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by JumpCrisscross 34 days ago
> Also: ageism isn't sexy

Biology is ageist. The youngest baby boomers are still in their early 60s, and not yet subject to a precipitous-decline cut-off, but the median Boomer is about 71 and probably past it [1].

Given every President since 1993—with the exception of Obama—was born in 1942 or 1946 [2], I think it’s fair to admit this whole an-eighty-year-old-is-the-same-as-a-thirty-year-old tripe has swung to an untenable extreme.

Race is a social construct. Age is not. Mixing them up is fundamentally wrong and, I’d argue, dangerous.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4906299/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...
1 comments
mschuster91 34 days ago
> Race is a social construct. Age is not. Mixing them up is fundamentally wrong and, I’d argue, dangerous.

Even worse. Our entire society, hell our biology is based on old people retiring to leave space for the young to develop themselves. When you got gerontocrats in power for too long and after them boomers, all you'll end with in 20 years is a bunch of dead boomers and gen silent, and a bunch of gen y/z that never had the opportunity to actually learn leadership skills and failing spectacularly as a result.

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JumpCrisscross 34 days ago
> Our entire society, hell our biology is based on old people retiring to leave space for the young to develop themselves

This strikes me as a spin on the lump-of-labor fallacy.

The problem with a gerontocracy is you have masses in cognitive and physical decline at the peaks of power. Absent that condition, the model isn’t fundamentally broken. (You would probably see more patricide in hereditary lines…) Old people aren’t a problem, aged people in command are.

That’s what makes the comparison to race interesting—a society that brain drains gets wealthier for everyone. If we made our immigration 65+ only, on the other hand, it would be an almost-immediate disaster.

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mschuster91 34 days ago
> The problem with a gerontocracy is you have masses in cognitive and physical decline at the peaks of power.

Well... that's exactly what we have been able to observe in the US. Trump and Biden are horribly old, both have shown serious cognitive and physical decline with Trump definitely being the more serious issue (I never heard rumors about Biden crapping in a diaper, with Trump the rumors are so consistent they're practically a meme, and now we get to look at his very weird hand with no explanation why it's weird all the time). A bunch of Congresspeople died of old age in office, with the most prominent being Dianne Feinstein. The Supreme Court is even worse, with RBG being the most infamous for not stepping down and allowing Obama to nominate a successor, thus handing the post to Trump.

> Old people aren’t a problem, aged people in command are.

Both are a problem. Old people are vastly more likely to fall gravely ill at any given moment, they take longer to recover, and they take longer to learn new things (or refuse to do so outright). Aged people tend to entrench themselves in their position and fear getting replaced and losing their privileges, often thanks to toxic work ethics.

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andsoitis 34 days ago
your line of thinking isn't going to age well when your future self re-read this.
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mschuster91 34 days ago
Oh, I'll go into retirement as soon as that will be legally allowed for me. I have zero desire of working myself to death.
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watwut 34 days ago
> Our entire society, hell our biology is based on old people retiring to leave space for the young to develop themselves.

No it is not. People retire, because they dont have strength to work anymore. They have no duty to give up their lives just because you want to take it from them.

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mschuster91 34 days ago
> No it is not. People retire, because they dont have strength to work anymore.

That's part of the problem, we shifted from an agrarian to industrial and now service economy. Unlike the first two, in a service economy you can work until old age finally takes you.

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jimbokun 34 days ago
We have a duty to take it from them because their incompetence is beyond dispute at this point.

The gerontocrats running the US government are a complete disaster and need to be replaced as rapidly as possible.

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