8 ms·

"Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". Sounds like democracy?

lmm 3y ago
> "Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". > Sounds like democracy? Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. And if they manage to get off work on election day. Meanwhile the elderly are reliably on the register (because they're not being forced to move around, because again they own a home) and encouraged to vote even if they're expected to die before the results take effect.
- _dain_ 3y ago
  >Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify the electoral roll when you move into a house or flat, then a few weeks before election day you get a bit of paper in the post, you can bring it to the polling station to prove you live there.
  - switch007 3y ago
    You’re a little out of date with your info https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-denied-vote-due-id-rule-electoral-commission-2023-06-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-...
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      The article says that 70% of them hadn't bothered to bring their ID. Hardly the result of draconian laws, is it? It also doesn't say how many of the 30% actually had the right to vote. It only says that they "brought a type that was not accepted".
  - edent 3y ago
    That is not correct. During the recent elections in England about 14,000 people were denied a vote due to lack of ID. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Great Britain has 67 million people. 14,000 people is unlikely to swing any election, even if they all voted in lockstep.
      - switch007 3y ago
        67m is the UK population, not the GB population. And 67m is nothing close to the size of the electorate of the local elections that number comes from. And as another commenter wrote, a small number of votes can matter a great deal.
      - mhh__ 3y ago
        14,000 in the right places could easily topple a government in a tight election because of FPTP - although one can obviously not choose in reality. In 2017 for example the minimum number of votes across the country needed to take down Theresa May (or more realistically have her form a true minority government) was something like 2500. We have an extremely disproportional electoral system.
        peterfirefly 3y ago
        That would have been 2500 in exactly the right places. 2500 in exactly the right places could also have given the Conservative Party even more seats. If we are talking about 0.25% on average then I doubt it could have changed much in these local elections (back in May in England and Northern Ireland). If anybody wants to play with the data from the General Election in 2017 they can do so here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2017_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2017_United_Kin... Sort the table by "Mjrty." in ascending order. Right at the top we see wins for SNP, Labour, SNP, Labour, and Labour that easily could have been wins for Lib Dem, Tories, Tories, Tories, and Tories.
  - matthewmacleod 3y ago
    The government has introduced a requirement for photographic ID for all UK parliament elections, as well as local elections in England. This has been quite heavily discussed, so I'm surprised you haven't heard about it.
  - acheron 3y ago
    > yank(?) To be clear, it’s not a real problem in the US either, but some people like to pretend it is. Don’t believe things you read on Reddit or wherever.
    - _dain_ 3y ago
      oh I already know it's not, you don't even have to be alive to vote let alone show ID
- dahwolf 3y ago
  I was referring to the idea that in an aging country, even if young/old people would equally show up to vote, the older people will have more votes. Which is democracy. It is fair in that sense, although surely it will not feel that way at all times.
  - jezzamon 3y ago
    You could imagine a system where similar to how we split votes into geographical regions via things like electoral colleges or having a locally elected representatives, there could be a similar splitting of votes into age ranges to ensure each group is sufficiently represented (Not advocating for this, just an interesting thing to think about)
    - dahwolf 3y ago
      Indeed, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. It's just an unusual and new idea to see young people as a minority as this never was the case to this extend. As it comes to housing though, I remain convinced that the issue is not as political as many make it out to be. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626 Meaning, even if the young seize more political power, there isn't going to be a law they can pass that says "cut rent in half".
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        There is also no law they can pass to reverse climatw change. Once some things are fucked, they are really hard to fix
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  California is one of the worst affected states for housing, and yet > they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats Pretty much everyone starts driving around 16-18 and has a driver's license > manage to get off work on election day CA is an early voting state where ballots are mailed to you ~1 month in advance. You can drop them off at your convenience at one of the numerous drop-off locations. Really, CA makes it as easy to vote as possible including same-day registration. There is no excuse for young people to not vote, except for their apathy.
  - lmm 3y ago
    I'm glad to hear we've finally put down that 1776 nonsense and restored California to the British crown.
    - eckesicle 3y ago
      Make America Great Britain Again!
- ozr 3y ago
  This is a wholly imaginary problem.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Oh come on. If there was the mass of people who couldn't get registered to vote, the Democrats would pull out all the stops to get them registered.
  - lmm 3y ago
    You mean the SDP? They haven't been an independent party since 1983, and have been politically irrelevant for even longer.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).
  - tmnvix 3y ago
    I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.
    - throwaway2037 3y ago
      Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period. where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, but somewhat offset by the cost of driving.
      - techer 3y ago
        “in the 5 years from 2015 to 2019, an average of 74% of people in England had a full driving licence“
        resonance1994 3y ago
        The provisional licence is enough as a voter ID though. I just used it in the last election.
        nirimda 3y ago
        I note your statistic refers to "people" and not "adults". Usually, some proportion of the people of any given country are ineligible to receive a drivers licence on the basis of their age. It seems that age is 17 in the UK, although I'm not sure whether that counts as full or provisional until they've got a bit more experience. I'll assume full. According to https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... there's about 1.2% of the people in each age group <17 in England, which means 1.2*17 ~= 20 of the people in the England are ineligible for a drivers licence. So there's only about 6% of people in the England who could have a full drivers licence, but don't. So either they give licences out in the cornflakes at Tescos, or almost the whole adult population of the UK wants a drivers licence.
jgon 3y ago
We usually have checks and balances in democracy so that a majority can't vote to say, take all the money from some minority group that has less voting power than them. What is happening now is that a "loophole" has been discovered wherein instead of just directly taking all of the money from some minority class the property owning class just instead condemns them to a lifetime of renting whereby just enough rent is charged to ensure that they are by and large never able to move out of renting, but not so much as to sow the seeds of a violent revolution (yet). Its democracy in the same way that voting to end all medical benefits for people over 65 would also be "democracy", which is to say it would be naked inter-generational and inter-class warfare.
- dahwolf 3y ago
  I get what you're saying and I'm against inter-generational hate. There is no plot against young people. Remember that most old people have children. If today's young people would time travel to some decades back, they'd too make the most of the conditions then. I would not imagine any young person that owns a home to sell it at a discount out of solidarity, they too would self-optimize without any consideration for anybody else. Young people today aren't especially targeted, they are at the end of what was a demographic/economic/infra/building boom. Those conditions cannot be recreated.
  - jgon 3y ago
    I don't think that the older generation "hates" youth, I don't think they think about them at all really. In the conversations I've had with Boomers and older people, although there is the standard derision for youth that is stereotypically expected of older generations, I would say there is more an immense blindspot and unwillingness to consider even a slight sacrifice of any type, even for their own children. The expectation is that the youth will just have to work hard like they did in there day and a complete unwillingness to confront any sort of conversation about what hard work could buy in their day vs the present one. I've watched boomers talk to each other about their kids or grandkids being unable to buy a home amongst each and other and I would describe the overall vibe as being one of detached "oh well, sucks for them" type acceptance, and trying to console each other that their kids are doing fine in other ways (they buy a new iphone every other year!!!). Your comment actually mirrors a lot of their attitude, especially the part about how the youth of today would definitely do the same things, so why feel guilty about doing it, a hypothesis that has no way of being disproved and which exists largely as a balm to soothe their conscience as they try to deal with the cognitive dissonance of watching their children suffer, and then voting for parties and policies that will prolong that suffering. You wouldn't imagine any young person doing something to help another person out in some sort of solidarity and yet I generally see this exact mindset in terms of voting for left wing parties that will raise taxes, including theirs, voting and campaigning for increased density which will affect the character of their neighborhoods and possibly decrease their property values. Hell I have never voted for a party that would decrease my taxes and I am pretty up front about needing to be taxed more as I am very fortunate with my employment and income situation. I've had conversations at length with boomers advocating for tax cuts which would cut funding to education, arguing that it is pretty convenient that they want these cuts right around the time that they have no children in public school and asked if we should also cut medical funding, funding that they disproportionately draw on and the response has been universally "No", that funding is good and necessary. So I don't think that they young are "especially targeted" and more that anyone who is not a boomer and up is targeted and that happens to include the youth. We can tell ourselves a bunch of stories but stats around home ownership, lifespan, healthspan, median income, etc, etc, etc, a laundry list tells the actual story of what the current relationship is like between generations. You don't have to hate someone to harm them greatly...
brutusborn 3y ago
Yep, democracy in action. Although I suspect if polities were smaller and more independent then certain areas, with more poor and young people, would vote to prioritise policies to incentivise housing construction. Large polities result in the same policies being applied to regions that are fundamentally different in ways that make policy good for some and bad for others. I think housing issues present a good case for confederalism or even anarchism. States rights in the US or Swiss Cantons are examples where different regions have more control over policies and thus can suit them to their own specific needs. The smaller the polity the better. Also why special economic zones tend to produce good outcomes.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> Sounds like democracy? Here is an example - 16 year olds who have a keen interest in their futute, are not allowed to vote. A 90 year old, who does not even remember that USSR has already collapsed, votes for a war-Mongering government. 18 year olds are drafted into the army and sent to fight a war, and they never had a chance to vote at all. Maybe their entire experience of democracy is getting sent to faraway land to die. Their experience is indistinguishable from tyrany
- aetherson 3y ago
  The last time the United States had a draft was 1973. The last time the UK had a draft was 1960. Who is the 18 year old who is drafted into the army and sent to fight a war and getting sent to a faraway land to die? I mean. Russians, for at least some value of faraway. But I don't think they're the central example that you're thinking of.
  - joebob42 3y ago
    That's 50 years ago. It's literally not even one lifetime ago.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      Given that you'd have to be 18 to be drafted (maybe 16), the minimum age of those people would be 68.

lmm 3y ago

> "Elections are largely monopolized by older people who mostly tend to be homeowners". > Sounds like democracy? Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. And if they manage to get off work on election day. Meanwhile the elderly are reliably on the register (because they're not being forced to move around, because again they own a home) and encouraged to vote even if they're expected to die before the results take effect.

_dain_ 3y ago
>Young people might get their first chance to vote at age 23 - assuming they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats to get the mythical free ID. uhh what? we're talking about britain here. I don't know what kind of yank(?) political dysfunction you're alluding to, but nobody has any trouble voting because of a lack of ID here. you don't need one to vote. you notify the electoral roll when you move into a house or flat, then a few weeks before election day you get a bit of paper in the post, you can bring it to the polling station to prove you live there.
- switch007 3y ago
  You’re a little out of date with your info https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-denied-vote-due-id-rule-electoral-commission-2023-06-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/about-14000-people-england-...
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    The article says that 70% of them hadn't bothered to bring their ID. Hardly the result of draconian laws, is it? It also doesn't say how many of the 30% actually had the right to vote. It only says that they "brought a type that was not accepted".
- edent 3y ago
  That is not correct. During the recent elections in England about 14,000 people were denied a vote due to lack of ID. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65988959
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Great Britain has 67 million people. 14,000 people is unlikely to swing any election, even if they all voted in lockstep.
    - switch007 3y ago
      67m is the UK population, not the GB population. And 67m is nothing close to the size of the electorate of the local elections that number comes from. And as another commenter wrote, a small number of votes can matter a great deal.
    - mhh__ 3y ago
      14,000 in the right places could easily topple a government in a tight election because of FPTP - although one can obviously not choose in reality. In 2017 for example the minimum number of votes across the country needed to take down Theresa May (or more realistically have her form a true minority government) was something like 2500. We have an extremely disproportional electoral system.
      - peterfirefly 3y ago
        That would have been 2500 in exactly the right places. 2500 in exactly the right places could also have given the Conservative Party even more seats. If we are talking about 0.25% on average then I doubt it could have changed much in these local elections (back in May in England and Northern Ireland). If anybody wants to play with the data from the General Election in 2017 they can do so here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2017_United_Kingdom_general_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2017_United_Kin... Sort the table by "Mjrty." in ascending order. Right at the top we see wins for SNP, Labour, SNP, Labour, and Labour that easily could have been wins for Lib Dem, Tories, Tories, Tories, and Tories.
- matthewmacleod 3y ago
  The government has introduced a requirement for photographic ID for all UK parliament elections, as well as local elections in England. This has been quite heavily discussed, so I'm surprised you haven't heard about it.
- acheron 3y ago
  > yank(?) To be clear, it’s not a real problem in the US either, but some people like to pretend it is. Don’t believe things you read on Reddit or wherever.
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    oh I already know it's not, you don't even have to be alive to vote let alone show ID
dahwolf 3y ago
I was referring to the idea that in an aging country, even if young/old people would equally show up to vote, the older people will have more votes. Which is democracy. It is fair in that sense, although surely it will not feel that way at all times.
- jezzamon 3y ago
  You could imagine a system where similar to how we split votes into geographical regions via things like electoral colleges or having a locally elected representatives, there could be a similar splitting of votes into age ranges to ensure each group is sufficiently represented (Not advocating for this, just an interesting thing to think about)
  - dahwolf 3y ago
    Indeed, democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for lunch. It's just an unusual and new idea to see young people as a minority as this never was the case to this extend. As it comes to housing though, I remain convinced that the issue is not as political as many make it out to be. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486626 Meaning, even if the young seize more political power, there isn't going to be a law they can pass that says "cut rent in half".
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      There is also no law they can pass to reverse climatw change. Once some things are fucked, they are really hard to fix
RestlessMind 3y ago
California is one of the worst affected states for housing, and yet > they paid for the right kind of ID, or navigated an impenetrable web of underpaid bureaucrats Pretty much everyone starts driving around 16-18 and has a driver's license > manage to get off work on election day CA is an early voting state where ballots are mailed to you ~1 month in advance. You can drop them off at your convenience at one of the numerous drop-off locations. Really, CA makes it as easy to vote as possible including same-day registration. There is no excuse for young people to not vote, except for their apathy.
- lmm 3y ago
  I'm glad to hear we've finally put down that 1776 nonsense and restored California to the British crown.
  - eckesicle 3y ago
    Make America Great Britain Again!
ozr 3y ago
This is a wholly imaginary problem.
WalterBright 3y ago
Oh come on. If there was the mass of people who couldn't get registered to vote, the Democrats would pull out all the stops to get them registered.
- lmm 3y ago
  You mean the SDP? They haven't been an independent party since 1983, and have been politically irrelevant for even longer.
alistairSH 3y ago
Does the UK not have any equivalent of the US “motor voter” system? When we update our info at the department of motor vehicles, there’s a checkbox on the form to automatically register to vote. So getting on the register is mostly automatic once you have the paperwork in order to get a driver’s license (which is a necessity to function as an adult in most of the US).
- tmnvix 3y ago
  I would guess that few countries have the type of situation that exists in the US where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. It can be prohibitively expensive when you consider the costs of lessons, a vehicle, and of the licence itself.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    Many people in the UK don't bother with a licence. Eh. "Many" is such a vague term. Like, 5% could be considered many. UK is a driving country, period. where a driver's licence is almost essential in order to go about daily life. This is true in all highly developed countries if you live outside the largest cities. You need to drive. It is baked in the cost of your life. Renting is much cheaper outside of the city, but somewhat offset by the cost of driving.
    - techer 3y ago
      “in the 5 years from 2015 to 2019, an average of 74% of people in England had a full driving licence“
      - resonance1994 3y ago
        The provisional licence is enough as a voter ID though. I just used it in the last election.
      - nirimda 3y ago
        I note your statistic refers to "people" and not "adults". Usually, some proportion of the people of any given country are ineligible to receive a drivers licence on the basis of their age. It seems that age is 17 in the UK, although I'm not sure whether that counts as full or provisional until they've got a bit more experience. I'll assume full. According to https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/ukpopulationpyramidinteractive/2020-01-08 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati... there's about 1.2% of the people in each age group <17 in England, which means 1.2*17 ~= 20 of the people in the England are ineligible for a drivers licence. So there's only about 6% of people in the England who could have a full drivers licence, but don't. So either they give licences out in the cornflakes at Tescos, or almost the whole adult population of the UK wants a drivers licence.

jgon 3y ago

We usually have checks and balances in democracy so that a majority can't vote to say, take all the money from some minority group that has less voting power than them. What is happening now is that a "loophole" has been discovered wherein instead of just directly taking all of the money from some minority class the property owning class just instead condemns them to a lifetime of renting whereby just enough rent is charged to ensure that they are by and large never able to move out of renting, but not so much as to sow the seeds of a violent revolution (yet). Its democracy in the same way that voting to end all medical benefits for people over 65 would also be "democracy", which is to say it would be naked inter-generational and inter-class warfare.

dahwolf 3y ago
I get what you're saying and I'm against inter-generational hate. There is no plot against young people. Remember that most old people have children. If today's young people would time travel to some decades back, they'd too make the most of the conditions then. I would not imagine any young person that owns a home to sell it at a discount out of solidarity, they too would self-optimize without any consideration for anybody else. Young people today aren't especially targeted, they are at the end of what was a demographic/economic/infra/building boom. Those conditions cannot be recreated.
- jgon 3y ago
  I don't think that the older generation "hates" youth, I don't think they think about them at all really. In the conversations I've had with Boomers and older people, although there is the standard derision for youth that is stereotypically expected of older generations, I would say there is more an immense blindspot and unwillingness to consider even a slight sacrifice of any type, even for their own children. The expectation is that the youth will just have to work hard like they did in there day and a complete unwillingness to confront any sort of conversation about what hard work could buy in their day vs the present one. I've watched boomers talk to each other about their kids or grandkids being unable to buy a home amongst each and other and I would describe the overall vibe as being one of detached "oh well, sucks for them" type acceptance, and trying to console each other that their kids are doing fine in other ways (they buy a new iphone every other year!!!). Your comment actually mirrors a lot of their attitude, especially the part about how the youth of today would definitely do the same things, so why feel guilty about doing it, a hypothesis that has no way of being disproved and which exists largely as a balm to soothe their conscience as they try to deal with the cognitive dissonance of watching their children suffer, and then voting for parties and policies that will prolong that suffering. You wouldn't imagine any young person doing something to help another person out in some sort of solidarity and yet I generally see this exact mindset in terms of voting for left wing parties that will raise taxes, including theirs, voting and campaigning for increased density which will affect the character of their neighborhoods and possibly decrease their property values. Hell I have never voted for a party that would decrease my taxes and I am pretty up front about needing to be taxed more as I am very fortunate with my employment and income situation. I've had conversations at length with boomers advocating for tax cuts which would cut funding to education, arguing that it is pretty convenient that they want these cuts right around the time that they have no children in public school and asked if we should also cut medical funding, funding that they disproportionately draw on and the response has been universally "No", that funding is good and necessary. So I don't think that they young are "especially targeted" and more that anyone who is not a boomer and up is targeted and that happens to include the youth. We can tell ourselves a bunch of stories but stats around home ownership, lifespan, healthspan, median income, etc, etc, etc, a laundry list tells the actual story of what the current relationship is like between generations. You don't have to hate someone to harm them greatly...

brutusborn 3y ago

Yep, democracy in action. Although I suspect if polities were smaller and more independent then certain areas, with more poor and young people, would vote to prioritise policies to incentivise housing construction. Large polities result in the same policies being applied to regions that are fundamentally different in ways that make policy good for some and bad for others. I think housing issues present a good case for confederalism or even anarchism. States rights in the US or Swiss Cantons are examples where different regions have more control over policies and thus can suit them to their own specific needs. The smaller the polity the better. Also why special economic zones tend to produce good outcomes.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> Sounds like democracy? Here is an example - 16 year olds who have a keen interest in their futute, are not allowed to vote. A 90 year old, who does not even remember that USSR has already collapsed, votes for a war-Mongering government. 18 year olds are drafted into the army and sent to fight a war, and they never had a chance to vote at all. Maybe their entire experience of democracy is getting sent to faraway land to die. Their experience is indistinguishable from tyrany

aetherson 3y ago
The last time the United States had a draft was 1973. The last time the UK had a draft was 1960. Who is the 18 year old who is drafted into the army and sent to fight a war and getting sent to a faraway land to die? I mean. Russians, for at least some value of faraway. But I don't think they're the central example that you're thinking of.
- joebob42 3y ago
  That's 50 years ago. It's literally not even one lifetime ago.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    Given that you'd have to be 18 to be drafted (maybe 16), the minimum age of those people would be 68.