J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,808 
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jul 16, 2017 19:01:10 GMT
Why are people on this thread treating adulthood/childhood as a binary distinction? When I woke up on the morning of my 18th birthday, I had not changed in any noticeable way from what I was the day before. Becoming an adult is a process that takes a number of years, and it's entirely appropriate that we recognise those changes at different points (even though those points are entirely arbitrary). There is a legitimate debate about what arbitrary age we decide to mark as the point where the "average" or "normal" person is capable of choosing a candidate or party to support in an election, and characterising votes-at-16 as being about allowing "children" to vote is both simplistic and disingenuous. If you have a legitimate reason to argue that 16 year olds don't have the capacity, then please make that point. If the only argument you have is a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument about allowing "children" to vote, then you don't really have an argument. Only because society has decided to grant legal adulthood at a certain age. Society could chose to grant adulthood via some other mechanism not tied to age, but again that goes down the slippy path of depending on some person's personal whim. Declaring that a person is an adult by the sole criterion that they have been alive for a certain universal period of time (whatever that period of time is) is the only impartial uncorruptable mechanism. I don't have any argument for or against the concept that 16-year-olds may or may not have the capacity to vote. And there's the rub. How *DO* you decide that a 16-year-old has or has not the capacity to vote? Or an 18-year-old? Or a 35-year-old? And how do you stop that decision ultimately ending up being some person's whim? The only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody can have adult rights is if they are an adult, and the only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody is an adult is by requiring them to have been alive for a certain amount of time. |
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Post by greenchristian on Jul 16, 2017 19:44:00 GMT
Why are people on this thread treating adulthood/childhood as a binary distinction? When I woke up on the morning of my 18th birthday, I had not changed in any noticeable way from what I was the day before. Becoming an adult is a process that takes a number of years, and it's entirely appropriate that we recognise those changes at different points (even though those points are entirely arbitrary). There is a legitimate debate about what arbitrary age we decide to mark as the point where the "average" or "normal" person is capable of choosing a candidate or party to support in an election, and characterising votes-at-16 as being about allowing "children" to vote is both simplistic and disingenuous. If you have a legitimate reason to argue that 16 year olds don't have the capacity, then please make that point. If the only argument you have is a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument about allowing "children" to vote, then you don't really have an argument. Only because society has decided to grant legal adulthood at a certain age. Society could chose to grant adulthood via some other mechanism not tied to age, but again that goes down the slippy path of depending on some person's personal whim. Declaring that a person is an adult by the sole criterion that they have been alive for a certain universal period of time (whatever that period of time is) is the only impartial uncorruptable mechanism. I don't have any argument for or against the concept that 16-year-olds may or may not have the capacity to vote. And there's the rub. How *DO* you decide that a 16-year-old has or has not the capacity to vote? Or an 18-year-old? Or a 35-year-old? And how do you stop that decision ultimately ending up being some person's whim? The only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody can have adult rights is if they are an adult, and the only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody is an adult is by requiring them to have been alive for a certain amount of time. So your argument is that adulthood has to be defined by putting an arbitrary age label on it (because any other method is partial and corruptible), that all adult rights and responsibilities must be acquired at this same arbitrary point (you've implied, but not explicitly stated that), and that because our society has currently put a very large proportion of those rights and responsibilities at age 18, that figure should be sacrosanct (not stated, but the only possible reason your arguments would say that the voting age should be 18). Please correct me if I'm wrong in boiling your argument down to its most basic logic. But that does seem to be a very weak argument. As I already pointed out, becoming an adult is a gradual process. It makes perfect sense to award different rights and responsibilities at different stages. And even if we accept that there should be an arbitrary point at which all (or almost all) of these rights and responsibilities come at once, there is still a legitimate discussion about whether the current "adult at 18" consensus is correct or not. None of your arguments convince me that there's any substance at all to the view that voting should be at 18 rather than 16, let alone that said substance is stronger than the substance of the arguments that the voting age should be lowered. |
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maxque
Non-Aligned
Posts: 9,312
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Post by maxque on Jul 16, 2017 21:09:03 GMT
Why are people on this thread treating adulthood/childhood as a binary distinction? When I woke up on the morning of my 18th birthday, I had not changed in any noticeable way from what I was the day before. Becoming an adult is a process that takes a number of years, and it's entirely appropriate that we recognise those changes at different points (even though those points are entirely arbitrary). There is a legitimate debate about what arbitrary age we decide to mark as the point where the "average" or "normal" person is capable of choosing a candidate or party to support in an election, and characterising votes-at-16 as being about allowing "children" to vote is both simplistic and disingenuous. If you have a legitimate reason to argue that 16 year olds don't have the capacity, then please make that point. If the only argument you have is a thin-end-of-the-wedge argument about allowing "children" to vote, then you don't really have an argument. Only because society has decided to grant legal adulthood at a certain age. Society could chose to grant adulthood via some other mechanism not tied to age, but again that goes down the slippy path of depending on some person's personal whim. Declaring that a person is an adult by the sole criterion that they have been alive for a certain universal period of time (whatever that period of time is) is the only impartial uncorruptable mechanism. I don't have any argument for or against the concept that 16-year-olds may or may not have the capacity to vote. And there's the rub. How *DO* you decide that a 16-year-old has or has not the capacity to vote? Or an 18-year-old? Or a 35-year-old? And how do you stop that decision ultimately ending up being some person's whim? The only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody can have adult rights is if they are an adult, and the only impartial uncorruptable method to decide whether somebody is an adult is by requiring them to have been alive for a certain amount of time. Quebec has gradual granting of rights and so, various majorities (for example, medical majority is 13, parents approval of medical treatment not needed anymore). |
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clyde1998
SNP
Green (E&W) member; SNP supporter
Posts: 1,765
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Post by clyde1998 on Jul 17, 2017 6:29:57 GMT
The issue is that there's no consistency in the age in which it becomes legal to do things in the UK, without parental consent, with most ranging between sixteen and eighteen:
Consent - 16
Driving - 17 (16 for mopeds and tractors)
Leave full time education/training - 16 (18 in England)
Legal capacity - 18 (16 in Scotland)
Marriage - 18 (16 in Scotland)
Purchase alcohol - 18 (16 in Scotland with a meal)
Purchase tobacco - 18 (can smoke at 16 in England and Wales)
Voting - 18 (16 for Scotland only elections)
Notably the official age of majority in Scotland is sixteen, while in the rest of the UK it's eighteen - that's a side effect of the three different legal systems in the UK.
There appears to be no reason as to why there's no consistency on these things; why should someone who is sixteen have consent, but not be able to purchase alcohol?
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Post by greenchristian on Jul 18, 2017 16:43:57 GMT
This is an interesting debate to have but I feel like I shouldn't fuel it on a page about opinion poll committes. Well, quite. Threads about opinion poll committees should be dominated by posts about trains.  |
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Post by greatkingrat on Jul 20, 2017 19:36:24 GMT
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