This isn't how anything works! It's why we have mandatory retirement ages or competency testing in many many professions!
Replies
Right. There are major structural reasons why it is hard to get rid of senior leadership even if they aren't doing a good job.
aug 30, 2025, 1:33 pm • 30 1 • view
A lot of it is US campaign finance laws I think www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
aug 30, 2025, 2:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Precisely! That's often why places implement hard retirement ages, because it becomes very hard to tell a powerful senior person that they've gotta give it up.
aug 30, 2025, 1:36 pm • 38 0 • view
And it's specifically the powerful, why it's a -cracy. Simultaneously everyday old people face unfair agism!
aug 30, 2025, 1:41 pm • 24 0 • view
Then there's all the powerful courtiers they have placed around them so they don't have to do the actual work.
aug 30, 2025, 1:56 pm • 5 0 • view
Also, this is a traditionally conservative argument, but within a democracy it is dangerous if a non-worker majority can vote itself funding from a laboring minority.
aug 30, 2025, 2:14 pm • 0 0 • view
Retirement should be based on WAR not age. (Wins above replacement executive.) Someone doing a bad job doesn't imply their replacement will do better!
aug 30, 2025, 2:40 pm • 0 0 • view
In Ontario, drivers 80 & over must renew their license every 2 years, w/vision & cognitive tests + driver's ed. session. Seniors 65 to 79 must take a knowledge test every 5 years.
aug 31, 2025, 1:37 am • 0 0 • view
Yeah that guy doesn't know what a PAC is.
aug 31, 2025, 12:10 am • 0 0 • view
In Mass. we have mandatory retirement for judges at 70 and it is a good thing.
aug 30, 2025, 1:55 pm • 3 0 • view
Sorry I can’t take anybody who doesn’t acknowledge the structural power dynamics within the 2 party system. Hell these people don’t even want to acknowledge rampant voter suppression. There are, in fact, an lot of ways our current political system is undemocratic & favors rich, elderly incumbents.
aug 30, 2025, 2:20 pm • 2 0 • view
I say this as someone who has worked on 2 uphill independent electoral campaigns, 1 that won & 1 that lost. You fight the system THE SYSTEM FIGHTS BACK.
aug 30, 2025, 2:20 pm • 2 0 • view
If you’ve never fundraised, hit the doors/phones, dealt with blow after blow of legal maneuvers to try to get your candidate of the ballot, tried to convert key constituencies who have are either being bought off or threatened in some fashion in a city with a big dem political machine:
aug 30, 2025, 2:22 pm • 1 0 • view
Sit the fuck down & shut the fuck up. Show me your skills before you talk about our skills issues you absolute pieces of shit.
aug 30, 2025, 2:22 pm • 0 0 • view
Law firms will let you hang around past 65 but they will de-equitize you and call you something like “senior counsel”.
aug 30, 2025, 2:22 pm • 9 0 • view
Not everywhere, but the places that don't start forcing their elderly partners to wind down their careers in their 70s end up having Problems.
aug 30, 2025, 2:24 pm • 8 0 • view
Yes. The older partners I worked for were also required to have serious transition plans that required integrating younger partners into the client work stream so that they could eventually take over.
aug 30, 2025, 2:26 pm • 8 0 • view
Of course some of this got blown to hell when Dewey collapsed because senior partner and junior partner ended up going to different firms, but that was an unusual situation.
aug 30, 2025, 2:30 pm • 3 0 • view
"The old man sees what's coming and jealously hordes his power and connections" is like humanity's 4th oldest problem. Pretending not to understand why so many institutions guard against it is insane
aug 30, 2025, 2:31 pm • 9 0 • view
We used to solve this with convenient murders.
aug 30, 2025, 10:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I ended up unfollowing that dude because his takes were just so boring, bad, and banal.
aug 30, 2025, 11:26 pm • 0 0 • view
A poor man's Fecke
aug 30, 2025, 11:40 pm • 1 0 • view
The stupidity in that thread is mind-boggling.
aug 30, 2025, 1:59 pm • 5 0 • view
The US has a lot of dancing around "voters make really bad decisions with staggering frequency"
aug 30, 2025, 2:36 pm • 4 0 • view
If we have a minimum age to get elected, we should have a maximum age.
aug 30, 2025, 2:28 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes but what if we pretend all of that doesn’t exist and just work off debating point first principles? THEN WHAT??
aug 30, 2025, 1:35 pm • 9 0 • view
This is the first generation to ever have this sort of life expectancy, yet that guy thinks “it’s always worked fine before” is a valid argument…
aug 30, 2025, 3:20 pm • 2 0 • view
It is also the case that old people are allowed to vote, regardless of cognitive capacity, and young people aren’t. Lower the voting age to thirteen and see how competitive those incumbents are then.
aug 30, 2025, 2:49 pm • 2 0 • view
"end run around democracy" is totally incoherent here too. trying to end run around democracy by raising an issue that you hope will get people to vote for you --or if he means pressuring people not to run, congratulations, he's discovered a non-electoral mechanism that perpetuates gerontocracy
aug 30, 2025, 1:52 pm • 3 0 • view
Normalize primarying incumbents for being too old.
aug 30, 2025, 2:21 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes, even that one.
aug 30, 2025, 2:21 pm • 1 0 • view
Age-based seniority is a plagiarizing ploy of sly sinecurists.
aug 31, 2025, 12:39 pm • 0 0 • view
Inexplicably I'm sort of surprised there are people out there defending Dianne Feinstein-type situations. What do they even possibly think they're defending here.
aug 30, 2025, 1:32 pm • 27 0 • view
Like not only should she not have been in the Senate, she shouldn't have been allowed to drive, she needed constant supervision, how is this complicated.
aug 30, 2025, 1:33 pm • 17 0 • view
and private organizations can move more quickly to replace someone when they vanish from work for four months because they've moved to a senior living facility for dementia care en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Gra...
aug 30, 2025, 1:48 pm • 6 0 • view
45 year old normies face age discrimination and this guy is out here running interference for 75 year old do nothings. Crazy world we live in.
aug 30, 2025, 2:05 pm • 9 0 • view
"Can't out compete the cheaper 19 year olds? Skill difference buddy!"
aug 30, 2025, 2:05 pm • 2 0 • view
"People die and get replaced so its a solved problem" is very obviously not true. There's been a number of politicians who have been senile for years before they died and that's been the case for a long time.
aug 30, 2025, 11:20 pm • 5 0 • view
I'm young, I can wait the current generation of senile elders out. But I'd prefer not to keep replacing them with a new generation of senile elders until eventually I can't wait them out because I am myself an old man.
aug 30, 2025, 11:20 pm • 4 0 • view
That person has never watched their parents age and decline
aug 30, 2025, 1:39 pm • 7 0 • view
"Competing on a level playing field" is such a bullshit way to frame a younger leader's experience in an old system inhabited by old leaders. There's nothing level about it. It's never a blind meritocracy.
aug 30, 2025, 2:25 pm • 6 0 • view
Okay who enforces the criterion?
aug 30, 2025, 2:06 pm • 1 0 • view
Many states have a retirement age of 70 for the judiciary. Many universities had mandatory retirement ages for faculty (and those were a good idea). And many places without firm retirement ages frequently work to determine whether you are still competent.
aug 30, 2025, 2:15 pm • 105 1 • view
Imagine thinking that having the ability to declare war isn’t a “dangerous position.”
aug 30, 2025, 2:35 pm • 0 0 • view
Even the Catholic Church for everyone other than the pope.
aug 30, 2025, 2:29 pm • 1 0 • view
The number of attorneys I’ve seen in the courtroom who barely knew what was going on and were still working because they never developed hobbies and didn’t know how to not work… it’s scary when you have to actually help opposing counsel through an appearance.
aug 30, 2025, 5:34 pm • 1 0 • view
The number of 20 year old clerks who don’t know shit in a courtroom and how to work. Or 30 year old ones. Or 40 year old ones.
sep 1, 2025, 12:09 am • 0 0 • view
A good idea for young people on tenure but not because the oldster couldn’t do their jobs.
sep 1, 2025, 12:07 am • 0 0 • view
Commercial pilots have mandatory retirement at 65. Air Traffic Controllers have to retire by age 56. That's not a typo.
aug 30, 2025, 2:57 pm • 0 0 • view
And mandatory retirement ages work both to ensure continued competence and to clear the way for new people to assume those positions, rather than have the same people in charge forever with no succession planning.
aug 30, 2025, 2:16 pm • 105 3 • view
Forget it, man. You are arguing with Diane Feinstein’s biggest fan. This guy loves seeing abused elderly people being used by their staff.
aug 30, 2025, 2:59 pm • 0 0 • view
If the Democrats had a culture where Tina Smith wasn't an outlier I could be skeptical of mandatory retirement; but folks just don't want to leave power, and they aren't fostering the next generation. It should be a party level policy, though, not law.
aug 30, 2025, 2:24 pm • 14 1 • view
The party is captured by the doddering geriatrics. Loyalty and seniority-worship factor in way more than the good of the party.
aug 30, 2025, 5:15 pm • 0 0 • view
But the party has manifestly failed to make said policy, so I'm fine with putting it into law. If the constitution can specify that you can't run for office when you're too young, no reason it shouldn't do so when you're too old.
aug 30, 2025, 2:35 pm • 11 0 • view
like the reason why people stay in office so long is that single winner districts and first past the post sucks they make it harder to break into politics, like mandatory retirements in non physical labor intensive jobs are ageist. the problem is that we age at different rates.
aug 30, 2025, 2:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Anywhere where there is no easy way to test competency should have a mandatory retirement age. And we should be doing age competency tests for more things - driving, for example. Once a year, every year after you turn 75
aug 30, 2025, 2:18 pm • 7 0 • view
If grandma can still drive safely at 90, that's awesome. I aspire to be like that. But if not, it's best for her and everyone else that she not drive. (I'm also very much in favor of more public transit investment, incl public transit targeted at seniors)
aug 30, 2025, 2:22 pm • 3 0 • view
He is exactly wrong wtf. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act specifically exempts executives and high policymaking employees. That's literally the only category you're allowed to discriminate against by age
aug 30, 2025, 2:21 pm • 8 1 • view