I doubt it has anything to do with verifying age though. More likely they know people are hesitant to sign up and pay for youtube, but if they can get your credit card in other ways, then later it easier to get you to pay for something because then you just have to press "ok" since your details are already entered.
Plus this gives them your identity, which is relevant because their business model nowadays is based around tracking people.
For some reason we never see any polls, just opinion pieces, but I'd wager that
(1) people think cooperation is a good idea
(2) and they also want to keep their own countries and identities
Once we start moving towards a single country, the inevitable question becomes, which rules and values should people follow? Which country gets to assert its way of life on the others? Or perhaps the virtual state known as the "EU" should assert its own values (whatever they may be)?
Now imagine expanding the EU to Turkey. Can we change their legislation to be more liberal? Or should the EU countries follow the hard line authoritarian islam that Erdogan pushes? No one is willing to change. And no one has to as long as the EU stays as a form of cooperation between nations.
If the EU pushes towards a single country, power struggles over values will follow.
>I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this. -Jeff Atwood
But the way to built that knowledge base is by answering peoples questions because the questions people ask indicate what is relevant to answer.
People get upset over others having more them they have, but rather than overtly stating they hate those who have more, it sounds far more appealing to say the attack on those who have is really a nice thing they're doing for the poor. But if you look at the actual actions and rhetoric, it's more about hating the rich than concern for the poor.