A lot of laws, such as age restrictions and prohibition of drugs, are mainly justified upon the grounds of "protecting people from themselves", i.e. paternalism.

Now, I have no objection to the concept of paternalism. I don't think the fact there are problems with it should mean that there was should be zero restrictions on five year olds shooting up heroin. But I do think the current legal approach is too one-size-fits-all. An arbitrary age limit ignores the fact that people older than the age limit may be very immature or vice versa. And for almost any drug it's possible to imagine someone using it in a responsible manner.

So why not follow the lead of driver licensing and have licenses for everything? If you want to snort cocaine, go ahead. If you're a 15 year old and want to have sex with a 35 year old, go ahead. You just have to pay all the costs for a difficult test that shows you strongly appreciate the risks involved. If there are concerned about negative externalities associated with the practices, you could add surcharges onto the cost of the tests to accommodate that.

The main downside is if it justified to significantly extend the degree of paternalism. And there could be issues with bias in the testers. But if we could ensure that it is only used in cases where there are currently total prohibitions (that is, 25 year olds aren't required to take tests to be able to consent to sex), I don't see any problems.

How about you just say no to drugs and skip all this mumbo jumbo.

That's not a legitimate use of force.

No AC hijacks plz. I'm not interested in debating whether any level of paternalism is justifiable, but given that we're going to have it, whether it's better to use tests rather than age-cutoffs or blanket bans.

Sounds like a complicated, bureaucratic solution to a relatively minor problem.

Agreed.

I mean how do you even have a test for "Are you capable of handling a sexual relationship with a 35 year old" that you can give to teenagers?

Just say no to paternalism except for kids (or the severly) ******ed. For kids paternalism is vital, as is them trying to get round it - that's where they prove their competence its not like its tricky.

Paternalism for adults requires no replacement its just stupid and harmful so get rid of it.

Paternalism, give it back to fathers and sons.

If all costs are borne by the test takers, where's the harm?

Also, for many things, it probably wouldn't need to be very complicated. A relatively straightforward multi-choice quiz would probably suffice for borderline cases (like a 17 year for various rights of adults).

That you need to take a test for a lot of standard stuff?

Feels like you need to have a much bigger benefit before creating a new cash-grab system for the government.

And because the tests will almost certainly do a ****ty job of evaluating what they're suppose to do you end up with a loophole around a law that supposedly provides some benefit.

There are already hardship exemptions in some cases which do the same thing in the US. Keep semi-arbitrary rules, allow exemptions where appropriate. ez game.

But it doesn't have to result in tests for things that people could do before, just things they couldn't do. Like 21 year olds could all buy alcohol as before, but 20 year olds have the option of trying to prove that they're responsible. If you hate the tests, you just don't take them and you're no worse off than you are under the status quo.

If this is a concern, they can be made fairly hard so you get relatively few false positives. Even if that makes them hardly worth taking for most people, at least they're an option you never had before.

Ah sweet - now we have an institutionalized way for rich people to get around laws they don't like.

Only partly tongue-in-cheek.

Tests are pretty good at measuring how people are at taking tests, I'm not so sure they're good for telling if you should do coke or **** old dudes.

Fun fact: In Oklahoma, where I grew up, the age of consent is 16*. The asterisk is because it's not a bright line rule. From when I was a teenager I remember a number of occasions of parents freaking out about their 16 year old daughter's 30 year old boyfriend only to be told that no crime had taken place. I also know of an instance of a 22 year old substitute getting indicted for statutory raping an 18 year old.

FWIW, when you consider the degree of control adults have over teenagers' lives in general, I think it's pretty obvious that consenting to sex belongs in a different category from things like alcohol use. Beer isn't sentient and can't have conflicts of interest.

there are usually specific laws banning teacher/student relationships regardless of other age of consent laws.

Even if this is the case - so what? I'm serious. If rich people are willing to give large sums to the taxpayer so they can do blow, who's worse off? Maybe dumb rich people, but I don't think many voters actually care about protecting them.

The harm is the test takers have to pay an extra cost to buy smokes.

anytime someone gets to be happy and that person is rich then obviously a crime against humanity has been committed.

Well, taking a step back there should be some reason for a law - some sort of societal good that comes from restricting someone's actions.

If that's the case - then how does paying money remove the societal ill the law is suppose to prevent? If that's not the case - we should just get rid of the law.

Edit: Hell, even ignoring the above - it's still a bad idea. Effectively you're creating a tax on an activity but instead of just pocketing the money you're wasting it on a whole testing infrastructure.

I will totally volunteer to administer the test for this.

I was kind of conflating the issues by expressing my opinion that I don't actually care if rich people could literally buy the law - so long as they're paying enough. Hence I'm not going to care about the far more mundane issue that rich people have more money to take tests.

Under my proposal, no-one who can currently buy cigarettes will have to take a test. Only those who currently cannot will have the option to buy them at an earlier age if they can pass a test showing they have a reasonable understanding of the costs.

It doesn't actually need to be like that, but I'm proposing it as a thought experiment to isolate its effect from questions about the optimal level of paternalism.

And I guess this has relevance, even if there isn't widespread implementation of this, to general arguments about consent. If you argue "People in group X [possibly "all people"] aren't able to fully appreciate the costs of of Y, so they should be banned from doing Y", I would say, "What if that person could establish that they really did appreciate the costs of Y?" You're saying you know better than someone, enough to intervene in their decisions, but you won't even give them the opportunity to prove you otherwise?