North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates • Hacker News Board

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#101

Post by chrisco255 » Tue, Jun 18, 2024, 3:57 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #26

chrisco255 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really weird at all. It's enough time to gain some experience and wisdom in the world before being endowed as Commander in Chief of the most powerful military on earth. A maximum age is dumb though. There really is no telling what developments in tech will lead to in terms of human lifespan. I'm more concerned with people staying in politics for too long. Yes if someone entered Congress at 25 they should c…

So don’t vote for young candidates then? Why do you need these limits?

I think young men given massive amounts of power while they're at peak testosterone levels has proven rather destructive throughout human history.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#102

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 1:00 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #99

bobthepanda wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a mix of issues with both incumbency and health episodes that come with old age. In practice the legislatures do not sufficiently police the health of their members and remove them if they are in poor health and unfit to serve; and four to six years can be quite a long time for health issues to emerge.

It's not the legislature's job to do so. It's the people's job to do so. The House has 2 year terms and the Senate has 6 year terms. But there are people that are plenty sharp well into their 80s, 90s. Benjamin Franklin was in office until he was 82. You look at someone like Warren Buffett as a more famous example of someone that is plenty sharp well into their 80s. People age at different rates, and there's really n…

The problem is that you can be perfectly healthy in year 1 and have severe cognitive decline by year 3, and voters can't really do anything about that.

as a general rule, right now states have no constitutional authority to institute recall elections for federal offices like Congress, so the only way to delegate that kind of authority would be for the current Congress to vote that into existence.

Re: North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

#103

Post by mrangle » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 3:34 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #81

mrangle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would. Congressional politics is closer to a complex game than a cognitive exercise. A game that is only learned and won with experience.

> Congressional politics is closer to a complex game than a cognitive exercise. A game that is only learned and won with experience. None of that means the game actually accomplishes what government is supposed to accomplish. The actual result of the game is a huge bloated bureaucratic government that (a) does a poor job of what it is supposed to be doing, protecting everyone's basic rights, and (b) also does a poor…

Was this response supposed to be relevant to the age question under discussion? Because that was the context of my response.

Second, my response both implies that the game and the government are indistinguishable and that what it is supposed to accomplish is as much a question that comes with experience as is the knowledge of how to play.

The output of a system is always its purpose, which is an upscaled cognate to the maxim that there are no mistakes in politics. The key to overcoming cognitive dissonance is to understand that this may not align with your perception of that purpose nor your perceived interests. Such is Life.