Americans: Should the voting age be lowered, and if so, how low?

[Gilles de Rais]

Originally Posted by contracycle

I don't accept the validity on any restrictions of suffrage to anyone considered sufficiently competent to be responsible for their own behaviour.

But that's the problem. Tons of people are incompetent/irresponsible when it comes to their own behaviour, let alone making them responsible for other people's lifes... We simply let it go in real life because the idea of culling/engineering people is distasteful in the extreme. When it comes to our social and political organisation, though, we might try to improve over nature.

Why? After all, bread and circuses did improve the quality of life of the people of Rome - they were merely despised for it by aristocrats who thought such trivia was beneath them and that true self-worth was to be found in faction and military enterprise.

Hmmm... It was a very short term solution to long term problems and a silly way to select leaders. If a leader was proposing to "spend it all", would you agree? I want responsible leadership!

[contracycle]

Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

But that's the problem. Tons of people are incompetent/irresponsible when it comes to their own behaviour, let alone making them responsible for other people's lifes... We simply let it go in real life because the idea of culling/engineering people is distasteful in the extreme. When it comes to our social and political organisation, though, we might try to improve over nature.

Too bad, thats the raw material you have to work with, and the basic principle of democracy. You don't get to decide who is "worthy" of the franchise and who is untermenschen.

Hmmm... It was a very short term solution to long term problems and a silly way to select leaders. If a leader was proposing to "spend it all", would you agree? I want responsible leadership!

It was not a short term solution, it worked for hundreds of years and Rome was far from the only society to make a staple food ration one of the basic purposes of the state. This has nothing to do with selecting leaders, and everything to do with the purposes of the state itself. If it is not there to meet everyones needs, then what - or more accurately, whose - purpose is it serving?