this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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I’ve encountered 90 year olds that can walk, maybe even run circles around 50-60 year olds, mentally and physically.
That said, this is something we keep seeing. Feinstein was painful to see, and a clear example of what should never be allowed to happen. We need an age cap.
A policy like that is also ethically sound in that, and I’ve heard this floated before in multiple places, in that the politician will then have to sit back as an outsider and look at the impact of what they did.
As is, our politicians are free from that in being able to die in office or retire to dementia care instead of FEELING the impact of what they’ve done, or pointedly not done, while in office.
Age cap: 70. Done. You can run if you’re going to turn 70 in office, let’s be generous, but once you’re over 70 you can no longer run for an office.
Enforced retirement of judges for the same reason. Hit 70, you finish or transfer the cases you’re working on and when that’s done you’re done. Who knows how much inertia is fueling a waxing/waning cusp of Dementia judge when there’s no real focus on this across the many courtrooms of the country.
But I’ll probably be accused of ageism here. It’s a nice way to solve ethics problems, infirmity problems, and add in a soft cap term limitation.
I got accused of ageism before for saying the same that there should be mandatory retirement for public officials. However, the most convincing argument I heard for letting elders to still run for public office is that their accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom could still be of great dispense for the public. Noam Chomsky is still doing well despite in his 90's, for example.
But Chomsky did not get it right with his genocide denialism on Cambodia and Yugoslavia. He may have great insights, but his ego seems to have been entrenched on downplaying atrocities of other anti-Western countries simply because they are anti-America. And then there is also the time when Chomsky basically brushed aside his association with Jeffrey Epstein, by telling the interviewer to mind his business. It's not a proof in and of itself, but it's very suspicious.
You can share your wisdom and be of great value to the public without being in public office.
At some point, though, you've gone from useful adult into honored elder, and while I'm not suggesting we put them all on ice floes, they shouldn't be running the country, especially since more than a few of them clearly don't even know which country they're in, let alone how to run it.
If you can't walk, are having strokes, have developed dementia, and generally just sit around staring at the wall like my cat, perhaps it's time to gracefully retire and go spend the rest of your life doing conferences and speaking engagements and whatever the hell else you want, not trying to legislate.
There's also a common problem of no career path for politicians after holding some of the higher offices. It's either be reelected or elected to a higher position. I think it's more or less present in most countries.
It's especially obvious with US presidents, none of them held any other office after being president. Even previous younger ones.
I kinda have two responses here, so uh, here's both of them:
Well, by the time this is an issue, odds are you've been a career politician anyway and don't need another job. This is just old people who refuse to retire because they like the power and trappings more than they care about doing their job.
By the time they MUST retire, these ghouls have stolen sufficient money that it doesn't matter, and sticking around is just them refusing to give up the power and feed their greed even more.
Both seem equally reasonable and applicable to the problem.
Don't most politicians have degrees even if unrelated to politics? They could fall back to the career relating to their degrees or at least close to it. There are some, however, who don't have college degrees or trade before becoming a politician. Bernie Sanders haven't had a proper career and did many jobs before becoming a politician.
Although if the politician retires at ripe old age between 60-70, they could live off the pension anyway.