User:AAAAA/Seniocracy
Seniocracy is a hypothetical variation of democracy which consists of assigning more votes to older people or to people with more years of experience or membership. This is based on a rationale that older people have more experience and will have a greater amount of knowledge to deal with issues such as economics and politics. With age, older people have "served" more years as part of society, and therefore they deserve more "say" in the common issues of the society.
The word Seniocracy originates from the Latin "Sen" or "Seni" meaning "elder", plus κρατειν meaning "to rule", and the suffix íα; the term therefore means "Rule by the elders".
This system borrows and combines the ideas from Gerontocracy. However, as opposed to Gerontocracy which usually refers to a small clique of very old leaders with power, Seniocracy gives an edge to older people when voting, but not full control.
A possible implementation would be one based on age. Let us assume that people start to vote at 18 and retire at 65, an 18 year old would get 18 votes and a 65 year old would get 65 votes. Another example would be any association of people. A possible implementation of this voting system would be to assign more weight to the votes of associates that have been more years (or months) in the association.
Possible implementation issues[edit]
Rule of the older "majority"[edit]
- Con: Certain decisions or laws would be skewed towards better Social Security & health care for the old. Younger people would probably end up more economically "taxed" to support the older retiring or retired population.
- Pro: Most older people also have sons & daughters, who would be affected if laws are too tilted against the young. Older people tend to be more conservative, which in turn is generally better for economic growth.
Privacy/Anonimity[edit]
- Con: A seniocratic vote requires the voter to identify his age, which would prevent the voting from being completely anonimous. If this system was used in a country's election, it would prevent many voters from voting freely, since their identities could be matched to their votes.
- Pro: With current technology, the association could be made in a way that only the electoral comittee of the country would have the ability to associate voter with vote. Furthermore, at his/her option, the voter could elect to vote completely anonimous, but would get only the amount of votes of the less educated and younger voter.
Seniocracy in Practice[edit]
While this concept is largely theoretical, in democracies where voting is optional, senior citizens currently do get more representation by virtue of the fact that they turn out to vote in larger numbers, implying that a Seniocracy exists. Then this 'hypothetical' concept actually exists in reality, albeit to a limited and unintentional degree. This form of unintentional seniocracy can easily be defeated, however, in democracies where voting is mandatory, such as Australia.
See also[edit]