The Semi Final Draw for the 2010 World Debating Championships
Semi-Final 1:
OG Oxford A
OO Stanford A
CG LSE A
CO Monash A
Semi-Final 2:
OG Queensland D
OO Harvard A
CG Cambridge A
CO Sydney A
Motion: THB that the United States government should subsidize Twitter to liberalize oppressed societies
Oh dear. That's a great motion if you win but a terrible one if you lose. More fist fights to come after this adjudication.
ReplyDelete"More fist fights"?
ReplyDeleteWere there some already?
I wasn't too sure about this motion at first, but the more I think about it, the more I like it
ReplyDeletewhy "The United States"? why not "THW Subsidize, etc." Feh.
ReplyDeleteThat's another great motion!
ReplyDeleteHow can you subsidize something that's free?
ReplyDeleteUsing twitter is free.
ReplyDeleteRunning twitter isn't. (In particular, making it less susceptible to being blocked is also pretty expensive.)
Go figure.
Twitter is loosing money hand over fist. Needless to say, being free is not a lucrative business model.
ReplyDeleteTwitter's making an operating profit this year; it has search deals from Google and Microsoft. This motion is set by people who clearly don't believe in researching the motions they set. Even if running twitter is not free; it is currently being made free to users; how and why should you then subsidize it?
ReplyDeleteThat's obviously why it's a debate, right?
ReplyDeleteYou may have trouble understanding/figuring out the prop case for it, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. In fact, there are some very strong arguments in favor of it. Refer to the video of the semi-final between Oxford A, LSE A, Stanford A, and Monash A. Their arguments are independent of whether Twitter is making an operating profit or not. Saying that Twitter is making an operating profit therefore there must not be a need to subsidize them is just silly.
The arguments made by LSE are particularly important. They were a pretty clear first that round, and even the judges seemed to agree, since the panel was unanimous in having them advance.