This is a good example of an argument that fails by virtue of its foundational premises. Vaush’s foundational premise for age of consent is tied to socioeconomic or material factors around power. In other words, the argument is founded on the premise that a child has less power than an adult so children can’t consent to intimate relationships with adults. This ignores the much more intractable argument over psychological and emotional maturity and the significance of particular age-specific life milestones that help to shape a child into an adult - a fully self-accountable member of society. Socioeconomics have mitigating influence over those things, which implies that even under socialism or any kind of post-capitalist society, that a society would have good reason to maintain agent of consent laws. It also totalizes socioeconomic factors as the defining impetus for consent, but that is in and of itself a slippery slope because you could take it to a logical extreme and argue that people of color and white people shouldn’t be allowed to be in relationships, because a person of color has less socioeconomic power in America than a white person, or even that men and women shouldn’t be allowed to be in relationships at all because men have greater socioeconomic power than women, which would mean that everyone should only be allowed to date same-sex members of their own race.
This is a good example of an argument that fails by virtue of its foundational premises. Vaush’s foundational premise for age of consent is tied to socioeconomic or material factors around power. In other words, the argument is founded on the premise that a child has less power than an adult so children can’t consent to intimate relationships with adults. This ignores the much more intractable argument over psychological and emotional maturity and the significance of particular age-specific life milestones that help to shape a child into an adult - a fully self-accountable member of society. Socioeconomics have mitigating influence over those things, which implies that even under socialism or any kind of post-capitalist society, that a society would have good reason to maintain agent of consent laws. It also totalizes socioeconomic factors as the defining impetus for consent, but that is in and of itself a slippery slope because you could take it to a logical extreme and argue that people of color and white people shouldn’t be allowed to be in relationships, because a person of color has less socioeconomic power in America than a white person, or even that men and women shouldn’t be allowed to be in relationships at all because men have greater socioeconomic power than women, which would mean that everyone should only be allowed to date same-sex members of their own race.