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| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
I'd support that. As much as the government would like to think it knows what's best for people, it usually just uses its authority to enforce cultural or religious norms.
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It is true that the government is enforcing social norms, but the government is not the creator of those norms, instead it's decisions are a by-product of those norms. Without a government enacting such social norms, the society would very soon transform into anarchy and thereafter into an opressive regime of some sort. On the other hand, a government can not impose any norms it wants, since the norms that are generally opposed to the public view will usually fall and such a government will soon be banished.
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Why do we need a restriction on driving? If a 13 year old can pass a road test, then he's obviously qualified to drive (well, ok, maybe not - road tests should be harder).
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Yes, a 13 year old's intellectual capacity is quite satisfactory as far as learning the rules and regulations. But his emotional stability and reaction delays are not the same as ones of the adult. A child's ability to think ahead is also often very questionable. Now, I'm not saying that a small minority of children aren't emotionally stable and capable of thinking ahead, as well as I'm not saying that there aren't many adults that are just plain irrational and unstable (take tiesto14 and his 26 years of age for example). But the fact is that USUALLY children aren't as capable of making rational decisions as adults are. I mean, take an average 12 year old and give him a Porsche. Do you think he won't try to push it to the limit sooner or later? Maybe not in the beginning, but after he gets used to the car, he'll definitely want to try out how fast it goes. Most adults would do that too, but they would usually have the experience which will help them test the car in a safer environment. Keep in mind here that Porsche is only an example, you can easily get yourself killed in a Yugo which hardly goes over 145 km/h.
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Why do we need a restriction on voting? Sure, most kids don't have a clue about politics. Neither do most adults. And do you really think any but the most interested (and hence probably most qualified) minors would actually exercise their right to vote? Please.
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So that a daddy with 10 children won't tell his kids "vote for this guy and you get a cookie, or vote for this guy and I beat you up". Aside from this obvious example, children are mostly educated by their parents in the ways of politics and religion, as it is obvious here that a state shouldn't interfere in such things. A child of that age usually doesn't have much experience of politics aside from the things it is being told by its parents. Therefore a child concludes that the best party is the one it's parents support. Same goes for religion. There are countless examples of people who were raised in opressive christian/muslim/whatever environments who in the end turn up to be non-religious or atheist. Also, there are some of those raised in atheist environments who turn up to become deeply religious (such a shame  ). During the time they were still under their parent's influence, they would vote for the exact opposite thing of what they would vote for when they have reached their maturity. Not because they were forced to, but because they really did believe that was the right choice and the right thing to do. Children look up to their parents as examples and, to a degree, as superior beings that always know what is good and what should be done. Only when those people become fully grown can they realize that their parents are just people who have sometimes made wrong choices.
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Why do we need a restriction on marriages? Well, I don't think marriage should be recognized by the state as it is a collectivist, rather than individualist, policy. A person should just be a person, regardless of their relationships. But in any case, througout history there have been tons of cultures where people married very early, and there weren't and catastrophic effects as a result. Besides, you can always get divorced later if it turns out to have been a mistake.
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Same thing as for voting. Children can easily be swayed by their parents to marry the person their parents want the child to marry, instead of marrying the person a child would want to. Very soon you'd have contract marriages of the sort that are still going on in some parts of the world. Aside from that, I really don't think a 10 year old is capable of feeling love in a way an adult or semi-adult person does. And while teenagers are already capable of being in love with someone, they are usually quite irrational, and can therefore easily rush into things and make mistakes which an adult person wouldn't.
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Finally, statutory rape is a bullshit law. It undermines the concept of rape and dehumanizes the purported "victim" by telling them they don't have sufficient volitional consciousness to decide for themselves. If a minor wants to have sex with someone older than them, who's business is it to tell them they can't? Your's? The Governments? Yes, the government knows what's best for you - I think I read that in "The Doctrine of Fascism" by Benito Mussolini.
There only needs to be one law about sex: Any sex act lacking the consent of one or more participants is illegal. Period. Anything on top of that is a direct usurpation of individual rights.
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Ok, so if I dip my dick into a jar of honey and then go into a kindergarden backyard and then wave my dick around, a kid will consentually suck my dick. So do you think it's ok for me to do such a thing? Besides, kids learn from their parents, and if their parents keep telling them it's ok to suck their dicks, and they'll get a cookie afterwards, children will accept that as a normal thing, some may even like it.
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"Maturity" is not objectively measurable. Using age as a standard by which to evaluate it constitutes gross generalization - hardly something we ought to be basing our legal code on. Since we cannot measure maturity, laws upon which it is a premise have no place in any rational legal doctrine. |
That's true, but since about 90% of the kids gain maturity at about the same age, such laws are generally better than not having them at all. You could have children go to psychological exams every year to see if they have reached their maturity, but that is just much complication for little factual gain. No kid has ever reached the full maturity before the end of the puberty, and I don't think there's one case where puberty ended before a person was 16 years old. And if a kid gains it's full maturity at the age of 17, he'll have to wait one lousy year to get his rights, but I'm sure such a kid will realize it is for the best of the society.
The problem in your statement is that you are considering children to be fully capable persons since the moment they were born (or maybe shortly afterwards). The fact is that they are not, and until they are, they need the protection from the adults.
Btw, Arbiter, do you mind telling me how old are you, since I had similar opinions when I was about 17-19 years old.
Hehe, here's one of those rare occasions where occrider and I fully agree  .
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1+1=10
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. But seriously, I would not object to a drinking age of 19. I draw the line when it comes to drinking with high schoolers though ... no booze for 18 year olds. But for we definetely need to raise the driving age in this country ... 16 year olds should not be on the road.
