This House Supports the rise of private cities in the developing world

Har Naveenjeet Singh
MO CO
84

Youtube Link (Timestamped): HERE

Why the policy will be implemented terribly ?

What does it look like? In a lot of developing countries, projects are oftentimes given on a tender basis. This just means people on the net are likely to bid for it. But the problem is, in the developing world, many many countries, especially because they're developing, a lot of them are post-conflict or post-colonial, which means for governments to stay in power, they have to get excess amounts of funds or resources or input from some sources. That's why, for many many countries in Southeast Asia and developing nations, many many ruling parties are very contingent and very reliant on vast networks of cronies.

Now, what does this look like in modern day? So that's why a lot of projects, for instance, are given to individuals that are not necessarily the most efficient, are not necessarily the best actors, for the reason being that governments oftentimes are reliant on these specific types of actors to, firstly, be re-elected and stay in power, secondly, to make sure that they don't flip over to the political opposition to allow for them to throw them out of power. Let me give you a couple of examples. The first is, look at the mass rapid transport-like project that was linked to 1MDB in Malaysia. It was clearly given to one of the worst corporations for the reason being that it was aligned with the current government at the time. Look at the Philippines with the ZTE-like telecommunications scandal as well. All of these were given towards individuals that didn't have the incentive to provide the best business, rather, these were the ones that were aligned the closest to government.

Kuala Lampur, March 30,2015 — The realignment of the second Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) route to a new township on land owned by 1 Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) shows Putrajaya is trying to favour the debt-ridden state investment firm, a DAP lawmaker said today.-malaymail

Refuting CG’s characterization
1. Now, what does CG tell us here? CG tells us that we're going to have contracts made that are significantly better. So this is contingent on there being like a fair symmetry and there not being contradicting interests between governments and the individuals. If the government and the people that are taking over these areas go hand in hand and that one gains profit and one gains political power, this doesn't quite apply.

2. But even in the best-case scenario, like the analysis from CG is this: There will be many people bidding, but the problem is, on a baseline, developing countries don't have much leverage to negotiate against mega corporations. So I'm willing to acknowledge that Amazon and Microsoft will probably give us differences in terms of like, you know, the concessions they give us, but it's quite marginal for the reason being that they don't have to dip in too much, for the reason being that, you know, we're never going to leave the negotiating table. We need their money. They can give us any conditions. At best, the increase in benefit is marginal.

So the second thing they tell us then is that we have stock exchanges. Like, this assumes that hedge funds, famously a very immoral industry, care about individuals in the developing world. I think, on a net, people like being paid significantly lower wages or having worse conditions tends not to offend shareholders, for the reason being that shareholders are mostly interested in the bottom line, which is profit to begin with. Famously, the international court has not sanctioned any company for, like, work violations in the developing world either. I'm not sure why this is applicable.

Now, I'm gonna take it over here by being a little bit more reasonable to the Gov, because I think it's a bit unfair to assume that all of them are gonna be incredibly corrupted. I think there is also space to assume that a corporation with good intentions is probably going to take over too.

Now, what is the bottom line coming from Gov here?
Claim
Their bottom line is efficiency. Now, let's just first ask ourselves what efficiency is going to look like.
Sub Claim
The first thing is that you are probably going to have to restructure sectors of the economy that are currently underperforming and inefficient.
Mechanism
Now, this is a very important thing. The reason for this is because, in the developing world, a lot of ethnic and racial tensions are oftentimes linked to the economy.
Example

So, the way that ethnic Malay individuals feel very very antagonized or very very scared of Chinese people because there is a perception that the economy is being taken over by them.
Analysis
That's why many many corporations that are, like, billing in a lot of losses operate in certain areas, but they are still there because they hire the most amount of people. In a world where these corporations enter and they restructure the economy, the first thing I will say is, there will be a significant shuttering of these inefficient industries that certain races are very very reliant upon. This just adds to the anxieties that these people have, and it adds to the layers that they have to potentially backslide into conflict, for the reason being that, while you are promising them jobs, you are still depriving them of an economic resource that they previously had access to and industries that they previously had access to as well. That's why, on the first level, there is probably going to be significant harm in terms of ethnic conflict. Don't worry, I'll take POI a little bit later.

Second, I think inefficiencies are needed. So the problem with Gov is that they just throw around the word "inefficiency" like it's jargon but not really explaining what the value of it is. The thing is, in many developing countries, inefficiencies look like absorbing very large costs or very large losses for the provision of certain services. So I understand what Gov is trying to say, that they'll maybe provide better services to be able to make up for that profit. Let's just question how they're going to do it. So in many areas, I think the first thing they're going to do is, they're going to try to reduce the number of people that are going to be relying on this service, for the reason being that they don't want to make a significantly higher cost. This looks like increasing the standards needed to get into specific hospitals, so you can say you're providing, but you're not providing for a lot of people and you're still reporting a profit. That's why things are significantly better as well. The comparative is, governments are able to absorb this cost and they are able to provide it at a significantly better scale too.

Uh, by from OG: “So the question is, are starving, malnourished, uneducated, pet peasants running your call centers profitable or unprofitable? We gave you reasons and intuitions. It's probably the latter.” Yeah, so firstly, that's a really, like, convenient and honestly unfair and extreme characterization. The second thing I would say is, because they have specific incentives to up their profit, they will make rules and regulations such that push these specific peasants you're talking about out of these services, to leave them on the coast, so they're able to report a profit but also provide for fewer people on a net.

Second question: I want to explain why development, on a net, becomes significantly better. I'm going to suggest that things become shit overall worse for these developing countries. The reason for this is because there's going to be a rat race in terms of gaining FDI. So according to the Gov, look at their language: This place is going to be a pristine area of development. This just means most international actors will probably focus their development and also focus their funds into these specific private areas, for the reason being that they are less corrupted or also more pristine in terms of development. This just means, on the net, for other areas of the government to be compatible, we have to make ourselves alluring. This looks like reducing worker standards on a net because it makes it significantly cheaper and easier for these corporations to exist. So what this means is that, overall, as a whole, to compete with this one private area, the standards decrease on a net. That's why the suffering of people increases significantly more.
Since investment now diverges towards small private cities, the government is now forced to lower working conditions in the rest of the country in order to keep up with the “private city”

And that's why I think, comparatively, Closing Opposition takes it over OO, for the reason being that we're way less convenient than them. We're also a significantly better comparative than the entire Gov bench. For those reasons, I think CO quite comfortably takes this debate. Thank you.

MG | GW
Lucía Arce Cubas
85 

Youtube Link (Timestamped):HERE

Starting in three, two, one.

In 2015, the BBC did a documentary on a factory in Cambodia, and what they found out was terrible working conditions and that there were children who were working at the factory, and the factory got shut down. They came back two years later, and they found out that most of the workers, after the factory got shut down, were actually either sold to human trafficking, children ended up in prostitution, or people just starved because they didn't have access to jobs.

I think that the problem with the vast majority of their arguments on the OP is that they failed to explain why, in the comparative, when these companies don’t want to invest, then there is still some level of interest in the area and some level of care from the government that means that people are fed. I don’t think that they have managed to do that despite consistently telling us that these are governments that are corrupt, that these are governments that don’t care about the poor.

Two things that we're going to be talking about.
1. Firstly, about why we have the capacity to control corporations in a way that we don’t right now, which I think Rachel explains to you. I'm gonna deal with Naveen’s(MO) responses within that.
2.Secondly, I want to talk about quality of life and why we think that workers’ rights are actually going to be protected in the cities irrespective of regulation, but rather purely because of company incentives.

Refutation
Before that, I want to deal with one exterior response to the previous speaker who told us that, you know, these companies are going to come in and create ethnic conflict, that they're going to dismantle certain industries. I have two responses.

Firstly, I actually think that OG is already beating this when the deputy speaker stands up and tells us that, you know, it is actually good that corporations come in because, unlike governments, they frequently don’t rely on a certain ethnicity in order to remain in power, so they don’t care what color your skin is as long as you have the capacity to work. They don’t have an incentive to put, for example, things that say that only certain ethnicities can work in certain industries. They don’t have an incentive to segregate things depending on, like, the color of the skin of the people that are there.
-uses OG's material regarding why foreign companies’ hiring practices are more equitable/meritocratic

But secondly, and this is important, I think that every conflict is generally bad for business. McKinsey’s sure evil, but they can definitely tell you that, and companies are going to realize that creating tensions is not going to yield them a profit but probably create riots that mean that they have to pay for reparations on the streets. So I don’t actually think that it is in the incentive of companies, and I think that they’re going to spend quite a lot of money consulting to make sure that they don’t create conflict because they don’t want it.
-Doesn't quite adequately respond to MO's argument concerning ethnic conflict. Companies may not have the incentive to stir up ethnic divide, however the mech regarding how they inevitably do it when they restructure the economy- move factories away to private cities leaving economically disadvantaged ethnicities who depend on inefficient sectors without a job  

Second point, or the first point in terms of clash, why do you think that we can control corporations in a way that we don’t have the capacity to right now when we’re just, you know, renting out contracts to corporations rather than selling cities? I think Rachel gives you three reasons, and I actually think that only one of them got responded to.
Reiterating MG's case

Firstly, Rachel tells you that there is competition amongst different corporations, that when you have different corporations that bid for the same contract, that means that, you know, if one is really really bad and the other one is better, that means that the contract will go to the one that is better. The response is, but these small countries don’t actually have that much leverage against these corporations, and that may be true, but you aren’t just negotiating with one corporation, right? You’re negotiating with multiple, which means that unless they all sort of, like, agree to lower their standards and to give you the exact same deal, which is really unlikely because then it’s basically random rather than attempting to one-up each other, as companies constantly do under capitalism, then that means that overall, competition means that you are not going to get the worst deal possible, as CO characterizes.
Addresses CO's framing regarding the asymmetry of power between the government and corporation 

But I think that the other two mechanisms are really important that she told you. Firstly, if the companies are more transparent, they have an incentive because they’re under global scrutiny. Note what the comparative is, right? When a random company comes into a random city in India or in El Salvador or in Cambodia and goes, "I would like to have a factory here," and no one gives a shit because no one cares about labor regulation in the random city in Cambodia or India or El Salvador. Whereas, if they know that Nestlé is setting up a factory and you have slogans on every newspaper everywhere going, "People are eating death chocolate from this company that bought a city and now has people in slavery," that’s going to be everywhere, right? And that’s going to hurt Nestlé, so they have an incentive to, first, be transparent, but second, to make sure their regulation is good.
Global and media scrutiny is far more likely to happen if a company is centralized in a “private city”
The third thing that Rachel tells you is that they have a massive incentive coming from governments to regulate this corporation. Firstly, because of what Naveen (MO) himself tells you, right? That otherwise, labor standards in the rest of the country are going to go down, and, you know, governments also don’t want that because then that means that it’s going to be more expensive for them to make a profit elsewhere. But also, importantly, there’s an incentive to regulate because you’re gonna have to deal with the disaster. If the corporation runs the city to the ground, then you’re gonna be left to deal with the fallout of what happens when no other corporation wants that city again, where you also don’t have the capacity to give welfare because everyone’s, like, broken, wearing diapers. So I think that overall, these are all reasons why the entire Open bench is gone. But I think it’s also recent, right? Overall, we take it over OG because I think that these are more structural reasons, not just about why companies are gonna behave well, but also about why we have the capacity to control them in a way we currently don’t in the status quo.

Second point, what about the quality of life and workers’ rights? But before that, I’ll take OO at, like, five or something. Quality of life on workers’ rights and status quo. OO says horrible rights and Chinese corporations. Their only reason that they give us why it’s gonna be horrible is, "They’re from China." Okay, Milos, you hate debate land, but in debate land, regrettably, facts are only facts insofar as you manage to prove that they are true. And I think that they didn’t manage to actually prove that Chinese corporations are inherently evil. I think OG did a good job of pointing out that in some cases, they aren't, and so at most, this is a wash.

The reason that I give you is, "Ah, but it makes a profit." Look, I think Rachel defeats that. But before that, OO, do you have a POI?

"Yeah, but it’s not like in the developing world, five companies are battling each other over who opens a business city. Even in privatization of very profitable companies in the developing world, one bidder who dictates the rule, usually from China."

Thank you. I think there’s two things to respond to here. Firstly, okay, then the comparative is, you get a company bidding again, but no one gives a shit so there’s less transparency and the Nestle doesn’t care about its profits, so the deal that you get is worse. But second is, like, look, if there is absolutely no other company bidding, that means that no one wants the city, and no one wants it because it’s unprofitable. So your alternative is, still, there are no jobs in the city, the government doesn’t give a shit because it’s not profitable and full of poor people, so people just starve, and you get, like, Cambodia after the factory shut down.

So I think that your comparative is still not good. Like, I get it, guys, maybe it’s not great, but it’s better than the status quo. A lot of these developing countries just don’t have that much going for them, like places in Mexico that are completely abandoned are also not nice places to live. So I think that this is at least better than the status quo. But anyway, back to what I think Rachel explains about quality of life.

Firstly, I think that she tells you—I'm granted OG do say this, or rather, say this pretty well—they’re sort of like, "It doesn’t make you a profit where your entire workforce is malnourished and also rioting."