Isn't that just as likely to mean that the cycle will produce more of the same? Why do the Baby Boomers have a monopoly on self-serving, harmful policy? "The old generation got it wrong. We'll get it right" is a very common refrain. Pretty much every generation has said it. And with each cycle, you get the same sorts of people in political power.
The sorts of qualities that attract someone to a life in politics, if not the very qualities that make someone successful in politics, tend to be the same qualities that lead to corruption, pandering, opportunism, and all the other vices. It's not a generational thing; it's a human-nature thing. Before long, the next generation will be looking at us and hoping things get better when we finally get off the stage.
I don't mean to be cynical. I'm just attempting to be realistic. I'm hopeful we can do better -- and if I didn't believe that, I'd be pretty damned depressed -- but I'm not basing that hope on the idea that we'll break a mold as old as politics itself.
Why do the Baby Boomers have a monopoly on self-serving, harmful policy?
What's kind of funny is that a good many of the Boomers were of the peace-and-love dope-smoking hippy '60s. They saw first-hand the results of Vietnam.
You'd think they would be the ones to spearhead gay rights and legalization of drugs and avoiding wars of interventionism. But by the '80s is was clear that all that youthful optimism and charity was but a phase.
As the saying goes, people become conservative the minute they have something to conserve.
It's because it is not about generation. It's a matter of social classes, if I may call it that. Most HN's folks are not going to do politics. The ones who end up in political power groups have been through different education and developed mindsets closer to the ones already there, who became their models.
tl;dr: time won't make thing better, we need refactoring
The sorts of qualities that attract someone to a life in politics, if not the very qualities that make someone successful in politics, tend to be the same qualities that lead to corruption, pandering, opportunism, and all the other vices. It's not a generational thing; it's a human-nature thing. Before long, the next generation will be looking at us and hoping things get better when we finally get off the stage.
I don't mean to be cynical. I'm just attempting to be realistic. I'm hopeful we can do better -- and if I didn't believe that, I'd be pretty damned depressed -- but I'm not basing that hope on the idea that we'll break a mold as old as politics itself.