North Dakota voters just approved an age limit for congressional candidates

And 80 is too high, but it is a good test legally. If you can retire and collect money for being old, then you are simply not generationally relevant anymore in terms of your political landscape. Almost by definition when you think about it that way. 60 or 65 should be the cap. Perhaps even to vote… It has nothing to do with technology and lifespan. It has to do with cultural relevance. Sure, our society should foster wise elders who hold respected opinions gained from years of experience, but to be ruled by them is to subject your prime years as an adult to the stolid ideals of a past generation.

Do I trust people like Trump or Biden to sensibly navigate a complex social landscape with gender fluidity, cyber personas, changing approaches to marriage, digital privacy concerns, digital identity, or even to understand the everyday stress and pressures of the generation producing the nation’s capital and the nations offspring? Heck no. Even if they read up on the topic and can respond to talking points or have formed their own opinions, _they didn't live them,_ it’s not the life of their generation and they simply cannot have true empathy for any such concerns. I would be more comfortable electing someone I disagreed with on almost every political topic to office, from my generation, than some impedance mismatched person twice my age who appears to align more naturally with my beliefs. Why? Because I know if it comes down to it, when stakes are high and it really matters, when that person has to make a decision that will have great impact, they will be equip with the tools, thoughts, experiences, etc. to navigate the decision in a way that’s socially relevant, even if I disagree with the outcome.

I say all this understanding that the time will come for my generation to relinquish power (if we ever get it) and shepherd in the next, likely before the power structures we’ve created would prefer it. The problem today is we’re still subjects of our grandparents power structures. And it is so hard not to become apathetic to our entire system when it’s so ingrained and inaccessible.

As far as I know voting record is reasonably available BUT bills are mostly not single issue and are very convoluted so that for any given bill it can be hard to tell whether you would have voted for or against.

The first (small) problem is that it caused unneeded intra-party drama. Effective assembly members would end up forced to seek a "promotion" into the state senate if they wanted to stay in politics. This often meant challenging members of the same party. This ends with people constantly fighting their "allies" to scramble up the greased pole, rather than doing more useful work.

Of course, that can happen even without term limits (politicians are the ambitious sort) but they definitely accelerate the effect.

The worse problem is that all of the legislators are now short-timers. But do you know who aren't newbs? The lobbyists! Since they're now the only ones around with deep experience, they invariably get even more involved with crafting laws.

This actually dove-tails into the other problem with the lobbying industry: the revolving door from legislator to the lobbying firm. Even without term limits this happens all of the time. It's very common for a retiring US House member to immediately get a lucrative job lobbying their former colleagues. However in a term-limited legislative body this only gets worse. Not only do lobbyists become more powerful, but term limits provide a guaranteed flow of politicians needing a new job.

So, if you find yourself as a newly-elected politician in such a system and you actually want to make a difference, probably your best bet is to immediately find some lobbyists to get sweet with. They are the only ones with the experience to make the political machinery work, and they're probably your future employer as well.

So at least in my observation, the ultimate effect of term-limits is to transfer power from democratically elected representatives to well-funded special interests. By un-entrenching the politicians you're accidentally making another group even more entrenched.

By contrast, I think the very top legislators are ones that become a true expert in their field of interest. Imagine somebody who has been working on, say, education policy for decades. They know every policy detail, all of the stakeholders, all of the experts. In a world of term limits, how will such a person ever emerge?

All of the above is specifically about legislative term limits. I believe the case for executive term limits is much stronger.

At 18 most people have too much going on (high school graduation coming up, studying for and applying to college and/or looking into employment, potentially seeking housing if their parents are kicking them out, etc) to have much capacity for political participation. That picture is significantly different just a couple of years earlier, where time and mental bandwidth is generally at more of a surplus, and so if people became capable of voting at that age it stands to reason that more would take advantage of it (and continue to after that).