Age-weighted voting

Abstract

If we’re trying to positively influence the long-run future, we immediately run into the problem that predicting the future is hard, and our best-guess plans today might turn out to be irrelevant or even harmful depending on how things turn out in the future.  The natural response to this issue is to instead try to change incentives — in particular, political incentives — such that people in the future take actions that are better from the perspective of the long-run future. As a comparison: the best action for feminist men in the 19th century wasn’t to figure out how best to help women directly (they probably would have failed dismally, especially if they were aiming at long-term benefits to women); it was to campaign to give women the vote, so that women could represent their own interests.