NPDL-TOC Topic Announcements

Tabroom — Schedule — Topic Strikes — Protest — Equity — Equity Slides — Judge Slides

Finals

A. This House regrets the gun control movement’s focus on mass shootings.

B. This House regrets the USA's declining influence over global affairs.

C. Germany should repeal its balanced budget amendment.
Info Slide: The German balanced budget amendment limits the budget deficit to 0.35% of the GDP, but allows exceptions for emergencies.

Semifinals

A. This House regrets Bukele’s gang crackdown.
Info Slide: For decades, El Salvador had one of the highest murder rates in the world; about 1 in 1000 El Salvadorans were murdered in 2015. This was largely due to gang violence. Nayib Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in 2019. In 2022, he declared a “state of exception,” suspending many civil liberties. Among other things, people were arrested and imprisoned en masse without trial. The murder rate has fallen by about half.

B. Humanity ought to pursue new knowledge, even in cases when doing so is costly and does not improve the overall quality of life.

C. The practice of publicly trading news organizations is bad for society.
Info Slide: For-profit companies can be publicly traded or privately held. A publicly traded company has stock. A privately held company does not have stock, and is simply owned outright by some party. There are also non-profit entities, which are not publicly traded.

Quarterfinals (STRIKE NO LATER THAN 2 PM)

A. The government of Honduras should end its opposition to Próspera.
Info Slide: Próspera is a charter city run by a private corporation. It has its own civil law and regulatory structure, independent of that of Honduras. However, it is still bound by the Honduran constitution and criminal law. It was approved by the previous Honduran government, which sought to attract foreign investment. It is opposed by the current Honduran government, which views it as a violation of Honduran sovereignty.

B. This House believes that it is wrong to have children in the 2020s.

C. This House prefers Germany’s method of confirming the appointments of justices to the US method.
Info Slide: In Germany, nominees are confirmed without public hearings by a secret ballot of the parliament. In the US, nominees are confirmed by the Senate following public hearings, and the vote of each senator is public record.

Octafinals (12:15)

A. Humans have a moral obligation to lessen the suffering of non-human animals, even when that type of suffering existed before the human species emerged.

B. The US federal government should allow members of armed forces to unionize.
Info Slide: 10 U.S. Code § 976 makes it illegal for a member of the armed forces to join a military labor organization.

C. This House regrets IMF bailoutsRound 7 (9:45)

A. This House regrets the narrative of individual environmental responsibility.

B. ASEAN nations should establish a freedom of movement area modeled after the Schengen Area.
Info Slide: 29 European countries have signed the Schengen Agreement. To enter the Schengen Area, you must go through normal international border controls. But once you are inside, you may freely move between countries. If you have a visa to live and work in any Schengen country, you may freely live and work in all of them.

C. If the technology existed, this House, as a parent, would use the Child Chip.
Info slide: The Child Chip is painlessly and safely implanted into babies' brains after birth. The technology allows a parent to see the child’s location at all times and use their smartphone to see what the child is currently seeing and implement content restrictions on what the child can see (e.g., the audio would be dampened and the child would see disturbing content in real life as merely a blur). When the child’s stress levels go up, the parent will receive a notification and can alter any settings remotely. The chip will be permanently and irreversibly disabled once the child reaches 16.

Round 6 (8:00)

A. On balance, minor political parties in the US do more harm than good. 

B. Cuba should end its size restrictions on private enterprises.
Info Slide: Private MSMEs (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, also known by their Spanish acronym MIPYMES) that employ 100 or fewer workers are allowed - outside of a few sectors (including health, education, banking, and defense) that are fully state-owned. Larger enterprises must be state-owned. 35% of the Cuban workforce is employed in the private sector (compared to 85% in the US). 

C. Labor unions in the US should avoid taking stances on political issues that do not directly affect the working conditions of their members.

Round 5 (5:24)

A. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany should ban AfD.
Info Slide: AfD (which translates to ‘Alternative for Germany’) is a far-right political party currently holding 11% of the seats in the German parliament. Article 21 of the German constitution states that “parties that, by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.”

B. The US public school system should offer the option of a vocational high school instead of a traditional one.
Info Slide: Vocational education prepares students for a specific line of work. Wood shop class is an example of a vocational class. A vocational school is one specifically focused on this type of education.

C. By 2200, there will be fewer than one million living humans on Earth.

Round 4 (3:18)

A. This House prefers a world in which the village democratically votes on who will be sacrificed instead of using a random lottery.
Info Slide: There is a village isolated from the rest of the world where a human sacrifice must be made annually to ensure a good harvest. In years when the village forewent the sacrifice, harsh famines killed most of the villagers. To determine the sacrifice, there is an annual rite where lots are drawn to determine who will be sacrificed.

B. This House believes that the US should become a unitary state.
Info Slide: In unitary states, such as France, the national government has final say on all matters of government. By contrast, the US is currently a federation, as outlined in its Constitution (see Amendment 10 and Article I Section 8). This means the federal government has final say over some matters (e.g. foreign policy), while the 50 state governments have final say over other matters (e.g. most of education policy). This balance of power between the federal and state governments has shifted throughout US history.

C. This House would sacrifice their life if doing so would bring significant public attention to what this House considers a good cause.

Round 3 (1:21)

A. We have a moral duty to honor the wishes of the dead.

B. This House prefers a world where, starting today, all humans have identical intellectual abilities, equivalent to the current global average.

C. This House, as a middle-class US resident in 2024, would be a doomsday prepper of sufficient dedication to amass everything needed to survive the collapse of civilization for several years.

Round 2

A. The US federal government should ban the sale of meat for human consumption.

B. The US federal government should significantly decrease subsidies for corn production.

C. The US federal government should nationalize the agriculture industry.

Round 1

A. The government of Nigeria should significantly reduce the extraction of oil and natural gas in Nigeria.

B. The government of Nigeria should mandate that any Nigeria-trained medical or dental practitioner must practice in Nigeria for a minimum of five years before being granted a full medical license.
Info Slide: “Bill for an Act to amend the Medical and Dental Practitioners Act,” aiming to implement this policy, was introduced - but not adopted - in 2023.

C. The government of Nigeria should have a surtax on companies that employ foreign workers.
Info Slide: Nigeria has an "expatriate levy" which imposes a flat fee on businesses for each foreign worker they employ: $15,000 for each foreign director and $10,000 for each other foreign employee. The levy was suspended shortly after it was announced.