alt Hacker News>questionable if we should allow the childless and the aged to even vote
We do need to restrict the franchise drastically. I don't know if this is where I'd draw the line, but it is actually one of the better ideas.
Other ideas: net tax payers, veterans, citizens
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The franchise is already restricted to citizens except for weird subsets like SF schools, right? I think any model of franchise restriction must have negative feedback effects:
- should not allow franchise holders to arrogate state function to themselves in a snowball manner
- should not allow franchise holders to enhance franchise power
Not in a direct “outlaw this”sense but in a dynamic systems sense. So something like net tax payer is good. If you use it to vote yourself more state benefits you lose the franchise and others can then remove that benefit from you.
It will be hard to handle delayed reward situations (I pay now to get benefit later) so I think the problem is we just don’t have the correct device for this yet.
But the restricted franchise is something I think is very useful. The model of having free riders vote for more free riding is rapidly approaching its limit.
I don't know HN was full of neo-confederates.
Half of America reads at a 6th grade level or lower. Something like a quarter of the country is effectively illiterate.
I don't believe disenfranchising them is the best solution- I might take a Jeffersonian view that in being so illiterate, they are already effectively disenfranchised (someone else is "voting" for them - influencing their choice in a probably undue way).
A better solution would be to find effective ways to educate them