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.
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.
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.
Even under regimes run by young people their advisors are old people.
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.
andsoitis•2h ago
alephnerd•15m ago
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•11m ago
alephnerd•9m ago
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.