Why giving the young more votes has implications you will not like

In a recent post I dealt with How votes for all (including non-citizens) devalues the vote

A related proposal is that the young should be given more votes than the old, since they'll be around longer to see the consequences of their vote - they thus have more skin in the game. Some even say that parents should get to vote on behalf of their children. One prominent example of this argument being trotted out is in the wake of Brexit - older voters, who leaned Leave, were mocked as ruining the future of the young, who leaned Remain - and these older voters wouldn't even be around for long to suffer the consequences of their vote.

One suspects that, just like epistocracy, this is just a cynical way for the elite to prevent phenomena like Trump and Brexit since the young vote more liberally than the old, but putting that aside for the moment, the implications are not going to please those who open this can of worms.

The concept of tying the vote to skin in the game is not new. Indeed, the "notion of political rights or citizenship depending on property is one found in many societies until relatively recent times" (Birth of Democracy: Solon the Lawgiver) - in Ancient Athens, the world's first democracy, under Solon's constitution, thetes (common laborers), while allowed to vote in the assembly and sit as jurors in law courts, could not hold office.

In more recent times, under some interpretations of John Locke he tied property ownership to voting rights, and in the early years of the USA, voting rights were generally only granted to white male property owners, reflecting a belief that,

"Freeholders, as property owners were called, had a legitimate interest in a community's success and well-being, paid taxes and deserved a voice in public affairs, had demonstrated they were energetic and intelligent enough to be trusted with a role in governance, and had enough resources to be independent thinkers not beholden to the wealthiest class."

During the French Revolution, Abbé Sieyès made a forceful case for different tiers of citizenship for similar reasons:

"All inhabitants of a country should enjoy in it the rights of passive citizens; all have the right to the protection of their person, of their property, of their liberty, etc. But all do not have the right to play an active role in the formation of public authorities; all are not active citizens. Women (at least at the present time), children, foreigners, and those others who contribute nothing to sustaining the public establishment should not be allowed to influence public life actively. Everyone is entitled to enjoy the advantages of society, but only those who contribute to the public establishment are true stockholders (actionnaires) of the great social enterprise. They alone are truly active citizens, true members of the association"

Even more recently, similar arguments can be found in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, where the ability to vote depends on having served the country (typically, though not always, in military service).

Until recently, these arguments were unfashionable in favour of the principle of one man one vote, but since changing the rules of the game is a sexy proposition when you're losing, they are now back in vogue; curiously, Lee Kuan Yew proposed something similar 25 years ago, namely giving people between 35 and 60 who were married with children an additional vote, but since he was "right wing" he got condemned.

Since we're now talking about weighted voting, rather than just the right to vote, the problematic aspects become even more evident. If the young should get more votes than the old because they will live for more years when their votes will have an impact, why not apply the same skin in the game principle to wealth? After all, the rich have more at stake than the poor - if you don't own your home, it doesn't matter if property prices collapse by 50%, for example.

Someone claimed that rich people actually have less skin in the game (and so should get fewer votes), because it's easy for them to move to another country if something goes wrong. Yet, investment visas are pricey, meaning this option is out of reach for all but the wealthiest - even if one could get them quickly enough if things went south. To say nothing of being able to move one's assets quickly enough; property is not liquid, and disposing of stocks and bonds at a moment's notice may not be easy, especially without incurring a substantial loss (since it's never good to be forced to sell - and if you're rich enough, a flash sale is going to depress prices and thus your selling price).

Yet, even if you place an upper limit on assets ($1 million, for example), a homeless person has less to lose than someone from the middle class, much less the upper middle class.

Awarding votes on the basis of "skin in the game" thus has class implications - to say nothing of race and other sensitive categories (due to disparate impact).

Liberals should be careful what they wish for. They just might get it.


Related posts:

How votes for all (including non-citizens) devalues the vote
Citizens and Permanent Residents vs Foreigners