I appreciate the recommendation but I don’t see my perspective on this issue as flawed or in need of changing.
I do have a lot of issues with the way wealth is distributed in capitalist societies… our income from work is a downright shitty attempt at approximating people’s value to society. Some people get more than they deserve and others get a lot less.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s wrong that at least a large part of a person’s value and worth should be determined by how they choose to spend their time. I see it as inherently unjust that someone who doesn’t apply themselves in a way that improves or maintains the world should be rewarded the same as someone who does.
The world is full of passions and hobbies that everyone would love to earn money from, but there are a lot of shitty, difficult, and hard jobs that need doing and but won’t get it without some sort of incentive. Thus, inequality, at least to some extent, is an essential feature of human societies that strive to improve over time. Every communist country has been wrought with inequalities under the surface, because they couldn’t motivate people without it!
This is not to say that anyone who honestly tries according to their ability deserve poverty, and I strongly believe in having a social safety net to help those people (I consider myself an Obama/Clinton democrat for reference).
While capitalism is an ultimately bad and inefficient way of rewarding people for their contribution to society, it would be far, far worse to fail to reward those that work extra hard, especially in jobs that are otherwise undesirable.
That’s the perspective I come from, and I think we simply have to agree to disagree.
It is really dumb to make it a hard cutoff in the first place. Colorado uses a system in which someone who is 15 can consent to sex with someone no older than 18. At 16 you can date consent with someone up to age at 19, and at 17 up to age 20. At age 18, people are considered adults and there is no longer an age limit to consent.
It is wholly necessary to protect children from sexual predators using age of consent laws. At the same time, it is a bit ridiculous to pretend that people in their teens don’t have sexual relationships with one another, and the law ought to reflect that. I certainly don’t feel that an 18-year-old should be considered a criminal for dating a 17-year-old, anyway.