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This is so weird, because you could also just not elect them.
by BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
This is so weird, because you could also just not elect them.
- bigyikes 2y agoDo you also find the two term limit for presidents weird then?
- HPsquared 2y agoIt is, a little.
- tyleo 2y agoNot a completely fair comparison IMO because the first term is an advantage when running for the second.
- bobthepanda 2y agoall, if not nearly all, of the old people that this is aimed at would be career politicians for which many of the same rules apply. the age limit for ND is 81. how many 81 year olds are fresh politicians?
- chrisco255 2y agoDoesn't matter if it's rare, it's a bad law if it restricts people arbitrarily. Just do term limits.
- bobthepanda 2y agoIt’s a mix of issues with both incumbency and health episodes that come with old age. In practice the legislatures do not sufficiently police the health of their members and remove them if they are in poor health and unfit to serve; and four to six years can be quite a long time for health issues to emerge.
- chrisco255 2y agoIt's not the legislature's job to do so. It's the people's job to do so. The House has 2 year terms and the Senate has 6 year terms. But there are people that are plenty sharp well into their 80s, 90s. Benjamin Franklin was in office until he was 82. You look at someone like Warren Buffett as a more famous example of someone that is plenty sharp well into their 80s. People age at different rates, and there's really no telling what sort of advances in medicine might improve this and extend life and healthspan by decades.
- bobthepanda 2y agoThe problem is that you can be perfectly healthy in year 1 and have severe cognitive decline by year 3, and voters can't really do anything about that. as a general rule, right now states have no constitutional authority to institute recall elections for federal offices like Congress, so the only way to delegate that kind of authority would be for the current Congress to vote that into existence.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoIt’s meant to prevent the emergence of an autocrat. That doesn’t apply to a member of Congress for obvious reasons.
- banish-m4 2y agoTerm limits are excellent because they avoid career politicians getting too comfortable and corrupt. It has nothing to do with age.
- Jensson 2y agoYet one of the most corrupt first world democracies has them while most of the much less corrupt democracies doesn't have it. Maybe it is needed due to corruption, but it doesn't seem to be necessary.
- vsuperpower2020 2y agoPeople can't really be trusted to make good decisions, so the current idea of democracy seems to be to at least remove some bad decisions.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 3vidence 2y agoWe have age minimums for just about everything it doesn't seem crazy to have age maximum for things for mainly the same reasons. Isn't the minimum age for presidential candidates 35? That actually seems weirder to me than an age maximum of 80.
- epoxia 2y agoThere is already precedent of careers in aviation having required retirement ages. In areas with high stakes, it is not unreasonable to have age limits.
- chrisco255 2y agoThat's not really weird at all. It's enough time to gain some experience and wisdom in the world before being endowed as Commander in Chief of the most powerful military on earth. A maximum age is dumb though. There really is no telling what developments in tech will lead to in terms of human lifespan. I'm more concerned with people staying in politics for too long. Yes if someone entered Congress at 25 they should certainly be gone by 45, but if they started at 65 I see no reason to boot them out based on some arbitrary age restriction.
- meristohm 2y agoIs it okay to die? Are we each so important that we need to extend our life with technology, beyond the low-tech solutions of exercise, sleep, nutrition (can get enough exercise just meeting this need), warmth, purpose, and love? What is the role of culture and generational bonds in all this?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIt’s not just okay, it is necessary. Otherwise, old ideas won’t die and give room for new ideas to grow, like a forest burning so that the saplings can get sun.
- p1esk 2y agoSo don’t vote for young candidates then? Why do you need these limits?
- TrainedMonkey 2y agoThe issue is not electing people... it's re-election advantage. Incumbent candidates rarely lose, especially in Congress... and power is addicting. This leads to the current situation where U.S. Congress median age is pretty far on the cognitive decline curve - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/30/house-gets-younger-senate-gets-older-a-look-at-the-age-and-generation-of-lawmakers-in-the-118th-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/30/house-get... . I think there were multiple issues that took down USSR, but aging leadership with inflexible thinking that was not capable of keeping up with times was probably complicit in most of them.
- lstodd 2y agowell maybe work on that "re-election advantage", understand and curtail it instead of instuting blanket (and imo insane) bans?
- dcow 2y agoIf you’re old enough to retire and collect old person benefits you are no longer fit to lead not because you are might be incapable but because you are simply not generationally relevant. The office of president has term limits for effectively the same reason and nobody calls those insane.
- TedDoesntTalk 2y agoTerm limits on the presidency have nothing to do with age. You could be 35, serve two terms, and you’d still be banned from being president again … at age 43. The ND ban is nothing but ageism.
- dcow 2y agoIt’s not. Nobody is saying old people are subhuman scum who shouldn’t be treated kindly and with respect. The argument is that after a certain point you may not have a lived experience that is relevant anymore for being an effective political leader. The same way we wouldn’t put two 80 year olds in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft… the risk there is obvious and clear.
- mycologos 2y agoCould you? Some elections only feature old candidates. This limit is a way of making sure there is at least one non-old choice.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoThere’s always the primary
- dheera 2y agoThe problem is real voters don't really determine who to elect. If they did, Biden and Trump would both not be candidates.
- zeroonetwothree 2y agoThey were selected in primaries. Who did that selection if not “real voters”?
- dheera 2y agoI don't know a single person who wanted Biden as the democrat candidate. He only won because the other dudes on the ballot are some nobodys that nobody knows. Do you even know who they are without looking? It's almost like it's rigged from the inside with some nobodys just so that Biden wins.
- Larrikin 2y agoAn anecdote is not evidence, neither is the failure of you and your friends to research people in the primary evidence of a grand conspiracy. Complaining about Biden specifically in an incumbent year really feels like a bad faith argument.
- rayiner 2y agoBiden and Trump are probably the worst examples for the point you’re trying to make. There’s no Democrat that polls better against Trump than Biden. Biden beat Kamala Harris (who had Obama’s team behind her), Elizabeth Warren (the choice of affluent white professionals), and Bernie Sanders (the choice of progressives) because he had the support of the party’s critical black voters and moderate/conservative faction. Trump, meanwhile, was the choice of populist republicans who overthrew the party’s establishment (Bush/McCain/Romney) wing.
- carabiner 2y agoHard when he has 100x more money than the younger guy.
- colechristensen 2y agoThe parties manipulate who runs in the primaries. Voters regularly just don't have the choices. The present ages of all of the candidates who won delegates in the 2020 democratic primaries: 82, 82, 81, 74, 41 I didn't want to vote for Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar wouldn't have been my choice for a candidate but was the nearest to someone I'd actually want to vote for and she dropped out after the third state. So yeah the Democratic party can go to hell. Donald Trump was their doing because they/Hillary pushed everyone off the ticket years ago and they haven't fielded a desirable candidate since Obama, and he was, all things considered, mediocre. These days the bar for a politician to get my vote is to still have a child in university (or younger) and to not literally be a Nazi. It is disturbingly difficult to find someone to vote for.
- dcow 2y agoYep. I would vote for a yellow haired keyboard warrior or a bible fearing evangelical regardless of whether I share a single political belief so long as they’re participating in the society I actually exist in. 80 year olds don’t live in the same world.