English Script Request

Ladies and Gentleman!

Despite what is an obvious number of you people in the audience believe, we from Oxford are actually quite nice people!

(laughter)

That's why we believe in maximizing the potential of everybody in the world! That's why we think the birth lottery is not a great thing, ladies and gentleman. Just because we're from Oxford doesn't automatically mean that we going to win this debate. We do actually have to work towards that, ladies and gentleman, particularly when you like me telling you more than that!

So today in my speech I am going to be showing you first of all what we believe, that there is fundamentally something wrong with the birth lottery. And then I am going to be showing why by eradicating the birth lottery, that means if you are born in a sanctioned country, you are automatically entitled to something more.

(stopped at 1:11)

It is actually beneficial not just to the individual who is harmed by that, but also to the world as a whole, ladies and gentleman.

So, let's look first of all at this idea of the birth lottery. We don't believe that your potential depends on the history of your country, ladies and gentleman.

Essentially, borders are entirely artificial. There is no reason that the border, for example, between the United States and Mexico should be where it is, other than the fact that the United States have won a war at some point in their history. We don't think that means that Mexicans born in Mexico under a state system means that these people should be disadvantaged by not having many of the legal protections that are provided by the United states law.

We think that we must establish when we are talking about the birth lottery that there are two different types of birth lottery that may affect an individual.

(stopped at 2:11)

First of all, we have the kind of birth lottery that we've all just spent two hours listening to that was discussed in the ?????*. Those are the kinds of things that affect individual personhood, ladies and gentlemen — what height they are, what colour they are, and what kind of intelligence people have. We think that that's something that's quite distinct from artificially created social constructs, ladies and gentlemen, like orders of the state.

We think that that's because these conditions relate to that individual person and their sense of personhood, ladies and gentlemen, but we also accept that where these things do harm that individual's potential, we should act to eradicate that. That's why we do have things like race laws, ladies and gentlemen.

What we want to do on the proposition is wonder about the differences that come from these artificial social constructs. And we want the opposition to prove to us today why they believe that those artificial social constructs are enough to justify discrimination against many people.

*Note: Sorry, I'm not sure what is said here. :/

(stopped at 3:14)

From 3:14

We agree, we say that when you come to a country, all that is necessary of residing within that country is having to abide by the social contract of that country there. When you believe that you have to live by the conditions of that society. We don’t put the constraints upon entering that country, the constraints should be upon something that happens within that country, ladies and gentleman.
The problem with the birth lottery, ladies and gentleman, is that any benefit that arrives from the birth lottery that puts you in one state or another accrues at the expense of other people, ladies and gentleman, who aren’t able to access the same kind of standards that you are able to have. Because you’re born in one country means that you get better protections under the laws of that country, and we think that’s dangerous. We think that actually the birth lottery, what it does, is it gives you certain levels of potential with your future life... But we don’t think that something like wealth automatically creates utility. We think that actually, it’s what you do with that money that gives you the benefit within society. We think that things like windfall lotteries are indistinguishable from stealing wealth, ladies and gentleman, and we would all view that stealing a large sum of money, millions of pounds that you might win in a lottery, ladies and gentleman is unjust, and we don’t see why there are these two different things.
If governments recognize that inequality is something that is harmful in the state of nature and therefore they try to rectify that within society, we don’t see why they should be sticking so strongly to these artificial state constructs. Yes man?
(Man): If you believe in the social contract, and you believe that social contract is a fair contract, why don’t you believe that both sides should have to be party to making that contract?
We believe that the social contract arises within the people who are in certain societies, ladies and gentleman. We believe that there is nothing that should stop you from joining any other social contract, ladies and gentleman. That’s why we believe that the restrictions should be upon entering, eh, should not be upon entering a country but being able to participate within that social contract. I fail to see why social contract should be defined by state boundaries, ladies and gentleman.
I have to move now on to the idea of how this improves general utility of people receiving the certain qualities… in the other kind of birth lottery that I’ve talked about, for example, their own intelligence, we believe that what this does is it increases the total utility of the world because we enable people to move around the world and get benefits. First of all, they get benefits to themselves, ladies and gentleman. They are able to move to a country which may have an infrastructure that is able to support the certain talents they have and enables them to become wealthy individuals, fulfilled individuals, happy individuals, we like that ladies and gentleman. But what this also leads to is a free market of nations. What happens at the moment is that one nation becomes overcrowded. That then stops people from entering that country because governments place restrictions on the immigration laws. We don’t think that that’s necessary, necessarily beneficial to that country. What might be more beneficial to that country is if they were then able to accept more people into that country; maybe buy some land, expand the country. We don’t think that these national boundaries are as distinct as we, as the opposition assume they are.
We also see that what this would allow is because of this free market that means that when we have overpopulation in one country, people are incentivized to move to another country. So we see the distribution of people in society going to the countries which they can utilize the most. We think that ok, there may be short-term harms of a country initially flooded with people, but we think that because of this free market, we’re going to balance these out, ultimately, and get what’s best for the world. And, ladies and gentleman, that’s what we want for the world. We want a country where people are happy in the country they are in, not the country they are born in, ladies and gentleman. And that’s the only way to achieve it.