This House Believes That the Indonesian Government Should Heavily Invest in Start-Up Online Businesses Rather Than Conventional Sectors (Accountants, Lawyers, Engineers, Doctors, etc.)

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The idea of investment is insertion or empowerment of capital, having a goal to yield more profit. Which side of the house returns more towards the government.

So, motion dissection. Here goes.

The Indonesian government (or other third world countries alike, for this case) should be facing pretty much the same issues among other agendas: a position of weakness, unfavorable trade balance, lack in human resources quality, etc. etc. Now comes the part of its characterization which is of a greater relevance in this motion: their strength, their position, their bargaining power in the digital world. Note that both Team Affirmative and Team Negative are very likely to be agreeing that they lose completely in terms of comparing conventional sectors performance (first-world countries WILL have better accountants, lawyers, engineers, and doctors than Indonesia will).

So, the second part. To heavily invest or not? Here comes the difference now. The Team Affirmative is expected to adopt a stance/belief of “can’t win this fight, just concede-surrender and fight them in some other war” whilst Team Negative is expected to “come on we can still win this”. This is in terms of visualizing the world as a battlefield, where countries win or lose. In this case, “winning” means that Indonesia has better online businesses (or human resources as accountants, lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc). And losing would mean that “Indonesia looks bad in all these things, worse compared to first-world countries” But remember, not everything about this is mutually exclusive. This is just our prediction, so the real debate could go somewhere else in a different direction than this which we envisioned. Moving on.

Now, start-up online businesses. When talking about this, there could also be a clash surrounding the characterization of this field. The clash expected is quite classic, pretty much a value judgment of how much feasible is this start-up online business in.. erm… ‘salvaging’ Indonesia’s economy, so to speak. Team Affirmative will try to glorify the goods of online business, Team Negative the otherwise, the harms.

Next up is the conventional sectors. Same drill with before. Clash surrounding the characterization of this field. The clash expected is quite classic, pretty much a value judgment of how much still relevant are these conventional sectors in terms of modern economy in Indonesia (and the rest of the world). Team Affirmative will try to glorify the harms of conventional sectors, Team Negative the otherwise, the goods.

And now, lastly, but no less important than the rest of the wording of the motions, is “heavily invest … rather than”. Notice what this means. It means that neither Team Affirmative nor Team Negative wishes to have a complete removal of the other opposing ideals of business fields not favorable in their opinion. What both affirmative and negative teams campaign, are a considerable magnitude of favoritism, in the form of investment skewed to a certain sector, compared to the other different sector. Not abandoning entirely.

That’s about it, though. That’s all.

Team Affirmative

  1. Because social media is the trend nowadays.

And since social media is the trend nowadays, the government should be futuristic and visionary, having a strong foothold and groundwork in establishing a proper conducive atmosphere for future potential entrepreneurs. Social media increases creativity and connects people, satisfying a potential demand with its corresponding supply. Furthermore it doesn’t restrict an individual to his/her own physical disabilities, allowing the disabled to work and be contributive. Governments should adapt with the trend, else they will fail in terms of the fields of competition. They will lose in their bargaining power because thank you economics and capitalism. Other benefits of these start-up online businesses (not only limited to social media) are how easy it is, only requiring a strong and fast internet connection. Also the fact that they don’t consume much space, leaving the land as other space feasible for primary sectors of the economy (mining, agriculture) – or even other secondary sectors, that need to take a physical form in order to function (warehouses), for example.

Explore more on those arguments. The points are, only,

  • The benefits of social media
  • The phenomenon of social media (how unwise it is to ignore its growth)
  • Moral responsibility of government to follow trends, adapt, and adjust
  • Potential demand from our citizens

That’s all! Elaborate a little bit more, provide some examples, link back, done.

  1. Because governments should just “let it be”.

And by ‘it’, we mean the conventional sectors. This argument runs along the notion that conventional sectors are currently struggling, even barely surviving the competition in establishing quality human resources. Facing this stalemate and chokepoint, you want to ensure the adjudicators that it’s just better to leave this competition be. Surrender. Give up. Concede. Picture yourselves as the CEO/COO of a certain company with lots of divisions, and you see a subsidiary of yours not performing well. What are your judgments and considerations in deciding to continue or discontinue an operation? What parameters and their thresholds need to satisfy in order for an operation to be discontinued? That’s all about this argument, really.

Some other aspects for comparison include just how much time and money needs to be invested to ‘create’ a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or an accountant. That is roughly 4-5 years times the money they spend for college tuition fees (and, in public universities, added with the subsidies from the government) in paying lecturer salaries, laboratory equipment and maintenance, and, oh bless my dear heavens, even something as banal and mundane as the toilets in that university. What makes these even allthemore funnier is when all these graduates get ready to become unemployed. Compare these numbers to the amount a person needs to invest in only thinking of a content, and then connecting to the internet, and then creating that content. A huge difference would still be an understatement.

But more about unemployment on the next point. Moving on.

  1. Because job opportunities and vacancies.

A.. ‘concentrated’ form of elaboration from one of the points in Team Affirmative Argument 1, apparently this is it.

Especially in Indonesia where it is a developing country where job fields, job vacancies, job opportunities are very little, people are seeking, finding jobs. Why we need to invest here on start-up online based businesses is due to the fact that there are a lot of people who still study in colleges or even high schools who already have an idea on how to channel their creativity and make money. They don’t need to wait until they are ‘ready’ from their studies. They can earn their own money by using their social media like Instagram or Blogger (Google AdSense, he’s the man!). Because they can promote what they sell easily using these apps, because they are famous, people become tempted in buying their stuffs. Next-level marketing 101 studies. Thus, they don’t have to suffer the potential to be unemployed when this country has enough engineers and that guy ends up as an extra redundant engineer upon his graduation from engineering school. Another thing, when we start up these businesses, it means that we can get more job fields. If governments invest, it can decrease unemployment. These unemployment decrease comes from the fact that businesses will need their fair share of lawyers and accountants when dealing with business ethics, code of conducts, or even something as basic as tax returns. The fact that they are using the internet realm also means that the surplus of workers in the technology field, the IT guys and programmers alike will experience a better rate of employment now.

Team Negative

  1. Because this.. online business thingy whatchamacallit is still volatile.

If we invest, then what about the main job workers on the conventional sectors? They have been working so hard and have undergone a painstaking and rigorous four or even six years of exhausting education and training in order to be where they are at right now. All for the sake of a field of business still untested, and with no guarantee of success. If we invest in something trivial and then fail, whilst coupled with the fact that people will always see that YouTube vloggers and Instagram artists are just precocious little brads and online prostitutes, people who demand acceptance in the society, this is just a silly notion of asserting dominance. Public reception will thus be mainly negative, and the fact that governments now choose to heavily subsidize on these people is going to be bad news against their current reputation. Good luck, incumbent.

But, then again, we also have the entrepreneurs who establish websites and build businesses surrounding e-commerce. What about these people, then? Surely nobody could even imagine on how to have a negativity towards oh-such-marvelous-splendid-wonderful-idea-that-helps-humanity, right?

Well, no! The harms now come not in the form of negativity, but in the form of ignorance and technological illiteracy. Two ways this is going to unfold:

  • heavily invest in hopes of addressing the needs of our current citizens -> they are technologically illiterate -> our investment proves to be naught, these businesses go redundant
  • they want to aim overseas and other more developed countries niche markets -> we heavily invest, then -> problem is, our culture just differ so much from theirs and somehow the potential overseas customers could connect with their own countries’ e-commerce instead of our own -> another useless investment and redundant business

But, really, that’s not the main point, this is not the main argument in which Team Negative should be capitalizing arguments, really. This should just serve as a mini-rebuttal in hopes of mitigating the significance and impact of the potentials of these businesses. The main point, in which you should be capitalizing your arguments, are in:

  1. Because the harms of ‘leaving’ the conventional sectors.

We should focus on real life occupations because they are what changes the world and triggers globalization. The true essence of economics activity, which is ‘value added’ does not belong in these businesses. At their best, they only resemble the middle part, distribution. Not production, not consumption either. Whilst the core value in economics has always been about producing (or harvesting, at least). And then, if we invest, there will be a tendency for these people to start converting to online occupations, they want to take advantage of this chance. Then, even those who are not good in it will insist on leaving conventional careers.

The point of this argument is not by proving that ‘everyone’ will leave their jobs as lawyers, accountants, engineers, and doctors. It sounds too farfetched and stupid, and too heavy of a burden of proof for you. Impossible, even.

The key point in addressing this argument of Team Negative is an understanding of a healthy scale of competition. Picture a scenario of a swimming competition that pits only 5 swimmers, and another which has 500 contestants. You can be rest assured that the quality of the competition is reflected more on the second one. The more the contenders, the more you can be sure of a competition’s qualities, and the better you can ensure the caliber of the winner. And the problem is also that in the conventional sectors. You don’t want a “just enough” amount of doctors and engineers and lawyers and doctors. You want LOTS of them. You want like a, double the amount of supply, when the demand needed for employment of these people are just only about half of the total supply. Because you want to ensure that only the best doctors and lawyers and accountants and engineers be working. Unemployment due to loss in competition in fighting for employment underneath the lack of job opportunities is OKAY. If your Team Affirmative has glorified the harms and exaggerated the numbers, do a fact check and mitigate the harms, prove that the current situation is not as bad as they picture it to be. Then, move on to the harms of this investment. This course of action from the government will mean an assertion, that they want to decrease the scale of competition (which is actually healthy) in terms of the conventional sectors. Sure, you also want a healthy scale of competition in terms of the e-commerce. Because you only want the best to be surviving there, and you want the chaff separated from the weed. But is the e-commerce a good field and sector of competition in developing-world countries, given the current situation under the status quo? You may revert back to glorifying your Team Negative Argument 1.

  1. Because then the real brain drain will happen.

A form of potential harm imposed by the model of this motion. Now supposing that you choose to concede the fact that these conventional sectors are “kind of hopeless”, that point actually has its merits in strengthening the fact that “when something is broke, you fix it, you ain’t throw it away”. The harms of completely abandoning attention in conventional sectors, is that the real brain drain will then happen. Under the current status quo (healthy competition characterization, just like in Team Negative Argument 2), the fact is that the better lawyers and engineers and doctors and accountants face employment, thanks to the notion that they somehow still feel indebted. The fact that the current government provides subsidy in tertiary education. The fact that there are lots of scholarships available for these people. But, now in this idea of scholarships, not only local governments are fighting to provide scholarships to potential and promising students. But foreign overseas governments are seeking to have these people feel indebted to them as well. What does the motion give, then? One, the fact that Team Affirmative can’t deny that not even a single person in this country is capable of being a competent lawyer, accountant, engineer, and doctor (they can’t refute this point – it’s impossible). They could only assert that the education system is sheety, not the individuals the students (but, even then, this is also a difficult burden of proof to carry). Then second, the fact that Team Affirmative decides to just abandon this field, because of the incompetence of the FIELD, INSTEAD OF THE INCOMPETENCE OF THE SYMPATHIZER AND ROOTER of this field. They can’t simply assert that not even a single person is a committed and devoted academician and researcher in university, in their respective studies. What happens afterwards, after this course of action of heavily investing, then is distrust coming from these people. The fact that they still have faith, but the government is the first one to lose faith and not improving the conventional sectors. After distrust, comes the brain drain. The fact that the current competition is already imbalanced, that the overseas ones already have better system, better education, then coupled with this brain drain, it will really leave our country who chose to abandon these conventional sectors, with no longer any supply of competent individuals.

Talk about fairness and equality in competition of human resources.

“Maybe I should have changed the wording of the motion from ‘Indonesian Government’ to ‘Third-World Countries’ after all – well, for one, you know dam well how good the IT guys coming from India are”