Posts by BenWilson
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Legal Beagle: On Consensus, in reply to Steven Peters,
Fair enough Steven, I guess I'm not sure exactly what every individual in parliament feels about thresholds. There may even be people in the big parties who feel the same way, that breaking off from their party might be less horrifying if there was at least a chance of forming a nationally oriented splinter group. Which is, I'd say, the biggest threat to the big parties, not little parties that might represent the current non-voters. In the end, the most horrifying thought of all is that the party system might break down completely, and individuals might vote according their own views of right and wrong.
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Legal Beagle: On Consensus, in reply to Rob Stowell,
NZers used to be able to get seriously pissed off. I don't think it's in the national psyche any more. A gradually growing peeve is the limit of political stonk we've got left.
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to DexterX,
There is something lurking deep at the seat of all this evil.
In the very bowels...
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OnPoint: What Andrew Geddis Said, But…, in reply to Roger Lacey,
If I was presented something to put my name to that had huge amounts it blanked out but was still legally binding, I'd ask some pretty pointed questions about it.
Word, I just wrote pretty much that, then deleted it because I wasn't sure at all on your second speculation. Maybe they really are that lazy, or obedient, or both.
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Don't know what to make of this move. Presumably this kind of action sets precedent for Labour to also do similar things. Isn't it the kind of thing they save up for a last term?
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Legal Beagle: On Consensus, in reply to tussock,
To summarise, you target the big two.
I like the way you're thinking but there's a factor you haven't considered. The votes lost by supporting such a system. It's no use to a party to gain 100,000 disaffected unvoters if they lose 50,001 voters to the other party, who won't hold truck with this minority pandering business. Not to mention that the prospect of more parties in Parliament does not appeal to any existing party in Parliament. It can only mean less pie for them. The loss of pie would be bigger than any gratitude vote, if such a thing could even be guaranteed from the pool of people who routinely don't vote anyway.
There's an iron law of oligarchy at work here. I'm still amazed that we ever got MMP in the first place.
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Wow is the IRD + Treasury really costing us over 10 billion per year?
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As a young man fresh out of school, I incurred 2 major debts. The first was my student loan. The second arose from a very poorly managed property development that I undertook. The debt left after all the dust settled from this development was more than my student debt, which was substantial. It was pretty shit at that age for that to happen, but I was determined to pay my debts. The people I owed money too demanded it, but in the end, we cut the debt in half, settling for a payment no more than all I could borrow from another source. They were happy to get it - there was a good chance they might never see any of it, I could have gone bankrupt, and I was definitely going to leave the country. After the settlement, we went our separate ways and I gradually paid the other source off on from the very high salary I earned in Australia. My student debt hung around for about 15 years, and was paid back in full, with a lot of interest, at market rates. There really was no other option.
The point I'm making is that despite the size of that property debt, the whole thing could be sorted out within a few years - the rub of moneylending can, and should, always be that the borrower can't pay, and the moneylender actually does lose. For that reason, they have to be reasonable about how much they lend, they should make efforts to ascertain that it can be paid back. There is absolutely no diligence of this kind whatsoever with regard to student debt. In that case, the deal is very different. It's "we have the power to persecute you for your entire life, because we are a government and you are merely a person. We will never let this go, until you die. We could even change the deal and shift debts beyond the grave, if we found we were losing out too much. We don't take it personally, you're just an entry in a ledger to us. No one can be appealed to about this, and no threat will move us. We will get our money, or you will die. That is what you signed up for, kid".
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Hard News: A Golden Age for the Arts?, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Wait, are you talking about the 1970s?
I may be. Anyway, I was talking gobshite. I don't really pretend to know the zeitgeist on music, because I don't listen to much that's new. That, in itself, is a purely visceral reaction to how unoriginal it sounds to me. Which is probably unfair, and I ought to develop my tastes further with lengthy periods listening to things I don't like. But it seems like work.
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Hard News: A Golden Age for the Arts?, in reply to Kumara Republic,
We're now into the Great Recession, and it seems no obvious musical groundswell has emerged. Any ideas?
From what I can tell, the groundswell of our time is live TV karaoke banging out stuff that was mostly made last century. People who themselves were once famous musicians play third rate hosts to such genius. Being a rock-star is passe, now it's all about being some hard luck nobody getting the big shot.
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