Elon Musk supports eliminating voting rights for people without children

mainaccount@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 876 points –
Elon Musk supports eliminating voting rights for people without children
independent.co.uk
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There isn’t much to rationalize, it’s not a good idea at the surface level, you don’t need to dig deep to see that.

Lol, if you insist :p I take it you've never tried a Steelman?

I mean, feel free to fix the logic and then we can talk about.

First, let me steelman your argument :] 'Having children doesnt automatically mean that you're a good, responsible, person.' Let me know how I did. Given the above--

Of course having children doesn't imbue a person with extra knowldge or virtue. However removing such barriers to vite (like lower voting age, allowing non-homeowners, allowing some fellons, et al) also does not grant extra knowldge or virtue. If the goal of society is to promote the ideals of the knowldgable/virtuous, it becomes necessary to find ways to delineate the two. One metric could be education level, another could be Starship Troopers, another could be a threshold of tax expenditures (after +$x of taxes paid)... There are many, including selecting for only those with children. This option has a few benefits. Chief among them, IMO, is that (at large) they want their children to inherit a functional society. Thus they may be more forward-thinking and more resistant to flippant changes in order to achieve a sense of stability. And, stability is good for society.

What evidence do you have that shows that the majority of people with children are more forward-thinking and more resistant to flippant changes in order to achieve a sense of stability?

Also, why do you think the goal of society is to promote the ideals of the knowledgeable/virtuous? And why is limiting voting rights the best way to do this?

Shouldn’t the goal of society to be to promote education so that as many people as possible have the opportunity to be knowledgeable and virtuous? I think you’d agree with this, but I know you’ll loop it back and say limiting voting to people with children would help this, to which I say again, where is the evidence?

Its syllogistic reasoning and gnosis :] I mean, sure I could try to find study, but if its easily falsifiable then be my guest. There is not a study on every imaginable topic, sometimes you just have to spitball with your intuition.

I picked 'knowldgable and virtuous' as a stand in for whatever value you'd like. It sounded good at the time, still does. Assuming that knowledge and virtue is hard to come by, this would mean many people do not meet these standards, and thus their opinions on society are questionable. If its open to everyone, why not let the Canadians vote too? ;]

Knowledge is not necessarily a virtue in itself. Pavlov preformed his experiments on children. We blind rabbits with chemicals to 'prove' that its harmful, lol. The search for all knowledge requires killing a lot of things, which is not a sign of temperance, for instance. I think the two ideas overlap, but I also think the Venn has a large gap...

Yeah, no. The burden of proof is on the person that made the claim.

I don’t even understand your point about letting Canadians vote. Why would someone that doesn’t live in the US need representation in the US government? I think you can find a better “slippery slope” argument if you put your mind to it.

The burden of proof schtick is cute for formal debate. And generally I try and keep it there. However, I suggest that it relies on being Appealed by Authority and it just kinda doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things. You may feel like a 'win,' but surely it also feels quite hollow ;]

Good call on the 'slippery slope,' tho! I thought it was more amusing than other stuff. For instance, I often hear people championing to lower the voting age. This would categorically produce less knowedgable voters, where knowledge is generally a function of time and experience (No, I dont have a source for that, lol). The point being that we dont let just anybody vote. Your take, thus far, shows no restraint at all. So...

Why shouldnt Canadians have a say?! They live right next to us! They share (many) of our values?! Sure, they're not Americans, but we're a melting pot!!1!... And so on.

So your entire argument so far boils down to “I have zero sources or evidence for any of this, but it feels like this is right if you don’t think too much about it.”

I’ve said literally nothing about who should be eligible to vote, other than saying that limiting it to just people who have children is a bad idea. Not sure why you keep acting like I’m suggesting minors and foreigners should vote. It’s very obvious you are trying to create my argument for me here and it’s just not working.

So anyway, you’ve added nothing to this discussion except demonstrate that owning a thesaurus doesn’t win a debate for you. Let me know if you ever actually have tangible evidence of anything you are arguing here, otherwise this discussion is pointless and based on nothing more than your feelings (or as you call, intuition…woah).

Its funny, because if you look all the way back, I posed a simple straight-forward rationale and you responded effectively as 'Some people have kids and suck, some don't but are cool.' Its not exactly empirical six-sigma-significance science here! I dont use a thesaurus, and Im also not normlly a pedant. But you're going to make me say it-- and I hate to do it-- The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And, again, studies are all an appeal to authority anyway, which is fallacious reasoning. But whatever. You totally got me :p

What I have been trying to do is get you to agree that some people ought to be ineligible. I have been rambling about maximums, the ideal of what voting could be. Yet you have put no minimum limit. I still dont know why you think its weird if Canadians could vote in the US election. Newborns on soil? Why not, they're Americans? Its less that Im making your argument and that you haven't the candor to explain your (totally scientific) rationale, so Im attempting to pull it out of you :]

Added nothing?! This thread IS the discussion. Its the other side of the table. Everyone prior was just in a circle-jerk.

Holy shit dude, you seem like the kind of guy that just likes to hear themselves talk.

What you’ve tried to do is shift the topic into whatever direction you can to deflect from the very simple fact that not only is there zero evidence to support the claim that only people with children should vote, but even on the surface level it makes no sense and the rationale you provided is flawed because it’s based on complete assumptions you are calling intuition.

I don’t care about your thoughts on suppressing voters outside of this specific scenario. I never did. The fact that “people outside the US don’t need representation inside the US government” leaves you still wondering why I don’t think Canadians should be able to vote in US elections makes me question your intention of even comprehending the basics of what we are talking about.

Let me be clear. Having a child to vote is enforcing a very high bar to vote. Its costly in time and finances. It's an 18+ year commitment. There are alreadt existing limitations to vote; Nationality, age, criminal status. These are, presumably, cool with you. Yet they are exclusionary. This begs questions. I gave several reasons why Canada maybe should: Locality, similar culture, trade benefits, deepen diplomatic ties... Why is it cool to keep Canada out? Say something, lol.

Here's a study that shows that nonparents use drugs at an increased rate to parents. This is emblematic of forward-thinking... Saving money, being more present, blah blah blah. Its boring. And its not going to convince you. Because its boring and doesnt speak to your intuitions. Because its boring. I can dig up more corroborating stuff that won't appeal to you-- because its homework-- or we can have a discussion.

I dont know what kind of eViDEncE you expect there to be to satisfy you. I think you just carry the vanilla position and assume its correct, which makes it effectively unfalsifiable. "It is what it is."

wtf are you talking about? You can be broke as shit with no job and have as many kids as you want with zero intentions of getting your shit together. Happens all the time actually. You don’t even need to stick around for 18 years.

The limitations that are set today are literally the most basic that can be - be a taxpaying member of the society. The criminal status differs by state.

You are saying they are presumably cool with me which is the root of the issue in all your arguments - you bring up weakly related points and try to act like I’m they are part of any argument I’ve made so you can argue your made up points instead of the very basic thing we are discussing.

You realize this though so you dig up some study about MARIJUANA use in adults (if you are actually taking this seriously you’d then go on to prove that using marijuana makes you a bad person), but immediately realize how weak this is as well so you write it off for me by saying it won’t be enough to convince me (for the wrong reasons, of course by saying I’m uninterested rather than the fact that it’s just incredibly weak…you aren’t ready to admit yet that there still is no argument to be made here).

Then you wrap it up nicely with your trademark segue into explaining how well you’ve created fake arguments, pinned them on me, and labeled them as a some sort of logical fallacy. All the while my position hasn’t changed once - show me actual evidence this is a good idea or there is no discussion to be had.

Nice.

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