The US government should give OPIC quarterly stipends

Just to touch briefly on one final thing. In his final sentence here pro briefly touches on what economics calls the "trickle down" theory, that money given only to the wealthy trickles down to help the poor. It has never been observed. Like, ever. Not even in exceptional cases has money ever gone to the poor simply because it was owned by the rich. Piketty's recent landmark study "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" shows that the only time money going from the rich to poor happened in the 20th century was right after world war 2, the reasons for which were outside of the control of the wealthy people. The fact is that the rich do not intrinsically share their wealth. I'd very much like pro to try to prove otherwise. Besides, think about it logically. If more money meant more opportunity for everyone, then printing more money would solve all problems. Sounds absurd, right? And if all this extra money were so great, then why are poor countries always worse off after an OPIC investment? How come OPIC has never helped any country work their way out of poverty while the American top 1% has become richer and richer?

If pro actually seriously contests this point, then he needs to explain whose loss is OPIC's gain. OPIC is, to put it in economics terms, a zero-sum game.

Finally, on this point, I just want to clarify that not everything OPIC gets they make more of. They take more of it away from somebody else, usually leaving the other side no better off. OPIC by themselves do not make anything. I presented several examples of this in the previous round.

Everyone gets a bad deal out of OPIC. A good deal out of OPIC would be contrary to OPIC's purpose - that is to say, to take as much money out of poor countries as possible.

Much of this has already been refuted, in this round, the cross-examination, and the previous round. I will re-iterate the key point though, because my opponent never responds to it even though this is apparently a rebuttal point.

Consider credit insurance or payday loans. There is very good statistical analysis out there that these industries would not be profitable if only those people who could use them most effectively to their advantage purchased them. This is, however, not the case. They are tempting for just about everybody, so everybody buys them anyway regardless of their true financial circumstances in terms of ability to pay back and such. If you have a budget and such then you'll be able to see through the scam pretty simply, but the unfortunate reality is most people don't. This doesn't mean they're too stupid to do so, but that they don't do it.

It's a similar deal with OPIC, but with two big differences. First, OPIC's conditions make it impossible to borrow if it would be profitable for you to do so. All the profits have to go back to the United States through OPIC. It's inherently unfair, predatory lending. And second, the loans are infinitely more complex. You really need a good grasp of economics to understand the potential long-term impacts of the loans even if OPIC did explain it to you in depth (which of course they don't). Within the United States, predatory lending is banned already to a significant degree. You can't charge unfair interest rates, for example. So the US has already accepted that in principal, economic liberty and choice can be reasonably restricted in the name of protecting vulnerable customers.

The only further question we need to ask in this debate is whether this freedom from uninformed lending practices extends to the third world. These third world entrepreneurs don't have MBAs like OPIC people do. OPIC has the job of tricking them into making loans they can't afford for things they don't need to earn money they won't get. By simply offering the loans to enough people OPIC is bound to find some hopeful person in the third world needing cash and failing to realize what he's dooming his country to by accepting it. OPIC makes you lose your entire wealth, and your country's wealth too. They use natural resources of third world countries to support the economy of the USA. They cheat and exploit people. If OPIC was a single person they would without a doubt be the most successful loan shark in history. Loan sharks operate by cheating people, not offering a fair, rational choice.

It isn't that OPIC's existence forces people to make these decisions. There are indeed other loan sharks out there. There are also less shady investment corporations and charities giving money to the third world. I am merely saying that this isn't the sort of organization the US government should be giving a stipend to.

The game theory of Albert William Tucker, as presented by my opponent, makes one critical assumption. That being - that people are rational. For example, the statement "If two sides have net gain from performing an action, both sides will partake" sounds entirely rational, right? It's what a rational person would do.

How many people do you know who are rational 100% of the time?

Let me give you an extreme example. At NASA, people have to be kind of rational. They're super smart engineers and such after all. So the Space Shuttle Columbia took off and something fell off its wing. The engineers were all like "uh guys, we'd better take a look at that...", but then the management were like "yeah nah, we know astronaut safety is more important, but we're going to care more about time and budget anyway". There was no rational defense for it. They just did it because they were not acting rationally at the time. They chose instead to conform to what had become the workplace culture.

On the other hand, game theory also assumes complete information. USUALLY we don't actually know what the outcome of different events will be. We're not sure if the outcome is good or bad. For example, if I chose to invest in Microsoft, I don't know whether those stocks will go up... or down.

So it should really read "If two RATIONAL people KNOW they will have a net gain in performing an action, both sides will partake".

In OPIC's case, only OPIC makes a gain. But information in OPIC's case is assymetric, and sometimes people make deals with others even though they know it will be bad for them. After all, this is exactly why people still take up smoking in this day and age - either they don't know smoking is bad for you, or they take it up despite knowing it will be bad for them. It wouldn't be rational of them for sure, but then Tucker's theory is imperfect and really only applies to the broadest economic models that seem designed more so that economics 101 classes have something to do, than any real-world application.