Individualism, Social Responsibility, and Litigiousness

Okay, after the recent blather about not noticing interesting features of NZ, here are two case studies.

The Dentist. A dental school offers free services from its hopefully moderately trained students. A mother takes her child there. The child has several cavities. In cleaning out the holes in preparation for the filling, the dental intern accidentally drills all the way through the primary (childhood) teeth, and all the way through to the permanent teeth still waiting beneath the gum line. Later in life, this causes severe dental problems for the patient. Her permanent teeth are ruined, she’s in severe discomfort, and she must go through several bouts of painful oral surgery.

The Headmaster. A headmaster/principal/CEO/whatever of a secondary school does an undeniably awful job. The school is run into the ground financially, important decisions go un-made, the quality of education declines.

Here’s the question for any Americans out there: how should the dentist and the headmaster be treated in reaction to these cases? My initial intuition is this: the dentist should be sued, and the headmaster should be fired.

Here in NZ, they do things a bit differently. The dentist can’t be sued. This is simply a non-litigious society, and so rather than allow individuals to extract compensation from other individuals, there’s a social insurance scheme, run by the ACC. This covers things like medical bills, although there’s no way to secure those notorious American benefits for vague “pain and suffering.” I guess that’s all in the spirit of the collective responsibility.

I’m mixed on whether I think this is a good thing. It’s good in that, first, interns (and the like) can train without fear of ending up destitute. Second, it’s good that the social compensation scheme isn’t run amok. Finally, the ACC covers not only individual harms, but sporting accidents and just about anything else, and there’s something nice about living in a society that says “Hey, whatever happens, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

The downside is that, as I see things, horribly negligent dentists (and the like) who ruin a child’s permanent teeth should be held personally responsible to some degree. But they’re not. This is where the Headmaster case becomes instructive. Do you agree that the headmaster should be fired? If so, prepare to be disappointed. Apparently, it’s NZ law that once a job search has been completed with due diligence, it is very hard for someone to get fired. At that point, a law kicks in that says that it’s the employer’s responsibility to make sure the employee is doing a good job. So, in the Headmaster case, the negligent employee, rather than being fired, was kept on the job, and the employer had to hire an external consultant to come in and teach/cajole him into doing a better job. Basically, it turns out, you can’t be fired here. (That makes the tenure process a little redundant, I’ve recently discovered; but it makes promotion that much more significant, so I guess it’s a wash.)

So, in my humble opinion, score 1 point for NZ on social as opposed to individual insurance for injuries and health care; score 1 point for the US on holding people accountable for gross negligence.

On Being an Ex-Pat

The blogging has been very slow lately. There are many likely contributory factors behind this. It’s been the end of the academic year, for one. The grading crush is always enough to stifle most other projects.

But another explanation has to do with being an expatriate. Most of the posts here at JIINZ have fallen under one of two categories: travelogues or reflections on unique aspects of NZ and how it differs from the US. Obviously, writing travelogues requires actually traveling. Less obviously, reflecting on unique aspects of NZ requires becoming aware of things that are unique about NZ. But as I become more and more normalized with respect to living here, fewer and fewer things seem unique.

So, after being here almost a year and a half, I suspect that the blogging has slowed down in good part because less stuff seems remarkable. A little of this might have to do with quantity: maybe I’ve just “used up” a lot of the novelty. But I suspect that a larger portion has to do with me: I’m just less observant of the uniqueness, now that I’ve been here this long. Almost everything just seems, for lack of a more descriptive word, normal.

That being said, I’m hoping to be a little more observant. Here’s one reflection on being an ex-pat that I wouldn’t have expected. Last Monday was Labour Day here. It’s a personally instructive holiday, because it’s so similar to a US holiday in what it’s meant to commemorate (unlike, say, ANZAC Day—click here, or watch Gallipoli). It even falls on a Monday right at one end of the academic year.

Now here’s the (mildly?) interesting part. I barely recognized the day. I didn’t know it was a holiday until the last possible minute. It didn’t prompt any behavioral change on my part. It came and went pretty much like any other Monday, except some businesses were closed.

But, just like Labour Day’s similarity to the US in its symbolic meaning, people here treat it just like we do in the US: in addition to taking a day to not work, they plan three-day vacations, barbeque, and so on.

So why didn’t I take note of it? It can’t be that its symbolic value is different (because its not). It can’t be that the surrounding culture treats it differently (because it doesn’t). The only explanation that I can think of is that it’s simply not in my tradition repertoire. Maybe if it had fallen on the first Monday in September. Or maybe if it were the beginning, rather than end, of the school year, or the end of summer, or the beginning of fall. If one of those things had happened, maybe I would have noticed it. But I didn't.

So the surprising (to me, anyway) thing is that one of the casualties of being an ex-pat turns out to be holidays. ANZAC Day feels like neither Memorial Day nor the 4^th of July (its two closest counterparts). And Labour Day felt like a minor speedbump. Even last year, I would have been more aware of the goings on, just because everything was so new.

To return to where this post started, maybe being an ex-pat at this stage is less about noticing what’s different about NZ as opposed to the US, and more about noticing what’s different in me in the recent, as opposed to initial, stages of living abroad.

But hopefully I'll get JIINZ off the schneid and start posting more frequently. I hereby resolve to notice more things, if that's something that is susceptible to resolution.