Thursday, 5 May 2011

Reader mailbag






Thank you so much in advance.
I replied:

My bigger worries, were I in your shoes would be








  1. Eric

    Eric what are they fleeing from,
    I am fleeing from Christchurch because the place is a ruin. Send your correspondent to me.
    The fire is lit, he can have my car, he can have my girl friend, he can have the closed libraries, the poor town, New Zealand, Eric give him New Zealand,give him the freedom,
    I am leaving its just too tough for me

  2. @Peter: I hear ya. The uncertainty about futures here is near paralysing. I'd expect he would be looking at non Christchurch options.

    Things will pick up. But it's going to be a rough few years.

  3. As an aside, how many lawyers in NZ would be libertarian in their views?

  4. Libertarian relative to NZ or libertarian in an absolute sense? The one legal academic who I know has libertarian sympathies steadfastly refuses ever to comment on anything because it might hurt his standing before the court, or on various commissions. Besides him, I can think of maybe two others. But I don't know a lot of lawyers.

  5. @V I guess that depends on how you define libertarian. At its most basic a libertarian is simply someone who places a high value on freedom and civil liberties. In the sense of politics I think it is fair to say that it generally refers to someone who prefers minimal government interference in all aspects of life(social, economic, spiritual, etc.)
    I'd say lawyers are no more or less likely to hold libertarian views than any other cross-section of society, normalising for other contributing factors such as socioeconomic background, IQ, etc. Mind you, this is just my opinion, if there is data out there to suggest otherwise I'll happily amend my view :)

  6. Holidays? One reason I could never live in the US is the lack of holidays. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating that 5 weeks annual holidays should be mandated by the state. But my understanding is that 2 weeks is the norm in the US, even for professionals, and I demand far more than that.

  7. @Lats: I've no clue. And the sample of lawyers with whom I speak leans too heavily academic to be representative.

    @goonix: Are any holidays ever more than nominal for professionals anyway? Yeah, the University makes us sign some piece of paper agreeing that we weren't working for five weeks, but anybody who actually took the five weeks' holiday would wind up in the poo later on for not having enough articles written, papers graded, and so on. I'd be shocked if partner-track lawyers actually ever took five weeks leave regardless of statutory requirements.

  8. The full holiday entitlement is are certainly taken by me and everyone I work with in management consulting. Although I do accept that those higher up the pyramid feel more pressure to work while on 'holiday'.

    I'm not giving my 5 weeks up for anything!

  9. I'm living in bizarro land. The consultants take more vacation than the academics.

    And you're not spending evenings while on holiday doing work projects? Seriously?

    The folks I knew in DC who chose consulting over academia wound up divorced for never seeing their families....

  10. I honestly rarely work more than my contracted 37.5 hours per week, as I place a lot of emphasis on work life balance. I am sure this will effect my lifetime earnings in some way but, as I already am more than comfortable with what I earn, I am happy to take the trade-off.

    Plus diminishing marginal returns to labour, just to throw some theory into the mix.