WUDC 2020 Thailand motions
These are the motions that were debated at the world universities debating championship that took place in Thailand WUDC 2020. The motions were very varied and covered topics from the nations security, and other topics.
There were a lot of info slides, I find this very interesting. If you are looking for other debate topics from the previous years of WUDC competitions, you can find them on this page.
| Round | Motion | Infoslide |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | This House would impose a BBC-style impartiality requirement on all news platforms. | The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is legally required to cover the news impartially. This means: 1. It cannot take sides on controversial issues. 2. The amount of coverage each viewpoint gets should roughly reflect the level of support that viewpoint has in society. 3. It is not required to be neutral on certain fundamental issues like the rule of law and the legitimacy of the democratic process. |
| 2 | This House supports the rapid global elimination of both tariff and non-tariff barriers to free trade. | |
| 3 | This House would allow children to sue their parents for religious indoctrination. | Indoctrination means teaching someone to accept beliefs uncritically. In the case of religion, this can include (but is not limited to) emphasising strict adherence to religious teachings and not presenting alternative viewpoints. |
| 4 | This House would abolish the Olympic Games. | |
| 5 | This House believes that the Mexican government should adopt measures that enable one cartel to monopolise the drug market. (These measures can include but are not limited to: targeting enemy cartels; selective arrests; stopping military deployments to areas controlled by this cartel; and renouncing the headhunt on its current leaders.) | |
| 6 | In liberal democracies, This House would implement a Social Credit System. | A Social Credit System is a national government-facilitated rating system that rewards citizens for good behaviour and sanctions them for bad behaviour. 1. It evaluates a defined set of actions that includes but goes beyond illegal or legally-obligatory acts (e.g., charitable donations, recycling, volunteer work; or jaywalking, and littering). 2. Scores can be given by members of the public, corporations, NGOs, and the government. 3. Based on these scores, the government applies rewards and sanctions (e.g., fast-track through airport security, government-subsidised mortgages, free public transportation; or higher tax, slower document-processing times, and increased barriers to public sector jobs). |
| 7 | This House believes that ASEAN should abandon “the ASEAN Way”. | The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. At its formation, ASEAN adopted principles that have come to be known as “the ASEAN Way.” These principles place strong emphasis on national sovereignty, and a commitment to non-intervention in the affairs of member states. All ASEAN decisions are made unanimously. |
| 8 | This House believes that the feminist movement should support the narrative that “beauty does not matter” over the narrative that “all bodies are beautiful”. | |
| 9 | This House would abolish primary and secondary school grades/years that group children based on age, and instead group them by competency and intelligence. | |
| EFL_Semis | This House prefers a world where, starting today, all humans have identical intellectual abilities (equivalent to the current global average). | |
| EFL_Final | This House would abolish the private ownership of (housing) property in major metropolitan areas. | |
| ESL_Quarters | In a relatively equal society where the “protected sphere model” is the norm, This House, as a parent, would raise their children according to the “deferred happiness model”. | Under the “deferred happiness model” of parenting, there is strong emphasis on setting children up for a successful adulthood, including through a focus on academic or extracurricular achievement, structure, and discipline. Under the “protected sphere model” of parenting, there is strong emphasis on “letting children be children”, including through a focus on playtime and personal enjoyment. |
| ESL_Semis | This House prefers a world without the Neuralink. | A highly-valued startup has invented Neuralink technology, which allows people’s consciousnesses to be irreversibly uploaded into a powerful supercomputer and maintained indefinitely. |
| ESL_Final | This House believes that the United States government should cede the authority to prosecute criminal trials involving African Americans (as either victims or alleged perpetrators) to African American interest groups, and allocate funding for this. | |
| Open_Partial_Double_Octos | This House prefers religions in which all individuals have roughly equal religious obligations and are encouraged to develop a personal connection with the divine, over religions in which religious obligation and access to the divine are concentrated in religious authority figures. | |
| Open_Octos | This House prefers a cynical and pessimistic perception of democratic politics to an idealistic and optimistic one. | |
| Open_Quarters | This House believes that developing countries should acquire, on the open market, large stakes in major publicly-traded global corporations (eg. Google, JP Morgan, Shell, and Pfizer). | |
| Open_Semis | This House prefers a “Brave New World” to the status quo in Western Liberal Democracies. | A “Brave New World” has these characteristics: 1. People are genetically engineered and socially conditioned by the state for specific societal roles. 2. People’s material and physical needs are unfailingly met. 3. There is no possibility of changing the social order. |
| Grand final | This House, as China, would grant universal suffrage to Hong Kong. |
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