That's part of the point I am making, is about this arbitrary system that determines that 18 is the legal age at which someone can willfully do such a thing. It's like something magical happens at 18, and suddenly parents and neighbors don't pull out shotguns to go kill the predator pedophiles anymore....
Then perhaps we should be focusing on just showing the absolute irrationality of having a dividing line at 18?
If you answer that anyone claiming the ability to contract gets it... there is going to be a very violent society in the making when petulant teenagers start abusing that, because their SPECIFIC mental disability is POOR DECISION MAKING because the frontal lobe isn't fully developed until the age of 21-25.
Well now you're just jumping to conclusions and treating speculation as fact. Is this a serious thought, or just more devil-advocating?
And where exactly did you get your data? I read scientific and psychology mags (the more serious stuff, I tend to skip Popular Science.) I believe it was just last year that the neurological/psychological data basically pointed at mental decision-processing ability literally
peaking during the teen years. (Sure, you may gain more knowledge as you age, but depending on the quality of that knowledge, that can be good and/or bad; ability peaks in the teens.)
(And finally, teenagers can apparently abuse their position to hell and back nowadays... but looking around, for some odd reason, I don't see much of that.)
Seriously, I think YOU are focusing on these sorts of nit-picky objections far more than any actual statist I know would. You keep digging and digging for logical rebuttals--concisely stated axioms at that--and acting as if all the "arguments" are really important and really need to be addressed in minute detail. But then you finally reveal that what you're concerned about is the emotional component to all this. And you want us to address that, to your satisfaction, with logic. That's a little frustrating, you know.
A single-sentence principle/axiom logically and completely detailing how a free society handles incompetents is NOT going to be enough to sway the mind of someone whose real objection to freedom isn't really even some deep-seated concern about incompetents (which is probably the case unless they already try to address such issues in their present life.)
Maybe you're more likely to get what you want if, instead of tossing and analyzing arguments, we try to address the emotional component underlying all this?
(Yeah, yeah, I should go first then... when I get more time....)