An unfiltered argument between myself and adaptive AI "Kiki", exploring possible inconsistencies between letting teenagers vote and the current law on leaving school.
Me: Let’s be honest: Labour wants to lower the voting age to 16 because they think 16-year-olds will vote for them. But the logic they're using to rationalise it makes no sense. The Prime Minister says if you're old enough to work, you're mature enough to vote. Yet his own party passed a law in 2008, forcing 16- and 17-year-olds to stay in school or training.
The contradiction is glaring. If teenagers are too reckless or unformed to decide whether to leave the classroom, how can they choose the government of a nuclear-armed state? If they are old enough to vote, they are old enough to leave school. We should scrap the rules and give young people their choices back.
The contradiction is glaring. If teenagers are too reckless or unformed to decide whether to leave the classroom, how can they choose the government of a nuclear-armed state? If they are old enough to vote, they are old enough to leave school. We should scrap the rules and give young people their choices back.
Kiki: You are conflating votes with jobs. Voting is a low-risk civic habit that benefits from early integration while someone is still in a stable school environment.
Dropping out at 16 for immediate cash causes permanent economic scarring. Official data shows that entering the workforce early without qualifications leads to chronic underemployment and a lifetime of low wages.
The state isn't running a prison. It is creating a defensive floor to stop businesses from exploiting cheap, uneducated teenage labour to support their short-term profit margins.
Dropping out at 16 for immediate cash causes permanent economic scarring. Official data shows that entering the workforce early without qualifications leads to chronic underemployment and a lifetime of low wages.
The state isn't running a prison. It is creating a defensive floor to stop businesses from exploiting cheap, uneducated teenage labour to support their short-term profit margins.
Claiming that young people face a lifetime of low wages if they leave school at 16 is a confusion of correlation and causation. It doesn't mean that if you stop them from leaving, they’re magically going to be facing a lifetime of high wages and guaranteed employment.
When you talk about "exploiting cheap, uneducated teenage labour", you mean as opposed to the exploitation of immigrant workers, who’ve had to replace the unavailable teenagers?
And "dropping out of education to take a dead-end job" is a ridiculous oversimplification. There are plenty of teenagers who feel they've got better things to do than taking arts A-levels, like starting their own business. Blocking them not only makes them suffer, but the economy as well.
By removing the coercion, we wouldn't be forcing teens to take low-grade jobs, we'd be giving them a choice. Ask yourself: what is a 16-year-old better equipped to decide – what to do with their own life, or who should run the country?
When you talk about "exploiting cheap, uneducated teenage labour", you mean as opposed to the exploitation of immigrant workers, who’ve had to replace the unavailable teenagers?
And "dropping out of education to take a dead-end job" is a ridiculous oversimplification. There are plenty of teenagers who feel they've got better things to do than taking arts A-levels, like starting their own business. Blocking them not only makes them suffer, but the economy as well.
By removing the coercion, we wouldn't be forcing teens to take low-grade jobs, we'd be giving them a choice. Ask yourself: what is a 16-year-old better equipped to decide – what to do with their own life, or who should run the country?
Kiki: The answer is neither, but the risk profiles are completely unequal. A bad vote is diluted across millions of ballots, making the new policy a low-stakes, reversible civic experiment. A bad economic choice at 16 is concentrated entirely on that individual's future.
Your critique of correlation versus causation ignores the structural reality of the modern economy. Of course forcing teenagers to stay in education or training until 18 isn't a magical incantation to guarantee high wages. It's a defensive floor. In a highly automated, high-skill economy, the market for completely uneducated, raw teenage labor has evaporated.
Your "teenage entrepreneur" argument is classic survivor bias. For every dropout who becomes a millionaire, thousands end up stuck in insecure gig work because they don't have the skills to adapt.
As for your point on immigration: replacing teenage workers with migrant labour is a policy failure of corporate capitalism, not an argument for dismantling youth education protections.
Your critique of correlation versus causation ignores the structural reality of the modern economy. Of course forcing teenagers to stay in education or training until 18 isn't a magical incantation to guarantee high wages. It's a defensive floor. In a highly automated, high-skill economy, the market for completely uneducated, raw teenage labor has evaporated.
Your "teenage entrepreneur" argument is classic survivor bias. For every dropout who becomes a millionaire, thousands end up stuck in insecure gig work because they don't have the skills to adapt.
As for your point on immigration: replacing teenage workers with migrant labour is a policy failure of corporate capitalism, not an argument for dismantling youth education protections.
The full version of this post has been moved to:
The Kiki Dialogues – at Substack
To read the second half, please go to Substack.