Apr 13, 2022·edited Apr 13, 2022Liked by Ives Parr
I find the idea of an "age of majority" test very frightening - if it *replaces* an arbitrary but inevitable age of majority for all people. That could very well decrease, uh, "net liberty" rather than increase it, because suddenly you have (another) way for politicians/bureaucrats/grass-roots moral busybodies to, by their thinking, "protect people from bad choices". For instance: Would people who self-harm be able to pass such a test, a test that's presumably devised by mostly neurotypical experts (or "experts") influenced by mostly neurotypical politicians, in turn influenced by mostly neurotypical voters? My impression of the general mentality of people, even in the most liberal of democracies, is that they are quick to assume that other/different people's freedoms, choices, and preferences are less rational, legitimate and important than their own. I think removing a universal age of majority will only increase the (cultural, ethnic, "neurological"(?), etc) majority's capacity to limit the freedom of minorities and weirdos. Additionally, the ideological zealots' capacity to impose their beliefs on others.
That said, the idea of a test that minors can use to access personal liberty earlier in life seems like a possibly beneficial thing, given that there's a set age when that *will* happen regardless of whether they pass the test(s) or not. (I guess it depends on which personal liberties they could access.) I doubt that it will happen, though, and the principal reason for that is that age isn't permanent. A sexist system that limits the freedom of women provides women with tons of motivation to push for systemic change, because systemic change is the only way to escape the sexism; freedom-limited adolescents in an ageist system can just wait a couple of years until *they* are personally unaffected. (Edit: And for the same reason, I think it's also far less morally repugnant than restrictions based on gender, ethnicity, etc.)
(I hope you don't mind comments on old(ish?) posts! Found your Newsletter recently and I think it's excellent!)
Totally agree (except that I think you're talking about "classical liberalism", not "progressivism").
But few people seem to support that idea - I think if the average person can't imagine some exception (in this case a competent 12 year old) then they assume it's impossible to exist, and see attempts to provide for those exceptions as stupid wastes of time.
I'd broaden the principle to say "any entity" that demonstrates compentence should have full adult human rights - a talking dog, a robot, a space alien, whatever.
This is one aspect of a larger issue - how society deals with entities somewhere between adult normal humans (who get full civil rights) and inanimate objects (rocks; which are chattel property and have no rights whatsoever).
In practice society does recognize many of these in-between entities (animals, children, incompetent adults), but not all of them. Moreover we deal with them very inconsistently (we have animal rights laws and child protection laws, but not following the same set of principles).
Unfortunately, any test of ability would have disparate impact. While the cause of these disparities could be the sole result of calculated systemic oppression, the result would be the same. In that case, it seems 'more fair' to use arbitrary metrics for various rights of citizenship that are vaguely correlated with ability.
I find the idea of an "age of majority" test very frightening - if it *replaces* an arbitrary but inevitable age of majority for all people. That could very well decrease, uh, "net liberty" rather than increase it, because suddenly you have (another) way for politicians/bureaucrats/grass-roots moral busybodies to, by their thinking, "protect people from bad choices". For instance: Would people who self-harm be able to pass such a test, a test that's presumably devised by mostly neurotypical experts (or "experts") influenced by mostly neurotypical politicians, in turn influenced by mostly neurotypical voters? My impression of the general mentality of people, even in the most liberal of democracies, is that they are quick to assume that other/different people's freedoms, choices, and preferences are less rational, legitimate and important than their own. I think removing a universal age of majority will only increase the (cultural, ethnic, "neurological"(?), etc) majority's capacity to limit the freedom of minorities and weirdos. Additionally, the ideological zealots' capacity to impose their beliefs on others.
That said, the idea of a test that minors can use to access personal liberty earlier in life seems like a possibly beneficial thing, given that there's a set age when that *will* happen regardless of whether they pass the test(s) or not. (I guess it depends on which personal liberties they could access.) I doubt that it will happen, though, and the principal reason for that is that age isn't permanent. A sexist system that limits the freedom of women provides women with tons of motivation to push for systemic change, because systemic change is the only way to escape the sexism; freedom-limited adolescents in an ageist system can just wait a couple of years until *they* are personally unaffected. (Edit: And for the same reason, I think it's also far less morally repugnant than restrictions based on gender, ethnicity, etc.)
(I hope you don't mind comments on old(ish?) posts! Found your Newsletter recently and I think it's excellent!)
Totally agree (except that I think you're talking about "classical liberalism", not "progressivism").
But few people seem to support that idea - I think if the average person can't imagine some exception (in this case a competent 12 year old) then they assume it's impossible to exist, and see attempts to provide for those exceptions as stupid wastes of time.
I'd broaden the principle to say "any entity" that demonstrates compentence should have full adult human rights - a talking dog, a robot, a space alien, whatever.
This is one aspect of a larger issue - how society deals with entities somewhere between adult normal humans (who get full civil rights) and inanimate objects (rocks; which are chattel property and have no rights whatsoever).
In practice society does recognize many of these in-between entities (animals, children, incompetent adults), but not all of them. Moreover we deal with them very inconsistently (we have animal rights laws and child protection laws, but not following the same set of principles).
Unfortunately, any test of ability would have disparate impact. While the cause of these disparities could be the sole result of calculated systemic oppression, the result would be the same. In that case, it seems 'more fair' to use arbitrary metrics for various rights of citizenship that are vaguely correlated with ability.