Many kings, pharaohs, and other royal type folk began ruling at a very young age. They were taught to.

People will not begin to make informed choices until they are forced to by way of independence, responsibility, and past experience. Many are lacking the ability to make an informed choice by the time they reach the "age of consent" as they are not being taught any manner of those 3 qualities.
(Turtlenuts, Wed 3 Nov 2010, 16:31, 1 reply)

Here we go with both feet
It's a little bit like health and safety law which I believe expressly prohibits the assumption of common sense in employees! The age of consent is an ideal of what we would like to be reality that has not been able to keep up with a society incapable of restraint and furthermore actively encourages ill informed decision making under the guise of 'rights'.

Trying to compare differently developed countries is pointless, the additional factors present in each case makes correlative evidence unlikely and such is the diversity in most societies these days that this almost as true at home as it is abroad. Things need to be judged on an individual basis, my personal gut instinct tends toward thinking that there are few if any under sixteens that are mentally up to having to cope with the strain of parenting whether physically capable of rutting with abandon or otherwise.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Wed 3 Nov 2010, 17:35, closed)

Going a bit off topic . . .
it's not the health and safety laws that are at fault. It's people misinterpreting them.
(Bitter and Twisted, Wed 3 Nov 2010, 20:21, closed)

This is true.
My job is potentially very dangerous, but my employers are legally obliged to provide a system of accountability, so that any near-misses and accidents are properly reported and the corrective measures (hopefully) prevent them from happening again. The law says nothing about how such a system should be implemented, only that it should be there.

The petty bureaucracy people attribute to the law results from implementors in lower-risk workplaces overestimating the amount and/or severity of potential hazards and completely losing their sense of perspective.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 3 Nov 2010, 23:05, closed)

I have yet to experience a workplace "accident" which wasn't entirely my own fault.
Didn't matter how many safety measures were in place, my injuries were caused entirely by own inattention to the task at hand.

I'm not convinced of the benefits of formalised H&S, since it didn't stop me hurting myself. On the other hand, a dose of common sense (pay some fucking attention to what I'm doing) would have done.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 4:19, closed)