[cookiecaper]

This is a simple matter of disagreement. Your elders aren't "making extremely poor choices" in an objective sense. They're making the choice they believe is for the long-term interest of the country, just as you did. You should not assume idiocy or malice on the opposing side's part just because you lost. Informed, well-educated people can and do disagree. This must be valued and believed in a democratic society if it's not to tear itself apart.

If it were up to me, minimum voting age would be bumped to 30 and votes would become more valuable as people aged. Personal experience and history is nothing to sneeze at. The open disrespect to just dismiss this by-definition-wiser voting block as making "extremely poor choices" is very distasteful and short-sighted.

[vacri]

I'm 43, and I think the idea of no-votes-until-30 is a crazy idea. Yes, the young are less informed, but they're also more interested in finding alternatives. The old are incredibly conservative, and as proven in this referendum, more fearful of diversity. They don't want to deal with change, which is a bad thing in a world that constantly changes - for example, keep in mind that the internet is only 20 years old, as far as the public is concerned. Cut off the young, and you take away the meat of the progressives, and your society will stagnate. Wisdom is definitely important, but so is the will to enact change.

And if you want evidence that the old are just as susceptible to stupid politics, look to Fox News's target audience: the silver hair brigade. Or talkback radio. Wisdom in personal life (everybody has one) does not necessarily translate to wisdom in political life (where few actually do engage).

[cookiecaper]

>They don't want to deal with change

Brexit is a pretty massive governance change. Everyone blames old people for its success, so I'm not sure why the narrative is that "old people won't vote for changes". I think it's less that older people are hostile to change as much as they've seen enough political opportunists and fraudsters that they have some firmness to their opinion (and again, this is a good thing). As Brexit shows, older people often do support changes that they believe would be beneficial.

I know that my dad, for example, would really like to see some stuff change, even though he's a senior citizen. But he's not excited by Bernie Sanders.

>for example, keep in mind that the internet is only 20 years old, as far as the public is concerned.

I am 1000% behind the idea of changing the laws that govern intellectual property and internet access, but this is not an issue that's age-dependent. Few people in any age strata care or think about this because if their news sources have any vested interest, it's in keeping IP laws locked down as tightly as possible. You'll find near-universal praise for copyright among every age group, because the public is presented only one side of the copyright debate. Laws expanding IP rights and locking down tech access routinely pass with minimal debate or interest. The exception to this is the hacker subculture, where it's not really an age-dependent thing either. Some older persons involved in certain niche businesses may remember slightly-less-oppressive copyright regimes and want to go back to that.

>Cut off the young, and you take away the meat of the progressives, and your society will stagnate.

This is everyone else's complaint too, but it's begging the question. "Progressiveness" is not inherently correct. Social insistence on certain behavioral standards is good. We don't want to "progress" out of all of our values.

>And if you want evidence that the old are just as susceptible to stupid politics, look to Fox News's target audience: the silver hair brigade. Or talkback radio.

I know a lot of young people who are into Fox News and conservative talk radio. People consciously pick the news outlets that agree with them most often because it's more pleasant to listen to someone encourage your beliefs than discourage them. Conservative media is not specifically targeted at old people; it's targeted at all conservatives.

[vacri]

> Brexit is a pretty massive governance change.

The people voting for Brexit want to stop the changes their seeing to their country. Brexit itself is a massive governance change, but the people going for it see it as the option to stop the change they see in the streets around them.

> internet = copyright issues

Bollocks. If that's all you think the internet means to people, intellectual property, you need to open your eyes considerably wider.

> "Progressiveness" is not inherently correct.

Not inherently, but a) our societies are far wealthier (fiscally and socially) and far more equitable than ever before, largely due to progression, and b) the world changes anyway, and you have to adapt to change. If it weren't for progressiveness, we'd still have slaves, women wouldn't be able to vote (or work, really), Africa and Asia would still be colonised, anti-semitism would still be the norm of polite society, so on and so forth.

> I know a lot of young people who are into Fox News and conservative talk radio

'Target audience'. You can have a lot of other members in your audience.

[cookiecaper]

>The people voting for Brexit want to stop the changes their seeing to their country. Brexit itself is a massive governance change, but the people going for it see it as the option to stop the change they see in the streets around them.

I'm sure Brexit supporters would argue this is a mischaracterization, but even if it's true, it proves that they're not afraid of change per se. They're willing to make a massive change to the country's governmental structure and role in the region in order to prevent other changes that they perceive as negative from occurring. They simply have a different evaluation of the situation than yourself. This is called a "disagreement".

>Bollocks. If that's all you think the internet means to people, intellectual property, you need to open your eyes considerably wider.

I was addressing the major fields of law that impact the internet, which is a) tech access laws like the CFAA and b) copyright/IP law. I guess your comment here indicates that you were thinking along the lines of net neutrality (already the law) and municipal internet/increased ISP competition (which is a complex issue that varies by locality and doesn't really represent a major, large-scale legal conundrum; it's mostly just legwork and local politics to resolve). Everyone wants improvement in that area too, but to my mind, it's minimally important compared to tech access and intellectual property, and it's certainly much more fractured since it's highly dependent on local politics.

>our societies are far wealthier (fiscally and socially) and far more equitable than ever before, largely due to progression

This is a non-sequitr and far too airy to really rebut. To the extent that changes associated with socially progressive politics have been beneficial (and I would argue that such changes are scant), it's not due to the fact that the positions were supported by social progressives, but that the position was reasonable and important. You act like this is inherently the same thing, that anything under the banner of progressivism is automatically just and important. That doesn't make any sense, which is becoming increasingly obvious as progressives have begun to run out of reasonable things to protest.

>the world changes anyway, and you have to adapt to change

Sure, some things change, and many things don't change. People today are biologically very similar to people from 5k years ago; on an evolutionary timescale, that's a miniscule difference, so the things that were logical and biologically compatible 5k years ago are probably pretty similar today.

It's not that people are afraid of change itself; it's simply that people understand that changes aren't always for the better.

>If it weren't for progressiveness, we'd still have slaves, women wouldn't be able to vote (or work, really), Africa and Asia would still be colonised, anti-semitism would still be the norm of polite society, so on and so forth.

You've essentially redefined "progressive" as "positive" and saying "anything good is progressive". Your statements here are not remotely reflective of reality. Every positive change is not automatically the work of social progressives. Slavery in particular drew fire from people of all ages and economic classes; the lines were not what you're trying to imply here.

>'Target audience'. You can have a lot of other members in your audience.

Yeah, I addressed this. This is another issue with getting definitions backwards, something you seem to be doing a lot. Fox News's target audience is not "old people", it's "conservatives". There are a lot of conservatives in all age groups, despite the media's attempts to make them invisible. Old people are overwhelmingly conservative, not because they're afraid of change, but because they recognize a lot of the proposed changes are not beneficial.

This boils down to simple political disagreement, and you're trying to generalize it over every demographic that's more likely to belong to your political opponents. Many would call this "ageism"; may want to watch it before your progressive brethren catch wind.

[Malician]

You make a good point with your last paragraph: given the circumstances, if we held a vote on who should get to vote, the answer would not be one millenials would relish. Those calling for disenfranchisement of the elderly are not only morally wrong but would bring down the very system which protects young people.

I do think that it is possible for a reasonable person to call certain decisions bad, even if it's not entirely objective. The vast majority of the credentialed economic establishment believes that Brexit was a tragedy, so does the stock market, and so do most of those educated on international political relations who study the subject.

Of course, the rejection of the establishment by voters who are tired of having their will systematically ignored, mocked, and thwarted is the reason for Brexit, so for the Leave crowd that isn't much of a point.