It’s an interesting theory.
When I first read the title “Why We Should Give Children The Vote” I
thought I would be reading something about how children would expect honesty
out of politicians and hold them accountable for breaking promises. Those with small children know they can be
relentless about pursuing something you’ve promised them. But it turned out to be something quite
different.
There’s been a lot of articles in the Globe lately about how the choices the boomers made have impacted
their children and grandchildren. A
massive debt has accumulated, forcing future generations to accept fewer
services for more tax dollars in order to repay the money which has been
borrowed. This has certainly caused some
intergenerational strife, from resentment from younger generations to a
confused denial of modern circumstances from boomers. (They were able to buy a home, raise a family
and indulge on single family incomes, so why can’t modern families do it?)
The theory behind the proposal was that if children’s
interests had been represented by actual votes, it would not have been possible
to sell out their futures. This strikes
me as overly optimistic and altruistic.
People do things against their children’s interest fairly
frequently. And I don’t honestly see how
this would have restrained the boomers from making the decisions they did.
When the boomers were making the decisions to spend more
than the government earned, they were riding a wave of euphoria at having
changed some fundamental injustices in society (gender roles and civil
rights). The economy was on a long,
steady boom and there was a real belief that things were only going to get
better. It was okay to borrow from the
future because the future would always repay you with interest. They weren’t being malicious or consciously
selfish. They believed it was possible
to have it all and more besides.
Reality was somewhat different than they’d hoped. It’s easy to criticize from hindsight and I’m
sure there were those who urged caution at the time. Just like the people who argued against
sub-prime, zero down mortgages. But when
the gravy train is flowing, those people are seen as being anti-progress.
Humans are astonishingly short-sighted. We aren’t good at making short-term
sacrifices for long-term benefits. Our
very biology is designed for a glut and famine cycle. When things are good, we stuff ourselves as
much as possible, trying to accumulate enough to ride through the inevitable
wave of famine. This works pretty well
in a hunter-gatherer subsistence environment, but not so good when our attempts
to glut can affect the entire global ecosystem.
I don’t accept this as an excuse. We have a lot of “natural” tendencies that
we’ve overcome. Fear of strangers, fear
of change. We’ve got brains as well as
instincts and when we acknowledge those instincts and want to overcome them, we
can.
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