Yet another Hacker News

One in ten people are older than 65. Three in four live under a leader who is

53 points gumby 2 hours ago 23 comments

andsoitis 2 hours ago | parent

Numbers, but I couldn't find insights in the article. Is there anything worthy of take-away?

alephnerd 17 minutes ago | parent

The world sucks becuase of old people and based on Hannah Ritchie's substack publications that the UK should cut pensions and its social safety net.

Which is ironic because I am younger than most HNers and Substackers who espouse this opinion and find it to be a weird form of ageism.

To me, a 45 year old and a 65 year old are equally out of touch or "old", so it feels like a pot calling a kettle black.

dylan604 12 minutes ago | parent

It's one thing to be older. It's another thing to be rational and of sound mind as an older person. At some point, it's time from grandpa to retire.

alephnerd 10 minutes ago | parent

At some point absolutely, but if someone is capable of executing there's no reason for them not to continue.

My dad's at retirement age yet continues to work on bleeding edge harness engineering and cloud security work, yet there are plenty of 30 and 40-somethings on HN that don't know the difference between a CNI and kube-proxy.

And my granddad's still physically active as a farmer in the old country. And his parents were alive and active into their 90s (also as farmers).

avazhi 54 minutes ago | parent

Yes, in general people place a lot of value in the wisdom that comes with age so long as the person isn’t senile.

Obviously with autocrats this isn’t applicable but there’s nothing inherently nonsensical or inexplicable about why mostly old dudes rule much of the world.

seemaze 47 minutes ago | parent

'Dudes' is more of a historical artifact than an implicit requirement. But I'll allow dudes in the general form of 'enlightened persons'.

Barrin92 25 minutes ago | parent

>Yes, in general people place a lot of value in the wisdom

I don't think that holds as an explanation given that 1. there's not a lot of wisdom going around among the geriatric leaders of the world, 2. this is a pretty rapidly increasing trend, not some fact of history.

Historical leaders used to be younger, including after accounting for increased lifespans. Just look at the founding of the American Republic. It's much more a sign of two things. Increased decadence and civilizations that are themselves at the end of their rope, and in democracies in particular a geriatric population that keeps voting itself into power based on their own interests.

avazhi 7 minutes ago | parent

I haven’t done the math but I’m assuming if you look at the founding fathers and life expectancy for the general population in the 18th century they would have represented what people in their 60s represent today relative to the rest of the population.

Also you can’t really talk about a geriatric population ‘voting itself into power’ if it makes up such a small proportion of the population. Young people just abstain from voting in western democracies, which is a choice just as much as voting one way or the other is. Yes, a person votes in his own self interest - that’s how that works.

donquichotte 46 minutes ago | parent

Well, one in twenty people is a doctor and nine in ten go see one if they have a stomach ulcer.

dylan604 15 minutes ago | parent

9 out of 10 doctors say that smoking a Lucky is good for you. of course 87% of statistics are made up

StanislavPetrov 44 minutes ago | parent

In 2026 scare quotes around the word "leader" should be obligatory in all cases.

CGMthrowaway 30 minutes ago | parent

Ten in ten children have parents who are older than them

Avicebron 24 minutes ago | parent

Parent's typically aren't in charge of understanding and regulating technology they barely understand, let alone can operate. We need to strip the gerontocracy of their ability to enrich themselves while being incapable of understanding the world around them. The founding fathers were in their 30s.

monideas 18 minutes ago | parent

This is actually a criticism of democracy, not gerontocracy. The masses, who don't understand X, vote for people to regulate X.

Even under regimes run by young people their advisors are old people.

Agentlien 11 minutes ago | parent

As a parent a large part of my responsibility is making decisions and regulation about how they are allowed to interact with trends and technology I barely understand.

carabiner 19 minutes ago | parent

Is it so strange to wish to be governed by peers? You don't think a gerontocracy is optimal, do you?

bigstrat2003 15 minutes ago | parent

I don't think it matters one way or the other how old leaders are. If they are capable, put them in charge. If not, don't.

pprotas 10 minutes ago | parent

Are they capable then?

jawiggins 17 minutes ago | parent

There's a reason why every American worker is paying 6% of their income to give checks to the richest cohort in society, and every politician is afraid to touch the program.

tudelo 10 minutes ago | parent

Can you expand on what you mean? I may be ignorant but my understanding of the system is you would technically get more back percentage wise as a low wage worker? Of course this is not just some cost benefit analysis, that money means more if you make less while you are still paying in. This is not a comment on the system at large, just more specifically I want to understand what you are implying.

bagacrap 2 minutes ago | parent

The dollars you pay into social security today go to a recipient tomorrow. They are not invested in some pension fund.

That, and people who are old enough to collect social security are rich.

Combine those two facts.

seniortaco 13 minutes ago | parent

Ageism.

monideas 12 minutes ago | parent

The term "Senate" comes from the Latin word "senex" meaning "old man", and obviously the US inherited the term "Senate" from ancient Rome. This is a basic structure of society.

The issue is that this particular group of people older than 65 at this particular time in world history (which you happen to be living in) are Boomers who are probably the most child-like, foolish, and ignorant generation of people in world history, due to the circumstances of their upbringing (post-WW2, high technology, opulence, drug use, sexual revolution, peace in the developed world).

This isn't ageism, since normally old people do tend to have more wisdom and knowledge than young people.

There is something that really went wrong with the Boomer generation. The goal of every society is basically to survive their Boomer generation which many are not really seeming to manage.