> It's been my dream for the past 10 years to move to New Zealand
Why?
I'm a real doomer when it comes to NZ. Everything I liked about it is disappearing and everything I dislike about it gets worse.
Why?
I'm a real doomer when it comes to NZ. Everything I liked about it is disappearing and everything I dislike about it gets worse.
It seems to me NZ's main problems are ones it has had for a long time (housing, inequality, gangs, drugs), some of them are getting better (tech industry), and the stuff I like is still good (tramping, food, environment, sane politics).
But the untold story of tech work in NZ is that working remotely for good wages is rapidly getting easier. I started the Mozilla NZ office in 2007 and we were paid adequately, because back then HR didn't have a firm "local cost of labour" policy. Since then I've seen friends find remote work at other companies to get paid a lot more than they would locally for the same job. Zapier is a good one. We can all see that remote work is trending steeply upward in general; it doesn't always translate into location-insensitive pay policies, but sometimes it does.
Canadians have a reputation for saying "sorry", let's give NZ a reputation for saying "thank you".
If I stayed in Switzerland (where I was born, but have no citizenship because parents weren't resident), I would have to join the army and kill foreigners. Same in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Austria... many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription, and I'm a pacifist.
People who want to make more money choose to move away to Australia, London, or California. Likewise in Kaohsiung, career-minded people move to Taipei or Hong Kong. The Immigration department is trying to alter that by preferentially issuing visas to rich people, but that's not how this works - it'll just increase inequality, and the government won't even make more money in taxes because most rich people find loopholes and tax havens anyway.
People who choose to move to New Zealand usually have something more worthwhile in life to hope for :)
If you move to NZ, I hope you're earning a lot of money. Everything is expensive. Housing especially - though you're used to that to an extent if you know Taipei.
Here in Auckland I'm currently paying 130 NZD per week for a room in a house shared with 3 others, about 15 mins bike ride from the office.
Heard the pollution is pretty bad though. And the driving was even worse than Taipei.
It may be the case that it is a necessary condition for remaining a nice country. At least if their neighbors aren't always so nice.
Most civilized countries with universal conscription allow you to do unarmed service (military support tasks) or civil service. In addition there's usually plenty of wiggle room to avoid the conscription altogether: health reasons (or excuses), being a member of certain religions, delaying/avoiding/hiding, or just plain refusing.