Fixing Democracy

When I left Japan, I had to decide whether I keep paying my pension or not.

I kinda did not want to keep paying it because I doubt Japanese pension system. As many people know, Japanese population is decreasing dramatically and the percentage of old people is increasing every year. I am not sure whether the system is not going to collapse when I become the age of receiving pension.

According to The Economist,

by 2060 the number of Japanese will have fallen from 127m to about 87m, of whom almost 40% will be 65 or older.

(Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/japans-demography)

There will be more people to be supported and less people to support them. It seems like it is obvious that the system is, or will be, in crisis sooner or later.

But, politicians cannot mention it. Why? It is easy. Because old people are the majority of the voters.

If politicians try to cut the amount of pension, they will lose vote and cannot stay in their position.

One of the biggest problems of current democracy is that it does not take the future generation's opinion into account.

Under the current system, people can ignore the harm that future generation needs to shoulder and pursue their preset satisfaction.

Climate change or fossil fuel depletion is a good example.

So how can we take future generation's opinion into account?

Is it possible under the democratic system?

One of the controversial ways is to change the weight of vote according to the age of people.

For example, how about giving more weight of vote for young people and less weight for older people?

Let's say, Tom is 30 years old and Ken is 90 years old. Then, let's deduct this number from 140 (Because I think the oldest person in this world is around 140 years old. I dont know,,,, this is just a random number I came up with. Of course, there should be more debate about this number.)

So, Tom's one vote is worth 110 points (140-30) and Ken's vote is worth 50 (140-90).

In this way, we can reflect young generation's opinion more into our society based on the philosophy that young people have more time left in this world, therefore, their opinion should be appreciated more than that of elderlies.

Do you think this is good??

It is problematic, as many people can intuit.

Firstly, it is practically saying that older people are less valuable than younger people. It seems like it is against human rights or the philosophy of equality under the law.

Secondly, don't older people make more reasonable judgement than young people based on their knowledge and experience? (Actually, under the current democratic system, only those who have certain age or above can vote on this ground.)

Thirdly, how do we think about the older people's contribution to this world? Our society and the world are based on the work and effort of older people. Don't we have to appreciate it?

Lastly, it does not solve the problem of the current system that cannot reflect the opinions of those who are not born yet.

It seems like democracy is becoming universal value especially for those who were educated in western and modern system, like me.

But recently, it seems like the obvious flaw of democracy is emerging in countries like Japan.

Changing the current democratic system is really difficult and it involves so many argument as I mentioned above.

However, it does not mean that we can ignore the future generation's opinion.

Are there ways to achieve it?