Posts by Moz
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
It might be handy to instead use a “mature adult” card
The very idea sticks in my craw. It's like taking the idea of a free and progressive society, and inverting it. Patronizing paternalism is hardly a new idea.
I can see the attraction of that point of view. But then I start thinking about "a nuclear weapon in every home" and become aggressively paternalistic again. My version of the balance between freedom to do whatever I like, and freedom from other people doing likewise, is on the side of definitely requiring permits to operate dangerous machinery, some kind of limit on who can consent to sex and contracts, bans on the sale of humans and so on.
I suspect that where you and I really differ is more likely on whether you want a crazy hodge-podge of rule and restrictions that vary depending on what exactly is under discussion, or a single "now you're an adult" line. But I could be wrong.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The problem with age of consent laws is they try to set a threshold for maturity in the law
But we do that with all sorts of things - contracts, operating dangerous machinery, medical attention, (recreational) drug use, military service, you name it. Pragmatism requires a sharp line that's easily distinguishable.
It might be handy to instead use a "mature adult" card. The test would presumably be similar to the dangerous machinery system we have now - a written test, an oral test, possibly a character or criminal record check, a bunch of dealing with bureaucrazy. If you pass you get the card. Then we make a bunch of stuff dependent on having the card - drivers license, firearms license (it's kinda double testing since the MA card is based on the systems those use already, but the subject matter will be different), possibly voting, having sex, signing contracts, buying drugs, seeing naked people at the movies, whatever.
If we did that I'd be really happy. Especially if we did it without the stupid threshold that I expect would be applied - if the testing has any merit at all it should be available to anyone. No restrictions at all. You're five years old and you want to have a go? Cough the cash and get in line.
The real amusement would come when we had to set up a system for removing cards from people who clearly failed to act like mature adults :)
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
But that was diametrically opposite to the argument they were making
I know. I just thought someone should mention that "pressuring someone into sex" is actually rape.
One of the other oddities is that in NZ it's quite legal to have sex at 16, but not legal to produce "sexually explicit images" of someone under 18. But we've discussed that before.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
When you're 35, "she's legal" isn't good enough.
Classic. I wonder how that would go down as a rule in a brothel.
I thought the whole point of brothels was that they swap compatibility for cash as the basis of consent?
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One of the "moments of recognition" for me at university was being introduced to the idea of philosophical post-modernism. Suddenly I had a name for how I'd been thinking for a long time. Yes, it depends, there's more than one way to look at that, who's asking and why do you want to know?
Here's the question that should be really hard to answer: is it wrong for an eighteen year old to have sex with a fourteen year old? Mulling this question led me to an even curlier one: should there be an age of consent?
Should there be an age of consent is easy: no. But lacking a better way to deal with the situation that's widely accepted, that's the best we can do. It's (hopefully) clear to everyone that five year olds shouldn't be having sex. Even (especially?) with other five year olds. But a mature 15 year old? Sometimes, some of them, definitely. An immature 25 year old? No way. No fricking way Jose! But until the lawyers can agree with each other, and with politicians, the media, every other punter that thinks for some reason that they should have a say in the law, we just have to suck it up.
It's one of those places where p*lice discretion makes sense, and judicial discretion when that fails. In a way I'd rather have judicial discretion only, but this is also one of those places where simply arresting and trying someone for the crime can be more punishment than the crime warrants (and, of course you can't un-punish someone after they're found not guilty). Sex offender panics are no fun for anyone except the media.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
an under-eighteen-year-old girl was depicted socially coercing an older (over 18 by some amount) boy into sex. The blogger was outraged that Glee was using "rape" (their description, due to the age-of-consent issue) in a titillating way. I objected to their description, on the grounds that sex involving someone below an age of consent was not automatically rape.
Whereas I agree with her, because the girl did commit rape. And that should not be trivialised.
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One ugly part of the fixed repayment is that there's no flexibility. If you go overseas to find work, or become unemployed while there the IRD doesn't care. They'll happily ask for money you don't have and charge you penalties for not supplying it. Which means you're often better off on the dole in NZ than overseas working for minimum wage while looking for work. I'd like to think that's not the design intention, but I am afraid that it is.
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OnPoint: Budget 2013: Bringing Down the…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The student loan issue is an ugly one. Not least because of the huge sovereign risk that's been demonstrated (viz, you have a legally binding agreement where one party can, and does, change the terms at will... it's as though they're taking tips from FaceBook).
I went through the process a few years ago because I could see that it was just going to get worse. It was better to borrow off a bank (who can't easily change the rules mid-loan) and focus on paying that back quick smart. In the end the process of arranging payment was so slow that I had saved enough by the time the IRD could give me a straight answer about how much I owed.
the likely defeat of the Australian Labor government this coming September
I expect an austerity program like the ones currently failing everywhere from the UK to Queensland. Which could easily send a flood of unemployed kiwis back across the Tasman. Those who can afford it, anyway - there are quite a few unemployed, homeless kiwis here with no entitlement to welfare. The ozzies are disturbingly happy to deny even the most basic sustenance to foreigners and aborigines. I got citizenship* a few years ago when it became clear that whipping up xenophobia was a blight that was not going away.
* for what that's worth - the ozzies are also happy to strip citizenship from dual citizens then deport them. They dumped a heroin addict into eastern europe a few years ago despite the fact that he'd lived in Australia since before he was five years old and didn't speak the language or know anyone there. From memory he slept in the embassy doorway and begged for food until the local media shamed someone into doing the absolute minimum necessary to make the problem go away.
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Wow,there's actual Ministry of Compulsory Joy in the interwebs! OMG.
At one stage I wanted to paint up a friends house truck/bus as "MoCJ: Official Funbus" with the slogan "You WILL enjoy yourselves". Owner vetoed it.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Martin Roberts,
The ‘old Chinese gentlemen’ demographic.... Are they considered by planners and advocates? Have they ever been engaged in cyclist community building?
Yes :)
In Sydney a number of councils go out of their way to find people like them and work out what they want. It can be hard when their native/only language is not English (Fairfield council does community surveys in 12 languages, for example). Usually they do stalls and info days rather than surveys, because grabbing whoever happens to have 10 minutes spare as they ride past is nearly worthless. But that reaching out is expensive, and often produces results that the powers that be do not like. Hence the "reforms" That Nice Mr Key{tm} is currently putting through, for example.
I've been paid by councils to do everything from bike counts to route design to sitting on stalls badgering cyclists. Stapling strips of paper to handlebars works really well, BTW. Just put a one-sentence request ("tell the council where you want a new bike path") URL and phone number of it, plus the council logo. Or in Fairfield, 12 sentences...
Discovery is also difficult because counting "cyclists not using this route" is hard, and many cyclists don't think about planning issues much. So asking "what routes would you like" can be pointless or meaningless. The bicycle user groups (BUGs) over here do a lot of this work for council, at some risk of the interests of engaged cyclists dominating. I'm a BUG member, and we try to cover all cyclists, but we're really ad-hoc (inevitably).
What seems to work really well is general obstacle awareness. We try to get the railway, road and motorway people thinking about the scale cyclists work at (they'll ride further than pedestrians, but dislike hills more, for example) when building or modifying obstacles (railway lines, main roads, pedestrian malls etc). Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it works well but the planners are unhappy (cyclists riding on pedestrian overbridges being a big one... like anyone is going to dismount and walk 100m over an otherwise-empty overbridge). So some BUG work is just educating both sides, and some of it is post facto infrastructure adjustment.