THBT states should discourage the concentration of their country's economic and political power within a single city

Oxford IV 2021 

Round 1 Gladstone Library

LO | OO

83

Economics
Naomi Panovka

Youtube Link (Timestamped) : HERE

I'm going to be talking about four things in the speech
1. Firstly, what even if this is theoretically beneficial it leads to major rights violations

2. Secondly, why concentration of power in a single city is necessary for degrees of economic growth
3. Thirdly, why economic growth matters and trickles down
4. And then finally what rural areas would look like on the comparative

Why will the “process” i.e implementation be done terribly ?
1. Into massive rights violations: I think the problem with OG is that they're quite vague in terms of the precise mechanism over how this is going to happen given that this is not a policy motion. They need to engage with ways that states have tried to restrict migration when this policy has been implemented under the status quo.
Exploits OG’s lack of characterization
I think they've broadly done two things.
So firstly in circumstances where cities are already really large and governments then try and downsize them which they have to do under this motion. You literally end up getting direct

evictions when people are living within these cities. So you go into people's homes, you often burn down property, you force people out of areas with guns which literally happen in Rio.
Referring to the forced evictions in Rio favelas since 2011 to make space for the construction for the 2016 Rio Olympic stadium.  About 90% of the 600 residents have already moved after being offered financial compensation, but the remaining holdouts are adamant that they do not want to give up their homes. Reports of a lack of adequate compensation, use of rubber bullets and percussion grenades 

If methods used by the state are less extreme… 

but secondly when you got quota based systems that exist this is still imposing a limitation on an individual's capacity to move often along economic lines. You allow more privileged people

to be the ones who are going into these cities um it's often regulated by politicians who often have harmful incentives. They might be a member of an ethnic group and therefore have like restriction migration policies which has been a problem with the Hukuo system overall

Hukuo system: Individuals are categorised as either rural or urban residents based on their place of origin in China and their family's registered hukou status.It acts as a gatekeeper, determining eligibility for various aspects of life, including employment, education, housing, healthcare, and even the right to move freely and reside in cities. By imposing institutional barriers, such as stringent requirements for residency permits and limitations on the transfer of hukou status, the system tightly regulates the flow of people and labour across different geographical areas. Travelling and relocating become intricately complicated endeavours due to the bureaucratic hurdles. Birth registration allows for the efficient distribution of resources based on urban or rural categorization. Within the hukou system, there are two basic types of household registration: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 registration primarily applies to individuals who depend on agricultural production for sustenance and income. Food allocation for Type 1 registrants is determined by local authorities rather than receiving a direct food quota from the government. In contrast, Type 2 registration guarantees formal employment, pension benefits, and a government-allocated food ration. Type 2 registrants also have access to additional benefits such as housing, healthcare, education, and maternity leave, controlled by the government through their work units.Not only is it closely tied to an individual's place of origin, but it also has a direct impact on various aspects of cultural heritage, including language, customs, and traditions. Furthermore, the hukou system affects family dynamics, particularly in relation to inheritance and property rights. In China, property and land rights are often linked to hukou registration in a specific area.

Why is it principally unjustified ?

Note that these are inherently massive rights violations. So I think that the right not to be evicted is key to bodily security. There's often a threat of violence and the right to move is key to any conception of bodily autonomy that exists. I think that even if the Gov team can prove that this is better for society overall, these rights violations are not justified because it involves a high degree of instrumentalization of the individual. I think that people have self-ownership of themselves- the virtue of the fact that they're forced to interact with their bodies on an incredibly proximate basis and therefore bodies in our labor are effectively our own.

Even if the state theoretically has obligations to promote a wide degree of economic growth I don't think it's justified to restrict an individual's right and capacity to move, to facilitate those obligations. The same way we would think it's incredibly unjust to force the smartest people within their country to work 24 hours a day at the behest of the state because they have not consented to be born into that state or consent into obligations they might have to other individuals

Second main contribution why is the concentration of power in a single city necessary for growth So our plan is  effectively that overpopulation is actually a beneficial vehicle for degrees of economic growth that exists which is why most developing countries have followed the recent development trajectory of having mega cities form like kuala lumpur like kugali. Then become vehicles for the remainder of the country to experience a higher degree of economic growth.
Claim

The first reason why this is beneficial for that is that lower wages that end up recurring, help businesses compete within international markets
Analysis
having a surplus of labor admittedly does decrease the bargaining power of individual workers we say this is ultimately a good thing

Impact
Because what this means is that businesses that end up saving money on labor better allow them to compete within international markets overall.

Secondly, there are huge benefits of agglomeration that exist which refer to the practice of having many many businesses being concentrated within a single area. The first reason for this is that businesses that are concentrated near one another makes importing and exporting between businesses substantially cheaper. This is very important in a developing world context for a lot of companies are still manufacturing based. Meaning that there's often things like supply transfers of car parts between different companies that end up saving massive amounts of money on that.
But secondly it also provides an incentive for better practices by companies because you end up getting more competition so in a situation where you have like 20 businesses that a worker is able to choose from you actually incentivize these companies um to be better when there's an easier transfer of labor that is ultimately going to exist .

I think the third thing to say here is that this is often needed in order to get forms of FDI. There's multiple reasons for this The liberal wages that I described guarantee a large pool of people who are always going to work for a company even if there is competition in the central business district. I think a really important factor here is also just having the reputation of being a central business district when your country is generally seen as being financially irresponsible so within western media cities like lagos and kigali are referred to as being the central business districts of African countries but it is important overcoming a lot of investment stigma when countries are

otherwise perceived as being politically volatile.
I also think that political power that is concentrated guarantees favorable business regulations that might otherwise face degrees of rural resistance at the false kind of perceived notion that this might disadvantage rural areas. So things like lowering taxation um and creating other like zoning policies in order to attract a very wide degree of FDI that exists.
Why is FDI important ?
Note FDI is often needed because domestic corporations due to like colonialism often lacks sort of know-how, meaning that things like foreign technology is really important and even if like

foreign companies do bad things. I think that it's “choice maximizing” because having a five dollar an hour wage is probably better than the comparative of having no wage whatsoever.

Claim
Next then, why does economic growth actually matter and what are the tangible trickle down benefits of this ?
Analysis
So firstly, when you have individual cities who are flourishing more, you often get outward forms of like population around the peripheries of cities. So you kind of get new cities forming along mega cities which is uniquely facilitated when you have things like railways and export hubs that are established in these cities themselves. And even if there is overpopulation there is a like solving mechanism here when it comes to things like trickle down growth.
But secondly more money ends up going to the government when gdp growth is higher and they're getting more tax revenue from these cities overall and that governments are less likely to do things like be trapped in debt cycles, paying off interest rates. It improves credit ratings and governments have less debt. But more importantly governments have a higher capacity to invest in the people overall.

Equalization Payments: The federal government(in Canada) makes unconditional payments from general revenues to provinces with lower fiscal capacity. The receiving provinces can spend the funds as they see fit.

Preemptive Rebuttal
I think the response is like ‘what is the incentive to when political power is constituted’ which is what opening government says.
1. Firstly, investing in more urban services is still a net win. I think it's good if millions of people in urban areas have better water supplies.
2. Secondly, it's not like rural states have like zero political power just because there's urban gridlock. I think there can often be coalitions between rural states um if there are more homogenous interests which is why a lot of states have some degree of like equalization payments. We do not want to completely neglect rural areas that exist.
3. Thirdly though, I think that like there's there's often connectedness between services in urban and rural areas. So if there are systematic power outages this is often a problem with the entire electricity grid so targeting this for urban areas often then goes down into rural areas.
POI

Before I continue, I'll take a POI from back half……..

“Yeah when Nike gets more profits from their businesses that doesn't trickle down to the people on the ground rather just goes back to the ceo's pocket all you proving your best”

Yeah but i literally explained why you can tax these companies which then means that the state end up getting more money overall and if nike does really well that means that more people than these countries get employed um and that is an active benefit overall okay

Symmetries present in the Status Quo
The final thing that I want to talk about is that what is the comparative for these rural areas. So the reason why people are leaving rural areas despite the fact they often have family, friends, and community there is that there just are not jobs under the status quo and that there are often urban areas that have better underlying economic conditions.
Firstly there's often just not enough people or more importantly like human capital shortages where education systems are often worse in quality. Secondly, they're often things like curatorial barriers so like rougher climates bad terrain to set up mass factories um a lack of like near

like a lack of proximity to things like export sectors that exist. This means there's often no investment in rural areas under either side of a house where countries either stay in the west or continue to go to large cities this is also why political capture in this debate is somewhat symmetric because larger cities are still going to have wealthier urban elites who’re going to have the most political sway on your other side of the house regardless of the scale of that influence