Posts by Kyle Matthews
-
Time to dig out the Pols 101 notes and start explaining what the government of a nation-state is, isn't, and how it's precisely not like a students association.
Did you miss it when I made that precise point?
-
but if you want to play that I guess left-wingers only defend VSM because they're the entrenched special interest here.
I'm not sure if you got that sentence the right way around. Left wingers defend VSM or CSM?
-
I want individual students to be able to decide for themselves whether they want universal fully-taxpayer-funded tertiary education: rather than having that decided for them by NZUSA.
I want individual taxpayers to be able to decide for themselves whether they want fully taxpayer funded SAS at war in Afghanistan: rather than having that decided for them by the government.
I mention this not to suggest that NZUSA and the government are equivalent, they clearly aren't.
But to point out that the fact that your elected representatives do not dictate to you what you think on an issue. They decide what the institution/state thinks on an issue. NZUSA doesn't tell students what they think any more than John Key tells me what I think.
I'm not sure why this distinction gets failed to be made when talking about student associations.
-
The phones on campus there were at Vic were provided by the University. SJS is almost exclusively government-funded.
Students associations used to fund SJS to keep it open during term time as well as the holidays. The government used to only fund it for summer. I'm not sure if that's still the case. Also, SJS is largely funded by government, but it's owned and run by Student Associations. It wouldn't exist if student associations hadn't started it, students would be fighting with everyone else at the MSD offices.
And everywhere you find a phone (or indeed umpteen million other things around tertiary institutions) which a tertiary institution put in, half the time it's there is because of pressure from the students association. I spent hundreds of hours of my time at OUSA stopping the University spending several million building a bridge, and getting them to instead spend the money on a Student Learning Center. Both achieved.
But these points aren't really central to your argument. I think the answer is four things:
Membership is automatic, but it's not compulsory. You can opt out of membership, and your money (at OUSA at least) and is redirected to a charity. I don't think ever more than 2 people a year requested this. You then miss out on the privileges of membership (actually, you'll still collect most of them by default, the explicit ones like voting you'll miss out on).
Making membership automatic isn't all fairies, but if student associations go voluntary, students will pay similar amounts of money (to the university mostly) for less, and certainly for a less independent voice. The weakest advocates for the student voice across New Zealand are the voluntary ones. There are no practical benefits to VSM, only philosophical ones.
These institutions are all incorporated socieites with constitutions, elections, general meetings etc. Unlike churches (or many other organisations), their direction is wholly set by members. Part of the reason VSM raises its head is "I am right wing and this students association is left wing, I shouldn't have to be a member of this which doesn't represent me." It's a sample of how the new right behaves in relation to democratic institutions - instead of engaging the process, they claim 'freedom' and try and opt out. I'd like to opt out of a number of things done in my name by various elected representatives, but it doesn't work that way.
I had a debate with a libertarian the other day (one of those young ones that likes arguing about philosophical stuff which has no practical application), who was trying to prove to me that freedom from taxation was a basic human right and I was applying force to him by allowing the state to tax him, in much the same way that a majority of the population might apply force to him if they voted to stone him. I say this to note that some of these people are fools, and that they'll apply the argument in the paragraph above to anything, not just student associations.
-
Yes. But why would I have to argue for complete privatisation because of it?
Would you argue for partial privatisation of the compulsory education sector, with similarly high fees, based on the fact that you get a private benefit from it?
-
I was merely pointing out that there are actually sensible reasons for not repealing section 59 in its entirety. Otherwise some day to day parenting routines would be criminal.
What Josh said.
I don't believe we need to make our laws so detailed so as to prevent the entire legal system from being morons. Find me a police officer that would look twice at it, a judge that wouldn't throw it off and give anyone that brought it before him/her a good bollocking.
-
Are you arguing that there is no private benefit from a tertiary education?
I hope you argue for the complete privatisation of the compulsory education sector on this basis Graeme. You did, I presume, get some private benefit from your primary and secondary education.
That argument is bunk. "There's a private benefit so you should pay something" is only ever used for tertiary education, not for any other sort of education, healthcare, welfare etc etc.
-
I don't think the church one is too bad
Come on Graeme, the church one is awful. There's valid points to be made philosophically about whether students association should be compulsory, but "they're like a church" isn't one of them. They're nothing like a church in underpinnings, purpose, means of control etc.
Student association membership isn't the only thing you become a member of when you enrol in a university. You also become a member of the university - for free - for life. Why no philosophical 'freedom and liberty' argument defending the right of every graduate not to be a member of their alma mater?
-
Surely your issue is not with student loans, but student fees? I for was quite grateful for the former, considering the magnitude of the latter.
Rewrite the past 19 years of tertiary education funding and fees, but take out the introduction of student loans.
Bet you'll find fees are a lot lower for various reasons.
Availability of easy credit makes it easier for everyone to increase prices.
-
Holding back a struggling child who is trying to run across a busy road, burping a windy baby etc. Alll would be assaults if s59 went altogether.
I think sometimes we need to remind ourselves that laws are interpreted by people who aren't as moronic as Larry Baldock. Burping a baby is possibly the silliest example I've heard of yet over the past two years.