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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"We're already seeing people demand the age of consent be raised to 21 or 25."

They've don't that for tobacco, alcohol, handguns, possibly soon to be for semi-auto rifles. Kids can stay on parents insurance longer. Driving restrictions have essentially raised the age until one can have full privileges. I'm sure there are others I'm missing too.

We might as well raise the legal age for everything to 21 at this point. Although my personal belief is that we're really just kicking the can - the kids don't learn responsibility until they have to and we're pushing that off later and later.

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My great grandmother was married at 17 and was having kids immediately after.

Kids are sure responsible when we charge them as adults, but can't be trusted with other adult decisions that aren't crimes?

There shouldn't be an age gap where you stop needing to listen to your parents and you now are an adult to find income, shelter, be on your own and be forbidden to certain vices or activities. Yet we charge minors as adults, even young ones, when they commit serious crimes. If exceptions can be made for bad actions that indicate a child had reached adult maturity at the decision of a prosecutor, then that makes any age based delimiter arbitrary and ultimately unfair.

The definitions and timelines of maturity in general are too arbitrary to apply a constant age as a fair and just measure against all of society. That's why protections against Ageism exists, and there are states where there's no distinction between young and old ageism. Cognitive ability waxes and wanes throughout life.

How about we start teaching our kids to be decent, independent, contributing members of society? Rather than delegating all of our problems to daddy Government? Wishful thinking, I guess.

> How about we start teaching our kids to be decent, independent, contributing members of society? > Rather than delegating all of our problems to daddy Government?

You give the average human too much credit and decry an effective solution in the same breath. Modern society is full of opportunists and predators, in all corners of the US and most people are ill-equipped to conceive of their tactics, much less spend time and effort to guard against them. You might want to internalize those ideas.

What is the effective solution?

Government oversight is how we have adopted widespread and enduring controls against unwanted behavior across time. It does not help with individual incidents in the immediate timeframe, but has demonstrated that regulation can curb behavior over time AND provide protections for victims, post-incident.

> Rather than delegating all of our problems to daddy Government?

Claiming it's one more step toward elevating government to the arbiter of all human problems confuses the issue. This is one problem where oversight is possible and, with the information we have, is warranted. It's not to say that the government doesn't make mistakes or won't over-regulate (eg County of Los Angeles Safer Sex In the Adult Film Industry Act) but there has been progress in providing safer working conditions.

"Government oversight is how we have adopted widespread and enduring controls against unwanted behavior across time."

True, but not universally effective. We can look at things like the war on drugs or even cyber bullying.

If we're actually looking at an effective law, it would be one focused on educating industry participants, not simply pushing the age higher and hoping that a couple years makes them smarter.

> If we're actually looking at an effective law, it would be one focused on educating industry participants,

We don't have data. Pursuing what has been effective is not a guarantee, but it's better than an experimental approach. When you pose "educating", I fail to see how this is any different than what I have stated. Education implies a standard, which is regulation.

My last sentence generally agrees with that.

Right, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I guess I worded it weirdly for a direct response. I was targeting others with my phrasing.

Because that relies on other parents doing their job. These programs aren't for your children or mine, but for their peers.

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