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a building company owner is investing for the future when they start constructing a new apartment complex. The huge difference, though, is that the building company owner is allowed to enjoy the fruits of their investment right away (getting paid a company salary while the apartments are still being built), but students aren't allowed to get paid while they're investing in themselves. So students may have to live off their parents, but that's only because they're forced to work without getting paid for their investment in themselves, which is hardly their fault. Besides, there are other people - trophy wives, the homeless, some college students, and various overlaps between those groups - who really are freeloading off of other people and not directly paying taxes, and hardly anyone argues for taking their civil rights away. So if that's not the real reason for most restrictions on minors' rights, then are there other reasons?

For example, it's probably a good thing that parents have the right to stop their five-year-old kids from watching gory movies, because they would give the kids nightmares - that's an actual reason, which is why you rarely see lawyers arguing in court for the First Amendment rights of five-year-olds to rent Saw III. On the other hand, studies show that letting parents veto sex education in schools, increases the risk of teenagers having sex for the first time without protection, which would be a strong argument for treating students' access to sex education as a basic right. Perhaps you might find an argument in the other direction - maybe students who have more sex (even safe sex) get less studying done. (I don't know if any studies show that, but in that case, I would ask if adults who have more sex also get less work done - and in both cases, whether the tradeoff isn't worth it anyway.) The point is to try and figure out where to draw the line, by weighing the pros and cons of drawing the line at different ages, instead of just saying, "Minors shouldn't have any say until they're 18, because it's always been that way."

Some other examples: the FAA doesn't let passengers under 15 sit in the exit row of an airplane. This is probably a reasonable rule since (a) they picked 15, which has no legal significance, so they must have thought that really was the appropriate age, and (b) it is not a big deal to be asked to move out of the exit row on a plane. On the other hand, most libraries won't give you a library card if you're under 18 without

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