Mind the Age Gap
This is my latest, where I discuss Geontocracy by Samuel Moyn. I hope you enjoy the review, and as always please read, comment, share, and subscribe!
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition” —Oscar Wilde
When we look at an aged face, what do we presume? Wisdom? Weakness? Stubbornness? Age is not just a number. It sends a signal about who we are, what we have done, and what is left for us to do. Samuel Moyn’s Gerontocracy asks a question that might have seemed strange until recently: Do old people have too much power?
Moyn’s answer is yes: America, he argues, has become a gerontocracy. To him, the problems of gerontocracy fall into two main brackets. First, the accumulation of electoral, fiscal, and social power by the old creates a bloc of power that cannot easily be opposed or shifted. For Moyn, the old not only hold a near-monopoly on resources, but are uniquely motivated to participate in democracy via ballot and attendance at local meetings. The age of representatives itself highlights the disproportionate power and interest the elder class have acquired. For Moyn, the significant electoral advantage possessed by the elderly, on top of the resource dominance they already enjoy, protects them from democratic reversals.
This narrows the pipeline for younger generations who need the space to innovate and accumulate themselves. Secondly, age-related barriers to mobility and innovation reduce the space for progress. The America that embraced radicalism from its founding has slowed down and is now decaying. Moyn, no conservative, worries that a country born in revolution is losing its rebellious mojo.
Moyn focuses on the United States, but it is not unreasonable to look at other mature democracies and witness the same problem. Grey hair and wrinkles are no longer signals that someone needs to retire from public life, but the norm we expect from those in charge. However, it is in the US where this has been taken to extremes. It is not merely traditionally gerontocratic institutions (the Senate and Supreme Court) where old men shape the direction of the nation. Now many legislative and corporate settings feature the old as the leading players.
Milton Friedman argued it was natural for people to maintain a legacy via inheritance, implicitly rewarding hard work and accumulation. The problem is that notion has transcended wealth to extend into a variety of arenas. People may get richer as they get older. But it’s not clear that they always get wiser. To illustrate this point, Moyn uses the TV show Succession, where the aging patriarch Logan Roy dies on the job, leading to the eventual sale of his company. Roy’s children, unaccustomed to exercising power, cannot rise to the task of overcoming their father’s shadow.
The adult children of Succession are willing to wait for a turn to rule that never comes, but others may not be so patient. Many revolutions are, in part, revolts of youth. It was in Revolutionary France that “gerontocracy” became an epithet for the first time. Moyn charts the reversion to gerontocracy after the fall of Napoleon. The result, as he sees it, was the loss of a dynamic democracy and the replacement of another sclerotic regime.
Short of revolution, though, the feasibility of overturning gerontocracy seems unclear. And revolution isn’t necessarily an improvement. Thrusting unprepared people into positions of power and authority has historically been a recipe for disaster. It is just as dangerous to overcompensate for lack of experience as it is to cling on for too long when the mind fades. This theme is central not only in Succession—where Roy’s children are obviously incompetent—but also in our current political elite, where younger figures seem even less impressive than their seniors.
Take Kamala Harris. In her 50s while serving as Vice President, she could have chosen to challenge the ailing sitting President in the primaries—like Eugene McCarthy, whose daring campaign forced Lyndon Johnson to quit the race to retain the White House and infused American politics with youthful energy. Yet she clung to the party line until Biden’s position became untenable. Generation X lacked the gumption to take what was rightfully theirs, and millennials were left even further behind. If there is a gerontocracy, it is in part because the young have allowed it to happen.
Political philosophers such as John Rawls focused on inequality as the benchmark social problem. For all its critics on both the left and right, the difference principle remains a valuable standard by which to judge our political and social arrangements. Even if we cannot begin the race of life in the same starting position, it feels intuitively reasonable that we give everyone the fairest opportunity possible to make the most of their talents.
In some ways, young people don’t have it so bad. Laws do not impede our freedom to move, live, procreate, and enjoy the rich fruits that life can offer. Perhaps that is why there is no mass movement in their favor. We should not pretend everyone wants adulthood thrust upon them—within some young people, there is perhaps a secret undercurrent that yearns to be kept in a childlike state.
But for reasons Moyn describes, the younger generation’s pathway to security and prosperity remains blocked. For all my frustration with my generation, our failures to accumulate wealth and move up the ranks in our professions are not merely personal failures. Moyn identifies structural explanations for these failures: elders’ disproportionate control over housing stock, financial wealth, and career advancement really is a kind of tyranny. Democracy cannot function when a single group holds so many of the cards.
So what can be done? There are obvious policy choices which could shift the balance between old and young, including mandatory retirement from high-powered jobs, term limits, and fewer residential vetoes over infrastructure such as housing. Moyn does not merely seek younger representatives—he ambitiously demands a structural shift from the old to the young. His boldest suggestion concerns voting. Using John Stuart Mill as a precursor in arguing for plural voting, Moyn suggests that the value of votes should correspond to age.
The criticism here is obvious. Relegating any group to second-class citizens is dicey at best, even if the aim is to redress a glaring imbalance. If young people do not turn out to vote, surely the blame is on them. Again, it’s not enough to push the aged off the stage if there are no responsible youth to replace them.
We may have mastered the art of managing illness, but we have not expanded the upper limits of our lifespans very dramatically, and nor have we necessarily improved the quality of life of the aged. Neither, despite living in a gerontocracy, have we secured old people’s futures. Far from merely bashing the elderly, it is posited throughout the piece that a dignified aging process is essential to a good life. It is not a race to the bottom; Moyn proposes a better life for everyone.
Moyn is not wrong to state we need to philosophically reimagine our age and what that means. However, we should remember that public philosophy does not appear out of thin air—it requires strong political structures to support it. This requires a significant reimagination of the purpose of political parties do. Should they aim merely to win elections, or to demand more from us as citizens in curating the tapestry of a public life? For Moyn’s vision to realize itself—and it is an admirable vision—both Democrats and Republicans need to philosophize more and campaign on the sexy issues less. This requires a significant rise in trust in our public sphere, which can only occur when we start treating our domestic opposition as such, rather than as threatening enemies. Moyn’s own presentation, at times, fails to take this necessary shift into account.
Neutering the online hellscape that is X and subsidizing journalism is one way to guarantee the sustainability of the public sphere. This model would differ from that of state-owned news, but like the BBC, offer a public service that demands both sides of the argument be held to the fire. Precisely because it does this, both the hard left and right in the UK despise the institution. Yet, in a world of declining legacy media, such an invention in the US is perhaps necessary to sustain a meaningful and serious public discourse that is required for such radical change to emerge in the first place.
On a deeper level, what Moyn is really asking for, without fully saying it, is real inter-generational friendship. That requires something deeper than socialism and liberalism—a reimagination of the public realm and what our lives are for. That cannot be achieved merely by institutional structures but by a deeper quest for self-understanding and what we prioritize: wealth and power, or living a life outside of these material wants? Naturally, this question sits uneasily alongside promises of material redistribution. In truth, we should be striving for both.
But the promise of friendship can only be realized by reciprocity. That means just as we cannot dismiss the young, we cannot sideline the old. Serious consideration needs to be given to a broader range of corporate responsibilities—such as gradual retirement, phasing out of workers slowly, padding incomes in earlier years to subsidize wage growth that levels off with time—and Deneen’s idea of direct investment in poorer areas was one of the few policy ideas in Regime Change which hit the mark. These changes do not obliterate the advantage that those in middle and old age have acquired, but it raises young people’s possibilities to compete in the open market.
This system also requires more of us, as citizens, to participate in and manufacture norms that uphold civic life. Moyn’s proposal of mandatory voting is one of the few that I find promising. But we all know voting does not necessitate engagement with the public realm. Instead, there should be more accessible public meetings, local elections, and systemic re-regulation of online engagement into platforms that, unlike social media, do not simply throw us into the void. Meetings should also be open on these platforms to those joining remotely, and online forms to join a queue of speakers should be made available far in advance. There is no reason to cling to an antiquated version of ‘in-person’ politics. These accessible, remote, and online governmental messages which are heavily advertised and free to access are real possibilities in the modern world.
This necessitates incentives, both financial and social, to participate in public life; I would advocate for sortition. For instance, young people (up to 40) who show up to town hall meetings and contribute to public discussion could be put in a lottery to win a place on the local council and become decision-makers. The more you show up, the more times your name would be placed in the lottery. This would help to redress the balance at local levels, where decisions are disproportionately made by the elderly. Of course, when there exists a more equal balance of age representation, such an initiative can be placed on hold.
Salaries and homes could also be more closely indexed to regions and need. Those who are young and wanting to buy a home should be rewarded for doing so. As in pension funds, a set amount of any person’s income who chooses should be set aside automatically for a house purchase. This should be at least partially matched by the state, which can then be repaid at a later date by the future house-owners. Younger people should also be given ‘discounts’ in expensive neighbourhoods to be able to compete with those who have accrued savings over time, offsetting disadvantages that have accrued over the years.
These changes do not reject the market system, but attempt to supplement and re-align it with necessary interventions. Even Adam Smith, the supposed godfather of the free market, recognized the need for intervention to create balance in a viable marketplace. Noticeably, my proposals don’t require price caps, ripping up planning regulations, or engaging in impractical building projects, which is especially important given the climate crisis. Instead, the focus lies on access—for all ages—to existing housing.
Both Moyn and I agree there is something wrong. Where we perhaps differ is over the potential changes that can be made. We cannot overthrow the old, and neither should we really want to. Instead, the goal should be to empower the young to make their own way in the world. For democracy to thrive, everyone must believe in the system and keep their faith; but to do so, it must give people a reason to believe.