A Stitch in Haste

I seem to recall a throwaway sentence or two in one of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" books mentioning that the age of majority in his fictional, distant-future, pan-galactic civilization was seven, but that in practice it was never enforced and that children were universally treated — well, like children.

And toward the future some would have us rush:

We should hasten the enfranchisement of this generation, born between 1980 and 1995, by lowering the voting age to 16.

Age thresholds are meant to bring an impartial data point to bear on insoluble moral questions: who can be legally executed, who can die in Iraq, who can operate the meat cutter at the local sub shop. But in a time when both youth and age are being extended, these dividing lines are increasingly inadequate.

First off, I reject utterly the premise that "insoluble" is interchangeable with "unsolvable." Perhaps moral questions don't dissolve in liquid — I don't know.

But such questions are certainly not "unsolvable" — we have, duh, already solved them. The fact that some malcontents might not like the actual solution we've come up with (i.e., everyone, whether dumb or smart, mature or immature, is a minor before 18 and an adult after) does not make the questions "unsolvable" (much like how my dissatisfaction with the current state of "insoluble/unsolvable" is not a basis for demanding that dictionaries that I consider wrong be summarily rewritten to suit my subjective view).

In any case, I find it fascinating that at the same time that we are revisiting — in the opposite direction — adult standards regarding criminal penalties for juvenile offenders (statutory rape, capital punishment, life without parole, etc.), in essence finding a new robustness in the notion that "minors are not competent and should not be treated as such," that anyone could seriously suggest that we should simultaneously find that ever younger people — who can, for example, void on a whim almost any contract at any time based on legal incapacity — ought to be allowed to elect politicians who will exert government force over others.

I have an alternative proposal: Instead of starting off 16-year olds as voters, why not start them off as jurors? I wonder how the author would feel, qua criminal defendant, about having her fate determined by 12 members of "Generation ROFLMAO."

More:

Driving laws provide the best model for combining early beginnings and mandatory education. Many states have had success with a gradual phasing in of driving rights over a year or more, starting with a learner's permit at age 16.

I can't speak for all states, but in New York a learner's permit is a determination, not that one is qualified to drive, but precisely the opposite: that one is not yet ready to make independent decisions about one's own driving ability. In New York, a permit holder cannot drive alone, cannot drive with multiple passengers, cannot drive at night in some cities and counties, and cannot drive under any circumstances on certain bridges, tunnels and highways.

How, exactly, could such gradualist rules map to a voting booth? You could vote at 17, but only accompanied by your parent?

Still more:

Similarly, 16-year-olds who want to start voting should be able to obtain an "early voting permit" from their high schools upon passing a simple civics course similar to the citizenship test.

That is a total non sequitur. Either require a civics course or don't. If it makes sense for 16-year olds, then it makes sense for 30-year olds or 90-year olds. Conversely, if we are going to argue that 30-year olds can vote while 16-year olds can't because the former have more "life experience" than the latter, then no PowerPoint presentation on bicameralism or the pocket veto is going to substitute for that.

One more:

The phasing in of credit cards at 16 could work with firm restrictions. A parental co-signer should be required until young applicants have made a year of on-time payments from their own wages. The most important requirement would be passing a mandatory financial literacy test. The applicant would define "compound interest," correctly decipher the fine print on a credit card agreement and argue with a robotic customer service representative over a mysterious fee. Surely this graduated system would be safer than handing young people a $2,000 line of credit just as they leave home for the first time.

At last we dive head-first into Kip's Law: "Surely"? The only thing I'm sure of is that credit card companies know their business better than I (or this malcontent) do. "Safer"? To whom? By what standard? (And, incidentally, minors already can obtain co-signed credit cards — I had one myself when I started college at 16.)

The malcontent ends with this presumptuous, warm-fuzzy-feeling drivel:

The more we treat teenagers as adults, the more they rise to our expectations.

I've watched enough episodes of Judge Judy to know that this is the most idiotically incorrect thing I will read this week (Super Tuesday notwithstanding). The more we treat minors as adults, the more ways they find to get themselves — and others — into trouble. As she often says, "They're not fully cooked."

The absolute last thing we need is such youngsters "learning-permitting" their way into a polling station.

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(The twenty-one drinking age is another matter altogether and a subject for other blogposts.)