Time to move to Scandinavia
I saw an article over at ArsTechnica today about a report released by The World Economic Forum. It shows the US falling way behind in the NRI (Network Readiness Index), which sounds like a bullshit indicator to me, but let’s go with it for the sake of argument. I can’t get FTTH, I have to pay unbelievable amounts for cable, we’re easily years behind most of the developed world in cell-phone technology, we’re extremely dependent on fossil fuels, and public transit is almost non-existant (except for a few select cities), so let’s just assume for a minute that the U.S. is a little bit behind the rest of the world. I think there’s a few reasons behind this, but let’s start with the one that jumped to mind first:
The average age in the 110th Congress is 62, the youngest of which is John Sununu at 43 years old (Wikipedia). Currently you must be 35 for Presidency, 30 for the Senate, or 25 for the House of Representatives (Wikipedia). However, in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the age you can be elected is 18. They seem to be doing pretty well overall. I’d say it looks like the 18 year olds aren’t ruining the government with their “inexperience”, so what’s the point of restricting government offices to older people? Sure, I don’t want an 18 year-old to be in charge of the country, but how bad would it be to see a few of the younger generation shaking things up in Washington? Perhaps someone who would question things like the DST change benefits, giving massive subsidies to already profitable oil companies, and “The Surge!”. In my experience 18 year-olds are much more likely to question things than their older brethren, and it sure would be nice to see Washingtonians squirming as they have to explain their hair-brained schemes to someone who doesn’t just see things differently, but lives in a different world entirely.
How many 60 year olds do you know that have a firm grasp on copyright law, the internet, foreign policy, or modern economics? I’m certainly not saying they can’t understand these things, some people stay knowledgeable and “hip” into their 80’s and 90’s even, but those are not the normal case. There’s a place for the older generation in politics, but I don’t think they should so thoroughly dominate it.
We currently have politicians in office that think the telecoms should be allowed to rob the government for billions of dollars with no recourse. That giving a contract to Diebold for unproven voting technology just because it has the word “electronic” is a good idea. That sending a miniscule percentage of extra troops to a country in a civil war is going to defeat an ideology. I’m willing to see what the alternative is to that kind of psychosis.
