**NUCLEAR TERRORISM IMPACTS**
**The Oregon FV Playbook**
Omaha! Omaha!
Hurry Hurry!
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**IMPACT BLOCKS**
Value to life first
1.VALUE OF DEATH: we can’t understand what death means unless there is a conception of value to life. Death means nothing in a world where value to life is nonexistent.
2. MAGNITUDE: Genocide and structural violence not only destroy value to life for the people they oppress, but they create entire cultures and ethnic groups that are perpetually oppressed. This causes transgenerational cultural murder that infinitely reproduces itself. Death and conflict may end some lives, but life can be recreated whereas value and ontology cannot.
3. PROBABILITY: structural violence occurs on a daily basis in every region around the globe. There is a 100% probability that these structures kill people, compared to a 1% chance that a nuclear conflict or extinction will happen. Structural violence kills more people every year than would die in a nuclear exchange. Probability should be the main mechanism you look at to weigh impacts because it is the only way to generate responsible policy making. Furthermore individual insecurity is the root cause of nation state instability. This is the root cause of terrorism, of resource wars, and of nation state wars.
a. CRISIS POLITICS: focusing on 1% nuke war scenarios locks us in a cycle of crisis policy making. We are always looking for the next threat to our state security; we believe these things to be so real that we take preventative action to stop them. This preventative action ends up creating more conflicts than it stops. It also ensures that policy makers find new threats in order to justify their control over the population. This makes the impacts of their disads inevitable in a world in which you don’t prioritize our impacts first to solve the root cause – means we control the IL to 100% of their scenarios. And, extinction is far more probable in a world in which death is the aim of politics and not simply the result of a particular combination of circumstances, as it is in their disads.
Extinction first
Extinction outweighs, three reasons:
1. IRREVERSIBILITY: Their impact calculus on magnitude is empirically denied. People can survive atrocities and go on live successful lives, which means that the magnitude of their impact is near impossible to determine at best and minimal in comparison to ours. Extinction, or even the risk of death, outweighs because of its finality. Additionally, life is a pre-requisite to making determinations as to the value of that life, which means that we are a prior question to their evaluation of the value of certain lives, since you can’t be ‘dehumanized’ or ‘rehumanized, or even make those value claims, if you’re dead.
2. MAGNITUDE: You should evaluate magnitude first. It’s the least arbitrary way of evaluating the implications of plan, because probability and time frame are impossible to objectively determine with any degree of certainty. We don’t know how fast or how certainly people may be dehumanized, but we do know that extinction results when (we blow up a nuclear bomb or whatever).
[If their analysis about MAD is true, that’s just a reason that extinction being a probable result of global nuclear warfare is true. Means if we win MAD does not apply in this instance, their own analysis serves to increase the probability of our scenario]
3. TIME FRAME: Even if you look to time frame, extinction still outweighs. The nuclear blast kills people instantly, whereas you have no idea how quickly dehumanization happens or when someone has been dehumanized enough to say their life is of no value.
Next, go to the line by line:
1. TURN: ACCEPTING THE IDEA THAT LIFE CAN HAVE NO VALUE IS THE ONLY WAY IT’S POSSIBLE – they accept the idea that life can reach an ontological zero-point, this means their impact is only possible in a world of the opposition (or aff) because categorically stating that a life has no value is the only world in which genocide and eugenics could be justified. Additionally, value to life is self-determined. No objective criterion or measure exists to guage the value someone derives from their lived experience. Should relegate that to the individual, otherwise it’s inaccurate and their impact prioritization paves the road to tyranny.
2. VALUE TO LIFE IS INEVITABLE: The desire for self-preservation is an observed fact. Individuals choose to persevere even in the most dehumanizing conditions, examples such as slavery; people did not lay down and accept death as an alternative even in the most hopeless circumstances, which means there’s no real impact to their argument. They’ll say suicide proves this isn’t true, but we’ve already answered this. It’s impossible to determine the motives of each individual who commits suicide and only in a world in which we accept that life can reach an ontological zero point and label people who kill themselves as having determined their life is of no value can their argument be true.
Systemic/High Probability Impacts First
Evaluate systemic impacts over terminalized claims:
1. High magnitude impacts are unpredictable—the Arab Spring was triggered by a guy lighting himself on fire, and the Fukushima meltdown was caused by random weather patterns. No one in 2010 thought Osama bin Laden would be dead or that Newt Gingrich would be leading GOP polls. We should reject the idea that debate can accurately forecast large-scale political or social shifts that deal with complex systems made up of millions of unique social actors—our predictions are about as good as monkeys throwing darts
2. Intervening actors—long timeframe exponentially decreases probability because of unknown externalities that mitigate impacts—other actors or events may step in to resolve terminalization
3. Multiplier effect—every ten-word link claim they make is probably not unique or not causal enough—stacking link chains multiplies these inaccuracies to produce conclusions that aren’t reasonable or realistic even if each step sort of is—this bias is worsened by the competitive incentive to exaggerate claims to win a ballot. You should prioritize probability.
4. Existential risk bad—doomsday claims take advantage of cognitive biases to produce bad policy decisions based on implausible scenarios. Magnitude debates shift to irrelevant contest of descriptive yellow journalism instead of being based in responsible evaluation of accuracy.
5. The world hasn’t ended yet—their impacts are all empirically denied.
Structural Violence First
Prefer structural violence over war claims:
1. Positive peace—the idea that wars have definite beginning and endpoints and break out of otherwise peaceful society obscures the ongoing war on marginalized persons committed through exclusive institutions and distribution of wealth. This ensures no action is taken to overturn and equalize this violence.
2. Crisis based politics—discussing war as a futuristic flashpoint permits ongoing militarism under the name of ‘police action’ or ‘kinetic assault.’ Also produces a mindset of paranoia that drives military decision-makers to miscalculation or accidental conflict.
3. Structural violence is far more significant than actual war—18 million people die yearly from structural factors, compared to only 100,000 from armed conflict— and every five years, as many people die from relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war. You should err on the side of chipping away at violence that is ongoing rather than deterring some supposed future conflict.
Reps First Framework (Debate Space)
Representations first/fiat bad
- All debate is representational, fiat is illusory is more than just a tagline, it is a way of understanding our relationship to the topic and to the community. Because our representations are all that we can actually take with us outside of this debate round should work to create safe spaces; all we are doing at the end of the day is sharing stories. These are the most important debates of the year, the strategies and videos that we allow to win at this tournament will shape debate in the immediate future, because those models of debate are emulated.
o The idea of fiat always preferences those who have the technological resources and the resources to get ideas passed. Fiat makes us pretend that we are privileged senators using our privilege to create change. It preferences teams with the resources to cut the latest politics uniqueness rather than the team that is working to create actual change. This denies personal orientation to the topic.
- Normative debate re-entrenches the worst aspects of capitalist, neoliberalist world systems. Why do the same teams keep on winning? Do we really believe that only explanation is a talent gap between the Oregon’s of the world and the rest of the pool? Parliamentary debate doesn’t allow us to read evidence; the only appeal to authority we can make is the authority of the name of the school in front of our initials. This is asking judges to default to the resource rich, not the resource poor. This problem cannot be solved by simply changing the NPTE formula, it requires a new ethic.
o Normative debate supports that politics is a game of the rich. Rich to participate, rich to be successful. Over 50% of congress are millionaires for the first time, in the status quo politics, the rich continue to get richer.
- Normative debate precludes the possibilities of rhizomatic knowledge because debate has already self regulated itself into hierarchical structures of arboresic knowledge.
o Certain methods of debate reward a particular understanding of the world. If we continue to debate within the same parameters we can never question existing knowledge or produce new knowledge outside the scope of what is already possible, which makes us have the same discussions over and over and never conclude anything different.
Narrow interpretations overrule the ethical decision making processes. Blindly following the letter of the law without allowing change from an ethical perspective is what allows judges to decide that you can legally take upskirt photos in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Alabama, Oregon and elsewhere because we hold the text of the law up on an unchallengeable pedestal despite the ethical implications.
Biological Weapons
1. Syria’s biological weapons – Syria has biological weapons from Russia, who developed both Small Pox and antibiotic resistant Bubonic Plague. Russian scientists bred a strain of the Plague by exposing generations of the disease to antibiotics, so only the ones that were resistant to anitiotics survived. They also exposed it to industrial chemical solvents, which means that once it’s released, it would be impossible to stop or contain.
a. Allowing a state to have biological weapons is more dangerous than nukes: because biological weapons can’t be contained to one region and gives nations a level of deterence that they’d never have to expand beyond.
b. Containment: if just 100 people became infected with Small Pox, we’d have to encircle them with 100 million vaccinated pepople to contain the spread of the disease, because the world is so densly populated and interconnected. And containment strategies are most developed and exist almost exclusively in the first world, which means that if we can’t contain it, it would be devastating to those on the periphery. Additionally, disease prevention infrastructure was developed by people who are used to having healthcare infrastructure like readily avaiable gloves and doctors so the undeveloped and developing world would be decimated overnight.
c. Would Cause Extinction: Small Pox killed a billion people before 1900, which was about 1/3 of the world’s total population, and the Plague wiped out almost 1/2 the population of Europe in 4 years. Disease prevention infrastructure would be unable to cope with hundreds of thousands of people infected overnight. Additionally, we can’t predict the strain of the disease or how it will mutate once it’s released, which means that any vaccines or anitbiotics we make will have to be made retroactively and be different formula than what we used before. It took a decade to erradicate Small Pox once we had vaccines the first time around, and the world was way less interconnected then – means the disease would proliferate too rapidly for anyone to respond and would result in complete extinction.
d. And Economic Collapse:
Democracy
1. A well functioning democracy precedes other political considerations (i.e. your politics disad that surely outweighs case):
a. Democracy is a pre-requisite to changing the political climate: Without a functioning democracy, no one can access the political system or participate in future governmental endeavors, including changing the political climate to access rights or stop violence. The impacts of your [politics] disad are inevitable without first establishing a means of holding our government accountable for the decisions that are made at the level of the state via a well-functioning and transparent representative democracy.
b. Participatory democracy prevents structural violence: Without a functioning democracy, rights stripping becomes inevitable, because citizens have no check on government power. Giving up individual political agency reduces individuals to instruments of the state, eviscerating individual autonomy and rendering the destruction of entire populations inevitable. This is control over the body politic, making you and your life dispensible to the point that structural violence goes unquestioned.
c. Democracy prevents state violence: Beyond the violence between states or against groups within states lies a more stunning generalization. Rudolph Rummel’s exhaustive study of the deaths from war, genocide, mass murder, and domestic violence demonstrates that every instance of mass murder by a state agent against its own people happened under authoritarian rule. The way to virtually eliminate state violence and genocide is through checking governmental power via democracy. Since there will aways be groups that do not conform with norms, this means that we will continue to exterminate groups until no one is left on earth without democracy.
d. War: In a democracy, the decision to wage war is made at the level of the state, allowing the individuals who fight and die in war a say, which increases the brink to go to war. Additionally, democracy provides alternative frameworks for conflict resolutions (like international organizations and mediation). When groups have peaceful means to express their political dissent, it’s less likely they’ll launch the bomb.
2. Democracy outweighs:
a. Without it, genocide via political violence becomes inevitable - Individuals who cannot access the political system are viewed as outside the scope of morality and justice, thus the concepts of deserving basic needs and fair treatment do not apply and can seem irrelevant. Moral exclusion reduces restraints against harming or exploiting certain groups of people. Once those who fall outside the stystem are consistently represented as less than human, it becomes psychologically acceptable to engage in genocide. This is the only real world in which extinction is possible – the mass killing of individuals first relies on our acceptance of individuals as objects. Rights stripping makes devaluation of individuals inevitable, justifying all violence against them.
b. Democracy gives value to life - The rights and freedoms afforded by a participatory democracy solve back for political violence and prevent states from creating disposable popultions. Genocide and structural violence not only destroy value to life for the people they oppress, but they create entire cultures and ethnic groups that are perpetually oppressed. This causes transgenerational cultural murder that infinitely reproduces itself. Even if there’s a risk of their disads, death and conflict may end some lives, but life can be recreated whereas value and ontology cannot.
c. Probability – Structural violence manifests itself in the purposeful degradation and devaluation of populations that leads to their elimination. There is a 100% probability that these structures kill people, compared to a 1% chance that a nuclear conflict happens or extinction will be the result. Extinction is far more probable in a world in which death is the aim of politics, not simply the result of a particular combination of circumstances (like their politics disad).
Dehum - Logic of disposability
The logic of disposability is bad:
1. Political voice: Devalued populations are used as tools to be exploited by elites. This represents the worst type of rights stripping because your humanity is literally being eviscerated. When people are stripped of their rights, they also can’t participate in future governmental endeavors, including changing the political climate to access rights. These impacts self-replicate and make all violence inevitable because individuals are incapable of escaping the cyclical nature of suppression and oppression, which makes us copmliant in our own destuction.
2. Bare life: When rights stripping happens by the government, it’s deemed acceptable for the rest of the population to interact with people as if they were tools, which allows us to create more disposable populations. Giving up individual political agency reduces individuals to instruments of the state, authorizing war and genocide; global ordering necessitates endless war to maintain this fictitious order and it perpetuates sovereignty over the body and renders the destruction of entire populations inevitable. This is control over the body politic, which is the ultimate loss of agency, making you and your life dispensible.
3. Genocide: Ethnic cleansing is taken up as the only way to purify the population and ensure its health. The outsiders need to be exterminated for the “greater good,” which justifes mass extermination. There will aways be groups that do not conform with norms. This means that we will continue to exterminate groups until no one is left on earth. Extinction is inevitable in a world of individual disposability.
4. Cultural destruction: The logic of disposability causes destruction of culture, which leads to the spirit murder of millions. Without culture, we lose the ability to be humanized and we’re reduced to expendable bodies. This strips individuals of their inherent rights and human dignity, which is transgenerational, because it affects everyone with that cultural identification. This makes cycles of violence inevitable. When we have the ability to reduce individuals to expendable, all violence can be justified against them and against others by using the devalued as pawns. This makes every impact inevitable, because violence is unchecked in a world without reprocussions.
And we outweigh, three reasons:
1. Magnitude: The logic of disposability enables infinite violence, from nuclear conflicts to extermination of entire populations. This is the only real world in which extinction is possible – the mass killing of individuals first relies on our acceptance of individuals as objects. Rights stripping makes devaluation of individuals inevitable, justifying all violence against them.
2. Probability: Structural violence manifests itself in the purposeful degradation and devaluation of populations that leads to their elimination. Extinction is far more probable in a world in which death is the aim of politics and not simply the result of a particular combination of circumstances, as it is in the 1ac.
3. Reversibility: Populations can bounce back from a nuclear blow, but value to life is destroyed and irretreivable in a world of total dehumanization. Cultural destruction is irreversible because it’s a lived knowledge – even if we can make a copy later, our immitation will be more like an artist’s perverted rendering than a photocopy. Cultural understanding is key to acceptance of the dissimilar, which is the only mechanism by which we can hope for a long term solution to the devaluation of individuals.
Liberation of the Oppressed
The Framework:
1. Debate should be about the liberation of the oppressed: Our advocacy is grounded in the material condition of oppression which lays the foundation for continual commitment to eliminate the conditions which produce oppression in the first place.
2. Any other framework erases structural violence: It is way too easy to justify the extermination of the other in the race to nuclear apocalypse if the only goal is hegemony. Our arg is that we should not reward rationalizations of unimaginable catastrophe. This embraces the kinds of fear, paranoia, and paralysis that dismantles the project of social justice at the expense of rationalizations that will never actually happen.
3. Our argument is that one percent thinking is ultimately a paralysis of social justice: which means that social justice is impossible when everyone thinks like Dick Cheney. We always assume that there is a new threat that will dismantle the project of social justice or will justify minimizing the prospect of destroying structural violence in the first place.
4. Thus we have to engage in a reconciliation between deontological and teleological calculations: A good example of an exclusive reliance on utilitarian formulation of ethics is slavery, whereby the rights of minorities were ultimately dismantled at the expense of what was greater for the majority in terms of a greater utilitarian call to order. Our argument is not that all calculation is bad, but that we should have deontological side constraints in terms of calculation so that we ensure that our calculation does not calcualte the permissibility of atrocities.
The Impact Prioritization:
1. Agency is a precondition to other impact claims: The perpetual replication of the status quo is inevitable in a world without agency for marginalized groups.
2. Intelligbility:
a. Our treatment of [whatever oppressed group] is ultimately an illustration of the reality that the state makes determinations about who does and does not constitute an intelligible human being. Which means we make determinations about what lives are livible, what lives are grieve-able, what kinds of suffering matter and what kind does not. Our affirmative is a critical gateway to making sure that individuals are actually individuals, constituted human beings who have political subjectivities and personal orientations to the world that have to be considered.
b. Intelligibility is key: In a world where we do not engage in that gesture of recognition, then people engage in a kind of self hatred that manifests in a total lack of ability to change the structural violence of the system.
3. Invisibility of violence: When we constitantly push suffering under the rug and periperilize suffering, we ultimately render violence to be an invisibliity. This is critical to the deliberation of structural violence, because we deem it as unworthy of consideration. This means we don’t even know how extensive violence is, which means we can’t understand the intersections of violence that manifest in the oppression that we describe and have no capacity to root it out.
Rights
1. This is key to changing the framing of the strategic access to rights of progressive groups.
a. In the SQ, advocacy groups spend money trying to get their changes instituted, but they ultimately get rolled back or replaced. Cementing rights allows groups to spend their money not on lobbying and making sure their legistation is air tight, but can focus on actually protecting people.
Risk Calc
Low probability impacts should be dismissed as zero risk and even high magnitude impacts like extinction should be avoided – regardless of probability: Certain hazards are simply unacceptable because they involve an unacceptable threat that it’s just not worthwhile to “run the risk”; even in the face of a favorable balance of probabilities. This means that structural disparities are perpetually ignored because of 1% risk calculation that kills far more people that would die in a nuclear blast.
Consequences only seek a set of truths about the world which never questions the epistemology of violence, ensuring its continuance and making your disad impacts inevitable: The epistemology of violence claims positivistic clarity about certain consequences to actions that would disrupt state power. The nation and its identity are known and essential to the given order, which precedes any evaluation of claims that suggest disrupting the SQ would be a desirable course of action. This means that the consequentialist logic of the disad will always preclude correcting structural violence.
Re-Valuation of Life
1. We cause a reaffirming of value to life: Our argument is not that there is a zero point to life, but that life can be deprived of its value on a particular scale. We have the ability to promote and cement quality lives Our arg is that in a world where our actions are motivated by problematic methodologies, (like informed by patriarchy), that is ultimately problematic. The kinds of masculine impulses that drive us to go to war with other countries and even to war with ourselves in terms of demobilizing structural violence and peripherilizing it and never considering it in terms of our concptions of reality ultimately is problematic because it sends the signal that life is not something to be valued or treasured. That is a terrible perspective because it is the underpinning of all kinds of management strategies that manifest in problematic acts of violence. Only through reaffirming the value to life through a strategy that acknowledges that people do have value and that we have the abilitiy to attibute that value can we break out of violence.
a. This is a precursor to competing impact claims, because the capacity to make sure we can attribute value to life is the only way in which we can stop vioelnce. We could not have nuclear war in a world in which nobody had the motivation or political willl to determine that life didn’t have value in order to justify that conflict in the first palce, which means we will control the impact calculus.
b. The invisitbility of violence: In a world where our perspectives and world views are informed by patriarchy which is endemically structurally violent, that is bad because it pushes volence to the periphery. We ultimately refuse to consider the concerns of the 3rd world or peripherilized people within this framework which makes violence pushed under the rug in favor of a larger call to order. Invisitbility of violence should come before other deliberative concerns, because when we make violence invisible we literally preclude the prospect to root out that violence, which means the invisibility of violence is a unique impact in this instance.
c. This is critical to the ability not consider ethical calculations, becase we aren’t aware of the way in which structural violence and patriarchy manifest to coalesce worldviews within us to condition us to be violent and to accept violence. Our personal orientation to violence is important, because the only way to coalesce large scale strategies for tranforming society as a whole is to create change within us. We have to make a personal determination not to be violent, to embrace peaceful strategies before we can transform society. We have to examine our personal relationship to institutional violences that we constantly ignore as a first step.
2. Gestures representing unbeliebvable possbilities are a prerequisite to mobilization in the name of of social justice. There was a time in our history that the Civil Rights Act was unthinkable, but the struggle to manifest such politics of inclusion are important. We have to interrogate our relationship to the topic, because fiat-centric education as an exclusive model of education absolves us of our responsibility and participation in violence, because we assume we are ultimately pretending to be someone else.
3. These kinds of ultilitarian calculations are problematic, because when we premise things on a body count, we condition ourselves to think that 4 million deaths is not a tragedy, but a few billion is. These delibartions assume those people don’t matter. Even if violence is ineviable, it’s how we respond to it that is important. The search for creating desirable conditions for those experiencing structural violence justifies macro-social risk. 1% risk calculations does not prepare us for real world policy making, because it ultimately justifies the kind of paranoia and fear that ensure the continuance of violent strategies.
State Violence
Our argument is that some degree of state violence is probably inevitable. It’s not a question of solving state violence, but it’s about ensuring there is constant pressure to alleviate the forms of state violence that we can combat. Politics is a process of constantly expanding our understanding of citizenship and inclusivity. That means plan is key to solving the question of inclusivity.
It’s also key to ethics:
Value to life is intersubjective: This means our identity is premised on our understanding of our relationship to the other. There are two possibilities. Either we construct friends and enemies. This is a violent relationship that leads to genocide against the other, because it’s framed as adversarial. The alternative to this is realizing that our identity should be based on an ethical relationship of acceptance to the other, which the plan does. This chips away at violence against alterity, which is necessary to combat violent impulses that lead to things like larger wars and make it acceptable to engage in violence at any level.
Nuke War
Note: These arguments are taken from Carl Sagen in 1983. His work was checked by over 100 experts in his field in the US, UK, and USSR.
1. A small scale nuclear war will escalate
a. Once the bombs begin exploding, communications failures, disorganization, fear, the necessity of making in minutes decisions affecting the fates of millions, and the immense psychological burden of knowing that your own loved ones may already have been destroyed are likely to result in a nuclear paroxysm. Many investigations, including a number of studies for the U.S. government, envision the explosion of 5,000 to 10,000 megatons.
2. People die
a. A study by the WHO concluded that 1.1 billion people would be killed immediately and another 1.1 billion would be critically injured or have radion sickness
3. Extinction—Ozone Destruction
a. High yield air bursts will chemically burn the nitrogen in the upper atmosphere, forming oxides of nitrogen. Nitrogen oxide reacts with ozone to form elemental nitrogen and oxygen removing the barrier that protects the Earth from deadly solar ultraviolet radiation.
b. Ultraviolet light has been found to mutate the DNA of crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. This destroys our ability to produce food
c. Everything outside gets burned/skin cancer.
d. DNA bonding is disrupted by UV-215 and more energetic radiation, ending the replication of life.
4. Extinction—Dust Cloud/Nuclear Winter
a. Based on data from dust storms on Mars and volcanic eruptions to assess the impact of particulate matter and soot being released into the atmosphere. He found that in the Northern Hemisphere there would not be sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis for multiple weeks. In addition, the surface temperature of the land mass dropped to -25 Celsius. Everything starves/freezes
b. The detonation of less than 1% of the world’s nuclear arsenal (~100 megatons) only in low-yield airbursts over cities would still trigger nuclear winter
5. Extinction—Fallout
a. The intermediate time scale fallout, from radioactive particulate matter kicked into the upper atmosphere but not the stratosphere, will be most damaging. Roughly 30 percent of the land at northern mid-latitudes could receive a radioactive dose greater than 250 rads, and that about 50 percent of northern mid-latitudes could receive a dose greater than 100 rads. A 100-rad dose is the equivalent of about 1000 medical X-rays. A 400-rad dose will, more likely than not, kill you.
6. Extinction—Epidemics
a. Medical infrastructure collapses from impacts 3-5.
b. After they thaw, the billion or so unburied bodies would probably contribute to the proliferation of disease
7. Extinction—Synergisms
a. The combined influence of these severe and simultaneous stresses on life are likely to produce even more adverse consequences -- biologists call them synergisms -- that we are not yet wise enough to foresee.
Economic Collapse
1) Decreased domestic quality of life - $ to buy things; food, water, shelter, warmth.
2) International reprcussions – linked world economy, ripples.
3) Stalls technological development – no surplus income for research and development – no solvency for global climate change or disease pandemics.
4) Makes irrational actor of all of us.
a. Heightened diplomatic isolationism – every one is out for themselves, destroys diplomacy, increases risk of conflict and ignorance of humanitarian aid needs.
b. Lowers threshhold for large-scale conflict – NUKE DEATH.
5) Cyclical material precarity.
a. Lack of means to feed, drink, clothe, or shelter self.
b. Insular minorities; these people have no means to break out of the cycle – either political, social, or economic mechanisms to escape violence.
c. Intergenerational violence – a child is born in poverty, they are more likely to live an impoverished childhood – no way to break the cycle absent external intervention.
d. Infinite and invisible – we control magnitude.
Environment Impacts:
Dead Zones
Eutrophication causes mass extinction of aquatic species:
1. Fish raised in laboratory-created hypoxic conditions showed extremely low sex-hormone concentrations and increased elevation of activity in two genes triggered by the hypoxia-inductile factor (HIF) protein. Under hypoxic conditions, HIF pairs with another protein, ARNT. The two then bind to DNA in cells, activating genes in those cells.
a. Under normal oxygen conditions, ARNT combines with estrogen to activate genes. Hypoxic cells in a test tube didn't react to estrogen placed in the tube. HIF appears to render ARNT unavailable to interact with estrogen, providing a mechanism by which hypoxic conditions alter reproduction in fish.
2. It might be expected that fish would flee this potential suffocation, but they are often quickly rendered unconscious and doomed. Slow moving bottom-dwelling creatures like clams, lobsters and oysters are unable to escape. All colonial animals are extinguished.
3. This means that entire populations of fish will die out at once or become invasive species in other areas, and since lower tropic levels will be scarce, resource partitioning will be impossible, meaning mass oceanic extinction will occur either way.
Ocean Acidification
1. As concentrations of CO2 continue to increase in the atmosphere, the rate of CO2 dissolving into the ocean will also increase, creating higher concentrations of carbonic acid in the water. Carbonic acid is devastating to oceanic life, as is causes corral reefs – which hold 82% of marine biodiversity - to disintigrate and makes the water unihabitable for lower trophic levels, such as phytoplankton which are sensitive to small pH changes. Wiping out major habitats and eliminating food sources causes extinction as the effects ripple throughout the ocean and resource partitioning will be impossible.
Oceanic extinction is bad
1. It causes resource wars on land:
a. Since a billion people live on less than a dollar a day and the highest concentrations of populations live near the coast and maintain their livelihood from the ocean in some way, they’ll all move inland at once. It’ll be try or die for the last grain of rice, which means extinction resulting from nuclear wars will be inevitable.
2. Ocean biodiversity is key to life on land:
a. The deep sea covers 65% of Earth and is the most important ecosystem for recycling and reforming carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous, without which plants can’t grow, animals can’t breathe and life cannot exist. Ocean biodiversity is directly and exponentially correlated with the efficiency of this system because as more species exist they can occupy one niche that creates increased sustainability of function. The loss of every species dramatically reduces the ability of the oceans to support all life.
3. Loss of Ocean biodiversity risks total collapse of ecosystems, causing extinction:
a. Even small shifts in ocean biodiversity have huge ripple effects on the global biosphere. A study of global ocean biodiversity released on January 8, 2008 in Current Biology provided evidence that the function of the oceans depends on the richness of the life there. The study found that the extinction of microscopic species on the ocean floor that humans can’t even see would be enough to disrupt all the functions of the oceans, killing every human because we cannot survive without the food, climate regulation, and resource reprocessing of the ocean.
4. Depleting the oceans robs us of future innovation:
a.Animals see in about 10 different ways, and seeing underwater can be a challenge. Lobsters tread the seafloor bottom at night and have an unusual method of processing light in these murky conditions. At the base of their antennae are thousands of square light reflectors which precisely focus all the incoming light unto one focal point. The Physical Optics Corporation is developing a scanner for the U.S. Homeland Security Department called the LEXID that can see through three inches of steel using a similar process to send and detect X-rays. The Lobster-ISS telescope at the University of Leicester Space Research Center also uses this method for low light collection.
b. Whalepower Corporation of Canada has designed wind turbines and industrial fans patterned from the tubercles of humpback whale flippers, those scalloped edges on the leading edge of their pectoral fins. The edge allows efficient operation at slower speeds without stalling or lowering the pitch of the blade.
c. Sharkskin has also been mimicked for its antibacterial properties by a company called Sharklet Industries. The dermal denticles that create the nano-streamlining on the shark also make it difficult for bacteria to form and this company has made a line of products for hospital use.
d. Red algae, has inspired a different kind of anti-bacterial strategy for the company Biosignal Ltd. of Australia. Rather than using its surface shape, the algae uses a chemical jamming signal to interfere with the communication of the gathering bacteria, something called “quorum signaling.” Biosignal has developed a proprietary method of employing furanones to coat surfaces. Applications include contact lenses, intrusive medical devices and pharmaceuticals, all areas where the growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics could be avoided.
e. Future tech solves for disease, global warming. “Marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible”.
Biodiversity – Keystone Structures
1. With the aid of the keystone structure concept we are able to abandon the discussion of ‘keystone vs. non-keystone species’ and focus on spatial structures that are provided by specific species: for ecosystem function and species diversity a given structure itself is important, independent of whether it is made up of one or several ecologically similar species. Then, the presence or quality of structure-based variables may function as biodiversity indicators In terms of biodiversity management this means that conservation of a keystone structure will maintain a high level of biodiversity whereas its removal will most likely lead to a breakdown in species diversity because these structure determine species diversity.
2. Example of a ‘keystone structure’: temporary wetlands in agricultural fields (beaver dams, too) Temporary wetlands are ‘ephemeral puddles’, which occur in conventionally ploughed hollows in these fields after heavy precipitation in winter or spring. Due to these flooding events the vegetation differs substantially from other parts of the fields. On a larger spatial scale of the entire fields, some of these temporary wetlands are keystone structures that determine species diversity.
Biodiveristy Loss - Extinction
1. Biodiversity loss outweighs because it’s irreversible:
a. Extinction can never be overcome – once biodiversity is lost it can never be replaced. This is more important than other forms of environmental degradation, resource disparities, and even nuclear war because while these issues can be repaired within several generations, we can never re-evolve the animals and plants that are lost.
2. Increased species loss is the equivalent of global Russian Roulette.
a. It is almost impossible to predict the importance of an individual species to the entirety of an ecosystem because of the cascading effects each die-off has – each species depends on many others and could be so substantially affected that it also goes extinct. This means even if we cannot determine with certainty which species is the keystone, it could potentially affect one that is, making the collapse of the system inevitable under the strain of increased biodiversity loss. The cascading effects would inevitably reach the entirety of the human race because we use all of these food webs for our food and our resources.
3. Biological simplicity has put us on the brink of widespread ecological collapse.
a. Humans are the cause for the 6th major extinction of species on the planet. The extreme stress we have put on the species of the world have led to artificially simplified ecosystems with few surviving species. Instead of individual species filling ecologically narrow niches, a wider area is covered by relatively few species, meaning that the loss of any species could potentially collapse the entire system. Evolution of new species in these areas has stagnated, because we have artificially reduced the competition between species already there with simplifying the ecosystems. This means that new medical advancements are impossible without promoting more biodiversity in the environment we already have – we are on the brink now.
4. Biodiversity is key to regulating natural processes that allow life to exist.
a. Diversity of species supports exponentially higher rates of ecosystem processes as the species can diversity and specialize (think of the complexity of a coral reef or human evolution – when multiple parts of the system are allowed to specialize, the organism as a whole becomes much more efficient – just think of your digestive system – the duodenum’s entire job is a channel for the pancreatic enzymes to break down food so that the jejunum can transport it to the small intestine for the microvillus can absorb nutrients– that’s all it does and it makes the human digestive system one of the most efficient and complex of any species – compare it to that of a frog or worm, which rely on muscle contractions to break down food!) which leads to much higher efficiency and an enhanced ability to perform the key biological and biochemical processes that support life on earth. We need biodiversity in order to recycle carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, mitigate pollution, protect watersheds and combat soil erosion. Because BioD is the buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate it is what protects from catastrophic impacts as a result of environmental changes.
5. The output of ecosystems declines exponentially which leads to the death of millions.
a. Every species that is lost functions in at least three directions in a food web meaning that each extinction inevitably creates a ripple effect that hurts the efficiency of the biome it functions within. The biomes on Earth also are all interrelated, meaning that each part that collapses also hurts the diversity of the others. This ripple effect culminates in the death of millions as subsistence and small scale farmers depend on the function of the land they live in for 100% of their livelihood and small changes in its viability due to ecosystemic change can be the difference between eating and not.
6. Future biodiversity is the only way to solve disease catastrophes that cause extinction.
a. Every cure comes from nature, so preserving biodiversity is absolutely key to prevent the loss of potential cures for new diseases that have yet to evolve. The potential use of plants and animals that are near extinction is limitless. The answer to global diseases like AIDS and cancer, which kill millions of people every year, can also only exist within nature. Genetic variability is essential to combat the diseases of the future that we cannot be prepared for. If the species that holds the cure for a new pandemic is extinct, humanity will be wiped out entirely.
Biodiversity Loss - Disease
1. Future biodiversity is the only way to solve disease catastrophes that cause extinction.
a. Every cure comes from nature, so preserving species’ genetic diversity and variation is absolutely key to prevent the loss of potential cures for new diseases that have yet to evolve as well as diseases we are searching for answers to. The potential use of plants and animals that are near extinction is limitless. The answer to global diseases like AIDS and cancer, which kill millions of people every year, can also only exist within nature. Genetic variability is essential to combat the diseases of the future that we cannot be prepared for. If the species that holds the cure for a new pandemic is extinct or if species are not diverse enough for new species to evolve that hold the key to future diseases, humanity runs the risk of being wiped out entirely.
2. Disrupted ecosystems increase disease
a. Unstable ecosystems and the effects they have on humanity increase the infectiousness of disease. Unclean water and unhealthy forests contribute to disease by making it harder for the environment to regulate itself and prevent problems that lead to disease. Standing and unclean water, for example, increase the amount of malaria, TB, cholera, and schistosomiasis, all of which kill millions of people a year. The problem does not stop at borders: infectious diseases take their greatest toll in developing countries, where malaria and tuberculosis are prevalent, but even in the United States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
3. Ecosystems are fundamental determinants of human health.
a. Humans need food, water, clean air, climatic constancy, and access to other basic natural resources in order to live and in order to be healthy. All of these become widely variable with losses in biodiversity because multiple niches filled by a diverse range of species check back against the variability of environmental systems. Scientists estimate that rising temperatures, for example, are increasing the infectiousness of certain diseases like TB and cholera.
4. Environmental destruction causes new diseases
a. Degradation of ecosystems lead to new factors that can cause new diseases to emerge, four reasons:
1. Altered habitats change the number of vector breeding sites or reservoir host distribution.
2. The instability or a former vector can lead to an evolutionary pressure to occupy new hosts that can transfer between species or occupy a new host.
3. Biodiversity loss can kill off predator species (of either vector or disease)
4. Biodiversity loss destroys the ability of the environment to regulate many causes of diseases, like fecal contamination.
Biodiversity Loss - War
1. Damage to BioD exacerbates resource instability that leads to war
a. Contamination of the air or water supplies and reduced viability of natural resources and fertility of land all emerge from lower levels of biodiversity because fewer niche species mean less efficiency and fewer natural processes that ensure things like sanitation or resource recycling. Fewer available natural resources causes war because people are willing to fight for things they can’t live without. Prevents conflict resolution because nobody wants to give up if they have nothing to win from it – IE worthless land or a polluted environment.
2. Environmental destruction is viewed as a potential security risk that fuels interstate conflict.
a. States that want to avoid degrading their own environment or hurting their economic viability are willing to go to war in order to prevent policies they perceive as bad for their own environment. Over-fishing, ecological destruction, and species loss only provide benefits to one entity but they tax the entire region, hurting interstate relations. Addressing problems of biodiversity that contain elements of mutual interest is a key way to build trust between states and communities that disappear with each species lost.
Biodiversity Loss - Economy
1. Systems without BioD depress economic activity
a. Every aspect of human economic life depends on the environment in one way or another. Species loss hurts the overall efficiency of ecosystems, which hurts the efficiency of real economies. Farming and resource extraction become more inefficient which depresses the amount of economic activity in a region.
2. Overpopulation and invasive species disrupt economies at their foundation
a. Species loss kills the ability of the environment to regulate itself through predator/prey relationships. This leads to increased overpopulation of certain species and increased vulnerability to invasive species. Rampant species destroy agriculture because they have no predators and are free to expand until they displace our over-consume other species. Invasive species like the Zebra Mussel and Asian Longhorned Beetle cost billions of dollars to clean up, displace local species on which economies are dependent, and depress property prices in the places they inhabit. They necessitate the use of serious pesticides that have systemic environmental effects that hurt agriculture even more.
3. Species loss destroys cropland and makes agriculture impossible.
a. Loss of species causes the degradation of usable farmland through soil erosion which causes flash floods that destroy farm land. In the Philippines, where rapid deforestation and species loss have taken place since WWII, lack of ecosystem regulation upset rain patterns, soil retention and flood prevention. Only about half of the irrigated farmland that they expected would be usable has actually panned out due to ecological destruction.
Precautionary Principle
1. Scientific standards of “certainty” fail to predict catastrophic risks
a. In even the most obviously related causes the period of time can be so long and with so many intervening factors that it is impossible to make a definitive link between a single cause and effect. Environmental problems can rarely be completely predicted until they actually happen, meaning that we must give added weight to potential risks that could have much greater effects than we can definitively prove. When the globe hangs in the balance, as it does with widespread ecological disruption, we should prevent as much harm as possible despite the fact that we may not understand the entirety of a phenomenon.
2. Risk assessment paradigms ask the wrong questions
a. Risk scenarios only ask questions that we already know the answer to, meaning that we have little ability to predict scenarios that have no basis in past human experience. The paradigm of risk assessment thus succeeds in supplying the questions rather than the answers, leaving us with little ability to actually predict risks.
3. Risk assessment always leaves out important factors.
a. Although they try to count for uncertainties, risk assessment is always tied to a notion of reasonability that inevitably leads to assumption and oversimplification. Quantitative risk assessment itself is bound up in cost-benefit analysis based on rationality that only address a limited number of potential factors, which often lead out social, cultural or environmental factors that are unknown to people that run the studies. The Precautionary Principle seeks to understand a wide range of factors that prevent real harm from unexpected sources.
4. Risk assessment is constantly manipulated by corporate interests
a. Environmental risk assessment that was developed in the 70s as a quantitative way of dealing with problems only served to “scientifically” prove that things were not a risk – rarely that they were. The burden of conclusive scientific proof of excess harm was increasingly approved and supported by commercial interests that sought to prove their products could not be reasonably regulated based on the cost-benefit analysis of risk assessment. The “risks” assisted and their varying outcomes are extremely open to manipulation under a risk assessment framework.
**ANSWERS TO IMPACTS**
A2: Biodiversity - Offense
1. Focus on a keystone species is counterproductive– It legitimates the extinction of other species by labeling them expendable:
The realization that a single species in a community may be equivalent of a keystone in an arch has profound implications for the other—non-keystone—species in a community – it leads to viewing all other species in the ecosystem as entirely unimportant. In the same way the keystone of an arch is often protruded and ornamented, a keystone species gains special status, relegating the non-keystone species to seeming obscurity. Once these species are deemed expendable it is easy to justify exploiting them or killing them off altogether.
2. Species extinction creates space for new and better species
Without species extinction, biodiversity would increase until some saturation level was reached, after which speciation would be forced to stop. At saturation, natural selection would continue to operate and improved adaptations would continue to develop. But many of the innovations in evolution, such as new body plans or modes of life, would probably not appear. The result would be a slowing of evolution and an approach to some sort of steady-state condition. According to this view, the principal role of extinction in evolution is to eliminate species and thereby to reduce biodiversity so that space -- ecological and geographic -- is available for innovation.
A2: Biodiversity – Defense
1. Extinction is natural and inevitable
a. Like humans, all species are mortal. Extinction is as inevitable and irreversible as death. Of five to 50 billion species that have exited in the history of life on earth, probably no more than 10 to 40 million currently exist. Thus, only about one tenth of one percent of all species which have ever lived are still alive.
b. Extinction of a few hundred species from a base of one million might be an ominous portent. The same loss from a base of 100 million species might suggest no more than a natural fluctuation.
2. There’s no impact to their argument even if 95% of species are lost.
Even if 95 percent of all species are lost, 80 percent of the underlying evolutionary history remains intact. Scientists from Oxford came up with equations to describe how much evolutionary history would remain after some species went extinct. And they found that it didn't really matter whether they killed off species at random or in a particular pattern. Choosing particular species to save didn't preserve much more evolutionary history than saving species at random.
3. Extinction rate is and will remain low
a. There is a fairly constant relationship between the rates of extinction between species
b. The latest model calculations indicate that even if the extinction rate increases 12 to 55 fold over the next 300 years, the extinction rate for all animals will remain below 0.208% per decade and be about 0.7% per 50 years.
4. Global biodiversity is at its highest point ever
The growth in the number of families and species can be accredited to a process of specialization which is both due to the fact that the Earth’s physical surroundings have become more diverse and a result of all other species becoming more specialized
5. Human impact on extinction is nothing new – we have historically exerted our influence
a. In the natural environment species are constantly dying in competition with other species
b. 25 species have become extinct every decade since 1600. Thus, what we see is clearly not just natural extinction. Actually, mankind has long been a major cause of extinction.
c. The Polynesians have colonized most of the 800 or so islands in the Pacific over the last 12,000 years, and it is estimated that they have caused the extinction of 2,000 species of birds, or more than 20 percent of all current bird species.
6. Alternate causality: warming, habitat destruction, and invasive species
a. Human pressure may greatly accelerate the relaxation process by increasing accidental extinction rates - We rapidly transport novel diseases and parasites around the world and we are warming the Earth.
b. The National Research Council (44) implicates exotic species or lack of adequate disturbance as the root cause in endangering a significant proportion of threatened U.S. species. But global warming may constitute the worst threat of all: by altering the basic abiotic conditions of reserves, it can destroy their ability to do much of their job.
c. We show little sign of abandoning the destruction of habitat that brings deterministic extinction to species.
7. Captive breeding prevents extinction
Captive breeding saved the bison. Wolves roam Yellowstone and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Peregrine Falcon is off the endangered species list, golden-lion tamarins thrive in the Brazilian forests, whooping cranes perform their mating dances along river banks in the west, and many more species might similarly be rescued. Zoos, botanical gardens and aquaria have found new purpose and direction, providing a safety net when other protective measures have failed.
8. No survival impact:
a. The loss of a single species will not collapse an entire ecosystem – empirically denied – resiliency prevents their big impacts
i. Biodiversity is not an either/or question, but rather a question of “how much.”. Although biological diversity is essential, a single species has only limited value, since the global system will continue to function without that species. Similarly, the value of a piece of biodiversity is small to negligible since its contribution to the functioning of the global biodiversity is negligible. The global ecosystem can function with “somewhat more” or “somewhat less” biodiversity, since there have been larger amounts in times past and some losses in recent times.
ii. In the absence of evidence to indicate that small habitat losses threaten the functioning of the global life support system, the value of these marginal habitats is negligible. Thus far, biodiversity losses appear to have had little or no effect on the functioning of the earth’s life support system, presumably due to the resiliency of the system, which perhaps is due to the redundancy found in the system.
iii. Ecosystems have thousands of species—in the soil, in the vegetation, and in the animals supported by them—and this complexity prevents us predicting what will happen from loss of species. One can understand each link individually, but not the outcome of a sequence of links. In fact, we know so little about this aspect that we really have to start from scratch and devise new ways of studying this question.
b. Humans are functionally extinction-proof
i. While human beings had a hand in the demise of the megamammals, we aren’t going to die out in some kind of earthly tit-for-tat. We are extremely intelligent and good at manipulating our environment to suit our needs/make sure we come out on top (building houses, roads, entire infrastructures, etc. to support our preferred lifestyle at the expense of the environment, however we’re good at developing new technologies to save ourselves when we fuck over one part of the earth)
9. Biodiversity not key to medical research/advancements: resiliency and redundancy solve
a. The value of biodiversity as a source of new products is extremely low. If there is a lot of biological material over which a search for useful new products can be conducted, the value of an individual piece of such material is not worth very much. There are literally millions of species that could potentially be the sources of new medicines, foods, and other products.
b. It’s true that one species is distinguished from another by its unique genetic constitution, but multiple different genetic packages can contain instructions for the synthesis of substitutable chemical entities. Think of all the different species of plants that can produce the chemical caffeine. A multitude of different species could hold the “key” they’re talking about for medical advancements.
c. Additionally, most species used in biomedical research are not endangered.
10 . Biodiversity hotspot approach fails: many limitations
a. the selection of hotspots has been criticized in general on several grounds.
i. Reliable quantitative data are generally only available for the most conspicuous and popular groups of organisms and it is generally assumed rather than proven that areas of diversity for one group will be concordant with areas of diversity of unsampled groups.
ii. Without a measure of complementarity between hotspots there is no way of knowing how many species are conserved twice in adjacent hotspots.
iii. Simply conserving maximum species numbers is not the same as conserving maximum species diversity.
A2: Biofuels
1. Ethanol fuel would require a huge infrastructure shift:
a. Ethanol yields 1/3 less energy per unit volume and, because of its chemical properties, cannot use the same pipelines, retail pumps and storage tanks as gasoline. This means that there will have to be enormous changes in our infrastructure that (probably) aren’t provided and that the plan does not provide any impetus for- demand for ethanol fuel is low now.
2. Using crop residues worsens warming:
a. The nice thing about leaving crop residues undisturbed is that their carbon is then sequestered in the soil. Taking them, doing stuff to them and then burning them releases all that CO2 that would have otherwise not been released. This is not carbon neutral, and just about any plan that pushes us towards a biomass-based fuel economy will encourage crop residue utilization.
3. The US already supports biofuels a lot:
a. We already give out large subsidies to both traditional (corn, sugar cane, beets, etc) and non traditional (cellulose) ethanol. We give out hundreds of millions of dollars every year for ‘biomass utilization research’ through the DoE and DoA.
4. Biofuels can’t meet US fuel demands:
a. We would need to use nine times current US cropland or eight times current US forested land for full time production of biomass to meet our current demand for non-coal fossil fuels, primarily driven by oil consumption. If we can’t do it with all of our excellent cropland, then there’s certainly no way the rest of the world can.
5. Cellulostic crops are hard to move:
a. In contrast to corn, cellulosic biofuel sources cause transport trucks to become physically full long before reaching their weight limit, greatly increasing transportation costs and imposing an unmanageable burden on rural transportation infrastructure. The Aff (probably) does nothing to address this structural problem, which is enough to prevent these alternatives from becoming competitive.
6. Producers are unlikely to grow perennial grasses:
a. Unlike residues left from another primary crop (leftover parts of a corn plant), primary energy crops like switchgrass are the only source of income for a given swathe of land and there is no commodity market to guarantee their price or allow producers to feely sell their crops. These structural issues make it unlikely that a primary energy market will emerge even with the plan, since the plan does nothing to encourage fair and efficient contracting between producers and processers. There is also substantial competition from corn and soybean producers on the most productive land, and, although grasses can grow in other locations, they grow less productively and increase costs for producers. There is also no crop insurance available for perennial grasses, which is a huge deterrent to new growers.
7. Biofuels should have responded to incentives already:
a. There is already a large tax credit for cellulosic biofuels- the equivalent of a $1.00 subsidy per gallon of fuel. And, yet, no firm has been able to find a way to make it happen commercially, empirically proving that structural problems not addressed by the plan are the barrier to cost competitive c. biofuels, so the plan doesn’t solve.
A2: Middle East – Regional Instability
1. Turn: Regional Instability is good – reduces China’s Heg
a. The whopping majority of the oil in the Middle East goes to China, yet China has not committed any troops or military capabilities to stabilizing the region – they rely on the US military to keep the area stable. In a world of regional instability, China would lose access to its oil imports in the region, which have jumped in recent months despite threats of US sanctions on imports from Iran. This means that China would no longer be able to build up their military capabilities to challenge the US [insert your favorite uniqueness and specific impact for US/China conflict].
A2: Nanotechnology
Here’s the thumper (LOL):
BLUE GOO SOLVES THEIR IMPACT – The development of blue or policing goo would be simpler to make to govern self-replicating materials and can be employed to deprive vital resources of the replication process and counteract mutations or anomalies, by correcting genetic code.
A2 GREY GOO
NO RISK OF RUNAWAY NANO—QUESTIONABLE IF SUCH BOTS ARE EVEN POSSIBLE—According to Nobelist Richard Smalley, "Self-replicating nanorobots like those envisioned by Eric Drexler are simply impossible to make." Mihail Roco likewise dismisses such nanobots as "sci fi," insisting there is "common agreement among scientists that they cannot exist."
NO RISK OF ROGUE NANO OUTBREAK – PREVENTATIVE MEASURES SOLVE ANY RISK OF GREY GOO
A) ISOLATION – One obvious tactic is isolation: the leading force will be able to contain replicator systems behind multiple walls or in laboratories in space. Simple replicators will have no intelligence, and they won't be designed to escape and run wild. Containing them seems no great challenge.
B) REPLICATION LIMITS – We will be able to design replicators that can't escape and run wild. We can build them with counters (like those in cells) that limit them to a fixed number of replications.
C) BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS, THEY ARE ASSEMBLERS NOT REPLICATORS – They will make only what they were programmed to make, when they are told to make it. Anyone lacking special assembler-built tools would be unable to reprogram them to serve other purposes. Using limited assemblers of this sort, people will be able to make as much as they want of whatever they want, subject to limits built into the machines. If none are programmed to make nuclear weapons, none will; if none are programmed to make dangerous replicators, none will.
D) EXPIRATION DATES – Tightly controlled operating conditions can severely restrict the "life" of an assembler. Assemblers can be designed to initiate a self-destruct sequence after a certain number of clock cycles - unless a special signal is received.
E) CONTROLLING ENERGY SOURCES – We can build them to have requirements for special synthetic "vitamins," or for bizarre environments found only in the laboratory. This could be accomplished by designing devices so that they have an "absolute dependence on a single artificial fuel source or artificial 'vitamins' that don't exist in any natural environment." So if some replicators should get away, they would simply run down when they ran out of fuel.
F) REMOTE ACTIVATION – Another proposal is that self-replicating nanotech devices be "dependent on broadcast transmissions for replication or in some cases operation." That would put human operators in complete control of the circumstances under which nanotech devices could replicate
NANO-REPLICATORS WILL NOT EVOLVE—TOO MANY SAFEGUARDS
A) DEVELOPMENT CONTROLS ABILITY TO EVOLVE – Because we will design them from scratch, replicators need not have the elementary survival skills that evolution has built into living cells.
B) GENETIC DUMMIES – We can give replicators redundant copies of their “genetic” instructions, and repair mechanisms to correct any mutations, so that they will always revert back to their original code.
C) HAMPERING EVOLUTION – We can design them in ways that would hamper evolutions even if mutations could occur, by designing them to stop working whenever changes occur, this ensures that we could stop them long before any lasting evolution occurs and before any damage is done.
D) ENCRYPTION – Uncontrolled "evolution" can be nipped in the bud by encrypting an assembler's instruction set. If one bit flips, the instructions are unreadable, and the assembler ceases to operate.
NO RISK OF RUNAWAY REPLICATORS, THE ENTIRE THEORY IS MISFOUNDED:
A) ARGUMENTS ARE BASED ON ERRONEOUS FEARS – There are emotions that center around the confusion between assemblers and living systems. This combination of factors makes it easy for discussions about assemblers to get badly derailed into irrelevancies and error, as has happened to something as simple as their estimated design complexity. The erroneous logic proceeds as follows: first, assume that living systems are necessarily incredibly complex (although the fact that the genome of Mycoplasma genitalia would fit on a tenth of a floppy disk contradicts this assumption). Second, assume (explicitly or implicitly) that assemblers are living, and must therefore themselves be incredibly complex. And finally, assert the impossibility of designing something that is incredibly complex (with overtones of dismay that anyone could be so filled with hubris as to think they could create life!).
B) ASSEMBLERS WILL BE TOO SIMPLE FOR ACCIDENTS TO HAPPEN – As assemblers are not living, and in particular as they need not possess the adaptability of living systems, they can be very much simpler. Replication, by itself, does not imply great design complexity. A living system such as a horse is able to fuel itself from sugar lumps, carrots, hay, potatoes, grass, carrots, or a huge number of other potential foodstuffs. A car, by contrast, uses a single source.
GREY GOO NOT A THREAT—ENERGY AND MATERIAL CONSTRAINTS ELIMINATE THREAT – Furthermore, conversion of the lithosphere into nanomachinery is not a primary concern because ordinary rocks typically contain relatively scarce sources of energy. Atoms of Al, Ti and B are far more abundant in the Earth's crust (81,300 ppm, 4400 ppm and 3 ppm, respectively [5]) than in biomass, e.g., the human body (0.1 ppm, 0 ppm, and 0.03 ppm [6]), reducing the direct threat of ecophagy by such systems. the mean geothermal heat flow is only 0.05 W/m2 at the surface [6], just a tiny fraction of solar insolation.
NANO REPLICATORS WOULD TRIGGER HIGHER CARBON LEVELS, INCREASING PLANT GROWTH AND CHECKING BIOMASS CONSUMPTION, PREVENTING GREY GOO – Conversion of living plant biomass to diamondoid nanomass by nanoreplicators thus may reduce the ability of the surviving plant population to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Unless carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are directly regulated by the active robotic nanomass, CO2 levels will begin to rise, which in turn may increase the growth rate of plants. If slow-moving nanoreplicators consume biomass only very slowly, the consumed biomass may be regenerated as new plant growth is stimulated worldwide
NANO ECOPHAGY CAN BE DETECTED AND PREVENTED IN TIME – such rapid replication creates an immediately detectable thermal signature enabling effective defensive policing instrumentalities to be promptly deployed before significant damage to the ecology can occur. Such defensive instrumentalities will generate their own thermal pollution during defensive operations.
A2: Nuke War -> X
Nuclear war doesn’t lead to extinction
1. Wouldn’t go global:
a) Wouldn’t escalate—MAD ensures extraneous powers wouldn’t get involved because they don’t want to die
b) Nuclear weapon free zones avoid the brunt of damage—South America, South Africa, and Oceania would probably be unscathed
c) No fallout impact—research shows deaths would be fewer than from smoking or automobile accidents—fallout would subside to safe levels within 20 days and those outside of affected areas would be fine—underground shelters solve those in affected areas
2. Nuclear winter is flawed:
--Ignores effects of rainout and photochemistry on atmospheric aerosol clouds
--Clouds don’t last long enough to spread
--Empirically denied by regular massive forest fires that dissipate quickly
--Also denied by Krakatoa which had a blast equivalent to 10,000 one-megaton bombs, and by historical meteor strikes—one in Quebec had the force of 17.5 million bombs
--Scientific consensus—research by the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency and other private groups disproves
--Politicization—nuclear winter was an air-brushed animation commissioned by a PR firm—Harvard physics professor Michael McElroy said researchers “stacked the deck” in their study
--Nuclear primacy solves—the US could launch a disarming first strike against all global powers
--Technical advantage—Russian stockpile is badly maintained and others aren’t big or advanced enough—US has a dominant SSRN and ICBM advantage
--Russian missile shield and early warning systems are decaying in the East—the US could launch an attack through the corridor and wipe out all response mechanisms
A2: Ocean Acidification
Offense:
1. T/Ocean Acidification Good:
a. Dinoflagellates are a group of single-celled organisms that make coral reefs possible. In return for shelter and some minerals, they provide their host with food: in some cases, as much as 90 percent of the coral’s nutrition. Different dinoflagellates cause corals to grow at different speeds, and allow them to grow in water of different acidity. By increasing the acidity of the ocean, natural selection will select for the types that speed corral growth, which increases the volume of these epicenters of oceanic biodiversity.
Defense:
1. Warming counteracts impacts of ocean acidification
a. Ocean life is not harmed by warming in the sense that increased temperatures keep ocean currents stable and better regulate ocean life. Even if ocean acidification is true, and even if carbonic acid is theoretically stable in water, the warming associated with it will regulate and minimize its impact on ocean biodiversity
b. The more oscillation between the molecules of H2O and H2CO3 means a greater likelihood that the intermolecular forces in Carbonic acid (dispersion and dipole-dipole) are too weak to overcome the kinetic energy created by the movement of the ocean, meaning it costs the molecule less energy to dissociate than to try to stay together.
2. Ocean acidification is mitigated by fish
a. Fish are a major source of calcium carbonate production in marine ecosystems. Fish may produce 3-15 percent of oceans’ calcium carbonate. The carbonate excreted by fish is in a form that rapidly dissolves in seawater, helping balance ocean chemistry by making waters more alkaline.
b. The combination of future increases in sea temperature and rising CO2 will cause fish to produce even more calcium carbonate. Fish’s metabolic rates are known to increase in warmer waters, which will also accelerate the rate of carbonate excretion.
c. Our existing knowledge of fish biology shows that blood CO2 levels rise as CO2 increases in seawater and that this in turn will further stimulate fish calcium carbonate production, meaning that they can help to balance out to acidity caused by carbonic acid.
3. CO2 is good for Dinoflagellates and thus good for coral reefs
a. Most reef corals are associations between an animal and Symbiodinium dinoflagellates. These are in the “plant” camp and make energy from the sun. In return for shelter and some minerals, they provide their host with food: in some cases, dinoflagellates provide as much as 90 percent of the coral’s nutrition. Different dinoflagellates cause corals to grow at different speeds, and allow them to grow in different temperatures
b. An experiment that put different dinoflagellates on the same species of coral in warmer waters than the coral naturally grew in found that coral species grew twice as fast when they had dinoflagellates from a group known as Symbiodinium C1.
c. Even if carbonic acid is true, on any given bleached reef, some corals make it through; the difference comes down to their dinoflagellates. If you apply Darwin’s principals to this idea, the best dinoflagellates will survive ocean acidification and live on to preserve and actually encourage the growth of coral reefs, ensuring that they will live long and prosper in warmer, more acidic waters.
4. The carbonic acid molecule is too unstable to cause your impact:
a. The creation of carbonic acid is empirically quite difficult, because the molecule itself is unstable and dissociates easily in water. This is because its reverse reaction happens more quickly than the forward reaction in CO2 + H2O ( H2CO3.
b. The majority of the carbon dioxide is not converted into carbonic acid and stays as CO2 molecules. This means that there is an extremely low propensity for the emissions you’re talking about to cause ocean acidification to the extent that your impacts claim.
A2: Precautionary Principle
1. Following the precautionary principle is impossible and would prevent important innovation, like drugs. Causes mass death:
Risks are on all sides of social situations. Any effort to be universally precautionary will be paralyzing, forbidding every imaginable step, including no step at all. Many environmental activists believe the Precautionary Principle compels bans on genetically engineered food crops, but such a ban would itself run afoul of the Principle, by depriving the world's poor of cheaper and more nutritious food. Such "risk-risk tradeoffs" are part and parcel of all human endeavors.
The Precautionary Principle amounts to the enshrinement of fear over progress. We adopt innovations not because they pose no risks, but because they are a demonstrable improvement over what we have had before. Vaccines might cause adverse effects for a handful of people who are allergic, but ultimately save millions of lives. The longer the drug approval process or the fewer drugs we approve, the more people suffer or die awaiting life-saving treatments.
2. The precautionary principle creates stagnation and prevents any solvency for environmental problems, turns case:
The principle tends to be primarily applied to new sources of risk, because we are more accustomed to living with old risk and therefore less threatened by them. This conservative approach to new risks, however, almost certainly increases the overall harm to public health and wellbeing.
3. It will create tons of new regulation – loads of red tape precludes ability to tackle environmental issues, turns case:
Financial costs of regulation have a long-tern adverse effect on environmental protection. Research demonstrates that economic growth correlates with more environmental protection. While no single environmental regulation is likely to produce severe adverse economic consequences, each rule contributes to a cumulative economic burden. To the extent that the precautionary principle counsels promulgation of costly rules with little health benefit, the long-term consequences of the principle means we will never solve for the environment.
4. Regulation is zero sum – each new one eliminates resources for another one, creating unforseeable risks, turns case
The principle creates a second form of political research misallocation, because its quest for the best defeats our ability to achieve the good. Its aim for virtually absolutist goals eliminates a hint of risk from a substance subject to government regulation. This approach fails to account for the inevitable trade off between the “depth” and “breadth” of government action. Regulating any one substance more strictly or deeply requires additional resources that will unintentionally preclude more widespread regulation of a greater number of risks.
5. Allows authoritarian minorities to dictate our lives and silence our voices:
The principle suffers from tunnel vision. The debate dwells on the merits of the particular problem under consideration without any attention to opportunity costs. In reality, there are a myriad of potential of public health and environmental issues to address and a limit to the amount of time, effort, and money available. Consequently, the principle is not precautionary, but rather gives attention to the problem that happens to top the agenda (i.e. the one with the most money and lobbyists behind it). Furthering the use of the principle will result in government officials who could evoke the 1% doctrine whenever they wish to establish new barriers to trade or simply to yield disingenuously to the demands of anti-technology activists.
6. Precautionary Principle causes nihilism b/c everything has some risk
Absolute proof of safety is impossible to prove – you would have to prove a negative, a logical fallacy. Risk cannot be proven to not exist and something cannot be proven to not cause something else. The burden of absolute proof is totalizing on action.
A2: Russia-China War
1. Diplomatic ties – 13 different treaties in 2005 ensures good relations between the two countries in the proximate future or at least deters war. It shows diplomatic methods of cooperation based on four central pillars. First, mutual respect and trust, second mutual benefits in common development, third creating a sound international environment, and fourth learning from each other to increase awareness and mutual strength.
2. Border treaties – supplementary agreement on the eastern section of the China-Russia boundary line provide historical precedent for peaceful methods of border disputes.
3. Resource cooperaiton – China’s rapid growth has increased the country’s demand for oil and has acted as a source of economic stimulus for Russia – growing their relationship and increasing their trade ties.
4. Economic Ties – increased investment cooperation has been growing in recent years (2.4 billion in 2012). In June 2012, Russia and China created the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to further increase economic ties between the two nations (it’s expected to increase investment to 4 billion USD). This bilateral cooperation and interconnectedness deters war.
5. Military Cooperation – Leaders of both Russia and China have spoken to a solidified and friendly relationship that serves both countries. They frequently engage in joint military exercises, which deters conflict by encouraging MAD to check (they know each other’s capabilities).
6. No loose nukes – US cooperation with Russia over loose nukes has enhanced nuclear security. The US conducts about twenty programs a year to destroy ICBM’s and dismantle aging nuclear weapons. This, along with START drawdown has reduced warheads down from 500 sites to 80 sites and will only continue to get smaller. A more contained nuclear program is both easier to keep track of and easier to guard.
7. No Accidental Launch – Russia does not maintian their early warning system. Lack of sattelite maintence means they will not detect any threats (false or real), thus no miscalc or accidental launch will happen.
A2: Six Party Talks
1. This disad is terminally non-unique. 6 Party Talks are stalled and have been for a while. North Korea is pressing on with its nuclear ambitions:
a. January test announcement: North Korea has announced it is going to conduct a new nuclear test 1/24, in what the South believes will be the first test of its enriched-uranium weapon.
b. They’ve said they’re going to target the US: North Korean state media has said that Pyongyang plans to carry out a third nuclear test and more long-range rocket launches, which it says will be targeted at the United States.
c. NoKo not coming to the table – they made it very clear: In response to harsher UN sanctions in late Januray, Pyongyang signaled its readiness to beef up its ‘military might’ and declared null and void the six-party talks on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
A2: Soft Power
1. NON-UNIQUE: When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, she spoke of the importance of a "smart power" strategy, combining the United States' hard and soft-power resources. She has revamped soft power by creating a second deputy at State, reinvigorating USAID, and working with the Office of Management and Budget.
2. AFF CANT SOLVE SP:
a. SP IMPOSSIBLE: benevolent hegemons are like unicorns, they just don’t exist. We will be unable to become a soft power leader as long as we have the largest military in the world because other countries will still fear us.
b. ROLLBACK: US uses the political capital that it gains from SP to justify military interventions in the name of human rights. This is exactly what happened in the Iraq war and the War on Terror. The result has been an unfortunate identification of human rights with America’s worldly ambitions.
c. SINGLE ISSUE FOCUS FAILS: the US has a lack of SP for more reasons than just our humanitarian aid. Failure to sign international treaties, to close Guantanamo, and to successfully stop nuclear development mean that the 1AC alone cannot solve US SP.
d. NO SPILL OVER: Many official instruments of soft or attractive power -- public diplomacy, broadcasting, exchange programs, development assistance, disaster relief, military-to-military contacts -- are scattered around the government, and there is no overarching strategy or budget that even tries to integrate them.
e. NO POLITICAL WILL: the only politicians that openly support soft power are people like Joint Chiefs of Staff that don’t have to face the American electorate. Congressmen and women have told reporters, "You are right about the importance of combining soft power with hard power, but I cannot talk about soft power and hope to get re-elected."
3. ECON K2 SP: The United States has long used the incentive of its large market to prod other nations to change their behavior. With a shrunken economy, America will be less able to use trade policy to advance good governance. Increased spending strains the American economy and makes soft power impossible in the future because trade relations are less valuable.
4. SOFT POWER DOES NOT SOLVE CONFLICT- soft power is powerless to deal with rouge states because they do not share the same values that the US is promoting. The Persian Gulf conflict empirically proves this because military forces continued to be the only method of controlling chaos in the region
5. TURN- TURKEY RELATIONS
a. US Turkey relations low now because of lack of US soft power and reliance on hard power and threats
b. Increasing soft power makes turkey view the US as reasonable and not dangerous. This leads to Turkish aggression because Turkey emerges as a power in the region and upsets balance of power with Syria
c. Turkey has twice as many ground troops this leads to one of two scenarios, either it ensures Syria’s defeat which would destabilize the Assad regmine OR it would drive Syria to use nukes to balance power
d. This would invoke a NATO article 5 response causing global escalation
A2: Soft Power Impact Turns
AFRICA: US seeking influence now with hard power – influence inevit and plan is capable of refashioning presence and influence with humanitarian ventures. Means their ! turns don’t assume a distinction between what kinds of influence the US uses.
All your impact turns are non unique because don’t have a CP that withdraws us from Africa – they don’t have a card that says we’re not expanding now.
A2: UN Bad
1. The number of HR violations are relatively small, especially compared to those of the US military. Also, the UN has looked into nearly every allegation and is dedicated to prosecuting known violators. All allegations have been almost cut in half from 2007 rates.
2. Having to consult all of the member countries ensures that everyones interests are taken into account and brings about any negative sentiments before any action is taken so that they can be addressed.
A2: US-Russia War
1. Russia would get their shit rocked and they know it – deters war
a. Russia is in a serious social and demographic crisis means they have to focus inward in order to stabilize the country. This means their focus is not on counterbalancing the US and even if they wanted to as a result of plan, they wouldn’t have the resources necessary to cause your impacts.
b. Russia doesn’t have strong enough alliances to combat the US – none of their regional allies or proxies are strong enough to stand a chance. Deters war.
c. Russia hasn’t supported serious enemies of the US. Okay, they’ve given some aid to South American dictators who are anti-US, but none of these people are serious threats to US heg or would stand a chance against the US. This indicates they are not willing to stick their neck out there to actively work against the US and their objections to US actions don’t go beyond mere symbolic gestures and tough rhetoric.
6. No loose nukes – US cooperation with Russia over loose nukes has inhanced nuclear security. The US conducts about twenty programs a year to destroy ICBM’s and dismantle aging nuclear weapons. This, along with START drawdown has reduced warheads down from 500 sites to 80 sites and will only continue to get smaller. A more contained nuclear program is both easier to keep track of and easier to guard.
7. No Accidental Launch – Russia does not maintian their early warning system. Lack of sattelite maintence means they will not detece any threats (false or real), thus no miscalc or accidental launch will happen.
A2: War - Generic
No risk of great power war:
1. No strategic benefit:
a) Defensive advantage—entrenched defenses make it impossible to take and maintain hold of enemy territory, particularly in a protracted fashion against guerilla war
b) Institutions solve—competition has shifted to peaceful venues like global trade and ideological issues get sorted out in the UN
2. Costs outweigh:
a) Economic interdependence—war threatens trade routes which are critical to standard of living and industrial production—outsourcing means few countries are capable of producing a war effort domestically. Rapid poverty would also diminish civilian will to maintain war.
b) Nuclear deterrence—great power war would trigger nuclear exchange that would kill millions and threaten extinction—no country is willing to risk anything that could escalate to nukes
c) Conventional dominance—the US military budget accounts for 40% of defense spending globally—it’s impossible for anyone to challenge us. Non-nuclear destruction deters conflict—no one wants to repeat World War II.
d) Empirics—60 powers of great power peace following World War II—proxy conflicts have steadily diminished in magnitude
3. Discouraging factors:
a) Democracy—countries are more representational than ever before—no populace would ever vote to undertake action that would risk their own livelihood or threaten the rights of others
b) Common security—interdependence and treaty commitments raise the stakes of lower level conflicts, making them less desirable—common security architecture is historically distinct.
A2: Warming – SO2 Screw
[Extend their uniqueness that says emissions are high now]
INTERNAL LINKS
1. Currently, SO2 and other aerosols emitted by the burning of fossil fuels partially offset warming caused by CO2, methane, water vapor, etc. with a cooling effect. This happens in two different ways.
a. DIRECT COOLING: SO2 in the atmosphere has the effect of directly reflecting light at certain wavelengths from the sun away from Earth, preventing a portion of the heat that would have reached our planet from doing so, thus cooling the planet by preventing heat from reaching it in the first place.
b. INDIRECT COOLING: SO2 and other aerosols have an effect on cloud formation as well. Clouds would not form without at least some small aerosol particles to act as starting points around which water begins to condense. Because the amount of actual water in a cloud remains constant, if there are more aerosols, there are more cloud droplets with less water on average per droplet. This has two effects. First, clouds with more droplets reflect more sunlight back- clouds with high aerosol content can reflect as much as 90% of light back; darker clouds with larger droplets reflect a small fraction of that. Secondly, clouds with smaller droplets take slightly longer to turn into rain because smaller droplets take longer to coalesce into large droplets, which then fall to the earth. Combined with direct cooling, this effect also helps reduce the amount of solar energy that reaches the earth, offsetting warming.
c. GOOD SCIENCE: This is not crackpot science. It is a fact that SO2 and other aerosols have this property to a very significant degree; we see this empirically every time a large volcanic eruption causes the atmospheric temperature to decrease temporarily, and the properties of clouds in relation to aerosols are well established.
2. The plan would have the effect of reducing emission of SO2. Although this is being done in tandem with CO2 reduction, there is a problem. While CO2 stays in the atmosphere for many decades (which is why the effects of warming are expected to persist until the end of the century) SO2 falls out the atmosphere in months. A sudden reduction in the emission of both substances will, therefore, cause a sudden increase in warming; human emitted SO2 will go down dramatically without emissions, but CO2 will remain. The resulting temperature spike will be far beyond what most warming models predict because most of them fail to account for aerosols or take their presence for granted.
IMPACTS:
1. TURN: SUDDEN WARMING: The Gov is about to lose this debate on timeframe. If emissions reform is successful, it won’t be long before almost all human made SO2 is gone, and, with CO2 sitting in the atmosphere until most of us are dead, a level of temperature increase that should have taken another 50 years will happen as soon as plan becomes solvent. Thus whatever impacts they described are all going to happen much sooner than they would have in the status quo, and, what’s more, they’ll happen at an even greater magnitude/probability, because the warming will be so sudden that humanity will not have time to slowly adjust to a changing world.
2. TERMINAL DEFENSE: FEEDBACKS: Even optimistic climate scientists estimate we have only until 2025 to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas output, lest the temperature increase between now and then become sufficient to trigger feedback loops. The melting of permafrost, for instance, is releasing far more CO2 than expected, and some ice formations melting contain huge amounts of methane that was not expected either. Because decades’ worth of temperature increase will happen very quickly due to the SO2 screw effect, the plan will also have the effect of triggering feedback cycles, meaning that the plan terminally lacks solvency. There will be no future benefit of reducing emissions. By the time man-made greenhouse gasses are gone, long-trapped arctic gasses will have created self-sustaining warming.
**A2 A2 IMPACTS**
Precautionary Principle
A2: Hurts Innovation
Turn: Increases Innovation
The search for safer alternatives leads to the increased innovation as people search for new, safer alternatives. The elimination of risk pushes new developments in more directions than a risk assessment paradigm. It also facilitates more sustainable and safer technologies that are better products anyway.
Turn: Increases Transparency, facilitating business
Society will always reject projects that are viewed as harmful – no one wants to use a product that is potentially dangerous. The precautionary principle makes this uncertainty explicit while increasing transparency to the consumer, meaning that companies are better able to compete and plan ahead.
A2: Requires Zero Risk
The Precautionary Principle only asks that we make reasonable attempts to reduce harm.
The Precautionary Principle operates on the assumption that people have the right to know everything about the risks that they are taking on, not to eliminate choice. The burden of proof is on the one who could potentially cause the harm to prove that there is no risk.
A2: Costs a lot
Turn: Decreases long term cost
The losses prevented by use of the precautionary principle are more outweigh short term costs. The cost of litigation or harmful side effects are the kind of sustained and major damages that bring down a company or an economy, not small adjustable costs.
Risk Assessment fails to completely analyze costs and benefits.
The impacts of environmental destruction are often non-monetary – which is exactly why risk assessment fails to predict them. Health, societal, and environmental impacts often don’t fit directly into an economic analysis which is why they are ignored in a risk assessment framework.
Warming
A2: SO2 Screw
DEFENSE:
1. THE CLEAN AIR ACT OF 1990: This argument is both empirically denied and totally non-unique because the U.S. and other emitters have drastically reduced SO2 output since 1990 as a part of an effort to curb acid rain. U.S. emissions, for instance, are at less than half what they were then, despite the fact that we burn more fossil fuels now. A cap and trade program for SO2 was a part of this effort, and it was very effective. Warming hasn’t been any faster despite the fact that there’s less SO2 in the atmosphere now than there was then (after all, it disappears in a few months, right?)
2. FUEL STANDARDS: Industrialized nations have also been increasing standards for sulfur content in both coal and gasoline for years now. SO2 emissions were higher in proportion to CO2 in the 60’s through the 80’s by far, but the rate of temperature increase has only increased in proportion to CO2 in the 90’s and 2000’s. Fuel additives such as ferox are also becoming more common, meaning that SO2 emissions are going to drop considerably further in the next few years anyway.
3. SO2 DOESN’T DO ANYTHING: If SO2 cooling was powerful enough to make the sort of difference the Opp. is describing, then it should have overwhelmed any sort of heating around the time of the industrial revolution for decades, until cumulative build up CO2 could overcome cooling. If anything, the Earth’s temperature should have gone down sharply about when we started burning lots of coal, especially because coal with high sulfur content was in more common use back then. This is completely and totally contrary to any data we have during this time period; there was no cooling, and the trend of warming began very quickly around the time massive coal burning began. Logically, this tells us that, if what the other teams says about the life of SO2 and CO2 is true, SO2 cannot have any significant cooling effect.
OFFENSE:
1. ACID RAIN IS REAL BAD: Fine, we’re reducing SO2 too. But that also reduced the levels of acid rain, which has the following effects:
a. LAKES/OCEAN: Before steps were taken to curb acid rain in the 90s, many lakes were becoming extremely acidic, and, over time, this could begin to affect the oceans as well. Ocean acidification will follow, which will kill off sensitive fido-plankton
i. This will destroy 80% of the world’s CO2 sinks (accessing feedbacks…more than you do?)
ii. It will also reduce the world’s oxygen by over 50%. Most species will not be able to survive in such a low oxygen environment, and mass extinction will result, taking out huge chunks of the food chain all at once.
iii. Phytoplanktons are also the grand king of all keystone species, so getting rid of them will destroy all biodiversity in the oceans. The 2 billion people who depend on the oceans will all die of starvation. It will be terrible.
b. FORESTS: It has been seen empirically all over the world (actually, just Germany) that trees exposed to acid rain have the waxy coating of their leaves destroyed, acidifying the leaves and allowing them to become dehydrated. These trees now cannot exchange CO2 and die.
i. Biodiversity is reduced. Read whatever you like for this.
ii. Loss of CO2 sink. Yet another link to warming.
2. SO2 CAUSES HEATING: Even if what they are saying about clouds is true, it isn’t a one way phenomenon. Clouds are also capable of insulating the planet from heat loss, just as they insulate the planet from heat gain.
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**GOOD/BAD FRONTLINES**
CAFO’s Bad
Confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) Steal funds from other programs
Where direct government subsidies favor CAFOs over other ways of raising livestock, they may also discourage otherwise viable alternatives. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was originally intended to help small and medium-sized livestock farms address pollution issues and prevent environmental harm. CAFOs were explicitly forbidden from receiving this funding. In 2002, however, the program was radically changed to make CAFOs a major funding recipient, and prioritized problems that only CAFOs would have, such as waste storage and manure transportation. UCS has estimated that CAFOs have received $100 million in annual pollution prevention payments from EQIP in recent years. This program was meant to encourage good stewardship of environmental resources, not mitigate the avoidable problems inherent to CAFOs.
Other alternatives better for animals, humans that eat them
Hog hoop barns, open-air structures with curved roofs, in which hogs are allowed to "nest" in straw bedding, are healthier for the animals and much smaller than CAFOs. They can produce comparable or even higher profits per unit at close to the same prices. UCS analysis has also found benefits to human health and the environment from raising beef cattle on "smart pasture operations." These operations feed animals a grass diet, requiring less maintenance and energy than the feed crops (such as corn and soybeans) on which CAFOs rely. Smart pasture operations, hog hoop barns, and other alternative agriculture methods succeed by working with nature, rather than against it.
Cause over-use of antibiotics
CAFOs are characterized by large numbers of animals crowded into a confined space—an unnatural and unhealthy condition that concentrates too much manure in too small an area. Many of the costly problems caused by CAFOs can be attributed to the storage and disposal of this manure and the overuse of antibiotics in livestock to stave off disease.
CAFO’s externalize costs and thus have no incentive to adopt better practices
CAFOs have reduced their costs through subsidies that come at the public’s expense, including (until very recently) low-cost feed. CAFOs have also benefited from taxpayer-supported pollution cleanup programs and technological “fixes” that may be counterproductive, such as the overuse of antibiotics. And by shifting the risks of their production methods onto the public, CAFOs avoid the costs of the harm they cause.
They’re bad for the environment:
Most of the problems caused by CAFOs result fromt heir excessive size and crowded conditions. CAFOs contain at least 1,000 large animals such as beef cows, or tens of thousands of smaller animals such as chickens, and many are much larger—with tens of thousands of beef cows or hogs, and hundreds of thousands of chickens. The problems that arise from excessive size and density (e.g., air and water pollution from manure, overuse of antibiotics) are exacerbated by the parallel trend of geographic concentration, whereby CAFOs for particular types of livestock have become concentrated in certain parts of the country, devastating local environments, crowding out all local operations, and polluting the air and water.
Deficits Bad
Downgrade Advantage:
HARMS:
Deficits:
DEBT/GDP RATIO IS GROWING MUCH TOO FAST: Our GDP is pretty stagnant, and, in reality, it was for most of the Bush presidency as well, but the housing bubble hid that. Our national debt has been ballooning since the Bush tax cuts and wars, however. National debt might mean little in of itself, but if the debt-to-GDP ratio is rising rapidly, this is a clear sign that our social compact is not sustainable in its current form. Markets will eventually react unless we improve our medium and long-term outlooks.
BRINK: MARKETS ARE WATCHING AND WAITING: The Euro crisis might delay a sovereign debt crisis for now, but if things take a turn for the worse before we pass legislation to put our financial house in order, the economic scare could easily trigger a debt crisis here. Furthermore, markets are watching the US to see if it is capable of mustering the political will to get its finances in order right now, which is probably part of the reason most investors haven’t turned against us.
BRINK: DOWNGRADE: Many pension funds and other investment groups are required to sell off bonds if they no longer have a AAA rating from 2 out of the three major ratings agencies. We’ve already lost S&P, and Fitch has indicated an openness to downgrading our sovereign debt if we don’t show that we’re serious about the deficit.
Solvency
SIGNALS COMMITMENT TO POLITICAL COOPERATION ON THE ISSUE: Apart from the significant impact the plan itself will have on the deficit, the size and scope of the plan and the fact that it was passed in middle of a presidential election season will indicate the seriousness of politicians in the US and greatly reassure investors and ratings agencies.
(SPECIFC TO THE PLAN)
IMPACTS:
AVERTS RISING INTEREST RATES: Without decisive action, the sort of which we’re unlikely to get without magic debate powers, markets will eventually react and borrowing will become more expensive. Either the government will be forced to overcorrect, leading to much harsher cuts and tax increases than the likes of the plan, in which case the economy is likely to suffer as well, or we will decide we can’t repay all our debt and default. This second option would send world financial markets into disarray and cause a global depression.
Deficits Not Bad
NO SHORT TERM IMPACT: Deficit hawks have been running around like Chicken Little proclaiming that moralistic investors concerned about the irresponsible behavior of the USFG are moments away pulling the plug by refusing to buy T-bills, which would send yields skyrocketing. Of course, they’ve been doing this non-stop since right about when Obama took office, undeterred by how horribly wrong they’ve been. There are a number of reasons why they’re wrong:
1. DEPRESSED ECONOMY: Since the economy is depressed, many investors worry about the value of riskier investments, preferring safe investments. This explains why, even as the US borrows more and more, investors have been happy to essentially pay the USFG to hold their money by buying bonds at ridiculously low yields.
2. EUROPE: Gold and the US and wealthy EU country treasuries are all supposed to be stable places to park one’s money. However, there isn’t enough gold for everyone who wants very safe assets right now, and the euro zone is far too unstable. Neither of those things is going to change in the near future, so investors don’t really have a choice but to continue buying US bonds, even if they think our fiscal prolificacy is questionable.
3. US SOLVENCY: There’s really not much of a reason for investors to care if we’re being irresponsible at this point. The US is too big to fail, at least for now, and no one really doubts that they will be paid for their investments in US debt. That isn’t going change in the near future, because the influence and size of the US economy isn’t going to change dramatically any times soon.
GAINS FROM TAXING THE RICH WOULD BE RELATIVELY SMALL: Eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (even including those making from $250,000-$1M a year) would only cut $700 billion from a projected $6 trillion ten year deficit. This isn’t nothing, but it comes nowhere near ‘solving’ the deficit.
Democracy Good
1. DECREASES WAR:
In democracies, the choice to go to war is made by many, not by one, and leaders are accountable to their constituents – those who actuall fight and die – which increases the brink to go to war. Democracies also have disincentives to go to war in the first place because of shared interests, trade ties, and methods of conflict resolution that do not involve violence – two democracies have never gone to war with each other. Additionally, democracy provides alternative frameworks for conflict resolutions (like international organizations and mediation). When groups have peaceful means to express their political dissent, it’s less likely they’ll launch the bomb.
2. KEY TO THE ECONOMY:
81% of the world’s economic output is created by “free” countries, even though they represent only 17% of the world’s total population. Democracy is key to development, because peace, stability are prerequisites to developmental goals being met. Additionally, development requires citizen involvement, which is only possible when citizens have rights and are respected. Democracy is also key to property rights, which incentivizes economic development. Moreover, established democracies perform better economically. This is important because poverty and a lack of human rights is often the root cause of endemic violence. When democracy spreads, prosperity will closely follow, which alleviates poverty and violence.
3. DEMOCRACY PROMOTION HELPS TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT. Democracy enables protection of rights for protest and organization. They also allow freer flows of information, wider debate, and more transparency in policy making. With these mechanisms it is possible to hold nation states accountable for protections to the environment. This is especially important in resource rich areas where their natural resources are the foundation of their economic growth – checks against econ expansion at the expense of the environment.
4. DEMOCRACIES HELP PROTECT AGAINST GOVERNMENTAL VIOLENCE AND GENOCIDE. Beyond the violence between states or against ethnic groups within states lies a more stunning generalization – absolute power kills absolutely. Rudolph Rummel’s exhaustive study of the deaths from war, genocide, mass murder, and domestic violence demonstrates that every instance of mass murder by a state agent against its own people happened under authoritarian rule. The way to virtually eliminate state violence and genocide is through checking governmental power via democracy.
4. SOLVES POVERTY:
a. ACCOUNTABILITY- leaders are accountable to the population because they are elected by them and therefore look out for their interests more.
b. FREE PRESS- provides early warning and pressures the government into responding quickly
c. SOCIAL SAFETY NETS – this accountability and economic growth causes the creation of social safety nets, which secure healthcare, food, and money for those on the periphery.
d. SOCIAL MOBILITY – free education and no caste system allows greater upward mobility. And democratic projects usually start at the bottom and go up. This is important because it allows those in the bottom rungs of society or on the social periphery the leg up they need to pull themselves out of poverty.
5. GOOD FOR WOMEN.
Women comprise roughly 50% of the population, but in authoritarian regimes do not come close to having equal rights. With democracy, women are allowed access into the political system and institutions – affording them greater freedoms and giving them agency. It also means that women’s interests can be represented and they can change the political climate to better access rights. Democracies also promote the separation of church and state, which is necessary to prevent religious dogma that discriminates against women from being legally enshrined (Sheria in the ME).
Democracy Bad
CAUSES TRANSISITON WARS AND AUTHORITARIANIAM- forced pace democratization leads to interm instability that breeds extremists because of the lack of political structure there is to begin with. In other words, if you attempt to force democracy on a nation that is not ready, a rollback or coup becomes inevitable.
a. This exacerbates ethnic conflicts because nationalism requires an other to be fought against. Also democracy increases civil wars which often devolve into ethnic conflicts
b. Spreading democracy will undermine local elites. They will impugn the West’s global political idelsl by attributing it to old imperialist motives. When they choose to fight back, they will do so with violent conflict that will cost thousands of lives.
c.The empirics are against you – Efforts have led to unstable to brutal regimes in Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Algeria, Pakistan, Russia, and Sosia.
d. This makes future democracy impossible and turns your impacts.
2. Democratization drives marketization, which creates a corporate state that undermines rights and democratic interests of the populus, which turns case.
3. US demo promo supports organizations that undermine human rights. Often the very groups that we pander to in an attempt to foster democracy are the same ones that are truly undermining human rights. Turns case.
4. DIPLOMACY SOLVES WAR- diplomacy has occurred between democracies and non- democracies and can solve all the same scenarios that democracy can
a. Creates peace because there is a nonviolent means to resolve conflict
b. Encourages reform at a slow and maintainable pace
5. NUCLEAR PROLIF- when countries are deemed democracies they are allowed to have nukes, the more contries that have nukes the higher likelihood of an accidental launch or attack.
DOES NOT SOLVE TERRORISM:
1. No causal link between the democratic deficit in the Middle East and Islamist terrorism. Studies on democracy and terrorism show that there is no simple causal relationship between the lack of democracy and terrorism anywhere in the world.
2. Terrorism occurs in democracies – the persistence of terrorism in western Europe in the form of the IRA, ETA, 17 November, Red Army Faction, Red Brigades), in the UK, Spain, Greece, Germany and Italy, respectively, and others too, all exist even in mature democracies. Both victims and perpetrators of terrorist acts are more likely to be citizens of stable democratic countries.
3. There is no evidence that repression, or the exclusion of political parties from the political process leads them to take up arms. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers were established in 1978 when their ‘sister’ political party, the Tamil United Liberation Front, was the single largest opposition party in parliament.
4. Elections, a central aspect of democracy, generate violent confrontations. The resort to violence is most likely to take place when members of a group have their hopes and aspirations raised, but then become disillusioned with the political process.
5. Authoritarian states are less likely than democracies to allow terrorism. It is less easy for terrorist groups to perpetrate campaigns in authoritarian systems and that terrorism can only flourish in an environment that is at least partly democratic.
6. The transition from dictatorship to democracy could be turbulent and that ‘more than a few established democracies have struggled with persistent terrorist threats. Commentators have questioned the link between democracy and stability and the assertion that democracy will produce peaceful and prosperous regimes. Others point out that elections in the Middle East could return anti-Western Islamists to power.
Drones Good
1. Innocent deaths: Drone strikes kill civilians at a lower rate than most other common means of warfare because they permit high precision in targeting.
a. Damage: UAVs can carry small bombs that do less widespread damage.
b. Human error: There’s no human pilot whose fatigue may limit flight time or contribute to miscalculation in or accidental premature deployment of bombs.
c. Green: UAVs are low profile and relatively fuel-efficient, so they can spend more “time on target” than any manned aircraft.
d. Surveillance: UAVs can engage in persistent surveillance, spending hours, days, or even months monitoring a potential subject before striking.
e. Technology precision: UAVs are equipped with imaging technologies that enable operators thousands of miles away to see details as fine as individual faces, making them the most capable technology of distinguishing between civilians and combatants.
f. Empirically effective: The New America Foundation, between 2004 and 2012, came up with somewhere between 1,873 and 3,171 people killed overall in Pakistan, of whom between 282 and 459 were civilians. That means somewhere between 8 percent and 47 percent of Pakistan drone strike victims were probably civilians.
i. Constantly improving: The New America Foundation concludes that only three to nine civilians were killed during 72 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in 2011, and the 2012 number -- so far -- is zero civilians killed in 36 strikes. This is due to technological advances and far more stringent rules for when drones can release weapons.
ii. Pakistan: By October 2009, the CIA claimed to have killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al-Qaeda terrorist suspects in targeted killings using drones. By May 2010, counter-terrorism officials said that drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas had killed more than 500 militants since 2008, and no more than 30 (5%) nearby civilians—mainly family members who lived and traveled with the targets.
g. Loss of US lives: Drone strikes enable us to kill enemies without exposing our own personnel.
2. Economically easy: Drones reduce the dollar cost of using lethal force inside foreign countries.
a. Comparative bargain: Manned aircraft are quite expensive: Lockheed Martin's F-22 fighter jets cost about $150 million each; F-35s are $90 million; and F-16s are $55 million. But the 2011 price of a Reaper drone was $28.4 million, while Predator drones cost only about $5 million to make. (And Hellfire missiles are a steal at less than $60,000 each; you could buy one with a home equity loan.)
3. Domestic political costs: Sending special operations forces after a suspected terrorist places the lives of U.S. personnel at risk, and full-scale invasions and occupations endanger even more American lives. Using armed drones eliminates all short-term risks to the lives of U.S. personnel involved in the operations.
a. Avoids Congressional gridlock: Drone attacks don't involve "sustained fighting … active exchanges of fire … [or] U.S. ground troops," any need for congressional notification and approval under the War Powers Resolution can conveniently be avoided.)
Drones Bad
1. Removes the consequence of lethal force: If killing a suspected terrorist based in Yemen or Somalia will endanger expensive manned aircraft, the lives of U.S. troops, and/or the lives of many innocent civilians, U.S. officials will reserve such killings for situations of extreme urgency and gravity (stopping another 9/11, finally getting Osama bin Laden). But if all that appears to be at risk is an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually.
a. Pakistan: The New America Foundation, between 2004 and 2012, came up with somewhere between 1,873 and 3,171 people killed overall in Pakistan, of whom between 282 and 459 were civilians. That means somewhere between 8 percent and 47 percent of Pakistan drone strike victims were probably civilians. Each drone strike seems to have killed between 0.8 and 2.5 civilians, on average, over the last 8 years.
i. High-level (in)efficacy: S. Azmat Hassan, a former ambassador of Pakistan, said in July 2009 that American UAV attacks were turning Pakistani opinion against the United States, and that 35 or 40 such attacks only killed 8 or 9 top al-Qaeda operatives.
ii. Civilian deaths: Pakistani authorities released statistics indicating that between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, U.S. Predator and Reaper drone strikes have killed over 700 innocent civilians.
b. PTSD: A recent Air Force study found that 29 percent of drone pilots suffered from "burnout," with 17 percent "clinically distressed."
c. Civilian death rate: In July 2009, Brookings Institution released a report stating that in the United States-led drone attacks in Pakistan, ten civilians died for every militant killed.
2. Gives the president a free pass: Drone attacks don't involve "sustained fighting … active exchanges of fire … [or] U.S. ground troops," any need for congressional notification and approval under the War Powers Resolution can conveniently be avoided.)
a. Government in denial: Barack Obama's administration still refuses to openly acknowledge that the CIA uses drone strikes anywhere other than Pakistan (and this was acknowledged only recently and grudgingly).
b. Higher use rate: Increasingly, drones strikes have targeted militants who are lower and lower down the terrorist food chain, rather than terrorist masterminds. Strikes increasingly target individuals who pose speculative, distant future threats rather than only those posing urgent or catastrophic threats. Drone strikes are believed to have killed more than3,000 people since 2004, only a tiny fraction of the dead appear to have been so-called "high-value targets."
3. Short term solvency: Drones enable a "short-term fix" approach to counterterrorism, one that relies excessively on eliminating specific individuals deemed to be a threat, without much discussion of whether this strategy is likely to produce long-term security gains.
a. Hot battlefields: Drone strikes have spread ever further from "hot" battlefields, migrating from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia (and perhaps to Mali and the Philippines as well), which, empirically, increases anti-US sentiment and terrorist recruitment.
Expansion of Executive Power Good/Inevitable
1. Expansion of federal executive branch/bureaucracy - The President leads a federal bureaucracy that, among other powers, sets pollution standards for private industry, regulates labor relations, and governs a host of other activities. And as the federal bureaucracy continues to expand, so does the power of the Presidency. Even if Congress were able to limit the President’s direct control over the administrative state the President’s powers stemming from an expanded federal bureaucracy would still increase. This means that presidents are able to circumvent Congress’ attempts to limit their powers by delegating decision-making to office-holders in these agencies by retaining the power to appoint whoever aligns with their political agenda to office.
2. Control of information and intelligence - Because of its vast resources, the executive
branch has far greater access to information than do the other branches of government. In addition, the executive branch has a greater ability to gather and examine that information than do the legislative staffs in Congress. Congress, for example, does not have at its disposal the information gathering of intelligence agencies or the technical expertise of the military in determining when there is a threat to national security.
3. Military Capabilities - the President directly controls the most powerful military in the world and directs clandestine agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. That control provides the President with immensely effective, non-transparent capabilities to further his political agenda and/or diminish the political abilities of his opponents. As the capabilities of these agencies increase through technological advances in surveillance and other methods of investigation, so does the power of the President.
4. Speed of decision making - In the 21st century, the weapons of war take only seconds to arrive. The increased speed of warfare necessarily vests power in the institution that is able to respond the fastest – the presidency, not the Congress. Consequently, the President has unparalleled ability to direct the nation’s political agenda. Decisions made in times of emergency are not easily reversed; a President’s commitment of troops inevitably creates a “rally round the flag” reaction that reinforces the initial decision. As Vietnam and now Iraq have shown, Congress is likely to be very slow in second guessing a President’s decision that places soldiers’ lives in harm’s way, giving the President the first and a lasting say in the direction of military action.
5. Media Focus - Because the President is seen as speaking for the nation, the Presidency is imbued with a unique credibility. The President thereby holds an immediate and substantial
advantage in any political confrontation. Additionally, unlike the Congress or the Court, the President is uniquely able to demand the attention of the media and, in that way, can influence the Nation’s political agenda to an extent that no other individual, or institution, can even approximate. Additionally, the public often perceives national power as directly related to the power of the incumbent President. This is why the voters tends to become invested in a President as soon as he is elected, and is why his popularity always rises immediately after an election.
Financial Transactions Tax Answers
1. THERE IS NO IMPACT: The ‘Flash Crash’ was certainly odd, but it had no lasting impact. The market recovered almost as speedily as it crashed, which is no surprise. Even when computers are used to make trades, there are still people making decisions about how, and there are even more people who are watching the market for investment opportunities. These people guaranteed that the Flash Crash had no impact by investing in the stocks of companies who had appeared to ‘crash’ for no reason, making back all the money that people stupid enough to let their computers get out of control lost.
2. SPECULATIVE TRADING ISN’T CAUSED BY COMPUTERS: Any time there’s a profit to be made by observing market trends, rather than just economic fundamentals, and making a decision with that as the basis, you can be certain that many people are going to try to make money that way. You don’t succeed to reorienting how trade happens.
3. IMPACT TURN: MORE EXPENSIVE TRADES: Not only do you make trades more expensive directly by taxing, but, even if you win that that only affects the super-rich, you are still going to drive up the costs of doing trades for everyone else by driving up the ask-bid gap. Right now, the large volume of trades mostly caused by high-frequency trading drives down this cost because the overhead cost of being the market broker is covered by a very small fee per trade. If you lower the number of trades, you drive up the costs of doing trades, making it less accessible to many investors, hampering their social mobility and hurting investment of all types.
Federalism Good
1. Federalism promites civic engagement and the growth of civil society:
a. Federalism creates spaces for what Tocqueville saw as the distinguishing and sustaining feature of American democracy: the principle of association. This principle nurtures an energy of civic engagement that then could be transmitted throughout the country. A divided and limited government provides space for civil associations of all kinds because it does not take the resources necessary to support them and leaves objectives for people to pursue in common purpose. A unitary, majoritarian state is more likely to take the requisite resources and treat civil associations badly because they would be the sole barrier between it and absolute power
2. Federalism key to democracy and political participation:
a. States, are closer to the people and provide an opportunity for greater citizen involvement in the functional process of self-government. Local government does provide many more avenues for citizen participation than the national government. Eliminating the autonomy of states would weaken our democracy. Moreover, state and local governments appear to serve as breeding grounds for democracy - they provide a way for many people interested in public service to step on to the ladder in a manageable way.
3. Federalism is itself a type of democracy:
a. There are scholars who argue that federalism is analytically a part of democracy: It is thus possible to consider federalism as a pluralist democracy based on a constitutional system of delegated, reserved and/or shared powers between relatively autonomous, yet interrelated, structures of government, whose multiple interactions aim to serve the sovereign will. Federalism maintains and promotes this pluralism, making it a significant force for limited government and hence for personal freedom.
4. Federalism key to economic growth:
a. Federalism limits the government from engaging in excessive regulation and wasteful spending on behalf of interest groups. Economists today explain that because of these limitations, the original constitutional design of a federalist free-trading system facilitated the United States' steady growth, allowing it to become an economic superpower by the beginning of the twentieth century.
5. Federalism facilitates labor and capital mobility, which empirically boosts the economy:
a. Mobility of labor and capital, together, ensure that governments cannot easily expropriate wealth thereby destroying the prospect of economic growth. Competition among these local governments gave the nascent industrial revolution breathing room. It's often the case that technological change disrupts and diminishes the power of old industries and political coalitions and as a result these coalitions try to hold back innovation. It is important, therefore, that there be some way to escape the clutches of powerful coalitions, which federalism allows for by letting the people choose more directly the means by which they think regulation at the state level is necessary. This is what allowed the industrial revolution to take off.
6. Federalism decreases government inefficiency – centralization will only decrease growth:
a. The dissolution of the limitations on government embodied in federalism has had dramatic and unfortunate consequences. Without the limitations of federalism, the federal government has also imposed far more regulations on our enterprises. the marketplace for government among the states works less well because state regulatory and spending programs have relatively small effects compared to those of the federal government. Thus, because of federalism's decline, our governments, both state and federal, spend less efficiently and tax and regulate more than they would in a system restrained by constitutional federalism. As a result, our more centralized state hinders economic growth.
Federalism Good Impact – Hegemony
A. US leadership is preserved by the balance of federalism
Alice Rivlin, Brookings Institution, Reviving the American Dream: The Economy, The States, and the Federal Government, 1992.
If the United States is to be an effective world leader, it cannot afford a cumbersome national government overlapping responsibilities between the federal government and the states, and confusion over which level is in charge of specific domestic government functions. As the world shrinks, international concerns will continue threatening to crowd out domestic policy on the federal agenda. However, effective domestic policy is now more crucial than ever, because it is essential to U.S. leadership in world affairs. Unless we have a strong productive economy, a healthy, well-educated population, and a responsive democratic government, we will not be among the major shapers of the future of this interdependent world. If the American standard of living is falling behind that of other countries and its government structure is paralyzed, the United States will find its credibility in world councils eroding.
B. Nuclear war
Zalmay Khalilzad, RAND, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1995
Strong US leadership through federalism would create a world a world that will have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
Federalism Good Impact – Democracy
A. US leadership on federalism is essential to democracy worldwide
David Broder, Washington Post, June 24, 2001, “Lessons On Freedom.”
The struggle to maintain the legitimacy of representative government in the eyes of the public is a worldwide battle. Election turnouts are dropping in almost all the established democracies. Political parties -- which most of us have regarded as essential agents of democracy -- are in decline everywhere. They are viewed by more and more of the public as being tied to special interests or locked in increasingly irrelevant or petty rivalries -- anything but effective instruments for tackling current challenges. Federalism will be vital to its success. And, once again, the United States has important lessons to teach, but only if we can keep democracy strong and vital in our own country.
B. That solves extinction
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, October 1995, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s,” , accessed on 12/11/99
Threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the absence of democracy, with its provisions for accountability and openness. Countries that govern themselves in a democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens.
Federalism Good – Economy
Jan K. Brueckner Department of economics University of California 2005
Federalism, which allows public-good levels to be tailored to suit the differing demands of young and old consumers, who live in different jurisdictions increases the incentive to save. This stronger incentive in turn leads to an increase in investment in human capital, and a byproduct of this higher investment is faster economic growth. A recent empirical literature explores a different effect of fiscal federalism by studying the impact of decentralized public spending on economic growth... better targeting of growth-enhancing infrastructure investment under federalism could raise an economy's growth rate... Federalism thus alters the time path of after-tax income over the life cycle, thereby affecting the economy's level of saving.
US FEDERALISM IS MODELED:
1. US Federalism is modeled internationally – multiple nations have established federalist systems off of ours:
a. U.S. style constitutional federalism has become the order in an extraordinarily large number of countries. Nations that had been influenced long ago by American federalism have chosen to retain and formalize their federal structures. The federalist constitutions of Australia, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, for example were all essentially modeled after US-style federalism.
2. US federalism is modeled worldwide – continued respect for state’s rights is key:
a. desire for federalism has swept across the world in recent years due to global fascination with and emulation of our own American federalism success story. The trend toward federalism depends for its success on the willingness of sovereign nations to strike federalism deals in the belief those deals will be kept. The U.S must do its part to encourage the future striking of such deals by enforcing vigorously our own American federalism deal.
3. States’ rights are key to promoting federalism worldwide:
a. This American experience with the new judicial federalism has implications for an emerging federalist revolution worldwide This potential utility lies primarily in the concept of independent and adequate state constitutional powers that enable constituent governments to protect rights not available from a national government. Rights protection cannot be entrusted to a monopoly guardian. New federalism is situated at a critical intersection between individual rights and local autonomy – thus the best way to promote and model federalism to other nations.
Federalism Bad
1. Democracy solves their offense:
a. Without democracy, genuine federalism is impossible it is difficult for the federative form of the state to be anything more than a façade. While democracy is essential to federalism, federalism is not a necessary condition for democracy. The state cannot flout the laws that it enacts, especially the fundamental law of the land the state must set an example for citizens, by striving to act always within the legal framework
2. Federalism sparks ethnic wars:
a. Federalism promotes localism, ethnic and racial xenophobia and undermines the sense of nationhood. The US and Nigeria are survivors of debilitating separatist wars, India bleeds from secessionist movements, and the introduction of regionalism in Ethiopia has fueled conflict. Federalsim sets regions down a spiral of decline, as it subjects local governments to double subordination by the central and regional governments-and the citizens to triple taxation. At a time when the country's economy is on its knees, the feasibility of a well-financed transition isn’t possible.
3. Federalism kills the economy:
a. without accountability and transparency mechanisms, decentralization can encourage dangerous opportunistic behavior by state and local authorities. such opportunism could undermine macroeconomic stability. The most vivid manifestation of this phenomenon is the softening of subnational budget constraints (like states allowing themselves to deficit spend at the expense of the nation as a whole and its citizens who are ultimately burdened with cutbacks and tax hikes.
4. Federalism Kills biodiversity:
a. Federalism doctrines may undermine biodiversity for both ethical and practical reasons because they unduly check national authority. Biodiversity protection is more the province of national elites. biodiversity is frustrated by lower-level resistance. The root of the problem is the preference for local decision-making that runs through much federalism jurisprudence. This preference can frustrate biodiversity because it concentrates power at the level where opposition to biodiversity protection may be the strongest.
5. Federalsim leads to secessionist fragmentation and violence:
a. Federations generally accord equal legal status among their constituent parts, but the reality is that those constituent parts are often unequal in terms of development, population, and economic power. The examples of Mali, Uganda, Ethiopia, Zaire (now Congo), Nigeria, Kenya, and the Cameroons bear out the conclusion that these efforts have failed. Fragmentary ingredients such as historical, ethnic, religious, customary, or linguistic differences, a divisive stew can come to brew in which one may try to jump out of the pot, causing chaos to ensue.
FEDERALISM ISN’T MODELED:
1. US federalism is inapplicable to the rest of the world:
a. U.S. federalism is considered to be constitutionally symmetrical. Asymmetrical arrangements that grant different rights are now not part of the U.S. model of federalism. However, most democratic countries that have adopted federal systems have chosen not to follow the U.S. model. Indeed, American-style federalism embodies some values that would be very inappropriate for democratizing countries, especially multinational polities
2. US federalism is inapplicable to contemporary fedral developments:
a. . Despite the prestige of this U.S. model of federalism, it would seem to hold greater historical interest than contemporary attraction for other democracies. . In contrast to the United States, these federations are constitutionally asymmetrical and more "demos-enabling" than "demos-constraining.". It would obviously defeat the purpose of such a new federation if it were constitutionally symmetrical. Many of the new federations that could emerge from the currently nondemocratic parts of the world would probably be territorially based, multilingual, and multinational. Very few, if any, such polities would attempt to consolidate democracy using the U.S. model of "coming-together," "demos-constraining," symmetrical federalism.
3. Other countries, especially Latin America, China, and Europe, won’t want to model US federalism – empirically denied:
a. Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways—none made in America. an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law is a model that's caught on quickly. America has grown incapable of recognizing its flaws, and the rest of the world has lost faith in the American model.
b. When nations write a new constitution, as dozens have in the past two decades, they seldom look to the American model. When the soviets withdrew from Central Europe, U.S. constitutional experts rushed in. They got a polite hearing, and were sent home. Drafting a post-apartheid constitution, South Africa rejected American-style federalism in favor of a German model, which leaders deemed appropriate for the social-welfare state they hoped to construct. Now fledgling African democracies look to South Africa as their inspiration
c. New democracies are looking for a constitution written in modern times and reflecting their progressive concerns about racial and social equality. The US’s refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions and ratify global human-rights treaties only reinforces the conviction that America's Constitution and legal system are out of step with the rest of the world.
IMPACT DEFENSE:
1. Federalism doesn’t accommodate minorities:
a. there is no guarantee that accommodation in a society divided by ethnic conflict will result in a long-lasting peace. Moreover, state elites are reluctant to consider accommodation as an option because they believe that a federative arrangement would give ethnic groups an even more legitimate opportunity to break away. All post-Soviet states, except for Russia and Romania, rather than enhancing the status of their ethnic groups have nominally discarded even the existing political autonomies since re-working their consitutions to become federations in name only since 1992. If states are not liberal by their ideology, if they are not economically secure and politically well- established democracies, they tend to reject the option of accommodation to the demands of ethnic groups.
2. Federalism isn’t democratic – multiple examples prove violence is the result:
a. Multi-national or multi-ethnic federations have either broken down, or have failed to remain democratic, throughout the communist world, and throughout the post-colonial world. The federations of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia disintegrated during or immediately after their respective democratisations. Of all these states, the federations experienced the most violent transitions. . In Asia there have been federative failures in Indochina, in Burma, in Pakistan (the secession of Bangladesh), and in the union of Malaya all of which have resulted in ethnic cleansing.
Foreign Aid Good
1. Fosters Pro-American Sentiments
a. Giving counties money helps strengthen relations between the US and our allies.
2. Protecting HRs
a. Aid in places like Kenya helps ensure human rights are being protected.
3. Democracy Promotion
a. Some aid, like that which is going to Egypt, promotes democracy which is good because democratic nations are less likely to go to war with eachother.
(A2: Foreign Aid Bad)
1. U.S government realizes when governments are passing on the aid to their people and cut it off.
2. Anti-American sentiments would be there rather we were giving assitance through aid or not. Even if we weren’t aiding our allies we woulud still assist them, probably with our military presence which would be even more interventionalistic.
3. U.S quality of life is much better than in the countries we are supporting. There is often lots of bloodshed in the areas that we are aiding which justifies military and economic aid.
Foreign Aid Bad
1. Corrupt Governments
a. We provide aid to mostly non-stable nations. These nations, such as Egypt, may not provide the aid to their people which fuels corruption.
2. Anti-American Sentiments
a. When we give a lot of money and miltary technology to one side of the war we aren’t letting it naturally resolve which means that there will always be unsettled conflict which will cause cyclical violence. The side that we aren’t supporting often develops anti-american views.
3. Neglects Domestic Issues
a. U.S economy is down, we are making cuts to vital social programs as a response. Since a lot of our aid is not related to humanitarianism but instead promoting our economic and military objectives, it would be better spent on humanitarian efforts at home.
(A2: Foreign Aid Good)
1. Aid is also seen as favoratism towards certain countries. We often support one side of a conflict (our allies, like Isreal) which causes the oppossing side to foster even more anti-American sentiments.
2. Very little of our foreign aid goes to HR promotion.
3. Our contributions to promoting democracies often cause even more bloodshed as we provide more economic support to uprisings than military protection so the oppressive government just reacts with more military force, resulting in more death.
Free Trade Good
LOL
Free Trade Bad
1. Free Trade Kills Democracy
a. It cedes control of domestic policy to multinational corporations which are not accountable to citizens and the general public has no control over. Businesses use this absolute power to promote their own interests such as property rights, low labor standards, and low environmental regulations at the expense of consumer rights, destroying the base for democracy.
Mini Disad: Counterfiet Drugs
Uniqueness
1. Counterfeit drugs currently make up about 10-30% of the drug market in Latin America [insert U for whatever area of the world the plan causes free trade with]
2. The Pan American Health Organization reports that steps are now being taken to address this problem, with the cooperation of the pharmaceutical industry and government organizations.
Links
1. Free trade zones make trade in counterfeit drugs relatively easy. In these zones, tariffs are waived and there is minimal regulatory oversight
2. Counterfeiters use these zones to hide a drugs origin or make the drugs themselves
3. These are also where internet drug salespeople set up their operations. Over 50% of drugs purchased online are counterfeit.
Impacts
1. Counterfeit medicine kills people and turns case (causes distrust in internal market liberalization).
a) Mass poisonings in Latin America and around the world kill thousands of people each year.
b) More importantly, counterfeit drugs cause populations to lose their trust in modern medicine and health care systems.
c) This is particularly devastating in undeveloped areas, where populations are only just begin to trust modern health practices. This leads to suffering and the spread of disease throughout large areas of the population.
d) It also creates distrust in modern trade, turning case. Far better to approach free trade slowly and internally so that the appropriate government regulatory agencies can be built from the ground-up.
2. Counterfeit drugs also support organized crime, propping up massive illegal operations.
a) This leads to the spread of violence and disorder throughout nations. People die, chaos and disorder reign.
GMOs Good
1. Feeding the world:
Biogenetics makes it possible to insert an insect’s gene into a plant or vaccines into bananas or potatoes, to create a variety of rice that needs no more water than a camel (instead of the 4,000 to 5,000 liters necessary to produce one kilo), or to enrich plants with vitamins and minerals and develop others that revitalize acidic soil devastated by over-farming. Further, the potential to introduce new metabolic pathways into plants is enormous and could lead to the development of plants able to grow in inhospitable environments, provide healthier foodstuffs or improved raw materials. This means that ultimately GMOs can solve for poor food production, food riots, and starvation.
2. Better for the environment and people:
GMO crops produce higher yields, are more disease resistant, needs less chemical pesticides and can be designed to have more calories and more vitamins and minerals per bite of food. These are all very good things in a world that is quickly approaching 7 billion, and which conservative estimates say will at the very least soon reach 9 billion.
3. No adverse health effects – we’ve been using these practices forever:
GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved. GMO crops work very similarly to every other sort of crop humans have ever had – in fact, humans have been using similar practices for genetic engineering since we began farming over 10,000 years ago. Selective breeding, that is, breeding for certain traits, . . is a process humans are very well acquainted with.
GMOs Bad
1. Pesticides:
Indirectly: GMOs can change the micro-environment after their release in addition to their direct ecological effects if management of herbicides and insecticides has been altered as well. Many GMOs require the use of harsh pesticides, which affect biodiversity and population dynamics of insects and mircoorganisms. These alterations have ripple effects throughout the food chain, as everything from arthropods to pollinating insects to birds will be exposed to these chemicals. There have been cases where these pesticides were toxic to surrounding animals and absolutely devastated the surrounding ecosystem (read bio-d impacts de jour)
2. Genetic Pollution:
GM crops could cause ‘genetic pollution’ of non-GM crops grown nearby. Corn, for example, readily cross-pollinates across space. . . There is concern as well that GM crops colud transfer their novel traits to wild relatives through weed crop hybridization. In the case of plants designed to be herbicide of virus-resistant, this could produce so-called ‘super weeds’ more widespread and difficult to control than their predecessors, which can take over entire ecosytems and out-compete other plants (bio-d impacts)
3. Monocultures:
An over-reliance on GM crops causes huge monocultures to develop, which puts our food security at risk to any disease. This is especially important in a world in which pests and diseases can develop that are resistant to the built-in pesticides of these plants. Entire crops could be wiped out on a national level, which causes food riots, price spikes, starvation, etc.
4. Human Health:
To the extent that insect-resistant crops function by expressing a toxin, there are human health concerns about the presence of that toxin in residues on produce, in groundwater, or in the soil. Some groups and scientists point out that insertion of a new gene into an established crop plant could yield any number of unforeseeable (and perhaps initially undetectable) undesirable traits in the resulting transgenic product. Such foods could be toxic to humans directly or just poison the groundwater/runoff.
5. They cause animal miscarriages
Researchers claim that Roundup Ready GM crops contain an organism, completely unknown until now, that has been shown to cause miscarriages in farm animals. It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases..."
5. They require the ground to be cleared of above-ground biomass before planting to reduce risks of hybridization
GMO crop fields often reduce above-ground biomass by 60% in the areas they are being cultivated. This permanently alters local landscapes of grasslands, wetlands, and destroys the habitats of endemic species. Biodiversity has evolved around farming for centuries; the diverse range of habitats and species in traditional agricultural landscapes, have provided invaluable aesthetic values and public benefits like countryside character, and ecosystem services covering soil, water and air quality.
In agricultural landscapes, permanent grassland, fallow, and landscape features provide valuable habitat diversity and resources for wildlife. Farmland birds use these farmed habitats to nest and feed themselves and their chicks, as crops provide seeds and host a variety of insects, other invertebrates and small mammals. Proves they’re key to the development of keystone structures, which determine species biodiverisity in a given area.
Heg Good
LIES!
INTERNAL LINKS:
1. US power sustainable – other countries have stopped trying to take over the role of hegemon because our supremacy is overarching
a. Military power – our military power is far superior to any other nation in both conventional and technological weapons. This means we can sustain troops in any area of the globe for extended periods of time. We account for half the world’s military spending meaning, we have specialization in every area and the eleven best fleets in the world. No other country can rival that.
b. Geography would make it difficult for another country to attack the US, and no one wants to aggravate their neighbors because we have allies in every major region
c. Economy- we produce 30% of the gross product meaning that we still have a huge influence in global economy and other countries depend on us for resources. Though the dollar has weakened it still remains the dominant currency – this takes into account the economic crisis
2. No counterbalancing
a. Military power projection makes resistance futile, enemies would have to exert more spending and force then they could hope to gain in war against us. US nuke stockpiles ensure any attacker would be destroyed
b. Most of the world’s major countries – Europe, Asian powers, and most democracies – are aligned with us. Even countries that are not aligned with the US lack other allies meaning they do not have resources to counterbalance
c. Most counterbalancing is just rhetorical posturing – empirically proven by lack of an attack
3. China cannot challenge us
a. Focusing on domestic issues- rapidly aging population, imbalance between sexes, political corruption, poverty, half the population has no medical care or education.
b. No global power – as long as the US is aligned with Japan we will have enough influence in the region, and China does not want to power project outside the region.
c. n=No military allies- all of China’s diplomatic relations have gone into creating economic allies not military allies meaning they cannot challenge us in military power. Furthermore they are still 20 years behind us in tech development.
4. US Power Projection inevitable
a. Public support ensures power projection – this sustains our military spending. It’s politically favorable to take the stance of advocating expansive security measures and is basically politically inconceivable that either party would unequivoally back off of military pre-eminance and interventionism. Additionally, US political power players value the US’ role as a global hegemon – this is why we make investments in areas where no competition exists. This is why the US continued to expand its global reach, with an annual defense budget of over $500 billion (likely $600 billion if supplemental spending is included) and a continued expansion of overseas bases.
GENERIC – COUNTERBALANCING
1. Hegemony stops war - Checks military competition
a. reduces competition – other countries accept military dominance of the hegemon because challenging their superior resources are too dangerous.
b. binds actors – Hegemons allow allies to free ride on their benefits, which creates allies instead of enemies. Allies take cover under US power umbrella, this means less weapons and less risk of accidental launch or warfare
c. reduces incentive – Creates unity in international norms which destroys incentive for war
2. Multipolarity balances violently – absence of US heg creates power vacuums where countries have to jockey for position as leaders. This increases weapons arsenals and transforms international relations into a sphere of power projection. This destroys all other methods of international conflict resolution and increases chance of an accidental launch.
3. Heg prevents nuke war – US hegemony is key to maintaining stability in many key regions
a. Western Europe – Germany and Russia would compete for domination. Britain and France fear German leadership and would cause retaliation
b. Asia – Japan would start nuclear production which would destabilize the region because China and Korea fear Japanese hegemony
c. Persian Gulf – Iran and Iraq will fight for dominance in the region, oil rich countries would be left without protection causes countries such as Saudi Arabia to create nuclear weapons. Peace resolution between Israelis and Arabs would become impossible.
d. Emerging powers- emerging countries such as India, a United Korea, and would attempt to compete for a place in global relations
e. US retaliation- US would be pushed out of the new global regimen and causing them to take violent action to protect their economic interests
IMPACT – IRAN PROLIF:
Heg solves Iran prolif.
Military strength and the visible will to use it is essential to persuading regimes like those in Tehran to abandon programs they wish to pursue. We have been trying the diplomatic approach, unsupported by meaningful military threat, for nearly fifteen years with North Korea, and the result has been utter failure. A similar approach in Iran has been just as unsuccessful. Try or die for hard power.
IMPACT – ME STABILITY
Heg solves Middle East stability.
The United States is the preponderant outside power in the Persian Gulf. Its position there helps to discourage the rise of a rival and will put it in a strong position to compete should one arise. U.S. preponderance serves the interests of the members of the zone of peace because it helps diminish the threat of interruption of oil supplies from the region. But the threat of hostile regional hegemony remains. The United States, with support from its allies, needs to maintain adequate military capability to deter and defeat the threat of regional hegemony from Iraq or Iran.
a. The United States has the ability to transport significant forces to these theaters and to the Middle East should tensions rise, and it preserves the ability to control the sea lanes and air corridors necessary to the security of its forward bases. Moreover, the United States maintains the world's largest intelligence and electronic surveillance organizations. Estimated to exceed $ 30 billion in 2003, the U.S. intelligence budget is larger than the individual military budgets of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and North Korea.
IMPACT – CHINA
Hegemony prevents South China Sea war
a. Military tensions in the South China Sea are escalating as NK ratchets up its military antagonism- earlier this year, NK attacked a SK warship, and NK has withdrawn from its armistice with SK, making the two countries technically at war once again. China’s negative reaction to increased US support of SK indicates that it is more openly taking the side of NK.
b. In a world where US hegemony is falling relative to Chinese heg and NK is less than a year from working nuclear missiles, Japan and SK aren’t going to trust the US to continue to protect them. If Japan and SoKo produce nuclear arms, China will feel threatened and increase its military presence in the SCS, prompting the US to react similarly.
c. With five nuclear actors patrolling the region and tensions high, conflict will eventually ensue and will always have to go nuclear, particularly with NK involved. This eventually escalates into a retaliatory nuclear war, which draws in US and Chinese allies and becomes a nuclear WWIII, which destroys the world.
IMPACT – INDIA/PAKISTAN
The US is a key ally to both India and Pakistan, and both rely on the US as a military power to check the other. However, as US heg declines further, India and Pakistan will re-escalate their military antagonism over the disputed Kashmir region. Eventually, as both move troops into and around the region, conventional conflict will break out and become conventional war between the two countries. Long standing ethnic tensions will justify the use of nuclear weapons, killing hundreds of millions, if not billions, and breaking the nuclear taboo.
Heg Bad
TRUTH!
1. US Heg Unsustainable –
a. Economic constraints- increase in relative wealth of other countries combined with decrease in the dollar makes it increasingly difficult for other US to shut out other countries. US needs to rely on other countries for economic support means we have to kowtow to their interests
b. Military constraints- China’s increasing military power along with increasing manpower of Russia and India make them more powerful, decrease in US security umbrella is causing Eurasia rearm
c. Diplomatic constraints- US will lose diplomatic ties when more authoritarian countries can achieve goals more effectively
2. Believe the hype: US hegemony is coming to an end
a. Chinese growth will allow it to overtake the US China's population is more than four times that of the United States. The famous projection by Goldman Sachs that China's economy will be bigger than that of the United States by 2027 was made before the 2008 economic crash. At the current pace, China could be No. 1 well before then.
b. China already challenges – China's economic prowess is already allowing Beijing to challenge American influence all over the world. The Chinese are the preferred partners of many African governments and the biggest trading partner of other emerging powers, such as Brazil and South Africa. China is also stepping in to buy the bonds of financially strapped members of the eurozone.
c. Skeptics point to problems in the Chinese economy. Despite structural flaws, the Chinese economy has kept growing, doubling in size roughly every seven years. Even if you factor in considerable future economic and political turbulence, the Chinese challenge to U.S. power will not simply disappear. Once countries get the hang of economic growth, it takes a great deal to throw them off course. Germany went through two catastrophic military defeats, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, the collapse of democracy, and the destruction of its major cities and infrastructure by Allied bombs. And yet by the end of the 1950s, West Germany was once again one of the world's leading economies.
d. Our allies are less relevant - America's traditional allies (Britain, France, Italy, Germany) are slipping down the economic ranks. New powers are on the rise: India, Brazil, Turkey. They each have their own foreign-policy preferences, which collectively constrain America's ability to shape the world.
e. Trade and democracy aren’t always pro-US. Economic growth has not led inevitably to democratization and when it does, new democracies aren’t inevitably more friendly and helpful toward the United States. Even if The idea that democracies are liable to agree on the big global issues is now being undermined on a regular basis.
f. Globalization IS zero-sum. It is a central tenet of modern economics that trade is mutually beneficial for both partners, a win-win rather than a zero-sum. But that implies the rules of the game aren't rigged. Rivalry between a rising China and a weakened America is now apparent across a whole range of issues, from territorial disputes in Asia to human rights.
TRANSITION NOW GOOD:
Transition now key –
First, the longer the US tries to maintain power the more time other powers will have to build up resources making the transition more violent. If the US conserves its resources they will be better able to increase stability in the long run. Waiting to accept multipolarity ensures that US will have to fight to maintain its dominance.
Second, it’s not worth it: we’d get at most thirty more years of hegemony, which pales in comparison to:
a. A global nuclear war from extended deterrence failures that could happen any day
b. Inevitable terrorist attacks that can only be solved through disengagement
Inflation Good
1. Higher inflation key to stopping recession: if rates of inflation increase, and companies don’t alter the wages of their employees, then they are able to technically decrease pay for employees while not cutting pay (which would infuriate workers). Decrease in worker pay gives the business more capital.
2. Inflation solves mortgages: increased inflation takes away the weight of payments on houses or other large loans, and increases the purchasing power of the money that was originally used.
3. Incentivizes spending: higher currency spending power means that people will spend more money
Inflation Bad
1. Increases in inflation make it difficult to analyze the causes of increased demand (is the higher price due to inflation or increased demand). This not only causes business confidence to drop, but it also causes businesses to not receive adequate prices for their goods, leading to more bankruptcy and lack of finances
2. High inflation tends to have high variance, meaning that the problem in 1. becomes more and more prevalent as inflation increases. It’s essentially a positive feedback loop that ends in complete instability and loss of confidence
Iran Proliferation Good
1. Pursuing nuclear technology allows Iran to develop science programs that feed into their civil nuclear sector. Without this tech, millions would starve or die without electricity and medical treatments. Dehum.
2. Allowing Iran to have nuclear technology allows them to become a regional hegemon and power project against Israel. It’s only in a world in which they look weak that Israel would first strike. Iran’s nuclear technology is the best deterrant for a first strike.
3. Not allowing Iran to develop its nuclear technology is racist. The West has appointed itself as the arbiter of who gets nuclear technology. This feeds anti-US sentiment, which is the root cause of terrorism and the drive to strike at the US and its allies.
LOST Good
1. MILITARY SURVEY RIGHTS
a. LOST allows for military surveys in non-foreign waters for signatories.
i. The freedom of navigation provisions (sections 58 and 87) permit general wandering around in the ocean and surveying.
1. Survey activities and marine scientific research come as a result of US and UK lobbying circa LOST III.
ii. Even in foreign EEZs, any lawful action is okay.
b. Military surveys are undertaken in ocean and costal waters—often solely composed of marine data collection. This data is essential for effective submarine operations, anti-submarine warfare, mine warfare, and mine countermeasure.
c. Military surveys are key in the South and EastChinaSeas where oceanographic and underwater acoustic conditions vary widely with uneven bottom topography, fast tidal streams, and a relatively high level of marine life.
i. If the US doesn’t ratify LOST, countries in Southern Asia (especially China) who don’t want the US in the area can block military surveys in their waters, hampering the ability of the US to conduct pre-warfare surveys and giving us no legal recourse for stopping them.
d. Any small tiff with a nation in Southern Asia will risk war with China in the South China Sea because China will need to enforce its regional hegemony.
i. This is only preventable if China perceives the US as strong outside of the EEZs or surveying in international waters while aligning with international law that would give China leverage to prosecute the US if they felt threatened.
e. AND, greater transparency in military surveying prevents a lot of bad risks we take now.
i. Underwater bumping accidents are a huge risk now because we are unaware of the marine wildlife population densities so are forced to turn off sonar and communication with central command. This is especially risky with subs containing nuclear material.
ii. Pre-emptive strikes and raids on presumed enemy ships could be entirely stopped, given a greater access to knowledge of other vessels in the area.
2. BASING RIGHTS
a. The US really wants to be able to build floating bases in foreign waters. Under LOST and international consensus, if we ratify LOST, the US would be able to do this.
b. US floating bases are key to air flights.
i. Floating bases act as prime refueling stations that are often far enough out of the way of conflict zones that they are not subject to targeting, but simultaneously close enough that they US is able to have a secure location to refuel planes and hold supplies for troops.
1. Floating bases accept ship-borne cargo, provide 3 million square feet for equipment storage, store 10 million gallons of fuel, and can house up to 3,000 troops.
c. If they US doesn’t ratify LOST, we can’t build floating bases, because we won’t have legal jurisdiction to do military surveying or EEZs to build on.
d. Without floating bases, we risk losing our ability to prevent war and to win war.
i. Since floating bases are mobile, we are able to more easily move and rebuild them in locations that are in our strategic best interests.
3. SCIENCE (realer than threats.)
a. The International Seabed Authority has a budget of $6.3 million a year and a staff of 35 to promote scientific (health and alternative energy) exploration on the high seas.
b. Diversification of exploration techniques has lead to rapid research and development as well as great breakthroughs.
i. This competition will speed up the current tech race over oil and gas extraction has lead to a fraction of the inevitable advances facilitating drilling in deep and frigid environments, made even more possible by shrinking polar ice caps, ie. Through-tube rotary drilling.
ii. The Russian Federation, Korea, China, Japan, France, India, Germany, and a bunch of Eastern European nations that make up the IOM have been contracting to develop technology to exploit the Arctic and the US could be next!
c. Further research into the Arctic has lead scientists to discover lots of important deposits, like manganese modules containing manganese, cobalt, copper, and nickel, scattered around the surface of the ocean floor.
i. Manganese is the key element used in new battery technology and cobalt has been used in a lot of green car technology and in the generation of biofuels.
4. THE ARCTIC IS GETTING LOTS OF ACTION. The Arctic has seen more mapping expeditions in the past 5 years than it had in the previous 50 because many countries are reaching their deadline for application for Arctic zones (10 years after LOST ratification).
a. KEY TO STOPPING RUSSIAN ARCTIC GRAB. At the end of September, the Russian Geographic Society hosted an international meeting in Moscow regarding potential and future exploitation of the arctic for oil and gas while protecting its environment.
b. RUSSIA HAS TRIED LAYING CLAIM FOR ITS ECONOMY. In 2001, Russia submitted a claim under LOST to an undersea mountain range allegedly extending from its continental shelf, called the Lomonosov Ridge. It is estimated to hold more crude oil than Russia's entire reserves.
i. The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is the UN body tasked to establish the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond countries' EEZs.
c. THE UN REJECTED RUSSIA. The UN said no because Russia lacked clear evidence, which they have since been trying to secure. At the end of September, Russia announced that it would dedicate $64 million to bringing its claim back to the UN in 2012.
i. THE US THINKS RUSSIA IS WRONG. The US has been reassuring itself every summer since 2003 that this mountain range extends off its continental shelf by taking ice breakers through the Beaufort Sea.
d. RUSSIA IS LAYING SYMBOLIC CLAIM. In 2007, Russia planted a titanium flag on the Arctic floor in a symbolic gesture that pissed off every other country that have control in the Arctic Circle, ie. Canada, the US, Denmark, and Norway. All of these nations responded with combative rhetoric and a hurriedly convened meeting in Greenland to discuss the Russian aggression.
i. NATO announced that the Arctic is a strategically important region. The four other countries Russia is competing with for this range are all NATO members
ii. Last month, Medvedev announced that Russia didn't think NATO had any business in the Arctic.
e. RUSSIA IS WILLING TO BRING OUT ITS BOOTS. Last September, Russia announced that it is willing to use its military to protect its claim over Arctic resources. Russia acknowledges that this might destroy its relations with allies and it is okay with that.
i. In 2009, Russia announced that before 2020, it will establish a Coast Guard to patrol the Arctic, under the control of the Federal Security Service.
ii. In response, Canada is building 8 ice breaking patrol ships to the sum of $7.1 billion. The US is considering an $8.7 billion budget reauthorization bill for the Coast Guard to send the nation’s three existing polar icebreakers to the Arctic Circle and build two more.
f. Fun fact: Russia is already in the works of producing a new, comprehensive atlas of the Arctic.
5. THE REGION WITH THE MOST RESOURCES WILL DEPEND ON THE LOMONOSOV RIDGE. 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil is in the Arctic.The USGS estimates that the Eurasian side of the Arctic holds around 63% of the total undiscovered oil and gas while the North American side holds 36%. The Eurasian side hold 73% of the gas and condensates and the North American side has about 26%. The North American side has 65% of oil and the Eurasian side has 34%. The key indeterminate region is the Lomonosov Ridge, which is 1800km across.
6. TERRITORIAL DISPUTES. LOST establishes territorial boundaries within open water for nations on a 200 nautical mile guide, referred to as their EEZ. As an extension, countries can apply for additional territory in unclaimed water that are approved or denied by the ISA, after being reviewed by the UN.
a. LOST is key to resolving territorial disputes because it’s the only international treaty that establishes boundaries within the water, giving it uncontested authority.
b. LOST is a UN treaty that has been signed by 160 nations, making it the most widely-respected international treaty.
7. ECONOMY.
a. LOST has provisions for protecting and maintaining the fiber optic cables through which the world communicates in terms of the military and commercial industry. This is why the US telecommunications industry is a strong supporter of LOST.
i. Information sharing is key to the economy and international relations because it incentivizes competition to make better technology, stimulating the economy, as well as strengthens relations by giving us better communicative ties with international partners.
b. About 44% of US maritime commerce consists of petroleum and petroleum products. Since LOST is key to development of domestic offshore oil and natural gas resources, the US will experience significant economic benefits from ratifying the treaty.
i. With the amount of oil that it is likely that the US will get from the EEZs we would be granted, we would be able to reduce our foreign dependence on oil.
8. ENVIRO LEADERSHIP
a. Ratifying LOST would signify US interest in the health of the world’s oceans and the living resources they contain, because it addresses marine pollution from a variety of sources. Although the US already has laws regulating protection of the marine environment, we would be in a stronger position to model.
i. LOST would protect marine species by improving international coordination of ocean conservation efforts, especially on marine protected areas and high seas fisheries and in the battle against ocean pollution.
ii. If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain life. Ocean species filter toxins from the water, protecting the shorelines and reducing the risk of algae blooms.
b. LOST requires the enforcement of environmental regulations up to 200 miles offshore (the country’s EEZ), empowering countries to stop pollution and ocean dumping caused by unregulated ships. LOST also helps the fisheries of coastal states by allowing them to set limits within their EEZ, protecting migratory fish stocks, like tuna and billfish, even beyond 200 miles.
i. With fisheries being depleted or collapsing in the squo and pollution plaguing coastal regions, the time for US protection and enforcement is now. LOST ensures a stricter minimum requirement to protect and preserve the marine environment.
LOST Bad
1. MILITARY SECRET THEFT
a. LOST allows for military surveys in non-foreign waters for signatories.
i. The freedom of navigation provisions (sections 58 and 87) permit general wandering around in the ocean and surveying. Even in foreign EEZs, any lawful action is okay.
ii. IN REALITY, the legal language of these sections provide no actual recourse for a country who has another country’s intelligence subs sitting right outside their EEZs, picking up their radio transmissions and running up next to their subs and ships on the periphery.
1. The only people who think that surveying means peaceful activities aren’t actually involved in the process.
b. Highly militarized areas patrolled and/or controlled by the US are: Cyprus, the North Korean coast, the Iranian peninsula, etc.
i. We will lose our ability to posture militarily to prevent movement off these coastlines if we ratify LOST, since military posturing is illegal and would be within these countries’ EEZs.
1. Currently we have military installations in cascading order, blocking radio signals, etc.
c. Other countries will be able to steal our military secrets and tactics as they survey within our EEZs.
i. In the status quo, the US can ward onlookers off, since we aren’t a LOST signatory. This spike in enemy surveillance will scare US military officials, making them more likely to first-strike and practice aggressive techniques.
ii. Or, possibly worse, to be more covert, our subs will turn off their communication with central command in order to prevent being overheard, and will bump into other subs (this could be very dangerous if either contains nuclear material) or into marine habitats.
2. INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY
a. The ISA is the body that countries have to go through to file their request to mine or explore an area outside of their EEZ. Their mission statement is to help lower-tier countries get richer/more exploration done. It’s the Affirmative Action of ocean surveying.
b. Each area that the ISA gives out to explore in is limited to 150,000 square km, of which half is to be relinquished to the ISA after 8 years.
i. Each contractor is required to report once a year on its activities in its assigned area. So far, no contracts have indicated any serious move to begin commercial exploitation.
c. The US is the best researching nation and mineral finder; if we lose contracts and rights to the ISA, especially in the Pacific, we can’t find alternative energy resources or medical minerals.
i. The free Markey and patent race incentivises the search for medicine and alternative energy. By regulating this, the ISA stifles research and development.
d. Further research into the Arctic has lead scientists to discover lots of important deposits, like manganese modules containing manganese, cobalt, copper, and nickel, scattered around the surface of the ocean floor.
i. Manganese is the key element used in new battery technology and cobalt has been used in a lot of green car technology and in the generation of biofuels.
3. DETECTION OF BAD ACTIVITIES
a. Incentives to explore are given by the ISA to infant nations with severely underdeveloped infrastructure and legal standards by which they can explore.
i. This trades off funding from infrastructure development, which is key to long term economic sustainability, to research and exploration, which is a short term competitive edge that the infant nation might gain, but not have the stability to do anything with.
ii. Without strong legal regulations on infant nations, environmental concerns inevitably become a low priority in the face of what is perceived as a potential economic gain.
b. Ships can be equipped with technologies that look and feel like others or are hidden, making it difficult for governing forces to check against illegal activity.
i. The sonar used to map territories also is capable of monitoring military activities.
ii. The drilling techniques used to sample soil can be used to extract minerals.
iii. Whaling ships can be disguised as legal fishing ships.
c. The increase of exploration and shipping by new nations requires an increase in monitoring by every state.
i. The ISA has no enforcement authority or mechanism, forcing the states to step up to check against international abuses of permits.
ii. The US currently monitors military activity across the globe, but trade and surveying have no real infrastructure for monitoring except port security and the individual coast guards of the nations involved.
iii. The increase in surveying explained in case will cause a shock to port security, making everyone more vulnerable.
4. LEGAL TROUBLE
a. The US has ships all over the ocean; if we ratify LOST, we can have claims levied against us for illegal military activity and research/exploration in zones that we would no longer have any excuse to pretend we have jurisdiction over.
i. This is bad for soft power because it makes us look like we’ve been taking advantage of lots of countries for a long time, stealing their resources and unnecessarily polluting their waters.
1. Recent deep-sea exploration of Indonesia’s Sangihe Talaud Region would probably be called into question or our expeditions into Bermuda or our exploration of Isla Espritu Santo off the coast of Mexico to name a few.
ii. This is bad for the economy because other countries will pull out investment and be less likely to loan in the US if all our international water action is suddenly being called into question. Since we will also have to pay settlement fees, this will skew our already balanced budget.
Offshore Drilling Good
ENVIORNMENT-
1.NOT CAUSE BRINK OF ECO-COLAPSE- even if they win that offshore drilling can have a negative effect they don’t prove that the aff reaches the brink of extinction. Current regulations on American offshore drilling prohibit drilling in environmentally sensitive areas such as Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska.
a. TURN: PLAN LEADS TO BETTER ENVIORNMENAL RESEARCH- Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard to determine key environmental areas and predict environmental impacts from the region. This is key to better understanding keystone species and key ecological issues which allows for other sectors to become more environmentally friendly
2.REGULATIONS SOLVE BACK- your arguments don’t assume the new MMS regulations that were drafted this week, these decrease future risk in three main ways
a. AUDITS- Operation audits once every three years
b. ON SIGHT INSPECTIONS- 200 more engineers are being hired to supervise and serve
as in house experts- there were only 53 on hand prior to this week. This means that there will be inspectors physically on-sight in the future compared to the past where computer programs were used to evaluate blowout risks.
c. STRICTER REGULATION ENFORCEMENT- Bromwich, head of Interior, has publicly come out to say that they will not be “rubber- stamping” permits but carefully evaluating them to make sure that all offshore drilling follows regulations.
3. TURN: AMERICAN DRILLING KEY TO STOP INTERNATIONAL DRILLING-
a. YOUR IMPACTS ARE NONUNIQUE- international companies are already engaging in
offshore drilling and exposing oceans to potential ecological harm
b. PLAN CAUSES TRADEOFF- When American companies start increasing their use of offshore drilling it will trade off with the areas that other companies can drill
c. AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY SOLVES- American Companies have higher environmental and safety standards for offshore drilling and better technology meaning we will decrease environmental risk
d. INCREASE IN AMERICAN DRILLING CAUSES REGULATIONS TO BE MODELED- once US companies are well established in the drilling market we can use international pressure to have international companies model our regulations.
ECONOMY
1. DIVERSIFING OIL MARKET KEY TO SUSTAINABLITY-
a. PROTECTS MARKET AGAINST PRICE SPIKES- this is key to sustainability of the entire US economy in the long term. 70 percent of U.S. freight moves through our nation’s supply chain by truck, and the overwhelming majority of trucking companies are small businesses that suffer greatly from spikes in fuel prices.
b. PRICE SPIKES CAUSE DOUBLE DIP RECESSION- This means that when oil and fuel prices spike, as they did in 2008, the industry suffers, companies fold and jobs are lost. The record-high diesel prices experienced in 2008 contributed to 3,065 companies with five or more trucks going out of business.
2. OIL SUPPLY KEY TO BUISNESS CONFIDENCE- because the entirety of US industry involves transportation which involves oil and natural gas the stability of the energy sector is crucial for business confidence. Aff legislation allows for a guaranteed supply of oil in the future which increases business confidence
a. BUISNESS CONFIDENCE KEY TO INVESTMENTS- high business confidence in the market means that businesses stop hoarding money and instead invest part of their profits back into the market. This causes bottom down economic recovery
b. INVESTMENTS INCREASE INFRASTRUCTURE- investments allow for better infrastructure and funding to more companies which in turn causes an increase in production and job creation.
3. OIL INDUSTRY KEY TO JOB CREATION- expansion of the oil industry leads to job creation which is key to consumer spending and revenue. Because when people have a stable income they are less likely to hoard money and more likely to purchase goods, this stimulates the economy from the bottom up.
Offshore Drilling Bad
Regulations Fail
1. LOW BUDGET PREVENTS ENFORCEMET- The offshore drilling regulator has asked Congress for $100 million, but Congress has approved only about $25 million
2. DOUBLE BIND- Either you are rubber stamping permits or not solving the economy. In order for there to be economic benefit of the plan you would need to have immediate time frame for job creation, this is only possible if you push through permits without scrutinizing them for compliance with regulations.
3. REGULATIONS NOT SOLVE ROOT CASE- MMS blames the vast majority of the 1,400 offshore drilling accidents in U.S. waters between 2001 and 2007 on "human error," not malfunctioning equipment. This is also true of the Deep-water Horizon oil spill
4. RESEARCH DOESN’T SOLVE- we don’t know what keystone species are so there is no way that we can research areas that do not have keystone species. Every area of the ocean is interconnected meaning that drilling in one area will cause environmental damage even in the areas that are protected from drilling.
Biodiversity
1. Seismic disruption – To find potential oil reserves, researchers send seismic waves into the ground. The waves bounce back to reveal the buried topography and can hint at a possible reserve. But seismic noise disorientates whales and leads to mass beachings, said Richard Charter, a government relations consultant for the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. Several weeks ago, ExxonMobil suspended exploration near Madagascar because more than 100 whales had beached themselves.
2. Chemical contamination – Animals’ panicked immune response to PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) can cause cancer — especially if the animal is exposed continually by living near an oil platform. Even a perfectly functioning oil well is a cause of concern due to "produced water," which rises with oil and contains environmental toxins such as PAH — is usually tossed overboard. At high concentrations, the contaminants are lethal to marine life. At lower concentrations, according to lab experiments, they can cause birth defects, impaired growth and skewed sex ratios.
3 Spills – there are 300 to 500 spills every year, a number which will grow with increased production. Once a spill occurs, the area is doners. Oil spreads on water at a rate of one-half a football field per second. Recovery can take decades. After 20 years of natural weathering, Prince William Sound — the area affected by the Exxon-Valdez spill — appears completely recovered to the casual observer but animals high up on the food chain are just now starting to re-colonize.
4. Impact is extinction - Loss of Ocean biodiversity risks total collapse of ecosystems, causing extinction. Even small shifts in ocean biodiversity have huge ripple effects on the global biosphere. A study of global ocean biodiversity released on January 8, 2008 in Current Biology provided evidence that the function of the oceans depends on the richness of the life there. The study found that the extinction of microscopic species on the ocean floor that humans can’t even see would be enough to disrupt all the functions of the oceans, killing every human because we cannot survive without the food, climate regulation, and resource reprocessing of the ocean.
5. Loss of biodiversity outweighs because it is irreversible. Extinction can never be overcome – once biodiversity is lost it can never be replaced. This is more important than other forms of environmental degradation, resource disparities, and even nuclear war because while these issues can be repaired within several generations, we can never re-evolve the animals and plants that are lost.
Patents Bad - Economy
1. Approximately 40% of the United States' economic growth is dependent upon intellectual property protection. Pfizer is the world's largest research based pharmaceutical company, and it alone is responsible for providing 85,000 jobs. Pfizer invests almost $ 60 billion each year in the search for new drugs. The problem of weak intellectual property protection "is of great importance, not just to the U.S. creative community, but to the U.S. economy and to U.S. society as a whole. The failure of the pharmaceutical industry will lead to a devastating impact on the nation's economy including the loss of tens of thousands of American jobs.
2. The patent system provides both an incentive to invest in developing new inventions and an incentive to disclose these inventions. The incentive to innovate is best explained by noting that without patent protection, inventors "may be unable to appropriate enough of the social value of the invention to justify the initial research and development expenditures." Without patent protection, imitators would enter the market and reduce prices to such an extent that an inventor could not recoup his or her initial investment.
3. Patents provide incentive to phrma to engage in risky and expensive research: identifying, developing, and testing a novel candidate therapeutic is a risky and expensive venture. Development of a new drug costs an estimated $500 million to $1 billion. Only one in one thousand new drugs that undergo animal testing are promising enough to begin the human clinical testing required for FDA approval,'" and only two out of every ten compounds that begin clinical testing are ever marketed." In addition, only three out of every ten compounds that reach the market will be commercially successful enough to recoup the expenses incurred during research and development.'^ Thus, pharmaceutical companies rely on the profits gained from successful drugs to recover the expenses associated with their development
PMCs Bad
1. Dehumanization:
a. Torture: PMCs were the main people involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2003 and 2004. None of them have faced prosecution, unlike US military personnel. PMCs are technically illegal under international law, but many countries are not signatories to the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention, banning the use of mercenaries, like the US and UK.
b. Sexual violence: In a study of military prostitution and trafficking during the Iraq war, the researcher concludes that heavy reliance on military contractors has worsened the prostituting of women in war zones. PMCs are more seasoned and sophisticated about prostitution and trafficking of women and they have more disposable income than the military (some earning between $650US and $1000US per day). When violating the U.S. military prohibition against involvement in prostitution they are not prosecuted; and they are accountable only to their companies. Sexual violence is dehumanizing and pervasive, which makes it irreversible and the most probable impact in the debate. Uncheckable objectification makes all violence inevitable and government endorsement of objectification makes it unending.
2. Infinite war: PMCs have incentives not only to prolong their contracts but also to avoid taking undue risks that might endanger their own corporate assets. The result may be a protracted conflict that perhaps could have been avoided if the client had built up its own military forces or more closely monitored its private agent. This was certainly true of mercenaries in the Biafra conflict in the 1970s, and many suspect that this was also the case with PMFs in the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict in 1997-99. Extinction is inevitable when there is an incentive for continual violence and instability. Proxy wars are the bloodiest kind of war and are most likely to incite ethnic violence, which is more charged and motivated than regular violence, making it harder to stop.
3. Aid theft: PMCs are notorious for hoarding food and water that they are supposed to be distributing to the people that they are protecting. According to a federal audit of Pentagon contractors in Afghanistan, 16% of monies paid the contractors has been for “questioned and unsupported costs. Removing the demand for PMCs equates to more clout and respect in international forums and agreements, which helps push forward the US agenda and things like food aid, AIDS medication and prevention equipment, strategic alliances, etc. Increased accountability directly results in a decreased abuse of power, since it will no longer be unmanaged. Resource conflict is inevitable in a world of finite resources, which makes large-scale violence more likely as resource scarcity becomes more prevalent. Large-scale violence brings in international retaliation and makes global war inevitable because of security guarantees. Instability, increased tensions, and lack of international cooperation make the propensity for nuclear weapons usage higher and nuclear war guarantees extinction.
Privatize Social Security Bad
Privatizing would make Social Security’s financing problem worse:
1. Diverting up to four percentage points of the payroll tax to create private accounts as has been proposed would shorten significantly the time until the Trust Funds become depleted. In part, this is because funds
now being set aside to build up the Trust Funds to provide for retiring baby boomers would be used instead to pay for the privatization accounts. The government would have to start borrowing from the private sector almost
immediately to be able to meet commitments to retirees and near-retirees. In such a short time frame, the investments in the personal accounts will not be nearly large enough to provide an adequate cushion.
Creating private accounts would severely harm economic growth, which would tank the chances of Social Security’s survival:
1. Privatizing Social Security will increase federal deficits and debt significantly while increasing the likelihood that national savings will decline—all of which could reduce long-term economic growth and the size of the economic pie available to pay for the retirement of the baby-boom generation.
2. Privatization is also more likely to reduce than increase national savings. When evaluating the overall effect on national savings requires taking into account the likely responses of government, employers, and households. Historically, neither the government nor businesses have changed their spending levels consistently in response to large changes in deficit levels. But households that consider the new accounts to constitute meaningful increases in their retirement wealth might well reduce their other saving. That, in turn, would further weaken economic growth and our capacity to pay for the retirement of the baby boomers.
Empirically Denied – privatization has failed elsewhere:
1. A report last year from the World Bank, once an enthusiastic privatization proponent, expressed disappointment that in Chile, and in most other Latin American countries that followed in its footsteps, “more than half of all workers [are excluded] from even a semblance of a safety net during their old age”. In Chile, investment accounts of retirees are much smaller than originally predicted—so low that 41 percent of those eligible to collect pensions continue to work. In the UK, the government was left with substantial new administrative expenses, lost tax revenues, and responsibilities to bail out some failed private pension plans.
Young people would be worse off:
1. Younger generations will be the ones who bear the costs of transforming the program. The added costs arise from the huge increases in federal borrowing needed to finance the new accounts while continuing to direct payroll taxes
toward existing benefits for current retirees. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “to raise the rate of return for future generations by moving to a funded system, some generations must receive rates of return even lower than they would have gotten under the pay-as-you-go system.”
Women stand to lose the most:
1. Since women on average work fewer years at lower pay, they contribute less in payroll taxes over their lifetimes than do men. But in their various roles as retirees, spouses, and widows, women collect Social Security benefits for more years than men. The result is that women get more net benefits over their lifetimes than do men.
2. Private accounts would jeopardize income that wives, widows, and divorcees now receive under Social Security. The more individual control that passes to workers, the fewer rights their dependents will retain to secure retirement income. If the guarantees and redistributive features of Social Security are replaced with a system that provides benefits according only to how much a worker earns over that worker’s lifetime and how fortunate that worker is in financial markets, the average woman, especially the average widow, will lose security and income from already low levels.
Prolif Good
1. It’s like MAD but better: When more countries have second-strike status (that is the ability to respond to a nuclear attack against your country with a nuclear attack of your own) that makes it even less likely that anyone will attack that nation. There is no reason that a nuclear attack should be prevented only against the Big 5 nuclear nations. If more nations have nuclear weapons, that means more nations will not be attacked because they posses the ability to maintain an effective deterrence position. Certainly, there are no world allies in the world so close with the Big 5 that those nations would use their status as a nuclear nation to second-strike protect a non-nuclear state (since then they would be at risk for total destruction).
2. If Iran has nuclear weapons it will stabilize the region because it decreases the risk not only of nuclear war but also conventional war. Nations will not want to send their soldiers into Iran when the possibility of nuclear war exists. So nuclear weapons can actually bring peace to the middle east because it deters an invasion.
3. When countries have nuclear weapons, it forces them to develop command and control infrastructure to secure a lot of their munitions, arms, etc. which is actually good, because then less conventional weapons get stolen (which rogue groups do actually use to kill people).
4. Nuclear weapons are expensive. This drains much of the military resources that a country has so that they will have less to invest in conventional warfare -- guns, tanks, etc. things that they might actually use in a hostile situation.
Prolif Good – Horizontal, Secret
Covert horizontal prolif prevents all conflicts – this is why no one invades Israel → no one wants to ever piss off or invade anyone if they might have a nuclear weapon.
Scares the leaders into rationality – people engage in less conflicts once they have the bomb and realize what it’s capable of
Prolif is not empirically denied and use of the bomb is – once people get the bomb no one uses it (when more than one country has one).
Prolif causes the invention of security invention – more people invent ways to keeping weapons safe – solves miscalculation
Arms race solves miscalc better than SQ because it’s only thing that allows prolif of tech that causes us to keep everything safe.
Prolif Bad
1. Breaks the taboo: A taboo has tacitly evolved over the decades preventing nations, at least so far, from actually pressing the nuclear button even in the face of serious military crises. Once the line dividing nuclear weapons and conventional bombs is crossed, it will become acceptable to use "baby nukes" and the radiation deaths that go with it. A gradual erosion of the feeling of abhorrence against nuclear weapons is bound to occur. The ante will keep going up till eventually the use of bigger multi-kiloton and megaton weapons would be contemplated more seriously as realistic military alternatives. The single largest universal deterrent against nuclear holocaust will be lost forever
2. Makes nuclear terrorism inevitable: In a world of terrorists determined to obtain a nuclear bomb, and a black market with state and non-state actors keen on profiting from the sale of necessary technology, the deterrence paradigm that reigned during the Cold War no longer work. In a world of widespread proliferation, accidents – such as misplacing nuclear warheads – could put nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists raises the stakes even higher. Especially acquiring nuclear weapons or increasing existing arsenals are located in conflict-prone regions and have limited financial and technical resources to devote to nuclear security.
3. Accidents: The accidental detonation of a single nuclear weapon could kill thousands; an accidental nuclear war could kill millions worldwide. This threat has been with us for decades, but the prospect that mistakes or mishaps could inadvertently help terrorists obtain nuclear weapons adds extra gravity to the threat.
4. Causes an arms race: When the desire for prestige becomes intertwined with security concerns, the rationale for nuclear weapons deepens. This will lead to neighboring nations – motivated by security concerns – developing nuclear weapons of their own. A nuclear arms race in the Middle East and/or Asia would pose a tremendous threat to international peace and security. In the Middle East, the combination of unstable states and jihadist networks yields an unpredictable combination of potential suppliers and determined consumers. In Asia, a region with longstanding hostilities between China and Japan, this could add yet another layer of distrust and insecurity to an already tense region.
5. Causes war: transition periods where countries are coming into the possession of nuclear weapons, and can deploy only rudimentary delivery systems, thus tempting an adversary to strike first in a preventive war. The spread of nuclear weapons to any large number of separate countries increases the chances of their coming into use, simply because they are embedded in the military forces that are committed to conflict. and come to be treated as 'just another weapon
Protectionism Good
1. Protectionism good- protectionism allows the US to protect domestic businesses and preserve our power as global hegemon
a. KEY TO PROFITS- protectionism is key to making US business profitable in an economy where foreign goods can be produced at cheaper prices.
b. KEY TO EMPLOYMENT- Profits allow companies to increase employment; this in turn increases consumerism and prevents another recession.
Protectionsim Bad
1. Protectionism bad- protectionism dramatically decreases free trade which has implications both nationally and internationally
a. DECLINE IN TRADE COLAPSES IR- when we stop trade with certain countries it causes negative public image for the US, it also means that the US does not have to worry about making policies that anger our allies, this significantly lowers the brink of war
b. CAUSES SCARCITY- protectionism prevents products from flowing equally into all markets, ensuring that some parts of the globe are left without necessities
c. SCARCITY CREATES RESOURCE WARS- when we stop trading to get products we start fighting in order to acquire them which leads to international resource wars.
REE’s Good
1. Nuclear Energy:
a. [UNIQUENESS FOR EU] The EU as a global leader in nuclear energy would model a sustainable future energy source to the rest of the developed world, leading to a movement towards nuclear energy R&D and implementation, which would then be seen as a viable, economically and environmentally sound alternative to coal-burning.
b. Coal plants emit 73 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere from electricity generators. By releasing the energy stored in coal, large quantities of carbon dioxide that have been stored in the coal for millions of years are released back into the atmosphere, increasing the threat of global warming. Coal plants are also a major source of airborne emissions of mercury, a toxic heavy metal that then rains down upon the Earth, poisoning plants, animals, and human beings. The mining, processing, and transporting of coal also insults the environment. About 87 percent of coal is removed from the earth through strip mining, which can contaminate soils with heavy metals and destroy near-surface aquifers.
c. The world has been dumping exponential amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere results in more CO2 dissolving into the world’s oceans. The chemical reaction that results creates carbonic acid, which lowers the pH of the ocean. This would lead to literally dissolving coral reefs, which contain the highest concentrations of biodiversity in the oceans, and decimating primary producers, which kill off all the higher trophic levels leading to mass oceanic and terrestrial extinction via resources wars or lack of future medicinal innovation due to ecological devastation.
d. Scientists estimate we have until the middle of this century to prevent our atmospheric CO2 levels from reaching 800ppm by the end of the century, which would trip the brink for runaway acidification and a catastrophic extinction event.
e. Nuclear power provides an environmental benefit by almost entirely eliminating airborne wastes and particulates generated during power generation. Nuclear power makes no contribution to global warming through the emission of carbon dioxide. Nuclear power also produces no sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, or particulates, which solves ocean acidification.
2. Research/Medicine:
a. Vaccines: Vaccines have saved literally billions lives- vaccine research allowed us to wipe out smallpox, which killed half a billion people in the twentieth century alone. We can anticipate that more advanced vaccines that can protect against today’s biggest killers can be used to save billions of additional lives over time, making them a low cost, high yield investment.
b. Medicine: New medications have the potential to solve for some of the largest killers in the first world, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes; we could save tens of millions of lives if microgravity research allows us to increase our understanding of organic molecular structure. New medications are also key to staying ahead of antibiotic resistance, which is an emerging, pandemic level threat. Bacterial infections are generally more contagious, often more deadly, and we are so dependent on the use of antibiotics to treat them that the emergence of bacteria with total anti-biotic resistance represents a crisis level threat that could kill hundreds of millions.
REE Mining Bad
CHINA SPECIFIC:
1. Rare earth processing in China is a messy, dangerous, polluting business. It uses toxic chemicals, acids, sulfates, and ammonia. The workers have little or no protection. According to the Baotou Rare Earth Research Institute: The environmental problems include air emissions with harmful elements, such as fluorine and sulfur, wastewater that contains excessive acid, and radioactive materials, too. One estimate from China concluded that for each ton of rare earth brought to the surface, 200 square meters of vegetation and 300 square meters of soil were sterilized by acid treatment.
2. In addition to the direct impacts of mining such as the footprint of the mine and the problems with radioactivity, the processing of rare earths requires a number of intensive steps, often using toxic chemicals and acids. Separation of different REE's from the complex mixture in ore can require dozens, or even hundreds of steps each with its own waste stream.
3. The procedure is rarely eco-friendly, creating hundreds of gallons of salty wastewater per minute, consuming huge amounts of electricity, requiring toxic materials for the refining process and occasionally unearthing dirt that is radioactive.
MINING IS GENER(IC)ALLY BAD:
1. Acid Mine Drainage
a. ARD is a natural process whereby sulphuric acid is produced when sulphides in rocks are exposed to air and water. Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is essentially the same process, greatly magnified. When large quantities of rock containing sulphide minerals are excavated from an open pit or opened up in an underground mine, it reacts with water and oxygen to create sulphuric acid. When the water reaches a certain level of acidity, a naturally occurring type of bacteria called Thiobacillus ferroxidans may kick in, accelerating the oxidation and acidification processes, leaching even more trace metals from the wastes. The acid will leach from the rock as long as its source rock is exposed to air and water and until the sulphides are leached out – a process that can last hundreds, even thousands of years. Acid is carried off the minesite by rainwater or surface drainage and deposited into nearby streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater. AMD severely degrades water quality, and can kill aquatic life and make water virtually unusable.
2. Heavy Metal Contamination & Leaching
a. Heavy metal pollution is caused when such metals as arsenic, cobalt, copper, cadmium, lead, silver and zinc contained in excavated rock or exposed in an underground mine come in contact with water. Metals are leached out and carried downstream as water washes over the rock surface. Although metals can become mobile in neutral pH conditions, leaching is particularly accelerated in the low pH conditions such as are created by Acid Mine Drainage.
3. Processing Chemicals Pollution
a. This kind of pollution occurs when chemical agents (such as cyanide or sulphuric acid used by mining companies to separate the target mineral from the ore) spill, leak, or leach from the mine site into nearby water bodies. These chemicals can be highly toxic to humans and wildlife.
4. Erosion and Sedimentation
a. Mineral development disturbs soil and rock in the course of constructing and maintaining roads, open pits, and waste impoundments. In the absence of adequate prevention and control strategies, erosion of the exposed earth may carry substantial amounts of sediment into streams, rivers and lakes. Excessive sediment can clog riverbeds and smother watershed vegetation, wildlife habitat and aquatic organisms.
5. Water Availability
a. Mining can deplete surface and groundwater supplies. Groundwater withdrawals may damage or destroy streamside habitat many miles from the actual mine site.
i. In Nevada, the driest state in the United States of America, the Humboldt River is being drained to benefit gold mining operations along the Carlin Trend. Mines in the northeastern Nevada desert pumped out more than 580 billion gallons of water between 1986 and 2001 – enough to feed New York City’s taps for more than a year.
ii. Groundwater withdrawn from the Santa Cruz River Basin in Southern Arizona for use at a nearby copper mine is lowering the water table and drying up the river.
Sanctions Good
SANCTIONS PREVENT GENOCIDE AND VIOLENCE- Sanctions create clear lines as to what a country justifies as moral action, and what they justify as immoral. Through defining their morals in the country imposing sanctions is able to create a clear moral code embraces identitarian justification which prevents immoral actions.
SANCTIONS HAVE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS- Engagement with other countries has moral implications beyond the specific political/economic action that countries engage in.
a. AFF ENGAGEMENT JUSTIFIES INTERNATIONAL MORAL CODES- When the US engages in any kind of political or economic cooperation with a country, we are validating that countries existence and embracing them as our international partners. Such as…….
b. REJECTION KEY TO MORALITY- When the US refuses to work with other countries we are making stating our rejection of some part of their politics. Rejection of certain politics is a supreme moral act because it creates a concrete definition of the moral order
MORAL ORDER STOPS GENOCIDE AND VIOLENCE- creating a solid moral order in society creates accountability and vigilance, without which deterioration of rights leads to devaluation of life, culminating in extermination of entire populations.
c. MORAL ORDER STOPS RIGHTS ABUSE- When we confuse or muddle the moral order we leave gaps in which actors can commit rights abuses in certain situations. Without rights we lose our capacity to make decisions for ourselves, which is the basis of our humanity.
d. RIGHTS ABUSE LEADS TO GENOCIDE- When people are denied their humanity they are used as objects to be exploited. This exploitation manifests in many different ways, but in the end it boils down to populations who live in a constant fear. Living in constant fear of death is a perpetual state of suffering that outweighs the singular instance of death
e. RIGHTS ABUSES CAUSE EXTERMINATION- Collapse of moral order is root cause of all your harms because genocide creates a social landscape in which entire populations can be killed without consequence, inevitably causing extinction.
1. A2: REJECTION IS IMORAL- The act of rejection does not directly harm someone; it only fails to help them. This is not considered immoral
a. For instance if every time we ate a meal we were considered to be failing to help someone who was starving one of two situations would result; either we would never eat and eventually die or we would be forced into a situation where morality was impossible. Both of these make a moral order impossible to achieve and thus justify why our interpretation of morality is best.
2. A2: SANCTIONS PREVENT INTERNATIONAL CHANGE- The accountability that moral order establishes is key to creating long lasting peace internationally
a. MORAL ORDER KEY TO MORAL TRANSPARENCY- moral order spills over to affect every other areas of morals, because it sets up a framework in which the international community can easily see each other’s moral values.
b. TRANSPARENCY KEY TO INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY- countries want to be seen as fitting in with the moral code to increase public image, this creates an international framework that incentivizes political change to promote just politics in all countries
SANCTIONS DESTABALIZE GOVERNMENTS- The power of authoritarian regimes is directly linked to their economic strength, when GDP increases support for the government grows and during times of economic crisis the government loses support because they are blamed for economic difficulties.
SANCTIONS CAUSE PUBLIC UNREST LEADING TO REVOLUTIONS- When economies are prevented from trading citizens are unable to receive essential resources, this causes the standard of living to decrease. This causes civilian backlash, and without a complacent population authoritarian leaders lose their power to enforce unjust laws.
a. EASTERN EUROPE PROVES- countries in Eastern Europe experienced a downward trend in GNP from 1970 to 1990, which eventually forced them to abandon their previous economic practices and liberalize to gain international acceptance
b. REVOLUTIONS LEAD TO DEMOCRACY - Latin America’s decline in standard of living caused outrage in the rural populations, right to anger and rebellion is a necessary tool that citizens must learn in order to pressure their government into a democracy. This is proven by the transition to semi-democratic governments in Latin America
SANCTIONC CAUSE INTERNATL POLITICAL SUPPORT TO DECREASE- Sanctions cause times of crisis in which factions emerge from within the dominant political group. This decreases support for current regimens and they are forced to either make compromises or leave office.
c. SANCTIONS PREVENT FUNDING OF PRIVEATE SUPPORT GROUPS- When governments experience economic hardships they no longer provide funding to individual support groups, which severely impacts their popularity and influence in the private sector
d. HUNGARY PROVES- Hungary experienced political tension when the economy fell under Rakosi, this causes internal political tension which allowed Nagy to gain an edge in political power, which he then used to promote freedom of information and human rights.
e. SOUTH AFRICA PROVES- sanctions and trade blocks against South Africa in the 1980’s created international political pressure for policies increasing human rights. This was eventually accomplished when Klerk was elected in 1989 and repealed apartheid laws.
PERCEPTION OF ECONOMIC CRISIS SOLVES- modern politicians are in constant dialogue with academics who trace the rise and fall of economies and political systems, because of this they anticipate future events and prepare for them.
f. Czechoslovakia- after 1946, when communist leaders were elected Czechoslovakia’s economy decreased in strength, while no economic crisis occurred the appearance of their economy lagging behind the rest of Eastern Europe opened space for Vaclave Haval to descend from the communist party and change many of the countries unjust practices
Sanctions Bad
I. SANCTIONS DON’T SOLVE- sanctions are not effective political or economic tools in the status quo
1. UNILATERAL SANCTIONS FAIL- US acting alone does not have broad impact we have only 13% of exports and 16% of imports, this means that it is very easy for other countries to fill in and provide necessary resources
a. OTHER COUNTRIES FILL IN DEMAND - Jimmy Carters 1980 embargo against grain to the Soviet Union didn’t stop grain flow, the Soviet Union ended up getting different grain at only a slightly reduced cost and without any change in their politics. US eventually lifted the embargo and admitted that it did not have the intended effect
b. PRIVATE ORGANIZATIONS FILL IN DEMAND- underground organizations are increasingly prevalent since shifts towards privatization of markets. The black market in Russia proved that the governments ban on blue jeans made no impact on consumer choices in clothing.
2. SANCTIONS NOT EFFECTIVE IN MODERN ECONOMY- From 1914-1990 sanctions were ineffective 66% of time. From 1973-1990- sanctions were ineffective 24% of time. This shows that the as the international economy develops sanctions become increasingly obsolete
a. DIVERSE DEMAND PREVENTS SOLVENCY- Recent increases in international trade mean that a variety of goods are available to satisfy a single consumer need. This means that it is increasingly easy to substituted new products in for sanctioned good
b. DIVERSE ECONOMIES PREVENT SOLVENCY- Sanctions only effects a small part of the other countries economy, modern economies are more diverse and can survive under sanctions because they have other sources of profit
• A lot of countries that have recently developed economic power, including China, developed under sanctions and their economies were created to be resistant to them.
3. THREATS OF SANCTIONS ARE NOT EFFECTIVE- don’t let them try to gain advantages off of threatening to use sanctions, all of our previous examples are rooted in historical fact and other countries that realize the ineffectiveness of sanctions will not be threatened.
a. SANCTIONS HURT THE ORIGINAL COUNTRY- Sanctions are rarely followed through with because they force host countries to lose profits and decrease their production of products. Given the US’s current economic situation our government will be very unlikely to follow through with the threat
b. SANCTIONS UNPOPULAR DOMESITCALLY- Sanctions not popular with voters because they hurt the middle class, and decrease economic prosperity. This means that leaders who impose sanctions are unlikely to get reelected and thus sanctions have a short life span
c. SANCTIONS HURT INTERNATINAL RELATIONS- Sanctions cause international backlash from countries that fear that the US will increase its protectionism, and in turn hurt other economies. In the SQ the US is desperate for international cooperation on the War on Terrorism so they are unlikely to upset strong international partners. This is proved through the 2008 DOHA conventions where international discussions collapsed into arguments over economic blame and conflict.
SANCTIONS KILL INTERNATIONAL DEMOCROCY PROMOTION- Sanctions hurt the middle class, not the political leaders. When countries have a weak middle class they don’t have the resources or influence to put checks on the government. Civilian checks on the government are key to democracy.
1. SANCTIONS VIOLATE HUMAN RIGHTS
a. VIOLATE RIGHT TO FREE TRADE- right to free trade is an inherent right within the ethics of a free market economy. Without right to free trade we lose the right to property and thus the right to have the resources to fulfill our needs.
b. RIGHTS ABUSE UNJUSTIFIED- it is not justified to take away basic necessities from an entire society in order to change economic or political behavior in the area. Furthermore we target countries for sanctions specifically because of their vulnerability meaning that we intend the rights abuses that happen. This turns their moral order advantage.
c. SANCTIONS GIVE MORE POWER TO DICTATORS- Sanctions consolidate economic power in the hands of governments that cause human rights abuses, this gives corrupt leaders more control over the population which will inevitably lead to human rights abuses because the discourse of these societies view citizens as means to an end.
d. TURN SANCTIONS INCREASE CORRUPTION- corrupt governments use propaganda to convince their country that the sanction is a sign of US abuse against the country.
▪ THREAT CAUSE NATIONALISM- When threats against entire countries occur it increases nationalism, forcing citizens to rally behind corrupt leaders.
▪ SANCTIONS ARE VIEWED AS CONTINUATION OF HISTORICAL STRUGGLES- when leaders appeal to a countries history of oppression they can use sanctions as a modern example of this trend. This allows leaders to appeal to tradition and unites them with their constituency.
e. SANCTIONS DECREASE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS- sanctions have the largest impact on the vulnerable citizens of society; these citizens do not have the power to influence their government. This is proven through the US’s sanctions against Cuba, despite years of sanctions and increases in poverty levels Castro has remained in power.
2. SANCTIONS INCREASE GAP BETWEEN RIGH AND POOR- Sanctions primarily effect only those people who cannot afford the time or money to find loopholes and go outside the bounds of the laws
o HURTS AMERICAN POOR- sanctions primarily affect small US companies that have direct and specific markets in which they work. When these companies lose profits they are put out of business and global corporations control the market.
o INCREASES INTERNATIONAL POVERTY - Haiti and Cuba prove that sanctions cause poverty and decrease in standard of living because citizens cannot get the resources they need. This increases the gap between the rich and poor because rich members of society are able to afford other imports.
3. SANCTIONS HURT THE ECONOMY – they create limits on where and what US companies can trade, which decreases profits and business confidence. This is especially relevant in the SQ when our economy is on a delicate path to recovery and could easily collapse into another recession.
a. SANCTIONS DECREASE PROFITS FOR US INDUSTRIES- the US has such a varied economy that any sanction will affect the number or opportunities open to businesses, which decreases profits. When profits decline companies are forced to fire people, which increases unemployment and in turn decreases consumer spending
b. SANCTIONS HURT BIZ CON- Decreases international business confidence because of unreliability that products will always be available. This has a long term impact on American businesses in SQ because the high tech economy require long term bonds with customers that sanctions make impossible
▪ DETERS INVESTMENT- lack of reliability causes a decline in investments, this prevents long term economic growth and locks us in an economic recession
4. TURNS CASE: ECONOMIC LIBERALIZAITON KEY TO RIGHTS- US businesses are key to economic growth in other countries. Economic growth creates multiple structures of power that have their own unique rights to citizens.
a. RIGHTS KEY TO MORALITY- rights are key to individuals being able to make their own decisions, this allows individual responsibility to be possible and is thus the building block of moral codes.
5. SANCTIONS UNPOPULAR- sanctions are a highly controversial issue that require substantial amounts of political capital to pass
a. UNPOPULAR WITH COMMERCE DEPARTMENT- Commerce department opposes sanctions because of the harms to US businesses
b. UNPOPULAR WITH STATE DEPARTMENT- State department opposes sanctions because they decrease our public image and damage our ability to have good foreign relations.
c. UNPOPULAR WITH INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT- Intelligence department opposes sanctions because it makes it easy for other countries to keep tracking of American methods of coercion.
Science Good
Their argument misunderstands science – it isn’t a dogmatic or fixed thought – it continually FALSIFIES itself, unlike the K – it’s the MOST ACCURATE system of knowledge we have: Falsifiability is essential to progress, for it is only through the repeated turnover of hypotheses that improvements in understanding can continue--a hypothesis that was not falsifiable could never be overturned, whether false or not, stalling progress.
Creationism is the alternative to science – we must speak out in public to prevent national cooption – The K will result in training an army of morons who repeat asenine statistics about hurricanes going through a junkyard and assembling a 747. We’ll be subject to the whims of supernatural spirits and phlogiston – a GIANT step back for humanity.
Scientific research is critical to the US economy: the economic well being, health, quality of life and security of our citizenry depend critically upon robust and sustained investments in research. Scientific research has the potential for revolutionary discovery and is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. Today, the chemical industry accounts for 1.9 percent of the nation's GDP and is the number one contributor to US exports. Physics has resulted in a $1T/year industry that gave us the world wide web. Economy K to {insert impact}.
a. Better Warrant: Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Solow has calculated that over the past half century, more than half of the growth in our nation's GDP has been rooted in scientific discoveries -- the kinds of fundamental, mission-driven research that we do at the labs.
Science is key to heg – we invest billions of dollars in employing top scientists in weapons research to maintain our hegemony. Heg is key to deterring conflict, preventing terrorism, stopping nuclear war and rogue states.
Science is key to solve the envrionment – innovation will save us from extinction. Pollution proves – would you rather breathe air in London in 1805 or today?
Science is key to soft power – science diplomacy (science is by nature apolitical and fact driven, which makes it perfect for engaging with nations where other forms of diplomacy have failed). Key to creating world peace or whatever.
Science is a better method than critical theory for achieving solidarity with the oppressed – embracing their critique’s relativism makes it impossible to verify or falsify claims to truth which means the oppressed can’t contest the arbitrary use of power. Contempt for “instrumental” scientific rationality undermines the possibility of meaningful dialogue between the humanities and the sciences. Science plays a crucial role in fostering political equality by enabling each to judge the veracity of truth claims. There is also nothing exaggerated in the claim that “the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was perhaps the single greatest influence on the development of the idea that political resistance is a legitimate act.
Critical theory that rejects science as a tool of domination by nature refuses to even engage the content of scientific inquiry – the scientific method rejects claims to absolute knowledge and can be a basis for liberation, but only by engaging it via the affirmative.
Science isn’t a practice of domination, it’s the opposite – scientific knowledge and inquiry liberates people from arbitrary power and aims to improve every individual’s life. The Enlightment freed humanity from the oppression of arbitrary boundaries dictated by the Church. Science has empowered people by challenging superstitions and dogmas that left them mute and helpless.
Their critique of science is non-sensical – deconstructing science is pointless because the aim that science is used for is vastly more important, and their alternative turns localized knowledge into a dogma that rejects science’s ability to solve practical problems. The validity of science does not rest on its ability to secure an “absolute” philosophical grounding, but rather on its universality and its salience in dealing with practical problems.
Science Bad
LOL yeah right.
Soft Power Bad/A2 SoPo
1. Uniqueness massively overwhelms the link --- a huge laundry list of issues including Iraq, arms control, ICC, human rights funding, prisoner abuse, and Kyoto shatter soft power. Even a broad overhaul of foreign policy would merely manage the decline of U.S. credibility --- the plan is only tactical fine-tuning that is radically insufficient to ‘solve’.
a. Cultural Influence through media and entertainment: Other countries—notably China—are filling the vacuum created by America’s disappearing soft power with information and exchange programs. And popular culture from other countries—films made in India’s Bollywood, manga comics from Japan —is providing an alternative to America’s pop dominance around the world.
2. The plan can’t solve for decades --- it takes years to change entrenched opposition to the U.S. --- Oppositional opinions of the U.S. are durable and cannot be overcome quickly, "The structural foundations feeding Anti-America will remain deep-rooted,"
a. "The answer du jour ," the Obama administration's efforts to spend more money on broadcasting and public diplomacy. But the best advertising in the world will not sell a poor product: "How can public diplomacy overcome images of torture? It can't." Proves the disads happen faster and turn the case and they can’t solve their impacts because they’re all too short-term.
3. Self-correction solves the advantage: The Obama administration is returning to multilateralism on climate change and Middle East peace and U.S. credibility will inevitably rebound --- Prefer our warrants --- they’re predictive and more recent.
a. This beats their spillover arguments --- if their premise is true, status quo measures will snowball to solve soft power --- if they don’t, it proves the plan can’t solve either because it’s insufficient.
4. Soft power is useless and mostly irrelevant for U.S. leadership --- only hard power matters because the U.S. must have strong military force to make diplomacy credible. Even if they’re right, soft power is only useful at the margins --- which are entirely irrelevant to the core missions of hegemony.
a. Soft power cannot prevent conflict – empirically proven. Two best examples of the continued utility of military force are the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-1 and the coalition deployment to the same region. In each case soft power proved singularly unable to affect the actions of a single, isolated, pariah state, albeit one that possessed considerable military wherewithal and a modicum of regional legitimacy. One might at least question the applicability of soft power to powerful rogue states in bold defiance of international law and international agreements.
b. Obama cannot just charm problems away – soft power cannot deal with almost every world threat; From North Korea to Guantánamo Bay, from Iran to Afghanistan, Mr Obama is confronting a range of vexing issues that cannot be charmed out of existence.
c. Empirically proven by Britain in the 1930’s – In some ways, the soft power that Britain could exert in the 1930s was greater than the soft power of the United States today. In a world of newspapers, radio receivers, and cinemas--where the number of content-supplying corporations (often national monopolies) was relatively small--the overseas broadcasts of the BBC could hope to reach a relatively large number of foreign ears. Yet whatever soft power Britain thereby wielded did nothing to halt the precipitous decline of British power after the 1930s.
5. Heg is strong --- even optimists admit that no rivals are strong enough to challenge the U.S. for 50 years. Economic growth, tech leadership, and military power ensure that leadership will be durable ---
a. Insert specific stats on U.S. superiority
b. Proves there’s zero internal link --- soft power can’t matter if we’re so strong now. They can’t show any concrete examples of how leadership is failing.
6. Soft power in Obama’s hands will not solve for leadership --- he’ll selectively use credibility to suit narrow policy goals inspiring international cynicism and backlash --- it’s entirely counterproductive . Prefer our warrants --- it assumes how the current administration will actually use additional power, unlike their internal links that only speak to its theoretical benefits.
8. Soft Power is Hype: The entire theory is based upon vague, untestable assertions and willful blindness about the root cause of america’s decline – Nye's theory is an excellent theory that can never be refuted precisely because it cannot be pinned down, its core assumptions too nebulous to lend themselves to scientific parsimony
Spending Good
1. Spending critical to avoid liquidity trap: an increase in spending prevents people from hoarding their money, and spending that money is key to lowering interest rates and preventing future monetary collapse
2. Bonds evaporate: Without spending, there are no more purchases of bonds or other necessary goods, causing an economic downturn
Spending Bad
1. Bond purchases fall: investors lose confidence in the long term outlook of the debt, which means that they don’t buy bonds and the economy drops
2. Increased risk of poverty: increased spending now vastly increases the risk that people will have no money when the next big crisis hits
Subsidies Good
1. Key to farmers’ survival:
Government subsidies provided a price floor, and income was guaranteed no matter how low prices got. In return, farmers were incentivized to overproduce–there was, after all, a buyer of last resort–and food became cheap and plentiful.
2. Stops food riots around the world:
If America stopped its farm subsidies and American farmers produced only what was domestically needed and a little more, no longer flooding the world market with cheap wheat and corn it woud result in food shortages, mass starvation, and food riots all around the world. We supply 40% of the world’s supply of corn – taking that away would be devastating.
2. Removing subsidies causes more monoculture and factory farms:
In a market controlled by just a few buyers of crops like corn, wheat and soybeans, and no mechanisms to manage overproduction that causes prices to collapse, subsidies have served as the bandage that partially stops the bleeding of farmers who often cannot stay in business any other way. Pulling the subsidy rug out from under the small and midsized farmers who depend on this support to keep farming in lean years could result in even fewer independent family farmers and even larger mono-cropping behemoths who buy up that land and keep using it to produce crops like corn and soybeans.
A2 Causes overproduction:
Commodity crop overproduction has been around long before the current subsidy program existed. During the New Deal, farm policies encouraged farmers to idle some of their land so they wouldn’t overproduce and established a national grain reserve. Beginning in 1985, food processors, grain traders, meat companies and marketers mounted a strong and successful lobbying effort against these policies. That Farm Bill eliminated land-idling programs, letting farmers plant as much as they wanted, and production increased over the next few years. That, along with the elimination of grain reserves earlier, resulted in farmers overproducing themselves into bankruptcy, and the subsidy system we know today was born.
Subsidies Bad
1. Causes poverty in developing countries:
Agricultural subsidies depress world prices and mean that unsubsidised developing-country farmers cannot compete; and the effects on poverty are particularly negative when subsidies are provided for crops that are also grown in developing countries since developing-country farmers must then compete directly with subsidised developed-country farmers, for example in cotton and sugar. Worse, the least developed countries have a higher proportion of GDP dependent upon agriculture, at around 36.7%, thus may be even more vulnerable to the effects of subsidies. It has been argued that subsidised agriculture in the developed world is one of the greatest obstacles to economic growth in the developing world; which has an indirect impact on reducing the income available to invest in rural infrastructure such as health, safe water supplies and electricity for the rural poor.
2. They’re enormously expensive for the US
Direct aid to farmers totals around $15-20 billion each year, and one report that aggregated indirect subsidy (i.e. programs for irrigation, export credits, nutrition food aid and loan guarantees) claimed that total direct and indirect aid exceeded $180 billion.
It also effects food prices: some farm programs raise food prices and hurt consumers directly. Federal controls on the dairy industry raise milk prices to consumers. Controls on the sugar industry raise U.S. sugar prices to about twice the world level, pushing up consumer costs for breakfast cereals, chocolate and other food products.
3. And they disproportionally pay out to large agribusiness rather than small farmers:
In recent years, the biggest 10 percent of farm businesses have received 72 percent of farm subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group.This encourages mass farming practices that are bad for the environment. Overproduction of wheat, corn, livestock require oil-based fertilizers that destroy the soil and environment: it draws marginal farmland into production and encourage the overuse of fertilizers. Lands that might otherwise be used for parks, forests or wetlands get locked into farm use. Florida sugar cane cultivation, for example, causes substantial damage to the Everglades (and read impacts about eutrophication)
4. Encourages the production and consumption of products that make us fat:
Overproduction of corn allows the cheap production of high fructose corn syrup and all the sugary, diabetes-causing products it engenders, not to mention the corn-fed snack industry.
Space Weaponization Good
INEVITABLE:
1. HUMAN NATURE: HUMAN NATURE ENSURES THEIR DEPLOYMENT—EVERY NEW MEDIUM OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN WEAPONIZED. The very idea of weaponizing space becomes a driving force to do so, like the idea of splitting and fusing the atom mad doing so inevitable. Because it’s a function of the physical universe the process, is in a very real sense beyond our control.
2. TECHONOLOGICAL MOMENTUM: THE NATURE OF TECHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT ENSURES THAT THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL BECOME THE ACTUAL, AS PROVEN BY EMPIRICAL EXAMPLES SUCH AS THE ATOM BOMB. Once someone begins development the technological imperative becomes nearly absolute and logic of technology becomes irresistible. Someone may start to weaponize as a poorly thought out reaction to some unforeseen security dilemma
3. POTENTIAL FOR COVERT DEVELOPMENT: Without a world system of checks and balances, spacefaring states have the option of developing weapons in a covert manner. An actor could place weapons in space claiming they are something else, or store on the ground w/ a launch ready configuration. This fact makes secret development of weapons for space highly attractive, and nearly inevitable
4. US, OTHER ACTORS HAVE MADE EFFORTS TO MILITARIZE SPACE ALREADY: After the Cold War, control of space remained tied to national identity and efforts to increase military control of space have been ongoing. The US has created a series of anti-satellite weapons, has been testing space-based laser weaponry since 2001 and as early as 2004 the US budget has included as line items “space control” and “counterspace technologies.” Other nations are at least making similar efforts, and it is inevitable that at least one will trip the brink between space militarization and space weaponization.
5.VULNERABILITIES & MILITARY ADVANTAGES: THE TREMEMDNOUS MILITARY AND ECONOMUC ADVANTAGES, COUPLED WITH CORRESPONDING VULNERABILITIES, ENSURE A RACE TO BE FIRST. The utility of space is increasing in all areas of human activity, history proves that every medium—air, land, and sea has seen conflict. Reality indicates that space will be no different, the military and pragmatic approach. Counterbalancing via space is a way for small states to quickly exert considerable global influence and power. Asymmetrical advantages assure space weaponization.
US FIRST/MOST IS BEST
1. ACTION NOW IS KEY TO MAINTAINING US ADVANTAGE: Rival powers, and China in particular, are gaining economic momentum and ramping up their militarization even as US prominence begins to decline and Republicans are trying to push through major cuts in NASA’s budget. The US needs to act now to stay ahead.
2. THE TRANSITION TO WEAPONIZED SPACE LEADS TO INSTABILITY- ONLY UNIPOLARITY CAN SOLVE: If space weaponization can throw off the balance of power and lead to war, and we’re winning that weaponization is inevitable, then the only way to solve back for war is the accelerate US space weaponization so that US control of space is absolute and maintains a unipolar world in which there is no impetus to go to nuclear.
3. US SPACE WEAPONS ARE KEY TO SOLVE FOR PROLIFERATION: US control of space increases to options for a quick response in the event of a perceived nuclear threat from new proliferators and provides a variety of options for military leaders when looking for non-diplomatic solutions to preventing proliferation. Increased development in space will also allow the US to develop more advanced military space-based warning and detection systems, which can allow us to act early to prevent proliferation and gather evidence to justify unilateral action. (Prolif is bad).
4. MILITARY CONTROL OF SPACE CAN SOLVE MISSILE DEFENSE: Weaponization of space would necessarily entail new missile defense tech, which would solve back in the event of a nuclear conflagration; the US would have the ability to intervene in order to neutralize the conflict by intercepting missiles. It would also remove the impetus to threaten or go to nuclear war in the first place; US allies would know they have the advantage, and not need to go to war, and US space-based missile defense would make the risk calculus less favorable for non-allies.
5. SPACE WEAPONIZATION KEY TO MAINTAIN US HEG: The US has saturated its development of convention and nuclear military power and can only wait for the inevitable rise of other actors, meaning that decline of US heg is coming now. The only way to solve back for this is for the US to expand militarily in other directions and assert our dominance from above. Because space is key to missile defense, which renders nuclear power less meaningful, if the US controls space first its position as the global hegemon will be secure. (US Heg good)
6. US CONTROL OF SPACE SOLVES FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE: The US must be able to defend satellites and in order to do that it needs to have a strong military presence in space. Loss of a few key portions of our satellite network would result in economic collapse because they are a major component of our digital infrastructure, which is key to all portions of the economy in the information age. Satellites represent
OTHER IMPACTS
1. SPACE WEAPONS SOLVE ASTEROIDS: Asteroids are the most likely extinction scenario; no likely nuclear war scenario will actually have the capacity to cause total human extinction because humans have the technology to shield themselves from radiation and remove radiation from water. Asteroid impacts have been responsible for many past extinction scenarios, so we have empirics on our side. It is unlikely that, given the vast amount of space we must monitor, that we will have enough to time to react to destroy on oncoming asteroid unless space is already weaponized.
2. WEAPONS SOLVE FOR DEBRIS: The US has already developed anti-space weapons based on nuclear powered laser tech, so space weaponization will likely include space lasers. Space lasers could be used to vaporize debris because they are designed to output enough heat to vaporize satellites or cause large-scale damage to reinforced ground targets. Solving for space debri is key to preventing the destruction of the satellite network, which is key to protecting our economy.
Space Weaponization Bad
WEAPONIZATION NOT INEVITABLE
1. WEAPONIZATION WILL ONLY HAPPEN IF US GOES FIRST: The drive to weaponize space, as in other media, mostly follows when one person ‘goes first’, as demonstrated in recent years by nuclear proliferation and the weaponization of infectious diseases. Because US is the dominant military power by far and historically leads major military developments, other countries are unlikely to take the initiative to go first. If the harms of the aff are true, the US is probably cutting back on space expansion now, so weaponization by the US is not coming now.
2. SPACE HOLDS A SPECIAL STATUS AND IS DIFFERENT THAN OTHER MEDIA: Large, strategic areas have already been declared non-nuclear zones, such as the Antarctic and the Moon, and the fact that space itself has remained weapon free for so long is indicative that the 45 years of restraint on the matter thus far indicate that weapons-free space has become a significant international political norm. Additionally, no one ‘owns’ space; in the absence of any sovereign land to defend, there is less motivation to weaponize space and it also becomes much harder to justify weaponizing space.
3. WEAPONIZING SPACE IS A POLITICAL DECISION, NOT A MILITARY INEVITABILITY: The US lacks a great nemesis to outgun like it had in WWII, when the nuclear bomb was created, or during the Cold War, when the nuclear stockpile exploded out of control. This means that there is no strong military drive the weaponize space, and it can be avoided, at least for some time, if we choose to avoid making it a priority, as we have done thus far.
4. SPACE WEAPONS ARE NOT KEY TO PROTECT US SPACE INTERESTS: US supremacy in military tech and the apparent lack of interest by our rivals in posturing to disrupt US space operations means that there is no perceived need for the US to weaponize space in the status quo.
WEAPONIZATION WOULD BE BAD
1. SPACE WEAPONIZATION CAUSES ANOTHER WAVE OF PROLIFERATION IN THE NEW MEDIA:
Expansion of military power into new media or using revolutionary tech empirically leads to copycats- nuclear proliferation and marine warfare prove this. Once other countries begin to weaponize space, the US has two options- it can either act to prevent proliferation, or allow it to continue.
If it acts to prevent war, a nuclear showdown is inevitable; all likely space proliferators are major nuclear powers, and are likely to see direct US military opposition to them as an act of aggression justifying military response, which will always have the propensity to lead to a nuclear exchange escalating into a near-extinction level scenario.
If the US allows proliferation to proceed, this destroys current military norms and risks a fullscale nuclear showdown in any event. If space is weaponized, it becomes impossible for the US and other actors to account for every contingency- direct targeting of domestic land from above suddenly becomes possible, and technological asymmetry is an inevitability. The stakes are higher now than in the past because now the world’s military powers collectively have enough military power in the form of nukes to trigger an extinction level scenario.
2. THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SPACE WEAPONS EXIST ALLOW FOR STRATEGIC MISCALCULATIONS: Because of the shear amount of space junk, satellites and other human-made bodies in orbit, once one actor weaponizes space, the propensity for space junk or other bodies to be mistaken for weapons, missile defense tech or similar bodies has the potential to heighten military tensions, leading to conflict that could eventually escalate to war between nuclear powers, or cause existing tensions between military powers to explode.
3. CONFLICT OR DEBRIS IN THE ATMOSPHERE DAMAGE SATELLITES AND MAKES SPACE INACCESSIBLE: Space weaponization will radically increase the amount of space junk orbiting the Earth by causing conflict in the atmosphere; it is impossible to believe that multiple military powers could put weapons in space and never clash when relations on the ground have never worked that way. In the event of a space conflict, the amount of debris in the atmosphere will be greatly increased because metallic objects will be destroyed in orbit. This will cause fragments to be dispersed in orbit at high speed, leading them to damage satellites in orbit. Satellites are a key part of our digital infrastructure; if major satellite networks are damaged, communications network that enable economic activity will go down and the US and global economies will crash.
4. SPACE WEAPONS LEAD TO THE USE OF INERTIA WEAPONS- ONLY SCENARIO FOR HUMAN-CAUSED EXTINCTION: Inertia weapons tech- for instance, the use of propulsion devices to redirect an asteroid toward a target on Earth- enables human-caused extinction. No likely nuclear war scenario will actually have the capacity to cause total human extinction because humans have the technology to shield themselves from radiation and remove radiation from water. Asteroid impacts have been responsible for many past extinction scenarios, so we have empirics on our side; any risk of sparking the development of inertia weapons outweighs all other impacts because it is the only scenario that allows human-triggered extinction and must be avoided at all costs.
SPACE NOT BEING WEAPONIZED NOW
1. THE CURRENT POLITICAL SITUATION IN THE US IS HOSTILE TO SPACE WEAPONIZATION: Republicans in Congress are calling for cuts to NASA and there have even been talks in the public domain about making major cuts to the military budget; Obama has targeted military pay for budget cuts and congress’s failure to pass a 2011 budget has put the military budget at risk. These factors make it unlikely that the US will engage in space weaponization now.
EXPANSION OF US ACTIVITY IN SPACE LEADS TO WEAPONIZATION
1. The perception of US expansion into space leads to expansion of similar efforts by rival powers. China is capable of doing this right now because it has been expanding its space program, and will act to mirror perceived US military action. This will lead the US to overcompensate in response, and spark a new space race between relevant powers.
2. The last space race was coopted by the military; the space race was framed in terms of military goals and led to the militarization, if not the weaponization of space. If we expand our involvement with space again, the likely result will be that the US military will use this as an opportunity to weaponize space.
3. Increasing our space activities lowers the cost barrier for more expansion into space, which makes space weaponization affordable and probable.
4. Right now, space is a-territorial, which means that a lot of space activity is treated as innocuous because no one in space has any territory to defend. If the US increases its exploration of space, others may follow suit, and eventually all parties involved will want return on their investment and begin to make territorial claims in space. This has the propensity to lead to armed conflict due to territorial disputes and the importance of keeping access to space for all economies, who need to be able to maintain satellites. This leads to space weaponization as a way to maintain territorial supremacy.
Taxes don’t hurt economy
High Income Taxes don’t hurt the economy:
NO NEGATIVE CORRELATION BETWEEN RATES AND JOB GROWTH: Data over the last 60 years shows that if choose almost any threshold for the top marginal tax rate and compare annual job growth above and below that margin, you will find that job growth was stronger when taxes are higher. This may indicate that when wealth is excessively concentrated, middle class consumers generate insufficient demand, which means that employers need fewer workers to provide services.
WE’RE IN A LIQUIDITY TRAP (capital gains, income, carried interest): A liquidity trap occurs when conventional monetary policy has exhausted its options because its rates are at or near zero, as the Fed’s rates are now. Bernanke has essentially acknowledged that this is the case by engaging in quantitative easing, which is the only monetary tool left when rates have bottomed out and banks and investors are holding on to capital. This flooded institutions with more money, but still to no avail. This happens because the uncertain and generally negative outlook of the economy as a whole keeps banks and investors from lending, and instead causes them to sit on their liquid assets, putting them in banks, gold, or safe bonds. If the rate wasn’t already at its lower bound, the Fed would respond by cutting interest rates, which discourages the hording of liquid assets by decreasing the payoff. The implication is that raising taxes on the rich will have little impact on the economy right now; even if it discourages investment or takes money away from the very wealthy, this group is already not investing, and is sitting on huge piles of money, rather than spending it, because of the lack of demand, rather than disincentives caused by taxes. Taxes enable the government to avoid cuts. More deficit spending would be the ideal form of stimulus, but, because of the political situation in the US, tax increases help us avoid cuts in government investment or welfare and will actually help increase demand and improve the economy. More warrants are:
1. LACK OF INFLATION: Thanks to the Fed’s quantitative easing, there has been a tripling of the ‘money supply’- i.e. the number of dollars in circulation. One would expect that, as the supply of dollars increases, the value would decrease. Instead, there has been no uptick in inflation at all. This happens because of a ‘liquidity preference’, in which investors continue to horde the newly available liquid assets. The cycle can’t be broken until the market eventually self corrects, or outside (government) intervention does enough to stimulate demand and break the savings preference to promote a stronger investment preference.
2. LOW BOND YIELDS, HIGH GOLD PRICES: There are a number of reasons why yields on government debt are so low, but one of them is that, in the context of a liquidity trap, investors fear that riskier investments will not be profitable and that there is insufficient demand to make other increases in capacity desirable. Thus, investors flock to ‘safe’ assets- demand for gold and T-bills goes up, raising the price of gold and lowering the yield on bonds, respectively. They also keep many of their assets in even more liquid form, often in banks overseas.
3. HORDING: Seriously, US based and multinational corporations are sitting on an excess of $2 trillion in liquid assets and unused capacity. This seems to indicate that we are very, very far from having investment taxes high enough to get in the way of profitable businesses, and the neg will never be able to win a brink argument. It also indicates that income taxes on the wealth are no where near high enough to discourage labor force participation among the wealthy who supposedly drive the profitability of large corporations.
TAXES CAN PROMOTE BUSINESS INVESTMENT (income, capital gains): Raising income tax rates can encourage the very wealthy who control business capital to leave more of their income tied up in their businesses, effectively increasing business investment, because that way it goes untaxed at individual rates. If we’re winning that the rich and corporations are already sitting on piles of cash, bringing home record profits, and unlikely to invest in the near future, then this is actually a way to turn the economy around by convincing business owners to take a chance and expand capacity.
THE IMPACT OF TAXES IS RELATIVELY SMALL: A Dartmouth study found that 5% decrease in total tax revenue, all other government spending and taxation equal, would only produce a 0.2% per year (log scale) increase in economic output. Most of the data for this study comes from times when the economy was strong relative to now, and our fiscal house was in much better order. The weakness of the economy and the fact that it is in a liquidity trap mean that the effect of taxes on investors would be much smaller now.
LOW CAPITAL GAINS TAXES CAUSE BUBBLES: This is both logical and empirically true. The desire to get the wealthy to invest is often cited as the motivation behind very low capital gains tax rates, but, in practice, it results in overinvestment into asset bubbles. As the very wealthy reap the rewards of low capital gains rates, they begin to invest less and less prudently. Capital gains rates were slashed in the run up to both the Great Depression and our current crisis, both of which were the product of financial crisis resulting from asset bubble collapses. This is not a coincidence, and it is not worth dooming ourselves to another great financial crisis a number of years down the line just so we can pretend to recover now.
LOW CAPITAL GAINS TAXES ARE EXTREMELY REGRESSIVE: The top 1% of earners own more than twice as much assets able to be invested as the bottom 90% of earners. Thus, low capital gains rate represent a large tax break for the very wealthy, which, in this political climate, is going to come at the cost of higher taxes, lower benefits, or both, for the vast majority of the population. So extreme is the policy of favoring very low capital gains rates that the top 400 earners in the US paid on average only 17% of their income in taxes in 2007. Since our current depressed economy is in large part the result of a collapse in demand, the less regressive our taxes are, and, thus, the more demand consumers generate, the better.
Taxes Bad
HIGHER AND MORE PROGRESSIVE TAXES KILL ECONOMIC GROWTH: A comprehensive study using data from OECD participant countries ranging from 1951 to 1990 found that there was a significant negative correlation between economic growth and net marginal tax rates. Just as importantly, there was also a significant negative correlation between the overall progressivity of the tax structure and national income. Another, much more recent study using data from post-WWII through 2007 found that a tax increase equivalent to 1% of GDP reduced real GDP by 3%.
HIGH MARGINAL TAX RATES REDUCE LABOR SUPPLY: Economic behavior is largely governed by incentives. When marginal tax rates are higher, there is a smaller incentive to work because the payoff is smaller. This not only makes sense, but is backed up by a large amount of empirical evidence. A large-scale study by Nobel prize winner Edward Prescott in 2004 found that there was a strong negative correlation between labor force participation and marginal tax rates in G-7 countries. Even if only the very rich are being affected by the plan, maximizing their participation in the workforce is key to maximizing economic growth; they are among the most productive members of society and often control the means of production. : A 2003 study using data from several countries, including the US, found that a 10% decrease (multiplicatively) in marginal rates led to an 18% increase in labor force participation in the US.
OUR TAX STUDIES ARE BETTER: A 2007 Berkley study classifies changes in tax policy into four groups; 1) changes to counteract other changes in the economy (think stimulative rebates) 2) paying for increases in government spending or decreasing taxes because spending drops 3) addressing an inherited deficit and 4) promoting long term growth. The first and second are strongly correlated with other changes in the economy, and, so, distort the data if included. Looking only at taxes made under the latter two circumstances shows that a tax increase of 1% lowers GDP 3%, largely due to changes in investment and labor participation, and that’s the number we should trust.
HIGH TAX RATES LEAD TO A BLACK MARKET: A study of 16 industrialized countries in the 90s found that a tax increase of 12.8% (multiplicatively) led, roughly, to a 5% decrease in total employment and a 4% increase in the size of the black market economy.
HIGHER CAPITAL GAINS TAXES GREATLY REDUCE INVESTMENT: A 5% increase in the marginal rate leads to a 10.4% decline in the number of entrepreneurs who make new investments at all during a given time period, and decreases the average amount of income invested by 10%.
Treaties Bad
1. Treaties operate on two levels simultaneously:
a. Instrumental – they try to change a state’s behavior in some way or bring them into compliance
b. Expressive – they declare acceptable norms in the international community.
Expressive and instrumental functions are at odds with human rights treaties, because non-compliance is not likely to be exposed, and there’s no enforcement for treaties like this. This turns all their modeling, because treaties relieve pressure for real change, so countries that ratify enjoy expressive benefits regardless of whether they comply with actual requirements.
2. Countries that ratify treaties often have worse practices because they can hide behind them:
The finding that countries that ratify human rights treaties have better ratings than those that do not is not universal. Indeed, the regional treaties that outlaw torture show the opposite result: The countries that have ratified the treaties appear to have worse torture practices. In six out of nine cases, ratification of regional treaties is associated with worse, rather than better, ratings. Democratic countries that ratify the Genocide Convention and the Optional Protocol have worse practices than those that do not.
3. The flipside: The countries with the worst human rights ratings are sometimes as likely as those with the best ratings to have joined the relevant human rights treaties:
The supposed normative power of treaties that is crucial for your advantage doesn’t have any historical backing. Many countries that ratify human rights treaties, it appears, regularly and predictably violate their voluntarily assumed human rights treaty obligations.
4. Can’t possibly reverse the harms:
If this single step was enough to give the US Human Rights credibility then abolishing the death penalty for minors should have, or the end of the global gag rule, or the nominal closing of Guantánamo, or whatever Plan is.
Unions Good
1. Workers benefits:
a. Union employers are significantly more likely to provide benefits to their employees. Union workers nationwide are 28.2 percent more likely to be covered by employer-provided health insurance and 53.9 percent more likely to have employer-provided pensions compared to workers with similar characteristics who were not in unions.
2. Provide benefits for LGBT when the federal law does not:
a. 53% of workers who receive domestic partner health care coverage are unionized, versus only 17% of non-union workers. Addtionally, union members are twice as likely to have survivor benefits for domestic partners. Many unions also prohibit discrimination based on sexual identity or gender identity.
3. Good for the economy:
a. The essence of what labor unions do is give workers a voice so they can access a fiar share of the economic output they create. Unions were essential to the creation of the middle class, and strengthening unions is key to the economic recovery because they ensure consumers have the spending power to generate demand. Consumer activity accounts for roughly 70 percent of our nation’s economy, and unionized workers earn 11.3 percent more than their otherwise identical non-union counterparts. This purchasing power of middle class consumers drives our economy.
4. Good for education:
a. Teachers unions are the only major educational players still focused on advancing school equity by leveling the playing field. Rarely do politicians propose policy measures motivated by concerns about equity -- like school integration based on socioeconomic status or equitable school funding. Politicians ignore these reforms in favor of various, ineffectual corporate reforms like school choice and teacher accountability, as well as programs like Teach for America, whose popularity in these corners remains unconnected to actual success . Meanwhile, unions like AFT push for programs like school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists… [who] serve low-income students, as well as bolstering programs that serve bilingual students and students with special needs (which charter schools rarely do).
b. Teachers unions fight to protect teachers’ First Amendment rights, allowing them to advocate for children and schools without facing retaliation. Teachers unions have long fought to prevent political repercussions against members who speak out or disagree with their superiors. Without job protections, the balance is tipped so heavily in favor of administration (who must prioritize issues like the budget, school reforms, and legislation) that teachers are silenced.
c. Schools with unionized teachers often produce higher achieving students. A well-regarded 2002 Arizona State University study concluded that unionized districts produced higher-achieving students. This should make perfect sense because unions are creating work places where teachers are better paid with better working conditions, which results in attracting and retaining great teachers as well as having great learning conditions for students.
Unions Bad
1. Unions bad for the economy and jobs:
a. Unions function as labor cartels. A labor cartel restricts the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers’ wages. Companies pass on those higher wages to consumers through higher prices, and often they also earn lower profits. Economic research finds that unions benefit their members but hurt consumers generally, and especially workers who are denied job opportunities.
b. By raising labor costs it further adds to the harm done to consumers (and workers in the competitive sector) by the monopoly power of business. In addition to being too high because firms collude, the price is also too high because employees collude. Furthermore, the interests of the union and their employers are convergent whenever they deal with the outside world: both want to increase the revenue that the firm or the industry can extract through lobbying activities. To the extent that union leaders provide additional voices, unionization adds to the lobbying power of an industry. This means that any initiative that could hurt the union but empower businesses always fails.
c. Economists consistently find that unions decrease the number of jobs available in the economy. The vast majority of manufacturing jobs lost over the past three decades have been among union members–non-union manufacturing employment has risen. Research also shows that widespread unionization delays recovery from economic downturns.
d. Unions also make it nearly impossible to fire workers who are inefficient at their jobs. Most unions have strict standards establishing on what grounds you can be fired and have a minimum number of offenses that must be committed before termination is a possibility. This grossly hampers business efficiency, which means that more employees have to be hired to do a job that could be managed by a few individuals. This places a huge burden on businesses who have to waste a ton of capital on employee wages and benefits, especially small businesses which are key to the economy.
2. Unions are bad for democracy:
a. Workers in certain sectors are forced to join the union to have a job. Once in the union, members must pay union dues and initiation fees that can be used for lobbying initiatives the worker may not agree with – stripping them of their freedom of speech. Should the worker refuse to join the union, they can be fired within 90 days. This means people have to choose between having a job and having no control over their free speech – turns their freedom of speech impacts and it’s dehumanizing.
3. TEACHERS UNIONS RUIN EDUCATIONAL QUALITY AND ARE THE OBSTACLE TO MEANINGFUL EDUCATION REFORM
a. At best, teachers unions harbor mediocre teachers, and, at worst, they actively hide and reward educators who are bad at their jobs. The union contracts are the reason we can’t pay good teachers more money and promote them – meaning they’re the reason we can’t incentivize and reward good teaching. They also make it nearly impossible to fire good teachers and pass the cost along to tax payers (the average cost to tax payers in the state of NY to fire 1 teacher is more than a $250,000). They also created a massively inefficient buerocracy, which wastes money and resources.
UN Good
1. Funding
a. The UN anncounced a 5.15 billion dollar budget for 2012-2013., meaning that they have the resources to employ expensive foreign policy measures.
2. International Representation
a. 193 of the 195 countries in the world recognized by the U.S Department of State have a representative in the UN General Assembly, meaning that there are diverse viewpoints and interests being represented.
3. Emphasis on Preserving Human Rights
a. UN decloration of human rights in the most widely accepted HR document in the world. Above any other objective, the UN prioritizes human rights in every action they take. This makes them a preferrable actor because they are actively cautious about causing any negative impacts to peoples quality of life in their accomplishing their objectives.
4. Ability to Establish International Law
a. Unlike any other actor the UN has been successful in establishing international law. With so many countries conviening, they are able to come to compromises that encompass the interests of many nations while still maintaining sensitivity to cultural and regional differences.
5. Mediation
a. The UN is one of the most effective mediatory organizations. They are able to resolve conflicts between groups and establish treaties.
UN Bad
1. HR Violations
a. According to the UN website between 2007-2012 alone there have been over 400 allegations of sexual abuse by UN personnel, nearly 4000 allegations of non-sexual abuse, and over 200 allegations of sexual abuse against minors,.
2. Slow Response Time
a. Because there are so many members and so many different cultures involved, the process of passing legislation is slow and often comes after the initial violence instead of being focused on preventative measures.
3. There is corruption in the UN which ends up wasting money on non-vital programs which takes away from there ability to provide meaningful services.
4. While many countries are represented, the power that each country plays in decision making is not equal.
5. There has been a significant record of human rights abuses in the UN’s history.
6. The process of establishing international law is slothly at best and there is no mechanism for enforcement. Countries sign on to international law under their own free will. For example, the US has still not signed on to the international declorational of human rights and there is no reprecussion to pressure them into it.
7. Mediatory measures are only effective in resolving small disputes. UN mediaton is rarely effective over the long term and treaties are often broken.
US Aid Bad
1. US AID FAILS: in a World Bank study of the effectiveness of humanitarian aid the United States ranks 13th, compared to Canada at 7th.
a. EARMARKED: US aid is tightly earmarked for specific projects or comes as physical goods instead of cash this puts a big constraint on how recipients can respond to emergencies and unplanned events.
b. HR: US is at the bottom of the pack in implementing international humanitarian rights laws, and U.S. aid is ranked the lowest in perceptions of "neutrality" and "independence" from political and strategic considerations.
c. NO RESOURCES: the number of U.S. direct-hire staff, including foreign service officers, has dropped 37 percent from 3,163 in 1992 to 1,985 in December 2002; and the agency has increasingly relied on personal services and institutional contractors to implement its humanitarian and development assistance projects and manage the day-to-day activities of overseas missions.
2. DEPENDICITIS: when countries receive aid from the West, they become dependent on the aid. This dependency causes a replication of the impacts they try to claim- eventually the U.S. will cut off the aid. Of the 67 countries that have been receiving U.S. economic assistance for decades, 37 have experienced less than 1 percent annual growth while on the dole. Of these, more than half are poorer than before they started receiving U.S. aid.
3. CORRUPT BUROCRACIES: A lot of the aid that goes through the government is wasted in bureaucratic efforts before the aid even gets to the target. In fact the politicians find ways to filter the money into their pockets. A World Bank study shows that there is a positive association between the level of corruption and the amount of foreign aid. Also, foreign aid bureaucracies are inefficient – they are unable to receive feedback or operate like a normal bureaucracy
4. TIED AID: Countries that donate aid do it conditioned upon certain things. For example, if somebody wants our aid, we specify what businesses they have to funnel the aid to so as long as it benefits our interests. This leaves the countries unable to use the aid where they need to most to change the problems they have. Over 80% of US aid is tied, making it normal means for the aff. Instead of creating new businesses and jobs in recipient countries, most of the benefits remain in the donor nations. Tied aid is also inefficient because often goods and services would be available at a lower price from local producers or world markets
5. BRAIN DRAIN: Africa’s best and brightest are leaving, even as their home countries need them most. Some analysts say that as many as 50,000 Ph.D.s, or 30 per cent of Africa's university trained professionals, currently live and work outside the continent, in Britain, Europe, or North America.
6. EFFECTIVENESS: leaner budgets would be better managed; other countries think our aid to them will cure all of their problems, when in reality there is no one policy fix all that will work. There would be greater competition for resources among nations and more time to select, prepare, and supervise projects in the few countries that met stringent criteria. Abundant aid offers false hope, dampens the initiative to develop the continent’s own resources, including its people, and calms Western consciences while dulling them to the even greater horrors that lie ahead.
1. Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) ranked 20 donor countries on their accountability in humanitarian aid. US ranked 17th in 2011, 15th in 2008, 16th in 2007. Analysis: US is getting worse at giving humanitarian aid.
2. US spends the most money and resources on humanitarian aid but the results don’t reflect this input: Only 62 cents of every $100 spent on humanitarian aid programmes in 2005-09 went to disaster prevention and preparedness programmes, says the report. Overall, less than 1% of all official government aid – both development and humanitarian – went to such programmes.
3. US aid is almost never for prevention but rather reactionary – puts millions of lives at risk (Example: Somalia 2011)
a. NO solvency from us aid!
b. 70% of humanitarian aid for Somalia and almost 90% of mainstream US and UK media coverage came after the formal UN declaration of famine on 20 July 2011. This year, Oxfam and Save the Children said tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided if the international community had responded earlier to clear warning signs of an escalating crisis in the region.
c. Sophisticated early-warning systems first forecast a likely emergency as early as August 2010, but the full-scale response was not launched until July 2011, when malnutrition rates in parts of the region had gone far beyond the emergency threshold and there was high-profile media coverage.
d. The US government estimates separately that more than 29,000 children under five died in the space of 90 days from May to July last year. The accompanying destruction of livelihoods, livestock and local market systems affected 13 million people overall. Hundreds of thousands remain at continuing risk of malnutrition.
----------------------------------------
**MG SECTION**
*CP THEORY*
Conditionality Bad
A. INTERP
1. THE CP SHOULD BE ADVOCATED UNCONDITIONALLY.
B. VIOLATION
1. THEY SAY CONDO
C. STANDARDS.
1. CREATES MULTIPULE WORLDS
a. THREE POSSIBLE UNIQUNESS SCENAROS SKEW THE MG because I have to spend reading offense against the AFF that can be extended against the AFF in the block.
b. EXACERBATES BLOCK TIME TRADE OFF, the neg gets to kick strategies in the block that the MG had to cover. This gives too much power to the block and kills the affs ability to compete because the MG can’t develop depth anywhere and the MO can spread out the PMR with new internal warrants.
c. INDEPENDENT VOTER FOR EDUCATION AND FAIRNESS because it proves they have established a game where we can’t compete or learn.
d. REJECT THE TEAM NOT THE ARGUMENT because the scope of abuse is totalizing to our ability to compete in the rest of the debate and kicking the CP for them only increases abuse because we get punished for winning on theory.
1. KILLS EDUCATION.
a. THE MG HAS TOO MUCH TO COVER and have to sacrifice quality for quantity, which decreases the educational value of the debate because everything is consolidated down to who wins the best time trade off.
b. KILLS ADVOCACY SKILLS because it trades critical comparative knowledge about specific policies for strategic gains and teaches us to be disingenuous advocates, which kills our ability to affect change in the future.
c. CROSS APPLY C AND D FROM THE FIRST STANDARD, this is an independent voter for fairness and education.
2. INFINATLLY REGRESSIVE. Their interpretation and standards justify reading 10 conditional counter plans and kicking 9 of them in the MO. Just because people can learn how to answer 10 CP at 200 WPM does not mean it is a valuable direction for the activity.
3. RECRIPROCITY, Aff only gets one advocacy they shouldn’t get two worlds. Condo justifies intrinsicness and severance because if they get to shift their advocacy for strategic reasons so should we. Even if those things are bad [or cross apply their pre-empts for why they’re bad] that’s just a reason to vote them down, because theory’s not what you do, it’s what you justify.
A. VOTERS
1. APRIORI. We must establish the rules of the game before we can play them
2. GROUND. The only access to ground we have in this debate is procedural so you should vote here first to rectify the ground loss. Reject the team not the argument because they have irreparably damaged the debate.
3. COMPETITING INTERPRATATIONS. Is the best way to weigh offense and defense in the procedural debate because it clearly divides ground and allows for comparative analysis of both without judge intervention.
4. POTENTIAL ABUSE IS A VOTER because they have already wasted a min of my MG, which reifies the time trade off abuse of the NEG.
PICS Bad
A. INTERP
a. The CP Should Not borrow significant parts of plan
B. VIOLATION
a. CP includes X part of Plan
B. Standards
1. KILLS AFF GROUND. Because it moots the 7 min of offense in the PMC.
a. ARTIFICALLY REDUCES THE BURDEN ON NEGATIVE OFFENSE, which is totalizing to competitive equity because there is always some risk to any DA.
b. THE AFF IS KEY LEVERAGE against generic big stick strats because that is the only equitable division of ground. They do not need to read a CP because they could just read a DA to test that part of plan.
c. INDEPENDENT VOTER FOR FAIRNESS because the CP is articulated in round abuse because the only stable ground we have in the MG are solvency presses which are defense and MPX turns which are inevitable.
2. ENCOURAGES VAGUE PLAN WRITING. To shield the aff from the perm, which kills critical debate education because it incentivizes decreasing specificity will kills the negatives ability to read competitive counter plans and garner specific DA links.
3. KILLS TOPIC SPECIFIC EDUCATION because the negative completely ignores the case debate and refocuses all of the substantive debate on a small part of plan. Assuming that the entire PMC is true kills debate education because it decreases our ability to test our knowledge and collaborate ideas.
4. INCREASES STALE DEBATE. Teams don’t have to continue to do research because they can write one PIC and read it every debate decreasing the argumentative innovation in the activity because all research gets devoted to small irrelevant parts of much larger and more important problems.
5. MG PREDICTIBILITY.
a. CANT PREP FOR EVERY SMALL ADJUSTMENT, which means I am always behind the 8 ball in prep because the negative gets to spend 20 min on something I probably, didn’t predict.
b. KILLS ALL PREP because it changes the direction of my answers to all of their DAs, which kills all depth in the debate because I cannot access the collaborative thinking of my prep staff.
c. CONDITIONAL AND DISPO PICS JUSTIFY CONTRADICTORY ARGUMENTS that force the MG to double turn themselves allowing a simple victory for the block.
d. INDEPENDENT VOTER FOR FAIRNESS AND EDUCATION because the MG is the only speech that we can read offense against the DA and it proves that we can’t functionally compete against the CP and our standards indicate they have killed all education in the debate which means you reject the argument not the team because they have infected the entire debate.
6. RECRIPROCITY. If the Neg can make minor adjustments to the aff, the aff should have the same reciprocal ability, which justifies severance and intrinsicness because that is the only way to take back the ground lost by the abusive CP.
C. VOTERS
1. APRIORI. We must establish the rules of the game before we can play them.
2. GROUND. The only access to ground we have in this debate is procedural so you should vote here first to rectify the ground loss. Reject the team not the argument because they have irreparably damaged the debate.
3. COMPETITING INTERPRATATIONS. Is the best way to weigh offense and defense in the procedural debate because it clearly divides ground and allows for comparative analysis of both.
4. POTENTIAL ABUSE IS A VOTER because they have already wasted a min of my MG, which reifies the time trade off abuse of the NEG.
Consult Bad
A. INTERP
1. THE CP SHOULD NOT CONSULT AN EXTERNAL ACTOR OVER THE PLAN
B. VIOLATION
C. STANDARDS
1. ARTIFICALLY GENERATES UNIQUNESS
a. CONSULTATIONS INVOLVES A SEPARATE ACTION to occur before the passage of plan, which allows the negative to artificially generate uniqueness and gain offense that we can’t answer because it is unpredictable and not real world.
b. CREATES ARTIFICAL COMPETITION by creating another action before plan, which the aff can never predict. Infinitely regressive.
c. THIS KILLS DEPTH AND REAL WORLD EDUCATION because it forfeits substantive strategies, for isolated and irrelevant cheep shots. Fiating that consultation is binding kills real world education because it creates a political certainty, which never exists in the real world.
d. INDEPENDENT VOTER FOR EDUCATION AND FAIRNESS because it proves they have established a game where we can’t compete or learn.
e. REJECT THE TEAM NOT THE ARGUMENT because the scope of abuse is totalizing to our ability to compete in the rest of the debate and kicking the CP for them increases abuse because we’re punished for winning on theory.
2. CONSULT IS DEFAULT CONDITIONALITY,
a. NEG can go for the they say no debate in the MO and use the act of consultation to generate uniqueness for their DA.
b. CREATES MULTIPUL WORLDS, which skews the MG because I have to spend reading offense against the AFF that can be extended against the AFF in the block.
c. EXACERBATES BLOCK TIME TRADE OFF, the neg gets to kick strategies in the block that the MG had to cover. This gives too much power to the block and kills the affs ability to compete because the MG can’t develop depth anywhere and the MO can spread out the PMR with new internal warrants.
d. KILLS RECRIPROCITY, Aff only gets one advocacy they shouldn’t get two worlds. Condo justifies intrinsicness and severance because if they get to shift their advocacy for strategic reasons so should we. Even if those things are bad, that’s just a reason to vote them down, because theory’s not what you do – it’s what you justify. [or cross apply their reasons why its bad]
e. CROSS APPLY D AND E FROM THE FIRST STANDARD, Independent voter for education and fairness.
3. CONSULT IS NOT A REASON TO REJECT, because it does not test weather or not the plan is a good idea to pass now rather if it is a good idea to do something else first.
D. VOTERS
1. APRIORI. We must establish the rules of the game before we can play them
2. GROUND. The only access to ground we have in this debate is procedural so you should vote here first to rectify the ground loss. Reject the team not the argument because they have irreparably damaged the debate.
3. COMPETITING INTERPRATATIONS. Is the best way to weigh offense and defense in the procedural debate because it clearly divides ground and allows for comparative analysis of both without judge intervention.
4. POTENTIAL ABUSE IS A VOTER because they have already wasted a min of my MG, which reifies the time trade off abuse of the NEG.
PERMS
1. PERM DO THE CP. Consultation is normal means, which means your CP is the aff. This means the CP is not offense against the aff because they are the same thing.
2. PERM DO BOTH. The USFG can pass the plan and consult at the same time, which means you don’t test the aff.
3. PERM DOUBLE BIND. The Perm only severs if they reject the aff, which means in the only instance the permutation severs from the AFF if they say no, which means in the only instance where the perm isn’t a round winner, the PMC is a DA to the CP alone and there’s a massive solvency deficit to the CP – means you don’t solve a lick of the aff in a world in which they say no.
States Bad
A. INTERP
1. THE CP ACTOR MUST BE SPECIFIED AS THE NATIONAL GOVENERS ASSOCIATION IN THE CP TEXT
B. VIOLATION
C. STANDARDS
1. SOLVES ALL YOUR OFFENSE.
a. YOU CAN TEST FEDERAL ACTION with the added bonus of using a real world organization that has a significant history of legislation. No policy has ever been adopted by all 50 states.
b. INCREASES EDUCATION because it allows both teams to access a lit base and is more real world, which means there, is more stable ground on both sides of the topic.
2. PREDICTIBILITY
a. NEG GETS TO CHERRY PICK, while the aff can never predict the CP in prep time which means that even if there is ground that doesn’t matter because the MG can not predict the net benefit to the CP and find a DA that links in 20 min.
b. NO LIT on 50 state action means we can’t access predictable ground on the topic, which means we are behind the 8 ball the entire debate.
c. INDEPENDENT VOTER FOR EDUCATION AND FAIRNESS because it proves they have established a game where we can’t compete or learn.
d. REJECT THE TEAM NOT THE ARGUMENT because the scope of abuse is totalizing to our ability to compete in the rest of the debate and kicking the CP for them only increases abuse because we get punished for winning on theory.
1. JUSTIFIES OBJECT FIAT AND MUTLI ACTOR CP they pass 50 different pieces of legislation through 50 different agents with 50 different enforcement mechanisms. This justifies the negative fiating the harms on both side of a conflict and winning the debate on an irrefutable solvency deficit.
2. YOU DON’T SOLVE. There is no actor called the 50 states, which means your plan never gets passed. In order for you to read a textually viable you would have to read the names of all 50 states in the CP text. This alone is terminal because it proves nothing happens as a result of the CP.
A. VOTERS
1. APRIORI. We must establish the rules of the game before we can play them
2. GROUND. The only access to ground we have in this debate is procedural so you should vote here first to rectify the ground loss. Reject the team not the argument because they have irreparably damaged the debate.
3. COMPETITING INTERPRATATIONS. Is the best way to weigh offense and defense in the procedural debate because it clearly divides ground and allows for comparative analysis of both.
4. POTENTIAL ABUSE IS A VOTER because they have already wasted a min of my MG, which reifies the time trade off abuse of the NEG.
Condition CP’s Bad
FIRST, ADDING A CONDITION IS A VOTING ISSUE:
a) AFF GROUND—POTENTIAL CONDITIONS ARE INFINITE AND UNRELATED TO THE PLAN. THEY COULD PICK ANYTHING AND READ AN ADVANTAGE ABOUT IT–IT’S ARTIFICIALLY COMPETITIVE [SINCE IT DOESN’T TEST THE MERITS OF THE PLAN ITSELF] AND IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT.
b) EDUCATION—LEGITIMIZES ANY CONDITION CP, INCLUDING GREENLAND ICEBERGS AND RUSSIAN SALES TO IRAN, DETRACTING FROM TOPIC EDUCATION BY JUSTIFYING CONDITIONS ERRONEOUS TO THE TOPIC.
NEXT, PERM: DO THE PLAN AND REQUEST THAT [X COUNTRY] __________________________.
IT’S NOT INTRINSIC BECAUSE THE REQUEST IS IMPLICIT IN THE CONDITION OF THE CP—IT ALSO PROVES THAT A FORMAL CONDITION IS NOT NECESSARY AND THAT THE CP DOESN’T COMPETE, B/C THERE NO REASON TO ATTACH THE PLAN TO IT SPECIFICALLY.
NEXT, PERM: DO THE COUNTERPLAN, ITS NOT SEVERANCE
a) FUNCTIONAL: ‘OFFER’ ALLOWS FOR A CHANGE IN CONDITIONS
Words and Phrases, Cumulative Annual Pocket Part, Vol. 29, 2007. //wku-tjs
b) TEXTUAL: IT JUST ADDS WORDS TO THE PLAN, MEANING THEY CAN BE COMBINED. TEXTUAL COMPETITION IS THE ONLY OBJECTIVE WAY TO ELIMINATE BAD CPS THAT PROMOTE STALE EDUCATION AND STEAL AFF GROUND
AND, MY INTERP IS THAT CPs MUST BE TEXTUALLY AND FUNCTIONALLY COMPETITIVE.
NEXT, PERM: DO THE PLAN, BUT TELL [X] THAT THE CONDTIONS INCLUDE ___________.
IT’S A DOUBLE BIND:
a) CP REQUIRES THAT [X] IS INFORMED OF THE ADDITIONAL CONDITIONS, MEANING IT ISN’T INTRINSIC AND THE PERM SOLVES, OR
b) THE CP DOESN’T INFORM CUBA OF ITS CONDITIONS, MEANING CUBA SAYS NO AND THE COUNTERPLAN DOESN’T SOLVE.
NEXT, PERM: DO THE PLAN AND CONDITION FUTURE ASSISTANCE TO [X] ON ________.
Textual Competition Good
1. Most objective – a text is the only unmovable way to determine competition, giving a clear delineation.
2. T-Comp dejustifies delay C/Ps which are bad because they allow the negative to steal aff ground and enact fiat in the future, for which we can generate no uniqueness.
3. Decreases judge intervention – Comparing texts is removed from the flow and requires no weighing of arguments, ensuring fairer decisions and debate.
4. Prevents advocacy shifts – Holding a team to the text prevents abusive shifts sustaining competitive equity and ground. We can’t hold them to the “function” of their plan because that changes depending on the arguments in the round.
5. Only true way to test competition – Without seeing what plan does and precludes through the text, we can’t judge what is really competitive.
Textual Competition Bad
1. Kills Policy Making – making debate into semantics turns the activity into who can write the best plan text, not what the best policy option for the real world is.
2. Judge intervention – the critic still has to look at texts and compare, which is removed from the flow and the actual arguments against the counter plan. This makes the debate stacked against the aff when neg gets the second text.
3. Contextual analysis is inevitable – conflicting legislation can be passed at the same time. Only a contextual evaluation of how they interact can show competition.
4. Encourages shifty debate – adding ‘reject the aff’ to the bottom of the counter plan text makes any counter plan textually competitive.
5. Allows aff abuse – any ‘do both’ perms would win the round because they don’t weigh whether the perm is net beneficial, destroying all negative CP ground.
6. Rewards bad plans – vague plans undermine neg ground and allow the aff to clarify later.
7. It’s eliminates good counterplans – means that truly mutually exclusive and competitive counterplans (ban the plan) aren’t allowed just because they add some words to the plan.
*A2 T*
A2: XT
1. We meet – The case is the focus pf the debate, not our advantages. We can claim whatever benefits from the resolution so long as plan text is topical.
2. We meet – Even if we did use extra T planks we wouldn’t be less topical, which is the only reason to vote against us. Don’t punish us for presenting a better than 100% case.
3. No abuse – If we don’t spike their DAs or steal their CP ground, there’s no in round abuse and no reason to vote us down – you’d never vote on a potential disad.
4. Severing is legit – If their argument is that some of our plan or advantages don’t belong in the debate the fairest thing to do is to remove them from your jurisdiction and evaluate the rest of case.
5. Severing extra T parts doesn’t abuse – Opp has the right to sever CPs and kick out of DAs or tenuous case arguments. Triaging positions is part of good debate so it should be reciprocal if our overall advocacy doesn’t change.
6. Not a justification to reject the gov – There’s no “only” in the resolution that would prevent us from going above and beyond our duty.
7. Allowing extra T planks/advantages allows us to find the best policy – Just like Congress attaches riders to the main part of a bill and public policy scholars often advocate provisions designed to ameliorate potential side effects.
8. Ridiculous semantic dispute – If anything, we expand the opp’s link ground to DAs, so it is theoretically inconsistent to argue T which is designed to protect ground.
9. No threshold – No brightline to determine how much is too much, failure of the opp to provide this makes it impossible for us to argue the violation.
10. Opp over-limits – This restricts creativity in resolution interpretation which is destructive to education – kills argumentative innovation that keeps debate alive.
A2: FX T
A good idea if your case might be FX topical is to add “all enforcement guaranteed through normal means” at the end of plan text and use that to answer any vacuum test, etc.
1. We meet – Plan doesn’t take multiple steps. We take one step, which is fiat on the national (or other) level, and enforcement through normal means. Upon signing your ballot, all this happens in one step.
2. Resolution requires FX – No reasonable person can expect any federal policy to take only one step and meet any advantage. Real world = multiple steps for any policy enactment.
3. FX arguments are infinitely regressive – Any advantage, DA, CP can be argued to involve multiple steps ad infinitum. As long as we support our steps, there’s no reason to reject.
4. FX = contradictory theoretical arguments – T is a ground preservation issue for the opp. Effectual cases actually expand opp DA ground since it can link off the FX topical portion of plan. Thus, there is no unique ground infringement.
5. No threshold – There is no clear brightline with which to determine when a case violates FX, thus it is impossible for you as the critic to make an objective evaluation. This begs for judge intervention which destroys the purpose of debate and should be an RVI.
6. Reciprocity – Opp DAs violate FX just as much as the gov case so their link chains should be procedurally rejected as well.
7. FX destroys research/education – FX is a silly semantic quibble sued by teams who don’t research cases and subjects outside the obvious and direct. Educational value of debate is derived from research.
A2: Standards
Limits bad:
1. Decreases education/creativity and gov ground – We could only debate a few cases, makes for redundant debate.
2. Courts disprove – Will open their jurisdiction if a case is significant.
Precision bad:
1. Decreases the meaning of the debate by shifting the focus of the resolution away from holistic interpretation to minutiae
2. Impossible to meet – Opening T up to each word opens up too many definitions to meet simultaneously.
Brightline bad:
1. Language isn’t perfect and requires some leniency
2. Not needed for debate – Every debater has a different approach/interpretation of every word but we can still debate the substantive issues.
K of T
Static interpretations of words justifies exclusion and otherization of individuals over semantic differences.
Their prioritization of the definition of words over substance of debate indicates this priviledging of static notions of what a word means rather than its function within our argument or the context of the round and represents a violent rejection of us as individuals.
Linguistic genocide is the impact: What you say and how you say it is important, because it shapes your identitiy. Their T violently rejects our ability to determine our own subjectivity and make sense of the world with our own language, which causes violence against the other, because they create a line in the sand to determine acceptability.
Reclamation of words: Reclaiming words like queer and slut is important for movements to reclaim identities and coalesce around to create social change – illustrating the importance of the fluidity of the meaning and use of words. They foreclose this possibility, which makes social change that stops structural violence impossible.
Alternative: Vote aff to withold legitimacy from topicality
Solves:
When they say debate is repressentational, they have to justify their method in all instances including the T debate.
A rejection of the legitimacy of T is able to solve back and take an ideological stance against static definitions of words, allowing us to embrace a method that does not violently exclude people with different perspectives or semantic differences.
Kritikal T Answers (For K Affs)
Creativity is the biggest impact to framework—this round is worthless if it’s the same as every other—we shouldn’t ask, “what is the ideal debate,” but “what can debate do?” This allows debate to become a machine of destabilization in which our assumptions our shaken and our revolutionary spirits are stirred.
Normativity is bad. Asking what we should do is useless if we are already constituted in ways that blind us to reality—instead we should seek to embrace rhizomatic thinking, which opens up new paths of action and thought.
Their framework is microfascism—predictability deploys the efficiency principle, in which the best debate is seen as the one we’ve already had a million times, making debate stale and turning all their education impacts:
Extend our FW analysis about arboresic knowledge – the aff is key to create new debate and switch side debate would prevent us from creating new forms of thought and debate that people actually care about. They’ve conceded that what we hope to accomplish from debate is wedded in assumptions about what debate is good debate – their theory would just force us to continue in the securitized mindset of SQ policy debates. We’ve already turned all their offense in the 1AC – if securitization is bad, then debating within security is bad as well. That means if we win securitization is bad, the only way you can break away is via the rhizome of the affirmative – for this debate and all future debates – that is why the ballot is key.
Fairness is self-serving—it begs the question, “fair for whom?” The equal game board is a misnomer— extend our arguments that say notions of fairness are informed by SQ debate and that rounds don’t happen without contect. We think that being forced to turn into Karl Rove isn’t fair either, but the normative debate that informs all of your assumptions about why your debate is good would compell us to debate that way. If we win a reason why your form of debate is bad, that’s a reason all your truth and fairness claims are rendered suspect.
All your predictability and fairness standards re-enforce and stem from the notion that we should have to do the topic because it’s the topic – the entirety of the 1AC is a criticism of this notion with offensive reasons that’s bad for us as individuals, bad for debate, and bad for the world, because it’s militaristic and re-entrenches security discourse. If we win a reason securitization is bad, it’s game over for them.
All our arguments are about what knowledge would a topical affirmative produce and what is the value or purpose of that knowledge?
We say a topical aff would be bad for security disco and turn us all into Karl Rove, and that the way we read our aff would offer us a way to escape that.
Impacts:– Res is underwritten with assumptions – in this instance, pressure targets a state’s behavior to create change favorable to the nation doing the pressuring. The thesis of our affirmative is that certain methods of debate reward a particular understanding of the world. Our aff seeks to build a new method of debate and thus a better interpretation of this and future topics. Extend our contention 1 that proves how the understanding of the world rewarded by militaristic debate is fundamentally flawed. Anything not the aff forces historical amnesia and reproduces debates that ignore dissenting opinions and the real world consequences of our speeches – this is just another reason they’re wrong on the question of what kind of debate is better and more educational for us. A negative ballot would make these harms inevitable.
*A2 GENERIC CP’s*
African Union
Perm: do the plan and then consult the African Union about something else
1. We still garner all of the advantages because we still consult. None of net-benefits of consultation are specific to a certain issue.
2. We have immediate solvency because we solve the case first.
There is no specification about how the consultation process occurs or how long it will take. There is a clear timeframe to the case debate that they don’t access.
Solvency deficit: there is at least a 99.9% chance that the AU says no, meaning they can’t solve for the case. The better choice is to just do the plan that has guaranteed solvency after passage.
Consultation CP are illegitimate
1. There are an infinite number of actors that the opposition can consult destroying all predictable ground for the topic
2. (insert consult bad from the Multilat/Unilat topic file)
No internal link to the net-benefit because there is no precedent that this consultation will lead to future consultations.
People act in Africa all the time without consulting the AU, there is no internal link as to why this would be any different.
Congress
Solvency Deficit
1. Precedent
a. SCOTUS sets a legal precedence with its decisions that all lower courts must follow and all future rulings have to default to. This means we solve the aff and any chance for future legislation that may weaken or rollback the plan. Your counterplan doesn’t do this. Means there’s a solvency deficit immediately as well as in the future, because changing legislation is easy compared to changing judicial precedent.
Disad to CP
Links to politics, obviously, because SCOTUS is an a-political organization.
Link differential: Justices are approved by the Senate and vetted by both parties extensively before being approved. They also have to provide a constitutional basis for their decisions and must recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest. Additionally, active justices cannot discuss their political beliefs with media or anyone else, as it might later create a conflict of interest.
Courts
Solvency Deficit
1. Enforcement
FIRST, the court has no inherent authority to compel compliance from other branches of government, and they will actively undermine the court—that’s Baum
SECOND, the president will use its constitutional authority to nullify the decision as uncontroversial—that’s Lawson
THIRD, lower court judges will just ignore the decision, meaning there is no way the plan gets implemented—that’s Baum again
FOURTH, administrative agencies are far removed from the court and find it easy to avoid implementing decisions… means no solvency—Baum again
And, court’s decisions are far from the last word on an issue, congress, the executive, lower courts and states’ interpretation has the largest impact
2. Courts Fail
FIRST, the limited nature of the judiciary, the inherent lack of independence, and the judiciary’s inability to implement their decision guts the court’s ability to produce social change—that’s O’Brien
SECOND, local courts pay attention to local politis and won’t enforce controversial SCOTUS decisions, gutting solvency—that’s Baum
THIRD, the court lacks the power of the purse and thus lacks the ability to enforce its decisions—that’s Rosenberg
FOURTH, the courts are slowed by countermobilization from decision opponents, who will contest the decision through re-litigating it in the lower courts, delaying solvency—Rosenberg again
FIFTH, even if the court produces some change, the decision’s beneficiaries will nto take advantage of that change, won’t notice the decision, or are unwilling to litigate to pursue their claims, gutting solvency—that’s Baum
3. Backlash
FIRST, controversial decisions tank the courts support with the public, gutting compliance—that’s Baum
SECOND, decisions mobilize opposition and shift their political activity to other venues like Congress and are able to render the ruling meaningless—Roe proves… That’s Tushnet
THIRD, Congressional and public backlash prevents the decision from gaining any support, gutting enforcement—that’s Wexler
And, the court relies on public to accept its decisions
4. Timeframe
Courts have to wait for the next available test case, which means you could take years to solve the aff.
Disad to CP
I guess fism might link to courts, too, since it’s a branch of the federal government dictating what all the state courts have to uphold rather than letting the states decide it on a state-by-state basis, but obviously court clog links (although I think the uniqueness is rather nebulous).
Delegation
CP links to politics
1. CP links to politics: No link differential to politics –Congress would backlash because it’s perceived as Obama trying to meddle with its authority on immigration – prefer our evidence because it’s in context of delegating on (topic)
a. The CP still involves a political battle: A non-political delegation is unlikely. . Elected officeholders would choose all of the members. Lobbying from all sides of the issue would move to these commission members.
b. And agencies are not insulated from political battles: Agencies are not insulated from political battles, but are vulnerable to all kinds of pressures from Congress – especially since Congress controlls their budgets and is also in charge of approving appointees that head the agencies themselves. They and their staffs have interests of their own, such as getting wider powers, a larger budget, and access to higher appointed positions.
2. Delegation CP’s are a voting issue:
1. Fairness – delegation moots the 1AC – aff can’t leverage offense because they can read contrived law review articles that say delegation has total authority
2. Education – centers the debate literally around whether delegation works or not and a contrived politics net benefit – destroys topic specific education
3. Conditionally makes it worse – we have to invest massive time allocation to make minute solvency deficits that aren’t offensive against other args – functionally ends the debate after the 1NC
Privatization
Solvency Deficits
Public action is better, 5 reasons:
1. The public sector can be more efficiently run – look at health care in the US versus basically the whole rest of the world or studies of electric utilities have found that publicly owned ones were more efficient and charged lower prices than privately owned ones. Also, privatization is not going to provide a miracle cure for all the problems (especially the inefficiencies) associated with the public sector, nor can private enterprise guarantee that the public interest is most effectively served by private interests taking over public sector activities. Also, by diverting private sector capital from new productive investments to buying existing public sector assets, economic growth would be retarded, rather than accelerated
2. Greater public accountability and a more transparent public sector would ensure greater efficiency in achieving the public and national interest while limiting public sector waste and borrowing.
3. Privatization may postpone a fiscal crisis by temporarily reducing fiscal deficits, but it could also exacerbate it in the medium term because the public sector would lose income from the more profitable public sector activities and would be stuck with financing the unprofitable ones, which would undermine the potential for cross-subsidization within the public sector
4. Privatization tends to adversely affect the interests of public sector employees and the public, especially of poorer consumers, which the public sector is usually more sensitive to.
5. Privatization would give priority to profit maximization at the expense of social welfare and the public interest.
Regulatory Negotiation
Perm
Perm – do the plan and the parts of the CP that mandate a reg neg, but not the parts that make it prior
Perm – do the plan and reg neg over something else.
Reg Neg Bad/Fails
Turn – rollback: reg negs are unconstitutional : In A.L.A Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the SCOTUS raised objections to Congress’ reliance on industry self regulation. Such a delegation of power is “inconsistent with the constitutional perogatives and duties of Congress.
Turn – Reg Neg takes longer, increases litigation, doesn’t help compliance and is likely to be modified – under a negotiated paradigm, the goal is consensus, not public interest. The process is not capable of limiting time and has empirically failed to avoid further litigation. The EPA has utilized it in the past and has not realized any decrease in the time required and has seena higher rate of litigation. Consensus often proves difficult and is complicated by the multiple avenues of input and oversight in the regulatory process, which increases the likelyhood of changes in policy.
Turn: reg negs delay, increase litigation, make worse policy and cause more conflicts: negotiated rulemaking has yet to achieve a reduction in the time it takes to develop regulations and has increased the intensity of subsequent litigation over regulations. It is bound to take a more intensive effort to develop a consensus, and negotiation processes generate confilcts and standoffs over who participates and over what terms mean. Making consensus a precondition for policymaking will only exacerbate problems like ambiguity, lowest common denominator results, and an undue emphasis on tractibility.
Turn – Confidentiality
a) Reg neg requires full disclosure: Participants to the process will be open to public inspection and thus public scrutiny at every stage. The Sunshine Act requires the meetings be open to the public and the Freedom of Information Act requires agencies to provide the public with many of their ineternal documents.
b) Disclosure kills biz con and solvency – confidentiality is critically important in dispute resolutions. Parties expect and desire that communications will be treated as privileged and confidential. Private negotiation becoming public record kills biz con, because they feel the public sector is invading the private sector. Guts solvency and means they’ll back out.
Say No –
a) Paritisanship – consensual rulemaking is not a panacea. Consensus on controversial subjects is difficult in the face of contentiousness that have developed over time.
b) Psychology - a regulatory negotiation is not analogous to a friendly discussion of policy. All parties expect to gain from an agreement. The psychological forces at world have as much to do with power and strength as with trust and mutual respect. The parties are bargaining under conditions in which their interests are opposed, which makes it likely that they’ll walk away.
Even a small risk means we win –
a) only takes one vote – during negotiations, the requirement of unanimous consent essentailly bestows veot rights on individual stakeholders, leading to ‘paralyzed’ negotiations. In 1996, the EPA was forced to ismiss certain representatives from the CSI process for ‘obstructionist’ behavior during negotiations.
b) snoball effect – it only takes one defecting group to begin unraveling the consensus. Hightened sensitivities accelerate the breakdown of consensus. The fact that agencies are embedded within a dynamic political environment makes consensus like building a house of cards.
States
Solvency Deficits
1. Uniformity
a. You don’t get to have it all ways. You either get to defend laboratory for democracy or uniform action gets passed. You don’t get to both ‘let states find the best way to do plan’ and defend that states won’t create a race to the bottom. We think that uniform federal action is best because it ensures the plan gets passed in every state and removes the possibility that states will create a race to the bottom with regulations. Massive solvency deficit to the counterplan. Advantage (whatever) is the disad to the counterplan.
b. Organizational fragmentation is the other solvency deficit to the counterplan. You pass legislation that has to be implemented 50 different ways in 50 different geographical locations. No way that states could handle the organizational nightmare. Means that at best, they pass a crappy, pared-down version of the plan. Look at empirics: when states try to undertake their own infrastructure development projects, they independently contract with planning firms which include noncompete clauses, which lock states into 35 year contracts and essentially remove the public’s ability to rework the contract (which takes out your laboratory for democracy args), and gain stable sources of revenue (like tolls from heavily used highways). Federal government is actually the most flexible when it comes to finding solutions, because they have more negotiating and bargaining power with firms.
2. Funding
a. If you defend uniform legislation, then you bite our state spending disad to the the counterplan. Means that at best, you might solve plan, but you cause a tradeoff because states can’t deficit spend (or when they do it comes at the espense of things like education and social programs).
3. Race to the bottom (enviro regs)
a. You create an incentive for states to NOT solve the aff harms, because states will compete with each other to attract business or at least prevent businesses from leaving their state. (This means you speed up the rate at which GW is occurring, means the GW advantage is a disad to the counterplan).
Underview: They’re in a double bind – either they defend a patchwork of legislation that fails and creates a race to the bottom work or they defend uniform action and at best state spending isn’t sufficient to solve case or they tradeoff with other programs.
Disad to CP - Tradeoff
Uniqueness:
1. State spending is tight now
a. Governors are facing enormous fiscal challenges from programs competing for a finite share of revenue. Throughout the country, states are still reeling from a budget situation described as more severe than any of the past 60 years by the National Association of State Budget Officers. State revenues have plummeted, forcing policymakers to slash budgets, scavenge for funds, and shift priorities in response. (Insert some specific uniqueness about budgets)
Link:
1. You force the states to fund the plan, which means the governors have to immediately chop a whole hell of a lot of money from their budgets. This means that [social programs, education, etc.], which is the low-hanging fruit, is axed.
2. This means you link to politics at least as hard, because the direct tradeoff with programs that are so necessary for people’s day to day existence are felt much more. Means that all across the country, voters backlash against their representatives (or whatever their politics says).
Internal Link:
1. These programs are key (insert reasons)
Impact:
1. Social programs/education is good.
CP Links to Politics
1. Private interests lobby to keep programs under federal control
a. (Whatever private interest group affected by the counterplan) and other private sector interest groups lobby Congress all the time to ensure the federal government is the one in charge. They worry that program consolidation will result in less funding for their programs over time, and Congress people worry that consolidation could lead to less funding for specific programs that are important to them (like the ones that tradeoff with states doing the plan)
2. State failures influence Congress (if we win a risk of a solvency deficit, then they link)
a. If states are provided additional authority and fail to meet public expectations, their representatives will be held accountable for that failure on election day. To Congress, a more prudent, risk-adverse approach is to provide states additional programmatic flexibility, but retain a federal presence through both program oversight and the imposition of federal guidelines to ensure that states do not stray too far from national objectives. Means that the permutation will shield the link to politics and solves best.
*DA FRONTLINES*
A2: Aid Tradeoff
1. Their internal links are empirically denied – the way that we do aid funding in the US isn’t like we allocate resources to disasters that we somehow magically know are going to happen months in advance. We have a budget, but then allocate those funds to disasters as they come up – there is no set budget that means money going to Syria would necessarily trade off with anything in particular. And even if it did, there’s no way to predict what it would trade off with, because those disasters haven’t happened yet.
2. Additionally, even if Syria would take up enough of our aid budget to trade off with something in the future that would be bad, there’s no reason that would mean NO money would go to whatever potential crisis would happen. All the natural disasters this year like Hurricane Sandy prove that if a disaster is bad enough to cause your impacts, there will be public will to fund more emergency relief.
a. This means you’re in a double bind – either the impact to your disad is inevitable and impossible to know or public will will always solve the terminal impact.
3. And your arg is empirically denied – in 2012, our aid budget was decreased by 12.5%. We should have seen your impact happen – either no impact or emergency relief packages solve.
4. Non-unique – Aid cuts now: with the Senate set to debate further spending cuts for global health programmes, humanitarian assistance, and US contributions to the World Bank, UN agencies, and other international organisations. Eager to rein in government spending, the Republican-controlled House is seeking to make further budget cuts in US diplomacy and global development programmes is looking to slice more than $1bn off last year's $49bn budget.
a. Republicans are calling for a 20% decrease in our foreign aid budget this year totaling about $12 billion.
5. Non-unique – Any support from Congress for foreign aid is just talk: Congress has failed to provide any support beyond rhetorical expressions of congratulations. The only relevant Congressional initiative this year – a very modest proposal to support the private sector in Egypt and Tunisia through enterprise funds – has stalled in the Senate after being approved by the Foreign Relations Committee in June and has failed to even get out of committee in the House.
A2 Hollow Hope
The courts spur social change: The courts and the law define and redefine structures, institutions, and expectations. Such redefinition is critical to giving momentum to social movements and the ability of individuals to access the justice system. This momentum leads to broader reform efforts and lends creedence to advocacy groups’ efforts and establishes new social norms in terms of strategic access to rights.
Legal focus does not cause disenfranchisement or disempowerment – marginalized groups must focus on the law to cause progressive change: Marginalized groups have used legal reform precisely because they lacked power. Despite limitations, these groups have often successfully secured their interests through legislative and judicial victories. Rather than experiencing a disabling disenchantment with the legal system, we can learn from past models, with the aim of constantly redefining the boundaries of legal reform and making visible law's broad reach.
Movements cannot solve for those who truly experience bare life: Those whose political identity is without protection or a means of access and recourse for their exploitation need to be granted intelligibility within the legal system as a pre-requisite for any movement or change, since they cannot participate in the movement without being recognized as a constituted human being with political considerations first.
Courts prompt legislative action: They are a necessary conduit to legitimate socially desirable but politically costly behavior. Court action or the threat of court action is essential to legitimate the demands of activism groups, because the lower courts and state legislatures have to follow the rulings from on-high even if it is politically untennable to do so or was that way before the ruling.
A2: Israel Freakout
Non-unique. Obama has taken the biggest stand against Israel of any president since its inception, actually insisting on a stop to settlement. The Israeli public views Obama as unreasonable and relations are tanked now.
LINK TURN: A DROP IN RELATIONS PREVENTS AN ISRAELI STRIKE
1. Unconditional US support encourages Israel: Israel clings to the belief that it will be able to guarantee its long-term security with weapons alone. The U.S. encourages it in this view, sending Israelis the message that no matter how militant their rejectionist policies become, they can count on Washington’s endless support.
2. Israel will never attack Iran without the overarching protection of the United States. Without a strong or at least tentative backing from the US, Israel fears a response from not only Iran but also Syria and Hezbollah. These two are likely to stand aside if the US has some sort of relations with Israel. Israel knows this and will not attempt an attack for fear of retaliation.
3. Explosions of arms caches in Lebanon proves that Iran is encouraging Hezbollah to stockpile weapons in order to attack Israel if a strike on Iran is ordered. Without the US to ensure weapons, defense supplies, and diplomatic support, Israel will be very vulnerable to Hezbollah rockets from the north. IDF intelligence has cited this as a major risk of an attack on Iran without US support.
4. Empirically decreased relations prove that Israel will act with less impunity, not more. In 1970, Golda Meir decided not to pre-emptively strike Egypt and Syria for fear of alienating the US, because Nixon did not support Israel unconditionally like we Johnson or later presidents. When relations were high under Bush, by contrast, the Israelis accelerated settlement and other internationally unpopular initiatives like the wars in Lebanon and Gaza. The Israelis felt comfortable destroying Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 without warning the US because of steady relations with the Reagan Administration.
IMPACT TURN: IRAN STRIKE GOOD
1. International consensus is that Tehran has passed the point of no return on nuclear weapons. If left to their own devices, Iran will have nuclear arms in the next six to twelve months.
2. A strong show of desperation proves that Israel will enforce the Begin Doctrine – that no regional force except for itself will obtain nuclear weapons. This leaves no strategic ambiguity for the Iranian regime, which will understand that Israel will stop at nothing to prevent it from achieving nuclear weapons (you can cross apply their arguments about how the Iranians have really good defenses and say that this proves that Israel is willing to take any military sacrifice in order to protect its sovereignty.)
3. Israel has bunker busters that are designed to break through the concrete walls that protect Iran’s reactors in the SQ. The strikes would work to disable these facilities. A US defense firm risk assessment of the scenario says that even in the most pessimistic scenario – if Iran has been supplied an advanced anti-aircraft system from Russia – the losses in the attack would only equal 20%.
4. The IAF would target the three main sites of Israeli nuclear technology: the nuclear research center in Isfahan, the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, and the heavy water plant, intended for future plutonium production, in Arak. These would be the most strategic and effective sites to target, setting back the Iranian nuclear program back several years at least. They are located in central Iran far from any region with a strong threat of biodiversity loss. Also the facilities are thirty meters underground preventing wind spread of radioisotopes.
5. An Israel strike disincentivizes regional proliferation because it frees Arab states that are allies of the United States (and through proxy Israel) of the need to develop their own nuclear weapons. Israel will prove itself willing to act in the collective interest of these countries against Iran.
6. This strike also decreases Iranian hard power in the region which solves for regional instability by preventing the ascendancy of armed groups like Hezbollah and Iranian proxies in Iraq.
7. A nuclear Iran would provide an umbrella of deterrence to its proxies in Lebanon and Syria. The only reason that paramilitary groups like Hamas’ military wing don’t constantly attack Israel is because of the deterrence that Israel’s superior military supplies. Giving them the ability to operate under the protection of Iran’s nukes ensures that they wage constant small scale guerilla conflict against and within Israel.
8. A nuclear Iran would proliferate, giving the technology to its ally Syria. Arab countries in the region that mistrust Persian supremacy (like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) would also weaponize because unlike Israel, Iran would not operate under the strategic wing of the United States, meaning that they have no check against Iranian aggression through a mutual ally. Widespread ME proliferation is bad because the area gets geographically far enough apart that it is conceivable for these states to use nuclear weapons against one another without risking irradiation of their own territory.
A2: Russia/US Relations
Uniqueness as of 9/11/12
US/Russia relations are bad now
1. Syria - On a visit to Russia this week, Clinton said she was willing to work with Moscow on a new UN resolution on Syria but warned that the United States would step up support to end Assad's regime if the measure did not carry consequences.
a. Clinton pressured Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a summit of Pacific Rim states in Russia last weekend to step up the pressure on ending Assad’s regime.
b. Chinese and Russian leaders restated their firm opposition to what they see as American meddling in Syria but did not state what potential consequences would be should the US intervene.
Link arguments:
1. Russia would see the plan (about Syria) coming: Clinton said that if the US and Russia can’t agree on a solution, the US would “hasten the fall of Assad” on their own. Means that Russia doesn’t freak out and act irrationally. Either they would have already threatened to do so in order to deter US action or they don’t care what the US does – they’re just posturing. Means there’s no risk of a link on this argument.
A2: Japan Rearm: China War
1. China would see it coming:
a. A group of 2,000 scholars has petitioned the Japanese government to repeal Article 9 of their consitiution. These political scholars have raised objections to the Article in a world in which China is heavily investing in their nuclear modernization. Their public protests and published works have raised the profile on the likelihood that Japan will repeal the Article.
2. China perceives Japan as a defacto nuclear power:
a. They have a contingent of highly trained scientists that are capable of making and assembling parts to construct a nulcear warhead. A Chinese defense report as early as 2004 reported that Japan could nuclearize within 1 week.
b. Japan has 44 reactors and is the third largest nuclear power generator in the world.
c. Japan is the largest Plutonium producer in the world and has the world’s largest Plutonium reserves. It’s sufficient to produce 1000s of nuclear warheads at a moment’s notice.
d. Their fuel handeling capability ranks third in the world behind the US and France and is projected to increase over the next 10 years.
e. China perceives Japan’s image is an extension of US power more than a threat to China. Their link mistakes Chinese threat perceptions because China sees them as constrained by US interests rather than a national power of their own.
3. Their internal link is non-unique. China is will build up their military inevitably.
a. This is evidenced by the past 20 years: China has been investing in upgrading their heavy nuclear arsenal.
b. Since the 1990s they have been working on widening the range of their ICBM’s and increasing investment in and the building of miniturizing technology for their warheads.
4. No impact to China securitization because there are already other arsenals within distance of striking them. Plan would not upset the balance of power.
a. The US, India, Russia, and China already all have huge nuclear arsenals. Japan acquiring a handful of nuclear weapons would have a negligible effect on the balance of power that already exists.
5. Turn: Japan can counter China post the plan.
a. Cross apply the reasons from case that prolif increases caution in state actions.
6. TURN: Japan would be able to protect other East Asian nations post the plan, which would deter conflict.
a. Japan has favorable trade and diplomatic relationships with other East Asian nations and Australia. This means other nations would bandwagon and the transition would be peaceful.
b. This means that China will no longer have a monopoly on offensive military capabilities and the ability to be the unchecked agressor. The SQ risks other actors proliferating that are not stable actors. Post plan, China would have a check on their behavoir and have an incentive to not infringe on the rights of the nations that would now be under Japan’s nuclear umbrella.
7. AND NO PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE:
a. US/Japanese security guarentees will still exist post the plan, which will ensure that China will not want to risk US draw-in
b. The time frame is too narrow to benefit China – Japan would develop nuclear weapons too quickly and China would not want to risk a nuclear second strike.
c. Japan’s defensive capabilities deter first strikes, because Japan has the ability to shoot down Chinese ICBM’s and retaliate with no political or military damage done to them.
A2: Japan Rearm: Japan Economy
1. Nuclear weapons development would not come at a huge cost to Japan.
a. (Cross apply the reasons Japan is ready to militarize now)
2. Turn: The alternative is a conventional buildup, which is inevitable.
a. (Cross apply the inherency that says conflict is inevitable now)
b. Nuclear weapons are a smaller investment and provide better protection – they cannot compete in a conventional war with China because of China’s size and sheer man power. If they attempt this in the SQ it’ll collapse their economy faster.
3. The Japanese economy is strong and resiliant:
a. They survived the US/Euro crisis and were one of the countries hardest hit by the tech bubble. Both times their economy has come back and these crises were worse than any marginal investment in nuclear technology.
4. No impact to this argument: Other countries (like the US) will bailout Japan before any economic decline caused by plan leads to collapse.
5. Turn: This would boost their economy by creating a new sector to invest in. Military investment is what pulls countries out of recessions. Even if they win that investment in nuke tech causes an economic downturn in the short term, military buildup would solve in the medium term and give them a new economic “out” to solve for any future downturns.
A2: Japan Rearm: Wildfire Prolif
1. Japanese nuclearization does not spark an arms race:
a. The region would welcome Japanese nuclear protection (cross apply offset China)
b. Other nations in the region do not have the structural ability to proliferate except for South Korea, which is hamstrung by the hostilities of North Korea and has the security backing of the US to prevent proliferation.
A2: Russia/NATO Backlash
1. NATO SAID NO TO JOINT MISSILE SHIELD: NATO has refused to build a joint NATO-Russian anti-missile system. “NATO bears responsibility for the defence of its members and we cannot delegate this responsibility to anyone,”
2. NATO IS ENCIRCLING RUSSIA Wikileaks released information last month that the missile shield being built in Poland is part of a larger NATO strategy of encircling Russia by also putting missile defense shields in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (all of the countries involved were super stoked on this). Russia said that the missile shield greatly threatens their foreign security and they are developing technology to evade them.
3. START DOESN'T MATTER: Russia is developing ss-27's, which are nuclear missiles designed to evade ABM technology. They have decoy technology, strapped with about ½ dozen decoys, are capable of quick maneuvers, and are designed to be resilient to laser technology. The effort to develop these weapons prove that START doesn't matter. Russia still perceives the West as a threat and may decrease its nuclear arsenal, but that don't mean shit because they're still upgrading weapons systems and divert a large portion of government spending to defense
4. SPIES: A few months ago the US caught a shit load of spies in Russia, which is reminiscent of the Cold War and reignited political and defensive tensions.
5. AFGHANISTAN: Even if Afghanistan, where both NATO and Russia are strongly concerned about terrorism and drug trafficking, they still view each other as a threat. Russia refuses to open its airways and supply routes to NATO military activity.
6. POPULAR DISCONTENT: There is much aggression from hard-liners within Russia concerning relations with the US. No one has forgotten the Cold War and even moderates view Russia as a threat.
7. TURN: adding a non-aligned country to NATO makes it more difficult for the US to push its politics because other countries can veto actions and push for their concerns
8. TURN: Russia and X country have good relations, adding can only improve relations with NATO
START COLLAPSE DEFENSE
1. With the state of affairs in the ME, there's no way the US will completely decrease their nuclear arsenal. Also, Russia is facing too many threats from southeast asia to limit their arsenal significantly. It's all political posturing
2. No Brink: Russia and the US will pretend START is successful even if it's not. As long as the world powers are incentivized to pretend its working, then plan won't trigger a break down.
A2 Pipelines
1. KHARKOV AGREEMENTS PREVENT DISPUTES: in 2010, Russia and the Ukraine signed a treaty where the Russian lease on naval facilities would be expanded 25 years in exchange for a multiyear discounted contract to provide Ukraine with Nature Gas.
2. THE PIPELINE DISPUTE WAS DUE TO UNPAID DEBT, NOT POLITICAL MANEUVERINGS. The decision was Gazprom's not the Russian government, and Gazprom is a private industry
A2: US/China War - Defense
O/V: Checkmate – Oregon will win on terminal defense. Even if you grant them that a war does happen, it will be swift, one-sided, and China will get their shit rocket. It will only take 8 minutes for the US to launch hundreds of our nuclear missiles we have standing at the ready, whereas China doesn’t even keep their warheads attached to their missiles, and China’s ICBM’s use liquid fuel, which corrodes missiles after 24 hours, so they’d have to take 2 hours to fuel one missile. Meanwhile, China will become a crater with no second-strike capabilities.
1. They don’t have a specific scenario for escalation from conventional to nuclear war – means you’ll grant the PMR a lot of leeway to answer the arguments they’ll fill in in the block.
2. War with China won’t escalate to nuclear use – 4 reasons:
a) Military Capabilities – neither nation has the capabilities or plans to launch into a land war against the other – ensures the war won’t be for national survival so the threat will never escalate to the point where nuclear weapons use is contemplated.
b) Political Objectives – the U.S. wouldn’t have the political will to suffer the consequences of an expanded war with many casualties for no strategic gain – Iraq proves
c) Tie Breaker – Studies of the Korean War in which both sides decided not to expand the war – prefer empirical examples – the only way to prove how somebody will behave with certainty is to actually see what they do under a set of circumstances.
d) Deterrence works empirically proven ( nuke weapons deter – state still increase their relative strength for influence b/c nuclear weapons mainly help induce state to avoid actions that would prove utterly destructive [Cold War and India/Pakistan prove]
3. The U.S. has overwhelming nuclear superiority – means that at the worst, even if war does escalate, it won’t cause extinction – China will just become a crater
Multiple reasons why the U.S. would own China within 8 minutes of escalation –
1. Quantitative Differences – Even if China launched first, only 20 of their ICBM’s could reach the U.S. – means the damage to the U.S. would be minimal
2. Launch Readiness – China’s missiles aren’t ready to launch and their warheads aren’t even kept attached to the missiles – the U.S. would be ready to launch hundreds of warheads in 8 minutes
3. Naval Dominance – China doesn’t even have an operational submarine – no way for their nuke arsenal to survive a strike – the U.S. has dozens of submarines with warheads
4. Air Superiority – The U.S. has dozens of stealth and conventional intercontinental bombers that are armed and on high alert to fly to and decimate China – China has a few outdated planes that wouldn’t be able to make it to their targets before they were shot down
5. Cruise Missiles – The U.S.’s nukes are radar-penetrating – means even if China had their missiles ready to launch, they wouldn’t even know the U.S. had hit them until they were incinerated
6. China has limited its ICBM force to a few dozen antiquated and vulnerable missiles – China has deployed short and medium range forces to secure East Asia while limiting its ICBM force.
Prefer Our Defense – US sources have grossly overstated Chinese nuke capabilities for decades – Unclassified and declassified Federation of American Scientists/Natural Resources Defense Council suggest that we overstae by several hundred percent, many reasons
a) Lack of detection and China has had an ability to keep capabilities hidden
b) Tendency among some U.S. intelligence analyst to overstate their conclusions – their impact authors cash their paychecks from the American military
c) Pentagon has a general inclination to assume the worst.
MORE COMPARISONS
No escalation – US first strike would eviscerate China’s nuclear capabilities even after Chinese alert.
-The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) possesses no modern SSBN’s or long-range bombers.
-Their navy used to have two ballistic missile submarines, but one sank and the other, which ahd such poor capabilities that it never left Chinese waters is no longer operational
- Their entire intercontinental nuclear arsenal consists of 18 stationary single-warhead ICBMS
-Not ready to launch of warning, kept in storage and unfueled
-China’s ICBMs use liquid fuel, which corrodes the missiles after 24 hours.
-Takes 2 hours to fuel and lack of advanced early warning system adds to the vulnerability
-No defense against a strike using hundreds of stealth nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
A2: US/China War - Offense
TURN: China Modernization
a) U.S.-China war would end any hope for Chinese military modernization – two reasons:
1.) Severely constraining its access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology
2.) Forcing China’s economy on a permanent wartime footing
b) We will isolate four Impacts -
1. Continued Chinese military modernization will collapse U.S. hegemony – that’s key to deter all their scenarios for nuke war
2. Collapse of U.S. hegemony causes a dangerous rivalry between the U.S. and China which will escalate to global nuke exchange and extinction
3. Chinese modernization spurs rapid proliferation—
a) End U.S./China security cooperation in Asia and spur arms race and NMD – Perceived as a response to West pursuit of NMD technology spurring an arms race the west would opt for “thick” NMD to neutralize Chinese deterrence, costly for both sides and unlikely to be effective.
b) Shift in nuclear posture – A doctrinal shift from minimal deterrence to limited deterrence would call China’s NFU pledge into question. The associated build up of Chinese nuclear missile forces, coupled with a US-Russian START III build-down, would move China closer to numerical parity.
c) Regional security dynamics –
a. Japan rearm: Japanese analysts would interpret China’s strategic modernization as a threat The closing of the gap between Chinese nuclear missile forces and US military capabilities and the potential for nuclear exchanges in the western Pacific could cause Tokyo to question the credibility of extended deterrence and the US nuclear umbrella. This might lead Japan to make a greater commitment to theater missile defense and to reconsider its nuclear and ballistic missile options.
b. India would point to Chinese modernization as justification for its own strategic buildup, impeding international efforts to pressure India to cap its nuclear and missile programs. However, China would continue efforts to use the international arms control regime to pressure India, fueling bilateral tensions. Undermines, nay, DESTROYS NPT - India might feel the need to enhance the credibility of its own nuclear and missile forces. The resulting arms competition would further erode the nuclear nonproliferation regime and damage the fragile consensus among the nuclear weapons states.
(!) PROLIF INCREASES THE RISK OF WAR FOR SEVERAL REASONS:
-Prolif will result in a nuclear wild west where conflicts will escalate to wars of maximum destruction that destroy whole nations
-A single prolif incident risks cascading wildfire prolif that risks at least four nuclear war scenarios including:
*intentional nuclear use
*accidental nuclear use
*nuclear terrorism,
*the collapse of us leadership
*prolif will magnify the risk of nuclear war by legitimizing pre-emptive nuclear strikes and terrorism while exacerbating accident risks.
T/ BIOWEAPONS
Modernization allows China to develop bioweapons to eventually use on the US – we must strike first.
(!) Bioweapons cause extinction
T/ECONOMY
War with China is key to revitalize the American economy ( it’s one of the only powers that would force the government to invest enough to make fighting them profitable ( experience after 9/11 proves how much money could be made on a major war ( otherwise the economy will inevitably stagnate
And that outweighs:
a) Magnitude – 25 separate nuke exchanges is guaranteed to cause extinction where as a war with China would be very limited in scope
b) Timeframe – The economy is on the brink NOW only starting a war with China in the short-term can prevent a larger global conflagration.
c) Turns the Case –
A2: Politics – Elections F/L
Obama winning now:
1. Historical precedent (It is just really hard to beat an incumbent):
a. Since 1980, only one president has failed to win a second term (that was George HW Bush). This proves that although a tough economy can work against a candidate, an incumbent is just nearly impossible to beat.
2. Economy:
a. Although Romney and the GOP want to run on the economy, voters remember that this is the party who wanted to take the whole country off the edge of the cliff and held the debt ceiling hostage for weeks over money that was already spent while Bush, another republican, was president. Obama will succeed in labeling Romney as a part of that insanity, which takes out the only argument the GOP has going for them.
b. The above is especially true when you consider Ryan’s budget record. When he was chair of the House Budget Committee eight stopgap spending measures that often brought the government within days or hours of shutting down. The 2012 budget was similarly off track, necessitating another series of temporary measures to keep the U.S. government funded. “The Path to Prosperity”, Ryan's alternative to Obama's annual budget proposal, is so wildly out of touch with anything Democrats would agree to as to be a effectively a symbolic statement of principles – it will never pass and many of his ‘big ideas’ have just created political gridlock (that’s why only 5 issues he’s sponsored or co-sponsored bills for have ever passed*). He’s just a ineffective idealogue who represents hardcore partisanship.
c. If that doesn’t work, blaming Bush for the economy does. After three-and-a-half Obama years, blaming George W. Bush for the financial crisis, the 2007-09 recession, and the subsequent stagnation infuriates Republican elites, but as a line of attack, it is far more in accord with the views of American voters than the (now abandoned) contention that under Obama the national economy has made a decent comeback.
3. Upheld Obamacare boosts his chances:
a. Obama can now point to popular, forward progress. He can also campaign on the progress yet to come, starting with the millions who will be receiving a rebate check this summer from their insurers for excessive administrative costs, as well as the "Big Fucking Deal" provisions that would kick in during Obama's second term: An end to insurance denials based on preexisting conditions; new health care markets for individual purchasers; and generous premium supports for those buying policies.
4. Republicans too divided to win:
a. The gaps between the Republican base and the centrists are huge; the obsession with social issues risks alienating independents; there are real doubts that Romney is conservative enough; and there's not much enthusiasm for his stiff style on the campaign trail and his evasiveness on everything from his tax returns to his Cayman accounts. Add to that Republican difficulties in making inroads with women and Hispanics, and the GOP is clearly too fractured to pull off a win.
*He’s sponsored or co-sponsored: issuing commemorative coins, re-naming US post office branches, honoring Wisconsin’s history, honoring Ronald Reagan, and banning crush porn.
5. Obama statistically speaking, has the edge:
a. puts him at a 61.8% chance of winning the electoral vote.
b. Obama’s convention gave him an 8 point boost: A chart relesaed by 538’s Nate Silver after the DNC indicates that Clinton’s speech gave him an 8 point boost. Silver's statistical inferences from several multi-day tracking polls that include Thursday and Friday, the final day of the Democratic convention and the day after Clinton’s speech.
c. Prefer 538 analysis: 538 uses multi-day tracking polls to create an amalgam of the biggest, best polls in the country. Additionally, he smooths polling results to create more accurate forecasts than national averages – he takes into account "most similar states" (it considers the relationships between the states and the ways they might move in tandem with one another), factors in national polling trends, and uses the voting history of a state or Congressional district to beat all the other polls.
FRAGILITY ARGS:
THE CENVENTIONS DIDN’T CAPTURE SWING VOTERS:
1. The DNC and RNC didn’t change independent’s minds – they’re the key voters in this election. According to Pew polling, the race has remained basically unchanged since the spring. While the conventions may have boosted partisan support for each candidate, neither convention really swayed swing voters. President Obama is left clinging to a small advantage but still standing below the critical 50 percent mark in support.
2. Most of those pre-convention surveys showed Obama with a slim lead in a race that is dividing the country along partisan, ideological, and racial lines. Although polling conducted between the conven- tions found that Romney had made modest gains in bolstering his personal image during the GOP gathering, his ballot showing against Obama improved hardly at all—only enough to lift him into a dead heat at best.
ROMNEY’S BARRIER IS WITH THE MIDDLE CLASS:
1. Romney’s greatest difficulty is the sense among many middle-class voters—particularly the ones in battleground states who have been bombarded with negative ads criticizing his business background—that he neither understands nor empathizes with their economic distress
2. A CNN/ORC International poll conducted immediately after the RNC showed only a very modest increase, from 39 percent to 43 percent, in the share of voters who said Romney was more in touch than Obama with the needs of the middle class.
ROMNEY MUST WIN OHIO AND FLORIDA/SWING STATES KEY:
1. No Republican has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and Florida’s 29 electoral votes – more than 10 percent of the 270 needed to win.
2. The candidates will be dueling for support from a relative handful of undecided voters. In Ohio, for instance, RealClearPolitics’ poll average shows Obama up by 0.7 percentage points – roughly 40,000 people in a state where 5.7 million voted for president last time.
3. If Obama holds the states polls say are now firmly his, he’d have 221 electoral votes, including California’s 55 and New York’s 29. Romney is considered a safe bet so far for 191 electoral votes, notably Texas’ 38.
4. FLORIDA (29 electoral votes): Romney holds an edge in money, but Obama’s so-called "ground-game" organization of thousands of volunteers and nearly 100 field offices appears unmatched.
a. The two are essentially tied, with Obama narrowly ahead of Romney by an inside-the-error margin lead of about 2 percentage points, according to the averages of the latest reputable statewide polls. Obama won Florida by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2008, but the toll of the bad economy has hurt his standing. The unemployment rate stands at 8.8 percent, and Florida’s foreclosure rate is the third highest in the nation.
b. Romney must win Florida to have a chance at the general election. Obama can win the election without winning Florida, but it would be a slam-dunk if he does win Florida.
5. OHIO (18 electoral votes): Obama and Romney are locked in a statistical dead heat in Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch recently recorded its closest presidential poll in modern history, with Romney leading Obama by only 0.22 percentage points, a figure well within the survey’s margin of error.
a. The economy is the dominant issue in Ohio, and voters appear evenly divided on whether Obama or Romney would provide better leadership on the issue. Though Ohio is a Rust Belt state, it’s doing better on jobs compared with other parts of the country. The state’s July unemployment rate was 7.2 percent – lower than the nation’s 8.1 percent jobless rate.
6. NORTH CAROLINA (15 electoral votes): This summer, the state has endured a $50 million advertising barrage, with Romney and his allies outspending Obama by more than 2-to-1. The GOP is taking no chances after Obama improbably carried North Carolina in 2008, the first time since 1976 that a Democratic presidential candidate won the state.
a. So far, the ad war has barely moved the polls, with most showing the race within the margin of error. But Democrats acknowledge they face an uphill task in a state with the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country. Obama is counting on a massive grassroots effort and a boost from the convention in Charlotte.
7. VIRGINIA (13 electoral votes): In 2008, Obama became the first Democratic candidate to carry the commonwealth in 44 years after putting together the broadest state political organization in modern times.
a. Democrats have made inroads in northern Virginia, where the population has boomed in recent years, particularly with minorities and younger voters. Republicans have electoral strength in the Shenandoah Valley and rural south and southwestern Virginia.
8. NEVADA (6 electoral votes): Foreclosures are rampant and the unemployment rate still hovers around 12 percent, highest in the nation. The Republican Party, outnumbered by more than 100,000 active voters in 2008, has reduced the Democratic Party’s advantage to fewer than 60,000 active voters this year.
a. The state’s growing Latino population and large Mormon population could factor heavily in the outcome, likely helping Obama and Romney, respectively.
9. NEW HAMPSHIRE (4 electoral votes): New Hampshire has voted Democratic in four of the last five presidential contests, and Obama won the state soundly in 2008. Romney, who has a summer home in the state and was governor of neighboring Massachusetts, is hoping for a hometown edge.
10. COLORADO (9 electoral votes): The state’s voters are nearly evenly split – about one-third each Republican, Democratic and unaffiliated. Latino voters, who could make up 8 percent or more of the electorate this year, are likely to be critical to the outcome, as are suburban women. Obama did well with Latinos and women voters in 2008. But the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent.
11. IOWA (6 electoral votes): Obama carried Iowa easily in 2008. Farm interests and alternative fuels – read ethanol subsidies and wind energy – remain important issues for the state’s voters. Some of Iowa’s Democrats also have an aggressive anti-war posture that Obama was able to tap. Romney, though, is relatively popular with the state’s social and fiscal conservatives, and he favors federal support for ethanol production.
a. Recent polls suggest the race is nearly a dead heat. The key remains self-identified independents, who make up more than a third of the Iowa electorate.
12. WISCONSIN (10 electoral votes): The two-point shift in Romney’s direction in the polls is within the margin of error but suggests Ryan’s addition to the ticket may have slightly increased Romney’s chances in Wisconsin. Additionally, the political shift towards the GOP in the 2010 means Obama shouldn’t be comfortable with the fact that a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t lost Wisconsin since 1984.
13. MICHIGAN (16 electoral votes): Thought to be a Democratic stronghold, it’s in play partly because of Romney’s family ties and partly because it’s shown some Republican tendencies. Michigan elected a conservative governor in 2010 and it’s Romney’s homestate.
a. Polls put Obama up 2.4 percentage points largely because the auto industry is coming back, and Obama is taking credit for the resurgence. Though the bailout program began under President George W. Bush, Obama kept it going strong and his campaign is offering constant reminders of what he did—and how Romney opposed the bailout.
OBAMA’S BARRIER IS THE ECONOMY:
1. Romney leads Obama when voters are asked which candidate could better handle the economy. In the new CNN/ORC poll, Romney led among white voters on that question by a resounding 61 percent to 34 percent.
Romney Good/Obama Bad:
1. Peak oil
a. Uniqueness – Peak oil now, must use our reserves.
i. Production/Consumption Gap
1. The International Energy Agency (IEA) came to the conclusion that the average production-weighted decline rate worldwide was 6.7% for post-peak fields (IEA, 2008).
2. In the last ten years, global oil production has been steadily declining while consumption has been increasing. This gap indicates that peak oil has been reached, and we are in the period of decline in production while demand continues to increase exponentially.
a. Last year, global consumption was 84,455,000 barrels per day while production was 81,829,000 barrels per day.
b. Links – Romney will drill in ANWAR – giving us access to more than 17 years worth of oil. There is more oil in ANWAR than in Saudi Arabia. This means the US is no longer dependent on other, potentially unstable and hostile nations for our oil supply.
c. Impacts – oil independence is good.
Romney winning now:
1. Romney will win because of GDP growth and consumer confidence:
a. Over almost the last 50 years, two economic indicators have done a great job predicting the vote share of incumbents in Presidential elections: real GDP growth and consumer confidence. Each has a correlation of 0.8 with vote share and each suggest that Obama will not be able to get 50% in a two way race with Romney. If anything, there is a good chance our economy will worsen, putting Obama even deeper in the hole.
2. Obama’s record turns off voters:
a. It seems clear that Obama won’t run on his record — always a bad sign for a president seeking reelection. His speeches are short on accomplishments but long on excuses. He blames everyone — Congress, Republicans, business, George W. Bush, world oil markets — except himself for the terrible state of our economy. His approval rating has been less than 50 percent for the past two years. He barely mentions his economic stimulus or his “signature achievement” health care plan.
b. Romney is broadly acceptable to most conservatives, moderates and even a few disillusioned liberals. Aside from extreme Democratic partisans, most Americans believe that he would be a more than able chief executive. He has a record as a competent governor who dealt with many problems the next president will face — including job creation, economic growth, health care and energy. If Romney can keep the focus on jobs and the economy, where Obama has proved unsuccessful and Romney shows experience and potential, he will win.
3. Obama’s numbers among the youth vote are dropping fast, which was key to his 08 election:
a. Polling suggests Obama's job approval rating among these voters has declined. The 75 percent rating he enjoyed in 2009, the year he took office, has dropped to 57 percent, according to Gallup. That opens the door for Romney and the Republican Party. When you look at 50 percent of kids coming out college today can't find a job or can't find a job which is consistent with their skills, it’s no wonder many young voters are either flocking to Romney or won’t come out to vote in November.
4. Romney is catching women’s votes:
a. A CBS/New York Times poll gives Romney a 46 to 44 per cent lead among women’s voters, a dramatic eight-point turnaround. Romney’s new strength among women follow Democratic party charges that the Republican party has declared a “war on women.”.
5. Romney is out-fundraising Obama:
a. Romney and his super PAC allies and party team raised about $86 million in the first few months of his campaign, compared with roughly $65 million raised by Obama and his allies, according to campaign finance reports. Romney has continued to rake in the huge donations after the RNC, whereas Obama is being forced to rely on a higher number of small donations due to his party’s ideological opposition to super PACs, which will put him farther and farther behind in swing states where money matters.
Obama Good/Romney Bad:
1. Iran Strikes
a. Obama stopping Iran strike now – he’s refused to let Israel bully him into moving or reaffirming the “red line” of when the US would strike Iran, which – especially in an election season – indicates he isn’t willing to play ball with Israel’s alarmist rhetoric. Additionally, he’s admonished the GOP for their ‘casual’ talk of possible war with Iran and has offered Israel carrots to de-escalate their rhetoric.
b. Romney will green light the first strike – he has said that he would direct US forces to pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, stating "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. If you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon".
c. Iran strikes leads to global nuclear war.
2. Warming
a. Obama looking to solve warming now – In the past he’s expressed an interest in cutting some of oil’s biggest tax breaks, but more specifically he’s hinted that in his second term he’d like to take more green energy initiatives to reduce our oil consumption, which at the very least means more investment in alternative energy.
b. Romeny would be bad for the environment – Romney has stated that among the first things on his agenda as president would be to open drilling in ANWR and approving the Keystone Pipeline. Studies related to the Keystone pipeline indicate that on an annual basis, the extraction of useable oil from tar sands would produce approximately 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That would be 82% greater than pollution created from oil refined in the U.S.
c. Increased drilling ruins the environment, and increased carbon emissions causes GW.
3. US/Russia Relations
a. Romney will hurt US/Russian relations with his nuclear arms control discussions - Romney and his fellow anti-arms control ideologues seem to think that it's possible to negotiate without even giving lip service to the other side's deepest concerns. This puts them far out of the historical mainstream of the Republican Party, in which presidents ranging from Richard Nixon, to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush negotiated and/or signed nuclear arms control agreements with a Soviet Union that was far more heavily armed than today's Russia. Negotiating with a firm sense of our national interest, as President Obama did with the New START treaty, and will hopefully do again given the opportunity, is a sign of strength. Engaging in tough guy fantasies that will almost certainly make the world a more dangerous place is a sign of moral, political, and strategic weakness. Our relations with Russia will crumble with a Romney presidency.
b. US/Russia relations key to preventing proxy wars in the ME and is the only country that can launch a devastating nuclear attack on the United States.
ANSWERS TO POLLS
Multi-day tracking polls are bad:
1. Nate Silver (who runs 538) himself emphasizes, there's a big challenge in interpreting multi-day tracking polls, because they don't release their day-by-day figures. So when, say, Obama's seven-day Gallup tracking number goes up for Friday (as it did), what that means is that the average Obama number for Sep. 1-7 is higher than the average Obama number for Aug. 31-Sep. 6. And the only thing you can infer from them for sure is that Obama’s Sep. 7 number was higher than the Aug. 31 number.
a. This means that Obama's numbers rose a lot on Thursday, after the Clinton speech, but then fell on Friday, after the Obama speech and the weak jobs numbers, though they didn't fall as low as they'd been some days earlier. Means that any boost from the convention was marginal at best.
A2: Politics – Debt Ceiling
Debt Ceiling won’t pass now:
First, do not expect the two parties to cooperate any better. Yet again, the best we can hope for is a last-minute deal that kicks the can down the road. There will be virtually no positive momentum to speak of.
Second, Democrats have less bargaining power this time around. Unlike in December when President Obama prevailed in imposing higher taxes on the rich, Republicans do not find themselves in a corner, dreading national blame for total dysfunction. This time around, the blame would be more equally shared.
Third, it is unlikely that an outside enforcement mechanism would force Congress into delivering a better outcome. In theory, this could come through either the creative use of exceptional powers granted by law, or some type of crisis that focuses minds and forces national priorities to overwhelm local ones. In practice, both are low probability events.
And no 14th Amendment or platinum coin sidestepping: Over the weekend, the Treasury and Federal Reserve distanced themselves from these options. Anthony Coley, a Treasury Department spokesperson, told the Washington Post's Ezra Klein on Saturday, “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,". the platinum dream's death blow in the quote is the inclusion of the Federal Reserve not accepting the coin. They would have to acknowledge the coin as legitimate currency for the platinum coin theory to work.
Uniqueness overwhelms the link: it’s all a simulation.
We always raise the debt ceiling. Debt ceiling will pass no matter what – the question is whether or not the negotiations will result in lots of spending cuts. In the SQ there will be lots of cuts. The GOP has a strong negotiation position as a result of their public outcry, which means the dems will cave now.
1. Ryan and other republicans are down with it: Eric Cantor said “We must pay our bills and responsibly budget for our future. Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget. Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, Members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay”.
2. Nyquist says they’re going to do it. He was behind the whole “no new taxes” pledges. Since he’s backing down, you know the debt ceiling is not the real thing the GOP cares about.
3. And emprically: We passed 7 continuing resolutions during FY 2011.
House GOP is considering a very short term debt limit pushback (House Republicans will vote next week on a three-month extension of the debt limit, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said this morning), because they want to push back when it’s spending negotiationg. They want that discussion to be happening simultaneously. This proves it’s all theater and the GOP doesn’t want to go over the debt ceiling. Also, they’ve passed every continuing resolution. We were here 20 months ago with this disad. Proves it’s not real. It’s like the reasons why China will not sell their T bills – it would be stupid – they just say they will to get better negotiation leverage.
And if worse comes to worse the Treasury will mint the coin. Obama can just tell them to mint it. No impact to your argument.
Go to the link:
You say the link argument is going to result in angry GOP that will stop the debt ceiling. The internal link of them succeeding in this is impossible. They can’t stop the debt ceiling from passing, because it’s part of the negotiating tactic. They’re on the wrong side of this.
1)Either plan makes GOP happy (dems get political capital) and makes it so they can’t negotiate in a way they want, because they have to work together.
2)Or it makes them so angry that they can’t act rationally, and they overplay their hand (spend all their political capital) and makes it so they can’t get the cuts they want and moderate GOPs splinter off and compromise with the dems. The new republicans who haven’t already been pinned as obstructionist will splinter and go crazy, because they feel they can shut down the government with no responsibility, since they didn’t have the experience of being blamed last time and it’s what their constituants want. There aren’t enough of them to accomplish this, and there are enough moderates to stop them. The louder they are, the more obstructionist they look, the harder it is for them to reach compromises. This is the way Obama can say things like “I will not compromise on the debt ceiling”.
Already an air of compromise (Ryan moving left on this issue, because they kicked the debate down the road three months, because they want to get as many cuts as possible), they’ll pass plan together. Leads to more compromise in the future.
3) Either way there will be less spending cuts post the plan. Either GOP won’t be able to have enough capital to get more cuts in March or the dems will have enough capital to lower spending cuts.
Impacts:
4) Austerity – spending cuts are bad, because they’re necessary to drive the economy. If we can give wages, it makes the econ flow. It’s a spark to get the engine running. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, the government is the only way the labor will go to work. Spending critical to avoid liquidity trap: an increase in spending prevents people from hoarding their money, and spending that money is key to lowering interest rates and preventing future monetary collapse. Bonds evaporate: Without spending, there are no more purchases of bonds or other necessary goods, causing an economic downturn
5) Cuts – social programs (not SS and medicare) getting cut are bad.
Impact Defense – Deficits Not Bad:
DEPRESSED ECONOMY: Since the economy is depressed, many investors worry about the value of riskier investments, preferring safe investments. This explains why, even as the US borrows more and more, investors have been happy to essentially pay the USFG to hold their money by buying bonds at ridiculously low yields.
EUROPE: Gold and the US and wealthy EU country treasuries are all supposed to be stable places to park one’s money. However, there isn’t enough gold for everyone who wants very safe assets right now, and the euro zone is far too unstable. Neither of those things is going to change in the near future, so investors don’t really have a choice but to continue buying US bonds, even if they think our fiscal prolificacy is questionable.
US SOLVENCY: There’s really not much of a reason for investors to care if we’re being irresponsible at this point. The US is too big to fail, at least for now, and no one really doubts that they will be paid for their investments in US debt. That isn’t going change in the near future, because the influence and size of the US economy isn’t going to change dramatically any times soon.
Impact Defense – Econ crisis doesn’t lead to resource wars (or, straight outta Will Chamberlain’s mouth):
Recessions are slowdowns in economic activity. They are the result of businesses being unable to sell their products, cutting production, and firing people. They are a product of people wanting fewer natural resources. People might have been inclined to fight over oil during the boom, but they sure as hell wouldn't have fought during the bust. In fact, people are probably a lot less likely to engage in resource wars during a recession. Means that there is less of a risk of their impact if they win a recession will happen post the plan.
Impact Defense – 14th Amendment allows the president to continue paying foreign debts. No scenario for war.
A2: Politics - Midterms
ACA:
House Democrats -
The silver lining for House Democrats is that even if things do go horribly wrong, few vulnerable Members who voted for the ACA in 2010 are left in Congress. Most of those members were wiped out in the 2010 tea party tsunami. Only ten potentially at risk Democrats who voted for the bill in 2010 are still in the House: Kirkpatrick (AZ-01), Maffei (NY-24), Shea-Porter (NH-01), Bishop (NY-01), Garamendi (CA-03), Owens (NY-21), Perlmutter (CO-07) Rahall (WV-02), Schrader (OR-05), and Tierney (MA-06). Even most of the Blue Dog Democrats who voted against the bill in 2010 are no longer in Congress.
Senate –
The Senate, however, is a different story. Red state senators like Mark Begich (AK), Mary Landrieu (LA), Mark Pryor (AR), and Kay Hagan (NC) have never had to defend their “yes” votes in an election year.
Obamacare is a tired message that voters don’t care about: beyond the basic economic issues of jobs/spending/taxes, “Obamacare” was the single most mentioned issue in Republican TV advertising, not just for president but all the way down the ballot. Yet, the fact that Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate in 2012 has Democrats like media consultant John Lapp saying that the GOP’s “Obamacare” messaging has run out of gas.
And voters that do care are Hispanic and the GOP can’t afford to lose them again – means that the GOP can’t backlash on ACA: a Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey taken last summer found that 67 percent of Hispanics said they favor a “larger federal government with many services” over a “smaller federal government with fewer services.”. On the ACA specifically, A March Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that while 48 percent of whites had an unfavorable view of the law, 48 percent of Hispanics had a favorable view of it. Among African-Americans it was 55 percent. Meanwhile, a whopping 68 percent of Republicans dislike the law while just 19 percent of Hispanics say they do.
Democrats are turning against the ACA (from 4/4/13): Two-thirds of Democrats now believe Obama's health care reforms will either hurt them personally or have no effect on their daily lives, a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday shows. In comparison, just 27 percent of Democratic respondents said the reforms would help them.
*KRITIKS OF DISADS*
Generic Impact Kritks
The aff is a prior question to democratic debate – to function, democratic debate needs a social contract that includes rights and priviledges, which provide a social safety-net for citizenship. The neg team’s characterization of politics as a response to threats destroys this basis of democracy and makes not only politics, but also critical thinking impossible, because it reduces politics to following orders and obscures the ideologies that shape political action.
Turn: Positive Peace – their disad impacts are isolated events of war and violence that they construct as separate from the time of peace we are living in now. Our entire 1AC shows that the status quo is not as peaceful as they believe. Justifying the perpetuation of structural violence to prevent a perceived catastrophic event renders current suffering invisible and makes violence inevitable in the long run.
Turn: Survival Focus – They construct a paradigm of survival where life is understood as a game in which we are governed not by sovereign wills but rather by contingencies. We must protect the autonomy of the individual as a prerequisite to protecting survival – otherwise death is meaningless and there’s no impact to their argument.
Turn: Risk Calculation – No threats exist prior to the discursive construction of risk through the power/knowledge relationship. This means their political strategies fail to understand the nature of violence and risk, and are therefore incapable of solving them. In the world of the SQ, we are left with a kill to save mentality, which makes extinction inevitable.
Impact – Structural Violence: We outweigh because all societal issues of insecurity spring from individual insecurity – means we control the internal link to 100% of their scenarios.
We win magnitude because of the massive death caused by structural violence
We win probability and timeframe because our impacts are happening the SQ
Impact – Social Death: This occurs when people are deemed unworthy of consideration, which outweighs all their impacts because it causes individual oppression, death, and destruction of entire cultures. This means the impact is infinate and invisible.
Kritik of Econ Impacts
Using economics to explain interstate actions presupposes economics as a neutral reflection of reality, rather than a historical construct. Their predictions rely upon a flawed understanding of interpersonal interactions, dooming them to failure: Your argument reduces the ‘economic sphere to be a distinct, independently existing sphere of life whose elements have no intrinsic political aspect and, as such, can be definitely separated from the social, political and legal aspects of life’ by overlooking a body of literature in the history of economic research which investigates the ways in which these “facts” are culturally, socially and historically articulated and constructed. This forecloses the possibility of considering the political processes of valuation that underpin the functioning of money and capital.
Reliance on rational economic enframings of reality destroy the environment, entire populations, and quality of life culminating in extinction: Economics has become a system of exploitation via the dualised priority of the individual over society, self-interest over community, competition over cooperation, which generates domination that prioritizes maintaining economic interests over human oppression – perpetuating the logic of disposability that results in extinction that the 1AC criticizes.
Economics is unable to consider social needs, meaning your realiance on the ideology of the economy as a primary concern will always result in systemic and invisible violence: economics sees itself as a neutral, objective, quantitative and universal science, which does not need to be integrated in social and natural reality. The outcome of this is that economics cannot value social and environmental needs. The priority on rationality the false belief in eternal economic growth ends in greed, domination, poverty, violence and war.
Kritik of Disease Impacts
Western disease discourse otherizes foreign lands and their people: More than denoting simply a physical space, the otherness conveyed by tropicality is as much a conceptual one: 'A Western way of defining something culturally and politically alien, as well as environmentally distinctive, from Europe. Western medicine effectively defines equatorial regions as a zone of danger in terms of disease and threat to life and health.
Western medicine discourse has divided the world into superior donors and inferior
recipients of western ideals: It only replicates the characteristic features of 'advanced' Western nations and the savior-savage mentality. Implicit in this construction of the world is the notion that backwards naitons need saving by the technologically advanced Western world. Western
investment and aid policies effectively divide the world conceptually in two — between donor and recipient nations, between developed and underdeveloped countries.
a. This condemns the periphery to the state of our representation of them as inadequate and lacking, because their backwards and inferior medicine couldn’t keep up with our superior knowledge. The assumption that the western state is the ideal state prevents us from looking at the flaws within our own society and the way that we promote humanitarian aid, which makes colonialism inevitable. First Nations genocide, and American trigger happy jingoism that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide and puts us on the brink of global nuclear annihilation.
b. This justifies perpetual intervention and colonizes the minds of those “saved” by the plan. Subjects of the colonial order assume violence as an existential condition of their own being, which is bad because it conditions them for self-genocide and devalues their lives from the stand point of the developed world. The “WEST IS BEST” mantra is inculcated into entire peoples, negating their ability to value their own culture, history, or political narrative, which causes no value to life.
*K OF POLITICS DAs*
The Framework:
Your politics arguments are fundamentally stories about how the world works and how you think political deliberations ought to be made. It also speaks to what you think deserves attention or whose considerations and values should be considered when making public policy, which is an indication that your discourse seeks to maintain the status quo at all costs. This makes violence on the periphery invisible and inevitable, because there will always be another crisis on the horizon that will take precedence over the aff.
Your disourse is a prior consideration to your arguments – the way you conceptualize the world and represent events matters, because it informs and shapes what policies you think are sensible (i.e. your response to the aff is based on your discursive formulations of how the world works and ought to work). You also can’t sever your discourse now, because the discursive representation has already happened and it already informs all of the other arguments you present in the debate.
Our link arguments:
They construct politics as a contest of individuals. this manufactures consent, because it obscures larger structural and institutional forces that drive individual decision-making. Politicians have the same goals – to remain in power.
Myth of partisanship: People think parties are fundamentally different and represent a meaningful choice. The disad re-inforces this. They are two wings of the same party which operates in a superstructure to consolidate and maintain power.
Sustains a myth of sustainability and control: The neg has the impression that politics is always up or down and changes all the time. This is a surface effect to distract from the cohesion associated with domination and control.
The impacts:
1. No agency: Systems of control maintain themselves. All political control is a kaleidoscope of interlocking illusions. When everything becomes a political problem (we confine analysis to political machenations), we end up thinking of all things like a state. This means the process trumps the outcome, so we no longer frame the debate about collective responsibility, but rather cost-benefit analysis of policymaking.
The thing that’s wrong with domination of political consdieration, you become part of spread of buerocracy, which constrains and limits our own agency. It domesticates is and allows totalitarianism to control us.
2. Oppression becomes naturalized and inevitable: The result of this colonizes our minds to talk about whether an individual senator or party likes the plan or doesn’t instead of talking about how to solve poverty.
This manages our thoughts and ideas much in the same way the politics disad is a violent hegemonic force to exclude the notion of our aff and causes us to consent to our own oppression by making the construction of our hypothetical world irrelevant when it goes against the desires of the elites.
3. And politics disads should not be in parli: debate is a unique political space where we can talk about how to make the world better without having to worry about real world political constraints and just imagine strategies for how to make life better for people. In every other discursive arena where public policy is bantered around, we have to worry about political constraints. Debate should not be a space where “the GOP gets mad” gets to pwn arguments about helping poor people.
4. And politics disads teach us the wrong things about the world: There’s no way on Earth your internal links are unique or causal enough to lead to the catastrophe you describe. This will collapse parli into a race to see who can make up the most vacuous and alarmist assertions about a specific senator who supposedly said yesterday that only our specific aff and nothing else will make them backlash on only your bill and nothing else. This only teaches us all the wrong things about politics and ensures we’re all slaves the elites and the version of the SQ that only serves them.
*TEACH ME 2 DE-DEV*
Concede their disad that says the plan results in an economic collapse.
OR read that we collapse the economy:
1. We collapse the economy: We’ll default on our debts, which kills international investment and freaks out investers at home and abroad – causes investor flight and chills the market.
a. This causes an immediate downgrade, because we can’t go into debt, which decreases the liquid capital available to the market. Fitch has said they’d downgrade the US if we even seem like we can’t pay our debts anymore, so this would cause and immediate downgrade and collapse.
THEN – EXTEND THE TERMINAL IMPACTS OF THE ADVANTAGES
1. Our terminal impacts depend on the non-existence of cpaital or of the government’s ability to control our economy.
2. Capitalism is bad, because it exploits people and is bad for the environment. It also fuels perpetual warfare due to class inequality and the driving force of capitalism – the need to accumulate capital.
3. An economic collapse would lead to the opposite of resource wars, because economic recessions decrease demand, decrease consumption, which solves all our impacts better than in the 1AC.
A VIOLENT COLLAPSE OF CAPITALISM IS INEVITABLE IN THE LONG TERM:
1. Trade will cause the country with all the demand to fuck with countries with raw materials – increased interdependence of trade fuels conflict, because it increases vulnerability (the other country has infrastructure and access to all your resources) and increases the incentive to compete among nations who are generating demand over the raw materials elsewhere.
2. Capitalism is inherently unstable, because is relies on infinate growth on a finite planet, which ups the ante for everyone competing for the finite resources.
3. Capitalism makes people disposable.
4. It decreases the carrying capacity of the Earth, which makes extinction inevitable in the long run.
COLLAPSE NOW BETTER THAN LATER – CRASH WOULD BE IMMEDIATE
1. Resource crunches – it’s not too late to start over – we haven’t depleted the Earth beyond repair.
2. People are so dislocated from resources that they depend on now, that an immediate crash would mean that we can’t geographically continute to exploit resources anymore.
3. A collapse would not result in extinction:
i. War depends on the existence of capitalism to exchange weapons and distribute the tools to wage war – we’d lose the internet and elecrticity, too, so no remote weapons or the ability to launch anything that could destroy the Earth – so violence would only decrease, because conflict would be reduced to walking distance, and it would be too energy expensive to walk to Portland to fight a large number of people.
ii. Low yield nuclear wars wouldn’t lead to extinction either – not big enough – and the only result of them would be that it would create a large taboo. They’re in a double bind – either there’s a big taboo now because of the nuclear reactors in Japan that killed a bunch of people, or new weapons would create another taboo that would surely prevent extinction.
iii. Any violence that would happen would be seen as a threat against humanity, because the transition would lead to a greater sense of collectivism within communities. This would just create another deterent against violence.
COLLAPSE LATER IS BAD:
1. Affluence – Trainer says that the longer we are affluent, the more disconnected we become with sustainable practices and it’s psychologically more difficult to transition away from the lifestyles we become accustomed to.
2. We’ll have exhausted all our resources.
3. There will be more war and violence, because we’ll have developed superweapons that can definitely destroy the planet.
COLLAPSE LEADS TO BIOREGIONALISM:
1. This menas that capitalism won’t re-emerge:
a. The experience of witnessing the failure of capitalism will lead to trauma, which takes away any incentive to go back.
b. scarcity post- capitalism means that our production will focus on essential things, which makes accumulating wealth and conquering other people will be impossible.
2. When people don’t have oil, their first instinct is survival. People will recognize that they need basic things – it would be a waste of time to wander somewhere else and invade someone else’s region. It would expend too much energy and waste too many of your own resources on something that’s not for-sure.
3. Sustianable practices based on local regions and practices means that people will return to natural, sustainable practices, which will solve for the environment (overconsumption and monoculture).
*K ANSWERS*
Framework – Cheaters, go home!
YOU ARE CHEATING AND YOUR ARG IS JUST NOT TRUE OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!
1. COUNTER INTERPRETATION: THE JUDGE SHOULD EVALUATE THIS ROUND AS A COMPARISON OF A WORLD WITH PLAN TO ONE WITHOUT. This solves most of their offense by providing the negative multiple means of opposing the plan including their K’s, the status quo, and competitive policy options. Prefer this framework:
A) IT’S THE MOST PREDICTABLE – The resolution asks a question about government action, the lack of individual agency stipulations in the resolution mean the introducing such questions are outside the subject we’re prepared to debate. Predictability precedes other issues – it determines research, clash and education, it makes debate productive.
B) IT’S KEY TO PRESERVE FAIRNESS – Wishing away policy comparison moots the entire PMC so we lose the ability to leverage the aff, and justifies the Gov. claim that racism is bad only to have the Opp. says that plan doesn’t pass you should vote on presumption, affs always lose and makes debate impossible, collapses the activity.
C) DECISION CLARITY – It facilitates best debate because it ensures that we are not forced to compare Gov. apples to Neg oranges—solves judge intervention by focusing debate to simple comparisons of plan vs. the status quo. The kritik requires evaluation of nebulous discursive impacts whereas fiat allows objective comparisons of hard consequences. Objective decision-making is a prerequisite to fairness, clash and switch-side debate so that we can test ideas openly, and keep people involved.
D) TOPIC SPECIFIC EDUCATION – Prevents them from sidestepping a discussion of the topic with stale criticisms, which is key to predictable and educational debate – it increases policy education which is necessary for real world political advocacy – and parli uniquely serves breadth because bring in blocks, meaning we outweigh their education.
E) AFF CHOICE – The Government team selects the framework for the debate in accordance with their PMC, this interpretation is best for debate:
a) Framework choice is linked to choosing the ground in the debate – it’s predictable, if they choose the plan, the gov has to be able to choose the framework for evaluating the plan, and otherwise they always lose.
b) Solves ground and time skew – Opp. Choice means that they always moot PMC with a contrasting framework
c) Solves all their offense because it’s reciprocal, they get to choose the framework when they are aff. This ensures that we can discuss all issues and avoid ‘clash of civilization’ debate that fail to create new knowledge.
d) Solves infinite regression – neg can always move the goalpost with a more predictable framework that makes discussion of the aff impossible, such as hypotesting returning us to the 80’s of non-clashing arguments tanking education and fairness.
2. THEY DON’T MEET: NEGATING IS ABOUT DISPROVING THE RESOLUTION BY SHOWING THE PLAN IS BAD OR THAT A COMPETITIVE POLICY OPTION IS BETTER THAN THE AFF’S TOPICAL EXAMPLE – DISCURSIVE ARGUMENTS AND NON-POLICY ALTERNATIVES DON’T COUNT. OUR ARGUMENT IS A VOTER – CRITIQUES ARE CHEATING, IT’S THE WRONG FORUM, THEY SHOULD LOSE FOR SKEWING TIME, EDUCATION AND COMPETITIVE EQUITY. AT THE LEAST, WEIGH THE K, IN OUR FRAMEWORK.
3. POLICY FOCUS BEST FOR DEBATE:
A) OUR AFFIRMATIVE IMPACT CLAIMS NECESSITATE THE NEED FOR GOVERNMENT ADVOCACY – Their drive for unfettered autonomy lets the government get away with destroying the world.
B) ABANDONING POLICY DISCUSSION FOR THE PURPOSE OF ONTOLOGICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL QUESTIONING PARALYZES ALL ACTION AND CAUSES NIGHTMARISH LEVELS OF VIOLENCE – no yardstick for measuring ontology because it does not address what we should do but only produces and endless cycle of disclosure and redisclosure, so we can never advance theory. The prioritization of the source of knowledge or ontology over relevant questions of ethics causes political paralysis because more questions will constantly reveal themselves.
C) THE FACT THAT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IS CONSTRUCTED DOESN’T DENY THE ACCURACY OF OUR IMPACT CLAIMS – VIOLENCE STILL EXISTS AND ONLY THE 1AC SOLVES IT, AND current forms of IR are not dependent on ontological or epistemological questions. Prioritizing ontology and epistemology over specific policy formulations paralyzes problem solving measures ensuring short-term annihilation.
4) WEIGH OUR IMPACTS, EVEN IF WE LOSE FRAMEWORK THAT IS ONLY A REASON TO REJECT OUR FILTER:
A) FIAT/PRE-FIAT DISTINCTIONS ARE STUPID – the pmc is a discursive advocacy for government action. the kritik alternative requires the same amount of personal fiat at the micro level that we use at the macro level. even if we lose framework, you can still weigh our impacts
B) CASE IMPACTS ARE A PROOF OF METHOD – if our policy is good then so is discussing it, policy discussion is critical to formulate political opinions and encourage citizens to hold government officials accountable – the case is a defense of our methodology.
5) IMPACTS:
A. YOU CAN’T ADDRESS WHETHER OUR METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK IS BAD WITHOUT EVALUATING WHETHER A WORLD WITH PLAN IS BETTER THAN ONE WITHOUT. IF WE WIN THAT WORLD IS BETTER, THAT’S AN OFFENSIVE JUSTIFICATION FOR OUR FRAMEWORK (ballot).
B. If we win policy focus this argument becomes a disad and is dead – the argument is terminally non-unique and the case becomes a turn to the alternative. State action solves the environmental crisis better that individual contemplation. If they fiat through the alternative, it justifies us fiating through world peace, destroying all ground, that’s a voter for fairness.
C. Even if we lose the fiat debate, we still get to leverage our aff impacts against those of the kritik—the discursive (or other) mechanism through which their alternative solves is just as available to our message about the necessity of authoritarianism. We are both theoretical kritiks of the status quo
Fiat is Inevitable
The human brain is functionally set up to use fiat in every instance. The way the human mind envisions the future and discerns which decisions are best makes fiat and calculations inevitable, because we will always use imagined worlds to help ourselves determine which course of action is best – no way to deviate from this means your alt does nothing. It’s more nuanced than simply being ‘illusory’, in fact it’s a very real mental process. You can’t get around it, means we should embrace it.
Permutations
Net Benefit to Perm (generic):
1. Working within the system is key because it allows infiltration and co-optation of elite knowledge. States can understand, target, and undermine outright resistance. Subversive methods that work within the system prevent this, which means the permutation solves best.
PERM: DO PLAN AND THE ALTERNATIVE – a) It solves because their alt only says that we have to _____, meaning that the plan would not interfere with its solvency, b) the plan is a net-benefit and solves better; by tempering ideological reflection with government policy we can best advance multiple social perspectives (include reps of the aff that are beneficial)
PERM: DO THE PLAN AND ALL NONCOMPETITIVE PARTS OF THE ALTERNATIVE – It’s legitimate because it only it only combine the plan with a portion of the alternative excluding the part that says vote neg, forces them to demonstrate that rejecting the aff is key to incorporate their perspective. Key to establishing defense of the plan.
PERM: DO THE PLAN AND DO THE ALTERNATIVE IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE – Solves all of their offense because the alternative says you only need one rejection or rethinking to solve—and it makes them prove a specific link to the plan – it’s legitimate because it proves that the K is not intrinsic to the aff action and thus not a reason to reject, intrinsic perms are justified if the alt artificially competes.
PERM: DO THE PLAN WHILE ENDORSING THE CRITICISM – EXIGENCIES DEMAND ACTION EVEN IN THE FACE OF CRITICISM – When faced with undecidable situations and the stakes are as high as the pmc, you have to act in the face of criticism or risk political paralysis because every action seems doomed, allowing oppression and violence to reign unchecked. case is a net-benefit to the permutation, exigencies such as the aff demand action even in the face ontological objections—this preserves space within which the k can happen.
PERM: DO BOTH – CRITICISM WITHOUT OPPOSITION CAUSES COOPERTATION, ONLY JUXTAPOSITION ALLOWS CONSTANT CRITICISM – OUR NET-BENEFIT IS JUXTAPOSITION – THIS SOLVES THE ALTERNATIVE BETTER. Juxtaposition takes the whole affirmative speech act and the whole negative criticism and allows you to vote for the process of constant criticism. it uses the plan to uphold the system as a target for the neg criticism. without that, the criticism becomes inverted, embodying its own opposite. Also, none of their specific evidence applies. it’s an in-round permutation about our speech acts and the best way to maintain the integrity of criticism.
PERM: DO THE PLAN AND THE ALTERNATIVE—ACTION DOES NOT REQUIRE EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONSISTENCY, WE CAN HAVE DIFFERING BELIEFS AND STILL ACT TO AFFIRM RIGHTS – We could have intellectual debates and find ourselves joined in the fight against violence, without having to agree on many epistemological issues. We could disagree on the status and character of modernity and yet find ourselves joined in asserting and defending the rights of indigenous women to health care, reproductive technology, decent wages, physical protection, cultural rights, freedom of assembly. Various routes lead us into politics, various kinds of reasoning and belief. We do not need to ground ourselves in a single mode of communication, a single model of reason, a single notion of the subject before we are able to act. Activism that affirms different approaches to thinking will not fracture coalitions.
PERM: DO THE PLAN AS A PRAGMATIC STEP TOWARD THE ALTERNATIVE
a) Key to solve, the government is the most powerful agent of change and a refusal to use them dooms the alt.
b) Net-benefit: pragmatism is good, failure to make specific list of reforms condemns the left to irrelevance and hurts other social movements.
Alt Can’t Solve
No Solvency: discursive acts of rejection don’t create real world change because they are isolated to the world of acedemia. This gets ignored by politicians and real policy makers because of its lack of practical application. And it cannot be adopted by the general population because the vast majority of people don’t have access to educational resources necessary to understand your ivory tower author (especially if they’re solving for oppressed populations).
No Solvency: representations do not have the power to change anything absent political action. There is no spill over to their project, meaningt that we will continue to interact with the political world in the way it exists in the SQ. Means we should operate within the system via the plan to solve their K.
Coalitions solve: Your alt is a totalizing rejection without the ability to work with other social reform groups. This means you kill coalitions and ensures you always remain a minority opinion without the force necessary to generate social change. Means you don’t solve the aff.
Democracy solves: The alt’s abandonment of the public sphere in favor of individualist intellectualizing cedes power to aggressive and reactionary elites and entrenches social hierarchies. Democracy creates value to life by allowing autonomy and individual agency in the real world. Means the plan solves the K.
Alt Turns
Turn: Political paralysis
a. It is impossible to create epistemological consistency on any issue. This leads to policy
paralysis because we have no ability to interact with the world post the alt.
b. This causes all leftists to remove themselves from the political sphere, which allows right wing conservatives to take over and create a dictatorship. Makes your impacts inevitable in a world of the alt.
Turn: Binaries
a. You create a totalizing ideaology with no ability to compromise or negotiate with other people. This justifies exclusion and otherization of those with different ideologies, which replicates your impacts.
Turn: Ethics
a. We have an ethical obligation to solve the impacts of case in order to save lives. This neg stands by and allows death to happen. This means they don’t believe these lives are worth saving, which is what creates devaluation of lives in the first place. We have to make decisions in the face of unresolvable situations in order to stop genocidal impulses.
Turn: Intersectionality:
a. pinning down one root cause of violence makes us ignore the ways in which individuals are oppressed depending on their social location. This worldview prevents us from understanding social location and causes perpetual cycles of violence. Your logic makes the impacts inevitable.
State is key: Rejection of state solutions dooms their alt – only the state is powerful enough to confront exploitation
a. You need the state: even if state action does not create complete solvency, it is still a prerequisite to solvency. You cannot create true liberation while there are still policies in place that create oppression. For instance, it was impossible to advocate for equal rights effectively before slavery was abolished.
b. Can’t overcome the state: it’s empirically proven. No resistance movement has overthrown the USFG, because the USFG has money and guns to crush resistance. The state will continue to exist post the alternative, which makes your impacts inevitable.
c. State is inevitable: two possibilities if you overthrow the state. 1) We collapse into a state of anarchy where violence becomes inevitable and there are hundreds of lose nukes that get stolen, launched by irrational actors, and leads to extinction, or 2) Another government institution takes the place of the current government, cracks down on the alt’s resistance and we descent into a totalitarian state where your impacts are inevitable. We are winning that reforms to the current state are the only risk of creating a better world.
d. Ethical use of the state: we can use the state ethically. Our plan shows flaws within the current system and understands how the state is complicit in oppression. It is only after we recognize this that we can create reform.
Standpoint Epistomology Bad
The alternative does not grant us access to special knowledge to solve oppression, It makes it impossible to solve oppression because other’s standpoints are ignored and marginalized: standpoint epistemologists tend to presuppose too narrow a view of privilege. Victims do not have exclusive access to truth about oppression. The positions of others even the victimizers -- yield perspectives of special knowledge that those who seek to end oppression must understand. To claim that [women] have special access to knowledge does not account for why all [women] do not share the same interpretations of situations.
Realism Good
1. THE FACT THAT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IS CONSTRUCTED DOESN’T DENY THE ACCURACY OF OUR IMPACT CLAIMS – VIOLENCE STILL EXISTS AND ONLY THE PMC SOLVES IT, AND current forms of IR are not dependent on ontological or epistemological questions. Prioritizing ontology and epistemology over specific policy formulations paralyzes problem solving measures ensuring short-term annihilation.
2. STATES INEVITABLY COMPETE WITH EACH OTHER FOR INTERNATIONAL POWER, THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS, AND WE MUST EMBRACE IT – [2 REASONS]
A) NO CENTRAL AUTHORITY OVER STATES – International system is anarchic as there is no higher sovereignty than the level of the state, thus states are endowed with an obligation to seek their own self-interest first and foremost.
B) STATES HAVE OFFENSIVE MILITARY CAPABILTIES – The possession of competing interests and the capacity for inflicting harm on others necessitates that states pursue security interests to avoid vulnerability to other self-interested states.
3. REALISM IS A DA TO THE K: ANY ATTEMPT TO DEVIATE FROM THIS STRUCTURE CAUSES VIOLENCE. THE SELF-HELP INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM MAKES REALISM INEVITABLE BECAUSE OF STATE COMPETITION AND THE DESIRE FOR SURVIVAL. TRYING TO BREAK DOWN THAT SYSTEM CAUSES POWER DIFFERENTIALS THAT RESULT IN MASS WAR AND DEATH
4. THAT MAKES THEIR ARGUMENT TERMINALLY NOT UNIQUE, BECAUSE STATES WILL STILL COMPETE AND FILL THE VOID AND YOU VOTE ON ANY RISK OF WAR.
5. STATE BEHAVIOR IS DRIVEN BY SECURITY COMPETITION ACCORDING TO THE DICTATES OF OFFENSIVE REALISM—CRITICAL THEORY DOES NOT HAVE THE ABILITY TO UNSEAT REALISM AS THE DOMINANT DISCOURSE OF IR YOUR IMPACT IS INEVITABLE: [4 REASONS]
A) MATERIAL STRUCTURE OF THE INT’L SYSTEM MEANS REALISM IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE SYSTEM: State behavior is largely shaped by the material structure of the international system. The distribution of material capabilities among states is the key factor for understanding world politics. For realists, some level of security competition among great powers is inevitable because of the material structure of the international system.
B) CRITICAL THEORY OFFERS NO EXPLANATION FOR HOW WE CHANGE IR – The problem with critical theory is that although the theory is deeply concerned with radically changing state behavior, it says little about how change comes about. The theory does not tell us why particular discourses become dominant, and others fall by the wayside. Specifically, Wendt does not explain why realism has been the dominant discourse in world politics for well over a thousand years.
C) LITTLE EMPIRICAL SUPPORT – its proponents have offered little empirical support for their theory. For example, I noted in "False Promise" that critical theorists concede that realism has been the dominant discourse in international politics from about 1300 to 1989, a remarkably long period of time.
D) JUST AS LIKELY TO BE FASCIST – Even if we change discourses and move beyond realism, a fundamental problem with Wendt's argument remains: because his theory cannot predict the future, he cannot know whether the discourse that ultimately replaces realism will be more benign than realism. He has no way of knowing whether a fascistic discourse more violent than realism will emerge as the hegemonic discourse.
ALT CANT SOLVE: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS ELITES WILL STILL SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF POWER YOU CAN’T CHANGE THEIR MINDS: Americans dislike realpolitik, public discourse about foreign policy in the United States is usually couched in the language of liberalism. . Hence the pronouncements of the policy elites are heavily flavored with optimism and moralism. Behind closed doors, however, the elites who make national security policy speak mostly the language of power not that of principle and the United States acts in the international system according to the dictates of realist logic.
A2 Anthro
Impact turns:
1. Anthro is good and inevitable – viewing ourselves as distinct as a species is inevitable because it was obviously evolutionarily advantageous to recognize who is a member of your species that you can potentially mate with and who or what is not. This means the hierarchies you describe are natural insofar as they are a product of our relationship with the natural world, hard wired into our brains, and inevitable.
2. Anthro is good – our domination of the world allows survival of human and non-human life: because human interaction with nature is inevitable, we will always manage or manipulate the environment in some way. Your alternative would force us to sacrifice human life in exchange for plants and other animals, which would eventually cause their extinction as well because the damage we have done to the Earth has already been wraught. We should try to reverse it to save the whole planet.
3. Sacrificing humanity for nature logically leads to genocide: Instrumentalizing human life is what allows us to instrumentalize non-human life as well. If we can solve for the logic of disposability among human beings, we can also question the approach we take with instrumentalizing other living beings as well. Sacrificing humanity forecloses upon this possibility and leads to nihilistic inaction, which does not reorient our relationship with nature – it just causes humans to go extinct.
4. Next, no root cause – anthro is not the root cause of environmental harm and it’s good for the environment: anthropocentric views should logically lead us to cease doing things that are destructive to the natural order insofar as the quality of human life depends on that order and start doing things that make nature better to make our own lives better since we depend on the natural world for our own survival.
Next, the alternative:
Perm: Do the aff and [whatever]
Perm: Do the plan as a pragmatic step towards the alt.
Perm: Do the plan and (whatever bullshitty things they make up that will supposedly solve the K
Domination and protection are compatible, the permutation solves. Their characterization of these relations to nature as mutually exclusive is too simplistic and assumes that a ‘natural’ or ‘knowable’ state of what is best for nature exists, which links to their own K, because they make that determination.
Next, Case is a net-benefit to the permutation and a disad to the alternative alone. They can’t solve [X], which guartentees the extinction of all human and non-human life on Earth in the short term, which short circuits our ability to let nature be.
Also, their alternative leads to the extinction of human and non-human life. We think it’s preferable to maintain domination of the environment if it net saves more species via an approach that involves eco-pragmatism and policymaking of the aff.
Next net-benefit to the permutation is eco pragmatism:
1. Pragmatism in environmental law allows for the contextualization of contradictory criticisms and reverses the nihilistic and destructive trends of pure critical philosophy.
2. Pragmatism creates a pluralistic approach to the environment that evaluates issues through an interdisciplinary framework while still advocating policy action; it’s the only way to put the alternative into practice.
3. Environmental pragmatism is the best way to protect nature from humanity while allowing human progress decoupled from the natural world—their framework merely divides individuals necessary in the struggle for environmental protection
And the alt doesn’t solve:
Turn: The Kritik prevents deliberation and all change, it polarizes rhetoric and transforms all discourse into irrelevant propaganda; pragmatism is necessary to enable compromise and the way we evaluate environmental discourses – solves the alt best: ideological commitments masquerading as methodological commitments have polarized discourse about environmental values, setting ethicists and economists on a rhetorical collision course. Continued emphasis on foundational issues by environmental ethicists simply exacerbates the ideological ferment and blocks reasonable deliberation about what to do.
Turn: The Kritik fails, its an infinitely regressive endorsement of non-action which denies the relationship and context between policy makers and average citizens: They cannot direct us to pragmatic solutions – they’re just an ideological commitment unconnected to empirical reality and our everday experiences with the environment.
A2: Baudrillard
Turn – Nihilism: Baudrillard reduces existence to politics and signs. This erases the distinction between suffering and happiness – radically devaluing life. His anti-political alternative relies on the reduction of the body, politics, and body politics to signs and symbols. His alt is a drive towards anti-utopia and nothingness, which crushes the possibility of transformative or effective politics.
Turn – Nominalism: in Baudrillard’s theory, the human form is entirely signifier, and not signified. This fetishization of signs ignores the corporeal and epistemically wrong—it leads to understanding the human condition as NOT a question of how much pain or suffering it endures, but how signs are applied to it. This theory separates the body from politics and allows for massive suffering to occur between the cracks that Baudrillard’s approach inevitably creates.
Turn – Ethics: The effect of Baudrillard’s alt boils down to despair and an apathetic inability to change the lives of other people because it mystifies any political discourse. His simulacrum is a way for intellectuals to evade their social an ethical responsibilities and give themselves an alibi for their own violence.
Turn - Violence is Inescapable: Our violence enables understanding more than it inhibits. Remembering and representing violence is essential to avert the destruction of the other – this is why televising war sparks outrage and galvanizes peace protesters. Reject the critique’s silence. The 1AC is a disad to the K.
Turn - Media images reveal their own illusions: Baudrillard himself (in Illusion of the End) says that media can disspell its own myths. He says that the excess of the media reveals the extent to which the images they show are simulated, which deconstructs its own credibility in showing us these images in the first place. He also says that paying attention to media images is important, because “where better can one learn to question every picture, every word, every commentary?”. It both teaches us to be critical of what we are presented and renders reality dissuasive. Means the aff solves the K.
Baudrillard’s argument ignores corporatism (aka “You don’t talk about class”): By focusing on the symbol, it misses out on the corporate nature of the media and the relationship between the image and profit – thus he does nothing for the exploitation of the masses by corporate interests, ensuring their continuance and replicating the dominance of corporate interests by creating false consciousness.
Baudrillard’s argument is contradictory and not productive: It’s contradictory to say that “it’s true that nothing is true”. Postmodernism misses the accumulation-legitimation tension in the media, for which Baudrillard’s argument has no explanatory power. While reality can be influenced and represented by the media, human and social reality can transcent it to be resistant to the images (that’s why people turned against the Vietnam war or why Reagan, despite being the ‘great communicator’ was widely unpopular).
Emperically Denied – Just a couple days before the war broke out in the Gulf, Baudrillard published an article in the Guardian declaring war would never happen – that it existed only as a figment of mass-media simulaiton and not as a factual possibility.
Baudrillard’s alternative allows conservative ideological distortion: Baudrillard’s alternative is “a hyperreal sheltered from any distinction between the real and the imaginary”. This vision allows disinformation to set the agenda for ‘public debate’ across a range of crucial policy issues, which only serves the intersts of those in power. This will only endorse and promote the work of ideological mystification that serves conservatives and the military.
Instead, we should recognize there is a difference between what we are given to believe and what emerges from the process of subjecting such beliefs to an informed critique of their content. Means the aff solves the K.
Baudrillard’s alternative masks violence: His preoccupation with representation and the signifier over the signified does nothing to relieve violence enacted on someone’s body. Endlessly analyzing the representations of war doesn’t interrogate or even acknowledge how many people died as a result of bombs being dropped. Without that physicalist sense of violence, war can be more effectively sold to a jingoistic public, making war infinitely more possible.
A2: Biopower
BIOPOWER IS INEVITABLE: Biopower existed before and exists outside of the state:
FIRST, PLAN IS NECESSARY FOR THE ALTERNATIVE BECAUSE IT CHALLENGES A MORE VIOLENT FORM OF UNILATERAL BIOPOWER. THIS CREATES A DOUBLE BIND: EITHER THE END RESULT OF THE ALT IS PLAN AND THERE’S NO LINK DIFFERENTIAL OR THE ALT DOES THE STATUS QUO AND DOESN’T SOLVE
Our demand turns the tables on biopolitical apparatus: we utilize the tension between freedom and control to articulate a series of demands which are a strategic reversal of power relations
Foucault's model of power dooms every resistance to inevitable co-optation because of a lack of subjectivity… antagonism exceeds its positive historical antecedents and can break the power cycle by using the edifice's excess against itself
Next, NO IMPACT – FOUCAULT DOESN’T SAY THAT BIOPOWER IS NECESSARILY BAD, BUT THAT IT’S DANGEROUS. PLAN IS AN INSANTIATION OF POWER CREATING ITS OWN RESISTENCE, CHALLENGING VIOLENCE
And, Demands on the state are more effective than radical rejection – Their alternative’s fear of cooption paralyzes political praxis – Only through the demands of the plan can we change the system
PERM SOLVES BEST - MICROPOLITICS AND LARGER STRUGGLES AGAINST OPPRESSION SHOULD BE COMBINED, CREATING A RADICAL REFORMISM IN OPPOSITION TO TOTALIZING POLITICS
AND THE ALT ALONE WILL FAIL: it’s easier for the government to identify and target outright resistance, whereas the permutation incorporates subversion into government action – ensuring a higher probability of success to best solve the K impacts.
A2: Borders
THE FACT THAT INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IS CONSTRUCTED DOESN’T DENY THE ACCURACY OF OUR IMPACT CLAIMS – VIOLENCE STILL EXISTS AND ONLY THE PMC SOLVES IT, AND current forms of IR are not dependent on ontological or epistemological questions. Prioritizing ontology and epistemology over specific policy formulations paralyzes problem solving measures ensuring short-term annihilation.
THE ALTERNATIVE FAILS: BORDERS ARE INEVITABLE
Selfish gene theory dictates that we’ll always draw a line around our shit and protect it from outsiders trying to wrest it from us. Means the alt doesn’t solve.
T/ MAINTAINING BORDERS IS KEY TO TERRITORIAL CONTAINMENT THAT PREVENTS SMALL CONFLICTS FROM ESCALATING GLOBALLY—The maintenance of borders prevents crises and tensions from escalating beyond the state in which they originated and guarantee neighboring countries are not affected. Conflicts in the Balkans, the civil war in Afghanistan, and the crisis in Algeria are all telling examples of this. SPECIFICALLY, the Rwanda-Burundi crisis that witnessed hundreds of thousands of refugees and death levels approaching genocide halted when Kabila took control of Zaire, and in only 3 months guaranteed both stability and containment – final troubles in Zaire/Congo confirm prove the effectiveness, the international community permitted external troops from Zimbabwe to provide stability.
T/ CREATING AND SUSTAINING GEOGRAPHICAL BORDERS IS KEY TO PREVENT ETHINIC CIVIL WARS—Scholars who challenge the single-state-orthodoxy are naïve; historically a key factor in sustaining negotiated settlements to ethnic conflicts ability to institutionalize power-sharing or regional autonomy. Dividing states and creating new boarders are an effective way to promote peace, because civil conflicts do not end until groups are separated into enclaves—when intermingled each side has an incentive to attack the other—once separated these incentives disappear. Without this all solutions are fruitless because intermingling is what fuels the conflict.
A2: Cap
ENVIRONMENT IMPACT TURNS:
T/ INNOVATION: Capitalism drives innovation by providing incentives to meet rising demand through new developments and innovate ideas to adapt to new market conditions through scientific discovery or economic models.
a) USING RESOURCES MORE WISELY and limiting overconsumption like renewable energy, sustainable farming practices, and scrubbers.
b) EXTRACTING AND PRODUCING RESOURCES MORE EFFICIENTLY and getting more out of fewer materials, such as new drilling practices and GMOs.
T/ CENTRALIZATION OF RESOURCES BREEDS INEFFICIENCY AND EMPIRICS PROVE THAT IT’S NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS – The former Soviet Union prioritized competition and expansion over environmental consciousness and poisoned millions in order to display high agricultural outputs, industrial modes of production in these societies were also the most unsafe and polluting the world has ever seen.
T/ CAPITALISM PROMOTES DEMOCRATIC ENVIRONMENTALISM – Democratic societies are more environmentally conscious because they are accountable to their citizens who are implicated by environmental degradation.
T/ CAPITALISM AVOIDS THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS BY INCENTIVIZING ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE – Allows for the valuation of the environmental and it resources and individuals as well as market incentives to lobby for its protections, also private ownership endows people with a personal desire to preserve what they have.
T/ MARKETS AREN’T INHERINTLY EVIL AND CAN BE MOTIVATED TOWARD ENVIRONMENTAL ENDS – Markets are manipulated by human input and have an enormous potential for fixing our environmentally destructive habits, market incentives create the most efficient way of employing protections and finding new ways to interact with the environment: policies such as Cap N’ Trade encourage businesses to be as environmentally friendly as possible driving market innovation and changing the fundamental nature of capitalism.
THEY’LL SAY THAT CAP’S PRESERVATION OF NATURE IS REDUCTIVE BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE: Things like National Parks demonstrate that the value we ascribe to nature is not informed purely by economics.
WAR IMPACT TURNS:
T/ PERIODS OF ECONOMIC DECLINE ERUPT IN WAR – We’re stuck now and the abandonment of capital would make conflict certain. The 1930’s serve as evidence that billions rely on the international marketplace and any attempt to suddenly supplant that with the alternatives refusal to work-from-within ensure that this disruptions would escalate. It would immediately jeopardize the food security of the planet, export agriculture and lack of local production would doom BILLIONS to starvation and death, killing the poorest first who have the least means of securing food for themselves and fueling conflict over the rest. This will cause neocolonial wars and 1st world countries attempt to keep others in the trade network. In today’s global context nuclear weapons would threaten the very source of life on earth, economic poverty breeds fierce nationalism and political dangerous posturing, and in a bid to save regimes leaders would not hesitate to destroy eachother.
THIS ALSO TURNS ALL OF THEIR SUSTAINABILITY ARGUMENTS, IF WE WIN GLOBAL WAR IN THE SHORT-TERM THAT WOULD DESTROY MOST OF THE BIOSPHERE AND DOOM ANY ATTEMPT TO REBUILD OR SAVE THE SPECIES POST COLLAPSE BECAUSE RESOURCES WOULDN’T EXIST.
T/ CAP INCREASES THE COSTS OF WAR – Economic interdependence provides disincentives for conflict because trade makes countries reliant on one another to sustain their societies, even their capcity to wage war. This is proven by the Cold War Era which minimized global conflicts with trade networks.
T/ GLOBAL TRADE IS A SAFETY VALVE TO DISPUTE RESOLUTIONS – WTO negotiation mechanism prevents global conflict by allowed for disputes to be resolved in a collective format.
T/ CAPITALISM DRIVE THE GLOBAL EXCHANGES
a) DEVELOPMENT IMPROVES TRANSPORTATION – Globalization erases artificial boundaries that are the foundation for war, multinationalism and integration erode the ability to categorize enemies and destroy the capacity for mounting political support for conflict.
b) ENCOURAGES CULTURAL EXCHANGES THAT STOP OTHERIZATION – Allows diverse points of contact and cooperation that stops otherization and war turns all of their impacts
c) COMMONALITY OF INTERESTS – Capitalism forges commonality amongst workers through all levels of society and allow them to mount a force against the exclusive interests of government officials. Breeds a desire to connect and protect the common interest of humanity.
T/ CAPITALISM SOLVES RESOURCE SCARCITY, WHICH IS A PRIMARY CAUSE OF WAR – Without capitalism outdated economic models would persist breeding scarcity for resources vital to the functioning of societies, countries would make aggressive moves to secure those culminating in war. We’ll also win on timeframe b/c capitalism provides the means of solving oncoming scarcity such as peak oil, food production, and freshwater. Majority of conflicts have been waged in an effort to seize or secure resources from an enemy to ensure continued livelihood.
T/ CAPITALISM DECREASES PROPENSITY FOR WAR BY DIVERSIFYING MARKETS – Incentive the open exchange of different resources and product mixed economies that rely on multiple resources interdependence. This prevents surplus accumulation in favor of mutual bargaining – no one resource is paramount.
T/ INCREASES AGGREGATE WEALTH OF SOCIETY PREVENTS FACTIONING AND UNREST – Conflict does not manifest when people basic needs are met and they have outlets for expression and labor. Market specialization increases productive efficiency and reduces the costs of production, this works to increase the wealth of a society almost like an invisible hand.
T/ CAP RESOLVES INTERNAL WEALTH DISPARITIES WHICH CAUSE CONFLICT – Historically class conflict has emerged when one section of society accrues the large majority of resources spurring revolt, the entrance of capitalism shows that it contributes to the construction of the “MIDDLE CLASS” which mediates class interests and prevents cyclical revolution.
VALUE TO LIFE IMPACT TURNS:
EXISTENCE IS A PRECONDITION TO VALUE – We’ll set the value to life at 100% so our disads to your alternative outweigh this argument.
VALUE TO LIFE IS SELF-DETERMINED – No objective criterion or measure that can be agreed upon to guage the value someone derives from their lived experience. Should relegate that to the individual, otherwise it’s inaccurate and leads to tyranny.
T/ CAPITALISM MAXIMIZES AUTONOMY – allows free choice in nearly all endeavors and rewards intellectual labor of all varieties. Self realization is only permissible in a world of capital that places a premium
T/ CAPITALISM IS THE ULTIMATE FREEDOM – Grounding value in the unit of the individual is the only way to establish value. In a system of controlled economics your worth is only calculated in terms of your worth to the collective society
THEIR ARGUMENT IS A CONFLATION OF TERMS – to say life can be ‘commoditized by cap and have no value’ doesn’t mean that the life currently being lived is without value, but that it allows others to regard life as not having supreme value, which is different. If we win that open markets and trade allow for the adoption of norms that affirm principles of human dignity, then we win the debate.
T/ ACCEPTING THE IDEA THAT LIFE CAN HAVE NO VALUE IS THE ONLY WAY IT’S POSSIBLE – their accepting the idea that life can reach an ontological zero-point, this is an independent reason for voting because their harms are only possible in a world of the opposition.
T/ CLAIMS TO NO-VALUE TO LIFE JUSTIFY EUGENICS AND GENOCIDE – Relegation of life to being without value creates the conditions for violence, couched in discursive representations.
THERE IS ALWAYS VALUE TO LIFE – The desire for self-preservation is an observed fact. Individuals choose to persevere even in the most dehumanizing conditions, examples such as slavery; people did not lay down and accept death as an alternative even in the most hopeless circumstances.
A2: CLS
TURN - saying the law is indeterminate makes it impossible to criticize the authoritarian nature of the law and exonerates the framers for writing a racist constitution since the logical conclusion of the above argument is that individual judges use the indeterminate law to their own political ends, which makes a criticism of the way the document was written impossible. Only through incremental reforms of the system can we ever rectify the oppressive nature of the way our gov’t was originally setup.
TURN - the kind of indeterminacy that CLS wants to make commonplace threatens the legitimacy of legal orders in ways likely to make the enforcement of legislative majorities less than effective. If legal decisions were encouraged to be the particular outcome of power conflicts at any particular time, law would be enforced so haphazardly that principles as consensually accepted as, for instance, equal protection would be impossible to uphold.
TURN – our restriction of gov’t power (insert specific case proof) is what actually enables the social transformation they advocate. Deconstruction does not actively do this.
TURN – their alt leads to nihilistic politics that are unable to transform society. Only our plan can decentralize gov’t action and allow individual conceptualization.
TURN – the law is key to their K – the law constantly puts itself on trial, is constantly being evaluated and interrogates the system.
TURN – our restriction of gov’t power (insert specific case proof) is what actually enables the social transformation they advocate. Deconstruction does not actively do this.
TURN – ivory tower intellectualism is bad. It’s easy to be an elite kritiking the system when you’re removed from systematic oppression that keeps people subjugated (or whatever).
Focusing on the indeterminacy, legal gaps and exceptions is NOT actually liberating but rather damning because it dooms us to be subjects of an unfixable system – the alt has no positive prescriptive action to advocate.
No Link - each type of law can be equally coherent or determinate in its appropriate sphere of jurisdiction, CLS just forces these contradictions out of context. Legal formalism CAN solve by at least significantly constraining outcomes even if they do not mechanically determine them.
Solvency takeout - CLS, while quite attuned to the presence of illegitimate socio-economic interests embedded in the state, has no means by which to evaluate different kinds of groups within society and their expanded influence on the law once important legal standards have been removed.
CRITIQUE DOESN’T SOLVE – THERE’S NO REASON POINTING OUT FLAWS IN THE SYSTEM WILL LEAD TO A HUGE MINDSET SHIFT. THE LAW WILL STILL UNILATERALLY DETAIN ENEMY COMBATANTS. PREFER OUR SPECIFIC TRIBE AND KATYAL EV
TURN- UPHOLDING LEGAL PRINCIPLES PROVES THE LAW’S FRAUDULENCE AND HOLDS IT ACCOUNTABLE: Demanding that the law be upheld or exercised fairly make the nature of the law clear to society and to those who inhabit its power structures. To assume that the laws are a mere façade would mean to go on reinforcing those aspects of the law that create the facade and the ritual. It would mean enabling those who exploit it to go unchallenged.
PERM – DO BOTH. FIGHTING WITHIN THE SYSTEM BY PRETENDING THAT WE CAN CHANGE IT IN SPITE OF ITS LIMITATIONS PRODUCES A MORE EFFECTIVE CLS THAT ENGAGES IN PRAXIS
INDETERMINACY MEANS YOU HAVE TO EVALUATE THE EMPIRICAL JUSTIFICATION OF OUR SOLVENCY CLAIMS: We shouldn’t evaluate the utopian results of the alternative, but rather compare our solvency claims with politics that have been effectively realized through the legal system, like the civil rights movement.
STRUGGLE IS A CATALYST FOR MAKING RIGHTS DETERMINATE, DISMANTLING OPPRESSION: the catalyst is persistent social struggle to transform the oppressiveness of one's existential condition. Under the pressures of social struggle, the oppressed can alter rights to better reflect the exigencies of social reality. For those deprived of basic freedoms and subjected to arbitrary acts of state authority, the enforcement of formal rights was revolutionary
A2: Colonialism
Alt can’t solve – attempts to break down colonialism are always coopted by a different oppressive group: The sovereignty of colonial states passed from European governments to governments which at first, and usually for some time, were dominated by the Westernised elite that had led the struggle for independence. IN nearly all cases, the institutional and legal forms of governance were continuous with those of the colonial period. Political and ethnic conflicts frequently coincided with or followed the granting of independence – former colonies were free from colonizers but not from oppression.
Alt can’t solve and would be worse – MNCs will fill-in for governments: MNCs (multinational corporations) gained control mainly to replace the white rulers in the area of economic exploitation. MNCs who now are actually the real owners of the raw materials in African nations like Nigeria. Countries that have tried to circumvent their control with regulations and taxes have failed, proving there’s no way to get rid of them once they take hold.
AND MNCs are worse than governmental colonialism for poverty, two reasons: 1) MNCs export abroad the capital that would have been used to develop countries thus; the MNCs distort the economy and economic development because the capital needed for development is no longer here in the country but abroad. 2) Technological backwardness: It is in the area that the MNCs are regarded as the worst culprits by way of purporting to help industrialize they create a branch-plant economy of small inefficient firms incapable of propelling overall development. They employ capital intensive productive techniques that cause unemployment. All these prevent the emergence of domestic technologies and doom the country to dependence and poverty.
AND MNC’s are bad because they oppress people: Advocacy groups often portray multinationals as sweatshop operators, polluters, and systematic tax evaders that cause horrific human rights violations. Even if most MNCs are well intentioned, they suffer from a credibility gap. MNCs can fuel public concern by being culturally insensitive, not honoring promises made by their predecessors, and being inconsistent in other aspects of their "social contract" with local society. When MNCs conclude that the host government had abandoned its favorable investment climate (like if people protest their oppression), they cut back on capital spending, close plants, and move money offshore – leaving the country high and dry after exploiting away any hopes of domestic development.
A2: Compassion Fatigue/Disaster Porn
YOU’RE WRONG:
1. The PMC’s act of prediction is key to mobilize populations to solve extinction in the short term: preventive foresight is commonplace because of the perils that humanity faces. Individuals and groups from far-flung parts of the planet are being brought together into “risk communities” that transcend geographical borders because knowledge of impeding catastrophes can instantaneously reach the four corners of the earth. Early warning about global cataclysms can overcome flawed conceptions of the future’s essential inscrutability and open the way to public deliberation about the construction of a new world order.
2. Theories of desensitization are false – extreme images of suffering re-sensitize and motivate action: The theory is an urban myth that gives no time span for desensitization, no idea as to who is being so brutalized, or how the original compassionate reaction can be made to reappear magically. It ignores mental reflection, symbolic meaning and cultural context. making the image of suffering more extreme and painful will re-sensitize people or whole cultures so that they find their lost compassion. But there is no standard, universal response to even the most extreme images of suffering.
3. The number of images doesn’t cause fatigue – individual’s reactions are far more intense than their authors give them credit for: The sheer repetition of images of suffering, their easy accessibility, or even their intrusiveness need not cause a state of exhaustion. There is, after all, no such thing as love fatigue. Visceral responses to images of suffering can still be as intense as they were in pre-compassion fatigue days, and far more intense than worldweary journalists or sociologists might predict.
AND OUR IMAGES ARE GOOD:
1. The representations of the affirmative results in global compassion and mobilization – depicting human suffering results in action by the governments and NGO’s: there is an increased political willingness to pay attention to internal national conflicts and civil wars with victims among the civilian population. Look even at how revolutionary televizing war has been post the Vietnam War – it sparked anti-war movements and outrage about violence, not apathy. The West no longer motivates international intervention in the rhetoric of political ideologies or power interests, but in the rhetoric of human rights and global compassion.
2. Images of crises is key to human intervention – our representations solve the harms: that public support for foreign relief activities is directly in proportion to the amount of media coverage given to specific emergencies. Few humanitarian crises seem to produce a public response unless they have first attracted the attention of the press and television - the so-called "CNN effect" - "Where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention.".
AND EVEN IF YOU’RE RIGHT, WE SHOULD STILL DO THE AFF:
1. We shouldn’t let compassion fatigue deter us from taking measures to help others: It should not be allowed to constrain or distort the collection and the imparting of knowledge. “There’s a very low level of general knowledge of the rest of the world among Americans. The global significance of a story, not the expected American reception of it, should be the main criterion for coverage. If knowledge about a place or an event make people care more about them, then a rise in Americans’ general knowledge about the world can only help Americans become more engaged.
DISASTER PORN IS GOOD:
Fear of nuclear anihilation is key to preserving peace and preventing the development and use of more violent technology in the future: Only fear forces us to take a wider view. The moment we become blasé about the possibility of a holocaust, the violence becomes a possibility because we no longer find it reprehensible or fear its reprocussions. That’s the only way their impacts are possible.
A2: Dedev
NO CONCIOUSNESS SHIFT: It is not reasonable to assume, in light of the short and medium term consequences of de-development (starvation, environmental devestation, nuclear war, etc.), that capitalism, rather than the collapse of capitalism, will suffer a massive decline in public support and a socialist bioregional alternative will set in. Rather, people will seek to use the technological and economic tools that are the product of capitalism to survive and increase their quality of life (assuming economic collapse doesn’t cause extinction), eventually rebuilding a capitalist system somewhat similar to the one we have now. However, the collapse of states in the interim will give rise to fascist regimes, environmental degradation due to a lack of regulation and public funding for clean energy, famine, and war.
PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES AREN’T GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Even if the Aff wins that no one reindustrializes, which is ludicrous, both hunter-gatherer and pastoral communities were extremely destructive, engaging in widespread clear-cutting in order to convert as much land as possible into pasture land, either to attract prey or to increase the size of the herd. Lacking artificial means of disposing of sewage, laundering garments, and obtaining water for bathing, humans used natural water sources for all of these things. The level of environmental devastation was at least as large, per capita- it’s just that the population was much smaller. That’s obviously not true today. For evidence of what could happen to the environment if everyone is forced to subsist off the land, or at least live without many modern conveniences, look at the Ganges in India, or the state of the Amazon rainforests bordering cropland in Latin America.
LOSS OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE KILLS 5.4 B PEOPLE: Industrial farming techniques can be used to support 35 times more people per hectare than can even the most sophisticated application of pre-industrial techniques. Given these limitations, an agrarian world could only support 1.4 billion people. This puts the Aff in a double bind- either we don’t completely regress to a pre-industrial society, and they are forced to defend that economic collapse without significant consciousness shift is a good thing, which is stupid, or they must defend that society regresses significantly and they kill about 80% of the world’s population and cause incomprehensible suffering based on starvation impacts alone.
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE CAUSES EXTINCTION IN THE INTERIM: It doesn’t matter what MIGHT happen to society if we dedeved- economic collapse will cause resource wars, instability to resource changes, mass unrest, the rise of ideological extremists and paramilitary forces, and just about any other factor you could think of that might lead to the use of nuclear weapons. Certainly MAD no longer checks in this unstable transition period. The arrangements between existing power structures to prevent nuclear war depend on the existence, certainly, but also the stability of those organizations. The plan destroys both of those, meaning that nuclear exchanges are likely to become commonplace, breaking the nuclear taboo and making large scale nuclear war an inevitability. The debate can end right here- disorderly transitions of this type are not acceptable in a world populated by thousands of nuclear weapons, and we will all be destroyed within months of plan’s passage, if not sooner, and you can vote here on timeframe even if collapse is inevitable.
THE RESULT OF COLLAPSE IS RIGHT-WING FASCISM: There will not be left-wing utopia, even following the bloodshed and starvation that are a guaranteed impact of plan. It is a given that authoritarianism is required to maintain order after dedevelopment occurs; people will not forgo what we consider modern comforts, let alone endure starvation, or, at the very least, deprivation, indefinitely without a very strong government to handle the distribution of resources and guard against development. This will come in the form of fascist regimes. In particular, the right will win out over the left in the aftermath of collapse because right wing groups are better equipped to do so; there are only a handful of left-wing street radicals when compared to the number of comparatively well armed right wing paramilitary groups, and the most powerful militaries, including, but not limited to the US, slant considerably to the right politically. The inevitable war for control of the future government(s) will be won by the right. The right is bad.
COLLAPSE NOT INEVITABLE:
1. TECH INNOVATION SOLVES CONSUMPTION: There are, as yet, still vast increases in efficiency that are obviously possible even using only the technology we have now. We engage in farming practices that leave soil bereft of nutrients, in many cases, making agricultural output less efficient than it might otherwise be. We use hopelessly inefficient electricity generators, and many of our most common energy consuming technologies, like light bulbs, are also very inefficient in their traditional forms. However, rising population and demand for resources will, thanks to capitalism, make it profitable to maximize efficiency by shifting to less wasteful practices and technologies, even if it is cheaper not to do so now. Examples include the use of better crop rotation strategies and the production less energy intensive crops, the use of more energy efficient appliances, utilities and vehicles, and the use of renewable and more efficient energy sources. We have done very little in these fields, and all have the potential to make much large populations sustainable. Thus, our current rate of technological innovation can sustain rising population and standards of living for some time.
2. RENEWABLES ARE GETTING MUCH BETTER: Solar energy is case in point. The output capacity of solar technology has been consistently doubling every 2.1 years for years, and doesn’t yet show signs of slowing. In theory, this means solar could feasibly provide all the world’s energy in 20 years. Certainly it shows that renewables will soon be little more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuels, and, since they can never run out, this means we will be able to have relatively cheap energy for a very long time.
3. PEAK OIL NOT A PROBLEM: Even if we are at peak oil production, human behavior and the global economy will both respond to supply pressures. As the price of gas rises, local production will be better equipped to compete with multi-national industrial producers (without us having to destroy the whole world to get rid of the large producers), helping decrease our reliance on gas in the short term. Increased use of mass transit and alternative transit like bicycling will also drive down the demand for gas and pressure the development of more such infrastructure. We see, empirically, that Western demand for oil is actually dropping even in the squo, so clearly continually growth in oil consumption is not inevitable in a world of capitalism. In the longer-term, renewable energy sources are become more efficient all the time, and electricity or biofuel powered vehicles will eventually be able to replace gasoline.
4. POPULATION GROWTH WILL RESPOND TO ECONOMIC PRESSURES: Further development in the less developed world will help control population growth. We see empirically the fertility rate is much lower in wealthier areas. As healthcare improves and economies stop being subsistence-based, large families are no longer an economic necessity, and the costs of providing childcare, healthcare, higher education, etc. help limit the size of families in developed economies, as does the availability of family planning services. Thus, population growth can be solved in the long term with more development, rather than dedevelopment that amounts to the murder of billions of people.
A2: Development K
YOUR K FAILS, AND THE PLAN IS GOOD:
1. The alternative of rejecting development necessitates legitimizing mass atrocities at the hands of local, indigenous groups: post-development authors reproduce colonial notions of community. post-development is steeped in the glorification of local, indigenous social movements such as the neo-Nazis or Ku Klux Klan as legitimate (even desirable) alternatives to development. Leads to violence and death.
2. Plan is key to maximize the positive forms of development that Escobar admits exist. His focus on discourse prevents the recognition of successful development strategies: In the attempt to avoid the pitfalls of relativism he is forced to acknowledge that development discourse is responsive to real needs on the part of the social majorities. A more positive form of development is available. The key to attaining it is to gain control of the development agenda in order - to maximise its benefits.
3. The alternative silences voices from important debates – their form of empowerment doesn’t spillover into macro-economic or political policies locking in status quo oppression: empowerment at the local level will be difficult to effect in the absence of coherent macro-economic and political policies. Post-development threatens to lock people out of debates that matter (on fiscal and trade policies, for example), preferring instead to extend the gaudy promise of a life free of contradctions at the local level.
4. Critiques of development do nothing to save lives, they have no alternative mechanism that cant be translated from theory to practice: Escobar’s net political effect turns out to be much the same. The kritik permits atrocities – preferring to wring their hands in an ivory tower.
DEVELOPMENT HAS WORKED:
1. The Post-development literature ignores development in a number of key areas:
a. East Asia – where is has proven effective: the assertion that “development does not work” ignores the rise of East Asia and the near doubling of life expectancy in much of the Third World’.
b. The entirety of Africa: post-development theory has had little to say about Africa, and that African scholars have had little to say about post-development theory. While it seems that the critique of development offered by post-development theory is excep- tionally relevant to Africa, there has been little attempt to relate the post-development perspective to the continent.
DEVELOPMENT GOOD:
1. Development is key to increase the efficiency of transportation and interaction between groups of people—solves otherization: allows individuals are to become truly global citizens who appreciate other cultures and cooperate across borders.
2. Development solves global poverty by encouraging developing nations to contribute to global trade: Developing countries will realize that, in order to enjoy the fruits of this emerging prosperity, they must cultivate the skills that this era requires. They can then exchange these skills on the world market for money and goods, thereby building their own base of wealth.
3. Development is key to scientific advancements—solves AIDS and disease: New discoveries in material science will also enhance the quality of products. Nanotechnology will enable the development of wholly new advanced materials that are more durable, resilient, and adaptable. Many people have already benefited from early innovations in materials science. We have to increase our ability to exchange ideas and build global communities to solve disease and advance our research.
A2: Environmental Managerialism
Perm: Do the plan and all non competitive parts of the alt
Perm: Do the plan as a pragmatic step towards the alt.
Perm: Do the plan and (whatever bullshitty things they make up that will suposedly solve the K)
FIRST NET BENEFIT TO THE PERM IS ECO-PRAGMATISM – INCORPORATION OF THE AFF IS KEY:
Turn: The Kritik prevents deliberation and all change, it polarizes rhetoric and transforms all discourse into irrelevant propaganda; pragmatism is necessary to enable compromise and the way we evaluate environmental discourses – solves the alt best: ideological commitments masquerading as methodological commitments have polarized discourse about environmental values, setting ethicists and economists on a rhetorical collision course. Continued emphasis on foundational issues by environmental ethicists simply exacerbates the ideological ferment and blocks reasonable deliberation about what to do.
Turn: The Kritik fails, its an infinitely regressive endorsement of non-action which denies the relationship and context between policy makers and average citizens: They cannot direct us to pragmatic solutions – they’re just an ideological commitment unconnected to empirical reality and our everday experiences with the environment.
Only the Permutation Solves: Deep Ecology, Eco Feminism and all Radical Critiques of the Environment are miserably ineffective, only Eco Pragmatism can unite these competing paradigms and create viable environmental policy: The challenge is to continue the progress and find better environmental solutions that both effect a change in the way we treat the environment and are practical enough to be adopted by our legal system. In taking up this challenge, it is imperative that loyalties to the goals of environmental protection include a willingness to modify, or even discard, radical environmental theories in an effort to secure far-reaching results.
ALT FAILS:
1. Human intrusion into the environment is key to prevent massive suffering and extinction – the alternative collapses civilization: Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life.
2. Even anti-managerialists would vote aff - your alt would be catastrophic: we have so disturbed the rhythms of the Earth that we can't even consider going back. To retreat to a pre-technological state would in fact be dooming the Earth to destruction, whereas what we need now is to be more engaged in trying to repair the damage. The only thing we can do is to move forward. We need to develop our efficiency and production methods so that we'll be able to take some of the pressure off the environment.
3. The alternative of rejecting managerialism always reverts back to the squo – makes the harms of case inevitable.
4. Alt delays action too long and causes extinction – immediate action like the plan is key – try or die for the aff:
MANAGERIALISM GOOD:
1. Managerialism is key to prevent extinction – simply letting nature ‘be’ cements the destructive status quo: There is a real and pressing need for more, and more accurate, technical and scientific information about the non-human world. The processes we have already set in train will continue to impact upon that world for centuries (like CO2 that stays in the atmosphere for years). If we simply preserve what remains we risk exacerbating the problems of the SQ – means the alt is way worse than the plan.
2. Mangagement is the only viable alternative to extinction – its too late to let nature ‘be’: A century ago, a hands-off policy was the best policy. Now it is not. Given nature’s current fragmented and stressed condition, neglect will result in an accelerating spiral of deterioration, which will make the harms inevitable.
3. The act of the 1ac is necessary to generate political will to spur real action – absent that ecological collapse is inevitable in the short-term: Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them. Political will to take environmental action is generated by knowing that unless we act, collapse is a strong possibility. The forecast of doom is itself a potent spur to action that will make the difference between survival and extinction. Aff solve the K.
PRAGMATISM GOOD:
1. Pragmatism in environmental law allows for the contextualization of contradictory criticisms and reverses the nihilistic and destructive trends of pure critical philosophy.
2. Pragmatism creates a pluralistic approach to the environment that evaluates issues through an interdisciplinary framework while still advocating policy action; it’s the only way to put the alternative into practice.
3. Environmental pragmatism is the best way to protect nature from humanity while allowing human progress decoupled from the natural world—their framework merely divides individuals necessary in the struggle for environmental protection
A2: Fem IR
ALT FAILS:
1. Female-centric IR is just as biased as the current one and the alternative fails: it would provide an equally biased account of international relations as those that are male-centric. Critiquing the social construction of gender is important, but it fails to provide new theories of international relations or to address the implications of gender for what happens in the world.
2. The alternative does not grant us access to special knowledge to solve oppression, It makes it impossible to solve oppression because other’s standpoints are ignored and marginalized: standpoint epistemologists tend to presuppose too narrow a view of privilege. Victims do not have exclusive access to truth about oppression. The positions of others even the victimizers -- yield perspectives of special knowledge that those who seek to end oppression must understand. To claim that women have special access to knowledge does not account for why all women do not share the same interpretations of situations.
YOUR K IS WRONG:
1. The label of feminism glosses over all other forms of oppression and isolating women as an identifiable category makes their degradation easier and inevitable: the label "feminist" has a tendency to assume a definition of "woman is fixed, exclusionary, homogenizing, and oppositional, a tendency that feminists have criticized in others. it obscures -- even denies -- important differences among women and among feminists, especially differences in race, class, and sexual orientation. Using woman as a category of analysis implies a rejection of these claims, for its suggests that members of the category share a set of common, essential characteristics that constitute a coherent identity. Ignoring difference means continued inequality and oppression based upon difference in maintaining the category of woman or its corresponding political label "feminist.
2. The claim that state sovereignty allows marginalization of women is false – without the state there would be no power to overcome gender oppression at all: You wrongly assume that state soverignity is the key reason for women’s exclusion from the attention of international law. This constructs patriarchy – and the nation-state – as a monolithic entity equally benefiting men at the expense of women. If there were no state, there would be no means for achieving equality.
3. Isolating feminist epistemological perspectives essentialize women’s experience and only reinforces other forms of oppression: in isolating gender as a source of oppression, feminist legal thinkers essentialize women’s experiences. Although the essentialist positions have strategic or rhetorical value these positions obscure the importance of differences among women and the fact that factors other than gender victimize women. A theory that purports to isolate gender as a basis for oppression reinforces other forms of oppression.
LINK DEFENSE:
1. Force them to explain a specific link - Their overly generic links obscures feminist analysis and contributes to oppression. The State and IR are not patriarchal – reformism is key: A framework that can characterize all state interventions as directly or indirectly patriarchal offers little practical guidance in challenging the conditions it condemns. The patriarchal model of single-minded instrumentalism seems highly implausible. feminists need more concrete and contextual accounts of state institutions than patriarchal frameworks have supplied. Lumping together all government institutions as agents of a unitary patriarchal structure does more to obscure than to advance analysis. the state is a primary source of both repression and assistance in the struggle for equality. These constituencies cannot be "for" or "against" state involvement in any categorical sense. The questions are always what forms of involvement, to what ends.
A2: Futurism
AFF SOLVES THE K:
The ethical practice of prediction and prevention builds communal ties and energizes a citizen base capable of pressuring for real solutions to extinction: the work of farsightedness practice a sense of responsibility for the future by attempting to prevent global catastrophes. the work of farsightedness derives its effectiveness and legitimacy from public debate and deliberation. Preventative foresight is commonplace because the of perils humankind faces – like nuclear war. individuals and groups from far-flung parts of the planet are being brought together into “risk communities” that transcend geographical borders. Early warning about global cataclysms can overcome flawed conceptions of the future’s essential inscrutability - opening public deliberation about the construction of an alternative world order.
Predictions are good – they are key to prevent catastrophic violence even if they are inaccurate: The future appears to be unknowable. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. The future becomes a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm.
THEIR K IS BAD:
The criticism’s focus on identity creates a politics of exclusion that prevents meaningful critiques and turns the very superior identification they try to solve: Legitimacy, in this context, can then be claimed in terms of one's group identity and the extent to which the history of that particular group has been "silenced.". Self-identification permits entry to intel¬lectual spaces whose sovereign authority is "policed" as much by marginal subjectivities as they allege of the oppressors who "police" the discourse of realism. In reality your argument is as selective, exclusionary, and dismissive of alternative perspectives as mainstream approaches are accused of being
ALT CAN’T SOLVE:
1. Edelman’s argument fails to provide a pragmatic solution for how the queer should go about embodying difference, this is a massive solvency deficit for the alternative: if the Real must exist for the Symbolic to function, then the abyss will remain whether homosexuals agree to inhabit it or not. Edelman acknowledges this but argues homosexuals will be compelled to do it. He provides few details as to how we might accomplish this task, and his insistence elsewhere that the powers-that-be will clamp down with unmitigated force to repress and disavow the encroaching Real renders such a strategy less than appealing.
2. Edelman effaces the difference between democracy and totalitarianism, casting democracy as a fascist, dominant system. This misconception anchors the call to action he argues as alternative and eliminates the chance for embracing the innovation that democracy provides: The democratic state, as opposed to the totalitarian, does not rule civil society but secures its possibility and flourishing; conversely, civil society is the nonpolitical realm from which emerge those initiatives that transform, moderately or radically, the political realm of laws and rights. The political realm itself is open to change and innovation. Innovation is a crucial concept for understanding the gay and lesbian movement, which emerged from within civil society as citizens who were stigmatized and often criminalized for their sexual lives created new forms of association. Thus the 1AC creates the conditions fo innovation to solve the root cause of the K.
TURNS:
1. Edelman prioritizes the aesthetic over the political, in doing so he blurs the lines between denouncement of the Child and destruction of the Child. This strengthens heteronormativity by associating queerness with pedophilia, depleting the ethical value of Edelman’s argument: There is a fine line between renouncing children and destroying children – and Edelman chooses texts which blur this line (most notably Hitchcock’s “The Birds”). Edelman figuratively equates queerness with the destruction of children. This is extremely unfortunate, given the popular equation of queerness and paedophilia – worse for queers.
2. Edelman’s failure to delineate between the democratic and totalitarian state is a fundamental misconception at the crux of his argument. In describing the democratic state as if it were totalitarian their argument limits out natality and to an extent, reproductivity as politically subversive instruments: he describes the democratic state as though it were a totalitarian state. It follows from that that all political participation reiterates the reproductive anathematizing- sacrificial logic of the whole mechanism. Human mortality is a condition of action, but since action is a capacity for beginnings, inauguration, newness, it also evinces “natality.” We mortals come into the world “newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth.” This natality makes politics a realm of innovation and fragility, means the aff is key to solve.
3. Divorcing the struggle against reproductive futurism from the political sphere makes a fatal mistake and in doing so nullifies the advancements of many queer activists. Edelman’s argument assumes that the idol of the Child is the foundational discourse from which the political is founded upon: The uncoupling of sexuality and reproduction is ubiquitous in American culture today as a result of multiple developments beyond the expansion of gay rights. all of these developments intensifies the targeting of gays by conservative ideology that is all the more reason to recognize that the deconstruction of the phobic figuration of the queer is a struggle to be pursued inside as well as outside politics. Means we must use politicts to solve the K.
A2 Give back the land
1. Tying land restoration to the identity of indigenous americans is essentialist: there are hundreds of groups of natives with distinct cultures. You create a trope of native culture with your monolithic portrayal.
a. You also attach identity to discrete territorial spaces, which repeats the very logic of the nation-state you kritik.
b. Your K also relies on a spacialized understanding of difference (‘here’ versus ‘there’) that incarcerates natives in the past, reinforcing colonial myths.
c. In addition, your discourse of monolithic native culture replicates colonialist images of romanticized and essentialist depictions of non-white, non-western cultures, which maintains the harms of domination and turns the K.
2. Essentialism destroys all liberation because it ghetto-izes the struggle and reduces populations to camp-captives: Your argument produces a homogenous culture and/or religion at its point of contac, which turns the internal link to your argument, because stereotypical portrayals will be front and center in a world of your reimagining.
And, permutation: do the plan and the alternative - We must assume a double-responsibility to criticize institutions while using sovereignty against itself via the affirmative.
The act of soverignty that encapsulates your harms is the manifestation of the existing state system that you say also caused your impacts. Thus, we should use state structures against themselves via the aff and give back the land.
And, combining the two perspectives solves better: Said says that ideas can be counterposed to allow us to gain new insights and the best mehod of resolving the kritik.
And alt can’t solve – Blaming colonialism for all problems can’t account for status quo violence caused by (whatever the aff solves for). Their history cannot account for all oppression and the plan is key to solve.
Next, object fiat is a voting issue: they fiat away the source of our harms; this means no affirmative could ever win and it justifies fiating iran not making nuclear weapons or israel not committing genocide against palestine. It’s a voter for competitive equity.
And turn – your alterantive assumes that land can be ‘owned’. Capitalism is the root cause. Your alternative is bad because it links ownership to freedom, which is inherently capitalistic and there’s no such thing as freedom in a capitalist epistemology.
Their methodology is flawed – all land is stolen and rightful owners do not exist: nothing is at zero motion. Transformation takes place all the time. All land in the world is stolen land. There is no impact to your argument, because everyone on Earth came from somewhere else and got their land jacked.
Turn – a world without the state would allow MNCs to pillage the world without any restrictions, increasing colonization. Empirically proven – look at failed states.
Realism is inevitable, which means the land will get stolen again by someone else because USFG vacating the land will cause a power vacuum and a transition war, which will kill the remaining natives, turning your alt.
A2: Heidegger
T/ REJECTING TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT DESTROYS ACCESS TO SURVIVAL AND ELIMINATES THE ABILITY TO MAKE OBJECTIVE CHOICES – No society can forego basic technical discoveries such as antibiotics, electricity, and none can withdraw from communication networks. Technical choices establish the horizons of daily life, these choices are specific alternatives of purpose, goals, uses and also define the subject who chooses them. So Technological change is self-referential.
T/ PERCEIVING OBJECTS THROUGH THE LENS OF TECHNOLOGY, WE REVEAL MORE THAN WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY – Thomas Kuhn said the scientists use technology and paradigms together to discover new pieces of nature. Look at the example of a microscope that allows us to look at new objects in nature. Technology actually reveals more objects to us and expands our sight into the world.
T/ THE ALT DOOMS US TO EXTINCTION, MUST BE WILLING TO PRIORITIZE AVOIDING DISASTER TO CONTEMPLATING BEING – Heideggarian notion of “letting things be” is too permissive and an individual’s decision not to act against preparations for a nuclear holocaust is to be an accomplice to the most horrendous crime against life imaginable – it’s annihilation. We must act now to prevent the unthinkable—only when that is achieved will ultimate violence be removed.
T/ PRIORITIZING ONTOLOGY IS A FORM OF TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT THAT FORCES THE OTHER TO CONFORM TO THE IDENTITY POSITED BY THE SUBJECT BY ENFRAMING THEIR BEING – For Heidegger ontology meant the study of humanity’s openness for the self-manifesting of things. If ontology always came first then ethical relations could never be possible because our relation to the other would always already be subordinated to being. This sort of thinking allows for perpetual violence to occur without our intervention. Heidegger’s thought locks us into paralysis while chaos reigns. In fact, he used his worldview to justify things like his Nazi-ism. Probably a reason the alt should be rejected.
T/ PRACTICAL REASON, TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT IS ONLY BAD BECAUSE OF A LACK OF THE RIGHT KIND OF RATIONALITY, HEIDEGGAR’S ALT IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE – the plan allows a reflection of ends that is able to counter the hegemony of instrumental reason. Heidegger’s theory of technology collapses because of its self-imposed limitations – problems with tech thought derive from a lack of reason in the modern world, not an excess. Modern life prematurely restricts thought and formal and instrumental reason has de-facto hegemony, practical reason and reflection on ends has been marginalized, THUS what is needed is an expansion of reason’s boundaries so that instrumental rationality is superceded by rational reflection ends, not “overcoming” reason.
EXISTENCE IS A PREREQUISITE TO ONTOLOGICAL QUESTIONING – Even the most radical postmodernist must observe the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. There is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world, thus a prerequisite of expression is existence. So the preservation of the world in all its diverse embodiments is a fundamental good regardless of its relationship.
ALT FAILS: HEIDEGGER’S APPROACH PREVENTS DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN WORLDLY EVENTS CRUSHING CHOICE AND PREVENTING ANY CHANGE – Heidegger’s argument is developed at such a high level of abstraction that he cannot discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agricultural techniques and the Holocaust. Rejection technical regression while leaving no modern alternative means that it is impossible to see how our relationship would change beyond mere attitude.
ALT FAILS: ONTOLOGY IS A SMOKESCREEN THAT HAS NO CONNECTION TO EMPIRICAL REALITY – EVALUATE POLITICAL ACTION FIRST – Ontology shrouds a total disconnect from empirical reality, it has an utter lack of relevance to the policy debates, the passage of actual laws, and the amendment of existing regulations that might actually do some good for someone. We must be pragmatists so that we can fix social ills, but only if we treat them as more important than Spirit and Utopia.
ALTERNATIVE FAILS: NATURE’S REVEALING TO US IS INTERSUBJECTIVE AND STILL REFLECTS OUR OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD – postmodernism’s understanding that whenever we reflect upon, talk about, or act in the world, we represent it to ourselves and others. And when we do that, we are not rendering an objective view of reality so much as constructing a certain understanding of the world. We are subscribing to a particular discourse or set of discourses about the "way things are," and this "way" shapes our experience.
ALT CANT SOLVE – TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT WILL NEVER BE ABANDONED AND EVEN IF IT WAS THE ALT WOULD JUST GET ROLLED BACK – Because of humanity’s pleasures, interests, passions, desires and motives it is scarcely conceivable that we would abandon the technology project. And even if by some change of heart humanity could adopt an altered relation to reality, how could it be enforced and allowed to yield its effects? Heideggerer’s suggestion that a saving remedy grows with the worst danger is useless, even the survivors of a global catastrophe caused by technological calculation would not want to block its reemergence.
ALT COLLAPSES INTO ESSENTIALISM: the philosophies of Heidegger promise a social vision that offers essentialist theories that fail to discriminate significantly different realizations of technical principles. Technology rigidifies into destiny in his thought and the prospects for reform are narrowed to adjustments on the boundaries of the technical sphere. He hopes that something can be preserved from the homogenizing effects of the radical extension of technical systems, but there is no hope of this.
NONE OF THEIR EVIDENCE SPEAKS TO THE TYPE OF TECHNOLOGY WE INSTITUTE. The exploration of ________ changes the destructive relationship with nature and stops more wide-scale forms of technological, calculative thinking.
PERM: DO PLAN AND REJECT ALL TECHNOLOGICAL THOUGHT NOT FOUND IN THE 1AC. Solves all of their offense because the alternative says you only need one rejection or rethinking to solve—and it makes them prove a specific link to the plan.
PERM SOLVES: TECH THOUGHT IS NOT MONOLITHIC – CAN BE COMBINED WITH THE PLAN - , Heidegger’s view of technology allows him to find a positive relation to it. Freeing us from having a total fixed identity so that we may experience ourselves as multiple identities disclosing multiple worlds is what Heidegger calls technology’s saving power. for Heidegger being gathered by and nurturing non- technological things makes possible being gathered by technological things. Thus, living in a plurality of local worlds is necessary if we are to give a positive place to technological devices.
Absence of an identity allows us to become sensitive to the various identities we have when we are engaged in disclosing the different worlds focused by different styles of things. the role of people as active world disclosers will only be preserved if it is at least possible for the gathering of these background skills to be experienced as such this experience will only be possible if one can shift back and forth between pre-technological identities with their style of coping and a technological style
PERM SOLVES: TECH THOUGHT CAN EXIST WITH THE PLAN, NO RESIDUAL LINK – “It would be foolish,"Heidegger insists, "to attack technology blindly, and shortsighted to condemn it as work of the devil. We all depend on technical devices - which even challenge us to ever greater advances." Yet, in the midst of technological enframing, another possibility is latent: that using technical devices without slavish attachment, that is, of living with technology in a free or released manner. In this fashion, Heidegger says, our relation to enframing becomes simple and relaxed: "We allow technical devices to enter our daily life, and at the same time we leave them outside, that is, we let them be as things exerting no absolute claim."
PERM SOLVES: TECH THOUGHT IS ONLY BAD WHEN IT HAS EXCLUSIVE REIGN OVER OUR EPISTOMOLOGY – PERM REMIDIES - Heidegger’s analysis of technology outlines two distinctive forms of thought: calculative and contemplative. Calculative thought is centered on measurement and is oriented toward manipulation and control, striving to attain certainty and security. contemplative thought seeks to question the meaning of things, particularly, the meaningful thinking of Being. Heidegger does not view calculative thought - central to modern science - as negative. ‘The problem occurs when calculative thought becomes exclusive’. Heidigger would vote for the perm.
THE ALTERNATIVE IS VAGUE; Heidegger’s theories are so incomprehensible that the nature of the alternative act is indiscernible. Our interp is that your alternative requires an agent and explicit action that can be endorsed with the ballot. What form of dwelling or ontological meditation they take up is never specified which kills specific MG offense.
A) This justifies Severance and Intrinsic permutations because the vague nature of the alt. allows them to shift.
B) They can also spike out of perms by re-characterizing their alternative. The alternative justifies a world where abstraction is taken to the point of meaningless which destroys specific research and education as well as creating a time and competitive skew that destroys ground. That’s a voting issue.
C) Sandbagging alternative solvency explanations until the block means they should lose because it’s after our last chance for offense and is akin to adding new portions onto the plan in the MG.
A2: Imperialism
LINK DEFENSE:
1. We’re not imperialist – their comparisons are dumb: We do not send out proconsuls to reside over client states, which in turn impose taxes on coerced subjects to pay for the legions. Instead, American bases are predicated on contractual obligations — costly to us and profitable to their hosts. Imperial powers order and subjects obey. But in our case, we offer the Turks strategic guarantees, political support — and money — for their allegiance. Isolationism, parochialism, and self-absorption are far stronger in the American character than desire for overseas adventurism. Our critics may slur us for "overreaching," but our elites in the military and government worry that they have to coax a reluctant populace, not constrain a blood-drunk rabble.
2. The US has no imperialist aims: America spends less of its GNP on defense than it did during the last five decades. And most of our military outlays go to training, salaries, and retirements — moneys that support, educate, and help people rather than simply stockpile weapons and hone killers. The eerie thing is not that we have 13 massive $5 billion carriers, but that we could easily produce and maintain 20 more. We’re more concerned with maintaining a stable world than conquering and building an empire.
YOUR K IS WONG, AND WE’RE GOOD:
1. Blaming imperialism for all oppression masks more violent forms of oppression: The issue here is not to see all US involvement as inherently negative, let alone to denounce all international standards of rights as imperialist. An anti-imperialism of disengagement serves only to reinforce the hold of authoritarian regimes and oppressive social practices (The Iranian Revolution, Ba‘thist Iraq, confessional militias in Lebanon, armed guerrilla groups in a range of countries, not to mention the Taliban in Afghanistan, often represent a much greater immediate threat to human rights)
2. No Impact - Western power and imperialism doesn’t foster violent interventions: Western leaders consistently shore up failed and failing authoritarian state structures, rather than supporting their break-ups. Even where these are dominated by regimes that are anti-Western as well as repressive, Western elites have generally been extremely reluctant to intervene In what sense, then, can contemporary Western power be said to represent an advance on historic empires.
3. Anti-imperialist strategies distort struggles for real global justice – resorting in massive violence in the periphery of your anti-western struggle: To take as the criterion of one's politics opposition to Western policy, rather than the demands for justice of the victims of oppression distorts our responses to the victims and our commitment to justice. We need to support the victims regardless of whether Western governments take up their cause or not; we need to judge Western power not according to a general assumption of 'new imperialism' but according to its actual role in relation to the victims.
4. Imperialism is critical to preventing wild-fire proliferation – status quo is comparatively less dangerous than world of alternative: If the US gave up on the imperial mission, this would mean the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the Middle East, Europe and mainland Asia. those who are hostile to us might remain hostile, and be much less afraid of the US after such a withdrawal. Current allies would feel less secure and would revert to the rapid acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. Major regional arms races would be very likely – lead to a power vacuum and pre-emptive warfare to securitize the globe.
5. A global power vacuum would result in economic collapse, global terrorism, multiple regional nuclear wars and causes more violent forms of imperialism globally as other states adjust to a world without US dominance: The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder. Limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, ending catastrophically in the Middle East. Lead to all out war – killing hundreds of thousands and causing the rise of authoritarian states that oppress people worse.
A2: Linguistic K’s
1. Language is inevitable:
a. The evidence for this is Nicaraguan Sign Language. When the Sandanistas (socialists) took over in 1979, they started a ton of new social programs including education. There was no educational programs for the deaf before the Sandanistas, because it was highly stigmatized, so as a result most deaf people were consistently isolated from society. The Sandanistas started deaf schools to try and educate deaf children using finger spelling, which went horribly, as most deaf children had no concept of a letter, let alone word order, or syntax. However, the students began to communicate with one another, adopting certain home signs as universals, this pidgin language developed into a fully fledged language by 1986 with complex vocabularies, abstraction symbols, and even verb agreement.
b. Basically, if you put a bunch of people together they will find a way to communicate. This example may seem anecdotal, however, considering how impossible it is to study a society with no language (because they don’t exist…hmmmm) this is the best example we have for whether or not language is inevitable.
2. Pretending Grammatical Structures don’t matter is stupid and racist:
a. There is a difference between the ungrammatical and the nongrammatical, you conflate the two. Nongrammatical is without grammar for example “Me up was for the you be.” This sentence has no meaning to anyone on earth. Ungrammatical is grammar that does not follow the rules of “mainstream” English. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have rules.
b. For example some people assume that AAVE (African American vernacular English) is some inferior form of Mainstream English. They don’t realize that deviations from the mainstream have their own rules. For example habitual “be.” In AAVE “you be trippin” is distinct from “you trippin” where the latter means that in this instance you are trippin’ and the former it means that you are in a constant state of trippin’.
c. To suggest that we privileged white people should do away with grammatical structure in order to open up communication with minorities suggests that they are not capable of following grammatical rules.
3. Often times the ungrammatical syntax of minority language fills in for the shortcomings of mainstream English:
a. We do not have a way to indicate a habitual state of being without adding more words to the sentence. Similarly our lack of a second person plural has led to the creation of southern y’all. Isletan English (a Native American English spoken in the southwest) has both double and single negation to indicate different things. There are plenty of other examples of minority languages actually gaining linguistic complexity, suggesting that instead of “deconstructing” language, maybe we should see some of our own shortcomings.
A2: Lacan
Lacanian politics breeds war and forecloses change: Lacan proposes that the primary element of social life is negativity, which prevents the development of a social whole. This rules out the possibility of achieving substantial improvements in any area on which this negativity bears. Lacanian political theory demands that we accept the lack and character of antagonism, which constitutes an ethical commitment to create conflict.
Lacanian theory is in a double-bind: if all attempts at interpretation are haunted by lack, then either Lacanian theory is too, which means it’s wrong about the nature of the subject, or it isn’t, which means your ktirik is the kind of structural theory that Lacanians attack and your alt will fail.
Psychoanalysis is a gigantic biopolitical machine that grinds up the unconscious and violently imposes reductive models upon the individual psyche: the entire psychoanalytical machine exists to suppress the conditions of real expression. Whatever one says is taken into an interpretive machine. This interpretation machine can be described in the following way: whatever you say, you mean something different. Stripping individuals of determining their own meaning making and agency in defining their own ideas and existence.
Psychoanalysis wrongly assumes that the observer can objectively analyze a subject creating hidden forms of psychic domination and taint alternative solvency.
The alternative creates a colonialism of the psyche and silences the voices of the subject by psychoanalytically attempting to remove the ‘primative’ aspects of the psyche: the very possibility of achieving subjectivity is predicated on a repudiation of the maternal, primitive, elements of the psyche. from this perspective it seems that there is no possibility of speaking if one tries to escape the repudiation of the primitive/maternal one refuses the possibility of speaking, of being heard, of becoming a subject at all.
Psychoanalysis fails to generate real, substantiative change and only results in poitical quietism and passivity locking in status quo violence: psychoanalysis offers an alibi for passivity and makes us all prisoners by championing political defeatism. In this scenario, the idea that people might come together and act together as rational beings is impossible. This is a prescription for a politics of quietism, fatalism and defeat that ensures totalitarianism and violence.
The alternatives causes a spiral of insecurity that causes the most violent aspects of your impact claims – only taking strategic political action in the short term like the plan solves
Lacanian theory is founded on essentialism – accepting lack and antagonism necessarily relies on essentialist notions of the subject’s constitution and the parameters of the political: The fixed structure of Lacanian theory is strongly operative in resultant arguments. This allows a smoothly-flowing rhetoric within which they can subsume contemporary events and specific subjects of analysis. However, beneath this rhetoric, the essentialist basic structure and the myth of "constitutive lack" call the shots – leaving no room for subjectivity.
It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to base an emancipatory project on Lacanian theory because of its essentialism of lack: Because they treat it on an ontological level Lacanians tend to reify the concept of lack into a metaphysical entity which exerts a positive force in the world. This means you take a contradictory position, offering precisely the kind of complete theory-without-remainder they declare to be impossible by reinscribing the remainder as a positive element given the name of negativity – means the alt is doomed to fail if your worldview is correct.
Radical Lacanian political theory can never transform itself into political action because its insistence in an irreducible Real haunting social relations means nothing can change the basic composition of the status quo: As long as they are engaged in politically ineffectual critique, Lacanians will denounce and criticize the social system, but once it comes to practical problems, the "order not to think" becomes operative, which just gives an alibi to commit violence and mass murder.
Their theory of lack is quite literally a myth – Lacanian theory elevates lack to a pre-ontological state, which is socially repressive and makes change impossible: The lack is a supposed fact which is supposed to operate above and beyond explanation, on an ontological level making it received rather than concluded or read. Myths have a repressive social function, carrying an 'order not to think'. Lacanian theory involves a prior idea of a structural matrix which is not open to change in the light of the instances to which it is applied which makes change impossible and is a totalitarian order not to have agency.
Your alternative is a-political – appropriating Lacanian theory for political philosophy is problematic because Lacanian theory assumes pre-given ontological truths about the political and then bends specific instances to meet theoretical models: since Lacan’s work deals with politics only very occasionally, the entire project of using Lacan politically is dangerous. Political discourse and events are subsumed into a prior theoretical framework in a manner more reminiscent of an attempt to confirm already-accepted assumptions than of an attempt to assess the theory itself. Means individuals are already doomed to pre-prescribed solutions that do not affirm independent thought or agency.
A2: Marx
Cap inevitable:
1. cap is the only economic we’ve had –every attempt to move away has been bloody and unproductive.
2. Invitable because our brain makes calculating cost/benefit inevitable, since that’s the only way we can make rational determinations as to what actions to take – makes value systems inevitable.
Impact turns - War
T/ CAPITALISM DECREASES PROPENSITY FOR WAR BY DIVERSIFYING MARKETS – Incentive the open exchange of different resources and product mixed economies that rely on multiple resources interdependence. This prevents surplus accumulation in favor of mutual bargaining – no one resource is paramount.
T/ INCREASES AGGREGATE WEALTH OF SOCIETY PREVENTS FACTIONING AND UNREST – Conflict does not manifest when people basic needs are met and they have outlets for expression and labor. Market specialization increases productive efficiency and reduces the costs of production, this works to increase the wealth of a society almost like an invisible hand.
T/ CAP RESOLVES INTERNAL WEALTH DISPARITIES WHICH CAUSE CONFLICT – Historically class conflict has emerged when one section of society accrues the large majority of resources spurring revolt, the entrance of capitalism shows that it contributes to the construction of the “MIDDLE CLASS” which mediates class interests and prevents cyclical revolution.
Impact turns – V2L
T/ CAPITALISM MAXIMIZES AUTONOMY – allows free choice in nearly all endeavors and rewards intellectual labor of all varieties. Self realization is only permissible in a world of capital that places a premium on individual choices
T/ CAPITALISM IS THE ULTIMATE FREEDOM – Grounding value in the unit of the individual is the only way to establish value. In a system of controlled economics your worth is only calculated in terms of your worth to the collective society
T/ ACCEPTING THE IDEA THAT LIFE CAN HAVE NO VALUE IS THE ONLY WAY IT’S POSSIBLE – their accepting the idea that life can reach an ontological zero-point, this is an independent reason for voting because their harms are only possible in a world of the opposition.
Impact turns – environment
T/ CAPITALISM PROMOTES DEMOCRATIC ENVIRONMENTALISM – Democratic societies are more environmentally conscious because they are accountable to their citizens who are implicated by environmental degradation.
T/ CENTRALIZATION OF RESOURCES BREEDS INEFFICIENCY AND EMPIRICS PROVE THAT IT’S NOT ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS – The former Soviet Union prioritized competition and expansion over environmental consciousness and poisoned millions in order to display high agricultural outputs, industrial modes of production in these societies were also the most unsafe and polluting the world has ever seen.
T/ INNOVATION: Capitalism drives innovation by providing incentives to meet rising demand through new developments and innovate ideas to adapt to new market conditions through scientific discovery or economic models.
Perms:
PERM: DO THE PLAN AND DO THE ALTERNATIVE IN EVERY OTHER INSTANCE – Solves all of their offense because the alternative says you only need one rejection or rethinking to solve—and it makes them prove a specific link to the plan – it’s legitimate because it proves that the K is not intrinsic to the aff action and thus not a reason to reject, intrinsic perms are justified if the alt artificially competes.
PERM: DO THE PLAN WHILE ENDORSING THE CRITICISM – allows us to realize what’s wrong with the system while still operating within it.
PERM: DO PLAN AND ALL NON COMPETITIVE PARTS OF THE ALTERNATIVE – a) It solves because their alt only says that we have to _____, meaning that the plan would not interfere with its solvency, b) the plan is a net-benefit and solves better; by tempering ideological reflection with government policy we can best advance multiple social perspectives (include reps of the aff that are beneficial)
Net Benefit to Perm (generic):
1. Working within the system is key because it allows infiltration and co-optation of elite knowledge. States can understand, target, and undermine outright resistance. Subversive methods that work within the system prevent this, which means the permutation solves best.
Perm NB – multiplicity. We can combine new types of ideologies to create the best solutions, because it will check against any blind spots in one ideology. Also solves why the plan is a bad epistomology, because we combine an ideology that criticizes the plan with the plan itself. Leads to better policy analysis in the future.
Alt things:
Turn: Binaries
a. You create a totalizing ideaology with no ability to compromise or negotiate with other people, which means you link to your own intellectual hegemony arguments. This justifies exclusion and otherization of those with different ideologies, which replicates your impacts.
Turn: Ethics
a. We have an ethical obligation to solve the impacts of case in order to save lives. This neg stands by and allows death to happen. This means they don’t believe these lives are worth saving, which is what creates devaluation of lives in the first place. We have to make decisions in the face of unresolvable situations in order to stop genocidal impulses.
No Solvency: discursive acts of rejection don’t create real world change because they are isolated to the world of acedemia. This gets ignored by politicians and real policy makers because of its lack of practical application. And it cannot be adopted by the general population because the vast majority of people don’t have access to educational resources necessary to understand your ivory tower author especially since we’re solving for oppressed populations. That’s the reason Marxism has never taken off, because elites tried to push it onto the proletariat.
Link things:
Link Turn – operating within the system is the only way to expose problems/solve them, because it provides a frame of reference to understand whatever you kritik. Means the plan is a pre-req to understanding/doing the alt.
Link Turn – We have to use the system to change the system. Our aff is a theoretical K of the SQ
a. individual activism – if individuals are against capitalism then our plan gives creedence to their protests, means that we spotlight the reason why their advocacy is correct. This means the permutation is the best means of solvency within the round.
Link turn - our plan is a new way to relate to the SQ so it changes whatever you say is bad – allows new types of thought – solves the SQ in a way the alternative cannot because we stop people from being killed in the meantime while denouncing US imperialism. Plan literally takes away the capital that we give them for war and denounces the use of soldiers for hire – the monetary incentive for war.
A2: Nietzche
Overview:
THE CLAIM THAT SUFFERING IS INEVITABLE AND THAT INTERVENTION TO SUFFERING IS LIFE-NEGATING IS NOTHING MORE THAN A THINLY-VEILED COVER FOR MASS RAPE AND GENOCIDE – ACCEPTING THEIR ARGUMENT NECESSITATES AN UNCONDITIONAL ACCEPTANCE OF BRUTAL ATROCITIES IN ALL THEIR FORMS.
NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY NOT ONLY JUSTIFIES ATROCITIES, BUT PRAISES THOSE WHO COMMIT THEM SIMPLY FOR THEIR CAPACITY TO DO SO. THE ALTERNATIVE PERMITS GENOCIDE IN THE NAME OF POWER.
DEMOCRATIC POLITICS SOLVES THE IMPACT—THE AGONISM OF STRUGGLE OF POLITICS ALLOWS US TO TEST EXISTENTIAL RESENTMENT VERSUS THE DEMAND FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE, AND TO CONTEST THE NORMALIZATION OF IDENTITIES.
EXTINCTION OUTWEIGHS: RADICAL OVERCOMING OF THE HUMAN (AS UBERMENSCH) IS PRECLUDED BY THE POSSIBILITY OF ANNIHILATION—preservation must be combined with going beyond, with the emergence of the late-modern possibility of self-extinction this new world has a different responsibility; the failure to “preserve humanity” would also extinguish the human basis for the struggle Nietzsche named “overman” which is key to any meaningfully existence – it’s the struggled for determining meaning that actually establishes value.
VALUE TO LIVE IS INEVITABLE: Humans will inevitably will meaning to their own lives the only thing that deprives them of that is death which only the affirmative avoids. Declaring that all life doesn’t have value is just as managing over life as the affirmative. Even Nietzsche agrees that judgements about the value of life are never true. Only the plan give the most people a chance to decide their won value to life – we are a prerequisite
ALT FAILS: Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrance implies that everything that happens has already happened an infinite number of times and will happen again, in the same way, an infinite number of times. Therefore excludes the possibility of a radical beginning and is empirically denied. As long as we win one reason life has improved or how we can prevent one form of suffering with the plan, we win the alt does nothing but permit atrocities.
PLAN SOLVES THE ALT: The plan, despite its risk of failure, is infinitely more courageous and life-affirming than the alternative’s defeatism. s
1. Life is sweet. We should have faith that life is an affirmation worthy process that we should do. There are things that are intrinsically rewarding to life. Our PMC claim is that when we endorse the notion that suffering is inevitable and that we should essentially do nothing, we doom ourselves to more suffering. We need to embrace a conception of hope that says that even if suffering is inevitable, we can actually do something that can create less suffering.
2. They do not have a conceivable reason to not vote for the affirmative. Make them prove that voting affirmative is a bad thing. Our claim is the affirmative ballot will create the political and social change that will allow for the temporary joy that will not “doom” the lives of all oppressed people.
3. Permutation – Vote Aff and embrace the conception that absurdity and suffering are inevitable. This solves all of the offense, because we can still be compelled to make judgements even in a world without objectivity, furthermore, there's no impact they can leverage in a world of meaningless life because it would contradict their argument.
4. Permutation – Do [something]. The celebration of life is hollow if it doesn’t include attempts to CHANGE the world – means that the incorporation of plan is key to solve the impacts of the K. We can seek what is wrong in the world and grasp it in a way that offers us the possiblity of change. The struggle against injustice doesn’t reduce life to comiseration, it’s the only way to enable effective challenges to oppression. What suffering exists in the world can then be seen as a gateway to a life-affirming camradarie against common forms of oppression. Solves the impacts of your K best.
A2: Nietzche (MOAR!)
-- Doesn’t solve the case – impact is short-term extinction – and, it turns their impact – domination and violence creates rigid boundaries and undermines individual joy and pride – shatters the ability to affirm life.
-- No link: the justifications for doing the Aff are informed by compassion, not pity – none of their arguments apply to Schopenhauer’s distinction:
A) Both pitying and compassionate agents are distressed by the suffering of others, but compassionate agents show concern for the way suffering persons endure their suffering. Compassion focuses on and is attentive to suffering persons while pity tends to focus just on the suffered condition.
B) Pity’s focus just on the suffered condition allows a gap of distance, of separation, of otherness to develop between pitying agents and the pitied and can lead to feelings of superiority. Compassion, by contrast, is based on awareness of our common humanity and able to bridge the damaging gap of separation and otherness. Compassionate agents can act selflessly and solely for sufferers precisely because they see in sufferers someone like themselves. In the eyes of compassionate agents there is no gap of distance, there’s no risk of their impact.
-- “Value to life” impact is trash –
A) Always exists – many things make living valuable – people can enjoy life even if slaves, Holocaust survivors found something to live for
B) “Denying” value isn’t the same as no value – incremental reduction isn’t total
C) Existence is a pre-requisite – have to be alive to value it – so the case impact of extinction turns this
-- Not all suffering is the same. Some degree of pain is good – but some degrees are not. It’s not inevitable and some forms can be prevented which is good.
-- PERM – ENDORSE THE PLAN AND NON-EXCLUSIVE PARTS OF THE ALT –
a) It informs how we value impacts – but still accomplishes the aff advantages
b) This solves all of the offense, because we can still be compelled to make judgments even in a world without objectivity.
c) There's no impact they can leverage in a world of meaningless life because it would contradict their argument.
PERM – DO THE ALT – ANY THEORY OBJECTION LINKS TO THE K
ATROCITIES DA: Abandoning humanist ethics causes replication of the Holocaust.
a) The claim that suffering is inevitable and that intervention to suffering is life-negating is nothing more than a thinly-veiled cover for mass rape and genocide – accepting their argument necessitates an unconditional acceptance of brutal atrocities in all their forms.
b) Nietzsche’s philosophy not only justifies atrocities, but praises those who commit them simply for their capacity to do so. The alternative permits genocide in the name of power; might-makes-right
c) This impact eclipses the K, compassion is life-affirming – its an extension of human will, an enables agency. The only truth they find are the horrors of concentration camps. Living life ethically is a condition made possible by others and relationships we forge give us value—it’s inevitable that we’ll try to save others.
--They’ll say they’re not the bad parts of nihilism/Nietzsche, but that won’t work:
a) NIETZSCHE’S ENTIRE PHILOSOPHY IS REACTIONARY AND OPPRESSIVE—they can’t just pick and choose fragments that appear benign
b) HISTORICAL APPROPRIATIONS ARE NEVER PURELY ACCIDENTAL—The seeds of Auschwitz are latent in Nietzsche’s texts, which proves all of our arguments as to how to ontology of Nietzsche is actually employed and the violence it manifests.
--The alternative is elitist garbage – it’s easy to be nihilist when you’re not one of the oppressed. This type of life and ontology that the negative speaks of is from a privilege position that precludes knowledge of the oppressed.
--DISENGAGEMENT DA – reducing suffering doesn’t consume all existence – it can be balanced and is an extension of life and human will – only the alt enables complete self-denial
a) Pity is in part a function of our attention. To what we attend is a function of our will. Our sentiments very largely determine to what we attend.
b) Consequently, it is only where people have disengaged themselves from pursuit of personal projects, like appreciating and producing art or caring for loved ones that there can be scope for a degree of pity of the sort that alone can give rise to denial of will.
--DEMOCRATIC POLITICS SOLVES THE IMPACT—The agonism of struggle of politics allows us to test existential resentment versus the demand for social justice, and to contest the normalization of identities. The struggle for the future, to survive and exist enriches life with value. You can’t beat the MAY CARD, Whitman knows this.
A2: Orientalism (Said)
WE AREN’T ORIENTALIST – JUST THE FACTS, BRO:
1. Our analysis is based on empirical reality – not prejudice: news stories and facts about [whatever problem the aff solves] do not originate in malevolent prejudice or issue in gross distortion; rather they are drawn from carefully observed reality. A great variety of writers see the same things over and over again, not because of the Orientalists' engrained turn of mind, but because those things are true. Especially in a world where we can get news from all over the world and read all sides and perspectives.
YOUR K IS BAD, AND YOU ARE WRONG:
1. Continuing accusations of orientalism suffocates academic research and allows the most violent forms of orientalist violence to manifest themselves: The argument that the Occident primarily defined itself in opposition to the Orient is oversimplifying and essentialist (confining the West to occidental identity). Western identity is overwhelmingly defined by historical references rather than geographical comparisons. Any stereotypes were never shaped into unchangeable discourse on the Middle East. In reality, academics often took the lead in undermining prejudices. Disqualifying all researchers who come outside the examined group would put an end to all serious academic research, means we could never achieve cultural understanding in a world of the alt – makes your impacts inevitable.
2. Orientalism is inevitable and if it’s not, Said is Orientalist: The West merely does what all cultures must do - examine other cultures through the concepts and frameworks it already holds. the West is no different from other cultures, including Islamic culture, which also has a distorted perspective of the "other.". Said insisting that the West must do “better” is what implies a western supremacy.
3. There is no connection between orientalist discourse and actual violence – their arguments mistake causation and correlation: A troubling problem for historians reading Orientalism is Said's dubious epistemological relationship to matters of cause and effect. Efforts to illuminate these connections are not successful. Said himself admitted: "It is difficult to connect these different realms, to show the involvements of culture with expanding empire”. Means your author says you’re wrong.
4. Orientalist critiques make it impossible for either the West or the East to fully understand one another – replicating the same violence: Other critics deny that anyone from the West has any right at all to address any subject having to do with the East. This Kafkaesque view condemns whole hemispheres of people to guilt, and is no better than the views of Europe’s imperial Orientalists at their worst.
5. Orientalist criticism stifles discussion and research pertaining to the Middle East – if the standard is academic environment, their alternative is much worse: the word "Orientalist" is creating an almost McCarthyist atmosphere in the American academy that chokes debates and arguments. it's not possible to say anything other than sugary nonsense, which makes scholars fearful to present their research or even research at all. Kills cultural understanding and forecloses the possibility of multilateral solutions.
ALT FAILS:
1. The alternative leads crushes political dialogue, destroying and semblance of understanding the East in any productive fashion – The alt leads to comparatively more suffering: what has taken the place of stereotyping and demonization? Unfortunately, it has not been an understanding of the relationship between the West and the world it is, rather, a denial of any relationship at all.
2. Orientalist critiques obscurity prevents infusion into the public sphere – its all unread academia: Later authors have pursued the matter as academics, writing in thick postmodern jargon and producing works that sit unread on research library shelves. The result is a project that appears increasingly ossified. (Said attempted to add more nuance to the thesis in his 1993 work Culture & Imperialism, arguing that a simple, binary East vs. West approach to such complex issues is after all a reworking of the "us vs. them" imperial worldview. Nobody paid much attention to him)
A2: Securitization
Securitization of threats is good—it allows us to anticipate and prevent danger: paranoid potential can be a useful resource, as opposed to a dangerous naivety that would prevent us from becoming aware of the situations of activation of aggression in the group, or regression to primitive levels of functioning. Where we can be aware of, and apprehend risk and danger, there is the possibility of preparation for the group to face and cope with danger.
Confronting threats early prevents escalation—WWII proves: In history, the effort to balance power quite often tended to start too late to protect the security of some of the individual states. , the resulting amount of force necessary to stop an aggressor is much larger than if the process had been started earlier the fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland showed how non-intervention or waiting for the “automatic” working through of the process turned out to be problematic.
The security dilemma doesn’t apply to situations where states pose genuine threats: If aggressors do in fact exist, then it is no longer a security dilemma but rather an example of a state or a coalition mobilizing for the purpose of expansion and the targets of that aggression responding to defend themselves. Uncertainty about the aims of others is inherent in structural anarchy. If a state clearly reveals itself as an expansionist, however, the alliance that forms against it is not self defeating as in the security dilemma. It is only the misplaced fear that others harbor aggressive designs that drive the security dilemma.
Wars are caused by deliberate threats, not spiraling insecurities. You get the causality wrong: War is almost always intended by someone. Throughout history it has been decided upon in cold blood not for reasons of self-preservation but for greedy expansion at the expense of others’ security, prestige, and power.
War preparation /Securitization deters aggression, the kritik prevents these efforts: War-preparation by those actually willing to fight averts war by dissuading others' hopes of easy victories. Whereas wishing for peace, marching for peace, etc., is as relevant as wishing and marching for good weather -- except it interferes with concrete war-preparations, causing deterence to vanish.
Security is a prerequistite to meaningful individual liberty: Security and freedom from fear are among the most elemental of human needs and they must be acquired before social or moral needs may be actualized. An individual cannot begin to concern themself with higher social and moral needs until their very basic material needs of life are met. The lack of one of life's most basic necessities -- security – prevents people from experiencing substantive freedom.
You’re in a double bind: either
1) The reason the judge votes negative is because our politics causes extinction and you link to yourself by justifying a certain action based on the securitization of populations meaning you vote aff on presumption
OR
2) Your impact is simply that people’s lives get devalued in which case we o/w on timeframe because you haven’t denied the truth value claim of our impacts
Critiquing existing security structures isn’t enough – political action is necessary and the perm solves: Thinking about thinking is important, but, more urgently, so is thinking about doing…. Abstract ideas about emancipation will not suffice: it is important for Critical Security Studies to engage with the real by suggesting policies, agents, and sites of change providing a critique of existing approaches to security is only one step that will not solve the impacts.
*K AFF EXTENTIONS/ANSWERS*
TRANSHUMANISM
A2 Perms
No permutation – all the residual link arguments are reasons the perm is not net benefiai
The alternative has already created a rhizomatic relation with the 1AC, so there’s no reason to prefer a world of the 1AC alone. This means there’s no posisble net benefit to the perm and the permutation doesn’t prove non-competitiveness.
Also, the permutation will get subsumed by the hierarchies of the 1AC – we’re winning that royal sciences will say anything that doesn’t align with it shouldn’t exist, which means the permutation will eliminate the alternative with any combination of the two.
Tranny solves 100% of the disads to the alternative. We can accommodate these considerations in a world of the alternative.
A2 Reading on laptops
Violently separating us from our ontological connection to our prostetic is epistemically wrong. You would never ask us to cut off our arms and leave them in the prep room because it gives us the advantage of writing down arguments in the debate space. This is exactly the same and demonstrates their lack of understanding of our argument and unwillingness to embrace a transhumanist epistemology.
This means they cann’t hope to engage our epistemic approach. This is another link into our argument and a reason they should lose this round. The residual link is a reason not to prefer the permutation, because they still conceive of us as separate entitites from the technology in front of us. This humanist approach is exactly what we are kritiking.
A2 Kritiks - Perms
Perm: We are borg. We can assimilate the kritik into a transhumanist ontology. We recognize that no epistemology is perfect that is why the transhumanist perspective says we can incorporate the best of all ideologies into our transition: New political principles arise from shifts in our understanding of epistemology. The mainstream understanding of epistemology is we know what we know through our senses. Cyborg existence can incorporate multiple epistomological perspectives that doesn’t rely on our sensory experiences alone.
Perm: [read all of the alt that isn’t vote neg or reject the aff] as a prosthesis of the plan: The alt can act as a prosthetic to the plan, incorporating all of its usefulness into a grander transition away from humanism. And the perm solves the K better than the alt alone, a fully automated system allows us to engage in new epistemologies in a way that is impossible to when you have to worry about basic needs like food and shelter. This allows your movement to expand past the ivory tower.
Transhumanism v. Biopower
Dude, you reached for the wrong generic K. The whole point of transhumanism is an affirmation of individual autonomy and recreating notions of subjectivity. Extend from the shell how we break down subjectivity, which is tied into notions of invention. If our inventions become a part of us, we no longer consider our inventions as our subjects, thus inventions of ‘other’ that are necessary for the persistence of biopower become deconstructed in a world of the 1AC – we solve better.
And, Foucault himself believes that humanism is at its end and that moving away from the modern epistemology should be the ultimate goal. He argues that static notions of subjectivity must be done away with in favor of dispersive agency that is only possible will a world that has transitioned beyond humanism.
So, transhumanism can solve back for biopower. Furthermore, the action taken by the 1AC, or its incorporation into the perm offers the a better way to take down biopower than sitting here intellectually masturbating
Transhumanism v. D&G
Aff solves the K: Prepare to be assimilated. Transhumanism is the ultimate acceptance of becoming and rhizomatic existence. It allows us to live in the place in-between, in lines of flight rather than in nodes. As Stelarc shows with such curious beauty, exoskeletons are the reimagining of the puppet strings that disintegrate our static notions of agency.
Transhumanism v. Heidegger
LINK ARGS:
No Link: Enframing only occurs when technology is concealed from us. Heidegger’s inability to distinguish between types of technologies means he does not allows the inscription of meaning through the machine– the 1AC solves this by stepping outside the humanist perspective to reveal technology’s potential to us.
Link Turn: Information machines are not subject to the cultural logic of enframing, and adding new dimensions to technology inhibits the possibility of enframing – turning the link. As technologies become more complex (like the Internet) dimension has been overlaid upon dimension, progressing to the point where configurations of space/time, body/mind, subject/object – patterns that are essential components of enframing – are each reconstituted in new, unrepresentable forms. Cyberspace reterritorializes pre-existing geographies, opening new social and cultural worlds that escape Heidegger’s dilemma.
The Aff renders Heidegger’s conceptions of technology and humanity obsolete – your links have no explanitory power in the context of our affirmative: a technological culture that bridges the human and the machine renders obsolete not so much the body but the culture of instrumental technology. This represents a fundamental reconfiguration of the relation of human to nature, which would have to formulate its projects along lines not envisioned by earlier social theory.
ALT ARGS:
Permutation solves 100% of the K better than Heidegger’s alt by turning away from the humanist perspective and allowing machines to inscribe their own meaning: The other way around the problem of the essence of technology is through the specificity of the machinic. The machine itself inscribes meaning, but it does so within its own register, not as a human subject would. The realm of the mechinic incorporates intersections of widely diverse domains, constituting an assemblage of enunciation in that ‘the machine speaks to the machine before speaking to man’
Heidegger would vote for the permutation to shift our conceptualization of technology – your alt fails. Only the 1AC establishes a different relationship to technology to solve the problem of enframing: Heidegger calls this culture of technology ‘enframing’. If humankind can recognize the process of enframing, then it may establish a different relation to itself and to technology, one that is free in the sense that it recognizes and accepts its own cultural form, its own being. Heidegger’s solution is not to abandon technology but to offer a spiritual shift in which technology would become entirely different from what it is.
Transhumanism v. Marx
Marxism has nothing to offer the transhumanist movement. It is literally the only system that is dialectically opposed to the individualism that is the offer of the 1AC. Communist, command economies result in totalitarianism, which kills participatory evolution towards the post-human or turns everyone into worker robots with no agency.
Marxism kills our individual technological evolution. Top down, command economies kill the liberation of our agency that comes from transhumanism because evolution is no longer on our terms, but rather the states’: Decisions about evolution should be made at the grassroots, just as political and economic decisions should be, especially now that we have begun to recognize the political evolution of cyborgs.
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**MO SECTION**
*CP THEORY*
Conditionally Good
Offense:
1. Ground – The option to advocate a permutation is offense that the Aff can use, creating more offensive ground for them.
2. Education
a. Breadth – The plan is the focus of the debate and the Neg should be able to attack the plan from multiple vantage points, that is the Squo and the C/P
b. Depth – We allow for depth by promoting crystallization. Rather than talking about everything, we can get rid of dead arguments to get to more developed ones.
c. It’s most educational to force each team to scan the available policy options, select one and then debate it to the max, because that involves critical and strategic thinking.
3. Aff ground – better for aff ground because it puts the aff in control. They can straight turn the counter plan, which forces it on us.
4. Forces strategic thinking by making the aff choose their best arguments instead of just throwing them all at a wall. The neg also has to respond with strategic thinking to see if it’s worth it to kick the CP. This kind of hard debate is the best and most educational type of debate because it makes you use your brain rather than going through the motions.
5. Dispo/Condo key to neg flexibility – Our only burden is to disprove their plan. Being able to test it at multiple levels is essential to neg strat and ground, which outweighs their predictability voters because neg flexibility is key to balancing an aff bias: they get to set the initial framework of the debate, how to interpret the res, and the structural advantage of the first and last speech in the round.
6. Rational decision making – The status quo should always be a viable option. The judge cannot vote Aff if the plan is worse, which means only under conditionality can the judge make a rational decision.
Defense:
1. All arguments are conditional, meaning that a time tradeoff in the block is inevitable. We should be able to kick counter plans just like T or a DA.
2. Perms check abuse. They are a worse time skew for us, because you only have to say a sentence and we have to treat like you could spend five minutes talking about it in the PMR. Also perms are inherently conditional, so it’s reciprocal.
3. Real world – Policy makers change their minds all the time if they see an option is not as good.
4. No reason to reject – there’s no in round abuse. The worst you should do is drop the counter plan because you can’t vote on potential abuse.
5. Debating the Squo isn’t an additional burden, that’s what the PMC was for. You already should have seven minutes of offense against it. This takes out your strategy skew and ground arguments.
Consult Good
1. Counter-interpretation: only allow consultation with countries that the US has a formal consultation framework with. This solves all their offense because there are only 5 possible actors. I’ve searched the internet high and low and only been able to find 2: Japan and NATO.
Offense:
1. Best policy option – If multilateral action is good, then consulting is the best policy option. We should always be looking for the best policies in debate rounds because it’s the most educational.
2. Education – forces the MG to make strategic decisions and increases discussion of domestic and international issues because of the net benefits. Hard debate is educational debate.
3. Should implies that the plan ought to happen immediately. We test the resolution by proving that we ought to consult first. You need to defend everything in your plan.
Defense:
1. Predictability – consult is a well known strategy and the actor we use is predictable in this round. There’s no way we skew you out of this round.
2. Not infinitely regressive – you only need to defend the consultation of one country, and it’s got to be one that would care about the implementation of plan.
3. Real world – Governments consult each other all the time. We need to consider this like real governments do.
4. Net Benefits check abuse – we still have to provide a reason our CP is better than the plan, so it’s not infinitely regressive.
Multi-Actor Fiat Good
(Most of this is specific to the delegation couterplan)
1. Reciprocal – the affirmative implicitly fiats all three branches in order to prevent court challenges, future presidential changes, and most importantly, agencies have to implement the plan
2. Predictable – our Epstein and O’Hallaron evidence proves this a predictable bright-line of how policies are created – this is not the same as fiating 5 countries don’t go to war AND congress delegates with a high frequency
3. Education – our Kerwin evidence indicates debate over delegated rulemaking is central to all political change and discussion – only multi-actor fiat accesses this debate
4. Mandates – the counterplan only has one actor issue a substantive mandate for the plan – Congress is only involved for enforcement issues
5. Side Balance – virtually all counterplans involve some level of multi-actor fiat – you can’t have enforcement without it – the negative counterplan option forms an essential part of adequate side balance
6. No Ground Loss – the affirmative doesn’t lose any arguments against delegated rulemaking and links are only supercharged by the involvement of additional actors
7. Fiat is a normative tool – its just as unrealistic to assume the affirmative plan’s adoption – multi-actor fiat, especially in the context of the counterplan, creates important debate over agent processes
8. Cross apply all of our agent counterplans good arguments – these apply here as well since multi actor fiat plays a crucial role in agent counterplans
PICs Good
Offense:
1. Education
a. They have to defend the whole plan. It makes for less educational and less realistic debate to co-opt problems with the plan.
b. In depth because we go into the details of the plan which is more important than weighing big stick impacts.
c. Real world education because Congress discusses specifics of bills.
d. Encourages innovative and in-depth research to find viable alternatives rather than generic problems with federal government action (for example).
2. PICs force precise plan wording so that texts are more defensible than vague assertions. This increases education because we get to talk about the most specific topic education there is in the round.
3. PICs rely on solvency mechanisms, meaning the aff gets arguments against PIC solvency directly. They already know how their plan solves, meaning the aff can use all solvency arguments the PIC doesn’t include as a direct answer to the conter plan. Non-exclusive counter plans, however rely on external net benefits or obscure solvency, which they have to be ready to turn, way worse for Aff predictability.
4. Best Policy Option – if we win that the CP is competitive and better than the plan then it shouldn’t matter how it works.
5. Ground – PICs are the only way the neg can generate offense against advantages like racism or genocide. The neg would have to defend offensive arguments like racism good if they couldn’t win on PICs.
6. Predictability
a. PICs are the most common and predictable counter plans in a debate round
b. PICs are based on words in the plan, meaning that the aff actually has some basis of knowledge for them. Better than all other CPs, which could have random solvency mechanisms, that would unlimited neg predictability.
Defense
1. We don’t steal aff ground – aff should be able to easily produce a solvency deficit for whatever is changed in plan text.
2. Net Benefits and solvency check abuse – PICs are grounded in the literature which limits what we can PIC out of.
3. Not a voting issue – at worse you reject the CP and evaluate the net ben versus the plan.
4. Not infinitely regressive. There are only a few PICs that can sustain a net benefit.
5. The point of the LOC is to make the PMC irrelevant. There’s no voter. It’s not a reason to vote gov because we have an effective strategy.
6. Every CP is a PIC. CPs always use part of plan, whether enforcement, implementation, or actor. No impact to their argument.
7. Doesn’t justify severance or intrinsicness
a. you can still read a disad to the counter plan based on action not in the PIC
b. severance justifies aff conditionality is bad because it is a moving target that we can never pin offense to. Intrinsicness justifies adding anything to the plan text, like fiating world peace. This destroys fairness in the debate and what we do with the PIC isn’t even close to as bad. We still have to be competitive.
8. Not a PIC. We aren’t a penny less. We engage in a different process. At worst, we’re a non-topical CP which is a fair and predictable way to judge what the neg should be allowed.
9. The aff has no inherent “right” to the case harms. We should debate about the best policy, not who can find the biggest harms.
States Fiat Good
Counter-interpretation: we have the right to fiat universal uniform state action. This ensures the aff gets predictable D/A ground for every single state and we can’t claim additional advantages based on innovation.
This definition is key to provide the fairest ground while still testing the viability of the Federal Government as an actor, which is a key question in any debate about the USFG.
Counter-interpretation: we have the right to fiat non-uniform state action. There is no literature on uniform state action because it doesn’t occur; different states enforce things in different ways.
a. This means you wouldn’t have offense against any advantage we claim having to do with uniform state action. We could claim that enacting a uniform policy is better for states’ cooperation on some random issue for example, and you would be screwed because no one is saying that all the states working together is bad for that issue.
b. Gives aff offense by giving them the ground to say that any one of the fifty states will implement it badly.
1. Non-topical and tests the Resolution – tests the words “Federal Government” in the resolution.
2. Key to neg ground – 50 states CPs are key to neg ground especially on _______ (whatever you’re debating). A huge section of policy literature is devoted to state enactment.
3. Increases critical thinking – Forces thought and strategic thinking on the fly, which is good for quick critical thinking skills. Also forces aff to defend all parts of plan which is a key part of good advocacy training.
4. Education – we get to debate policy making at a state versus national level as well as specific solvency arguments about the implementation of plan at different levels.
5. Ground – by fiating all state action we open ourselves up to the aff reading a DA or a solvency deficit against any of the 50 states.
6. Reciprocal – USFG includes many branches and agencies that the aff gets to have act. Multi-actor fiat in a governmental setting is inevitable.
7. Your “too many actors/justifies fiatting world peace” arguments are silly standards. You fiat 100 senators, 435 representatives and numerous governmental enforcement agencies. There’s no brightline to this argument.
A2: “Wrong Forum”
1. Competitive debate is the best forum
a. It creates dialogues that would never take place otherwise. Debate tournaments are places where many cultures, socio-economic backgrounds, and styles can engage one another.
b. It allows for new evaluations of diverse voices on a similar topic. The interaction of voices is rarely heard outside of competitive debate. For example, senators on Capitol Hill rarely interact meaningfully with radical feminist argumentation. Debate is an entirely unique opportunity to smash two worldviews together and see what comes out.
c. Competition serves as a motivational starting point for interaction, bringing together people who otherwise would not meet and conversations that otherwise would not happen.
2. Competition increases empathy
a. Increasing argumentation skills helps people develop into more empathetic and less ego-centric people by motivating them to become dialectical thinkers. Switching sides in a competitive format helps people overall understand arguments that they argue against rather than engendering disgust.
b. It is a false distinction to suggest debate is either inclusive or competitive. The duality of voices means that we can uniquely create clash and mutual benefits without taking competition to its extreme, when it becomes merely about shutting out others.
3. This round is a key pedagogical tool for liberation. Liberation can only come when leadership establishes a permanent relationship of dialogue with the oppressed, which is exactly what debate does. You get the speech time to speak your mind without rules or regulations, meaning that this is a unique opportunity to bring voices out into the light of day.
*A2: CP ANSWERS*
DELEGATION
A2: Perm
-- Mutually Exclusive – delegation is exclusive of the plan’s mandate that Congress state the rules – you cannot do something and give it away at the same time – that’s 1NC Epstein and O’Hallaron evidence.
-- Doesn’t Solve the Net Benefit
A. Backlash – the President and Congress can avoid pointing to specific legislation over the plan, instead they can shift blame to agencies and even “run against the plan.” The permutation ties the President and Congress to the plan’s action requiring them to face political heat related to the plan – shattering the set of mirrors provide by delegation.
B. Enactment – The permutation forces legislation through congress and the CP does not require any use of political capital since it uses an agency nor does it trigger any of the institutional hurdles associated with votes, horse-trading, and committee obstruction.
CP Doesn’t Link to Politics
1. Maximizes credit –delegation allows politicians to capture any credit from the plan, meaning no risk of any link turn
2. Blame avoidance – lack of a concrete vote allows politicians to deflect all criticism
3. Smoke and mirrors – even supportive politicians can run against the agency claiming they didn’t intend for the result AND the broad delegation means they appear in favor of one-sided goals
4. The process of enacting legislation – only with the plan is Congress and the President required to engage in the uphill battle of getting tough legislation through Congress
5. Empirics – Clean Air Act: The Clean Air Act represents a more complex form of shifting blame to an agency. Congress ensured that EPA took responsibility both for the failure to meet the grand promises made by legislators and for the costs of achieving the emissions reductions that were enacted.
A2: Funding Solvency Deficit
1. The CP text delegates rulemaking power that allows for the plan – this obviously would include the delegation of rulemaking power to allocate funding necessary to implement results – if this weren’t the case, then delegation would be a non-starter since agencies could never issue any rules that required money
2. Empirics: The FCC imposed a tax to finance educational expenditures when they were delegated their own power of purse.
3. AND -- Executive agencies have money – the large portion of appropriations bills are simply about how much money to allocate to various agencies.
A2: Accountability Solvency Deficit
1. Delegation is only a symptom of unaccountability – other factors are more important causes: they have failed to demonstrate a link between accountability and delegation. the Constitution has always allowed, legislators to use a wide variety of strategies to avoid accountability. the non-delegation doctrine cannot create a system in which Congress alone makes the laws. Improved accountability can be achieved within the Constitution's flexible framework only if judicial resolve is accompanied by people participate in politics
REG NEG
A2: “Can’t read with eco managerialism”
1. Some form of managerialism is inevitable, which means the only way to remove its worst impacts is to create an exchange of perspectives via the counterplan.
2. Empirical solvency – Drug companies work with tribes to create medications and do research that respects everyone.
3. We allow policymakers and others to discuss their relationship with the environment. This means the counterplan leads to a cultural transformation in how we view the environment, because it establishes a new framework of working to find environmental solutions. This means we solve in the short term and the long term.
*K ANSWERS/EXTENSIONS*
A2: Generics
Link Args:
A2: Link Turn (Plan exposes the issue) – only way to expose problems/solve them, because it provides a frame of reference to understand whatever you kritik. Means the plan is a pre-req to understanding/doing the alt.
( No, our K exposes the issue, not your aff that unquestioningly engages in [whatever]. Your link turn still thinks that the 1AC is an advisable advocacy to adopt. This is logically undermined by the K. The frame of reference to understand what was wrong with your 1AC was our link arguments, so this understanding should have already happened. No uniqueness for this link turn, so it can’t be offense.
A2: Link turn (New ethic) - our plan is a new way to relate to the SQ so it changes whatever you say is bad – allows new types of thought – solves the SQ in a way the alternative cannot because we stop [X harm from case] // Link turn (aff is new discourse/cooperation) – means we solve back for your link arguments and the impacts.
( Our link arguments conclude exactly the opposite – that your aff is just old [colonialist, capitalist, whatever] jargon dressed up as a great new idea. And even if your aff offers a new way to relate to the SQ, the justifications you use still propogate xenophobia or whatever. The 1AC is more than just the plan.
A2: Link Turn (use system to change) – We have to use the system to change the system. Our aff is a theoretical K of the SQ
( Our Links conclude the opposite. Revisionism is bad, because it grants legitimacy to the system’s ability to ‘fix’ itself, resulting in more faith in a bankrupt system. Any increase in [the state’s] political capital as a result of the plan is a bad idea, because it just lets the [state] get away with genocide under the mask of liberalism.
A2: Link turn (Have to use the system) – have to be able to use the system to critique the system
a. scholarly unification – the new type of literacy produced via the 1AC is key because scholars have to understand the way that [harms from case] operate within the system to fight back against it.
b. individual activism – if individuals are against [whatever you K] then our plan gives creedence to their protests, means that we spotlight the reason why their advocacy is correct
(general):
( Obviously your 1AC is what gives us germane K links, but that doesn’t mean that using the system is a good idea. Our K concludes the opposite. That logic perpetuates oppression and gives license to oppress people, because it’s like saying, “we should all be racist so that other people can point out how harmful racism is”. Even if your engagement allows us to read the K, given the choice, it’s still a bad idea to [be capitalist or do whatever we ktirik]
( There’s no uniqueness for this link turn, because the literature base for your aff already exists or there would be no disad ground and zero predictability. That’s why we research topics before hand or when the res comes out. So there’s no unique reason your aff is key to understand the system. The fact that the 1AC exists is a reason we have to read the K as a response, which means the knowledge is already out there.
( Again, no uniqueness for this argument. The K has already spotlighted why our advocacy is correct because the 1AC happened – that’s not a reason the 1AC is a good idea or why it’s good to use the system – it just pepetuates oppression and gives license to oppress people. It’s like saying we should all be racist so that minorities can point out how racist we are.
Alternative Args:
A2: Perm – Do the plan and all non-competitive parts of the alternative
( obviously the alternative is entirely competitive with the aff because you cannot combine the [whatever] of the 1AC with [whatever our alternative is]. If you do, you’d have to sever out of [whatever] in the aff, which makes you a moving target that we can’t generate offense against and is a voter for fairness.
A2: Perm – do the alternative but vote aff (Creates a discussion so it solves better)
( This is severence out of the disco/reps of the 1AC and the action of the 1AC, because our kritik indicts their disco/reps and says their action itself is a bad idea, which means that this permutation makes them a moving target, we can’t generate any offense against them, and it’s too late because the PMR has the last speech in the round, so it’s proven abuse and a voting issue for fairness.
(All of the links become disadvantages to the permutation, which means that any discussion that they create would not be net beneficial and any residual link probably just means that their discussion would just get squashed by [whatever we kritik].
A2: Perm NB – Juxtaposition – we can see how things interact with each other to come up with the best solutions. // Perm NB – multiplicity. We can combine new types of ideologies to create the best solutions, because it will check against any blind spots in one ideology. Also solves why the plan is a bad method or whatever, because we combine an ideology that criticizes the plan with the plan itself. Leads to better policy analysis in the future.
Don’t have to have epistemic consistency to be able to solve issues
Coalitions is the only way to solve
( This argument has already been resolved within this debate round – the 1NC juxtaposed our two ideologies and concluded the opposite of your net benefit. Either the juxtaposition will still conclude that the 1AC is a bad idea and it wouldn’t be net beneficial or juxtaposition will not happen because your episto is so hegemonic that multiplicity is not possible, that is why the alternative alone is key to produce new knowledge. Any link argument we win is a reason that any juxtaposition will fail – they will not have access to coalitions-based arguments.
(They’ll go for the argument that the combination of the two will come up with the best solutions, but any residiual link means this will also fail AND our serial policy failure argument presupposes this. Any incorporation of the 1AC will replicate the harms.
A2: Perm NB – Our perm creates a praxis between ideology and policy, so we can act and think about what’s wrong with the system
( The problem with this logic is that you cannot both do the action of the 1AC and think about what’s wrong with the system, because the logic of the 1AC will preclude any thinking that concludes there’s anything wrong – that’s our turns the case impact.
A2: Perm double bind – Either the alt can tolerate the incorporation of the plan or the alt can’t overcome the SQ because it’s not strong enough, so you don’t solve.
“Either the alternative is strong enough to overcome a tiny increase in [whatever is bad that the plan engages in] or it can never overcome the status quo.”
( Carving out exceptions paves the way for the alt’s failure because we’ll gloss over whatever seems like a good idea on surface from the standpoint of those in power. Every rejection is key, because recognizing every form and expression of [whatever] is necessary for complete solvency, because otherwise structures of power will continue to justify the same form of oppression via the justifications of the 1AC.
( This argument doesn’t make any sense because the strength of the alternative is commensurate to the strength of your rejection of [whatever]. This is why the world of a permutation would be less preferable to a world of the alternative alone.
( This argument doesn’t make sense, because our alt says that we don’t have to ‘overcome’ the status quo – it’s not a kritik of all instance of [whatever], it’s a kritik of your specific engagement in [whatever], so it makes sense that the alternative can’t tolerate the aff because we’re only kritiking your aff.
A2: Double Bind – either your representations are flexible or you link harder
Representations are fluid, so there’s not a risk of a residual link to the K in our permutations
Representational severence is key to coalition-building, only when we allow coalitions to come together and reframe our mindset.
( Representations might be fluid, but we kritik the [whatever] in the 1AC. Either all of our links are still germane or you’ve severed out of our offense, which makes you a moving target. The abuse has already happened, because the PMR has the last speech in the round, so you should vote them down on face for reasons of fairness, because we cannot possibly generate any args that will stick and the neg would lose every time in the PMR.
( Also this kills coalition-building, because particularlisms and fluidity of representations will only cause internal dissent and bifricate coalitions – they will literally have nothing to coalesce around if you’re constantly changing your reps.
A2: Perm vote aff and embrace the ideology of the alt.
( This is impossible, because the ideology of the alternative cannot exist within the aff, and that wouldn’t be net beneficial anyway, because the 1AC would still have all the residual links to the K, which means every single link will function as a disad to this permutation.
( Additionally, this permutation is intrinsic because it adds the words “embrace the ideology of the” and “vote aff” – neither of which are in the plan text or the alternative text. This means they can shift the goalpost to moot 100% of our offense, which means we always lose. That’s a voter for fairness.
Alt Solvency Args:
A2: You only have solvency for this debate round means all the other instances of [biopower or
whatever your K says is bad] still happens out in the real world, so your impacts are inevitable.
( Get ready for some hand waving.
( No shit, Sherlock. We criticize your engagement in [whatever we kritik], and say that a negative ballot would create favorable change to that system. It’s not a question of solving all other instances of [whatever], it’s about why your engagement in [that system] is problematic and what the negative consequences of engaging in [that system] are. Our alternative posits that challenging your [disco/episto/reps] could create valuable knowledge in changing our relationship [the system], but at least represents an avenue of non-engagement within the debate space, which we think is good.
A2: Alt leads to political nihilism – we can never help people // We solve people dying and you do nothing – existence is a pre-req to V2L/Political paralysis
( Listen, bro, fiat’s not real. All that matters are the justifications (or whatever) of the 1AC and this debate round. Even if the aff is a discursive advocacy, your policy doesn’t actually pass. Your harms will still exist regardless of whether or not you win the round. What matters is whether or not your disco/reps/episto is good.
( Even if they go for the argument that they advocate doing something while we advocate doing nothing, as long as we win reasons why the logic of the plan is bad or why their reps ensure serial policy failure (i.e. a risk of a link), the alternative of not doing their policy in this instance is still net beneficial to voting aff. Blindly action and reproducing the problem is worse than political paralysis, because at least with political paralysis there’s a risk we’ll come up with a solution that can actually solve your harms, whereas plan action will definitely result in people dying.
( Also, our links problamatize the solvency of the aff, which means that even if you think that advocating for the plan is good, it just produces serial policy failure, which turns the case.
A2: Totalizing rejection is bad and justifies genocide – bifricates movements and means the alt has no solvency.
( We’re only a rejeciton of your disco/reps/episto, which allows movements to coalesce around our alternative. I have no idea what a totalizing rejection means, but I think it’s better than engaging in [whatever we critique], which ensures serial policy failure and total genocide/extinction.
A2: Cede the political
( For Cap: Cede the political is non-unique. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of owners by design. Faux progressivism is just the last defense for a failed system. Also, our epistomology arguments are a turn to their presupposition of a liberal consciousness, which straight turns permutation solvency. No risk this is a net benefit.
( General: Our entire kritik indicates that ceding the political is non-unique. We’re winning that power already rests in the hands of elites who control [whatever we kritik]. Only a risk the alternative can create new knowledge/raise consciousness/smash through the state’s hegemony in the SQ to empower individuals and solve back for this argument.
A2: State is key – we have to use the state and be pragmatic in order to solve problems. They’re the biggest and most useful agent of change. Progress from the state down is key to be able to give movements momentum
( Our argument indicates that the state is an undesirable agent of change for reasons explained in our impacts. Our alternative has the risk of producing valuable new knowledge, which means it’s not a question of ‘solving’ [whatever we K] but a question of rejecting their truth claims/disco/reps/episto in order to create new, better ways of orienting ourselves to the world.
( Also, you don’t actually use the state. Nothing happens IRL as a result of voting aff, which means that pragmatism can’t be a net benefit. Even if using the state teaches us how the state works, we can also access that knowledge by kritiking the functioning/the actions of the state with the added benefit of accessing knowledge that indicates the state isn’t a magic, infallible source of rainbows for everyone. Also, this is probably useless knowledge anyway if we’re winning that the state is a system that not everyone can actually engage in.
A2: You don’t use fiat for your alternative, so there’s no spillover to your project.
( We’re not claiming spillover, but rather that every rejection is important because your episto is so hegemonic that a failure to reject it will ensure total genocide or whatever we said in our impacts and that instances of rejection will create new knowledge or space for talking about why you’re wrong.
( Also, you can’t claim spillover for your aff either, because fiat isn’t real. There’s no outside consequences to either of our speeches, it’s just about the way you chose to [justify or whatever] your affirmation of the res. We think our negation of the res produces more favorable consequences in this round and the way we relate to the world.
General Args:
A2: “Can’t read this with your disad, because it doesn’t jive”/Condo is bad with Kritiks (Security, Marx)
((for a not disco based arg) We’re not engaging in this, we’re just analyzing you, because our framework is a prioritization argument which indicates this is a gateway issue in which you have to justify your episto in order to determine whether or not the policy action you advocate is a good idea. Our alternative is based on the advocacy you’re promoting, not our in round discourse.
( Additionally, we think getting to test the aff on multiple levels is good (critical education) and key to check aff bias.
( Need an answer for discourse-based arguments.
A2: State inevitable – you don’t have the power or resources to solve outside the state, means we have to use them to be able to solve our problems. Can’t operate outside the system.
( Even if the state is inevitable, that’s not a reason to prefer using them over individual action. Additionally, our entire K demonstrates how the state cannot solve problems and only replicates your harms by engaging in [whatever we kritik] which means that there’s only a risk the alternative is the only means of creating true solvency. Also, just because the state is inevitable doesn’t mean we can’t resist structures of power or change the state’s behavior by operating outside of it’s control – means there’s a risk of alt solvency.
Condi good with K’s and CP’s
1. Education – key to critical and policy education
a. Depth - this is good for depth in parli uniquely because we have a rolling topic so it’s necessary to be able to discuss the merits of a plan on multiple levels every round to get the most educational bang for your buck out of every round by considering many perspectives.
b. Critical education – this a unique type of education that we cannot achieve by talking about only the policy implications every round. Including it forces us to consider the merits of your aff from the outside the standpoint of the state, which is key to [whatever the k imapcts say]
c. Hard debate is good debate, because it forces strategic thinking instead of throwing everything at a wall, we force you to pick your best answers and think globally about how various arguments interact, which you wouldn’t have to do otherwise. This ensures the best kind of education and critical thinking is achieved.
2. Key to checking aff bias – they get the first and last speech, get to set the initial framework for the debate, and get 20 minutes to pick the best, most defensible ground for themselves. Testing the aff on multiple levels is key to checking against the structural advantages the aff has – key to ensure it’s not a rigged game that just collapses on itself.
3. MG time skew inevitable with multiple disadvantages, and some teams will inevitably be faster and more technical which means block time tradeoff will always happen. It’s also worse for education and for the PMR if the block goes for everything because the PMR can’t effectively weigh the args they’re ahead on against every single argument we read in the round, which means it’s better for the aff if we kick down and produces the best discussion if we can pick one argument and debate it to the max by the end of the debate.
A2: Realism Good/Inevitable
1. Realism is terrible—it naturalizes security discourse by constructing all others as potential threats:
A. Causes violence — it freezes national identity around a culture of militarism that always lashes out at the first sign of difference due to a constitutive paranoia.
B. Enslaves the populace—makes us all cogs in the militaristic machine, stripping us of any identity claims not in keeping with hegemonic norms, destroying joy and value to life
C. Erases ecocide—requires continued military-industrial development that destroys the environment—risks extinction
2. It’s tautological
A. Threats do not pre-exist our phenomenological ascriptions—realist epistemology attaches the label of ‘threat’ to anything that represents change or difference, regardless of whether this alterity can or will cause us bodily harm. This makes threats self-fulfilling by forcing them to choose between self-sacrifice or suicidal lash-out.
B. Aff solves—our call for reflection on nationalist violence opens a space for criticism of realist praxis and for the development of alternative methods of international engagement that do not rely on exterminating difference
3. Terminally non-unique:
A. Dilution of sovereignty—the state system is no longer dominant—it’s criss-crossed by NGOs, terrorist groups, MNCs, and international political entities like the UN and the IMF, as well as infinitely complex trade relations
B. Not everyone’s a realist—if everyone acted like good realists all the time then we wouldn’t need Mearsheimer telling us what to do—the fact that realists have people to criticize proves other structures are possible
A2: Realism Real
1. A neg (or aff) ballot changes how realism works—moves away from it only create violence under traditional IR – we challenge the norms of debate and pull back the veil to reveal that these threats are misinformed.
2. Begs the question of whether threats are constructed—if we win threat con is true then moves away from realism won’t result in violence
3. This a performance of our link: They presume disorderly space upon which security must be imposed… they use the resulting visceral discomfort to justify our dominance.
4. Realism not inevitable:
a. Cultural and biological evolution proves humans are naturally cooperative: The correlation between moral norms and biological fitness is neither necessary nor always the case. Some moral precepts are contrary to fitness and are products of cultural evolution. Standards of morality will tend to improve over human history precisely on grounds of group selection, because the higher the moral standards of a tribe, the more likely the success of the tribe. Furthermore, there’s a biological basis for morality and empathy – some research suggests that mirror nuerons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy.
b. Altruistic punishment solves the free rider problem—studies, game theory and evolution prove: Studies have shown that people will, at significant individual cost, punish people who violate norms of fairness if a punishment mechanism is available (Gürek, et. al., 2006).
5. The Impact: Realism makes war inevitable—try or die for the alt: 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained through that reasoning's very operation and existence. Your arguments preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic.
A2: Threats are Real
1. Their UQ args stick them in a double bind
A. Their scenario has some validity but emerges only because we operate according to an ontology that encourages violence—meaning the case straight turns the DA
B. Their impact isn’t real because they are incentivized to produce threats to legitimize status quo identifications, meaning our criticism pulls the veil back and solves it.
Our offense
2. Extend our nationalism K—threats are not natural, but constructed in terms of what they threaten, neutralizing the validity of these identifying principles—the DA reifies a logic of the homeland that must be defended from the outsiders, justifying continual interventionism
3. Apocalypticism is depoliticizing—security logic always ups the ante as much as possible, saying we’re always on the brink to stifle the possibility for reflection.
4. Rationality is subjective—it’s an arbitrary compilation of truth claims that take on signification intersubjectively and can be contested at any nodal point. Our disruption of war ontology reconstitutes political logic in a way that produces more peaceful foreign policy—best solves the impact.
CULTURED JAM
TOP OF PMC
Top of the PMC:
It’s time to talk about space and spaciality and the spacialization of space, and how that’s relevant to all the spaces that encompass our db8 space. The anxiety of our cubic time is one of space.
In order to access alterity and infinite respect for the otherness of the other, we must performatively enact a parallel affirmation of the space inhabited by otherness. This process un-inaugurates the conditions of spaciality that makes violence possible in the first place.
The impetus of violence is that which denies the other their space and/or spacializes the other into marginalized spaces, which have been pre-scripted by the bureaucracy-space.
It is in recognition of this that the PMC stands in affirmation of the left side of the pairing. We’ll explain our framework for the debate, as important as any framework, yet picked by us, because we are the affirmative and according to debate traditionalists, we get to define our ground in order for us to be able to predict what you say.
We will not forefit our right as the affirmative to choose the framework for the debate, as others have strenuously argued against us several times. In response to those who would commit genocide by reading T against us, we present the following:
The A subpoint is putting the work back in framework:
The 1AC is a criticism of how we relate to the resolution and to debate. Their inevitable advocacy is a spaceship that can be described as a submarine where they encase themselves in order to mediate their experience of the topic. Like a spaceship that can be described as a submarine, it only lets us experience nature through portholes while sitting lethargically in a bong hit induced comfort through a window of predictability surrounded by comfortingly familiar arguments like politics and heg. They don’t feel guilty, because otherwise how can they stay safe? This is an unproductive position to be in, as their framework does violence to us as subjects. Like death who allowed himself to be interpolated by a spaceship that can be described as a submarine, theirs is an attempt to interpolate our relationship to the topic. Voting negative destroys our ability to act.
Ergo, the following unstable, subtextual text of our definite course of antithetical, counterfactual topical knowledge: [Plan]
We reverse the anti-right to unclarify negative intent. Only un-new answers in the 1NC are allowed, because the 1AC is where we make strategic decisions about which 1AC not to read in the debate. That’s a voter and a fairness question. Also, we will backfill in the MG.
MG/MO Overview
Circle star highlight that the ballot will say that the [aff/neg]’s method of resolving error replication in the debate space is preferable to the method the [other team] engages in.
Our argument pulls back the veil to reveal the structures of debate are broken now. The way we distort debate arguments reveals this insofar as the judge is required to vote on anything that says “AP, outweighs, turns case, etc”. This is a flawed method of debating. Either we should embrace culture jamming as a way of creating change or frustrate people to the point of realizing that you can’t win in a broken system and collapse debate. If we are the last team standing at the last parli tournament ever, we’d consider that a win, but either way, our method is preferable.
Their mediated experience with the topic is antithetical to education, because the best debate is seen as the one we've already had a million times. Thus, asking us to affirm the topic in a predictable way is useless if we're already positioned in ways that blind us to the reality of debate now. Instead, we should reveal how ridiculous, confusing, and exclusionary that method of debate looks to an outsider. Only the aff offers a way to escape the SQ of debate and has a risk of being more inclusive.
PMR/LOR Overview
The debate comes down to a question of competing methods and the political advantages that those methods accrue. The method of the aff is best able to resolve the problems within the debate space, which we think is the only kind of impact that matters.
>Second Lines
A2: We aren’t funny
Not relevant. Our argument could just as easily not incorporate humor and be exactly the same. The thesis of our argument is that distorting debate arguments in the debate space is good, which doesn’t require humor at all to performatively endorse.
A2: some jokes are racist and/or sexist
Malarkey! You have failed to identify a single joke of ours that is racist and/or sexist. Obviously we don’t link to this. It can’t be offense for you. Jokes aren’t even central to what we’re doing here.
A2: Not everyone gets jokes
That’s fine. Subversive humor is good and jokes aren’t relevant to our argument – see above. The fact that some people might not be able to see the distortion at first speaks to how engrained the norms of debate are. This only makes the uniqueness question rest more firmly in our favor, because it speaks to how broken debate is now. The fact that you might not be able to tell just lends more subversiveness to our argument and supercharges our solvency. If we win on Ashtar Spec because you thought it was real, you need to get solved on.
Look, we all know that what we do in debate is not what we do in public and that we tailor our performance to the audience present in the debate. They might be right that if we read our 1AC in public, we’d not be very helpful to the cause or misunderstood, but that’s not what we have done. We have contextualized our method of political engagement to the specific situation of a debate round to distort normative debate arguments.
A2: Jokes are for elites
Why? Humor is often a coping mechanism for people with really underprivelged backgrounds in shitty positions, i.e. every comedian ever. Jokes are uniquely good to make fun of elites, because it’s a safe way to resist power structures that try to keep us subservient and point out the ridiculousness of hierarchical domination. Elites are often the butt of jokes, which is what makes them funny to the masses.
Even if they’re right that we are privileged for being here, we think our method of pointing out the ridiculousness of normative debate to open up the space for people who couldn’t or didn’t want to come because normative debate excluded them is less privileged than the position they take in the debate of mindlessly trudging on and saying ‘fuck those people, I want to talk about politics and heg’.
A2: This argument excludes us
Not at all unique to this argument. The endpoint of every argument in debate is that the other team should lose, which is also the thesis of this exclusion argument, which means at worst, you link equally to this non-sensical offense.
We think your mode of debating is more exclusionary and arbitrary and less educational, which means that a risk of us solving on you net increases the inclusivity of the debate space, which we will defend is good.
Moreover, “exclusion in the name of inclusion” is logically equivalent to “affirmative action reverse discriminates against White people”. The equal board game is a misnomer in the SQ. What feels exclusive to you is the lived reality of everyone who hasn’t systematically benefitted from your vision of debate. Welcome to the other side of the coin.
A2: We are future policymakers
Your mode of debate is anti-educational and any risk that it produces some kind of education is still worthless, because that education structurally excludes both individuals and other types of knowledge from debate and from politics, which means that even if you are future policymakers you’d go on to make bankrupt and exclusionary policies, which is terrible.
In addition, a preoccupation with fiat is bad, because it privileges a preoccupation with the making of policy rather than the execution of policy, which impoverishes our understanding of the way politics operates. The USFG acts, funding is guarenteed, and the neg gets politics links and a process CP. This is a shallow examination of the way policy outcomes actually happen and turns their education claims.
Their assertions about never being able to challenge politics in the real world through our method are descriptive of exactly what occurs when we trick ourselves into thinking that old approaches to political action are sufficient. The problem is that the political has already been ceded to the right, and they have no way to counter it. Only our method has a risk of solving.
A2: People will leave debate because of you
You’re too behind on the uniqueness question to win this. People are leaving the activity now. Also, there is no impact to participation in the activity if it results in a bankrupt, distorted understanding of how to change the world or be political. In order for it to matter if they’re excluded or people will leave, they have to prove it’s valuable or beneficial to have the discussion they want to have in the first place.
A2: Endorse the aff in non-competitive forums
If these other forums are not competitive, then this counter advocacy is not competitive with the aff, so there’s no opportunity cost to their CP and the permutation resolves 100% of this argument.
The counter advocacy solves zero percent of the aff. Our argument is about distorting debate arguments themselves in the debate space. Endorsing or talking about the aff outside the round does nothing to change the actual debate space. The aff is disad #1 to the counter advocacy. The second disad to the CP is that it replicates the same kind of exclusion we criticize, because it relegates those discussions to outside the round and denies them entry into your sacred, insulated spaceship. It’s like saying that sexism is bad in a forum and then calling me a dumb bitch in round. We are the logical endpoint of those discussions and the only way to actually increase inclusion in the space where people can’t access it now, which is the round.
This means the permutation, vote aff and endorse the aff in non-competitive settings, is the most logical and net beneficial.
A2: Debate inclusive now
You have failed to answer the argument that overall numbers of participation for NPTE and NPDA debate are rapidly declining, which seems to trump your two examples and take them into account. It also doesn’t speak to the kinds of arguments that are permissible in the debate space, which is what our argument is also about, so your examples of program participation isn’t relevant. If debate was really that inclusive, framework and ‘wrong forum’ wouldn’t be an acceptable answer to kritikal affs.
If there is any hope for our community to be political, revolutionary or whatever, we must first form a potent leftist critique within the community. Debate arguments and false protests and wackademic wax poetics have all become commodified to the point where debate becomes bankrupt. Despite everyone’s best intentions, these strategies will fail absent change within the rounds themselves.
A2: Irony Bad
The only thing that would be ironic is if you went for this argument. No link – we are not the literary device of irony. Just because we posit a method of politics that uses humorous and/or ironic elements does not mean our strategy relies on irony, or that it even is irony.
In order to win this argument, they have to posit an alternative. Sure, some people might not get it, but all communication is subject to that pitfall, because language is imprecise and debaters more often than not babble about the topic in a manner that seems and is incoherent. Our method is at least better than traditional politics, which have failed to do anything to curtail actual bad things IRL (like environmental degredation or helping poor people).
A2: They perform weird shit back to us
There’s a difference between what they do and an actual political strategy with the method of the affirmative. We might look the same in that we’re both being weird or whatever, but the method and purpose could not be more different. We distort actual debate arguments to prove that debate needs to change and offer a way to escape what debate has become. Even if they say they’re mimicing us, it’s still not the same, because our performance becomes the focus of their critique or counter performance, whereas the center of ours is debate itself. But more likely than not, they’re just jerking off and playing fuck fuck.
MARX
MO O/V
First—Your decision is not between competing policy options, but historical outlooks—dialectical materialism is best: Material conditions structure social consciousness and the labor theory of value is the best conceptualization of human development. None of their arguments interact with how we have framed the determinant factors of social reality, so it’s a prior question.
The ballot affirms the methodological assumption of class as the structuring antagonism of history. This is key to radical action—universal classism offers a revolutionary program for achieving class consciousness and offering a goal for action. Our task is to achieve the intellectual conditions for revolution, not the revolution itself.
This is a prior question to specific paths of attack—theory is a prerequisite because it provides the ethical and epistemological underpinnings of the PMC’s logical justification. They have to prove that their argument is historically responsible to demonstrate its validity.
The Impact OV
Capitalism is driven to crisis by the contradiction between competing individual interests and finite resources—that’s our imperial drive impact
a) Results in desperate energy imperialism—rising production costs risk irrational escalation to nuclear conflict
b) Destroys the environment—short term profit trumps long term ecology—causes rampant pollution, species extinction, and climate change
Our turns case args are prior to the advantages—extend framework—flawed method reproduces social antagonisms and crises nullifying the long-term effects of the plan—prefer theoretical coherency over stop-gap fixes
A2: Framework
The ballot should endorse the superior political methodology. This is best:
a. Cedes politics—liberalism naturalizes wage relations and oppressive structures, making our impacts inevitable—at worst, if the K turns the case then vote neg on presumption
b. Epistemology turns education—if we’re right that capital determines political conscious then their framework is pedagogically meaningless—it ensures serial policy failure.
c. Saying it’s a good idea to not question is ludicrous. Your argument is question begging—if we win your ideology is problematic then the K already implicates your framework. Their constraints on discussion rule out effective methods of challenging capitalism, so our Kritik turns framework.
AT: Predictability
Ideology impact turns—if we win capitalist ideology is problematic then their model of policymaking is politically and educationally useless and also violent—extend Foster. Only a risk the alt allows for genuine radicalism to emerge—outweighs abstract ‘fairness’ claims
Also, seriously, it’s the cap K—prep better.
AT: Policymaking good
The K already implicates this—their mode of politics only reifies capitalist hegemony which makes extinction inevitable—any piecemeal reform only strengthens confidence in the system which caused their impacts in the first place.
We solve better—universal critique is more productive than particularized action—only the alt breaks through the epistemic blinders of capital to allow decision-making based on objective and free knowledge.
AT: Plan Focus
Capitalism is a disad to the plan—our impacts stem from the material and ideological consequences of USFG policy
Weigh ideology before consequences—cross-apply Tumino—the 1AC is intellectual blackmail which restricts radical theory which is a prerequisite to material change
AT: Cede the Political
If our overdetermination argument is right, then ceding the political is non-unique, and the aff is the new Right—Tumino says capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the owners by design—faux-progressivism is just the last ideological defense for a failing system.
Not a net benefit to the perm—our epistemology arguments are a DA to their presupposition of a liberal consensus which straight turns perm solvency. There’s only a risk the alt can smash the state.
Their fearmongering of a conservative takeover is just a scare tactic to prevent any disturbances of the liberal-democratic order that maintains capitalism
A2: Cap Good – Democracy
1. The alternative solves this: To ensure the participation of the vast majority of citizens, a political system would require a structure in which all officials — civil, military, and judicial — were elected and in which all elected representatives and officials were subject to recall at any time upon the demand of a majority of their electors. To ensure that the material interests and social outlook of these officials was not at variance with the interests of the majority of citizens, that is, of ordinary working people, their salaries should not exceed the average wage of a skilled worker. Genuine representative democracy would necessarily require a unique combination of centralisation and decentralisation, Within this democratically centralised political system, representative bodies would be executive as well as legislative organs. The citizens would participate not simply through their votes but by being drawn into the actual administrative work through forms of self-government
A2: Cap Good - Environment
1. Capitalism ensures eco-doom—will not be constrained by green initiatives, must be overthrown for us to survive: There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. We cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system. Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. It will automatically undo every green initiative we come up with. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.
2. The aff is fiddling while rome burns—their fixes leave the underlying system intact: After being directed to the growing planetary threats of global warming and species extinction we are told that the answer is better gas mileage and better emissions standards. There is one constant: the fundamental character of business as usual is hardly changed at all. The cure for capitalism is not more capitalism (i.e. running out and buying more cars from corporations that skirt environmental standards to produce the products that are supposed to save us). Whenever production dies down or social resistance imposes barriers on the expansion of capital the answer is always to find new ways to exploit/degrade nature more intensively. New technology is incapable of solving the problem.
3. Capitalism creates massive inefficiencies and waste—they are simply wrong: superfluous packaging; billions of dollars worth of investments wasted through bankruptcies, enormous economic damage caused by widespread criminality and vandalism, and the enormous costs of fighting them—these are all examples of wastage, inefficiency and misallocation of resources in a system that is allegedly efficient and rational.
A2: Cap Good – Environment (Markets)
MARKETS FAIL:
1. Capitalism sacrifices the environment: markets and nature are mutually exclusive – The conflict is clear - In the global market economy we have created, humans can improve their economic well-being by destroying parts of the natural world. In the long run, however, human survival depends on protecting other species and the ecosystems they inhabit. When we trade nature for economic growth, we are destroying the life systems upon which all human life depends to achieve a short-run gain.
2. Won’t save us in time – markets can’t predict or adapt to future scarcity: The ability of the capitalist market system to guide us through the next decades of increasing scarcity and downscaling of industrial production is very limited indeed, and if lives are to be preserved, the primacy of politics over markets will have to be introduced again
3. Markets are unable to respond to scarcity: In the face of limited natural resources, there is no rational way to prioritize under a capitalist system, in which the market—that is the wealthy with their market power—decides how commodities are allocated. When extraction begins to decline, as is projected for oil within the near future, price increases will put increased pressure on what had been until recently the boast of world capitalism, the supposedly middle-class workers of the center.
4. The cure is worse than the disease – markets are susceptible to complex disruptions, impact is extinction: there will he a temporal conjunction of four sizable bottlenecks: population, land, energy, and environmental carrying capacity. All of them are so intricately related that they form a system complexity whose very balance has never been so delicate vet so important to our survival. Markets are known to have a great deal of discontinu¬ity owing to the anonymous number of their participants and the unforeseeable outcome produced by their myriad market interactions. Thus, the capitalist market, the very technique chosen to manage survival, is itself a threat to survival, as is exemplified by speculation, recessions, and depressions, booms and busts. How many big risks, should the event and the scarcity associated with them occur, can the political system handle before solidarity breaks down, instability increases, conflicts grow, and massive death results?
A2: Cap Good – Environment: Underview
Markets wont’ save us because
First, marketization is inherently incompatible with nature—market rationales ensure environmental destruction.
Second, markets are unable to predict shortages or act fast enough to address them.
Third, even if they win resources will never be completely exhausted, as markets grow, the complex nature leads to breakdowns that can disrupt society and lead to mass death and possible extinction.
A2: Cap Good -Tech
Tech won’t save us
1. Overshoot—only makes consumption easier: each major technological advance has made possible our digging deeper and faster into the barrel of natural resources, the acceler¬ated rate of exploitation increasing the size of the human population at the same time as it manifests itself as economic growth. So although more and more people are becoming dependent on the contents of the barrel, our constantly increasing consumption speeds us ever faster to the day when we will be scraping its bottom.
2. Limits—tech can’t circumvent the ultimate day of reckoning: Most technologies require natural resources. However, the demands on many resources are now greater than the supply. Future technologies depend on the very resources that the rapidly growing human population is depleting. Technology cannot produce an unlimited availability of those vital natural resources that are the raw material for sustained agricultural production
3. Too little too late—can’t keep up with exploding problems or ecoproblems: Society faces not only the current situation of human numbers and resource consumption but also frightening rates of increase. A current annual addition of 100 million people leads to projections of human population many billions larger than present. To sustain such population growth with the same set of resources seems beyond the reach of technological fixes, especially while society is undermining the environmental stability
4. Too expensive to be useful in averting collapse: Even if these unproven technologies are eventually found to be both economically practical and ecologically harmless, replacing nature as the maker of all the basic requisites of life for large numbers of people will take infinitely more capital, knowledge, and managerial skill than we now possess or are ever likely to acquire.
5. Tech development decreases carrying capacity by eroding resource base: technology can directly reduce carrying capacity while creating the illusion of increasing it! We often use technology to increase the short-term energy and material flux through exploited ecosystems while actually permanently eroding the resource base The net effect is to create unsustainable dependencies on enhanced material flows while reducing longterm carrying capacity.
6. Technology cannot make resource consumption environmentally benign—it inevitably reaches a limit, at which point environmental destruction increases: It is conceivable that in the initial phase of a new technology (or a new branch of industry), negative environmental impact per unit of production can be reduced at some point the optimum will be reached. After that, increases in production will be accompanied by environmental degradation. The conventional technological environmental protection policy only shift the problem. Pollutants are shifted, and in the long run, from a global standpoint, such “successes“ are of no use.
AND THE ALT SOLVES:
1. Withdrawl from capitalism allows us to shift our resource comsumption to a sustainable model and takes away the profit incentive to only research things that are destructive: Half a million of the world's scientists and engineers are employed worldwide in weapons research. Expenditure on weapons research and development accounts for nearly $100 billion, or half of the world's total expenditure on scientific research and technological development. The enormous resources consumed each year by global military activities would be more than sufficient to solve some of the most pressing problems of humanity's mounting ecological disaster
A2: Cap Good - War
1. The alt solves the root cause of war: War is a product of the social inequality that characterises class-divided societies. Throughout human history, wars have been the result of conflicts over the sources of social wealth between exploiting classes or between exploiting and exploited classes. While society remains divided into exploiting and exploited classes the potential for war will remain. The permanent eradication of the threat of war requires the permanent eradication of social inequality and the creation of a democratically planned classless society on a worldwide scale.
2. Capitalist expansion fuels perpetual warfare: over the past two and a half centuries of industrial capitalism has been the almost continuous warfare with hundreds of millions of people killed. Occupation, slavery, genocide, wars, and exploitation are part of the continuing history of capitalism. Wars have resulted from capitalist countries fighting among themselves for dominance and access to global markets, The basic driving force of capitalism, to accumulate capital, compels capitalist countries to penetrate foreign markets and expand their market share
A2: Cap Inevitable
1. This claim only proves our argument that capital has become so hegemonic that contemporary political movements are unable to imagine an alternative to liberal capitalism, preventing any systemic change: Means the perm doesn’t solve the K impacts.
2. The claim of ‘no alternative’ is constructed because capitalism cannot tolerate the alternative, not because it is impossible—this is tantamount to the complete erasure of politics: Even if we concede that there is no ‘credible idea of what might replace it, it does not follow that this will remain the case this is absurd—as if a social system that has existed for what is a mere moment in human history, had already used up all the —possibilities available to the future. We are only at the very early state in the disintegration of the liberal hegemony, and we cannot predict the practical or theoretical format left alternatives to it may take, let alone what success they might have
3. Your rehearsal of ‘the ussr proves you fail’ is shallow and reactionary—claiming that marxism is too reductionist is a crass ideological move to naturalize systems of exploitation and mask the totalitarianism of capital: At the core of their assumptions is the implication that capitalism has survived because it is not "totalitarian". But the "failure" of Communism to survive in the former Soviet Union had nothing to do with too simplistic a view of "class". In fact, the fall of the Soviet Union had everything to do with the re-emergence of class relations brought on by the West’s attempts to re-inject capitalist ideologies into the USSR.
4. The failed soviet experiment was because of the reliance on the state and competition—it was a result of a failure to completely jettison capitalism: The implosion of the Soviet type capital system was inseparable from the structural crisis of capital. The real problem was that under the new circumstances of capital’s structural crisis the former working class parties, Communist and non-Communist alike, had no strategy to offer as to how their traditional constituency — labour — should confront capital which was bound to impose on the working people growing hardship under the worsening conditions
A2: Transition Wars
1. FIRST, you vote neg even if they win the full risk of this argument—a fast transition is necessary to avoid total extinction, which is far better than any transition war: Unfortunately, millions may die in the wars and economic and political conflicts created by the accelerating collapse of global industrial civilization. But we can be assured that, on the basis of the past history of the collapse of regional civilizations such as the Mayan and the Roman Empires, human societies and civilizations will continue to exist and develop on a smaller, regional scale. Yes, such civilizations will be violent, corrupt, and often cruel, but, in the end, less so than our current global industrial civilization, which is abusing the entire planet and threatening the mass extinction and suffering of all its peoples and the living, biological fabric of life on Earth. The collapse is necessary for the future-long term survival of the planet.
2. Capitalist imperialism will kill us all anyway--are better off channeling our anger and social violence towards the productive ends of socialist revolution: These imperialists make life unlivable for the great majority of people in the world and they threaten the very future of humanity. If there is going to be killing and dying--and there is, one way or the other--then let it be for something that is in our own interests. Let's direct our anger, our energy, our creativity and our knowledge to fighting them in an organized and conscious way, with leadership and philosophy and strategy that can show us how to win, in the fullest sense,
3. Catastrophe and threats of violent transition are blackmail to forstall challenges to capitalism—even if some theats are real, its key to take the leap: The refusal to risk a gesture of disruption because it might not turn out exactly the way one envisions it should is the surest bulwark against change. They’re conceding extinction is inevitable in a capatilist system. Try or die for the alt.
4. Capitalism is unable to resolve its contradictions—makes its collapse inevitable: the period of capitalism’s historic ascendance has now ended. The long structural crisis of the system, prevents capital from effectively coping with its contradictions, even temporarily. The extraneous help offered by the state is no longer sufficient to boost the system. Hence, capital’s “destructive uncontrollability” — its destruction of previous social relations and its inability to put anything sustainable in their place — is coming. Means it’s try or die for the alternative.
A2: Perm
PERM FAILS:
1. COOPTION: Capitalism must be the beginning point of our resistance—leaving the social, economic, and political structures in place that facilitate oppression merely shifts capital’s dominance to a new locus—capitalism socializes competitive environments that make racism inevitable and naturalizes inequality—without putting capitalism at the forefront we risk failure on a massive scale.
2. MASKING: Our withdrawal from capital must be TOTAL—pointing to symptoms of capital or social problems all serve to mask capital’s contradictions and enables the desire to accumulate to overwhelm rational thought and de facto support for capitalism—keeping these in place is the only thing that will make capitalism inevitable.
3. IDENTIFYING STRUCTURES: They engage in a particular strategy—to avoid identifying the structure of dominance that produces the type of social exclusions that they identify, this means that their strategy of multiplicity does not put class at the forefront and any permutation is a severance of the prioritization of their politics—don’t allow it.
4. METHOD SHIFT: Their apropriation is merely an attempt to disarm marxism of its radical potential as well as masking the fundamental contradiction of surplus-labor—this is why you cannot permute a method—it strips out all of the conceptual theory that allows us to both understand the world and to create a praxis to end oppression.
DISADS TO THE PERM:
1. PARTICULARISM: single issue resistance is easily co-opted and marginalized because they do not have a coherent and comprehensive alternative to the given order. labor is the only issue that cannot be integrated and destroyed by capital—this universal is key to uproot the entire system**
A2: “Alt no solve”
1. This argument is all answered in the overview—it’s not about ‘solving cap’ it’s a question of whether there’s any foundation to the aff’s truth claims and producing the best historical outlook, which helps establish theory for action, prefer
a. It’s more specific to our social location in academic and social discussions—our alternative posits that a revolutionary theory must come prior to action
b. Timeliness—we exist in a unique time where the contradictions of capital are coming to the forefront of society
2. A negative vote to validates our method is crucial because:
a. It creates new knowledge—ruthless criticism both renders capital’s mode of reproduction and control visible as well as negates it’s legitimacy in any instance
b. Allows universal identification—structural kritik forges a labor consciousness which allows for politicization of the masses but also labor as the alternative to capitalism
3. Only a marxist method will allow any progress towards emancipation—oppression is an ideological mode deployed to keep us all running in place. Understanding this materialist relationship is the only hope for changing the system
4. Utopian imagination is key to political praxis—institutionalization kills radical creativity
A2: “Alt is Utopian”
The alternative is not utopian fiat, it is a competing political strategy. We don’t fiat that the working class accept Marxism, we say that they are in currently poised to do so and that as a member of that potential movement we should endorse a revolution as the only solution.
And, This solves all of their theory offense – we don’t fiat that the lower class accept the alternative. If the aff really thinks revolution is utopian, then they should be able to win that it couldn’t happen or wouldn’t work.
And, Your education is bad – our K is a fat impact turn to your education. It prevents the rev.
And, It is not a matter of whether or not we are utopian, because our 1NC Zavarzadeh evidence says that their prayer that the capitalist state will listen to the people of the world and make decisions based on their needs is just as utopian. The only question is whether we relate our political subjectivity to the ruling class by advocating a political strategy for the ruling class or align ourselves with the working by advocating a political strategy for the working class.
And, This dovetails with our Avakian alternative evidence. We must stop allowing the ruling class to make decisions for humanity’s future, but we cannot do this if we think of ourselves as only individuals. We must start making decisions as a class, and talking about political strategy for our class. What they call utopian fiat is actually the development of class consciousness.
And, Doesn’t justify intrinsic or severance perms –
Subpoint A) If we win it’s the alt’s not abusive, then they can’t win that it justifies any special perm rules
Subpoint B) Moving target – adding new advocacies or severing out of the 1AC allows them to dodge all of our links all our offense. The aff would always win.
Subpoint C) They will never win that the alternative is more abusive than cheater perms, crossapply from above
Utopia is not an imaginary, impossible society. Rather, it the construction of a social space beyond what is considered possible within the current system.
FEYERABEND
MO O/V
“A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content of the views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. . .Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge”
1. Asking for an open embrace of all forms of scientific knowledge is not engaging in a system of hierarchies. The world of the alternative would allow civil society and subjectivities back into science – not priviledge them over the royal sciences. This is key to creating the kind of rhizomatic knowledge outside of existing truths that will best allow an enormous proliferation of knowledge from multiple perspectives that actually gets heard and listened to. The biggest and greatest scientific acheivements happened when the “method” and epistomology of the royal science was disregarded (tower argument) – not when we only paid attention to ideas that were built off of old truths.
2. The problem with status quo royal sciences is that the state, capitalism, and science are self-reinforcing and police what epistemic norms are possible and permissible. This necessarily priviledges certain kinds of knowledge which is not only the least humanitarian way we could go about doing science – because everything that doesn’t fit into the already known is eliminated - but also forstalls all scientific progress that could benefit humankind.
3. This means our link problematizes the solvency of the 1AC and our argument link turns all their “state is a safety valve” arguments. The only possible way to solve their impacts of the 1AC is via the alternative alone.
A2: Can’t read with T
On T, extend the WM, this means both interpretations have access to the offense about limits, which means there’s no reason to reject us.
And we can read this with T – we use T to talk about including more and other definitions under the scope of the resolution. You limiting to your one affirmative is the priviledging of your knowledge, which is a link to the K.
A2: Stops progress
Our alt allows the prolifertion of knowledge, because we stop the practice of disregarding theories, ideas, and discoveries that don’t align with older knowledge. The royal sciences say that anything that doesn’t align with their method is backwards and wrong, but furthermore, it by nature priviledges older knowledge.
“The judgement of new theories by ‘facts’ is bound to eliminate ideas simply because they do not fit into the framework of some older cosmology. . .putting the burden of proof on the theory means taking [previous knowledge] for granted without ever having examined it”
“Every step that protects a view from criticism is a step away from rationality”
We promote more better future research by creating rhizomatic connections – “ad hoc approximations create a tentative area of contact between ‘facts’ and [new views] . .[they] thus determine the direction of future research. . .These deviations and errors are preconditions of progress”
A2: Science is bad
Science priveldges efficient knowledge production – take away intuition and other forms of knowledge, which buerocratizes sciences.
Instrumental rationalism is old and the alt solves back because we reintorduce the person and subjectivities into science.
Science is inevitable, but we need to have more control over the way it goes.
Our K resolves the bad parts of science, so we avoid your offense. Also, you can’t really read science bad when you’re reading science good impacts in the PMC, I guess.
A2: Folk Knowledge Bad
We don’t priviledge folk knowledge, we just think it should have access to the same realms that the royal sciences isolate themselves to now. Allowing them access isn’t the same as the hierarchies you entrench.
And saying that “science” will descend into “myths” and untruths is silly. Science now is more similar to an unshakable mythos than the other ideas we’re trying to introduce. According to Horton, the central ideas of a myth are regarded as sacred and there is anxiety about threats to them. That describes the SQ of science.
And your argument is a link back into our K – you create the deliniation between scientific knowledge and folk knowledge. Our argument is that all knowledge is folk knolwedge and all knowledge is scientific knowledge.
A2: “Bad for women/patriarchy”
The logic of patriarchy and [whatever they say is bad for women] operates by excluding those subjectivities that are hurt [women’s]. The alternative solves this by putting subjectivity back into science and allowing their voices and knowledge to be considered and access the system of knolwedge production.
A2: Cap is worse/State is a safety valve
The state is a conduit of capitalist interests now. The state, capitalism, and science are self-reinforcing in the SQ (example: NMD and all kinds of other military technology where we pay the military and scientists to develop things we already have against not real threats). That means we’re a link turn to all these arguments, because we reintroduce the person and civil society back into science.
A2: Science is self-correcting
Science cannot be self-correcting if it is limited in what is can do and what solutions or knowledge it is willing to consider. The only solutions it can consider now rely on more of the accepted episto of the royal sciences.
Additionally, science spreads it’s fairy tale of “method” to exclude new knowledge, which means it can never be corrected, because it’s corrections are based in flawed episto.
A2: “Alt is utopian”
Hard debate is good debate – it’s the only thing that solves for stale debates and injects creativity and argumentative innovation into the activity. It’s also the only way we have an incentive to do research and derive educational value from debate, which means it’s the best real world education and if it’s stale and has no educational value, the activity will collapse.
And this is another link into the K – limits are bad and create arbitrary distinctions and hierarchies that priviledge certain knowedge bases. Your argument assumes no value in hard debate – see above for why your interpretation is bad.
A2: Permutation
The alternative has already created a rhizomatic relation with the 1AC, so there’s no reason to prefer a world of the 1AC alone. This means there’s no posisble net benefit to the perm and the permutation doesn’t prove non-competitiveness.
Also, the permutation will get subsumed by the hierarchies of the 1AC – we’re winning that royal sciences will say anything that doesn’t align with it shouldn’t exist, which means the permutation will eliminate the alternative with any combination of the two.
A2: cognative dissonance solves your rhizome args: No, cognative dissonance can’t happen in a world of the perm, because you don’t remove the hierarchies from the world of the 1AC.
A2: “Your alt excludes us, so you link”: No, we don’t exclude forms of knowledge, just systems of priviledging certain knowledge.
NEOLIB
A2: Perm
Perm fails: Your economic focus precludes all other forms of identification and thus structures society and the state based purely on the neoliberal ideology
Perm fails: neoliberalism is the root cause of all their impacts, means a 1% risk of a link means you reject the perm, because the residual link outweighs the net-benefit.
Moral obligation to reject the perm: neoliberalism is created through individual discourse and actions, we have to reject it in every instance because if not we are responsible for creating it.
Perm leads to masking: Negative actions like the plan do nothing to reverse neoliberalism—instead they just mask the flip side of benevolence— and embrace securitization through risk management and the privatization of immigration enforcement
Perm severs: ontology is an inherent part of the 1AC that they cannot sever out of midway through the round. Ontological valuation is inherent in every political action whether we choose to recognize it or not.
A2: Framework
Makes neolib inevitable – The k impact turns your framework – if the system is decision-making under economic rationality is ultimately undesirable, then so it debating within it. Which means they have to win neoliberalism is good to win a framework
A2: Cap Good
No link—capitalism is a value-neutral economic system—it only becomes dangerous when it is combined with ideology. Neoliberalism is just a specific set of economic reforms that have taken place in the last 35 years.
We can concede this entire block and still win on Neolib – four reasons
A) We outweigh – Neoliberalist logic culminates in collective suicide and genocidal extermination
B) Our K indicts your epistemology and the authors that defend it – our links are predicated on the aff furthering a neoliberal project that obliterates other forms of knowledge.
C) This is especially important because all of your authors come from the CATO Institute, etc – they’re already convinced of the self-evident value of properly functioning markets. Alternatives solutions lie outside their purview.
D) Our alt will always solve all your offense – democracy controls the worst abuses of Capitalism and doesn’t collapse the system. Your epistemology collapses democracy.
A2: Cap Good – Growth Solves
Growth can’t solve poverty—social development can exist without economic growth
Neoliberalism’s massive inequality results in a society in which 1% of the world receives 57% of its income at the expense of everyone else – empirically proven that neoliberalism doesn’t increase social well-being or economic efficiency
A2: Free Trade Good
Development of first world nations is not due to neoliberal economics but has involved protectionism – Britain, US, Japan, and Korea are all examples of this: Protectionism and government control of the markets helped establish and protect manufacturing and helped these industries boom – only after the US raised tariffs under the Smoot Hawley Act did our economy become the fastest growing in the world. It was only after we had the developed industries and technological edge that we started advocating protectionism.
A2: Competition = Human Nature
Cultural and biological evolution proves humans are naturally cooperative: moral codes are products of cultural evolution, a mode that has surpassed the biological, because it is a more effective form of cultural and social adaptation.
They create a self fulfilling prophecy only the alt solves—studies prove: subjects come to perceive self-interest as a normative characterization of rational behavior and to act accordingly (prisoners dilemma experiments prove). our beliefs about human nature help shape human nature itself – means this is only the case in a world of the perm or the aff alone.
Theories of human selfishness are socially constructed and no longer apply to the kind of social evolution that is possible now that we have biologically evolved – you have been socialized to believe that neolib is right and that we are all selfish: Almost two generations of human beings have been educated and socialized to think in terms of universal selfishness. Our erroneous beliefs and ways of thinking about human nature are interpreted as evidence and become entrenched. New insights need to overcome substantial barriers before they are accepted.
The alt solves – focus on solidarity can change selfishness: The more empathy and solidarity we feel with others, the more likely we are to account for their interests. Similarly, solidarity with a group makes us more likely to sacrifice our interest for that of the collective.
A2: Realism
Realism denies the ability of ethical norms to factor in international behavior. This creates a system that only works to maintain the oppression of the status quo. In the process entire sections of the population are sacrificed and dehumanized in the name of realism.
No link: Neoliberalism is a set of economic reforms that started in the 70’s, realism existed before and will exist after – realism has no bearing on the existence or non-existence of neolib.
Alt solves: the alt moves away from current IR which only takes into account national security interests and instead focuses on individual security. This approach is capable of understanding both structural and physical violence and thus creates solutions.
In addition, expsing the failures of discourses that are accepted as inevitable norms, we shatter realism and open up space for alternative concepts – solves your arg.
Realism not inevitable – read competition stuff from above.
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED
A2: Perm
1. No Solvency: Discovering oneself as an oppressor does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed. Rather, unless the oppressors abolish their paternalistic treatment of the oppressed and refuse to see them as an abstract category, their actions will continue to dominate the oppressed. They must see the oppressed as persons, and since the Perm includes the plan, this is impossible.
2. No Solvency: The oppressed, realizing themselves as incomplete beings, must develop their own pedagogy for liberation. Liberating pedagogy cannot be distant from the oppressed, and it cannot begin with the egoistic interests of the oppressors.
3. Turn: The Oppressors’ power is not appropriately situated to liberate their own class or the oppressed because it springs from the will to dominate. Their generosity is false in that its employment is sustained by oppression; oppressors can only be generous through their systematic taking and disenfranchising of others. True generosity seeks to eliminate the causes that require the oppressed to seek “gifts.” The perm allows for the continued false generosity of oppressors, extending the cycle of violence.
4. Situations of oppression employ violence. Oppression is the exploitation of persons, keeping from their ontological vocation of becoming more fully human. Therefore, violence is initiated and constantly employed by the oppressors. We must reject the oppressors characterization of the use of resistant force by the oppressed as violent and barbaric.
5. The oppressors’ tendency to view their overthrow as unjust (the Gov’s reaction to a loss in this round) is produced by their submersion in the situation of oppression, which, as an objective reality, conditions their consciousness. Their consciousness is possessive, and only through possession and domination can they engage the world and understand themselves. Therefore, for the oppressors, “to be” is “to have,” and in turn, humanity becomes a thing which one possesses, and may be possessed as an exclusive right.
6. No Solvency: Because the oppressor is housed within the oppressed, their resistance will always provoke feelings of guilt and inadequacy within the oppressed. They will feel as though they are killing a part of their own identity due to the duality of their identity. As they cannot objectify the oppressors, the oppressed will be unable to dispel their perception of the invulnerability and magical force of dominating power. Therefore, the oppressed must see vulnerability in their oppressors in order to begin resistance.
7. Turn: Oppressors are not interested in changing the situation of oppression but rather the consciousness of the oppressed. Therefore, they must view them as individuals, separate from each other and from the world. Such manipulation allows for the exclusion and isolation of deviant individuals that threaten the social order.
A2: Policymaking FW best
1. Turn: Oppressors that denounce their role and attempt to stand in solidarity with the oppressed still bear the legacy of oppression as an heirloom. They speak about the people, recognize the injustice, and desire to transform the situation. However, they do not trust the people; they do not believe the people have the potential to transform the world as they assume the role of liberators. This is evident in their FW’s calls for a policy solution. However, this only entrenches oppression as it maintains that the oppressed are passive agents unable to act upon the world themselves.
2. No Solvency: Comradeship with the oppressed is the only true way for converts to understand their previous ways of living. Any other approach that does not place the oppressed at the center of their own liberation makes fatalism inevitable.
3. Turn: When the oppressed cannot see themselves as the driving force of struggle, and when they cannot expunge their oppressors, they strike out against their comrades who, in their duality, also house the oppressors. Their inability to objectify (realize outside of the self) the oppressor makes their struggle impotent and misguided toward the oppressor within the oppressed. This creates an inability to form solidarity between oppressed people, ensuring fatalism.
A2: Backlash/Alt is exclusive
1. Liberating pedagogy has two stages: 1. The oppressed must unveil the world of oppression through praxis, committing them to transformation of that world. 2. Pedagogy begins to belong to all people and becomes the process of permanet liberation. In the first stage, the oppressed must confront the culture of domination through changing the way they perceive the world, and in the second, through the expulsion of myths developed by the oppressors so they do not haunt the new order.
2. Violent acts initiated by the oppressed are not oppressive; on the contrary, they initiate an act of love. The oppressors’ employment of violence attempts to prevent a class of humans from being more fully human. However, grounded in the desire to overcome the mutually dehumanizing oppressed/oppressor contradiction, violenct acts by the oppressed attempt to rehumanize both classes by taking away the abusive power of the oppressors.
POSITIVE PEACE
A2: Perm
1. The perm is severance – the rhetoric of the 1AC is an inherent part of their case which they cannot change mid way through the round. Severance is a voter for the following reasons
a. Moving target: we base our 1NC on the 1AC, severance allows the aff to spike out of our links and kills neg strategy. This skews fairness to the aff because they get last speech.
b. Unpredictable: we can’t predict what parts of the plan they will sever out of, this means every debate comes down to the last two speeches which leaves no time for argument development. This kills education
2. Perm Kills Solvency- it is impossible to simultaneously engage in the war/peace paradigm and rethink its merits, a rethinking of how we conceptualize war requires us to fully abandon current political practices in order to embark on a journey without a clear end
a. This is key to deconstructing binaries beyond just the peace/war paradigm and stopping societal exclusion and rights abuse
b. The residual link to the K outweighs the NB to the Perm
c. We have a moral obligation to reject the perm
3. The perm recognizes our individual complicity with violence, and then does nothing about it. Rather, they attempt to resolve our local responsibility with global action. Our K is about starting points, not ends, which means the alt alone is preferable.
4. The perm is co-option, turning even the most localized activism twoards a global view, which encloses activism. It appropriates out critical distancing as a way to strengthen their order of the world, further legitimizing violence.
A2: Military does good things
The military does not increase general social welfare: To have a military is to be prepared to fight and win wars. The military is not a social welfare agency, it's not a jobs program. Veterans earn less, make up 1/3 of homeless men and 20% of the nation's prison population. 57% of military personnel receive no educational benefits and only 5% receive the maximum benefit.
A2: We solve some oppression
Militarism Intersects With Other Forms of Inequality: They Shouldn’t Be Considered In Opposition to One Another, But Instead, Utilized to Crack the Matrix of Oppression
A2: We make the military do something good
Militarism is More About the Support for Militaristic Ideology Than The Literal Practices of the Military: There are Cultural and Institutional Questions Involved
A2: Violence inevitable
TURN: QUESTIONING THE INEVITABILITY OF VIOLENCE IS A MORAL IMPERATIVE: Understanding the system that creates domination through violence brings to light the choice available – either we choose complacency or engage in the system in a new way that demands new possibilities that do not include violence. It’s a moral imperative to create interim methods to extricate ourselves from the grip of the current system.
Violence is only inevitable if we don’t step away from the cycle: The thesis of our argument is that violence begets violence, so the only world in which violence is inevitable is the perm or the 1AC alone.
Violence NOT inevitable: Violence is a choice, which implies that we have a chioce to not engage in violent action. Arguments about evolution and being hardwired to engage in violent activities given a choice are false and don’t account for social and cultural evolution shaping our human behavior to overcome ‘animal’ instincts for violent impulses. Kin selection, reciprocal altruism, mutual interests fueling cooperation all point to alternatives to violence should we make that decision.
SECURITY
MO OV
Thesis: The PMC is not ‘objective’ or ‘true’, but a product of hegemonic power structures – the aff took snippets from a worst-case scenario to scare the judge into voting for them. Our kritik pulls back the veil and reveals the truth of the PMC. Their impacts are false and constructed by the military industrial complex to stay in power.
Impact: The impact is dehumanization that gives license for all atrocities and total extinction – the “other” is a danger that must be eliminated. We don’t need to stop structural violence, because the military needs a new jet to scare China. The K also turns the case – they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Invading Afghanistan caused more terrorism, attacking Iraq caused Korea and Iran to speed up proliferation. This ensures the harms are only replicated in new and worse ways.
The Alternative is to reject the aff’s securitization –the creation of counter discourses opens up space for alternatives to security. Securitization survives through the acceptance of speech acts being true – this is why permutations don’t make sense, because voting aff is an endorsement of the 1AC
A2: Our predictions are good
Their predictions are about as good as monkeys throwing darts – complex systems rely on more than the sum of their parts and are inherently unpredictable, because they rely on human beings reacting and making decisions based on perceptions and what they think other people are thinking – means there’s only a risk of our dehumanization/systemic impacts.
A2: Perms
1. Permutation severs the whole 1AC minus the words in their plan text. It’s not like kicking advantages, because we straight turned them. Severence is a voter for fairness, because it makes them a moving target that we can’t generate offense against.
2. Regeneration DA – The speech act is key. Voting on the perm gives security a “free pass” to regenerate in the future. Scenarios are securitized only if the judge votes aff, and the perm prevents a total break to create counter discourses.
3. Displacement DA – The perm only trades one form of securitization for another – also leaves underlying assumptions about security unchallenged – rather than shift away from state-based conceptions of security, they delineate new realms of state action to become meaninful actors again.
4. State of emergency DA – carving out an exception for the plan reserves the crisis politics justification for security in the future. Whenever there is a state of emergency all critical discussion will be suspended, ceding the gatekeeper role to the whims of state security claims, rolling back any progress because these declarations are themselves arbitrary and inevitable.
5. Policymaking DA – Combining policymaking with criticism guts it of revolutionary potential, two reasons:
a. Forcing a blueprint for action is limited to the possibilities of the present, preventing epistemic change. No vision can be immediately politically efficacious, denying the fundamental value of critique initially.
b. Realist subversion: forcing constructivist theory to appeal to exclusive communities whose survival is based on a theory of violence, thus realism, not responsibility, will be reasserted. This fails, because insecure nation-states are not a stable platform for peaceful solutions.
A2: Double Bind
The double bind doesn’t make any sense in the context of our alt, which says the strength of the alternative is commensurate to the strength of your rejection of securitization. It cannot tolerate the plan, because that wouldn’t be a rejection of securitization.
A2: Politics Key
This doesn’t make sense either – the alt is a better political action – it’s more consistent because it operates in an accorate epistomology.
TRANSHUMANISM
A2 Kritiks - Perms
Perm: We are borg. We can assimilate the kritik into a transhumanist ontology. We recognize that no epistemology is perfect that is why the transhumanist perspective says we can incorporate the best of all ideologies into our transition: New political principles arise from shifts in our understanding of epistemology. The mainstream understanding of epistemology is we know what we know through our senses. Cyborg existence can incorporate multiple epistomological perspectives that doesn’t rely on our sensory experiences alone.
Perm: [read all of the alt that isn’t vote neg or reject the aff] as a prosthesis of the plan: The alt can act as a prosthetic to the plan, incorporating all of its usefulness into a grander transition away from humanism. And the perm solves the K better than the alt alone, a fully automated system allows us to engage in new epistemologies in a way that is impossible to when you have to worry about basic needs like food and shelter. This allows your movement to expand past the ivory tower.
Transhumanism v. Biopower
You reached for the wrong generic K. The whole point of transhumanism is an affirmation of individual autonomy and recreating notions of subjectivity. Extend from the shell how we break down subjectivity, which is tied into notions of invention. If our inventions become a part of us, we no longer consider our inventions as our subjects, thus inventions of ‘other’ that are necessary for the persistence of biopower become deconstructed in a world of the 1AC – we solve better.
And, Foucault himself believes that humanism is at its end and that moving away from the modern epistemology should be the ultimate goal. He argues that static notions of subjectivity must be done away with in favor of dispersive agency that is only possible will a world that has transitioned beyond humanism.
So, transhumanism can solve back for biopower. Furthermore, the action taken by the 1AC, or its incorporation into the perm offers the a better way to take down biopower than sitting here intellectually masturbating
Transhumanism v. D&G
Aff solves the K: Prepare to be assimilated. Transhumanism is the ultimate acceptance of becoming and rhizomatic existence. It allows us to live in the place in-between, in lines of flight rather than in nodes. As Stelarc shows with such curious beauty, exoskeletons are the reimagining of the puppet strings that disintegrate our static notions of agency.
Transhumanism v. Heidegger
LINK ARGS:
No Link: Enframing only occurs when technology is concealed from us. Heidegger’s inability to distinguish between types of technologies means he does not allows the inscription of meaning through the machine– the 1AC solves this by stepping outside the humanist perspective to reveal technology’s potential to us.
Link Turn: Information machines are not subject to the cultural logic of enframing, and adding new dimensions to technology inhibits the possibility of enframing – turning the link. As technologies become more complex (like the Internet) dimension has been overlaid upon dimension, progressing to the point where configurations of space/time, body/mind, subject/object – patterns that are essential components of enframing – are each reconstituted in new, unrepresentable forms. Cyberspace reterritorializes pre-existing geographies, opening new social and cultural worlds that escape Heidegger’s dilemma.
The Aff renders Heidegger’s conceptions of technology and humanity obsolete – your links have no explanitory power in the context of our affirmative: a technological culture that bridges the human and the machine renders obsolete not so much the body but the culture of instrumental technology. This represents a fundamental reconfiguration of the relation of human to nature, which would have to formulate its projects along lines not envisioned by earlier social theory.
ALT ARGS:
Permutation solves 100% of the K better than Heidegger’s alt by turning away from the humanist perspective and allowing machines to inscribe their own meaning: The other way around the problem of the essence of technology is through the specificity of the machinic. The machine itself inscribes meaning, but it does so within its own register, not as a human subject would. The realm of the mechinic incorporates intersections of widely diverse domains, constituting an assemblage of enunciation in that ‘the machine speaks to the machine before speaking to man’
Heidegger would vote for the permutation to shift our conceptualization of technology – your alt fails. Only the 1AC establishes a different relationship to technology to solve the problem of enframing: Heidegger calls this culture of technology ‘enframing’. If humankind can recognize the process of enframing, then it may establish a different relation to itself and to technology, one that is free in the sense that it recognizes and accepts its own cultural form, its own being. Heidegger’s solution is not to abandon technology but to offer a spiritual shift in which technology would become entirely different from what it is.
Transhumanism v. Marx
Marxism has nothing to offer the transhumanist movement. It is literally the only system that is dialectically opposed to the individualism that is the offer of the 1AC. Communist, command economies result in totalitarianism, which kills participatory evolution towards the post-human or turns everyone into worker robots with no agency.
Marxism kills our individual technological evolution. Top down, command economies kill the liberation of our agency that comes from transhumanism because evolution is no longer on our terms, but rather the states’: Decisions about evolution should be made at the grassroots, just as political and economic decisions should be, especially now that we have begun to recognize the political evolution of cyborgs.
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**PMC SECTION**
*GENERICS/FAVORITES*
ISRAEL
Qualitative Military Edge Adv.
Harms:
1. Israel’s regional hegemony is legally enshrined in the concept of Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge” (QME). The US Government must guarantee that whatever we sell or give to anyone else in the world, we give something as good or even sweeter to Israel. Israel is the only country on the planet that we have this agreement with, and it ensures that only they and the US have the latest, best military technology.
2. The Obama Administration has demonstrated its commitment to Israel’s QME by not only sustaining and building upon practices established by prior administrations, but also undertaking new initiatives to make our security relationship more intimate than ever before.
3. For some three decades, Israel has been the leading beneficiary of U.S. security assistance through the Foreign Military Financing program, or FMF – a facet of the QME. Currently, Israel receives almost $3 billion per year in U.S. funding for training and equipment under FMF. It is a testament to our special security relationship that each year Israel accounts for just over 50 percent of U.S. security assistance funding.
4. Qualitative Military Edge is bad because leads to a regional arms race. Because some neighboring countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are U.S. allies but also considered threats by Israel, arms provided to them automatically mean that better weapons must go to Israel. The result is a U.S.-generated arms race that escalates regional conflict and makes violence inevitable. A better armed Israel makes conventional military defeat difficult, always laying the ground for the next conflict, which means that the US is responsible for perpeutating conflict in the region.
a. For example, the threat to both countries from Iran led the Saudis in 2010 to begin negotiations to purchase advanced F-15 fighters. In turn, Israel — using $2.75 billion in American military assistance — has been allowed to buy 20 of the new F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighters being developed by the United States and eight other nations.
b. Again, in January 2012 when Boeing and Lockheed Martin sold Saudi Arabia 30 billion dollars worth of advanced technology (of enhanced F-15 fighter jets), they also had to sell Israel 30 billion dollars worth of even more advanced technology so as not to erode the QME.
5. This puts the US in an awkward position politically with Egypt and Saudi Arabia since they participate in the arms race against Israel. Especially with Egypt since Israel attacked Egyptian soldiers and has been increasingly aggressive towards them. An Israli Defense Forces leader said that Israel was prepared to go to war if the Muslim Brotherhood gained control of Egypt – they view the Muslim Brotherhood as an existential threat.
Solvency (note – the solvency is a link turn to the Israel/Iran DA):
1. Plan eliminates the Qualitative Military Edge (or whatever the res says to do).
2. This de-escalates the conflict between Israel and other regional actors, effectually ending the arms race with US technology, because now the US can’t guarantee the best stuff goest to Israel while our other allies get the second tier tech. Unequivocal US backing is the only reason Israel would feel secure enough to first strike Iran.
3. Solves an Israel-Egypt war.
In a world of the QME, Israel knows that the US has to give them the technology to beat Egypt in a war, which makes their decision to use military force an easy one. However, post plan israel no longer knows for sure which side of the conflict the United States would support.
a. There is empirical evidence for this. In the 1956 Suez War Israel attacked Egypt without the consent of the United States. US response was to join forces with USSR in support of Egypt, threaten to cut off all aid, add UN sanctions and expell Israel from the UN. Israel would never risk this kind of reaction again.
a. Because we are allies of both Egypt and Israel Egypt is unstable militarily
b. Muslim Brotherhood won and is poised to win again. The muslim brotherhood swept the parliamentary elections and former muslim brotherhood executive Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh is set to win the presidential elections. He is charismatic has widespread support and his current primary opposition served under Mubarak, a very unpopular association. After the Israeli attacks on Egypt Fotouh called for the expulsion of Israeli ambassador and cancelling all gas export contracts with israel.
Impacts:
1. Regional War
Genocide/HR Adv.
Harms:
1. The US gives Israel a ton of sweet weapons.
a. Over the last 20 years, the U.S. has been slowly phasing out economic aid to Israel and gradually replacing it with increased military aid. Beginning in 2007, the U.S. has increased military aid by $150 million each year. By FY2012, we will be sending Israel $3.09 billion a year (or an average of $8.5 million a day) and will continue to provide military aid at that level through 2018. U.S. tax dollars are subsidizing one of the most powerful foreign militaries. According to a Congressional Research Service report, “[current U.S. military aid] grants to Israel represent 18.2% of the overall Israeli defense budget.”
b. Obama has launched the most comprehensive and meaningful strategic and operational consultations, across all levels of our governments, in the history of the relationship between the US and Israel. In October 2009, our nations' armed forces conducted their largest ever joint military exercise, Juniper Cobra. In 2010, nearly 200 senior-level Department of Defense officials visited Israel, and senior Israeli officials visit the U.S. just as often. And this year, despite tough fiscal times, President Obama fought for and secured full funding for Israel in our 2011 budget, including $3 billion in military assistance--the most ever.
2. Israel often turns around and sells US weapons they receive as aid to countries that are adversaries of the US or in the midst of civil war/genocides and the US maintaining aid to Israel under these circumstances is defacto US approval of this policy – makes our human rights credbility really really weak.
a. Israel's client list includes Cambodia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the South Lebanon Army, India, China, Burma and Zambia. The U.S. has most recently warmed up to India and is now in fact competing with Israel for arms sales there, but the other Israeli customers remain dubious at best.
b. Most troubling of all is the Israeli/Chinese arms relationship. Israel is China's second largest supplier of arms. Coincidentally, the newest addition to the Chinese air force, the F-10 multi-role fighter, is an almost identical version of the Lavi (Lion). The Lavi was a joint Israeli-American design based upon the F-16 for manufacture in Israel, but financed mostly with American aid.
c. If Israeli weapons sales to China induce misgivings, including the most recent U.S. blocked sale of Israel's Phalcon airborne radar, the beneficiaries of Chinese arms transfers of Israeli-American technology are even more disturbing. China has sold over 100 missiles and launchers to Iran, along with a handful of combat aircraft and warships.
d. US military aid specifically is under scrutiny as many world leaders have drawn attention to the fact that such aid is essentially U.S. taxpayer dollars supporting Israeli policies that are in violation of international law and U.S. law, including the Arms Export Control Act, the Foreign Assistance Act, and the ‘Leahy Law’” which prohibits the U.S. providing military assistance to foreign armies that violate human rights.
Solvency:
1. Plan stops giving military aid to Israel or stops giving them the bad aid.
Impacts:
1. Genocide is bad and the US taking a stance against it is good.
ASIA
China Reunify Advantage
AD: Reunify
Harms:
1. China and Taiwan are headed towards reunification
a. Politically-
i. Ma was just re-elected as the Taiwanese president last month. Ma is the most pro-china president in decades. He has opened up trade and drastically reduced travel restrictions. Ma also has expressed a desire for signing a peace treaty with china within the next decade. China’s official Xinhua News Agency on Sunday welcomed Ma’s victory and said it “may open new chances.”
ii. Last October Hu called for peaceful diplomatic reunification with Taiwan on the 100th anniversary of the xinhai revolution.
iii. Last October Taiwan and China signed a nuclear safety cooperation treaty.
iv. 80% of Taiwan’s population favors the Cross-Strait talks which function to settle issues and bring both sides closer together.
v. Nearly a million Taiwanese citizens spend at least 6 months of the year in Mainland China.
vi. Just two weeks ago Wang Yi, The Chinese mainland's top Taiwan affairs official has said that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait expect new chances for the development of cross-Strait relations based on upholding the "1992 Consensus."
b. Economically
i. China and Taiwan signed a trade agreement in 2010 that drastically increased trade, reduced tariffs, and led to the best relations between the two in over 60 years.
ii. China is Taiwan’s number one investor, and while Taiwan is only officially China’s 7th largest investor, when you take into account investment that goes through 3rd parties but originates in Taiwanese firms, Taiwan becomes China’s biggest investor, with $300 billion in investment.
iii. Just this week Taiwan's financial regulator is considering allowing individuals to invest in wealth management products denominated in China's yuan currency.
iv. 42% of Taiwan’s exports are to China.
2. However, Reunification can never happen as long as the US sends military aid.
a. Arms sales remain the big split between the two sides. According to Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii, “The Ma Ying-jeou position that arms sales contribute to peaceful cross-strait relations, is the exact opposite of the PRC position that arms sales contribute to tensions across the Taiwan Strait. One must assume that there’s a limit to Chinese tolerance of that contradiction.”
Links:
1. We eliminate arms deals with Taiwan.
Internal links:
1. No one else will fill the gap. Taiwan’s list of allies has been steadily shrinking from 30 in 2000 to 23 today. These allies are mostly small impoverished nations in Africa and latin America. Everyone else wants a sweet piece of that mainland pie.
Impacts:
1. This stops a Taiwan-China war
a. The only way war between Taiwan and China ever breaks out is if ambiguity convinces Taiwan to attack China. China knows that Taiwan is not a real threat, it has no allies outside the United States, its window to be dubbed the “real china” has passed. China would never attack and risk a war with the United States. Taiwan on the other hand has nothing to lose. While the KMT was able to win the most recent elections the nationalist DPP walked away with almost 46% of the vote. If the nationalists decide that they can afford to fight for independence knowing the US will back them, a full war between China and Taiwan would break out.
2. This dramatically improves US-China relations
a. The Taiwan issue is the biggest rift between the US and China. A US concession here would be a show of good faith and could begin to open negotiations on monetary policies and human rights
China Tariffs PMC
Background:
1. China has been manipulating its currency for many years in order to keep the yuan very weak compared to the US dollar. It does this largely by buying up reserves of US dollars at a rate specifically calculated to keep the yuan a certain amount weaker than the US dollar.
2. China claims that the yuan is no longer pegged to the dollar, but it is clear that it is still devaluing its currency. It has been months since China supposedly allowed the value of the yuan to float, and, yet, it has only changed in value by 2%, and almost all of that change has been very recently, clearly in anticipation of the House vote on the tariffs bill.
Plan: The Senate should pass H.R. 2378, the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act.
Solvency:
1. The Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act, hereafter ‘the tariffs bill’, would give corporations the right to apply to the Department of Commerce to have duties placed on particular goods from specific countries. There must be evidence that these countries have been deliberately manipulating the value of their currency for at least 18 months.
2. China clearly meets the criteria as outlined by the law.
3. There is no alternative to protectionism by the United States to counteract China’s actions. The United States is the primary target of China’s currency devaluation, and the WTO has made it clear that it will not act against China’s currency devaluation because it is too general to be deemed an illegal subsidy toward any specific product.
4. The tariffs bill is specifically structured to meet WTO requirements by forcing producers of specific goods within the US to demonstrate that they have been disadvantaged by currency devaluation by a given country on a case by case basis.
ECON ADVANTAGE:
Harms
1. THE US ECON IS FRAGILE: As the stimulus runs out, political gridlock makes further intervention impossible, and the structural problems with the US economy remain unaddressed we are heading for a double dip depression. Meanwhile, high and growing unemployment cripples consumer spending, reducing corporate profits. This causes corporations to stop hiring, creating a vicious cycle.
2. US INDUSTRY IS A DECADE BEHIND: Economic growth in the US for the last decade has been illusory; financial tricks generated most of that growth, and, now that this bubble has burst, our country has essentially returned to 2001 levels of industrial capacity. This has left the country in a structural economic decline, not producing enough substantial goods to support the level of wealth expected in the United States.
3. CHINESE CURRENCY DEVALUATION IS CRIPPLING RECOVERY: The next big boom is going to be green tech, and China has embraced green tech whole heartedly. Its currency manipulation, combined with a lack of support for green tech by the US government leave us without the ability to compete. Political gridlock in the US makes it unlikely that the US will embrace green energy subsidies soon enough to make the US competitive, meaning that checking China’s export advantage is the only means of encouraging green energy development in the US.
4. CHINA’S LONG TERM ECONOMIC PROSPECTS IN QUESTION: The giant export/import gap is good for influential Chinese export companies, but bad for China’s long term prospects. The export profits are rarely passed on to Chinese workers, explaining the recent wave of strikes in China. Inflationary effects make imports ridiculously expensive for the Chinese and the practice of buying up US dollars also diverts massive amounts of Chinese resources to a very low profit enterprise, rather than toward investment in key domestic projects and services. These factors cripple the growth of a Chinese middle class. This, in turn, calls into question the future of Chinese domestic markets and the growth of knowledge industries in China, which are key to China’s future economic and political stability.
Solvency:
1. PLAN INCREASES US COMPETITIVENESS: Plan allows American industries to compete with subsidized Chinese companies to petition for duties on Chinese goods, as detailed in the Solvency contention. Cross apply that here.
2. CHINA STOPS MANIPULATING ITS CURRENCY: Plan eliminates Chinese incentive to continue manipulating its currency in a world where its benefit is dubious. This policy is clearly aimed at the US, as demonstrated by the fact that the yuan pinned its currency to the dollar, and the new US policy will render currency manipulation a useless tool to subsidize exports. China is facing strong international pressure from the US and others to change its policy, and you can cross apply the reasons why it is bad for China’s economy as reasons why it would stop if its benefit had been negated.
a. China recently announced that it was allowing interest rates to rise on the renembi, meaning it is willing to revalue gradually, indicating that they will probably say yes.
3. US INDUSTRY RECOVERS: The United States still has the world’s strongest university system and one of its most creative tech industries, and, in a world where we can compete with Chinese exports, innovation will allow US industry to recover.
Impacts:
1. US CHINA CONFLICT: If congressional action isn’t taken to address China’s currency manipulation, the executive will be forced to act to address the situation by applying increased military pressure to China. As the US increases its presence in the South China Sea, China will respond in kind. Increased military activity in the region will agitate regional actors, including North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Eventually, military tensions will erupt into conflict, which will escalate into a fully fledged conventional war between the US and China. Because the US does not have the troop capabilities to defeat a country as large as China in a conventional war, and China does not have a sophisticated enough air force or navy to take on the US, one country will be forced to turn to nuclear weapons. The nuclear taboo will be broken, and all out nuclear war will ensue, drawing in US and Chinese allies until WWIII breaks out and nuclear Armageddon ensues, destroying all life.
2. RESOURCE WARS: The other alternative is that the US economy will increasingly fall further and further behind while it remains the world’s greatest military superpower. This will force America to increasingly use its military to secure resources overseas in order to keep its economy afloat and support its military. This will lead to the devastation of undeveloped countries all over the world, killing millions on its own. This will also bring US interests into conflict with China and Russia. This will lead to proxy wars, which will eventually draw in troops from the controlling countries. Conventional conflict will escalate into nuclear conflict because conventional military defenses are too sophisticated for a conventional war to resolve itself without nukes. Cross apply the nuclear annihilation scenario.
ALT ENERGY
Peak Oil Advantage
Harms
1. Won’t peak until 2020 or later
1. Reserves
i. The world’s oil reserves are estimated to total 1342.207 billion barrels.
ii. Additionally, the global natural gas reserves are estimated to be 6,245.346 trillion cubic feet.
iii. We also have over 500 years worth of coal in the United States alone
2. Discoveries – you learn something new every day
i. Last year Pemex, Mexico’s state oil company, announced a discovery of 43 million barrels in the Gulf.
ii. Chevron and Devon and Statoil announced September 5th of this year that they discovered a new oil field that could increase US proven reserves of oil and natural gas (as they think the field contains both) by as much as 50%.
iii. The US Senate is weeks away from voting on the lifting of the 25-year ban on offshore drilling off the majority of the coasts in the US.
1. The discovery creates political pressure and cooperate incentive to lift the ban, increasing the amount of oil we have access to.
3. Technology – the R&D is out there and being funded
i. Although many alternative sources of energy use oil in the status quo, they could easily be done with natural gas or electricity. We only use oil now because it’s cheap and available, but the technology exists for alternative fuel and alternative methods of fuel production
ii. GreenTech has developed an algae biofuel reactor that produces algae from CO2 emissions. It’s basically hooked up to the side of a coal plant, and uses all the CO2 produced to grow algae that’s later harvested for biodisel to run cars.
iii. In addition to GreenTech’s closed bioreactor that feeds directly off of power plant emissions, LiveFuels of San Carlos, Calif. received $10 million in funding from The Quercus Trust in 2007 and looks to continue the Aquatic Species Program’s research in using open-pond algae systems to develop biofuel.
iv. More R&D and better technologies being developed means that we can turn to other sources of fuel and energy while bringing down the cost with greater supply and better methods of development.
v. Algae would do nothing to food prices,we don’t eat it, and it can be grown in vertical sheets as well as ponds, so you don’t necessarily have to take up large amounts of land (and take away farm space) to grow huge amounts. Additionally, algae doubles in size every 7 to 12 hours, so we can grow an enormous volume in a relatively small space.
d. Timing
i. Consumption has been flat-lining or declining in recent years, making it likely that the oil reserves we do have will last us longer as demand for expensive oil goes down and demand for better technology goes up.
1. Crude oil surged to a one year high of $82/barrel last week (10/27). Prices have gained 76 percent this year and reached $82 a barrel on Oct. 21.
2. Global demand has decreased over the past few years – it was down 0.6% in 2008 from the previous year
2. Investment in alternate fuel and energy up, but not widely used
1. While the status quo prices of biofuel are up around $3.79 per gallon, this cost would come down (and be more reasonable) when two things happen
i. Oil supply decreases and it becomes more and more expensive over the next ten to twenty years
ii. Our methods of production are perfected, and we can produce large volumes of alternative fuel very cheaply and quickly
Solvency
1. Plan does something to restrict carbon emissions
2. Alt energy dependence up as oil prices rise after peak and slowly decline
a. Phasing out oil slowly, because we have the time and reserves to do it
b. More R&D to alternative energy means we have viable sources of energy that are reasonably priced, and what people move to as oil becomes scarce and more expensive.
Impx.
1. Global Warming
Decreasing CO2 emissions with alternative forms of energy means we can solve for global warming – this peak oil is a global phenomenon, so everyone’s decreasing their emissions, which means we globally solve for extinction because we avoid things like ocean acidification (CO2 released and dissolved into the oceans as carbonic acid, which lowers the pH of the water and makes it impossible for fish to get enough oxygen, which collapses the ecosystem of the ocean, meaning that the 1B people who live off the oceans don’t have a livelihood and start resource wars with the people who suddenly can’t grow crops because of climate change shifting the food belt, which means we have wars and no food or money, which gives us global economic collapse and means that no one can make any kind of technology to save us, because we develop technology from the nature we have, but the nature we have is destroyed which leads to extinction).
Biofuels PMC
Plan: USFG S. significantly increase support for biomass energy by subsidizing applied research on cellulosic biofuel production.
Inherency:
US SUPPORT HAS FOCUSED ON THE WRONG PLACES IN THE PAST: US support for biomass usage has often been broad and allowed research on already fairly well developed and not particularly useful techniques for converting starchy food products into chemical feedstocks and biofuels to soak up a large portion of the funding, undermining its effectiveness. It has also been too small in scale.
US SUPPORT IS DECLINING: The farm bill hasn’t passed, and Obama proposed a plan to cut $5 billion dollars in farm subsidies, and Republicans and Democrats have both indicated an interest in cutting support for biofuel subsidies and ag subsidies in general. Some polls even show that voters in traditionally pro-ag states prioritize spending cuts. Past support for this kind alternative biofuel research has come largely in the form of DoE and DoA money for ‘biomass utilization’, so the result will be the evisceration of public support for alternative fuel sources.
Solvency:
SOLVENCY IS RELATIVELY FAST: This type of technology has a very low regulatory burden, at least relative to many other kinds of tech. The most promising lines of research for this involve industrial biotechnology, and significant advances in this sort of tech often have timeframes of as little as three years. The huge amount of idle capital businesses are sitting on also mean that they will be more likely to act on the opportunity the government is giving them to increase the probability of making such investments without suffering a loss.
Advantage: Oil is Bad
Harms
CURRENT MANDATES ARE NOT HAVING THE DESIRED EFFECT: As part of the Energy Independence and Security Act, the share of celluostic biofuels in the US market is mandated to grow to 16 billion gallons per year by 2022. The current share is close to zero.
BIOFUELS ARE LIKELY TO LOSE PUBLIC SUPPORT: The government will need to signal more support, rather than less, if biofuels are going to succeed, but the Obama administration has proposed $5 billion in ag subsidies cuts that would affect biofuels and both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have signaled support for cutting such subsidies as part of deficit reduction measures.
CELLULOSTIC BIOFUELS AREN’T VIABLE NOW: Hydrolysis of cellulose to make sugar currently costs upwards of $0.50/gallon of fuel, which is very high and by itself stops these fuels from being competitive. Pretreatment of feedstocks using bacteria or fungi is also very time consuming, taking 10-14 days. This slows the process and wastes space and money. Additionally, the pretreatment process is not effective enough, often leaving too many impurities behind for hydrolysis to proceed to completion. This can more than halve yields. Finally, fermentation is done with yeast, rather than bacteria, reducing the efficiency of the process by requiring that it be done at low temperatures to avoid killing the yeast.
BIOFUELS AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE WITHOUT CELLULOSE: Because of the burden of high land, fertilizer and energy requirements for the use of traditional starch crops to produce ethanol, as well as the overlap with both the food market and land used to produce food, biofuels cannot be used as a realistic fuel solution for the US and most of the rest of the world unless we make them from cellulose.
BIOFUELS ARE COMPETING WITH FOOD: Currently, 12% and rising of US corn land is used to produce ethanol, rather than food. Because US production makes up such a large share of world production, the result is that we artificially drive up food prices, causing starvation and malnutrition worldwide.
WARMING IS HAPPENING: We are approaching 400 ppm of CO2, and the contribution that oil consumption is making, already large, is set to increase hugely as cars become ubiquitous in developing countries that already use dirty fuels for electricity.
PEAK OIL IS COMING: Several reasons:
1. China already accounts for a third of the world’s incremental demand for oil, and is projected to double its demand in nine years, indicating that they will use 1.5 times as much oil as the US by 2020.
2. Of the 34 major oil producing regions in the world, production in 25 has already peaked, leaving only nine with potential for growth.
3. New discoveries are unlikely to significantly outpace these projections; even though technology is much more sophisticated now, new oil discoveries world wide peaked fifty years ago.
4. Much of the oil remaining is less accessible, requires more treatment, and is in environmentally fragile areas.
5. Together these factors indicate that production will fall by 25 percent by 2020 and 65% by 2050.
6. Developing countries are unlikely to turn to electric cars. China has already had problems with power supply shortages, and its capacity to produce electricity is unlikely to be able to accommodate hundreds of millions of cars.
Solvency
CONSISTENT SUPPORT IS THE ONLY BARRIER TO ADVANCING THE TECH:
1. There is no mystery- all of the barriers to cellulosic biofuels should be solvable with already existing techniques; experimentation to figure out exactly what to do and engineer the tools needed is all that’s left. The issue is that there are few firms doing dedicated research in the US or elsewhere, and those that do exist suffer from inconsistent investment and uncertain demand.
2. The plan provides a large amount of funding that will greatly reduce the amount of time required to make cellulosic biofuels viable by increasing research and encouraging skilled chemical or biotechnical engineers to turn toward biofuels research as firms expand into the field.
BIOFUELS ARE CARBON NEUTRAL: Everyone thinks otherwise because corn ethanol is so resource intensive, but biofuels are technically carbon neutral, and would be in actuality if we had cellulosic biofuels. This is because they are much less resource intensive and could provide enough ethanol to radically transform our transportation infrastructure, so we wouldn’t be using tons of oil to make the stuff that’s supposed to replace oil. Replacing oil has the potential to reduce emissions by 30% by itself.
US EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS WILL GET MODELLED: This will surely get billed as an emissions reductions effort when we start implementing cellulosic biofuels, and other countries will not only use the tech we’ve developed, but be pressured to reduce their emissions and develop green tech. Several warrants:
1. INCREASED DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE: China, India and other developing countries will no longer be able to protest that the US has made no structural changes to reduce its emissions, allowing the West to exert pressure multilaterally without US hypocrisy at issue.
2. COMPETETIVE PRESSURE: China especially has made a very serious effort to increase its investment in and production of green tech, and having the US achieve one of the holy grails of renewable energy will force an even more serious commitment from China to increase its stake in green tech, pushing further investment and leading to high targeted GHG reductions.
3. INDIA WILL MODEL US: The US will make serious efforts to convince ideologically compatible countries such as India to follow its lead, and will have a much better case once it has weaned itself significantly off oil.
FEEDSTOCKS ARE AVAILABLE: Perennial grasses would be the primary dedicated energy crops, and there is low quality pasture land not suitable for other crops equal in size to 6-7 times the land we currently use to grow corn in the United States available for year round grass growth. Additionally, there are already vast quantities of crop residues and woody tissue produced each year that could be used to produce ethanol. The Departments of Energy and Agriculture found that there is already enough sustainable, non-food biomass produced every year for us to replace one third of our petroleum consumption with ethanol using cellulosic biofuel tech.
HIGH OIL PRICES WILL HELP: Although many important actors are in a state of denial about peak oil, everyone recognizes that oil prices are high, which will drive investment into a viable alternative once the tech required has been developed.
BIOFUELS CAN BE COST EFFECTIVE SOON: Already, imagining that the proper infrastructure existed, the CRS estimates that cellulosic biofuels would price between $2.50-3.00/gallon. This assumes optimum laboratory conditions, and the process must be improved by further research before it can be efficient on a commercial scale, but if further biotechnological developments allowed production to get even close to optimal efficiency, cellulosic biofuels would be cost competitive enough to prompt an infrastructure switch.
PLAN WOULD SIGNAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT: There is some question as to whether the government will continue to support cellulosic biofuels with subsidies set to expire in 2012. This move would show that the government intends to continue to support biofuels as a long term solution to oil dependency for the United States, which is a prerequisite to the maturation of the industry.
Impacts
PEAK OIL: As we approach and reach peak oil, oil price spikes and insufficient supply will lead to:
1. WORLD ECONOMIC RECESSION: Historically, the US has always entered a state of recession whenever there have been oil price shocks, and since these will become virtually the norm in a decade, our and other oil dependent economies- including EU economies and, by then, China- will suffer elongated economic contractions. This will tank other parts of the world economy dependent on trade and investment relationships. Transportation will become much more expensive, further reducing trade and causing food shortages in parts of the world that import large portions of their food. Impacts:
a. POVERTY AND STARVATION: Lots of people will die of hunger because food will be less available and others will suffer prolonged suffering and earlier demise due to poverty.
b. POLITICAL INSTABILITY: Countries without highly stable governments will be far more likely to undergo regime changes either in the forms of rebellions or military coos. The result will be millions of deaths due to crackdowns and civil war. These problems are likely in both China, whose government relies on economic growth for control, and Pakistan, whose government has poor control of its military already. The result will be that war becomes more frequent and the use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons becomes more likely as unstable actors gain power, greatly increasing the likelihood of a devastating World War.
c. RESOURCE COMPETITION: Even if major military and economic powers keep their cool and begin making serious efforts to solve the issue, by the time these problems emerge the search for energy will become desperate and there won’t be time to wait for long term structural changes such as a switch to biofuels or electric vehicles paired with increased nuclear tech. The result will be that great powers will redouble their imperialist efforts to gain resource footholds and that competition will be fierce, increasing the prevalence of proxy wars between powers, leading to casualties, poverty and promoting cultural genocide. These always have the potential to spill over into conventional war, which will always have the potential to go nuclear, especially if a state of highly aggressive resource competition becomes the norm and actors are desperate.
2. INFLATION: Everything will become much more expensive as transportation costs spike. This means that everything, from food to clothing to health care, will become less available. Lots of people will die from exposure, lack of nutrition or health care, or else suffer in prolonged poverty.
WARMING: Global warming is not something that either happens or doesn’t happen- climate change can be mitigated even if it cannot be stopped, and the level of impact it causes also depends in large part on how quickly it happens, which depends on the continuing levels of GHG emissions. This is because we ourselves and our ecosystem can adapt to slower warming. Warming itself is less consequential than how fast it happens, and current levels of GHG emissions are causing carbon concentrations to rise 300 times faster than any other time in our known geological history. Feedback loops can happen, but they are not self sustaining. Methane from ice isn’t enough to drive catastrophic warming by itself and doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act. Mitigating future warming will help to avert the following impacts:
1. SEA LEVEL RISE: Sea level rise will displace hundreds of millions of individuals in nations of types, leading to poverty and the outbreak of regional conflicts between competing ethnic groups forced into one another’s land. Refugees will suffer terrible poverty and abuse. Sea level rise will also disrupt food supplies as societies dependent on fishing see their trade disrupted by the changing fish habitation patterns and loss of access, leading to mass starvation. Economies will be disrupted as coastal erosion increases and costal infrastructure is destroyed or damaged as a result. Water tables will be poisoned by salt water, displacing millions and exacerbating these impacts.
2. LOSS OF AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT: Although some northern areas will have increased agricultural output, the higher the temperatures the more overall agricultural land is will be lost, especially in areas with higher populations and population growth, which therefore need them the most, and in areas that are poorer. This will cause starvation and disrupt all but the most northern economies, leading to global economic recession.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION: As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, the amount that dissolves in the ocean increases. It reacts with water to produce carbonic acid, lowering the pH of ocean water. This kills off microorganisms that live in coral reefs, bleaching and killing the reefs, which are the host of much of the oceans biodiversity. Phytoplankton are also sensitive to pH and most populations cannot adapt to the rapidly changing pH. Thus warming causes many to die. Both of these sets of organisms represent keystone species for much of our ocean life, which in turn supports coastal habitats and much of our land biodiversity. The result will be a biodiversity collapse that will result in mass starvation due to a loss of fish and coastal life and economic collapse because we rely on our ecosystems as natural infrastructure every day.
BÉISBOL
Venezuela - ¡Chávez no se va!
Plan: The US State department should initiate a series of international sporting exhibitions between United States and Venezuelan national sporting teams. These exhibitions should include youth camps, coaching camps, and exhibition contests.
Diplomatic efforts between the United States and Venezuela are chilled.
US diplomats were kicked out of the country. This signals a total collapse of formal state-to-state relations. Arguably most or all attempts to engage Venezuela at this point will fail. State-to state relations are not really possible with the elections pending after Chavez kicked the Americans diplomats out and died soon thereafter. Traditional methods would be foolish and likely backfire.
Advantage one: The US has no influence in Venezuela and WE SHOULD
1. Anti US propaganda is rampant. There is no way traditional state to state relations will be able to successfully export Americanism to Venezuela now. Most attempts are re-articulated by the government or media sources preventing the message from arriving accurately.
2. The US has a terrible history in South and Latin America. Most of our policies are simply not looked at with a favorable eye because we have tried to manipulate the region with all sorts of imperialist policies. When a US peace force, or aid package, or trade deal, or even diplomat arrives they are seen as forces of evil. As the inherency makes clear, they kicked out the ambassadors and accused them of undermining their government.
3. The only possible outcomes now are negative. The US is going to be frozen out of the region and/or vilified by the new leadership in Venezuela. Unless a significant repackaging of the American image is able to occur successfully in the very short-term relations will go from non-existent to hostile. Any ill fated diplomatic surge into the nation now will get spun by the media and captured by politicians who seek to gain favor with an anti US stance.
4. The US has a variety of life saving and life quality increasing ideas and technologies that it would love to export to Venezuela in a world with more favorable relations. However, all of these policies are seen as bankrupt because of the poor image of the US. The US needs to be seen as an honest broker that can be related to. Policies that make huge claims of utopian relationships will fail without an initial alteration of the US image by the population.
IMPACT
1. If the US is able to increase its relations with Venezuela people’s lives will get better. The US will be able to provide the following things that Venezuelans need: _____
2. The US and Venezuela have the potential to trade the following goods:_____
That would makes the lives of people in both nations better and increase growth in both areas.
3. There are a few potential flashpoints for conflict between groups in the region. ______ vs _______. If the US is viewed favorably by Venezuela, the US might be called on to assist in these conflicts and would be able to resolve them more easily than any fighting force on the planet. Even the perception that there are stable relations with the US would prevent most groups from starting conflict, due to the looming threat of American intervention.
Advantage 2: If not US then China
1. China is attempting to increase relations with Venezuela -- ___________
2. The US needs to find a way to get a baseline relationship with Venezuela if it hopes to pass future policies that would counter those. Of course the US can offer them all the same things and more, but US offers are seen as hostile now. Something is needed to prime the pump of the relationship. A crucial first step is necessary.
!. Increased relations between China and Venezuela would be bad.
-China provides bad HR model
-China provides bad labor rights model
-China burs FFs poorly and buys them all
-The US freaks out
Baseball Diplo is the Shit (Solvency/Empirics)
The plan solves both advantages by opening the door for a new relationship between both nations. Sports diplomacy has a long-standing history of peacefully exporting American ideals. Unlike other forms of diplomacy, sports do not require translation in any sense. Sports do not require language translation. Sports do not require analysts to break down the political implications of the exhibitions. Sports cannot fall prey to propaganda nearly as easily. This means this is one of the only policies that will prime the pump of relations. Sporting exhibitions simply allow the masses in either nation to humanize the other nation as they see representatives from both nations in equal contests that they enjoy.
Sports allow both nations to harbor the most positive forms of nationalism. Sports are the safest place for a citizen to root for their homeland and feel pride in the individuals they produced. Moreover, national sports teams are often publicly funded, or fundraising nonprofits meaning the populations often owns the team more senses than one. These positive outlets for nationalism ensure citizens from both nations are able to engage in civil politics without simple national pride clouding other issues. Sports have proven an ice-breaker throughout history.
A steady relationship on the field will allow both nations to examine other deeper relations. Citizens will find polices more palpable after seeing their sports stars engage in civil contests. There is no convincing citizens that America is still always the great white devil, when the only thing you see about America in the post Chavez era is American baseball coaches teaching your kids to pitch and the Venezuelan soccer team scoring on Tim Howard (the American soccer goalie).
Example time:
1. The US has engaged in a series of baseball games with Latin American nations to attempt to rebuild relations. Baseball is one of the only types of diplomacy that has any success in Cuba.
To commemorate the historic competition of a U.S. and Cuban baseball team on a diamond in Havana this Sunday, the National Security Archive today posted a collection of documents which chronicles the origins of "baseball diplomacy"--an effort initiated 25 years ago.
The documents, ranging from unclassified letters to declassified secret cables and high-level State Department memoranda, reveal the efforts of then-commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, and his counterparts in Cuba, along with aides to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to arrange a game between U.S. and Cuban teams in 1975. Among the revelations are: Baseball diplomacy would "help break the ice" between two nations separated by decades of hostility, as ping pong had done for U.S.-Chinese relations, according to memoranda written for Kissinger.
2. International Ping Pong contests were crucial to relations starting up between the US and China after having spent the entirety of human history as far apart as possible.
The documents, ranging from unclassified letters to declassified secret cables and high-level State Department memoranda, reveal the efforts of then-commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, and his counterparts in Cuba, along with aides to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to arrange a game between U.S. and Cuban teams in 1975. Among the revelations are: Baseball diplomacy would "help break the ice" between two nations separated by decades of hostility, as ping pong had done for U.S.-Chinese relations, according to memoranda written for Kissinger.
3. The Baltimore Oriels played a series of baseball games against the Cuban national team. This was seen as a non-political gesture to attempt to rebuild relations after the Bay of Pigs. Unfortunately this proposal was pushed back for decades after its initial proposal. Another series of these games is being proposed by now retired player Cal Ripken Jr., in an effort to re-establish a relationship with Cuba. This conjoined effort would further grant legitimacy to the AFF efforts in Venezuela.
4. Hockey basically solved the cold war. After the miracle on ice relations were never allowed to get as low as they had been previously. The US citizens were more easily able to relate to Russians after seeing American hockey amateurs defeat the Russian national team in dramatic fashion in the Olympics of 1980. This moment has gone down in history as a turning point in American perceptions of Russia. The US would go on to get crushed by the same Russian national team year after year until the break up of the USSR, but one fleeting moment of sport changed the citizens perceptions forever. So what if the US gets owned by Venezuela in these soccer matches, it’s the small risk of a great moment that could bring the nations together, or change one nation’s perception of the other that you should vote aff for.
We do not link to anything. There are no DAs to this AFF. We are not some imperialist project of American idealism. We are not exporting capitalism or neo-liberalism. We are not exporting violence or conflict. We don’t need to win or lose any of the games. There is no chance that the AFF is rejected, since it is the most peaceful offering possible.
Also, Venezuela loves soccer and baseball. They have scores of pro players in the highest forms of both sports. Also, there are tens of things that would thump any turns or links. We have Olympics in the US and non-allied nations still send their teams to play in them.
Venezuela has participated in every Olympics it has qualified for, including those in the US during Chavez’s rule. We host the little league, Babe Ruth, Pony League, Cal Ripken league, and Legion international tournaments in the US. Venezuela sends youngsters to all of these events. There are other neutral sites the contests could take place on even if there were concerns about visa or travel. Bush invited tens of coaches to the US from Venezuela in a diplomatic effort during his presidency. This was during the lead-up to the Little League world series.
Baseball Diplo = T
You bet we are T – The US has done baseball diplomacy with Venezuela multiple times in the past. We have sent baseball coaches, had soccer matches and engaged in baseball tournaments. There is significant lit about the AFF solvency. It has likely been used more often, in this exact form (considering baseball has been used in diplomacy since 1850s and the rules haven’t changed much) for over a hundred years. This is the most predictable AFF in a way. This is certainly diplomacy, certainly significant, certainly done by the US state department. There is neg ground galore, should have read the empire strikes out. We’ll tell you about it after the 2nc.
CYBERSECURITY
Cyberterror Advantage
Harms:
1. Cyberattacks have increased 17-fold from 2009 to 2011, despite proclaimed "advances" in US cybersecurity
2. Current legislation is insufficient, even the widely promoted Cybersecurity Act of 2012 does not have sufficient provisions to counter the cyberterrorism threat, relying on voluntary information sharing between government and industry that would not be conducive to swiftly responding to threats. Similarly, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act would not be effective in promoting information sharing or protection
3. Terrorist Hack Attempt will Happen: Terrorists will launch a cyber-attack against a nuclear facility, as this is the lowest risk, highest reward scenario for them, allowing a nuclear missile strike while not risking capture or retaliation
4. Terrorist Nuclear Strike Catastrophic: Missile launch would kill hundreds of thousands, radiation would poison the area, making it barren for dozens of years
5. Sparks Nuclear War: A missile strike launched from the US on Russia or China causes global nuclear war .
Solvency:
1. Less vulnerability to cyberterrorism improves US global image, allows US to focus efforts on helping other nations combat cyberterrorism
2. More efforts to combat cyberterrorism also decreases our vulnerability to Chinese cyber attacks, as our cyber-infrastructure is increased in general
3. US heg good, more secure world state, better research opportunities, etc
4. Without adequate cybersecurity, US heg goes down as China has more tech than the US, enabling hacking/disruption of US abilities
DRONES
Heg Advantage
Harms:
1. US soft power is low now in the Middle East
a. Generally: We’ve had to acquiesse to Pakistan rather than just telling them how it’s going to be (move, bitch, get out the way). We unfroze millions of dollars of military aid in exchange for their re-opening US/NATO routes. Illustrates how we have to use carrots now.
b. Specifically in Afghanistan and Iraq – our heg is low due to drone use, which has absolutely exploded under Obama [The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago, and asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones in the 2012 budget.]
c. These drones are a symbol os American power, running roughshod over soverignity and killing thousands of innocent civilians. The US uses them to increase terror in civilians they don’t kill, too, because we can fly them silently, but instead choose to have them make noise when they’re flying over, like a reminder that the US is flying killing machines over their heads.
d. Drones have replaced Guantanamo as the recruiting tool of choice for terrorists – in his 2010 guilty plea, Shazad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, used drones as his justification for targeting civilians – telling the judge “when the drones hit, they don’t see children”. This massively increases terrorist recruitment and sets the US as a target even when we’re drawing down troops in the region
Solvency:
1. Plan removes drones and is a massive reversal of Obama’s stance on this military strategy
2. It removes the centerpiece for terrorist recruitment by removing the symbol of US terror in the region – it’s seen as a concession, which increases our soft power in the region and makes the US seem more benevolent (lol)
Impacts:
1. Soft Power is good (insert favorite impact)
Video Game Effect Advantage
1. The predator drone interface the US military uses to operate our unmanned drones is exactly like a video game – from the screen display to the controllers.
a. The military recognizes this and actually hires gamers who are really highly ranked to operate these systems and kill people in real life.
b. This is bad, because it creates what’s referred to as “the video game effect” where these people become desensitized to the violence they’re actually inflicting in the real world, including killing civilians and children.
c. Operators, rather than seeing human beings, perceive mere blips on a screen. The potential is for this to lead to a culture of convenient killing in which we’re immune to the atrocities and suffering we inflict on other human beings
Solvency:
1. Plan bans the use of drones/UAV’s/whatever
Impacts:
1. Logic of disposability is bad
--ECON – GENERIC—
Econ – Financial Transactions Tax
Plan: The USFG should impose a financial transactions tax on trades of stock, currency, derivatives and other financial assets beyond the first $100,000 equal to 0.25% of the value of the trade for stock and derivative trades and 0.01% on currency and other trades.
Background:
1. The US had a financial transactions tax for decades until it was phased out starting in 1966.
2. In the wake of the financial crisis, the idea of imposing a financial transactions tax gained some attention in the United States and the EU, as there was considerable ill will toward the financial services industry and national governments needed to raise revenue.
3. The push for FTT gained momentum when runaway trading caused a ‘Flash Crash’ in which the Dow Jones plunged 1000 points in less than half an hour- the largest drop in history. We’ll discuss the causes and case solvency on the advantages. Although the market later recovered, investors were spooked and policy-makers were rightly worried that such crashes created a unstable investment environment. These efforts have lagged and are unlikely to make progress until after the US presidential elections, however.
4. Empirically, countries with such a tax haven’t seen a loss of productive trading or a decline in the health of their financial services industries as a result. The UK has such a tax and London remains one of the world’s oldest and largest financial services hubs, and is one of the most profitable today.
SOLVENCY:
1. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that the tax will raise about $177 billion an year in the Untied States alone, and that virtually all of the tax will be paid by individuals engaging in speculative trading or derivative trading.
2. The Center also estimates that the tax would be highly effective, leading to a 50% reduction in trading volumes.
Harms
FLASH TRADING CAUSES FLASH CRASHES: On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones made history when it plummeted 1000 points in less than half an hour. The crash caused absurd downs and a few equally absurd ups in the market. Accenture shares fell by over 99%, from $40 to $0.01. While that was happening shares in Sotheby’s became three thousand times more valuable, going from $34 to $99,999.99 Although the exact cause is unknown, we know for certain that it was enabled by computer executed high frequency trading, in which trades are executed under certain market conditions, like a rise or drop in the price of the given financial asset, or a change in the value of some related asset, and so on. Without this sort of vacuous high frequency trading, it would be almost impossible for this sort of self-sustaining market crash to occur except world where it did not reflect some sort of underlying economic problem, because people have to base their decisions on substantive economic considerations.
FLASH CRASHES COULD HAVE LASTING CONSEQUENCES: In an unstable economy like the current one, a flash crash could precipitate a broader run on the markets by causing a market panic, causing a collapse in private investment and capital hoarding of the sort that caused the great depression. At the very least, flash crashes will shake confidence and perpetuate economic gloom by demonstrating market instability, hurting business confidence and perpetuating low consumer spending.
THE BROADER ECONOMY IS HAMPERED BY MEANINGLESS SPECULATIVE TRADING: The focus on speculative trading is largely enabled by the low cost of making a trade and by the focus on high frequency trading. The result is a derivatives market that is supposed to be worth 66 times the value of the entire world economy and a financial services industry that even the IMF calls “too big.” These sorts of trades make up 50-75% of the total in the US. This hurts the economy in two ways:
1. IT WASTES RESOURCES: The type of trading we’re describing has almost nothing to do with what is happening in the real economy; it just follows, and then amplifies, market trends, regardless of whether they are good, bad, or just meaningless noise. The whole point of investment is supposed to be to allocate capital in such a way that the most successful and profitable, and (hopefully) USEFUL enterprises are rewarded for success and get access to the resources needed to be productive. Esoteric financial instruments and high-volume trading trade-off directly with more productive endeavors by consuming capital that would otherwise be allocated elsewhere.
2. IT FOSTERS FUTURE BUBBLES: This sort of trading isn’t what caused the 2008 crisis, but it could be a factor in future ones. By allocating resources in computer-propelled cycles without regard to fundamentals, high frequency trading encourages investors to participate in the creation of speculative bubbles like the housing bubbles because they become focused on following blips on computer screens without consideration for the fundamentals underlying market movements.
SHADY DEALS: The Greek debt crisis was enabled by shady, high frequency transaction as part of a shady deal with Goldman Sachs, who helped Greece cook their books to hide their debts from their European allies. The scheme was very complex, but involved many currency swaps, and, had a financial transactions tax like the one we are proposing been in place, would have cost Greek investors alone tens of millions of dollars, which, considering the difference in GDP sizes, is kind of like a transaction costing US investors almost $3 billion.
Solvency
CROSS APPLY THE CASE SOLVENCY
DISCOURAGES HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING. This argument is intuitive. During the most frightening 20 minutes of the 2010 flash crash, the tax would have raised as much as $7 million dollars a minute total from those involved. Just the prospect of such large losses will discourage computer-focused high frequency trading. And, of course, the actual costs involved will help too.
ENCOURAGES MORE MEANINGFUL TRADING. The plan will promote more meaningful investment by forcing frequent traders to consider their trades somewhat more carefully, take into account the economic fundamentals that underlie their trades, and simply by making meaningless high frequency trades unfavorable, forcing investors to look to more traditional ways of making money.
MAKES CHEATING LESS LIKELY: It’s difficult to predict exactly when another situation like Greece will arise, but it is clear that bad behavior is enabled when there is no cost to engaging in such financial transactions, leading to a ‘why the fuck not’ attitude among those who, like Greece, most need to consider smarter and harder decisions. Imposing a cost on this behavior makes them think twice.
IMPACTS:
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE: 1) Short term because Flash Crashes could happen literally at any moment when the markets are open 2) Medium term because the revenue from the plan will help make sure that cool new enterprises or lagging but generally deserving companies get the investment capital they need 3) Long term because the plan will prevent future collapses and puts long term investment on the right path
Econ – Capital Gains Tax
Plan: The USFG should raise capital gains taxes by requiring that the minimum capital gains tax remain the same and that the tax be implemented on a sliding scale for higher earners so that the tax rate is the same as the rate that the individual paying that tax would have paid in their income tax bracket.
Solvency:
1. In case that plan text was unclear, we’re basically saying that capital gains taxes would go up by keeping the same minimum rate as now but rising with income the same way income taxes do, making the two rates effectively equal for all medium to high earners (anyone paying 15% or more in income taxes).
Background:
1. In the status quo, the United States taxes capital gains on long term assets, or those held for more than a year, at a rate of 15%, assuming that the individual holding the assets makes enough income to reach the 25% federal income tax mark.
2. This rate is far lower than the 35% rate that virtually everyone making a significant amount of money from capital gains would be paying if capital gains were treated as ordinary income.
Ad: Super Corporations
Harms:
RELATIVELY LOW CAPITAL GAINS TAXES LEAD TO HOARDING: This is a multipart argument:
1. In the past, it was much more common practice than it is today to reward shareholders by giving out a significant proportion of profits in the form of dividends. However, as capital gains have become very low, both in general and proportionally to income taxes, this practice has fallen out of favor, especially with many of the somewhat newer and more profitable companies. This happens because both companies and big investors would prefer not to receive dividends that are taxed as income when, instead, companies can increase stock value of their companies by either keeping the capital, which will then be reflected in their stock prices, or by keeping money until it can be used to acquire other companies, patents, or other capital.
2. The result is that many companies sit on their capital, often in large quantities and for long periods of time, as it is impossible for one company to search for and pursue the number of investment or personal consumption opportunities as many investors receiving dividends can. This is problematic in general, as some companies, such as Apple, which has about $80 billion dollars now, are sitting on far more money than they could possibly spend on acquiring other companies or justify keeping in a world where dividends were more profitable. Overall, corporations are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash while many run record profits and the economy suffers from low business investment and unemployment. This behavior is directly contributing to the depressed economy.
3. Also very problematic is not just that the money doesn’t always get invested, but that when the money does get invested it is reinvested by the corporation in the form of acquiring other firms. This is contributing the growth of super-corporations and destroying upward mobility by concentrating the wealth in the hands of a fewer and fewer individuals. This exacerbates the income disparity we are seeing in the United States today, which leads to poverty and political disenfranchisement for many. Furthermore, multi-pronged corporations are generally less effective because they are ultimately led by a small group of people that cannot effectively promote successful investment and innovation in many different spheres simultaneously. Corporate specialization and new start-ups are good, and current capital gains policies discourage both.
Solvency:
PLAN MAKES CAPITAL GAINS SIMILAR TO INCOME: The plan will, for almost everyone affected, make tax rates for income and capital gains functionally the same. This obviously remedies the harms we isolate by removing the incentive the return value to the shareholders purely via stock value, rather than dividends.
Impacts:
Economic collapse
Economic equality and dehum
Econ – Reducing Deficit Spending
Harms:
1. The budget deficit has driven the value of the Dollar
a. As the US budget balloons, and especially after the debt ceiling scare, foreign investors see that the dollar isn’t as safe as they once believed. They further recognize that as we move further into debt the more the US will have to borrow from foreign investors to pay continue to pay its bills, meaning that the relative attractiveness of that foreign currency is greater. As the demand for the US dollar tanks the value of the dollar plummets with it.
2. China keeps the Yuan artificially low.
a. Even after China has officially unpegged the Yuan from the dollar it continues to be incredibly undervalued, as reported by the US treasury department on Tuesday.
b. This is because China will never let the Yuan overtake the dollar, the only way their export driven economy can stay afloat is by making sure they have a competitive advantage over the United States. This is why the standard monetary models don’t apply with China. If China didn’t manipulate it’s currency, when the value of the dollar sank the relative value of the RMB would increase, but when the dollar begins to sink, china buys up more dollars to bring put upward pressure on the currency and make sure the RMB never comes close to overtaking the dollar.
c. This means that as the value of the dollar tanks the value of the RMB tanks even more, this is good for Chinese businessman, and the politicians, by ensuring the comparative strength of the RMB remains low, they are able to continue the massive amounts of exports. However, it’s pretty terrible for Chinese workers who’s pay doesn’t go up when the value of the RMB goes down. This means as the value of the dollar falls, Chinese workers continue getting poorer and poorer, ensuring no middle class can ever actually be achieved in china, and forcing people to work indefinitely just to stay afloat.
Solvency:
1. Plan reduces the deficit
Internal Links:
1. The value of the dollar is driven more by perception than actual fiscal policy. Plan makes it appear that the US has made a significant shift in fiscal responsibility This will increase the demand for the dollar and thus raise its value.
2. As the dollar rises, China will allow the Yuan to increase. The yuan is not pegged to the dollar, and china has in the past few months been allowing the Yuan’s value to appreciate to alleviate pressure put on them by the US and the IMF as currency manipulators. Once the value of the dollar rises, china can allow the Yuan to appreciate rapidly to show that it is complying with international monetary policy. It will still keep the RMB lower than the dollar but the actual value of the RMB will increase, and with it the wealth of the Chinese people.
3. This is the only way that china can gain a middle class. Culturally the Chinese are a savings based economy, rather than a consumer based economy. This means that they don’t buy things on credit and the government has taken steps to continue discouraging this by doing things like cutting back on pensions to encourage saving for retirement. The average person has limited investment opportunities so they just let their money sit in the bank. In the bank the money can’t keep up with the rate of inflation so they lose money just by keeping it in the bank. As the Yuan appreciate they have access to stable savings that actually increase in value. This makes it impossible to create a middle class, denying access to education, and continuing a vicious cycle that keeps people in poverty.
Impacts::
1. Poverty- Read whatever poverty impacts you want, something else to consider. China does actually import goods. The problem is that everybody is going through inflation right now, as countries all around the globe print more money to close spending gaps, meaning the goods produced there are more expensive. So while the Yuan won’t overtake the dollar it could overtake currencies that would allow the Chinese to purchase cheap goods from places like Latin America.
EDUCACIÓN
Educación Bilingüe
Dual Immersion programs are the shit – Kim Potowski
(2-Way, or dual immersion programs use two languages for content and literacy instruction for monolingual and bilingual speakers. This means that neither group of students will have to forgo developing skills in their L1 while learning an L2. It’s also got the benefit of not totally fucking over monolingual Spanish (or w/e) speakers by putting them further and further behind in content while they’re still developing their ZPD in an L2.
It’s really good for ELLs:
Two-way immersion has been referred to as the most effective bilingual program contributing to long-term academic success (Howard et al. 2003, p. 24).
In well-implemented programs, ELLs have achieved higher academic success than their peers in other bilingual programs (Dorner, 2011).
Students participating in TWI programs for this length of time have been shown to demonstrate higher academic performance than their peers in English-immersion programs (Howard et al. 2003, p. 24). On the contrary, students who receive little to no instruction in their native language, during their elementary years, struggle to attain grade level performance in the target language (Cobb, 2006).
Also good for cultural understanding/sensitivity:
Because TWI classrooms bring together students from different language, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, they allow students to learn first hand about cultures that are different from their own from their peers.
Studies:
Cobb, Brian, Diego Vega, and Cindy Kronauge. "Effects of an Elementary Dual Language Immersion School Program on Junior High Achievement." Middle Grades Research Journal. 1. no. 1 (2006): 27-47.
Howard, E. R., Sugarman, J., & Christian, D. (2003). Trends in two-way immersion education: A review of the research. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Howard, E. R., Christian, D., & Genesee, F. (2003). The development of bilingualism and biliteracy from grade 3 to 5: A summary of findings from the CAL/CREDE study of two-way immersion education (Research Report 13). Santa Cruz, CA and Washington, DC: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence.
FERTILIZERS
Organic Fertilizers
Harms:
Current Methods of Fertilization are unsustainable:
DUMPING CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS DISRUPTS THE N-CYCLE:
1. The N cycle is comprised of 2 types of bacteria that produce NH4+, a version of nitrogen that plants can absorb as a nutrient. These bacteria use different materials to produce ammonium, Nitrogen-fixing bacteria use N2, while ammonifying bacteria use organic, decaying matter in the soil. Nitrogen-fixation is a very energy-expensive process and thus generally the rate-limiting step.
2. Dumping large amounts of chemical fertilizers to encourage plant growth must go through the nitrogen-fixing bacteria, as it is not in a form the ammonifying bacteria can process.
3. Thus a huge amount of nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers get washed away via irrigation or precipitation or flooding before the N-fixing bacteria have used any significant amount to produce ammonium.
4. This leads to chemical runoff of groundwater to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, causing eutrophication (flooding nutrients into the ocean).
EUTROPHICATION IS BAD:
1. Eutrophication leads to huge spikes in algal populations of green and blue-green algae. This does two things:
a. It blocks photosynthesis to lower plant matter (by shielding these plants’ access to the sun), killing these organisms and the small fish that hide in/live in them
b. It creates huge amounts of dead, decaying matter that sink to the floor. Bacteria that feed on this use oxygen in the water for respiration, so since a larger population of bacteria can be supported, their population increases, which robs the water of its oxygen.
2. This causes hypoxia and anoxia (or low/no oxygen in the water), which is the root cause of all marine dead zones.
3. Dead zones cause long term damage to entire ecosystems, as it causes local species to flee to different areas, wherein they either become invasive species in their new habitat or go extinct.
THE EU’S CURRENT FERTILIZATION PRACTICES ARE CAUSING EUTROPHICATION, NOW IS KEY:
1. Nitrogen-based fertilizer is far and away the most-used form of fertilizer for the EU
a. About 12 million tons of Nitrogen has been used over the last 10 years, versus about 5 million tons of phosphorus-based fertilizer and about 4 million tons of potassium-based fertilizer over the same period.
b. Although many forecast fertilizer use in the EU to decline over the next ten years, individual nations are expected to increase their use of nitrogen-based fertilizers to develop biofuels from ethanol corn. France in particular is looking to expand its development of biofuels. Overall, 10 EU nations are expected to increase their use of N-based fertilizers over the next decade.
2. Eutrophication is on the brink now
a. The anthropogenic input of nutrients from land and changed nutrient ratios primarily affect the coastal zone. In particular in estuaries and fiords, the Wadden Sea, the southern and German Bights, the Kattegat and the eastern Skagerrak, nutrient related problems are widespread. Negative impacts include periodic disturbances of the ecosystem such as oxygen depletion and the subsequent mortality of benthic organisms, as well as changes in abundance and diversity of the different animal and plant communities, e.g. increased phytoplankton blooms (Figure 21) including harmful species and drifting algal mats.
b. Mediterranean surface waters in the open sea are classified among the poorest in nutrients (oligotrophic) of the world oceans. Algal blooms, diversity reduction of marine species and depletion of oxygen as well as potential human health risks related to the ingestion of seafood contaminated by pathogens or toxic algal blooms are some of the problems associated with Mediterranean eutrophication.
Solvency:
1. Plan stops using chemical nitrogen fertilizers/uses organic fertilizers, meaning that less fertilizer is wasted and washed into bodies of water
2. Dead zones are reversible. The Black Sea dead zone, previously the largest dead zone in the world, largely disappeared between 1991 and 2001 after fertilizers became too costly to use following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of centrally planned economies in Eastern and Central Europe. Fishing has again become a major economic activity in the region.
Impacts:
Extinction:
Eutrophication causes mass extinction of aquatic species:
1. Fish raised in laboratory-created hypoxic conditions showed extremely low sex-hormone concentrations and increased elevation of activity in two genes triggered by the hypoxia-inductile factor (HIF) protein. Under hypoxic conditions, HIF pairs with another protein, ARNT. The two then bind to DNA in cells, activating genes in those cells.
a. Under normal oxygen conditions, ARNT combines with estrogen to activate genes. Hypoxic cells in a test tube didn't react to estrogen placed in the tube. HIF appears to render ARNT unavailable to interact with estrogen, providing a mechanism by which hypoxic conditions alter reproduction in fish.
2. It might be expected that fish would flee this potential suffocation, but they are often quickly rendered unconscious and doomed. Slow moving bottom-dwelling creatures like clams, lobsters and oysters are unable to escape. All colonial animals are extinguished.
3. This means that entire populations of fish will die out at once or become invasive species in other areas, and since lower tropic levels will be scarce, resource partitioning will be impossible, meaning mass oceanic extinction will occur either way.
Ocean extinction is bad:
1. It causes resource wars on land, since a billion people live on less than a dollar a day and the highest concentrations of populations live near the coast and maintain their livelihood from the ocean in some way, resource wars will be inevitable.
2. Depleting the oceans robs us of future innovation (solves GW, superbugs, terrorism)
a. Animals see in about 10 different ways, and seeing underwater can be a challenge. Lobsters tread the seafloor bottom at night and have an unusual method of processing light in these murky conditions. At the base of their antennae are thousands of square light reflectors which precisely focus all the incoming light unto one focal point. The Physical Optics Corporation is developing a scanner for the U.S. Homeland Security Department called the LEXID that can see through three inches of steel using a similar process to send and detect X-rays. The Lobster-ISS telescope at the University of Leicester Space Research Center also uses this method for low light collection.
b. Whalepower Corporation of Canada has designed wind turbines and industrial fans patterned from the tubercles of humpback whale flippers, those scalloped edges on the leading edge of their pectoral fins. The edge allows efficient operation at slower speeds without stalling or lowering the pitch of the blade.
c. Sharkskin has also been mimicked for its antibacterial properties by a company called Sharklet Industries. The dermal denticles that create the nano-streamlining on the shark also make it difficult for bacteria to form and this company has made a line of products for hospital use.
d. Red algae, has inspired a different kind of anti-bacterial strategy for the company Biosignal Ltd. of Australia. Rather than using its surface shape, the algae uses a chemical jamming signal to interfere with the communication of the gathering bacteria, something called “quorum signaling.” Biosignal has developed a proprietary method of employing furanones to coat surfaces. Applications include contact lenses, intrusive medical devices and pharmaceuticals, all areas where the growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics could be avoided.
e. Future tech solves for disease, global warming. “Marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible”.
GMOs
Ban GMOs PMC
Background:
1. GM foods are crop plants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. These plants have been modified to enhance desired traits.
2. The US food industry and government assume that these new foods are not substantially different from existing foods and pose no special risks.
3. Currently, the Monsanto conglomeration controls 90% of genetically modified seeds and has over 7,000 patents in the US alone, protecting their intellectual property: the seeds.
4. On average GM seeds, though more expensive, produced 6% less than non-GM relatives, and 11% less than the highest yielding conventional crops. In a study of 8,200 field trials, Roundup Ready soybeans produced fewer bushels of soy than non-GM. This indicates that GM crops offer no direct benefit.
Plan: Congress will pass, and the President will sign, legislation banning the production and growth of GM foods within the US.
Advantage 1: Insect variety
Harms
1. Genetically engineered corn, soy, and cotton exude dangerous pesticides.
A. Monsanto was forced to publish its raw data on safety tests, which added to the evidence that GM crops may damage health as well as be harmful to the environment due to their high toxicity.
B. Levels of pesticides in GMs are known to reach up to 1000 times their normal presence in non-modified foods.
C. This pervasively impacts entire fields over the entire life span of crops. This increases GM use at least a million fold in US agriculture. According to a study conducted at NYU, GM residues remained in the soil for as much as 243 days.
2. GM pesticides harm insect populations
A. GM toxins pervasively infiltrate the fibers of the plants and soil, killing insect larvae indiscriminately; insects are not only necessary for genetic variation and food chains, but they are also critical to continuity of flowering species, as they carry pollen on their bodies when they come into contact with the stamen of a flower.
B. A study by Cornell University showed that toxic pollen from GM corn that had blown onto milkweed leaves, the main source of food for monarchy butterflies, had devastating effects on these butterflies, causing half of the population to die within four days of exposure and the other half of the group to grow to be less than half their normal size. This compares to a different group of butterflies who at GM-free milkweed, where survival was 100%.
i. Butterflies are critical to farms and gardens, especially, because they are the number two most common pollinator of crops, second only to bees. Their larvae is also a critical component of the food chain.
ii. Because most monarch butterflies are native to the corn belt area, GM corn is particularly devastating for their sustainability. Several scientists hypothesize that monarch butterflies are on the brink of extinction as a direct result of this contamination.
C. In a study from October 2009, colonies of honey bees infected with the parasite nosema and fed with the pollen of the genetically modified maize MON810, collapsed after three weeks of exposure.
i. Honeybees are the number one pollinator of flowering species, with almost 100 crops entirely dependent on honeybees for fertilization.
ii. Some economists have estimated this species of bees alone to be worth as much at $14billion to the US economy, since pollinated plants account for as much as 1/3 of the average American diet, and the healthiest portion of the diet.
Solvency
1. GM corn (60% of all US corn), soy (89%), and cotton (83%) make up a significant amount of US crop production. Under the plan, these and other GM crops will no longer be grown in the US
Impacts
Biodiversity
1. Since honeybees and monarch butterflies are on the brink right now and are absolutely critical components to the ecosystem on a farm, their propensity to crash the food chain is high.
A. Even seemingly robust amphibian species have vanished in as little as six months due to decreased insect populations, since insects are a key part of their diet.
2. Initially modest extinction rate climbs exponentially as co-extinctions increase--mirroring spread of an infectious disease, eventually wiping out 90% of all life on the planet
3. It takes 10 million years before biodiversity begins to approach what it was before a die-off. This means that we get biggest magnitude, shortest timeframe, and most irreversible impacts.
Advantage 2: Crop diversity
Harms
1. Monsanto's current monopolization of the seed industry means that it's patents account for over 90% of genetically modified seeds available, making farmers incredibly dependent on the viability of their seed stock.
A. Because of this, average annual income per farm has plummeted. A quarter of all farm operating families live below the poverty level, twice the national average.
2. Most GM plants have been patented, which raises the price of seeds so high that small farmers can’t afford seeds for GM crops; since many farmers don't have another option, they are forced to choose between spending their savings on seeds or not supporting their family at all.
A. This makes it easier for GM corporations to drive their competitors out of business, causing the average small farmer's income plummets while a few large-scale, hyper-productive operations survive (which supercharges harms of first advantage, since these larger corporations produce GM crops). The family farmer is, then, shoved to the very lowest rung of the economic ladder.
3. GMs are necessarily antibiotic resistant because the marker genes that indicate whether or not the organism has been modified naturally deactivate internal antidotes to bacterial threats. This makes consumers of any GMs uniquely susceptible to infection and to deficient levels of immunity.
4. The production of GM crops destroys farming overseas
A. In 1986, Sudan lost its export of gum arabic when a New York company discovered a bioengineering process for producing the same.
B. Two bioengineering firms have announced a GM vanilla plant where vanilla can be grown in vats at a lower cost – and which could eliminate the livelihood of the world’s 100,000 vanilla farmers – most of whom are on the islands of Madagascar, Reunion and Comoros. C. Other firms are developing bioengineered fructose, besides chemical sugar substitutes, that threatens a million farmers in the Third World.
5. The possibility of interbreeding is shown by the defense of farmers against lawsuits filed by Monsanto. The company has filed patent infringement lawsuits against farmers who may have harvested GM crops. Monsanto claims that the farmers obtained Monsanto-licensed GM seeds from an unknown source and did not pay royalties to Monsanto. The farmers claim that their unmodified crops were cross-pollinated from someone else's GM crops planted a field or two away.
Solvency
1. Plan bans production of GM foods, so there can’t be any more US-issued patents
2. Plan prevents production of GM foods that would otherwise replace jobs both in the US and abroad, protecting small farmers
3. By halting the expansion of GMOs across agricultural America, plan will prevent the interbreeding that occurs between heritage crops and GMOs, shielding small farmers from bankruptcy-producing interbreeding suits from chemical giants
Impacts
Economics
1. When one company controls a patent, they can control the price of the food commodity, thus increasing food prices
A. Higher food prices raise the cost of living, making it harder to afford food.
B. Monsanto engineers its seeds to produce crops only one time, forcing farmers to purchase a new set of seeds every planting season.
C. Because of huge agricultural subsidies currently in place by the USFG, farmers are actually overproducing crops that they cannot survive on, at the expense of purchasing sustainable crops of animals. This supercharges the previous point, because farmers are forced to buy seeds every year that will not yield the production that they actually need to survive, and since so many other farmers are buying these crops, like soy and corn, their local market (where they can demand more) is nonexistent and their larger market (where they are at the mercy of large corporations) is their only option for a remote risk at sustainability.
i. This escalates previous problems of malnutrition that comes as a result of lack of dietary diversity.
ii. Poorer farmers who live in areas compromised by the economic devastation of overproduction without a viable market are unable to afford healthcare, so have fewer visits to the doctor of preventative medicine. This furthers malnutrition problems and puts them in a uniquely dehumanizing position as they are forced to choose between medicine and food diversity.
2. Especially in our current economic climate, recovery of the middle class is key to overall recovery from the recession. In a world without the plan, the middle farming class is further escalated into devastation, pulling small farming towns down with them. We think that this will function like a domino effect, quickly escalating into a double-dip recession as small towns and small businesses all throughout the corn belt, particularly, collapse.
Genetic biodiversity
1. Crops are unable to respond to changes in environment, which can lead to extinction of plant species almost overnight, especially since their toxin pollen is killing off the insects that act as their main means of fertilization.
2. Human response time and conservation efforts are never going to be fast enough to prevent the rapid coextinction that will ensue; often the environment change is too drastic for species recovery and it takes 10 million years after a die-off for species to return to prior levels of existence.
A. One mutation of a disease (eg wheat rot) can take out an entire GM crop, because the crop is so uniform. If there is a problem with one type of seed, because every other seed is created to be identical, the problem is exacerbated to a pretty devastating degree. One problematic set of seeds to sufficient to trigger extinction as coextinction rates destroy food chains and create a feedback loop capable of destroying the whole ecosphere. This quickly triggers human extinction as people starve and suffer from extreme malnutrition. We think that this is uniquely dehumanizing for the reasons explained in advantage one.
PATENTS/MEDICINE
Stop Patents on Life PMC
Inherency
1. Prior to 1980, life forms were considered a part of nature and were not patentable. Diamond v. Chakrabarty changed this with the 5 to 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision that genetically engineered (modified) bacteria were patentable because they did not occur naturally in nature. In this case, Chakrabarty had modified bacteria to create an oil-dissolving bioengineered microbe.
2. Patent protection extends to all living organisms that are technically modified or into which the patented genes are inserted, or even when only their "normal" molecular properties are analyzed. The patent applies to living organisms, as well as all subsequent generations that have the patented properties.
3. IPRs on seeds and hybrids became a means to force farmers to buy new seed every year. Hybrid seed cannot be reproduced on-farm, because it requires two different parent lines, which are kept as a trade secret and are closely guarded by the seed company. Between 1930 and 1960, the whole of the US main crop – corn – was gradually converted to hybrid seed under the guise of securing yield size.
Plan: The USFG will outlaw patents on living organisms other than kingdom plantae. (Note: The U.S. Congress has never explicitly addressed the question of whether animal genes and cells can be corporate property.)
Plan: The United States Supreme Court will overturn Diamond v. Chakrabarty on a ____ decision using the Patent Act of 1952 with special regards to title code 35 of 101.
Advantage 1: Environmental exploitation
Uniqueness
1. The biggest hurdle to humans becoming one with the environment is the recognition of plants and bacteria as a part of the life cycle.
a. We already place restrictions of the kingdom animalia because we are in it. We have protections against ourselves like preventing genetics to be discriminatory and cannibalism laws.
b. Plants are the largest and most fundamental resource we exploit, since it comprises most of our food.
Solvency
1. The plan prohibits companies from controlling the environment as a means to generate income.
a. In the US, seed patents are not only used to sign licensing agreements with growers, the farmers are also told which pesticides they should use.
b. In the case of the Flavr Savr tomato, the patent proprietors even controlled crop sales.
c. The big strides in yield and resistance improvement during the 20th century were made before IPR protection was available to plant breeders and while much of the variety development was done in the public sector.
1. These big strides were mainly due to the one-off effect of selecting and combining the best traits from thousands of farmer varieties, locally selected over centuries – it was more a windfall than a product of patient and systematic research.
Impacts
1. Research Destruction: Parallel to the extension of private copyrights, the funds for public research have been drastically cut. At the same time, patenting has made access to genetic resources more difficult.
a. The increase in concentration, and the conflicting patent claims when both the public and private sectors have patented plant technologies, may have had an inhibiting effect on research.
2. Diversity Destruction: The push for organic seed standards is resulting in the elimination of that diversity. The control over the patents has allowed seed companies to essentially wipe out diversity by doing monoculture plants.
a. For example 60% of the corn in the US is produced by one strain of Pionner seed.
3. Food Security:
a. There are considerable dangers to food security if the technologies are overpriced to the exclusion of small farmers, or there is no alternative source of new technologies, particularly from the public sector.
b. Monoculture seed can be wiped out by a single blight look to the potato famines that starved 10,000 to death in Ireland.
Advantage 2: Farm-Saved Seed
Uniqueness
1. FSS is currently being inhibited by major corporations.
a. Farm-saved seed is a seed that is left over from the crop that the planter can use next season to grow another crop.
b. Currently, the seed industry is using their seed patents to prevent farm saved seed. They are attempting to collect royalties on farm saved seed and are coercing governments to adopt stringent control over them. The current losses are at approximately 7 billion dollars a year.
c. Figures compiled by GRAIN indicate that most developing countries still mainly depend on FSS – in particular regions with a large peasant farming sector, such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where typically 80–90% of planting materials are produced on-farm.
1. Mr Monsanto, for instance, holds a market share of 60 per cent of the trade in (ordinary) corn seed in Brazil. Only a share of five per cent is left over for Brazilian companies.
2. Squeezed between the increasing corporate control over organics, and legislation that forces the creation of an organic seed market, organic farmers that want to use their own seeds, or conventional seeds that fit their farming conditions, are finding themselves increasingly on the border of illegal activity.
Solvency
1. By not being able to patent plants, Farm Saved Seed would be completely legal and farmers would not have to pay a royalty on anything generated from seeds.
Impacts
1. Culture: This is about outlawing an important part of a farmer’s livelihood and culture (their heritage seeds), not only in Europe and the USA but also in places like Bolivia, Moldova, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, for no better reason than to increase the profits of Du Pont, Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto.
2. Food Security: We have seen that in many cases individual farmers can match – or beat – the performance of present commercial varieties by simple on-farm selection. The seed industry has every reason to fear competition from farm-saved seed, not as they claim because it threatens innovation, but because it exposes their lack of it.
3. Poverty: Seeds are becoming too expensive, especially for developing countries. If this trend isn't halted, some experts claim, tomorrow's supercrops may end up like many of today's medicines: priced out of the reach of much of the developing world's growing population. We are headed down the same path that public-sector vaccine and drug research went down a couple of decades ago.
4. EU Relations: Europeans have been the most eager of all to undermine yet further the other key characteristic of the right to use farm-saved seed. Representatives of the European Seed Association have gradually stepped up their attacks on the current rules, and now call for the farm-saved seed exemption to be eliminated altogether.
a. Insert Favorite EU impact here
Shorten Market Exclusivity PMC
INHERENCY
1. Currently, patent laws protect a patented process, compound, etc. for 20 years from the filing date of the patent. The way that current market and data exclusivity clauses in the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 are written indicate that exclusivity is set to 5 or 12 years, depending wholly on the discretion of the FDA.
2. The FDA has yet to take a definitive stance on which length of market exclusivity they will give to pharmaceuticals. Even now, drugs that sell really well ($100 million+, approximately 43% of the market) are granted market exclusivity periods on the shorter end of the scale (on average 11.2 v 14 years), but the exclusivity of patents can be continuously extended in the status quo, given that the manufacturer can find additional uses for their drug.
3. Because of this uncertainty in exclusivity length, generic companies have recently been suing larger pharmaceutical companies under Paragraph IV of the BPCIA so that the generic companies can see if they are allowed to produce biosimilar compounds yet, with the hope that the answer is yes and that the revenue they make from selling generics pays off their legal fees.
Plan: The USFG will set pharmaceutical patent exclusivity at five years.
SOLVENCY
1. USFG can.
2. USFG isn’t doing now.
3. Researchers agree that 5 years is key.
a. This is a little less than the normal length of time that it takes to develop and test a new drug, so the drug company gets their initial time and monetary investment back.
b. The boom in purchasing a new treatment comes usually during the first 3-5 years and then it tapers off as the drug becomes more integrated into medicine.
c. 5 years gives generic production companies time to see if it is worth it to invest in creating a generic and if they decide to, it is enough time to develop their biosimilar replication of the original drug.
NO DISADS
1. Case doesn’t trigger bizcon: This will make more pharmaceutical companies invest in R&D, given that they have a stable number to count on. Confidence in the market is the internal link to business investment and this definitive standard will give companies that security. And, companies stop spending so much money on lengthy and expensive legal battles.
2. Case doesn’t trigger politics: This will help businesses, which will send more cash into the economy, so Republicans will be pleased by this even if they aren’t super stoked on Big Pharma not being able to extend his exclusivity into perpetuity anymore. But even more than that, since pharmaceutical companies still get exclusivity for half a decade, the incentive for research and development in competition won’t be compromised.
AND WE’RE T
1. Market exclusivity is the way in which patents are granted the exclusivity that the patent definition highlights. Prefer our specificity to any generic interpretation of what it means to be patented because:
a. Limits: Our definition comes from a legal dictionary, which means that the site gathering our data has a better understanding of the way in which patents not only currently operate, but also are intended to operate and what patent law protects, which means that we are the best limit to the topic, too, because you can still access your generics based on the type of time on the patent that we choose to shorten and you get better specifics that would be more similar to the way a real life debate about IPR and patent law would shake down; since so many debaters use this activity as a springboard for actual careers in politics, our real world education (both in terms of initial exposure with our approach and secondary integration with how this debate will happen) are net benefits to our interp. Since we’re the crux of topic literature and current debate, you should have already known about us; topic lit is the internal link to predictability in a tournament that has topic areas.
ADVANTAGE 1: Disease
Harms
1. Lots of people are dying of diseases and/or can’t afford their medications
a. Pharmaceutical price discrimination: US pharmaceutical costs are the highest in the world (inflating about 8.3% in the past decade while treatment intensification increased by 68%), which explains why the pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable business in the US (17% return on revenue).
b. The average American spends almost $800 on pharmaceuticals annually, yet 20-30% of people report skipping or stretching doses in the past year debate of the cost while others report cutting back on utilities or food to pay for prescriptions.
c. Patients do things like split pills, stop taking medicine when they feel better instead of when their prescription ends, taking counterfeit medications, taking medicine after its expiration date, etc. to combat high drug prices.
2. US is perceptually weak in science.
a. Graduation rates for people with degrees in hard sciences have been plummeting recently. Additionally, not only are test scores down, in a vacuum, but they are down relative to the rises in scores that we’ve seen internationally, in places like China, Europe, and India, which are all places that we routinely export our tech jobs to or import graduates from to do our science for us.
Solvency
1. We spur competition and innovation. By keeping rights exclusive to the original developers for five years, scientists have enough time to develop new drugs and they have an incentive to keep innovating. However, by allowing the generic companies to play the game sooner, competition rises and more drugs are developed, since—surprise—generic companies have scientists, too, who also develop drugs.
a. This is the difference between one team getting all of their NPTE 1s during NPDA and the top NPDA seeds bye-ing through the trips. It’s a matter of continuous protection versus a certain, albeit shorter than the original, period of protection.
2. Competition itself renders drug prices lower, generic drugs are accompanied by inevitably lower prices, and Big Pharma competing with generics to make them look less appealing will inevitably lower their prices. Any risk of a lower price through any of these mechanisms is a reason that more people will have access to the drugs that they need.
3. Having underlying technology in place and more drugs developed and circulating through the market sets the groundwork for better drugs and better technology to produce drugs and other things
4. Scientific advancements spur interest and involvement in science. Those of you who aren’t hard science people probably still at least stare for a little while at the links to science that McCabe posts on facebook all the time. It’s the same principle—when you are exposed to the market frequently and some things about it captivate you, involvement to some degree is inevitable. Even if this only means that news related to science becomes more popular and is published more frequently, it risks reaching someone who might find it captivating and who immerses his/herself in science as a result.
Impacts
1. Quality of life – When people can’t afford basic necessities because they have to buy pharmaceuticals, that’s probably pretty dehumanizing.
2. Economy – A study by Battelle Memorial Institute estimated that drug research will save more than $750 billion in treatment costs for just five illnesses (AIDS, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and arthritis) over the next 25 years. Schizophrenia drugs cost $4,500 per patient per year and save more than $70,000 per patient per year by rendering hospitalization unnecessary. They money that drugs save is amazing and given that prices drop a little bit, any risk of R&D increasing means that we’re more likely to find a cure for one of these five diseases, which would make this treatment-cost strain on our healthcare system drop off.
Shorten Patent Duration PMC
PLAN: The USFG should shorten the duration for patents on biomedical technology to a duration of 13 years.
BACKGROUND:
1. The baseline duration of patents in the United States is 20 years at the filing date.
2. The effective duration of pharmaceutical patents in the status quo is 12 years once the testing phase is considered complete and the government has ‘refunded’ the patent holder some of that time.
3. The excessive length of patents on biomedical tech is basically creating a monopoly and making drugs ecessively expensive, because cheap generics can’t be produced for so long.
SOLVENCY
1. The plan would shorten the effective patent duration to 5 years- a reasonable minimum to allow companies who develop especially expensive products a chance to earn back the costs of developing a product.
2. This change is significant- a reduction of just 5 more years would essentially remove the utility of pharmaceutical patents altogether.
3. Research and development will improve as companies are not forced to wait as long to use research by individuals upstream from them on the pathway to marketable products.
Advantage: Saves Lives
HARMS:
PHARMACEUTICAL DEVELOPMENT TAKES FAR TOO LONG TO REACH THE DEVELOPING WORLD:
1. In the status quo, it takes drugs more than a decade after their release into the market to lose their status as patent protected, meaning that it takes 12 years for generics to become available.
2. Generics drugs are vastly cheaper than brand name drugs. Brand name drugs often emerge by being the original name for a substance before generics are available, and, so, are able to charge more because of name recognition.
3. Very poor countries simply cannot afford to pay for non-generic drugs; the price for some key drugs, such as AIDS medication, is often so high that any significant amount of use would constitute more than the country’s entire health industry spending combined.
THE UNITED STATES PRODUCES A LOT OF BIOMEDICAL TECH: The US accounts for about 40% of the world’s pharma tech, for example.
THERE IS NO INCENTIVE TO DEVELOP DRUGS SPECIFICALLY FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD: The situation in the developing world now resembles a situation that occurs in the developed world when an illness is so rare that there is not incentive to do R and D to cure or treat it. The US government took steps to address this issue and incentivize treatments for these illnesses.
SOLVENCY:
THE PLAN WOULD ALLOW DRUGS TO BECOME GENERIC FASTER: This would help get new treatments to the developing world more cheaply- this includes not just pharmaceuticals to poor African, but also things like new treatments for long term diseases to countries that are somewhat more economically developed. It is especially important to make this change now because as the world continues to warm due to greenhouse gas pollution, disease vectors will change and the spread of new disease may accelerate. We need to change our patent laws before that happens, or it may not happen afterwards and countless people in poor countries will die.
PLAN PROVIDES A REASON TO DEVELOP DRUGS FOR COUNTRIES SPECIFIC TO POORER COUNTRIES: If the generic phase happens sooner, it will account for a larger portion of company profits, so drugs that are mostly useful in the generic stage- drugs that treat tuberculosis, for example, that need to be used mostly in poorer countries- will become a focus more than they are now.
IMPACTS
LESS PEOPLE DIE FROM HERE ON UNTIL THE WORLD IS ECONOMICALLY INTEGRATED: This change will continue saving lives by getting drugs to the poor more cheaply until a time that all countries are equally wealthy comes about- so forever, most likely. This is always going to be a huge impact because it is ongoing.
DISEASES THAT MIGHT NOT BE TREATED OTHERWISE GET TREATED: Diseases specific to poorer countries that don’t have settled treatments aren’t being treated now- these disease kill a very large number of people every year. If we can come up with treatments for them, we can not only save the people who don’t die because they are treated, but we can also create a much healthier population in some of these countries, making it easier for poor nations to develop and thus saving countess more lives as quality of life improves.
NOW IS CRITICAL: These impacts will become enormous if we don’t act soon. As we isolate in the harms, if this change isn’t made now, epidemics that are likely coming in the near future will hit the third world and it will simply be too expensive to treat them.
Advantage 2: Spurns Development HARMS
PATENTS ARE CREATING A ‘TRAGEDY OF THE ANTI-COMMONS’ IN BIOMEDICAL TECH: Biomedical tech suffers from ‘underuse’ of intellectual property. This arises for these generic reasons:
1. TRANSACTION COSTS: The costs of transferring rights to intellectual property can serve as a significant impediment to further research; the outcome is not always clear, meaning that caution discourages many possibly fruitful undertakings. Furthermore, because a great deal of research happens at public institutions with different budget constraints than private institutions and who often prioritize basic research, these barriers are particularly large impediments to basic research, which is the most important kind; it is required to fill in the gaps in basic scientific theories that build the foundation for future tech development.
2. POOR ASSESMENT OF VALUE: There is a fundamental human tendency to overestimate the likelihood of high magnitude, low probability events. If 10 individuals control the patent to, say, a chemical that a firm is willing to pay $1M for, each should be willing to accept $100,000 for their intellectual property. However, each will, statistically, ask for significantly more, overestimating the probability that their chemical is the right one. This can lead to a standoff that derails further innovation; neither side will accept the price the other wants.
It is specifically bad for biomedical tech because there are a lot of different kinds of patents involved in different kinds of research and because so much chemistry and biology research takes place at universities; also, so many new medical technologies are useful as components for future medical tech. The combined effect is that biomedical tech is suffering worse than most from underuse of intellectual property.
SOME EXAMPLES OF HARMFUL PATENTS: Patents on the discovery of chemical receptors that can be used to test the effectiveness of new drugs make it sometimes prohibitively expensive to test new drugs, stunting pharma R and D very directly. Furthermore, patents an anonymous DNA fragments can make it ridiculously complicated to get rights for many related sequences so that a larger gene sequence can be used to create something useful.
SOLVENCY
SHORTENING PATENT DURATION SPEEDS THE PROCESS ALONG: It’s simple math; if the patent duration is effectively less than half of what it once would have been- it’s very difficult to use parts of a new product if it hasn’t been released yet, after all- then the turnover rate and rate of development of new tech will increase greatly.
IMPACTS:
SAVES LIVES: It obviously saves lives because we find more treatments for diseases per year, so we are able to cure or treat more things. This saves a lot of lives.
SAVES TONS OF LIVES: There will always be new diseases, and, eventually, one of them will be super deadly again, like the smallpox or plagues of old. If we are not as far advanced in our development of biomedical tech as we need to be when the next great killer hits us, we could lose half the world’ population rather than being able to treat and contain the illness quickly.
Regulate Pharmaceutical Ads
INHERENCY
1. The U.S. is one of only two industrialized countries that allow drug ads on television. Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, a loosely regulated but steadily growing sector totaled a record $5.3 billion last year. The other is New Zealand. Americans see an average of 9 drug commercials per day.
a. In the US drug companies can advertise medicines without discussing side-effects as long as they do not mention the condition the drug is supposed to treat.
2. Pharmaceutical advertising is pretty much unchecked; with 30 sec ads, companies can claim a host of symptoms that have nothing to do with disease they’re claiming to solve
a. A study published in the current issue of the journal Annals of Family Medicine examined 38 different pharmaceutical advertisements that ran during peak television viewing times. Researchers found that while the overwhelming majority of the ads made arguments for the use of drugs, only about a quarter of them described the causes of the medical conditions the drugs are designed to treat
b. Alex Sugerman-Brozan, director of the Prescription Access Litigation Project, a consumer group fighting for lower-cost medicines, said more thorough studies would be helpful to measure the effect of the drug ads. But, he added, better FDA enforcement against misleading practices is far more important.
i. "These are not ads for fabric softener or breakfast cereal. They're for medical treatments and need to be treated with the seriousness they deserve," Sugerman-Brozan said. "FDA enforcement against deceptive drug ads has fallen to the lowest level in 10 years, despite the explosion of such ads."
3. More than 90 percent of the public reports seeing prescription-drug advertisements. The ads are designed to get attention by appealing to our deepest emotions -- the value of life and that of loved ones, the fear of disability, or, you know, erectile dysfunction. Alternatives and preventive strategies such as exercise or diet are rarely mentioned.
a. The ads routinely urge consumers to consult their doctors. But they also encourage them to ask for specific drugs. Doctors are trained as medical experts, but they are also trained to empathize with patients. When a patient demands a specific drug, doctors can experience significant conflict if they refuse to prescribe it. Some patients are known to change doctors if their requests are refused.
4. Advertising is so effective because of the large amounts of money necessary to produce
a. The U.S. drug industry has been very successful, with annual sales estimated at $250 billion. The industry has benefited from scientific and technological advances, new drug discoveries paid for by taxpayers, advances in therapeutic knowledge and changes in government and regulatory controls. However, increasing competition, patent expirations and the impact of managed care seem to have resulted in questionable marketing tactics to extend and expand profits at the expense of safety.
b. Merck spent over $100 billion on advertising of Vioxx, which was recalled last year due to “unforeseen” side effects”
5. It wasn’t always like this-advertising used to be checked
a. Before 1997, drug companies were faced with a conundrum when it came to advertising their products through television commercials.
b. They could choose to mention either the product's name or what condition it was supposed to treat, but they could not mention both.
Plan: The FDA will ban direct to consumer advertising on all prescription medicine or
The FDA will require every pharmaceutical ad to be reviewed by FDA medical staff
Advantage 1: Copyright Shenanigans- AIDS medicine
Harms
1. Countries suffering from high AIDS rates, such as many in South America, have started to develop generic drugs that can be nationally produced and widely distributed, due to a lower cost
a. After failed negotiations with multinational drug company Merck, Brazil has signed a "compulsory license" that will allow the production of a generic version of the patented antiretroviral drug known as efavirenz. This controversial decision will reduce the annual cost of treatment per patient from $580 to $165 in Brazil, where HIV treatment is provided free by the government.
b. Because of this, in 2006 over 80% of people in Brazil were receiving HIV treatment (who needed)
c. Similar rates were reported in Thailand, Belize, and Burundi
2. HOWEVER, big drug companies are using WTO to stop this selling, using (not very well understood) international copyright laws
a. Although compulsory licenses are legal under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, big pharmaceutical companies like Merck argue that forcing developed countries alone to bear the costs of essential drug development will jeopardize future innovation.
b. Patents have been used for centuries in the industrialized world to reward those who invest in research and development with a temporary monopoly for the production and sale of a given invention.
c. With globalization, the patent and copyright systems in many developed countries have been threatened by weak or non-existent rules in other parts of the world.
3. Giving pharmaceutical companies more money will allow them to carry out legal action against states trying to develop their own generics---resulting in less HIV treatment in these developing countries
a. Brazil's controversial May 4th [2007] decision followed a similar action by Thailand in December concerning the same HIV drug, efavirenz, as well as two others. Those in support of big pharmaceuticals are warning of serious consequences for future drug research and development, and criticize Thailand for not accepting offers to sell efavirenz at the "no profit" price of $237.25 per patient per year. The U.S. government has placed Thailand on its Priority Watch List of countries it deems are not adequately protecting intellectual property, which can discourage foreign investment and influence export tariffs.
Solvency
Plan removes /limits monetary power of pharmaceutical companies; pharmaceutical companies can’t afford to beat back the international force against their monopoly, they let developing countries make their own drugs
Impacts
1. HIV treatment, people!
a. Brazil promises free HIV treatment to all. Now it can afford to.
b. Other developing countries can follow suit without threat of legal action through WTO
c. Thousands cured; easy access to generics key to worldwide AIDS prevention
d. The US not putting tariffs on countries allows economies to not…wither and die
Advantage 2: Hypochondria—Side effects
Harms
1. Pharmaceutical companies are both creating fake diseases and exaggerating existing ones through emotional direct-to-consumer advertising
a. Fibromyalgia is a “real” disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
i. Worldwide sales of Lyrica, which is also used to treat diabetic nerve pain and seizures and which received F.D.A. approval in June for fibromyalgia, reached $1.8 billion in 2007, up 50 percent from 2006. Analysts predict sales will rise an additional 30 percent this year, helped by consumer advertising.
ii. Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.
b. The whole RLS debacle---what bullshit
i. First up: Requip, a drug to treat restless-legs syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause tingling or restlessness in the legs just before sleep. Trouble is, simply lying in bed waiting for sleep can also cause tingling and restlessness, but some consumers have begged their physicians for the drug even though they have no evidence of the syndrome. "That's concerning," says Steve Findlay, a health policy analyst in the Washington, D.C., office of Consumers Union. In some users, Requip can cause serious side effects, such as drowsiness, compulsive gambling and sexual behaviors.
c. Drug companies are not required to have their TV ads approved before airing, but the companies are subject to warning letters and monetary penalties if the FDA finds that ads are misleading or false
i. However, only about 35% of drug ads that make it on air are viewed by FDA staff, says Rita Chapelle, an agency spokeswoman.
ii. In mid-January, Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co., which jointly market Vytorin, pulled the ads portraying family members dressed like food items to show genetic causes and food sources of high cholesterol.
iii. The ads were yanked after members of Congress questioned whether the two companies deliberately delayed releasing clinical trial results for the drug -- results that showed it was no more effective than a generic at reducing the buildup of plaque in the carotid artery. They also questioned whether the ad overstated benefits of the drug, a combination of Zetia and simvastatin (a generic of the statin Zocor).
d. Volatile nature of market leads to desparate companies—less honest advertising
i. This year, for example, patents will expire for Merck's osteoporosis drug Fosamax ($2 billion in sales) and Johnson & Johnson's schizophrenia drug Risperdal ($2.5 billion in sales). With billions in sales at stake, companies may be increasingly desperate to sell consumers on their brand-name drugs. Already, drug companies spend about $4.5 billion for direct-to-consumer advertising each year, with the biggest share going to television ads, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.
2. Direct to consumer advertising eliminating doctor-patient relationship (less informed patients)
a. Dominick Frosch, lead study author and assistant professor of general internal medicine at UCLA. "Medical decisions shouldn't be about emotions. They should be on carefully weighed benefits, risks and costs."
b. Frosch says presenting information about the drugs in this way could also lead patients to think that they need medicine even if they really don't.
c. "Doctors in surveys have said that they have provided drugs even when the prescription wasn't appropriate," Frosch says. "If consumers were powerless in changing the views of
d. The doctors, the pharmaceutical industry would not be spending money advertising to them. It works."
e. Pills don’t work/ market creates diseases
i. Two of this year's Bitter Pill winners are Lunesta and Ambien CR advertisements that give people the impression, according to PAL director Alex Sugerman-Brozan, "that a full night's trouble-free sleep is just a pill away, when in fact these drugs don't meaningfully improve how long it takes most people to fall asleep or how long they stay asleep. For many of the millions taking these drugs, changes in behavior would be just as effective, without the side effects. But these ads convince people these drugs are a cure- all."
3. An increase in hypochondria leads to devastating side effects!
a. Merck's recall of its arthritis pain drug, Vioxx, because of elevated risks of heart attack and stroke has obscured another important issue that Congress, in investigating the matter, must face squarely and deal with: What happens when pharmaceutical companies pitch medicines directly to consumers.
b. 4 hour erections! Jesus Christ!
c. In July, 2003, Dateline NBC aired a story which came to light in 2002 when a corporate whistleblower exposed how Warner-Lambert, now part of Pfizer, "deliberately distorted information," about Neurontin, "possibly putting lives at risk ... in what may be one of the biggest medical deceptions in history."
d. Former Warner-Lambert employee David Franklin PhD told correspondent John Hockenberry how he "was trained to deceive doctors" into prescribing Neurontin for a variety of off-label uses, including bipolar. Dr Franklin was part of a marketing blitz that included recruiting doctors to hear "scientific presentations" in places like Jupiter Beach, Florida and at venues like Yankee Stadium.
e. Fibromyalgia medicine causes extreme weight gain, which, in turn, causes “chronic pain from an unknown source,” one on the medication’s symptoms
f. The known deadly side effects of prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the industrialized world, surpassed only by the number of deaths from heart attacks, cancer and strokes (Journal of the American Medical Association, April 15, 1998). This fact is no surprise either, because drug patents are primarily issued for new synthetic molecules. All synthetic molecules need to be detoxified and eliminated from the body, a system that frequently fails and results in an epidemic of severe and deadly side effects.
Solvency
Plan eliminates advertising power of Pharm. Companies, less mass hysteria, less hypochondria
Impacts
1. No four hour erections, less death, etc
2. Patients will go to doctors for advice now, adapt better lifestyle, fix health in a…healthy manner
3. A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that drug reactions kill an estimated 100,000 people a year in U.S. hospitals. The researchers also claim that another 2.1 million are injured by adverse reactions. The elderly are especially vulnerable because of the multiple prescriptions they take. The federal General Accounting Office reports that more than 5 million Americans use medications that are either inappropriate or could cause adverse interactions serious enough to warrant hospitalization.
SPACE
Science Diplpomacy
SCIENCE DIPLOMACY IS GENER(IC)ALLY LOW NOW
1. THE US POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT IS HURTING SCIENCE DIPLOMACY: The Republican power has shifted far to the right, and its hostility to science and international diplomacy has become too great to ignore. When Republicans consider practically defunding security at the UN Headquarters in New York to save a few million dollars and try to scrap funding to large portions of NASA for similar reasons, the US commitment to international engagement and engagement on science issues in particular seems very low.
2. THE US IS PERCEPTUALLY WEAK IN SCIENCE IN TECHNOLOGY: The US appears to be, and probably is, falling behind in science and tech. US graduation in science fields is low, and we routinely export our tech jobs to other countries, or import graduates from other countries to do our science work for us. Poor US scores in science and math testing got a great deal of attention, and the reaction of US politicians was positively desperate. If the US is perceived as weak on science issues, then US science diplomacy will suffer; the credibility of our scientists is a pre-requisite to leading on scientific issues.
3. THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION IS ON THE BRINK: US commitment to the ISS is flagging; in 2009, it appeared that the space station might have to de-orbit in 2016, shortly after it was scheduled to be finished, because US politicians disagreed about the value of continuing to fund it. As US returns on science investment are reduced, due to our lack of credibility, the effect reinforces itself, leading us to reduce investment in science (such as the ISS) and place less value on science culturally.
THE ISS IS KEY: The ISS embodies US investment in science and science diplomacy, as well as one of the greatest successes of US science diplomacy- the de-escalation of tensions between the US and the former USSR. If the ISS fails or becomes obsolete and obscure, then the ability of the US to use science diplomacy will be dramatically reduced.
Internal Links
SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION IS NATURALLY SUITED TO PROMOTING DIPLOMACY
1. SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE IS CIVIL, SOLUTION ORIENTED AND NON-PARTISAN BY NATURE: Scientists are required to approach every situation with an ‘open mind,’ lest misconceptions skew there interpretations of data and poison the results of their work. Thus, discussions between scientists tend to be transparent, fair, and produce tangible results, regardless of the national, ethnic and political backgrounds of the participants. This makes science diplomacy ideal for jump-starting relations with nations that are otherwise hostile, and for advancing stagnant relations with others; the first concern of the scientists is the issue at hand.
2. SCIENTIFIC ISSUES TRANSEND CULTURE: The desire to develop technology, improve lives and understand the physical world transcends national origin. No matter what ideological differences exist between participants in science diplomacy, science can bridge the divide in the pursuit of truth and the best possible outcome for everyone involved.
THE EVIDENCE INDICATES SCIENCE IS AN EXCELLENT SOURCE OF DIPLOMATIC INROADS:
1. US SCIENTISTS ARE RESPECTED ALL OVER THE WORLD: Even when the international view of the US as a whole is fairly negative, as now, positive viewpoints toward American scientists remain more resilient. Pew polling data in 43 countries shows that the view of American science and technology is 23 points more favorable than the view of the US as a whole. Polling data also shows that in Muslim nations whose people hold a very negative view of the US, the view of American science and technology is still very favorable.
2. US SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH SCIENTISTS FROM A NUMBER OF HOSTILE NATIONS: US scientists have met with scientists from such countries as Rwanda, Cuba and Syria, and at a time when US-North Korean relations have all but ground to a halt, US scientists and North Korean scientists are capable of sitting down with each other and engaging constructively.
3. SCIENCE DIPLOMACY HAS HISTORICAL SOLVENCY:
a. After the Cold War, US and USSR non-governmental scientists cooperated on a number of issues; in 1986, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an independent US scientific organization, reached an agreement with similar groups in the USSR that was approved by each government, calling for seismic monitoring stations around nuclear testing sites in each country. Concerns by US scientists working with Russian scientists also motivated the US to give funds to Russia for the maintenance of security at its nuclear weapons and nuclear test sites. These sorts of agreements helped motivate a post-Cold War thaw between the US and the USSR/Russia.
b. Science diplomacy was key in helping stabilize relations between Germany and Israel and remains a key aspect of their bilateral relations even today. The German “Volkswagen Foundation” has been promoting scientific cooperation between Israel and Germany since 1961, since before the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and today Germany is the second largest donor of money for research to Israel, after the US, and has the most scientists working in tandem with Israel by far. Science is helping to heal the wounds caused by the Holocaust.
SCIENCE DIPLOMACY IS KEY TO CREATING AND MAINTAINING PARTNERSHIPS TO SOLVE MUTUAL PROBLEMS
1. SCIENCE DIPLOMACY ENCOURAGES MULTI-LATERAL, SOLUTION-ORIENTED DISCUSSION OF POTENTIAL SOURCES OF CONFLICT: The ability to come to the table and have a discussion about specific issues without having past disagreements, political motivations and the inability to agree on every issue derailing productivity is key to solving pressing issues between nations. Issues of climate change and resource scarcity are examples of issues in which there is absolute scientific consensus on the overall direction that policy needs to take, if not the details. However, discussions of these issues between nations routinely devolves into political posturing and thinly veiled accusations of hypocrisy, selfishness and stubbornness on the part of all actors involved because no one can see the forest for the trees and everyone wants everyone else to do all the sacrificing.
a. Science diplomacy corrects this mindset by encouraging meaningful solutions from the bottom up, as our empirics about Russian nukes prove is possible, by keeping issues of major scientific concern, like the impacts we’re going to isolate, a major component of ongoing discussion, and promoting solution-oriented discussion that leads to real change.
2. SCIENCE DIPLOMACY IS KEY TO ONGOING MULTILATERAL RESEARCH EFFORTS: Science diplomacy is key to maintaining interest in and continued funding for the space station; the station’s entire premise is international cooperation on science issues. The ISS is the US’s only ongoing, manned research facility and, as such, is key to micro-gravity research. Microgravity research is extremely important for several different reasons:
a. VACCINE RESEARCH: Microgravity research has been key to the development of vaccines in the past and will continue to be in the future. As recently as 2009, microgravity research yielded a new vaccine for salmonella. Bacteria and viruses simply grow more quickly, and are easier to manipulate, in space.
b. PROTEIN CRYSTAL GROWTH: In space, it is possible to large organic crystals composed of thousands of atoms, a feat which is prohibitively difficult to do with the same precision on Earth. These crystals are important because they are important tools for pharmaceutical research; they allow us to use X-ray crystallography to find the precise structure of organic molecules, from which medications are composed.
a. Combined with fast-growing cell cultures, which allow scientists to test new medications and produce test substances very quickly in space, NASA highlights crystal growth as key to treating various stubborn diseases, including AIDs, cancers, heart disease, diabetes and hepatitis. The ability to create more advanced and complex pharmaceuticals is also key to beating back antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Impacts
COOPERATION ON RESOURCE SCARCITY
1. WE’RE HEADING TOWARD A RESOURCE CRUNCH: The world’s supply of fossil fuels is finite and running out. Now that the world economy is recovering, oil, copper and cotton prices are skyrocketing again, reflecting fears that supplies cannot keep up with rising demand from China and India. Once the members of these emerging economies start driving cars, our remaining oil supplies are done for. Supplies of rare earths are also running out, and, with the population projected to reach almost 10 billion by 2050, the entire world will need to seriously reconsider the sustainability of water use and agricultural practices as they stand now. We’ve already proven science diplomacy is key to solve.
2. IMPACT: STARVATION: Unless countries can act together meaningfully to address sustainability issues, the world as we use it now simply will not be able to support everyone on it. Starvation will become the norm, and the food supply will become so fragile that price spikes and unexpected weather will result in death by the tens of millions. A lack of clean water will also result in the spread of dysentery, already one of the world’s largest killers, which will kill millions more over time.
3. IMPACT: RESOURCE WARS: As resources begin to run out, regional civil and territorial conflicts will become the norm, especially in vulnerable locations such as poor African nations. The result will be the death of millions, at the least. Tensions that result will also be the spark that ignites ethnic conflict, resulting in genocide. The resource crunch will also affect rich nations; the US and China have demonstrated a willingness to promote or perpetuate the death of over a collective million in the Middle East and Sudan in the last decade alone. As resources become too scarce for nations to colonize the same locations, their interests will overlap, military tensions, already on the rise due to economic hardship which will result in protectionist policies, will ignite, resulting in skirmishes, which will lead to conventional war. (WAR ESCALATES(NUKE WAR)
RESEARCH
1. VACCINES: Vaccines have saved literally billions lives- vaccine research allowed us to wipe out smallpox, which killed half a billion people in the twentieth century alone. We can anticipate that more advanced vaccines that can protect against today’s biggest killers can be used to save billions of additional lives over time, making them a low cost, high yield investment.
2. MEDICINE: New medications have the potential to solve for some of the largest killers in the first world, including cancer, heart disease and diabetes; we could save tens of millions of lives if microgravity research allows us to increase our understanding of organic molecular structure. New medications are also key to staying ahead of antibiotic resistance, which is an emerging, pandemic level threat. Bacterial infections are generally more contagious, often more deadly, and we are so dependent on the use of antibiotics to treat them that the emergence of bacteria with total anti-biotic resistance represents a crisis level threat that could kill hundreds of millions.
SYRIA
US Key to Transition
1. Rebel groups want US intervention – they feel abandoned in the SQ. The US is key to a smooth transition towards a US-friendly Syria, and a smooth transition: According to the leader of the FSA – Yasser Abu Ali - “America will pay a price for this,” he said. “America is going to lose the friendship of Syrians, and no one will trust them anymore.”
a. According to Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute of Near East Affairs, at a time when al-Qaeda-influenced jihadis are trying to establish a presence in Syria, there is a risk that a virulently anti-American form of Islamism could take hold among disillusioned Syrians
b. If the US continues on its current path, the political entity that comes to power will be viruently anti-West, and the US will have lost the opportunity to establish a secular and democratic Syria.
Others Will Fill Power Void
1. Jihadists will take over: Currently, Syria looks eerily similar to Bosnia in the early 1990s. When the world did not act to end the slaughter of Muslims there, jihadists moved in to join the fight, and they sought to convince the otherwise staunchly secular-minded Bosnian Muslims that the world had abandoned them and that they were better off with jihadists. In Bosnia, the international community intervened before it was too late. If Syria radicalizes, becoming a jihadist safe haven, it could become a Sisyphean task to normalize it.
a. Al Qaeda is gaining ground in Syria now: Al Qaeda has helped to change the nature of the conflict, injecting the weapon it perfected in Iraq — suicide bombings — into the battle against President Bashar al-Assad with growing frequency. The presence of jihadists in Syria has accelerated in recent days in part because of a convergence with the sectarian tensions across the country’s long border in Iraq. Al Qaeda, through an audio statement, has just made an undisguised bid to link its insurgency in Iraq with the revolution in Syria, depicting both as sectarian conflicts — Sunnis versus Shiites. They’ve been logistically and ideologically supported by the Al-Nursa front or the People of the Levant, which military and intelligence analysts say is the major Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria, with two other Qaeda-linked groups also claiming to be active there, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and Al Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade.
i. Since the beginning of the conflict, Al-Qaeda tactics have increased: There have been at least 35 car bombings and 10 confirmed suicide bombings, 4 of which have been claimed by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, according to data compiled by the Institute for the Study of War.
2. Turkey and Israel will strike, cause a regional war:
a. Turkey is gearing up for war: As their Prime Minister said, “although Turkey does not want war, it is close to war.” If the situation continues to escalate, Turkey’s history suggests that it is likely to stage an actual invasion to contain the crisis as it did in Cyprus in the 1970s. At that time, Ankara waited patiently for the United States and the international community to come to its aid in Cyprus. When such help did not materialize, Turkey took matters into its own hands, and landed troops on the island.
b. Israel is also gearing up for war: Netanyahu is already threatening to take military action should talks fail by early summer. He’s feeling pressure to take a hardline stance, since he was just re-elected and needs to prove his credibility to hardliners who elected him.
Solvency – No Fly Zone
**This is what a no-fly-zone is/what you’d defend: essentially demilitarizing the skies to the hostile forces in question, shooting or bringing down any aircraft that violate it.
1. Would neutralize the Syrian air capabilities: neutralizing the Syrian Air Force will be a major turning point in the war and will erase one of the regime’s decisive advantages.
2. Wouldn’t have to move troops on the ground – Iraq proves a no fly zone is preferable to the US and Syrians: The use of infantry forces would likely result in mass casualties among both servicemen and Syrian civilians. Reliable experts estimate that over 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the aftermath the American invasion – a body count even higher than Assad’s war has amassed. Furthermore, as the Iraqi example demonstrates, it is much easier to enter into the conflict than leave with a viable long-term solution.
3. It worked in Lybia – proves not as costly financially or to lives of individuals, because we only puish people who choose to violate it: As in Libya, a No-Fly Zone would tip the scales toward the opposition without incurring the cost of full intervention.
4. Differences between Lybian capabilities and Syrian capabilities are negligible: Even if Syria’s regime is better able to shoot down US planes than Lybia was, when military officials see a strong foreign presence, similar to the Libyan affair, many will be likely to switch sides or flee. A no fly zone will act as a deterrant, since the risk that they’ll get shot down will be 100%
Impacts/Framing
1. Syria’s biological weapons – Syria has biological weapons from Russia, who developed both Small Pox and antibiotic resistant Bubonic Plague. Russian scientists bred a strain of the Plague by exposing generations of the disease to antibiotics, so only the ones that were resistant to anitiotics survived. They also exposed it to industrial chemical solvents, which means that once it’s released, it would be impossible to stop or contain.
a. Allowing a state to have biological weapons is more dangerous than nukes: because biological weapons can’t be contained to one region and gives nations a level of deterence that they’d never have to expand beyond.
b. Containment: if just 100 people became infected with Small Pox, we’d have to encircle them with 100 million vaccinated pepople to contain the spread of the disease, because the world is so densly populated and interconnected. And containment strategies are most developed and exist almost exclusively in the first world, which means that if we can’t contain it, it would be devastating to those on the periphery. Additionally, disease prevention infrastructure was developed by people who are used to having healthcare infrastructure like readily avaiable gloves and doctors so the undeveloped and developing world would be decimated overnight.
c. Would Cause Extinction: Small Pox killed a billion people before 1900, which was about 1/3 of the world’s total population, and the Plague wiped out almost 1/2 the population of Europe in 4 years. Disease prevention infrastructure would be unable to cope with hundreds of thousands of people infected overnight. Additionally, we can’t predict the strain of the disease or how it will mutate once it’s released, which means that any vaccines or anitbiotics we make will have to be made retroactively and be different formula than what we used before. It took a decade to erradicate Small Pox the first time around, and the world was way less interconnected then – means the disease would proliferate too rapidly for anyone to respond and would result in complete extinction.
d. And Economic Shutdown: It would cause all transportation infrastructure to shut dowm immediately so we can have a small hope of containing the spread of the disease and quarrentining those who become infected from the release of disease. Transportation is a vector for disease, and once a pandemic takes place economic activities cannot be sustained – it will shut down all critical infrastructure.
i. Empirics: And empirics prove: during the SARS outbreak in 2003 flights in Pacific Asia decreased by 45% and flights between Hong Kong and the United States fell 69%. This would pale in comparison to the panic that will ensue from the use of biological weapons.
ii. Food: supermarkets have between 2 to 5 days of inventory of perishable goods and about 1 to 2 weeks for other goods. In the case of a pandemic, available food supplies could quickly be exhausted through hoarding.
iii. Energy: 50% of US energy is generated by burning coal. Coal power plants only maintain 30 day stockpiles, and energy distribution systems could be shut down for weeks or months. This will cause rolling blackouts, power shortages, and render us incapable of running our entire economy. Because of the global trade network, this would cause immediate global collapse.
iv. Poverty/violence: billions will instantly be plunged into poverty and material precarity – hurting those on the periphery and third world first. Economic collapse will breed fierce competition for remaining food, potable water, and weapons in the first world. Scarcity will make irrational actors of us all, since it’ll be try or die for the last grain of rice, we’ll all start killing each other or die of starvation and dehydration once water towers and wells run dry. That’s a really dehumanizing way to die and kill your friends and family to take their food.
2. Human rights abuses: As of today, it’s estimated that 70,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict. More than 700,000 Syrians have registered as refugees since the crisis began, or are awaiting registration in neighboring countries while, inside Syria, an additional 2.5 million people remain internally displaced and 4 million people are in need of assistance.
a. Sexual violence is widespread in the conflict: According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), rape is not only pervasive, but it is also a driving factor behind the rapidly growing numbers of Syrian refugees, both within and outside of the country. It is also being used against prisoners in Syrian detention facilities, has been employed as a form of torture during interrogations, and is used to intimidate and deter people from supporting and harboring rebels. According to reports coming out of Syria, 20% of those violated are men and boys.
b. Sexual violence is bad: The psychological and physical trauma caused by sexual violence is dehumanizing. Many survivors report symptoms similar to PTSD, but moreover sexual violence creates a climate of violence makes it more difficult for survivors of sexual assault to participate in social organizations because it causes feelings of alienation and depression. It also reifies the idea that some bodies are disposable objects to be used by for power and control. This is the root cause of other forms of violence – only when we see other people’s bodies as objects can we justify other forms of violence and oppression.
c. Killing people – A lot of people are dying in this war. Death is bad.
3. Ethical obligation to act: We have to act to stop violence. Even if we don’t solve for all human rights abuses ever, in this instance, it is morally reprehensible to not act when we can reduce the suffering of others, because, in this case, neutrality only helps the oppressor. Embracing the ethical obligation to act is the only way to allow for productive engagement with other political issues, because we create a new standard of accountability and set of political norms. Suspending justice and the rights in the short term may avoid some made up conflict, but it fails to establish a foundation for peaceful society, meaning we always degenerate back into violence.
*Kritikal Affs*
Cyberliberty
A. FRAMEWORK
1, INTERP- our interpretation is that the role of the ballot should be to determine who constructs the best relationship to cyberliberty
2, DEFINIG CYBERLIBERTY- In order properly to define “cyberliberty,” the basic philosophic underpinning of liberty must be examined in light of contemporary problems. Once we have done this, we can create an informed definition of “cyberliberty” that will guide regulation of activity on the Internet in a way that properly balances individual rights against the regulatory power of nations.
3, WE PRECEDE POLITICS- we have reached an issue that political society has not considered yet, a search of the Library of Congress catalog will reveal no titles or books listed under the term “cyberliberty”, this is key to future policy education because it opens the door for discussion.
B. HARMS-
1, CYBERLIBERTY- Cyberliberty expands across all borders, affects all nations, and as of yet, has not been defined by any nation.
a. LEGAL FOUNDATION- We need a definition of cyberliberty in order to provide a legal foundation for regulating conduct on the Internet.
b. STATE CONTROL- Without this we will never be free from state control and they will continually assert of prescriptive jurisdiction, a liberty that has always been an essential element of sovereignty.
C, SOLVENCY
1. DECENTRALIZATION- The Internet engenders “the notion of distributed power: decentralization, openness, possibility of expansion, no hierarchy, no center, no conditions for authoritarian or monopoly control”
a. KNOWLEDGE- The internet is the ideal location for the flow of ideas and information across national borders because it is not restricted by status quo barriers and happens immediately. Knowledge promotes intellectual revolutions that reconceptualize of the world and possibilities for different social groups
b. RETERITORIALIZATION- Cyber technology has reteritorialized and deteritorialized the space of global politics, when we change the centralization of power we have the capacity to change the entire functioning of the global system.
2, NOMADISM- Many of the jurisdictional and substantive quandaries raised by border-crossing electronic communications could be resolved by one simple principle: conceiving of cyberspace as a distinct “place” for purpose[s] of legal analysis and recognizing a legally significant border between cyberspace [and] the “real world.” . . . Crossing into cyberspace is a meaningful act that would make application of a distinct law of cyberspace fair to those who pass over the electronic boundary.
a. SOLVES BIOPOWER- the nationstate derives its control from the obsession to tie itself to a piece of land and defend it against the other. Taking the compulsion for a land base and national identity erodes the basis of the nationstates power.
b. RECREATE ONTOLOGY- this allows us to recreate ontology in a space that exists outside of the nationstates control. This is key to regaining individual agency and humanizing the population.
D, IMPACTS
1, INNOVATION- Internet is unparalleled in its ability to fundamentally change education and public discourse, more economically, free of ordinary politics, and “free to develop, to work ideas out, without apology.”The very nature and structure of the Internet makes this medium extraordinarily capable of infusing creativity into a global society.
a. CONTROL OF ONTOLOGY- without the ability to recreate our conceptions of life and what individual ontology means we will be trapped with the identification of the nation state. No ontology exists outside its apparatus making resisitance and individual agency impossible.
b. COOPTION OF TRANSCENDENCE- when we give the nationstate the ability to control the means of education and advancement we literally give up the right to transcend to a better social situation because all of the methods of reform are controlled by dominant institutions.
2, FREEDOM OF SPEECH- Cyberliberty is generally considered to be a particular application of free speech rights. Freedom of speech is generally considered one of the most important rights any individual might have.
a. HUMANIZATION- communication defines humanity. The ability to communicate complex and abstract concepts separates humans from animals it makes populations into individuals deserving of rights instead of controllable objects.
b. CYCLES OF VIOLENCE- when the population is viewd as simply controllable objects entire groups can be sacrificed without consequence createing a kill to save mentality and cycles of violence.
Neoliberalism
A. HARMS
1. RISE OF THE COORPERATION: America has become a country not of people but of corporations. All of our policies are based in unconditional faith in the free market. If we bail out corporations, if we cut taxes to the wealthy, if we decrease regulations then everything will be ok.
a. TAX RATES: the actual tax rate paid by the wealthy and big business is the lowest in several generations (According to Republican economist and former White House adviser Bruce Bartlett)
b. HOARDING CASH: A study earlier this month reported that 25 of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States paid their CEOs more money than their entire corporations paid in taxes. Meanwhile, corporations are earning record profits and sitting on record cash reserves -- upwards of $2 trillion dollars.
2. FAILED POLICIES: This faith blinds us to failed policies of neoliberal corporations. We gave companies bailouts and they gave their CEO’s bonuses, we cut taxes to the wealthy and they hoarded it, we decreased regulations and now the environment is being destroyed. Corporations are driven by profit; this means that they will never be able to generate long term solutions to social problems.
a. INEQUALITY: Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, our nation's total income rose by $528 billion. $464 billion went to pretax corporate profits. And $7 billion went to wages and salaries. In other words 88% of the brief recovery went to corporate profits and just 1% went to workers (according to a study by economists at Northeastern University)
b. EMPIRICALLY DISPROVEN: When the United States was recovering from a downturn in the early 1990s, 50% of the growth in the national income went to wages and salaries.
c. POVERTY: 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty in 2010, which is the highest number ever reported in the 52 years the census bureau has been collecting data.
3. DEMISE OF DEMOCRACY: What’s worse is that faith in cooperate America has caused the demise of democracy. Political lobbies ensure that the only policies that get passed are the ones that benefit the rich and cause perpetual poverty for the poor. Individual’s voices aren’t being heard in the political sphere so they have to occupy the streets in order to gain attention.
a. POPULAR OPINION: Fifty-six percent of Americans think taxes should be increased on households earning $250,000 a year or higher to help lower the deficit, while 37 percent say taxes should not be raised on those households.
b. Almost three in four Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy so we can put government to work getting all of America working again, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll
c. In fact, even among Republican voters, raising taxes on the rich is more popular than cuts to Social Security or Medicare -- putting the leading Republican presidential candidates squarely out of touch even with their own base.
PLAN: resolution
B. SOLVNECY
1. STOP THE CYCLE: We break the cycle of neolib and introduce new solutions. This fractures the overarching narrative of neoliberalism and is a prerequisite to social change.
2. DISCURSIVE SHIFT: The plan represents a shift from neoliberalism to democracy. We are increasing ____ taxes because we no longer believe that free market will solve social problems. Instead we are choosing to tax ____ so that corporate profits can start being a tool for democratic distribution of wealth.
3. NATIONAL VALUES: our plan represents a shift in values of American society. Through valuing democracy and social justice we are creating a political precedent that these issues come first.
4. OVERCOMING MYTH: neoliberalism is only able to survive because we believe that there is no alternative to the present day reality, we become convinced that social problems are the result of market laws that have not been fully applied, not the inevitable consequences of a market centered society. This aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo and makes political alternatives impossible.
5. INDIVIDUAL REJECTION SOLVES: neoliberalism is a discursive system that can only function as long as individuals accept its values and norms. Individual rejection fractures the truth claims of the system and creates an ontological space to generate new value norms.
a. GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW SOLVES- we can strengthen civil society by rejecting passive acceptance of social norms and creating society based on human solidarity. Beginning politics from the grass roots level affirms democracy and agency.
6. FRAMEWORK: put away your framework blocks, we fiat the policy action and engage in deliberative democracy. Debate is impossible in the current political climate, only we open space for new solutions.
a. REJECT THE LIES OF COORPERATIONS: if we start taxing the rich everything will not go to hell. Refer to our harms arguments; the world is already going to hell. Reject the truth claims of the taxes bad arguments because they were created to serve a purpose, increasing cooperate profits.
b. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE OVER DISASTER PORN: value poverty over the impact claims of their DA.
C. IMPACTS
1. KILL TO SAVE MENTALITY: in neoliberalism individuals lose autonomy and agency. Their value gets determined by the amount that they contribute to the economic system. This divorces qualitative meaning of life from the quantitative econ system.
a. DEHUM: dehumanization destroys everything that makes life meaningful to the point that death no longer has meaning. It also creates perpetual suffering that outweighs an instant death. Neoliberalism also destroys cultures and therefore causes transgenerational oppression.
b. EXTINCTION: when life has no meaning it infinitely lowers the brink for violence. We become convinced that we must save humanity be destroying part of it. This culminates in cycles of violence that result in extinction.
2. CLIMATE CHANGE: neoliberal policies allow corporations to act without any sort of accountability. This mindset leads us to disregard policies about climate change and environmental destruction because we believe that the private sector will fix them. But the private sector is only after short term profits, which means environmental concerns get ignored.
a. TIMEFRAME: now is key. We’re on the brink of creating a positive feedback loop that will result in runaway global warming. We’re at 350ppm of carbon in the atmosphere now, and most scientists agree that if we reach 400ppm in the next couple years we’ll have made global warming inevitable.
b. EXTINCTION: Global warming will result in mass extinction. When the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases and we can’t control it, it’ll dissolve into the ocean, creating carbonic acid. This will lower the pH of the water and make it impossible for keystone species such as phytoplankton to survive and causing corral bleaching, collapsing the ecosystem of the entire ocean. Since 2 billion people live on less than a dollar a day and they depend on the ocean for their livelihood in some way they’ll move inland to try to survive, causing a massive resource crunch. It’ll be try or die for the last grain of rice, which makes irrational actors of us all and increases isolationism. These resource conflicts will go nuclear, causing enough particulates to block out the sun, end photosynthesis and end all life on earth.
3. POVERTY: neoliberalism allows cyclical poverty to self-perpetuate, since the free market has determined that these people are not fit enough to survive in the economic sphere. The invisibility of the poverty crisis due to their lack of access to the political system ensures the harms are infinitely reproduced. This culminates in cyclical dehumanization and oppression, creating the logic of disposability that permits any atrocity against them. We’ll control the internal link to violence, because violence is only possible when you’ve created a disposable other that can and should be sacrificed to benefit the rest of society.
Security – Russia Strat
Contention one is “Back in the USSR”:
1. The historical lens through which we view the cold war has evolved and our perspective as critical thinkers should evolve with it.
a. Traditionalism- The prevailing narrative of the cold war began from the traditionalist perspective that it was just an extension of the prevailing pre-Second World War historiography of American diplomacy . . . [which] was consensual, and . . . was a celebratory, even triumphalist, interpretation of American foreign policy to that point. the traditionalist view that the Cold War was a product of aggressive Russian expansionism, which forced the United States into a global defence of freedom
b. Revisionists- From here it expanded to the revisionist perspective, wherein economic factors are central and U.S. foreign policy is seen as ‚expansionist‛ and dynamic rather than defensive and reactive.
c. Post-Revisionists-Then came the post-revisionists who brought geopolitics into the discussion where U.S. policy is seen as being driven by security and balance-of-power concern. Policy-makers were seeking certain objectives but unsure of how to reach them, wanting both to avert Soviet domination and yet maintain cooperation, driven by fear as well as by a sense of power,
d. Post-structuralism- Finally came the post-structuralists who argued that US foreign policy . . . is also about the creation of foreign threats because such threats are needed for the production and reproduction of American identity‛. Reinforcement of the ‚self,‛ in this view, ‚necessitates the production of the ‘other’‛.For that enterprise, the state is the vehicle; it has to define otherness and to create threats. ‚’Foreign policy’ is about the creation of those discourses [of danger] and . . . is directed, not only externally at the outside world, but also internally, for the purpose of reproducing the identity of the state‛.The use of metaphors is characteristic of such ‚foreign policy.‛ ‚In the Cold War, for example, communism was regularly portrayed as a disease, virus or other pathological condition. . . . By thus transcribing its differences from the USSR onto differences taken for granted in US culture, the process of foreign policy naturalises those differences while also serving to demonise the other.
2. The cold war ended in 1991, we need to leave securitization discourse & justifications behind or we risk a return to a world in which nuclear war and annihalation becomes normalized.
a. The cold war saw the splitting of Berlin, the fall of the Soviet Union and the start of the now giant American debt, which began as a method of out-spending the Soviets in an arms race
b. During that period, the United States spent eight trillion dollars in the arms race with Russia, and 100,000 American soldiers died in the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, both of which occurred in an attempt to “stem the Communist tide.”
c. The U.S. was involved in over 50 conflicts in Latin America and Africa where democratically elected leaders who favored Russia and Communism were taken out and removed by CIA agents so U.S. puppets could be put into place instead
d. The cold war brought containment, Communism, arms race, missile gap, proxy wars, client states, non-alignment, Cuban missile crisis, Korean War, Vietnam War, détente, nuclear deterrence, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), and the whole arcana of espionage—moles, double agents, wet operations, and plausible deniability into our normalized understanding of the world.
Thus we affirm the resolution as a jumping off point to question the historical necessity of securitization against the other.
Contention two is “Why We Shouldn’t Have to be Topical”:
1. Our relationship to the resolution isn’t something we should divorce from our opinions and what the consequence of our speech is in order to be topical. The idea that we should have to do the topic because it’s the topic neglects our individual connections to the res and what the effects of our speech might be (in this instance, the topic forces us to defend the security discourse of the Cold War).
a. Training us to do defend the topic no matter what results in conditioning us to just make the best of whatever’s given to us like generals that are being told what to do and who to fire upon without questioning whether or not it’s the right course of action or one which they believe in. This ultimately will replicate the harms of securitization and make peaceful solutions impossible.
2. The status quo of policy-based debate reproduces infinite numbers of Karl Roves - i.e. disinterested policy makers that achieve success based on making arguments they don’t care about and their ability to coerce people. They make their living appealing to people’s most basic reptile instincts no matter how distorted or harmful the consequences may be. Mindless debate about hypotehticals trains us to do that in the most efficient way possible.
a. In a normal discussion, the things that win out are exaggerations and plays on fear rather than a responsible evaluation of facts, so the topical way to read this aff will inevitably reproduce that.
b. The idea of pressuring Russia and that states must control another state is steeped in the ideas of Western democracy and capitalism’s superiority - thus we as the United States have to secure our interests from threats. This is best illustrated by the Cold War’s ideology of pressure and containment - that we must place parameters on other people choosing a side on a different type of economy, because it posed a major threat to our “correct” way of approaching the world.
c. Because switch side debate currently teaches us to be like Karl Rove, people argue things they don’t believe in for the sake of winning, which militarizes debate, capitalizes on fear, and results in everyone becoming “might makes right” hacks.
3. The belief that security is a neutral idea holds similarities to “resolution is a neutral starting point and there’s fairness on each side”
a. The idea that truth will surface at the end of the round isn’t a correct assumption, because rounds don’t happen without context – the dominant narratives, the value judgement of the judge (certain things appeal to some judges more than others, biggest death toll wins, how many times have you voted on “risk of the disad” wins?, lines on the flow go like missiles, some get blocked, some go through, you concede collateral losses and damage, entrap people.
b. We debate in a way that’s currently dominated by security discourse, so debating in traditional methods is insufficient to deconstruct or change that.
c. The implication to this is that all our impacts about securitization are implications to how debating within security is bad. That training us to be security calculators is bad if securitization is bad.
4. In the same way you can’t deconstruct security within the branch of the Pentagon because certain assumptions can’t be unseated in an easy way, you can’t get away from threat construction if you subscribe to “this is how the world works and how each actor behaves”. So we have to change assumptions about debate in order to create debate as something different.
a. The way we think about debate now is on which side of the flow is the devastation more complete? Can we undo that by reading topical affs? That will lapse us back into the same damaging security that we always use and make all our harms inevitable.
b. What determines what opinions are legitimate or worth talking about is by patterns of thinking created by discourse. This is why articulating new ways of doing debate and defiance is useful.
c. We should make the distinction between risomatic and arboresic knowledge. Arboresic knoweldge says that everything you think can only be an extension of what you already know – much like a tree the branches are fundamentally constrained in what “new” can be produced. This creates facism of truth if you can’t return earlier and defy points, it creates micro facisms. We have to be risomatic to create truths outside of truth by returning to the central question of what we do and why it’s educational and ask what’s the value of this debate round right now? What we hope to accomplish here and now is wedded in assumptions about what debate is good debate. Debate is currently just doing arboresic mode of thinking and education.
i. The aff is a risome, not because just talking about how we’re securitized with Russia (in the same way as if we read it on the neg) but also because it offers an interruption as to how debate must continue. This will facilitate better debates about Russia in the future, and better debates on every topic, because it will be okay to break out of the securitized norm.
Contention three is “Why Securitization is Bad”:
1. The call to securitize always implies an enemy: against the sacred population in need of salvation is placed an unstable other who must be resisted at all costs. The only possible result is annihilation: Security is first and foremost a performative discourse that classifies and defines power relationships. It is used to constitute the ethical boundaries and territorial borders of inside/ outside, normal/pathological, civilized/barbaric, so wars are not waged for the purpose of defending their rulers, but for the purpose of defending "the nation," ensuring the state's security and entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of slaughter in the name of life necessity. This means we will continue to exterminate groups until no one is left on Earth.
2. Securitization and its mediation ensures total war and genocide – Security Representations ensure large scale violence: The Other is objectified, made into an object of knowledge, by re-presentation of their identity and values. Such a dichotomization implies a necessity to get rid of the “Other”, because they connote a challenge to categorizing practices and represent a competing world picture. Securitization forces the Other to conform or be eliminated and constructs these options as a natural necessity to restore order. In this way, it is not only justifiable to eliminate entire populations, but securitizing is legitimized for use in all future instances as a tool of bringing Others into submission. Results in atrocities that are unquestioned and encouraged.
3. Reliance on security suffers from serial policy failure – and the endless production of new threats to be countered creates an endless politics of war: Life exists in a permanent state of emergency constantly ruled by fear. Securitization makes the kind of politics that defines the self on the basis of hostility. Without the process of identifying and excluding Others, order in itself is made impossible – This ensures that our responses to threats, or perceived threats, are always informed by an us/them dichotomy that creates perpetual warfare and the conditions for constant violence.
4. Securitization removes structural violence from the realm of politics – makes it impossible to face real threats: Diplomacy and conventional warfare are seen as the primary means by which states seek to protect themselves from the threat represented by the armed forces of other states. During the Cold War, "deterrence" of nuclear and conventional attack through contingent threats of nuclear retaliation was added as a strategy to deter conflict. That which needed to be secured (the object of security) was the state, and the mechanism by which security would be achieved was the manipulation of military capability in relation to actual or potential adversaries. This interpretation of security denies to the populace the resources and attention from government that can actually improve their quality of life – violence that does not fit into a particular category of threats is ignored, and ongoing militarism in the form of structural violence is accepted as a necessary byproduct of defending the ultimate good – the soverignity of the group versus the “other”.
Space Traders
1 January. the first surprise was the ships themselves. huge vessels, the size of aircraft carriers. the bow of the leading ship slowly lowered. A sizable party of the visitors -emerged and began moving majestically across the water toward the shore. At least no one panicked.
Then came the second surprise. The leaders spoke in the familiar comforting tones of former President Reagan, spokesperson for the space people raised a hand and spoke crisply, and to the point.
And this point constituted the third surprise. vessels carried within their holds treasure of which the United States was in most desperate need: gold, to bail out the almost bankrupt federal, state, and local governments; special chemicals capable of unpolluting the environment, and a totally safe nuclear engine and fuel to relieve the nation's all-but-depleted supply of fossil fuel. In return, the visitors wanted only one thing-and that was to take back to their home star all the African Americans who lived in the United States.
The Space Traders said they would wait sixteen days for a response to their offer. the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. they would depart carrying with them every black man, woman, and child in the nation and leave behind untold treasure.
2 January.
In the few hours since the Space Traders' offer, the white House and the Congress had been inundated with phone calls and telegrams. The President was not surprised that a clear majority spontaneously urged acceptance of the offer.
The President had asked Gleason Golightly, the conservative black economics professor, who was his unofficial black cabinet member, to attend the meeting. Golightly was smart and seemed to be truly conservative.
”As you know, Mr. President, I have supported this administration’s policies that have led to the repeal of some civil rights laws. I have been willing to be a ‘good soldier’ for the Party even though I am condemned as an Uncle Tom by my people. Mr. President, my record of support entitles me to be heard on the Space Traders’ proposition. I disagree strongly with both the Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General. What they are proposing is not universal selective service for blacks. It is group banishment. You simply cannot condemn twenty million people because they are black, and thus fit fodder for trade. Moreover, I doubt whether the Secretary of the Interior would willingly offer up his family and friends if the Space Traders sought them instead of me and mine.”
the President replied smoothly ”I think we get your point, Professor,” We will give it weight in our considerations. Now,” he said, rising, “we need to get to work on this thing. We don’t have much time. Meeting adjourned.”
3 January. The Anti-Trade Coalition-a gathering of black and liberal white politicians, civil rights representatives, and progressive academics-quickly assembled Working nonstop had drafted a series of legal and political steps designed to organize opposition to the Space Traders’ offer.
At that moment, Professor Gleason Golightly sought the floor. Flying in the face of our history,
you are still relying on the assumption that whites really want to grant justice to blacks. the principal, motivation for racism in this country is the deeply held belief that black people should not have anything that white people don’t have. Rather than resisting the Space Traders’ offer, let us circulate widely the rumor that the Space Traders, aware of our long fruitless struggle on this planet, are arranging to transport us to a land of milk and honey-a virtual paradise.
He paused, looking out over the sea of faces. Then there was a clamor of outraged cries: “Sell-out!” “Traitor!” and “Ultimate Uncle Tom!”
4 January. In a nationally televised address, the President sought to reassure both Trade supporters that he was responding favorably to their strong messages, and blacks and whites opposed to the Trade that he would not ignore their views.
7 January. Groups supporting the Space Traders’ proposition had from the beginning taken seriously blacks’ charges that acceptance of it would violate the Constitution’s most basic protections. the state legislatures-quickly passed, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It declared: Without regard to the language or interpretations previously given any other provision of this document, every United States citizen is subject at the call of Congress to selection for special service for periods necessary to protect domestic interests and international needs.
11 January.
Unconfirmed media reports asserted that U.S. officials tried in secret negotiations to get the Space Traders to take in trade only those blacks currently under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system. Government negotiators noted that this would include almost one half of the black males in the twenty- to twenty-nine-year-old bracket. Negotiators were also reported to have offered to trade only blacks locked in the inner cities.
the Space Traders warned that they would withdraw their proposition unless the United States halted the flight of the growing numbers of middle-class blacks fleeing the country. In response, executive orders were issued and implemented, barring blacks from leaving the country until the Space Traders’ proposition was fully debated and resolved.
15 January. Many whites had, to their credit, been working day and night to defeat the amendment; but, as is the usual fate of minority rights when subjected to referenda or initiatives, the outcome was never really in doubt. The final vote tally confirmed the predictions. By 70 percent to 30 percent, American citizens voted to ratify the constitutional amendment that provided a legal basis for acceptance of the space traders offer.
16 January. Professor Golightly and his family were promised safe passage to Canada for all his past service. But, at the border that evening, he was stopped and turned back.
”I wonder,” he murmured “how my high-minded brothers at the conference feel
now about their decision to fail with integrity rather than stoop to the bit of trickery that might have saved them” ”But, Gleason,” his wife asked, “If the Space Traders were to depart, carrying away with them what they and everyone else says can solve our major domestic problems, wouldn’t people increasingly blame us blacks for increases in debt, pollution, and fuel shortages? We might have saved ourselves-but only to face here a fate as dire as any we face in space.”
17 January. The last Martin Luther King holiday the nation would ever observe dawned on an extraordinary sight. In the night, the Space Traders had drawn their strange ships right up to the beaches and discharged their cargoes of gold, minerals, and machinery, leaving vast empty holds. Crowded on the beaches were inductees, some twenty million silent black men, women, and children, including babes in arms. The inductees looked fearfully behind them. But, on the dunes above the beaches, guns at the ready, stood U.S. guards. There was no escape, no alternative. Heads bowed, arms now linked by slender chains, black people left the New World as their forebears had arrived.
Superheroes Shell - Superman
Superman offers a challenge us to imagine what a collective “good” looks like – representing the necessity of ethical gestures: Superman has transformed himself and his storylines in accordance with broader historical contexts – from thinly veiled revolutionary socialism to wartime populism to Eisenhower capitalism to self escapism and skepticism. Thus, his history illustrates that good and evil are not absolutes but change according to time, place, and culture. However, his transformations reveal the commitment to the ideal of moral perfection. He challenges us to imagine what absolute commitment to virtue and an examination of the ethical might look like – even if it is a constantly shifting landscape, the gesture of the ethical is still important.
Superman solves oppression: The form of good that Superman does is explicitly characterized from the outset of his creation as a form of sociopolitical intervention. Over the course of his first 12 appearances, he addresses problems such as political corruption, ghetto housing (which he explicitly declares is a factor in youth crime) and campaigns for prison reform. Thus, the “evils” he fights against are clearly rooted in inequality.
Superman can reform the USFG: Superman acts as a mirror for the political system to reveal and correct the structural flaws therein. The social order is represented as corrupt to the extent that true moral action cannot inhere in its laws and practices and has an imparative to opreate outside the law to correct them. He is literally an alien outsider capable of exposing that no human society has yet managed to resolve or transcend the structures of inequality and explotation that are the real evils of his story.
Superheroes Shell – Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is an inherently deconstructive superhero: She was self-consciously designed to change perceptions of gender and sexuality by inverting the hierarchical oppositions of man/woman, power/weakness, and dominance/submission.
Wonder women is also plays with gender identity and roles for men and women. She asserts against the entire masculinist order. She espouses values that show it is possible to be beautiful and strong, nurturing and independend
Wonder woman plays with sexuality and gender for women – she ties up men and women and plays with bondage and domination/subordination roles for men and women – tying up men and taking sexual pleasure in being tied up herself.
Transhumanism
Now is key to embrace transhumanism:
Technological advancements have brought us to a crossroads – unless transhumanist education is promoted, technology will allow us to violently cause our own extinction. Action is key- every day we delay transitioning risks extinction: Violent impulses, miscalculation and the building of weapons capable of destroying the earth ensure that a time will come when we will either reach doomsday or transcivilization. The risk of humantranshuman extinction is very small compared to the possible extinction of humans by humans. Our ignorance and lack of intelligence increase the prospect of doomsday regardless of our good intentions – every delay risks extinction.
Mathematically, either extinction is inevitable without a
posthuman transition or our potential for a transition is closing: Technological civilization will oscillate continuously within a relatively narrow band of development. If there is any chance that a cycle will either break through to the posthuman level or plummet into extinction, then there is for each period a chance that the oscillation will end. Unless the chance of such a breakout converges to zero at a sufficiently rapid rate, then with probability one the pattern will eventually be broken.
The cumulative probability of extinction increases monotonically over time. The current century will be a critical phase for humanity, since we now are capable of developing to the post-human. The new civilization would have vastly improved survival prospects since it would be guided by superintelligent foresight and planning, thus breaking out of our current cycle of oscillation.
Solvency:
This synthesis of man and machine breaks down Aristotelian views that man and machine are separate entities. This is key to reshaping the human experience, opening ourselves to new knowledge and new beings and sparking the transhumanist ethic: Conceiving of technology as a prosthesis that alters the nature of its user reminds us how technical innovations produce unforeseeable transformations. The deconstruction of Aristotelian systems enables each invention to be seen as an eruption of the other. This involves a negotiation with what one can’t or doesn’t know, whereby knowledge could have secured itself as an ‘invention of the other’ produces undecidability as to agency. This undecidability allows us to open ourselves to new forms of being.
Furthermore, complete immortality is possible... there’s no reason to accept death: Machines are becoming more organic, selfmodifying, and intelligent. Driving these developments are new neural networks, fuzzy logic, intelligent agents, and machine intelligence. At the same time, we are beginning to incorporate our technology into ourselves.
We began with pacemakers, artificial joints, and contact lenses. The abolition of aging and most involuntary death will be one result. Immortality is next.
Machine intelligence researchers, roboticists, and cognitive scientists foresee even more radical posthuman possibilities. Using nanocomputers our mental processors could run a million times faster and allow easier and more extensive modification than our natural brains.
And the meaning of those immortal lives gain in depth, richness and beauty with an embrace of transhumanism. It allows us to affirm life in completely new ways: It suggests a necessity for a political cartography of bodily formation that attends to how bodies are imbued with the capacity to act and be acted on. It means accepting that politics come before being – not the reverse – because life is no longer a median or distribution of norms instead of biological essence being threatened by technology. Only then will we see the post-human is the ongoing differentiation of ways of life and modes of being. Then we can evaluate beings in terms of their affirmation of life rather than their distance from it.
Impacts:
This transhumanist ethic solves back for all structural otherizations – solves the root cause of structural violence and oppression: Transhumanism is compatible with a variety of ethical systems and holds that people are not disposable. Transhumanists reject speciesism and insist that all beings that can experience pain have moral status and that post-human persons could have at least the same level of moral status as humans do in their current form.
Transhumanism is key to breaking down binaries, and accepting pluralities of identities. It is the ultimate expansion into an acceptance of new identities: A cyborgian existence allows people to manipulate their gender identity, create new ones, and challenge the key assumptions of Western culture that ‘biology is destiny’ and destiny is binary.
Finally, the transhumanist ethic is logically prior to all other impacts. We’re key to the possibility of evaluating anything: Discussions of values are incapable of framing the world we have created. Even as technology evolves around us, we fall back into classic European Enlightenment terms of liberty and egalitarianism. We are evolving toward a level of complexity and integration of human and synthetic systems that we cannot grasp with our outdated ideologies and human limitations. Without a new rationale suitable for the evolving world, we will forfeit our ability to evaluate any question of ethics.
Yertle the Turtle (The Turtle Shell – hehe)
[On the far away island of Salamasond, Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond. A nice little pond, it was clean, it was neat. The water was warm. There was plenty to eat. And turtles had everything turtles might need. And they were all happy, quite happy indeed.
They were. Until Yertle, the king of them all, decided the kingdom he ruled was too small. ] 0:19
[Yertle the turtle king lifted his hand, and Yertle the turtle king gave a command. He ordered nine turtles to swim to his stone, and using these turtles, he built a new throne. He made each turtle stand on another one’s back. And he piled them up in a nine turtle stack.] 0:14
[All through that morning, he sat there up high. Saying over and over, “A great king am I”. Then, he heard a faint little sigh. “What’s that?” snapped the king. He looked down the stack, and he saw at the bottom a turtle named Mack. This plain little turtle looked up and said “Beg pardon, King Yertle. I’ve pains in my back and my shoulders and knees. How long must we stand here, your majesty, please? I know up on top you’re seeing great sights. But down at the bottom, we, too, should have rights”
“You hush up your mouth!” howled the king Yertle. “You have no right to talk to the world’s highest turtle!”] 0:30
[That plain little turtle below in the stack, that plain little turtle whose name was just Mack, decided he’d taken enough. That plain little Mack did a plain little thing. He burped. And his burp shook the throne of the king.
That was the end of the turtle king’s rule. For Yertle, the king of all Salamasond, fell off his high throne and *plunk* in the pond. And today the great Yertle, that marvelous he, is king of the mud. That’s all he can see. And the turtles? They’re all quite happy and free, as turtles, and maybe all creatures should be.] 0:25
1:30
Framework:
1. Fiat isn’t real: Duh. We as individuals are not members of the USFG and we are likely never to actually access the political system in a way that would make us capable of singlehandedly forcing policy change to happen. Reading and voting for a topical plan doesn’t cause the policy to pass, so discussing irreal hypotheticals in terms of the USFG action is a futile exercise in terms of actual change. Instead, we should affirm a method of engaging with the topic that is more politically productive and proximal to our lives.
2. What if method doesn’t come from a store? Perhaps method means a little bit more: Instead, we should use our imaginations to engage with children’s literature, like Yertle the Turtle to imagine better possibilities for the world.
Solvency:
1. Children’s literature has politically subversive potential: It encodes ideological assumptions or disemminates strategies for resisting them – transmitting cultural values and norms or breaking them down. Children’s literature in particular is effective in this, because childhood is a time for learning to negotiate and find a place in society. Children’s literature also represents a unique cultural space that is often overlooked and unregulated by the state (unlike school) that can present radical and subversive views – provoking their readers who are experiencing ideas for the first time to question why things are the way they are. (Reynolds, “Radical Children’s Literature”)
a. Children’s authors are granted way more freedom in experimenting with form and content, exactly because the genre isn’t included in discussions of supposedly higher forms of literature and critical thought. Even during the height of McCarthyism, children’s books were generally assumed to be good for children, flew under the radar of regulation that censored other mediums of expression like television and textbooks. Instead, children’s books preserved and disemminated liberal, cultural values. (Mickenberg, “Learning from the Left”)
2. Children’s literature is accessible in a way that policy discussions are not – reaching a broader scope of people and encoding methods of resistance that are more fully capable of achieving liberation:
3. Reading Yertle the Turtle as a method of engagement with the topic allows us to access this subversive quality in a way that roleplaying the USFG would not:
4. This is a productive way to engage in the topic – Yertle the Turtle is a metaphor for hegemony: Dr. Suess wrote Yertle the Turtle about Hitler and to teach children and all of us about resisting authoritarianism. His political strategies are encoded in his books to encourage resistance to dictators who would literally use the bodies of the oppressed to build their empires.
Impacts:
1. Heg is bad (duh).
Bartholomew and the Oobleck
They still talk about it in the Kingdom of Didd as The-Year-the-King-Got-Angry-with-the-Sky. And they still talk about the page boy, Bartholomew Cubbins. If it hadn’t been for Bartholomew, that King and that Sky would have wrecked that little Kingdom.
All year long he stared up into the air above his kingdom, muttering and sputtering through his royal whiskers, “Humph! The things that come down from the sky! Every year the same things! I want something NEW to come down!”
But how to get something new to come down? That was rather hard to think up. And for many days the old King stomped around, trying to figure out some way to do it.
“Why of course!” He began laughing. “They can do it for me! Bartholomew, blow my secret whistle! Call my royal magicians!”
“I wish” spoke the King, “to have you make something fall from my skies that no other kingdom has ever had before. What can you do? What can you make?”
They spoke a word. . .one word. . .”Oobleck”
All night they walked in circles round their magic fire, making magic mumbling with their clucking tongues:
Quick! Before the day gets light,
Go, magic smoke! Go high! Go high!
Go rise into the kingdom’s sky!
Go make the Oobleck tumble down
In every street in every town!
At first, it seemed like a little greenish cloud. But now it was coming lower, closer. Tiny little greenish specks were shimmering in the air.
Outside the palace it was piling up, great greenish tons of Oobleck, deeper and deeper in every roof in the land. That Oobleck’s gooey and gummy! It’s like glue! There were farmers in the fields, getting stuck to plows. Goats were getting stuck to ducks. Everywhere Bartholomew ran, he saw someone stuck to something!
Old King Derwin was trembling, shaking, helpless as a baby. His royal crown was stuck to his royal head. Oobleck was dripping from his eyebrows. It was oozing from his royal ears.
Bartholomew could hold his tongue no longer. “This is all your fault. Now the least you can do is say the simple words, ‘I’m sorry’”.
Bartholomew heard a great, deep sob. The old King was crying! “You’re right! It is all my fault!. And I am sorry! I’m awfully, awfully sorry!”
And the moment the King spoke those words, the sun began to shine and fight its way through the storm. The falling Oobleck grew smaller and smaller. All the Oobleck that was stuck on all the people just simply, quietly melted away.
1:40
The Lorax
I’ll tell you how the Lorax got lifted and taken away. Way back in the days when the grass was still green, and the pond was still wet, and the clouds were still clean.
I first saw the trees, the Truffula Trees. Mile after mile in the fresh morning breeze.
I chopped down a truffula tree with one chop and with great speedy-speed, I took the soft tuft and knitted a Thneed.
The instant I’d finished, I heard a great “ga-zump”. I looked. I saw something pop out of the stump of the tree I chopped down. It was sort of a man. Describe him? That’s hard. I don’t know if I can.
“Mister? I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. And I’m asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs, what’s that thing you have made out of my truffula puff?”
“I chopped down just one tree. There’s no cause for alarm. I’m being quite useful – I’m doing no harm. This Thneed is a fine thing that all people need”
In no time at all, in the factory I’d built, the whole Once-ler family was working fill tilt. We were knitting Thneedes as busy as bees, to the sound of the chopping of Truffula Trees.
And the Lorax? Next week, he knocked on my new office door. “Now thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there’s not enough Truffula fruit to go ‘round. My poor Barbaloutes are all getting the grummies, because there’s not enough food in the tummies. You’re making such smog-ulous smoke, my poor swammie swans, why they can’t sing a note! No one can sing with smoke in their throat!”
I’ll never forget the grim look on his face when he hoisted himself and took leave of this place.
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks with the word “Unless”.
But now, now that you’re here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
1:40
War Ontology
Harms
[Insert country or conflict specific harms arguments]
Thus the plan text: [Do something less militaristic/to change the way we relate to war and violence]
A. SOLVENCY
1. CHANGE IN TRAJECTORY: Eliminating the sale of M1A1 tanks takes a step towards reforming militarized societies. Egypt maintains along with several thousand Soviet-era tanks. According to Shana Marshal of the Institute for Middle East studies, there's no conceivable scenario in which Egypt could need all those tanks short of an alien invasion, in which case I think we are all agreed that there would be more pressing problems than a shortage of tanks.
a. SPOTLIGHTING: eliminating military aid that has no purposeful application allows international discussions to be focused on the strategic interested and strings involved with military aid instead of on securitizing concerns.
b. REFORMISM SOLVES: challenging the ontology of war exposes its weaknesses and unveils the hypocrisy of its development. This allows for societal transformation to occur and for a restructuring of economic systems to take place.
2. IDENTITY CHANGES ACTION: Changing our actions ruptures the ontology of war by demonstrating the possibility for praxis not reliant upon nationalistic identity claims. Our plan solves best because it is a critical approach with real world political context. To change modern security discourse we must first start by challenging the epistemological assumptions that create the basis of military policy, the affirmative uses a method of questioning current political situations and providing alternative policies as a method of moving away from the status quo. This is the first step in creation of new political discourses.
a. LOCALIZATION- our policy is a shift in normative epistemology because the constant state of questioning allows for multiple viewpoints to be accessed and destroys the illusion that there is a universal truth about the world.
b. SITE OF RESISTANCE- discourse is constructed on the individual level by every day actions and assumptions; this means that the ideal way to change discourse is on the individual level as well. Because there is no center of militaristic ideology it is pervasive in all aspects of life, but it is also its greatest weakness because it means militarism can be challenged from any point.
c. RECONCEPTUALIZE PEACE: understanding peace as more than establishing a “legitimate” government allows for a change in political trajectory from a secure government to secure individuals.
3. RECONSTRUCT SECURITIZING RATIONALITIES: Rationality is simply a chain of reasoning that continually builds links of truth on top of each other until a particular course of action becomes seemingly necessary. The challenge to demilitarize requires that we address particular policy decisions in terms of the overarching systems of thought which motivate them. Each policy is another link in the chain; nothing is inevitable until we make it so. Each additional claim that violence is necessary is a unique cause of violence in its support for war ontology.
4. SPILL OVER: War ontology makes policy discussions limited in scope to maintain the status quo—alternative possibilities can be grasped only outside of this discourse. We cannot immediately transcend static nationalist identifications, but the PMC offers a first step which makes us aware of our conditions and leads us to actively question ontological violence. We should consider underlying reasons that compel us to act violently.
5. ROLE OF THE BALLOT: questioning the basis of security allows us to understand the issue in new ways, these changes the way in which we view that world and what we regard as inevitable opening new paths for nonviolent solutions. Without a shift in discourse we are locked in current episto and are unable to change our actions.
B. IMPACTS
1. POVERTY:
a. STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE: causes 14 to 18 million deaths a year compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period.
2. ONTOLOGY OF WAR:
a. TEMPORAL DISLOCATION: defining the Egyptian state based off of US interpretations ensures that the conflict within the country continues. The US pulls the puppet strings behind the government institution without an understanding of how individuals conceptualize their own democracy and their own political status. This subjugates individuals within countries to shadowed space without political recognition or participation and creates a terrifying binary: either one must conform to US ideals of what political action means or be ignored.
b. TRANSGENERATIONAL DEATH: not only does this result in the death of millions but the lack of political response keeps the conflict invisible therefore creating expendable populations that are not worthy of human rigths. When people are neglected because of their identity they undergo rights stripping and humiliation, these things are transgenerational and result in the social death of entire populations.
3. SECURITIZATION: US military aid to Egypt in anticipation of conflict only exacerbates regional tensions and causes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only does national security not guarantee individual security but it also creates a risk calculation mindset that results in inevitable violence. When we view the world and foreign actors as posing a violent threat it forces us to respond with preemptive violence, in the form of weapons accumulation and first strike capacity; in turn our enemies increase their arsenal as well. This lowers the brink for war and makes miscalculation and accidental launch more likely. Military policies create the violence they seek to prevent.
-------------------------------------------------
**LOC SECTION**
*FRONTLINES TO AFF’S*
K AFF FRAMING
Ethical Obligation - Derrida
1. Derrida’s ethics of relating to the other requires viewing rapists as equal to victim, oppressor equal to oppressed – destroying the possibility of ethical decision making: Under this view, justice requires one to speak in the language of the Other by trying to see things from the Other's point of view. Suppose, however, that we are not the injurer, but the victim not the oppressor, but the oppressed. We might wonder whether this is what justice really requires, especially if the injustice we complain of is precisely that the Other failed to recognize us as a person, refused to speak in our language, and declined to consider our uniqueness and authenticity.
2. Their attempt at empathizing with the Other ultimately fails – it ignores larger structures of domination imposed on the Other and serves to widen the gap between the individual and the Other: Because the representation of "the other" ignores (1) the class and intellectual hierarchies within these other cultures and (2) discursive power relations, it produces a way of talking in which notions of lack, subalternity, victimization, and so forth are drawn upon indiscriminately, often with the intention of spotlighting the speaker's own sense of alterity and political righteousness. This deprives the oppressed of even the vocabulary of protest and rightful demand. The oppressed, whose voices we seldom hear, are robbed twice—the first time of their economic chances, the second time of their language, which is now no longer distinguishable from those of us who have had our consciousnesses "raised”.
3. The affirmative’s action of speaking for Others serves to ultimately reinscribe a hierarchy of civilizations – triggering racism and imperialism, which ultimately overwhelms their attempts at improving the condition of the Other: Their discourse reinscribes the "hierarchy of civilizations" view where the US lands squarely at the top, because the “other” is reduced to an object and victim that must be championed from afar, thus disempowered. Though the speaker may be trying to improve the situation of some lesser-privileged group, the effects of their discourse is to reinforce racist, imperialist conceptions and silence the lesser-privileged group's own ability to speak and be heard.
4. Even if the Other supposedly wants to be spoken for, it is still an act of representing the Other which ignores the imbalance of power between the speaker and Other: You are still interpreting the other's situation and wishes, and so you are still creating for them a self in the presence of others. In doing so, you’ve authorized yourself to speak for them and to have power over the “other”. This is rarely present in the instances where one is being spoken for.
Ethics – Short FL
1. ENDS DON’T JUSTIFY MEANS: their ethics turn attempts to use their impacts as a justification for action. But this makes no logical sense; they have to prove that their methodology is sound before they can prove that their impact claims are true. Using impacts to justify actions is what leads to flawed methodologies in the first place.
2. 1AC NOT ETHICAL: we are proving on the impact level of the K that the discourse of the 1AC is the root cause of the impacts that they isolate. This means that voting for the alternative is really the only way to be ethical and prevent death.
3. ONTOLOGY FIRST: ethics is based in how we conceive of ourselves and our own agency. Our conceptions of self is logically prior to our relationships with others because there can be no relationship or other without first a concept of self. This means that creating a new ontological space for the self to exist is necessary to change ethics. There are not and cannot be ethics in the status quo because of the links we isolate.
4. CRISIS POLITICS: the idea that we need to act immediately to prevent catastrophic impacts traps us into the cycle of crisis politics where we hand over our agency to state actors. The state has a vested interest in the crisis politics system because it reinforces their power to control and act. But this is a self-fulfilling prophecy that ends up creating the impacts it seeks to prevent. The only way to break out is to do nothing in the face of catastrophe and reject the impulse to act.
*GENERICS/FAVORITES*
ALT ENERGY
Peak Oil Disad
Uniqueness
1. Peak oil now (all these are indicators that consumption is overrunning production)
a. Production/Consumption Gap
i. The International Energy Agency (IEA) came to the conclusion that the average production-weighted decline rate worldwide was 6.7% for post-peak fields (IEA, 2008).
1. In the last ten years, global oil production has been steadily declining while consumption has been increasing. This gap indicates that peak oil has been reached, and we are in the period of decline in production while demand continues to increase exponentially.
a. Last year, global consumption was 84,455,000 barrels per day while production was 81,829,000 barrels per day.
b. Population up
i. The world population increased from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion by 1999, a doubling that occurred over 40 years. The Census Bureau's latest projections imply that population growth will continue into the 21st century.
ii. The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2043, an increase of 50 percent that is expected to require 44 years.
iii. The current world population is 6,793,263,209
iv. The current US population is 307,798,665
c. No amount of technology can save us
i. Biophysical economists theorize that the peak oil phenomenon holds true for all non-renewable resources, especially energy commodities.
ii. Oil extraction has evolved by leaps and bounds since the early 1900s, and yet companies must expend much more energy to get less and less oil than they did back then.
d. Demand up – indicates high dependency
i. International Energy Agency's own data show that energy use is doubling every 37 years or so, while energy productivity takes about 56 years to double
ii. The petroleum sector's EROI (energy return on investment) in this country was about 100-to-1 in 1930, meaning one had to burn approximately 1 barrel of oil's worth of energy to get 100 barrels out of the ground. By the 1990s, it is thought, that number slid to less than 36-to-1, and further down to 19-to-1 by 2006.
iii. If you go from using a 20-to-1 energy return fuel down to a 3-to-1 fuel, economic collapse is guaranteed as nothing is left for economic activity.
iv. Fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are America's primary source of energy, accounting for 85 percent of current US fuel use.
e. All supply discovered
2. No viable alternatives
a. Many alternative sources of energy require oil
i. Wind farms and nuclear plants require oil to produce the materials they're made from, to transport the materials to the site, and to run construction equipment. Electric cars take oil to manufacture. Even coal mines need oil to run mining machinery.
b. Shale bad
i. The vast majority of oil shale resources in the United States are found in the 16,000 square mile Green River Formation in northwest Colorado, northeast Utah, and southwest Wyoming.
ii. This area is also some of the most valuable wildlife habitat in the United States; the area supports mule deer and elk to mountain lions, black bears, and bald Eagles. populations of Colorado River cutthroat trout, and a host of other wildlife species. These wildlife resources have been built up over millennia.
iii. Shale depletes water in already arid areas. Oil shale development in Colorado would reduce the annual flow of the White River up to 8.2 percent and would permanently erase or severely degrade nearly 50 percent of BLM (bureau of land management) stream fisheries, including those of the Colorado River cutthroat trout – effectively choking out wildlife.
iv. A commercial oil shale program would result in a 15% - 65% increase in GHG emissions compared to conventional oil production.
c. Biofuels are expensive and threaten food security
i. Biofuel tends to reduce fuel economy, so we would have to consume more to go the same distance, compounding the next argument.
ii. According to World Bank around 100 million people face starvation in the wake of the current food-shortage crisis. Although many claim that the food shortage has been triggered by a sudden shift in the eating habits of people in China and India, the impact of biofuel production on food-security cannot be ignored.
1. The German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul said in Washington at a World Bank meeting that “Increasing production of biofuels was 30 to 70 per cent responsible for the rapid rise in food prices
Links:
1. Plan makes oil demand go up somehow, so we run out completely really fast
a. No supply
b. Still high demand
IL
1. No way to support our current lifestyle, as our current consumption rate is unsustainable
2. Crash inevitable because of timeframe
a. When plan speeds up consumption more, we run out even faster
Impx
1. Global Economic Collapse
a. Food $ up
i. Oil and gas supplies are essential to modern agricultural techniques, so food prices skyrocket, and we see unprecedented famine and starvation because food supply plummets while demand stays constant and prices increase.
b. Massive unemployment/Economic Collapse/Resource wars
i. Industry collapses with nothing to fuel it, so businesses go under, resulting in massive layoffs. Since everyone’s economy is interdependent through trade ties and a mutual dependence on oil, a global economic collapse is inevitable. People can’t afford necessities, so they either starve to death or get into resource wars, increasing the death toll with starvation, disease, and violence (since no one can afford or has access to medicine anymore) and displacing millions of people in the process.
c. Extinction
i. No resources and massive starvation coupled with resource wars, disease, and violence leads to extinction.
Backstopping Disad
Uniqueness
Uniqueness
1.Oil prices high now
a. Crude oil is currently $77.11 per barrel (10/28)
b. Its one year forecast price is $89 per barrel
c. Prices have been increasing over the last six weeks from $65.00 in September to just over $76 this week.
d. A year ago, the cost was $59.30
2. High oil prices good
a. They incentivize a demand for alternative energy and renewable sources of energy, which is good for the environment, since they decrease pollution/CO2 emissions and solve for global warming.
b. High prices dictate business behaviors, so the high and increasing squo prices are causing transitioning away to better fuels and fuels that are less finite and cause less pollution.
i. We see this in the status quo with people buying and driving fuel-efficient cars to reduce CO2 emissions (automobiles in the status quo are the second largest source of emissions, putting out nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually).
1. Sales of light trucks, which include SUVs and pickup trucks, dropped 27% in 2008 for GM
2. For Ford, truck sales fell 18%, while car sales slipped only 1%. Sales of Ford sport-utility vehicles dropped 36% in 08
3. For Chrysler overall truck sales fell 25% in 08
4. Sales of Toyota's fuel-efficient hybrid Prius rose 67%, and sales of the hybrid version of its Camry automobile also rose significantly. Toyota said it sold a total of 32,841 hybrid vehicles in April. Meanwhile, sales of the company's sport-utility vehicles fell 8%. (2008)
c. High prices keep countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia from selling off their oil reserves when prices are low (since they have the huge reserves to do it), which means they can’t push other, smaller oil countries out of the market and flood the market with cheap oil when prices go down.
Links
1. Plan stops the market transition that is happening now. Government intervention screws this transition up by dropping prices because it limits the ability of countries to use fuels since when companies have a harder time consuming coal, it reduces the overall consumption, causing price to go down, which means that on the global market, prices go down and countries that inevitably have lower regulations consume more and burn coal/oil as dirty as ever
2. Lower fossil fuel usage in the US means higher usage internationally
a. When we use fewer fossil fuels, more fossil fuels will be sold internationally because companies will be able to sell it for a lower price when demand drops. The US has the highest emissions regulations in the world, so no matter what market these fuels get sold to, emissions will be dirtier and more environmentally harmful than they would be in America.
Impacts
1. Oil prices drop, increasing demand, which, on the global scene, means that countries with lots of oil like SA and Russia can afford to keep selling their reserves while other countries are forced to choose between waiting to sell until prices are higher or taking a huge profit hit while the larger oil nations crowd them out of the market with their larger reserves and the ability to lower their prices more, thus selling more of their product. When the big oil nations are selling more, more oil gets burned, which means we have more net emissions than when prices were high. A greater amount of net emissions means there are more CO2 and other pollutants in the atmosphere, which reflect and scatter infrared heat from the sun back down to Earth, so even more heat is trapped close to the Earth’s surface, increasing the temperature of the Earth. Rising temperatures are bad for a multitude of reasons.
2. Warming accelerates when more fossil fuels are burned and they are burned in places with little to no emissions regulations. Also, without technology in place to solve warming and with the market incentive to create the technology to fix warming removed, we won’t have a way to compensate for the current CO2 levels, much less the future emissions caused by backstopping. Read your warming bad impact.
a. Shifting the food belt (because of temperature changes)/Ocean acidification (CO2 dissolving in the oceans into carbonic acid, which lowers the pH of the ocean and makes it impossible for fish to get oxygen, collapsing the ecosystem of the ocean)
i. This takes away the livelihood and food source of hundreds of millions of people, leaving them with no means of supporting themselves or feeding their families, which causes resource wars, famine, violence, refugees/displaced people searching for basic necessities, and economic collapse.
ii. This also means no future medical research is possible, because you kill the world’s greatest source of biodiversity. We get medical advancements from the nature that we have, and destroying nature stunts technological growth in this area, so there is no way to recover from new diseases that pop up because the land that’s in a tropical climate zone has suddenly exploded, and insect and animal-born illnesses run rampant and mutate when they meet with animals in their suddenly expanded environment or the environment they’re forced to migrate to.
b. Increased natural disasters
i. High temperatures cause droughts, which intensify wildfire seasons and cause dust storms, which kill crops
ii. Global warming intensifies hurricanes and tropical storms, because they can pick up more energy from a warmer ocean before they hit land.
iii. Melting glaciers cause floods, which destroy entire cities and economies in a matter of hours or days
iv. Disruption of habitats and temperature changes could wipe out the animal and plant live already living there or force them into other habitats where they either become extinct from predators there or become the predatory invasive species, killing other animals and crops.
c. These factors will ultimately lead to the extinction all life on Earth, because the remaining resources we start to go to war over will be destroyed by the natural disasters caused by global warming and new diseases will run rampant with no hope for treatment.
CYBERSECURITY
China DA
Uniqueness:
1: Chinese economy is slowing down/is facing long term structural problems
a. Chinese manufacturing is at a 9 month low, and is at an index of 49.2, anything below 50 indicates contraction. This is due to a weak recovery in the United States and instability in Europe, China’s two largest export markets.
b. There is a massive property bubble in China. There are four million apartments that sit empty in Beijing and there are numerous “ghost cities” that were financed to stimulate internal economic activity and create construction jobs, but now threaten the stability of the Chinese property market, which represents 15% of the labor force.
c. China’s economy is only expected to grow by 7.5% this year. This is well under their ten year average of 10%.
2: The Chinese government needs a steadily growing economy to ensure political survival.
While this may sound great, this is actually incredibly worrying for the Chinese Communist Party. Because of mass migration from rural areas to the cities, and rising economic expectations in relation to the suppression of political freedoms, the Chinese government must maintain an 8% growth rate to merely placate their population and prevent mass political uprising.
3: Cyber infiltration is critical to Chinese economic growth
a. The government is depending more and more on state sanctioned and other nationalist forms of Hacking, which take R&D from US companies and transfer them to Chinese companies. This allows Chinese companies to put products immediately out on the market, for cheaper prices, without having to spend any money on design or research. This gives Chinese companies an incredible advantage, and basically allows them to revitalize and reorient their export market in a moment’s notice.
b. This is why China has hacked “every major US company” to steal R&D and gain a competitive advantage.
4: Because of the high economic stakes, any further escalation risks “"spiraling into a competitive relationship that could involve military tensions that reach the point of conflict” says Ken Lieberthal of the Brookings institute.
L:
1. The US passes major cyber security legislation
IL:
1. The Chinese government senses the increase in US protection, and doubles down on hacking efforts, because of its desperation to maintain economic growth in order to remain politically stable.
2: The US government gets mad, and increases anti-Chinese rhetoric and counterbalances by sending arms to Taiwan or doubling support for the Philippines/Japan on island claims.
3: The Chinese government responds with its own counterbalancing, drastically increasing odds of miscalc.
4: The massive military buildup makes miscalc/military action inevitable, because each action causes a reaction, making war inevitable.
Impacts:
1. US China war
a. Millions dead, massive instability for a country with 1.3 billion people.
b. Fucks up the Global Economy
c. Harms the 2.7 on less than $2 billion a day.
d. Engine of the global economy taken out, global economic collapse
e. Resource wars, nuclear conflict, ect.
Iran DA
Uniqueness:
1. US has launched a series of attacks with Israel against Iran since January and is rumored to be working on more projects to take down its nuclear reactors. This represents the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.
a. The Stuxnet worm, which is reportedly the most malefic piece of malware ever created, and its kin, Duqu, as well as the Flame malware, were reportedly created by Israel and the U.S. to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
b. Iran was hit in mid-July by another worm that shut down two Iranian facilities -- at Natanz and Fordo. It played the AC/DC song "Thunderstruck. One of the key goals of Thunderstruck was to be noticed, which is very different from the objectives of both Flame and Stuxnet since the latter two were crafted to avoid discovery.
c. According to the former CIO of the U.S. Department of the Interior the so-called Thunderstruck worm "can be turned around and used to attack [United States] critical infrastructure”.
2. Iran was understandably quite angry with the US and Israel and vowed to launch an attach if they felt cyberattacks were persisting or the US was gearing up for a larger-scale cyber war.
a. Since the US doesn’t have any good cybersecurity defenses now, this signals to Iran that we aren’t looking to spark a full scale cyber war, or at least that we’re not serious about the viruses we’re releasing. Even though Thunderstruck proves we’re getting bolder with our attacks, since the virus can be turned around and used against us, we’re not expecting a crippling retaliatory response to our actions in the SQ.
3. Iranian cyber relations are on the brink – they view this as separate from other forms of relations, like US sanctions, since those have been going on forever and are largely ineffective. Cyber attacks are newer and hit closer to home, since they do more damage. Means that Iran takes them more seriously.
Links:
1. Plan does whatever with cybersecurity
2. Iran perceives this as the US protecting itself against Iranian retaliation for its next big attack. They’ll think we released another virus and are investing in cybersecurity in order to shield ourselves. The US currently doesn’t have any good cybersecurity defenses – we’ve only really invested time and money into offensive attacks. Iran will interpret the signal that at best we’re signaling to the world that we’re gearing up for a cyber war, or at worst we just released something so bad that we expect to spark a war and incur some serious retaliation.
3. Since the US will be investing more heavily in cybersecurity post the plan, Iran will target our weak spots, which include (all those no solvency args) and Israel as a proxy to hit at a US ally that targeted it before.
Impacts:
All those solvency args can be turned into scenarios here – pick your favorite one.
Iran attacks Israel, you can pick your favorite scenario, but this would probably lead to first strike in a world in which the plan doesn’t give Israel the US’ new cybersecurity measures.
No Solvency: Impossible to secure
1. Passwords:
a. The art of password cracking has advanced further in the past five years than it did in the previous several decades combined. At the same time, the dangerous practice of password reuse has surged. The result: security provided by the average password in 2012 has never been weaker.
b. The average Web user maintains 25 separate accounts but uses just 6.5 passwords to protect them, according to a landmark Microsoft study such password reuse, combined with the frequent use of e-mail addresses as user names, means that once hackers have plucked login credentials from one site, they often have the means to compromise dozens of other accounts, too. Password hackers have gotten faster, too. A PC running a single program can try on average 8.2 billion password combinations each second.
c. This means that plan fails. In a world in which you can’t secure passwords, hackers and cyberterrorists will still be able to get into the systems you isolate are critical to solve for.
2. Drones
a. It will take at least until 2014 to encrypt video feeds from the U.S. military's Predator and Reaper drones to prevent enemy forces from intercepting the information, according to the US Air Force. The 2014 finish date does not take into account the need to retrofit our existing drones on the field – just to encrypt all newly created feeds. These feeds are used for surveillance and missile launches. These feeds have already been hacked – the US military has confiscated Iraqi insurgents’ laptops that contained video feeds and hacks from US drones. In a world of the plan, these feeds would still be vulnerable.
3. Virtual Machines:
a. Virtual Machines are bad for two reasons. One, they significantly handicap the user because they can’ take advantage of the full power of the operating system, meaning that securitization will result in a drastic drop in productivity.
b. Two, virtual machines have been hacked. The Crisis malware was able to get into a virtual machine using a backdoor entry from third party software, meaning that the best hope to stop viruses has now been compromised. This also should be cross applied to the impossible to securitize arguments, because it is further evidence that it is impossible to protect ourselves in cyberspace .
4. NATO
a. In a February 2012 report, NATO has virtually no cyber defense and is remarkably vulnerable to cyber security intrusions . While NATO has since contracted a cyber defense system to Northrup Grumman, there is simply no way that NATO can build a cyber security network in a year that is capable of stopping threats that have been going on for three decades. NATO will remain vulnerable, and may be vulnerable more so because of the drive for hackers to break their defenses .
b. In addition, individual countries at the macro level within NATO are not investing in their cyber security structure because there are more pressing budget concerns. And on the micro level, individual businesses are working hard to mask problems they might be having with cyber security because of the worry that in an already uncertain business climate, they will be hit hard by a consumer exodus if its known how bad the security system is .
c. NATO is looking at revising article 5, and there are substantial discussions within NATO to expand article 5 to not just mean armed attacks, but on cyber-attacks as well. In a 2011 NATO review, it was argued that cyber security was something that ought to be added to the things that could trigger an article 5 response. This would mean that while the US might escape China or Russia war, an ensuing cyber breach of a NATO country would pull the US into conflict
5. Impossible:
a. Hacker mentality means this will just draw attention to the US, rush to take it down. Hackers are motivated by intellectual challenges, nationalism, and ego, which will ensure that any major federal government initiative will be attacked the moment that anything happens .
b. These fuckers are persistent and resourceful. Even heads of companies taking steps to avoid them, like not using a computer at all, are hit because hackers look for weak links. In the case of a head of a major Indian corporation, the CEO had his documents stolen through the hacking of his personal assistants computer .
c. It’s state-sanctioned, so unless the US is willing to continually upgrade its cyber security, Russia and China will always upgrade and beat our defenses. Considering the political costs of getting one cyber bill passed, the situation will merely revert back to the status quo for the extended future once China and Russia upgrade their capabilities.
d. Law enforcement lacks the resources to find and prosecute offenders. There have been extremely limited successes, arresting maybe dozens of hackers a year. But compared to the amount of attacks, this number is extremely pitiful. Law enforcement officers themselves admit that they "are never going to solve the [cybercrime] problem”. At best, they are just “trying to keep a lid on it."
e. Hackers often operate internationally. Because police jurisdiction operates within national borders, while net activity does not, then hackers are able to strike the US from anywhere without little fear of a US arrest. While there have been some examples of international cooperation, the vast majority of hacks occur in countries where the user knows that the government isn’t going to do jack shit to arrest them.
f. Because trillions of dollars are exchanged over the web, hacking is an incredibly lucrative activity, which will draw tens of thousands of people into the activity. Add in the lax policing and difficulties of police to catch people when they do try, and the risk/reward calculus is absurdly tilted towards encouraging people to hack.
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE
Case Turn: Refugee Aid
1. REFUGEE AID FAILS:
a. CATALYST FOR CONFLICT: A major catalyst for the regional insecurity in Central Africa was this internationally supported refugee population, which included tens of thousands of unrepentant genocide perpetrators. Between 1994 and 1996, international donors spent $1.3 billion to sustain this population. These same donors refused to fund efforts to disarm the militants, much less send peacekeeping troops to do so.
b. LACK OF GOVERNANCE: the misuse of aid is likely when the receiving state is unwilling or unable to impose political order and demilitarize the refugees. In the absence of state-imposed security, it is more likely that militants will use humanitarian assistance as a tool of war. A hostile or incapable receiving state erodes the potential for nonpolitical humanitarian action.
c. NO ACCOUNTABILITY: defenders of the relief regime absolve humanitarian organizations of all wrongdoing, arguing that other parties, including perpetrators of violence, their allies, and powerful donor states, are far more culpable for the spread of conflict in a refugee crisis.
d. NO NEUTRALITY: In reality, the humanitarian assistance may be delivered with impartial and neutral intent, but the effects of the humanitarian actions always have political, and sometimes even military, repercussions.[1]
China CP
Text: China will do X
Solvency:
Less Paternalistic than the US:
Frankly, sovereign African countries are fed up of being told that they cannot govern themselves unless an outside power keeps them in check by using aid as a carrot and stick device. African states are not naughty children to be taught discipline by a strict headmaster from the West. Those in the West that still believe this is so should wake up their dreams of past imperial glory and look at the reality of modem life.
The countries in the region have welcomed China’s rise and benefited from the growing trade and investment ties that have accompanied China’s rapid economic development and emergence as a major global trading country.
Unlike the US, military concerns have played a remarkably small part in China’s return to the continent as a major player, Instead, wave after wave of high-level visitors to the connnent from Beijing stress the ‘win-win’ nature of China’s engagement. Long gone are the days of the Cold War, when the continent was divided between clients of East and West, and depending upon one’s perspective between ‘good ’ guys’ and ‘bad guys’.
‘Our attempts and efforts to develop relations are not directed at entering any alliance and will not compromise the interests of other counaies’, said Premier Wen Jiabao, during a June 2006 visit says it expects China to become its largest trading partner. ‘China’s development will not bring a threat to anyone but, instead, will only bring more opportunities and space for develapment of the world,’ he told the Nigerian national assembly.
Better at Economic Development:
The statistics on what China has accomplished in very little time in Africa speak eloquently of the vast scope of the world’s incipient superpower’s undertaking. China recorded 840 billion in trade with Africa in 2005, a four-fold increase since 2001. In the process, it surpassed the United Kingdom to become the continent’s third leading commercial parmer, after the United States and France.
This year, China has committed $8.1 billion in lending to Nigeria, Angola, and Mozambique alone. By comparison, the World Bank has committed $2.3 billion to all of sub-Saharan African in the Same time span. By one tally, China currently has about 900 investment projects on the continent. These range from the highly controversial, such as China’s 40% controlling participation in the Sudanese oil company, Greater Nile Petroleum, and mining projects in Zimbabwe, to the construction of a new national rail network in Angola.
Beijing is also working to encourage tourism in Africa, partly in an effort to develop cultural ties. The government has approved 16 African countries as outbound destinations for Chinese tourists, including Ethiopia, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. This pushed the number of Africa's Chinese tourists to 110,000 in 2005, a 100 percent increase over 2004, according to Chinese government figures.
In recent months, Beijing has embarked on a series of initiatives designed to secure long-term raw materials resources in one of the planet’s most endowed regions - Sub-Saharan Africa. No raw material has higher priority in Beijing at present than oil. Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have left Washington furious.
Better at Education development
In addition to increased aid, China's outreach includes efforts to boost its soft power in Africa. This is evident in a growing focus on promoting Chinese cultural and language studies on the continent. In 2003, 1,793 African students studied in China, representing one-third of total foreign students that year. China plans to train some 10,000 Africans per year, including many future African opinion leaders who once might have trained in the West.
Beijing also seeks to establish "Confucius Institutes" in Africa-programs at leading local universities, funded by Beijing and devoted to China studies and Chinese language training. Already, in Asia, Confucius Institutes have proved effective in encouraging graduate students to focus on China studies and, ultimately, to study in China. Meanwhile, Chinese medical schools and physicians train African doctors and provide medicine and equipment free of charge to African countries. Through these programs and exchanges, China develops trust by investing in long-term relationships with African elites that formerly might have been educated in London or Washington.
China is ready to enhance medical personnel and information exchange with Afiica. It will continue to send medical teams and provide medicines and medical materials to African countries, and help them establish and improve medical facilities and train medical personnel. China will increase its exchanges and cooperation with African countries in the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS and malaria and other diseases, research and application of traditional medicine and experience concerning mechanism for public health emergencies.
Better at Lending: No Conditions
China is using no-strings attached dollar credits to gain access to Africa’s vast raw material wealth, leaving Washington’s typical control game via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot?
Responding to the news, the Angolan Embassy in London stated that the deal ’cannot be matched on the current international financial market, which imposes conditions on developing countries that are nearly always unbearable and sometimes even politically unacceptable’. Indeed, ‘It is a well known fact that many developed countries make the support and aid they give conditional on the recurrent issue of transparency’. ‘In the case of the agreement recently signed with the Chinese bank, no humiliating conditions were imposed on Angola.
The agreement therefore greatly surpasses the contractual framework imposed on the Angolan government by European and traditional markets and opens up a practical means of sustained and mutually advantageous cooperation with one of the world economies with the highest growth rate’.
What China offers Africa, he says, is 'breathing space' from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the transfer of technologies in the areas of agriculture, infrastructure building and oil exploration. It is up to Africa to avoid a scramble for its resources by building an industrial base to take advantage of them so that it can create a more equal relationship with China, argues Dembefe. To do this Africa needs the ability to speak with one voice, a coherent development strategy within and between countries, and strong leadership committed to defending Africa's interests.
Africa's trade with China is expected to reach $45bn in 2007 and grow to $100bn in 2010. China is Africa's third biggest investor and will overtake the US to become the second biggest by 2010. Chinese imports &om Africa have grown from 1% in the early 1990s to 10% today and are set to increase.
The Chinese are investing in those areas in Africa, which the West has repeatedly snubbed over the last five decades. They are building factories, railways, roads, hospitals, govemment offices, social housing, stadiums and hotels. They are investing in agriculture, tourism, building materials, economic zones; they are upgrading ports and harbors, telecom systems, electricity supplies and a host of other activities.
Aid Tradeoff DA
UNIQUENESS:
Republicans will fail to cut foreign aid now:
1. REPUBLICANS WANT TO CUT A LOT OF AID: Under a proposed Republican plan, $450 million would be cut from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and $363 would be cut from PEPFAR.
2. THESE CUTS WON’T MATERIALIZE NOW:
a. This is not the fight just around the corner: Foreign aid is not the primary target of the ongoing budget battle. Republicans are more concerned with contentions domestic programs like Planned Parenthood and NPR. Furthermore, entitlements are the fight on the horizon.
b. Liberal Democrats don’t want these cuts and are mobilizing their fellows to resist them but may not succeed if it becomes politically unfeasible.
c. Some prominent actors like Hillary Clinton have called for these programs to be maintained but there is still a brink because she is highly unpopular with Republicans and her protection will mean little if pressure to cut foreign aid increases.
d. Current aid efforts such as aid to Japan or possible efforts in the Islamic world are viewed as military efforts because Japan is a very important military ally and because of our military entanglements in the Islamic World.
3. THERE IS A BRINK: There is always a propensity for these cuts to happen because the average American believes that foreign aid makes up 25% of US spending and blames it for our budget crisis, and wants it to be cut. This means that if it comes under significantly more attention.
LINKS:
1. YOU START A NEW FOREIGN AID PROGRAM/INCREASE SPENDING ON FOREIGN AID: This draws attention to foreign aid and increases the propensity that the Republicans will perceive a public mandate to take up this fight.
2. PLAN FORCES CENTRIST DEMOCRATS TO CAVE: Only a unified Democratic party can block these cuts and the plan will force conservative Democrats in districts not friendly to helping black people to break away from the left wing of there party to keep their conservative cred.
3. (IF APPLICABLE) USAID HAS LIMITED FUNDS: US foreign aid programs have a set amount of funding and normal means for funding something else in the middle of a budget cycle is to take funding from existing programs.
INTERNAL LINKS:
1. AIDS FUNDING GETS CUT: This is where cuts will happen first because they are pending, second because no one in Africa contributes anything to US foreign policy goals for the most part, and third because AIDS is associated with gay people and conservatives don’t like that.
2. PEOPLE DON’T GET THEIR MEDICINE: No one else will possibly make up for these cuts- the US has been the leader on AIDS funding and most other countries contribute little comparatively. Most economies are still fragile and most first world governments are dealing with budget issues.
IMPACTS:
1. PEOPLE DIE: They don’t get their medicine.
2. AIDS IN AFRICA BECOMES VERY DIFFICULT TO TREAT: Scientists have discovered that in small areas where people have been on and off of ARVs or forced to ration them for long periods of time the virus has been able to mutate to become significantly resistant to these drugs. Since the result of the plan will be rationing of ARVs and intermittent use because there won’t be enough drug resistant forms of AIDS will spread in Africa, dooming tens if not hundreds of millions of people to death over time as current treatments become useless.
FISM
Indonesia IL’s
1. Trouble in West Papua
a. Indonesian police and anti-terror forces murdered Papua separatist Mako Tabuni at the beginning of the summer. Since then, unrest has increased and several other seperatists and political dissadents have been killed.
b. In the face of criticism, Indonesia has appointed former anti-terror chief Tito Karnavian. His former forces, Densus 88, have been responsible for most of the political killings in West Papua, including Tabuni. He has a mandate to stamp out opposition in the region.
c. A 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the region in 2009, making the population desperate and more willing to challenge the Indonesian government.
d. 100,000-400,000 have been killed since Indonesia began administering the area
2. Indonesia will never let West Papua secede
a. West Papua is rich in oil, timber, and palm oil and contains the Freeport mine with $40 billion of copper and gold reserves. There’s also a bunch of nickel.
b. West Papua is the most resource rich province in Indonesia.
3. Indonesia will model US fism to avoid becoming an international pariah
a. Indonesia has learned its lesson after East Timor—it doesn’t want sanctions or to risk a deterioration of bilateral relations with Australia, an important economic and military partner.
4. Australia will pressure Indonesia to model US fism
a. Because of the 2006 Lombok Treaty, Australia has been partially responsible for the training of Indonesian death squads under the mantle of counter-terror efforts. However, this gives Australia leverage over Indonesia and motivation to pressure Indonesia
5. Fism solves
a. The West Papuan separatists’ primary concern is that resources are being extracted from the region while the associated wealth from contracts with the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and China remains in Jakarta.
b. Lack of separatists and policy of greater regional autonomy results in the removal of counter terrorism groups from the region
c. Regional management of resource extraction results in more environmentally friendly policies because the people who live on the land get to decide dhow its used.
6. Failure to reach resolution results in genocide
a. Currently, the Indonesians have a massive military advantage, and little international attention outside of Australia is focused on West Papua. East Timor suggests that Indonesia will take advantage of the situation.
b. Over 250 distinct ethnic groups live in West Papua. That’s a lot of culture to genocide.
7. Extinction—Biodiversity
a. West Papuan coral reefs are the richest on the planet in biodiversity, and the Indonesian government doesn’t care about the regions health, so it’s destroying them in the name of resource extraction. Mine tailings are being dumped into the coral reefs.
b. Ecosystems are composed of countless species that are mutually dependent upon each other for nutrients directly as food or as by-products of earth-life (e.g., as carbon dioxide and oxygen). If the biodiversity of an ecosystem is substantially compromised, then the entire system could collapse due to destructive negative nutrient cycle feedback effects.
c. If enough ecosystems collapse worldwide, then the cascading impact on global nutrient cycles could lead to catastrophic species extinction
JAPAN
Rearm: Case Answers
1. Japanese relations don’t escalate:
a. The US has security guarentees post the plan that would go into effect. 82% of the Japanese people think the US would protect them should China threaten Japan with war.
b. Clinton has made multiple diplomatic trips to Japan in the last year to to mediate disputes and reaffirm the US’ commmitment to our security guarnetees.
c. Economic interdependence between China and Japan would deter conflict. They would not want to risk devastating their own economies for ideological differences. Their each other’s #2 trading partners.
2. Turn: Japanese economy
a. A rearm would tank their economy: Japan has very low growth now, which means a massive investment in military technology would tank the rest of their economy. This means your plan can’t result in a rearm.
b. And China would sell Japanese bonds to prevent their militarization. This would tank Japan’s ability to weaponize and their ability to recover economically.
c. And China would stop selling REE’s to Japan to prevent them from weaponizing. This means they wouldn’t be able to make the control boards they need to launch nuclear weapons and the crux of their economy, their tech sector, would collapse.
NATO
Russia/NATO Relations DA
A. Uniqueness:
RUSSIA/NATO RELATIONS GENER[IC]ALLY HIGH NOW:
LISBON SUMMIT: The 2010 November Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon was a milestone event that set the stage for new trends in international relations for the coming decade. For the first time it [RUSSIA] announced that NATO poses no threat to Russia, so politicians continue to discuss opportunities for closer cooperation between the two sides that are both concerned over developments in Afghanistan, narcotraffic and the problems of instalment and interaction of their individual anti-missile shields.
START: Russia agreed to START, which shows Russia's willingness to cooperate on issues deemed the utmost importance for international security. Russia's nuclear arsenal is its main deterrent force, and they've publicly demonstrated they're willing to cooperate with the US.
NEW NUCLEAR SHIELD: Talks are happening to coordinate a new nuclear shield, one built by both Russia and the EU. This is key because it shows that they are willing to cooperate on issues that once made them the most polarized.
AFGHANISTAN: Russia is coordinating with NATO to fight terrorism and drug trafficking in Afghanistan. Russia transports non-military ISAF freight and Russia is currently in talks to give more helicopters to Afghanistan through NATO. They are also coordinating on poppy-eradication efforts.
NATO SAYS RUSSIA IS NO LONGER A THREAT: According to the US envoy to NATO, NATO is not bracing itself for a military or other standoff with Russia.
LEVEL OF TALKS ARE INCREASING, which demonstrates a willingness to cooperate on international issues.
a. Medvedev visited the US last June
b. Last Monday a NATO official, deputy advisor to UN General Secretary James Appaturai arrived in Moscow to continue negotiations along the Lisbon lines and to open Winter Academy which, he said, looks at Euro-Atlantic security and also to meet a number of high-level speakers on the issue.
c. Biden is planning to go to Moscow this Spring for high-level talks and Obama is planning to visit after this.
7. Relations with NATO are always on the brink: NATO's sole existence is to deter a Russian attack
B. Link:
APPEARS RASH: Fiat means plan adds another country to the alliance immediately, without consensus of Russia. Consulting Russia on this issue isn't normal means if plan is to take place immediately. NATO enlargement occurring without discussion alienates Russia and makes it look like NATO is arming against them.
SYMBOLIC: Adding a country to NATO is a symbolic statement that Russia is a threat and a larger alliance with more basing opportunities is necessary to control Russian aggression. PMC justifications about security proves this, and proves how it will be perceived by the international community, regardless of what the MG says. Although adding a country may be good for that country's democracy or whatever, the only reason NATO would add a country is to benefit the alliance, not to benefit the individual country.
UNANIMOUS CONSENT: the fast that admission of a country into NATO has to be unanimously approved demonstrates that the entire block of NATO views Russia as a threat
NON-DEMOCRATIC: The fact that NATO is willing to add X country, without the country meeting the guideline of NATO regarding democracy proves that NATO has alternative motives for adding that country that supersede democracy promotion.
Internal Link:
1. This breaks down progress made between Russia and the international community by publicly acknowledging that NATO believes russia is a threat.
2. Arms development in Russia directly parallels the admission of member nations
D. Impacts
1. START COLLAPSE AND PROLIF: START is still fragile because it only recently passed and both sides are unsure of eachother's commitment to the treaty. NATO enlargement makes Russia feel they are the enemy and does what they can to protect themselves. This in turn means the US doesn't decrease their nuclear arsenal. Even if Russia still complies with START, they would increase development to the amount of badass weapons they have, further antagonizing the West. For example, they are developing SS-27's, which are nuclear missiles that are created specifically to avoid ABM tech. They have decoy technology and are designed to survive a hit from laser technology and capable of making evasive maneuvers. Russia could deploy these next to the border, increasing defensive tensions. Also, prolif increases the propensity for non state actors to obtain fissile material.
2. PIPELINES: Ukraine 2.0. Russia could shut off gas pipelines, like they did when Ukraine was increasing NATO involvement. Empirically proven that Russia is reactionary to countries joining NATO. Shutting of Ukraine pipelines would stop access to most of Western Europe- people freeze to death.
3. ARMS TRADE (parallel- read last): when russia feels threatened, they expand their sphere of influence by giving weapons to anti-US countries (plan would do this because NATO is viewed as the international branch of US military and all actions taken by NATO are perceived as instigated by the US).
Scenario 1: Venezuela: Empirically proven that Russia gives Venezuela weapons during times of political tension.
Uniqueness: FARC is losing resources in the squo and can't stay afloat
link: russia increases small arms to venezuela, which they give to FARC.
Internal: FARC increases violence in columbia
impacts: FARC kills people, columbia violently cracks down, strips people of rights.
Perpetuates the war on drugs, which has killed 100's of thousands of people and ensures cyclical violence.
Scenario 2: Libya- Russia gives Libya weapons to fight Western influence. Qadaafi supports terror (which is why the US has tried to kill him so many times), this ensures perpetuation of the war on terror which kills millions and ensures US's destructive involvement in the middle east.
PATENTS
Drug Industry DA
UNIQUENESS:
THE ECONOMY IS RECOVERING NOW: Economic growth is now proceeding even as the stimulus runs out- this is a sign that US industry is returning to equilibrium. The fact that unemployment is high is not unusual because it is a lagging indicator. More predictive indicators indicate the economy is improving
BIOMEDICAL TECH IS KEY TO THE ECONOMY: The pharmaceutical and other biomedical tech industries are among the most rapidly growing parts of the US economy and have been for a long time; they were able to withstand the recession with very little change in sales and the US remains largely ahead of its international competition in terms of control over this industry.
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH IS HIGH: The amount of biomedical research we have is high now because of strong IPR in the United States; more patents are being filed now than in the past, and part of the increase can be statistically tied to the US lengthening of its patent durations in 1994.
PHARMA COMPANIES ARE ON THE BRINK: This is a particularly inopportune time to shorten patents; next year 10 of the most profitable brand names drugs will lose market exclusivity, costing more than $50 billion a year in profits, including Lipitor, which will cost Pfizer $10 billion a year in reduce profits on its own. This means that the profitability of drug companies is on the brink and also that they are making structuring decisions that will determine how much research they are long term; it may too risky to begin new research right now if the ability to recoup the costs is questionable.
LINKS
YOU DRAMATICALLY WEAKEN IPR FOR BIOMEDICAL TECH: You effectively halve the duration of pharmaceutical patent durations
THIS IS HUGELY HARMFUL TO THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY: The industry relies on the continued release of new medicines for its growth. Growth will stagnate and even begin to decline if new medications aren’t being released at regular intervals.
INTERNAL LINKS
THIS KILLS DEVELOPMENT OF NEW PRODUCTS:
1. DATA SHOWS: Based on business surveys and economic models, it is likely that spending on new research and development in the pharmaceutical industry would decline by 64% right away in the absence of strong patent protection.
2. R&D IS REALLY EXPENSIVE FOR DRUG MAKERS: Only like 1 in almost a million compounds generated in drug research makes it to the clinical phase. In the pre-clinical phase only 1% of products makes it the next phase, and only 20% of THOSE are then released. In the end, this means that developing a new drug is extremely expensive; some new drugs have cost about a billion dollars to develop.
3. COPYING IS CHEAP: Once the formula and structure of a new drug can be determined- this is very easy and can be done without ‘leaks’ from a company- the competition can find a way to synthesize that compound without needing any special design information from the developer. This makes copycat drugs much cheaper to start making than copycats in other industries.
THIS STUNTS US ECONOMIC GROWTH: If the biomedical tech field starts to decline, other industries, including the whole health care industry, will decline as their services lose their universally recognized cutting edge tech and ability to charge high prices for services. The US economy is still fragile right now, and the political instability has US investors wary. Any sudden weakness in a key industry will lead to the US economy collapsing, either directly or by investor flight.
The top ten Fortune 500 companies are all pharmaceutical companies, and are worth more than the bottom 490. This indicates that if pharma goes down it will drag the US economy down with it.
IMPACTS
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IS BAD:
MORE PEOPLE DIE FROM NEW AND EXISTING DISEASES: If we don’t have innovation, many people will die every year from diseases there is no longer a strong incentive to cure. Additionally, this will weaken or research infrastructure as a whole- it will shrink as it loses value- meaning that we will not have the ability to fight future diseases. This impacts constitute the largest impact in the round because it will kill the most people over time.
THIS TURNS ANY IMPACTS ABOUT HELPING THE THIRD WORLD: Right now the third world is having some luck with getting medication for diseases it has in common with the first world, such as HIV. New research and development of 3rd world specific medication is key, but if the world’s greatest pharmaceutical producer, the US, goes into a state of decline it is unlikely that treatments for ‘poor people diseases’ will progress much further. This means that body count for diseases like tuberculosis and malaria will keep mounting indefinitely.
WTO DA
Thesis of this DA:
1. All of the patents that your Aff shortens in length are still protected internationally because the US has gotten everyone into the WTO and various other trade agreements. This means there is no chance you really solve your aff since all of the protections will be extended everywhere but in the US
2. This also violates the US’s agreements in the WTO to protect patents after basically inventing and forcing the WTO down the worlds throat for the last 25 years. This would be a terrible sign for the credibility of international trade regimes and cause terrible backlashes against the US.
3. That turns the case and makes trade in the whole world terrible. There would be a likely rollback of the case as someone took a case to the WTO and that would mean you solve none.
4. Even if you can somehow enforce your aff, that would crush the WTO collapsing all trade internationally. If good don’t cross borders guns do.
Uniqueness:
The WTO is strong
a. The WTO has authority over all of its members (pretty much the whole world); since there is little to no existing case law for international patent protection, the decisions they hand down with regard to IPR will dictate the focus of IPR law for the forseeable future
b. With the commodification of water as a resource in many countries in the Americas and Europe, the WTO will have the ultimate say on international water rights
Link:
The WTO is the one that protect patent right in an international context. It does with through the TRIPS (Trade aspects of international property rights) agreement which states that to be a viable patent for international trade then several factors must me meet.
a. The agreement says patent protection must be available for inventions for at least 20 years.
b. Patent protection must be available for both products and processes, in almost all fields of technology. With exception of public order or morality or diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods, plants and animals (other than microorganisms), and biological processes for the production of plants or animals (other than microbiological processes). Plant varieties; however, must be protecting able either by patents or by a sui generis system (such as the breeder’s rights provided in a UPOV Convention).
Internal Link:
The government plan violates the trips agreement.
a. One way to do this would be for a country to produce its own generic drugs without the express approval of the drug’s company
US is key to WTO.
a. We are the big stick
Impacts:
China and Russia economic Backlash specific to IPR
a. The US is blocking Russia entrance into the WTO because of IPR protection specifically media and internet piracy
b. The US is using the WTO to basically sue china in the dispute reconciliation framework for patent infringements.
c. The US has special bilateral working groups with both countries under section 301 of the international intellectual property association.
d. The Us trade representatives report every other year on the status of IPR protection in each country and currently China and Russia are still on the priority watch list. (the highest concern)
e.They will probably do a big F u and stop the working groups and allow the infringements to continue turning case.
WTO GOOD
a. Free trade helps everyone it’s the only way to allow developing countries access to the market through specialization in a capitalistic system.
b. Integrated markets prevent war.
c. Like it or not, it’s the only real option for a neutral, rules-based organization that adheres to laws and democratically-concocted codes of conduct, rather than the profit motive (eh…)
Link:
Bio IPR is part of WTO via the UPOV.
Farm Saved Seed represented an “average loss” to the seed trade of almost US$7 billion annually (calculated on the basis of an average seed value of $73 per hectare and an area under cultivation of 95 million hectares). [2] Expressed differently (and more correctly), that would be the average extra business which seed companies could monopolies if FSS was made illegal. Multiply that figure a few times – because the actual worldwide area that is each year seeded with FSS is probably more than 1 billion hectares – and you may get a sense of just how far the seed industry is prepared to go to corner that market. Under the UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) agreement in the WTO framework: Currently governments get to choose if this is enforced but in the seed industry is moving to outlaw it by 2011 when the UPOV reconvenes its conformance.
Turn:
High development cost must be recouped to allow future drugs to enter the market.
• Each year, worldwide, only about 26 such drugs enter the market (2005: 26, 2004: 24, 2003: 26, 2002: 28). The development cost of the thousands of other drugs are much smaller. The $800 million quoted include the cost of all drug development which did not result in a new drug. It also includes some 400 million $ of opportunity costs.
• To get to a phase 3 trial (last step in FDA approval) the cost per patient of running Phase 3 clinical studies exceeds $26,000, on average.
Solvency Mitigation:
The public sector is horrible at developing viable drugs for development.
• They don’t have the infrastructure to begin drug development
• The public sector seeks to understand not create
Most infectious diseases have cures like cholera however the current focus is vaccines. The problem is government distribution and funding not development; why risk hurting the biopharm industry in other developments for the sake of already created medicines
Compulsory Licensing CP
COMPULSORY LICENSING
Compulsory licensing is when a government allows someone else to produce the patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner. In current public discussion, this is usually associated with pharmaceuticals, but it could also apply to patents in any field.
Complies with TRIPS:
The agreement allows compulsory licensing as part of the agreement’s overall attempt to strike a balance between promoting access to existing drugs and promoting research and development into new drugs. The phrase “other use without authorization of the right holder” appears in the title of Article 31. Compulsory licensing is only part of this since “other use” includes use by governments for their own purposes.
Compulsory licensing and government use of a patent without the authorization of its owner can only be done under a number of conditions aimed at protecting the legitimate interests of the patent holder.
Compulsory licensing must meet certain additional requirements. In particular, it cannot be given exclusively to licensees (e.g. the patent-holder can continue to produce), and usually it must be granted mainly to supply the domestic market.
SCOTUS DAs
Hollow Hope Internal Links
1. Court action is counterproductive and undermines movements:
a. Resources: not only can Court action be ineffective, judicial victories can ultimately be counterproductive. Litigation can siphon off resources that advocacy groups might better use elsewhere.
b. Breeds complacency: Victories in court, especially at the Supreme Court, can lull litigants into accepting symbolic triumphs instead of continuing to work for grassroots change
c. Galvanizes opponents: while a favorable Court decision can give the winning party a false sense of complacency, it can galvanize the losing side into finding ways outside the judicial system to circumvent the Court's ruling
2. Court action blocks social change by mobilizing opponents of reform:
a. Empirics: With civil rights, there was growth in the membership and activities of pro-segregation groups such as the White Citizens Councils and the Ku Klux Klan in the years after Brown. While both types of groups existed before Court action, they appeared re-invigorated after it. In addition, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1989 Webster decision, seen by many as a threat to continuing access to safe and legal abortion, pro-choice forces seemed to gain renewed vigor.
3. Court victories are hollow – do not rally support for movements:
a. Not enough support: only 13 percent of the American public has the knowledge and beliefs about the Court necessary for it to legitimate action (Murphy and Tanenhaus 1968a). This includes the belief that the Court is a proper, impartial, and competent interpreter of the Constitution. This means that the potential pool of people who could be spurred into supportive action by a Supreme Court decision is small.
4. Court action is antidemocratic:
a. Prevents movement coalitions and success: there is the danger that litigation by the few will replace political action by the many and reduce the democratic nature of the American polity. legal rights approach to expanding democracy has significantly narrowed their conception of political action itself. legal tactics not only absorb scarce resources that could be used for popular mobilization… [but also] make it difficult to develop broadly based, multiissue grassroots associations of sustained citizen allegiance. The bounded nature of constitutional rights prevents courts from hearing or effectively acting on many significant social reform claims, and lessens the chances of popular mobilization.
5. Court is unable to affect social change and ineffective at enforcing rights:
a. Empricis: Hostile opposition forces were able to completely neutralize the Court's seemingly ground-breaking ruling in Brown v. Board of Education n24 in the first decade after the decision; moreover, the limited progress made after the ruling was due to a shift in political forces that had everything to do with the changing economic role of AfricanAmericans and their own extra-legal activism and little or nothing to do with the Supreme Court. Other empirical studies of the effects of U.S. rights-litigation also make a compelling argument against the commonly held belief that supreme courts can bring about effective policy change, and show that while rights-litigation victories may have a symbolic significance, they do not necessarily have any immediate impact on people's lives
Hollow Hope Shell
Uniqueness
1. Currently the Supreme Court is ideologically weighted to the right and is not taking any steps to further movements
a. The 5-4 ruling in Citizens United reinforced the court's caustic ideological divide, with Roberts leading Alito, Thomas, Scalia, and the swing Kennedy in their right leaning decisions
b. The same split was seen earlier in January when the five-justice conservative majority blocked broadcast of a federal trial in San Francisco on the constitutionality of California's ban on same-sex marriage.
c. SCOTUS denied cert to cases involving communication privacy
d. Obama’s rebuke of the Court after the Citizens United ruling specifically leads liberal movements away from the court. Activist groups are lobbying in the legislatures for rights protections. The environmental movement is currently lobbying in Congress and the Executive for a Climate Change Bill. Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, and Earth First! All focusing money and rallying support to get congressional bills passed. Environmental Defense Fund states that they focus on Congressional legislation because it is more financially efficient and effective
Links
1. This is seen as a sign that movements can get rights via the courts
2. Other minority advocacy groups shift focus from legislative change to litigation wins
Internal Links
1. SCOTUS an ineffectual agent of change- masks issues
a. The Court does not have the power to develop necessary policy and implement decisions that could effect significant reform. Because, as Alexander Hamilton put it, the Court controls neither the sword (Executive branch) nor the purse (Legislative branch), it must rely on cooperation from the other two branches in order to enforce its decisions.
b. Cases that have been seen as major wins actually did not enact any real change until major bills were passed as well. Ten years after Brown v. Board there was virtually zero evidence that schools had been more integrated. It is not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the percentage begins to increase annually. After Roe v. Wade the annual number of legal abortions did not seem to be greatly affected
2. If changes do occur it takes decades
a. The Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that interracial marriage prohibitions are unconstitutional, but it took over 33 years for states with such laws to repeal them
b. Through an examination of the immediate effect of the decision, opinion polls (measuring both awareness of Court opinions and changes in attitude as a result of the ruling), news coverage of issues that were subject to Court decision, and other measures it has been observed that court action seldom brings reform any closer and often strengthens the opponents of such change
c. Changes in race relations, gender roles, criminal procedure, and the environment often attributed to court action, instead, are the product of independent action taken by elected government and social reform movements.
3. Kills Rights & groups ability to successfully push for their rights through legislative reform. Winning court battles is a long and resource consuming process. Advocates must hire lawyers, battle up through the district courts, and perhaps wait years before the Supreme Court will hear their case. Even if the movement would win their case, it will take decades before the ruling will truly change society. Court decisions are like flypaper, they drag social movements from congress to the courts, where they fail. This turns solvency for the case.
4. Drawing the environmental movement to the courts would collapse the movement
a. Courts don’t make decisions on the environment. Due to the scientific and technical issues involved they are more likely to defer decision making/finding to other agencies. As stated in case dealing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: “When examining this kind of scientific determination, as opposed to simple findings of fact, a reviewing court must generally be at its most deferential." Judges' lack of training and knowledge to assess the merits of scientific arguments and lack of sufficient technical training has reinforced courts' unwillingness to become involved in substantive environmental matters
b. Courts can’t implement their plans. Courts are not usually aware of the constraints under which implementing agencies operate. Even when courts order agencies to take specific steps or meet certain deadlines, the agencies may lack sufficiently trained personnel, the money, or the political resources necessary to comply. One study looked at over 2,000 environmental decisions in the federal courts and found only one instance where Congress provided EPA with additional staff or funds to comply with a court order.Agencies often are forced to make choices about where to invest limited resources. When courts order agencies to invest more resources in a given program, compliance leads to another program being deprived of resources.
c. Courts waste resources and support that should be rallied to bring citizens out to lobby for legislative change. Focusing on the courts eliminates popular support for the movement. When environmentalists have turned their attention toward the courts, the American people no longer related to environmentalism’s goals. Popular support key for environmental mvmnt success.
Impacts
1. Prevents further movement success
a. Claims of social change in courts are a guise to prevent further action in spheres that could have an impact
b. Purely symbolic ruling leads to feelings of satisfaction and complacency without any change
c. Breaks up movements
d. Furthermore creates counter-movements who are reactionary to the action, not realizing it is purely symbolic, rousing the oppsotion making any further changes harder
2. Kills environmental movement therefore dooming the environment. When you focus the environmental movement in the courts it fails to make the changes to our society necessary to solve for global warming. We don’t get any real reductions in CO2 emissions. We don’t protect our endangered species. We don’t protect our forests. We don’t shift to a new form of energy security
Judicial Activism
Uniqueness
1. Judicial activism occurs when ‘ the Court reverses the elected branches, “rewrites" portions of the Constitution, or makes sweeping decisions.
a. Judicial Activism has been low (Gross v FBL financial services), but we have seen in Citizens Untied that Roberts will move boldly on behalf of conservative cases. The decision in Citizens United has raised the question about what will happen the rest of this year and in the years ahead, whether it was the exception or the new rule of conservative judicial activism
b. While Roberts expanded his view of stare decisis in his concurring remarks on the Citizens United case, he is likes to maintain a mostly centrist court: he will only make occasional small right leaning pushes unless he has to counteract a large left leaning decision. That will give him the cover to pull the court right again in the vein of centrism
2. Obama nominees are unproven and won’t surpass liberal judges of the past.
a. Sotomayor replaces Souter and Kagan John Paul Stevens, both considerably more conservative than their predecessors.
b. Roberts is 55, a wily bastard, and can play the long game.
Links
Plan sets precedent for judicial activism on the court as the rule, not the exception
Plan sets precedent for ignoring ___________ (standing, ripeness, etc.)
Plan pushes court left, meaning the conservative block pushes right to re-center
Impacts
1. Congressional Rollback
The more controversial or power-grabbing a court decision is, the more likely that congress, especially when the power is held by a contrasting ideological majority, will enact legislation to overturn the court, as what happened after the court ruled Military Tribunals unconstitutional (Hamden v Rumsfeld) and then congress immediately passed the Military Commissions Act.
2. Conservative Activism
When looking at voting patterns of SCOTUS justices, it has been concluded that “conservative” justices were more likely to strike down a federal or state law or overturn Supreme Court precedent (act in an activist nature)
3. Destroys democracy & SOP
Federal judges are appointed for life, and they aren't accountable to anyone. The Judiciary is the least representative branch in our representative form of government. They are not directly elected by the people, they cannot be removed by the people ... in short, federal judges don't have to answer to the people at all. The only thing that prevents these judges from becoming a black-robed oligarchy is any adherence they feel to their perception of the Rule of Law.
Allows non-elected and unaccountable courts defeat the policies and normative decisions of the accountable "political" branches
Democracy requires that the choice of substantive political values be made by elected representatives
The separation of powers must operate in a prophylactic manner -- in other words, as a means of preventing a situation in which one branch has acquired a level of power sufficient to allow it to subvert popular sovereignty and individual liberty.
Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered.
4. Destroy federalism
Relying on judicial power to promote federalism is self-defeating, because that power is itself a threat to federalism.
Congress is by its very structure more concerned about federalism than the courts are
Federalism prevents lawlessness and war
Federalism can help to promote peace, prosperity, and happiness.
It can alleviate the threat of majority tyranny - which is the central flaw of democracy.
It can reduce the visibility of dangerous social fault lines, thereby preventing bloodshed and violence.
5. Each invasion of liberty must be resisted
It is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects.
That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism and the end of all human aspiration.
If one believes in freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying spirit.
SPACE
Nuclear Tradeoff DA
Uniqueness:
1. NUCLEAR PROGRAMMING FUNDING STABLE/INCREASING IN THE SQ
a. University-level nuclear education in the USA is to be boosted by $18.2 million in funding for research reactor upgrades, equipment purchases and student funding from the US Department of Energy
b. Nuclear R&D are big winners in the proposed $28.4 billion Energy Department fiscal 2011 budget. They’re set to receive a 5% increase in funding from the fiscal year 2010 which covers a $36 billion boost; a total of $54 billion ($300 million for an innovative energy research program, and a $226 million increase in funding for the Office of Science for research and development of "breakthrough" technologies).
2. SPACE FUNDING BEING ROLLED BACK IN THE SQ
a. NASA’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2011 is 2.2% lower than it was in 2010 and is projected to receive cuts in 2012 as well.
b. Funding for NASA’s earth science programs would decline from $1.802 billion in fiscal 2011 to $1.797 billion in fiscal 2012. The cuts would slow development of future missions such as the third generation of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and a satellite that would monitor changes in Earth’s temperature.
c. Obama proposed freezing NASA’s budget at the 2010 level, and called for a five-year freeze on new spending for the space agency. This would put NASA at $18.7 billion annually through fiscal 2016. Gone is the 1.6-percent increase NASA had sought for fiscal 2011, which ends in September, as well as the promised steady increases of an extra $6 billion over five years.
d. Cuts are at the expense of R&D. The budget includes no money for the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, recommended as the top astrophysics space mission by a recent National Academy of Science panel. The telescope would search for extrasolar planets and dark energy, thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.
3. NUCLEAR DETERRENCE HIGH NOW
a. For US nuclear forces to be effective in deterrence roles, they must be sufficient in number to hold at risk those things our adversaries value most and to hedge against technical or geopolitical surprise. The warheads must be reliable, safe and secure, both to prevent accidents and to prevent anyone from ever being able to use an American nuclear weapon should they somehow get their hands on one. They must be sufficiently diverse and operationally flexible to provide the president with the necessary range of options for their use and to hedge against the technological failure of any particular delivery system or warhead design.
4. BUT THE DETERENCE BRINK IS COMING
a. Our forces have these attributes today, but we are rapidly approaching decision points that will determine the extent to which they continue to have them in the future. Our nuclear weapons stockpile is aging, and we will not be able to maintain the reliability of our current nuclear warheads indefinitely. Similarly, we face critical decisions regarding the modernization of our nuclear delivery systems, due not to their impending obsolescence—all will remain viable for at least a decade, some for two or three—but rather because of the long lead times involved in designing and building their replacements. If, through negotiations or unilateral decisions, we make a deliberate national decision to forego nuclear weapons in the future, we will have to reconsider our fundamental deterrence strategy, for it will no longer be built on the firm foundation that our nuclear arsenal provides
Links:
1. NUCLEAR AND SPACE CAREER TRAJECTORIES COMPETE, DILUTING THE EXPERIENCE BASE FOR BOTH
a. Recently, several reports have identified a declining level of expertise within the Air Force nuclear enterprise stating that Air Force leadership needs to develop a more effective approach to personnel management for manning critical nuclear positions The nuclear career path was formalized to identify personnel early in their careers and develop them in order to fill key nuclear billets in the future. The goal was to increase an officer’s breadth of experience, encouraging them to get exposed to as many space mission areas as possible during their career. This resulted in many space and missile operations officers spending a significant portion of their careers out of the nuclear arena, diluting the experience base. Current plans are to continue cooperation between the Air Force and AFSPC (Air Force Space Command) at several different levels with regard to training and personnel management The current AFSPC will continue to be shared by both space and missile operators with the majority of new officer accessions going to AF to serve as missile combat crew officers. Following their first assignment, these junior company grade officers will either stay in AFGSC (Air Force Global Strike Command) and fill follow-on nuclear billets or flow to AFSPC to satisfy AFSPC’s requirement to fill space positions with these operationally experienced captains. This 13S career field management will allow AFGSC to retain personnel with the expertise and dedication to excellence required by the nuclear specialty and supply AFSPC with seasoned and experienced officers.
2. PLAN IS A SHIFT TOWARDS SPACE EXPLORATION, CAUSING AN IMMEDIATE DECREASE IN PERSONNEL AVAILABLE FOR OUR NUCLEAR ARSENALS.
Economy low now means people want career for next 30 years means all people choose space because of snap policy decision.
Internal links:
1. MAINTAINING PERSONNEL KEY TO DETERRENCE
a. Over the past year, several incidents and subsequent internal and external reviews have highlighted a substantial deficiency in the procedures, logistics, and sustainment of the nuclear enterprise. Consequently, our credibility to perform the vital mission of nuclear deterrence is in question. The reinvigoration of the nuclear enterprise must be the top priority to maintain credibility. According to the AF, the reinvigoration of the nuclear enterprise requires everyone’s commitment to right the performance and leadership failures of the past, indicating that a shift firmly in the direction of solely focusing on nuclear deterrence is key now.
2. REINVIGORATION PROGRAMS HAVE RECENTLY BEGUN/PERSONNEL KEY TO THEIR SUCCESS
a. Each flight security controller (FSC) has access to a dedicated remote visual assessment (RVA) terminal, which displays near real time streaming video of the launch facilities (LFs) for which they have primary security responsibilities. In addition, the FSC can rewind the video memory to the time of any alarm to determine the cause. This capability will allow the FSC the ability to monitor the situation at the LF and tailor a response in the event of alarms.
b. Our nuclear weapons are at increased risk when the interior of an LF is accessed by lowering the B-Plug enclosure hatch (essentially a safety-door), allowing maintainers access to the launcher enclosure. Now the personnel on site will be able to rapidly raise the B-Plug, effectively sealing off access during security situations and when maintenance is completed. This ability to quickly close the LF entryway will increase the security of deployed warheads, provide added protection to the personnel on site and increase denial time significantly while additional security forces respond to the developing situation.
Impacts:
1. NO NUCLEAR DETERRENT MEANS WAR IS INTEVITABLE
a. Without a nuclear deterrent the US could be destroyed as an industrial civilization and our conventional forces could be defeated by a state with grossly inferior conventional capability but powerful WMD. We cannot afford to ignore existing and growing threats to the very existence of the US as a national entity. Missile defenses and conventional strike capabilities simply can't substitute for nuclear deterrence. In light of the emerging “strategic partnership” between Russia and China and their emphasis on nuclear weapons it would be foolish to discard the requirement that the U.S. nuclear deterrent be “second to none.” Ignoring the PRC nuclear threat because of Chinese “no first use” propaganda is just as irresponsible. Absent a nuclear deterrent to their WMD use, states could defeat our forces by the combination of few nuclear EMP weapons and large chemical and biological attacks. The situation would be much worse if they build a more extensive nuclear strike capability as has been reported.
A2: Colonization
HERE’S THE THUMPER:
Reproduction is impossible in space. hypo- and hyper-gravity induce changes in male and female reproductive processes. Findings from studies using a variety of experimental conditions to simulate hypogravity raise questions about whether reproduction is possible when gravity is reduced. Studies are providing evidence that hypogravity might exert pronounced effects on male reproductive processes and reduce the rate of implantation during early pregnancy in rats. The cardiovascular deconditioning, bone demineralization and decrease in red blood cell concentration associated with hypogravity also affects the ability of female rats to sustain their pregnancies.
1. Not at all feasible – we can’t reach livable planets or transport everyone there – and even if we could, we can’t establish survivable habitats for that many people. They’re too far away. If our planet becomes unlivable, we don’t have the option of colonizing another planet or surviving on space ships. We don’t have the technology to move large numbers of people off this planet. we don’t even know how to keep a few humans alive in a closed, artificial environment for more than a few months, or live in harmony on what was once a roomy and comfortable planet.
2. Massive energy requirements make space colonization infeasible. Sunlight could keep green plants on such a ship growing for only the first few months of the trip. Long before the craft got as far away as Neptune there would be too little sunlight for photosynthesis; and everyone knows how dim the distant stars are. In the dark, plants use oxygen, just as animals do all the time. Long before Neptune was passed the plants would be competing with people for oxygen. Since Alpha Centauri is the nearest star, that means that most of the 140 years of the voyage would take place in starlight only. To regenerate oxygen on board energy would be required. From what source could the colonists get enough energy for five generations of living in the dark? Then, we’d need some magic source of energy to generate a hospitable, oxygen-rich environment for ourselves once we got to our destination.
3. Free-riding bottlenecks space colonization – international law defines extra-terrestrial property as commonly owned. Under Article 11 of the 1979 Moon Treaty, extraterrestrial resources are deemed the “common heritage of mankind.” Thus, at least in principle, everyone on Earth “owns” all extraterrestrial territory. In practice, the treaty may discourage many from attempting to exploit extraterrestrial territory because of the potential for free-riding by other “owners” who might assert a claim for a share of any economic benefits. the collective ownership of extraterrestrial territories discourages their economic development would provide political elites with justification for this expropriation, which might take place under cover of some claim that everyone would eventually benefit from economic development.
4. Lack of government action prevents space colonization. The plan doesn’t solve because it only indirectly engages space colonization advocates, who tend to rely on the private sector. very large space development projects are probably too unattractive as investments for private investors and lenders. For the current generation of space development enthusiasts this is a very disquieting conclusion. Many exhibit a fierce libertarianism. They share an ideological conviction that private enterprise and unfettered markets are capable of overcoming almost any technological or economic obstacle. Government appears less as the driving force for space exploration than as the political and bureaucratic obstacle to technological innovation and the commercial development of space
5. The government doesn’t have an effective long-term funding mechanism. Especially in the United States, industry is prevented from obtaining investors for future private space transportation systems because the near-term customer, U.S. government agencies, are not allowed to make orders for space launches as airlines can for commercial aircraft. While some progress has been made NASA thus far has not been allowed (or encouraged) to follow such a practice for future reusable launch vehicles.
6. Lack of short-term profit deters investments in space colonization. Attempting to persuade investors to risk enough capital to finance the construction of a very large space development project would run up against the same capitalization problems now faced by entrepreneurs seeking capital for ordinary space development projects. Investors and lenders seek to maximize economic returns from capital while avoiding risk. The cost of capital is higher for riskier investments. Persuading investors and lenders to part with their capital requires making credible promises that they will receive better returns than they would have received from making alternative investments during the same time period commensurate with risk. Ordinary space development projects confront not only the risks that their businesses might not make money and that the technology might fail to work as projected, but also that they might not attract enough investment because the necessary capital investment is too “chunky. the “up-front” capital investment necessary to proceed tends to be relatively large and to take a relatively long time period before generating cash flows or profits. Meaning plan can never solve due to lack of investor capital.
7. Making trips to space profitable is key, and there are no conceivable outlooks for generating profit. For very large space projects close to the Earth, the new real estate rendered habitable or economically exploitable by the very large space development project would constitute the most valuable public assets which could be sold or leased to raise revenue. Sales of mining rights and profits from public-private joint ventures in mining would probably provide the chief source of cash. Identifying sources of revenue sufficient to pay interest on borrowing for very large space development projects elsewhere is more difficult. Distance and thus higher transportation costs to and from Earth make the prospects for profitable mining ventures on Mars or other bodies in the solar system appear dimmer
8. Space environment is too hostile. Space will never be anything other than a brutally hostile environment The surface of Mars is far harsher than Antarctica in the dead of the austral winter. Putting humans in these environments serves no useful purpose.
9. The technology for closed-loop life support systems hasn’t been developed. Having to launch everything necessary for life support for any extended period of time, long duration space travel and space settlements will be cost prohibitive. Budget cuts to the International Space Station program have severely delayed if not canceled research and experimentation of components of closed-loop life support systems that are necessary to reduce the dependency of space settlements on support launched from Earth.
10. Rate of population growth means that we’d have to send hundreds of thousands of people into space every day. To keep the Earth's population from growing we would have to ship off, each day, 250,000 emigrants (a number equal to the Earth's population increase during the past 24 hours). And on every ship sent off, the passengers would have to practice total population control for the entire flight. Beyond our, planetary system, the next star system is Alpha Centauri, which may-just may-have suitable planets. It is 25 quadrillion miles away. At present spaceship speeds, it would take 100,000 years to get there.
11. Even if technical barriers are overcome, the public perceives inherent dangers in space travel. In addition to the real measurable risks associated with launch vehicle reliability, both the private and public sector have been led to believe that outer space itself is inherently dangerous, because of (1) the "effects of weightlessness," an artificial risk created by government space agencies’ preoccupation with micro-gravity, and (2) space radiation, a true hazard whose risk has been temporarily heightened by the short-term need to make spacecraft walls thin to reduce launch weight.
Space Colonization Bad:
1. Space colonization causes superviruses and ecological damage. We are now poised to take the bad seed of greed, environmental exploitation and war into space. Countless launches of nuclear materials, using rockets that regularly blow up on the launch pad, will seriously jeopardize life on Earth. Returning potentially bacteria-laden space materials back to Earth, without any real plans for containment and monitoring, could create new epidemics for us. The possibility of an expanding nuclear-powered arms race in space will certainly have serious ecological and political ramifications as well. The effort to deny years of consensus around international space law will create new global conflicts and confrontations
2. No protection mechanisms against space viruses. At the present time NASA has taken no action to create a special facility to handle space sample returns. The first positive identification of extraterrestrial microbial life was reported in 2001; we know bacteria in space exists.
3. Earth viruses are worse after stints in space, making extinction inevitable if colonization occurs. An experiment on board space shuttle Atlantis included Salmonella typhimurium bacteria, which is often fatal in humans. When the bacteria returned to Earth, scientists injected it into mice. They found the space-faring bacteria caused death quicker and more often than Earth-restricted organisms. Genetic sequencing showed that 167 genes and 73 proteins had been altered. When activated, the proteins the altered genes produced were shown to strengthen multiple types of bacteria. Since bacteria are always present inside humans, it is impossible to prevent any of the organisms from getting into the space shuttle. Given that bacteria are better ecological competitors and our immune system functions at lower levels in space, that means infection is pretty inevitable.
SYRIA
Rebel Fracturing DA
Uniqueness:
1. Presently, the rebellion in Syria is composed of a loosely united collection of distinct militia groups with their own community affiliations, ideologies, and policy agendas: “It’s a blend of forces and agendas at play on the rebel side” (Murphy 2012)
a. FSA, Jabhat, Support Front for the People of Syria may have visions of post-Assad Syria that are in tension
b. When leaders from different rebel groups met in Cairo last month and couldn’t agree on a power-sharing arrangement, the Syrian Kurds walked out of the meeting and a fistfight broke out (Lederer 2012)
2. The only reason these militias are united (or at least not frequently fighting each other now) is because they fear elimination by the Syrian military. They feel that they have to set aside their ideological disagreements in order to focus all their energy on surviving against Assad
a. The massacre at Aleppo and the inability of the rebels to topple the vastly superior Syrian army after a year of fighting confirms the militias’ fears that they cannot survive without one another
Links:
1. The militias anticipate that the aid from the US will enable them to improve their capabilities relative to the Assad regime and survive independently of one another
a. Enhances communication capabilities of particular opposition groups
b. More importantly, the militias will interpret the plan as a harbinger of future aid from the US, which they believe will enable them to contest the Syrian military’s monopoly on violence without relying on inter-militia alliances
c. Almost certainly, the assistance will be dispersed unevenly. Incredibly difficult to spread aid evenly across such varied militia groups
Impacts:
1. Anticipating further aid, the rebels turn their weapons on each other in competition for attention from external patrons
a. Each group wants to present itself as the most viable and robust, and therefore the most likely to attract aid from the US. The plan incentivizes inter-militia violence as they compete with rivals to attract aid
b. This happens all the time in civil war: LTTE & its war against other Tamil insurgencies; MPLA, FNLA & UNITA in Angola; Libyan civil war
2. This turns case by actually weakening the opposition, prolonging the civil war
China Relations DA
Uniqueness:
1. China continues to protect Syria from condemnation/sanctions at the UN, creating tensions with the US (Nichols 2012)
a. On July 20th, China blocked a UNSC resolution to sanction Syria (for the third time) and extend the UN observer mission
b. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, called the veto “dangerous & deplorable”
2. China & Russia have consistently pushed for an alternative peace plan that ends in a negotiated settlement between the Assad regime and the rebels, rather than a decisive victory for one side or the other
Links:
1. Plan substantially switches the US role from humanitarian aid to active logistical/military assistance threatening Assad, which upsets China in several ways:
a. Assad = traditional regional ally of China
b. China’s strict understanding of sovereignty necessitates non-interference, especially when the state’s monopoly on violence is threatened
i. Uighurs in Xinjiang, Tibet
c. Appears to be a rejection of China’s preferred vision for a negotiated settlement
d. Appears that the US is positioning itself to establish itself as the eminent ally of a post-Assad Syria
Impacts:
1. China seeks to make up for the political loss that results from the plan and consolidate its control over the South China Sea to balance against the US, trading consolidation in one region for another
a. Establishing military garrison in a disputed portion of the sea (Perrington 2012), run-ins and cable-cutting with Vietnamese and Filipino ships
2. Consolidation requires further naval buildup in the region, puts China in head-to-head competition with other regional claimants, US intervenes on behalf of Vietnam or Philippines → war in the SCS
Diplo Tradeoff DA
Uniqueness:
1. In the SQ, Iran is coming to the table on talks regarding their nuclear program.
a. Ahmedinejad is ready to come to the table: On Sunday (2/10/13) Ahmadinejad said that he is ready to have talks with United States if the West stops pressuring his country. He said the West had recently taken a "better" tone toward Iran a nod to statements made by vice president Joe Biden last week, in which he said the United States was prepared talk directly to Iran.
b. Ahmedinejad admitted that sanctions are effective: He stated, “Today, because of dishonorable pressure by enemies, people are under pressure. The government is concerned about the uneasy situation of a big portion of the country."
c. But he wants to condition the talks on the US pulling away from their aggressive strategies: Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the 1979 revolution that toppled a Western-backed monarch and ushered in the Islamic Republic, "You pull away the gun from the face of the Iranian nation, and I myself will enter the talks with you,". Additionally, Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said:” Washington needs to quiet its “threatening rhetoric” for the offer to get real consideration by Tehran’s ruling clerics”
2. There’s a consensus that these negotiations will be successful – the West is recognizing that this is the last chance for successful talks before military action will become the best option:
a. It’s time for a solution or military measures: Iran is continuting to enrich Uranium that has no plausable civilian explination. There is a general sense among experts that 2013 will be a make or break year for the negotiations. Obama has repeatedly said that he will not allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons state and indicated that military action is an option.
b. Talks failed in June, because the US didn’t back off and give Iran concessions: At talks in June, Iran demanded the lifting of ever-tightening international economic sanctions as a precondition for discussions about reducing or eliminating its growing inventory of enriched uranium. The US wouldn’t give in to demands, and talks failed. This time, however, Iran wants two things – 1) they want the US to back off of their harsh rhetoric and 2) they want a new offer (According to a member of their nuclear negotiating delegation “The [West] knows they should have a new proposal”)
c. The talks offered this time will be more successful – we offered one on one talks and are backing off: Given how unproductive and unwieldy the talks have been, some experts say that the best approach would be to have one-on-one negotiations between the United States and Iran. Vice President Joe Biden offered such discussions when he spoke at a security conference in Munich last weekend. He said the US would present an “updated and credible offer”, which meets the second of their two demands.
Links:
1. Plan does [X] to Syria.
2. This is a perceptual and material threat to Iran: Iran perceives this as the US reversing its current trajectory of coming to the table and backing off its aggressive rheotoric – ramping up its agression in the Middle East and trying to encircle Iran with pro-US governments by removing Iranian allies. It’s like we’ve taken their concessions and agreements to go to the table as license to do whatever we want to them and their allies. They’ll also perceive the plan as a threat to their authority and power (like the US is saying “do what we want, or we’ll topple you, too”).
Internal Links:
1. This kills any hope of negotiations: and provides Iran fuel to ramp up their nuclear program more flagrantly, because they can point to US containment strategies and threats as political cover and a tangible reason they can and should have nuclear weapons. This causes rampant Iranian proliferation.
2. Israel freaks the fuck out: Netanyahu is already threatening to take military action should talks fail by early summer. Since plan will cause these talks to fail and be a major hurdle to any talks starting up and having meaningful results by early summer, he’ll seize the opportunity to take hardline action. Additionally, he’ll need to take a hardline stance on Iran, since he was just re-elected and needs to prove his credibility to hardliners and stand up to the failed actions of the US post the plan.
3. Causes Israel to first strike: Israel will feel they need to intervene in the conflict, since their conditions for intervention will have been met. They’ll also feel they have political cover on all sides, since talks will fail and they’ve been hit with shells from Syria. This will give them the go-ahead to move in troops and try to forcibly remove Assad themselves.
Impacts:
1. Regional nuclear war, US draw-in because of security guarentees with Israel.
a. Small scale war will escalate regionally: Once the bombs begin exploding, communications failures, disorganization, fear, the necessity of making in minutes decisions affecting the fates of millions, and the immense psychological burden of knowing that your own loved ones may already have been destroyed are likely to result in a nuclear paroxysm. Many investigations, including a number of studies for the U.S. government, envision the explosion of 5,000 to 10,000 megatons.
b. It will cause draw-in of the US: because of our security guarentees with Israel.
c. Extinction – Oozone destruction: High yield air bursts will chemically burn the nitrogen in the upper atmosphere, forming oxides of nitrogen. Nitrogen oxide reacts with ozone to form elemental nitrogen and oxygen removing the barrier that protects the Earth from deadly solar ultraviolet radiation.
i. Ultraviolet light has been found to mutate the DNA of crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. This destroys our ability to produce food
ii. Everything outside gets burned/skin cancer.
iii. DNA bonding is disrupted by UV-215 and more energetic radiation, ending the replication of life.
d. Extinction – dust cloud: The detonation of less than 1% of the world’s nuclear arsenal (~100 megatons) only in low-yield airbursts over cities would still trigger nuclear winter.
i. In a nuclear winter there would not be sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis for multiple weeks. In addition, the surface temperature of the land mass will drop to -25 Celsius. Everything starves/freezes.
2. Turns any stability and transition arguments from case, because Iran will sabotage our efforts to cause a pro-US transition in Syria and we’ll all be dead from nuclear war.
Opposition Groups DA
Uniqueness:
1. Presently, the rebellion in Syria is composed of a loosely united collection of distinct militia groups with their own community affiliations, ideologies, and policy agendas: “It’s a blend of forces and agendas at play on the rebel side”.
2. The civil war is causing an increase in fundamentalism: Syria is becoming ever more a Shia-Sunni religious conflict as the smaller, more moderate groupings within are marginalised and leave the country.
3. Al-Qaeda is gaining ground in Syria now and taking on a leadership role with the opposition forces: Al Qaeda has helped to change the nature of the conflict, injecting the weapon it perfected in Iraq — suicide bombings — into the battle against President Bashar al-Assad with growing frequency. The presence of jihadists in Syria has accelerated in recent days in part because of a convergence with the sectarian tensions across the country’s long border in Iraq. Al Qaeda, through an audio statement, has just made an undisguised bid to link its insurgency in Iraq with the revolution in Syria, depicting both as sectarian conflicts — Sunnis versus Shiites. They’ve been logistically and ideologically supported by the Al-Nursa front or the People of the Levant, which military and intelligence analysts say is the major Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria, with two other Qaeda-linked groups also claiming to be active there, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and Al Baraa ibn Malik Martyrdom Brigade.
a. Since the beginning of the conflict, Al-Qaeda tactics have increased: There have been at least 35 car bombings and 10 confirmed suicide bombings, 4 of which have been claimed by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, according to data compiled by the Institute for the Study of War.
Links:
1. Plan is perceived as the US sweeping in at the last minute when the war has already been functionally won to claim credit for a victory they did nothing to orchestrate.
Internal Links:
1. Fundamentalists will take power and cause regional spillover: The most worrying factor is the inevitable spillover to Iraq. There, the Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has moved closer to the Shiite fundamentalist regime in Iran since the withdrawal of the US military at the end of 2011. Al-Maliki fears that Sunni fundamentalists in Syria might replace the Assad regime and then support Sunni insurgent elements in Iraq.
Impacts:
1. Turns case – a US led transition will spur anti-western movements and will cause regional wars to spark.
Case Turn: Bioweapons
1. Plan leads to Assad launching bioweapons: US intervention will singal an early death knell for Assad. Even if the regime will crumble no matter what, in the SQ he is in controll of what kind of topple he’ll experience and how quickly it will happen. He’ll know he has only hours to react before the US intervenes in a world of the plan and absolutely nothing to lose since his regime’s demise will be imminent, so he’ll launch chemical and bioweapons out of desperation. Turns case and bioweapons are bad:
a. Containment: if just 100 people became infected with Small Pox, we’d have to encircle them with 100 million vaccinated pepople to contain the spread of the disease, because the world is so densly populated and interconnected. And containment strategies are most developed and exist almost exclusively in the first world, which means that if we can’t contain it, it would be devastating to those on the periphery. Additionally, disease prevention infrastructure was developed by people who are used to having healthcare infrastructure like readily avaiable gloves and doctors so the undeveloped and developing world would be decimated overnight.
b. Would Cause Extinction: Small Pox killed a billion people before 1900, which was about 1/3 of the world’s total population, and the Plague wiped out almost 1/2 the population of Europe in 4 years. Disease prevention infrastructure would be unable to cope with hundreds of thousands of people infected overnight. Additionally, we can’t predict the strain of the disease or how it will mutate once it’s released, which means that any vaccines or anitbiotics we make will have to be made retroactively and be different formula than what we used before. It took a decade to erradicate Small Pox the first time around, and the world was way less interconnected then – means the disease would proliferate too rapidly for anyone to respond and would result in complete extinction.
c. And Economic Shutdown: It would cause all transportation infrastructure to shut dowm immediately so we can have a small hope of containing the spread of the disease and quarrentining those who become infected from the release of disease. Transportation is a vector for disease, and once a pandemic takes place economic activities cannot be sustained – it will shut down all critical infrastructure.
i. Empirics: And empirics prove: during the SARS outbreak in 2003 flights in Pacific Asia decreased by 45% and flights between Hong Kong and the United States fell 69%. This would pale in comparison to the panic that will ensue from the use of biological weapons).
ii. Food: supermarkets have between 2 to 5 days of inventory of perishable goods and about 1 to 2 weeks for other goods. In the case of a pandemic, available food supplies could quickly be exhausted through hoarding.
iii. Energy: 50% of US energy is generated by burning coal. Coal power plants only maintain 30 day stockpiles, and energy distribution systems could be shut down for weeks or months. This will cause rolling blackouts, power shortages, and render us incapable of running our entire economy. Because of the global trade network, this would cause immediate global collapse.
iv. Poverty/violence: billions will instantly be plunged into poverty and material precarity – hurting those on the periphery and third world first. Economic collapse will breed fierce competition for remaining food, potable water, and weapons in the first world. Scarcity will make irrational actors of us all, since it’ll be try or die for the last grain of rice, we’ll all start killing each other or die of starvation and dehydration once water towers and wells run dry. That’s a really dehumanizing way to die and kill your friends and family to take their food
*KRITIKAL NEGS*
FW – Reps first (generic)
1. K comes first: Framework questions should come before policymaking questions because they determine the effectiveness, acceptance, and possibility of a policy. Failure to prioritize the framing is to ignore reality. Truth is a question of framing – not of facts.
2. Reps focus good: representations need to be evaluated first because they determine the how we define political subjects. They also delineate which knowledge claims that can be evaluated and which are marginalized. Truth does not exist objectively; it is created through systems of power which we as policy makers subscribe to.
a. Once theory is established as common sense, they become incredibly powerful since they delineate not simply what can be known but also what it is sensible to talk about or suggest – thus representations are the ultimate act of political power.
3. Words impact understanding: images are interpreted within an already existing context. They come with historical baggage, both in terms of the particular event and in terms of previous events. In order to discuss the possible implications of a policy action, we first have to determine how our words and the way we represent political undertakings influences our understanding of perceived problems.
FW – Debate As Politics
Debate is a platform in which you are forced to listen to, write down, and engage in dialogue with us over our argument. This affords us a unique space to come together and discuss issues that are important to us. It’s not like you can blow it off or choose not to participate in the dialogue like you could with a diversity forum or out of round discussion. This ensures that everyone involved has a stake in the outcome of the round and is forced to come to terms with their own complacency or participation in systems of oppression that shape what debate looks like.
Competitive format fosters empathy and understanding – makes it perfect for these kinds of arguments, because you not only listen and engage, but spark discussion out of round and have to sit and think about how you’ll engage with us in the future, meaning that we have long term solvency and are capable of multiplying the discussion and thought that you wouldn’t have to do if we just conversed outside the round or had another forum that you slept through. We are the logical endpoint of these discussions, and it’s maximally inclusive, because not everyone comes to tournaments to go to a forum, but everyone comes to compete.
Subjectivity comes first – we cannot engage in a discussion of politics within the round unless we first sort out whether or not we can politically engage within the debate space. Otherwise, it’s always a rigged game where the privileged win out no matter what.
We cannot hope to transform the world through fiat unless we first come to terms with transforming our own community. The only kind of imagination that matters is not fiat but the imagination of what we hope to be as individuals and as a community of debaters that actively participates in the exclusion of marginalized groups.
Identitiy politics also renews democratic engagement: We can unsettle taken-for-granted hierarchies to open up the enterprise of self-identification and meaning-making, keeping it on edge and so alive – thus renewing the spring of political energy that propels us forward.
And identitiy politics is inevitable – all politics is identity politics, it’s just a question of whether or not our voices are marginalized, allowed to have a seat at the table, or are part of the dominant discourse. Political activity is shaped by efforts to defend and define who I am, who we are, and what we hope to become. This is inclusive of the debate space, making it perfect to discuss these kinds of issues.
These are also all reasons why the ballot is important: Endorsement grants legitimacy to method, representations, and the kinds of outcomes we think are desirable. It also means that what you vote for is successful and emulated by people who associate that winning with success and want to achieve it as well, meaning that you literally vote for the arguments and style of debate that is modeled by future generations. Thus, problematic models of debate are infinitely replicated unless an iterruption is offered and voted for.
In addition, ballot count influences how far a team goes in a tournament, giving more people a chance to come and listen to arguments firsthand, form their own opinions about it, and think about how they also participate in forms of oppression.
FW – Narrative good
Narrative is good:
Narratives increase minority participation in debate – formalized power structures that have kept minorities out of the activity. We can safely assume that of the X number of participants in this tournament, only a handful are from minotirized populations. You’ll find the same thing when you look at women directors and coaches. Our argument is that different forms of communication combine to get everyone to be able to participate in the discussion. Exclusion works to silence voices and forclose upon new forms of knowledge. Knowledge production is more than traditional debate – we have to strive to keep the activity healthy by encouraging a diversity of voices and knowledge bases.
Moreover, the narrative approach alters the foundational intersts in established debate from one that focuses on anticipating hypothetical outcomes to one that subverts this approach to explode our horizons. Repeating the process of debate only produces the same outcomes that serve those in power, so we have to create a different approach to interrupt this cycle.
We should instead seek to use counter narratives to open up space to find the most inclusive and liberating solutions for everyone within the debate space and within the criminal justice system.
The narrative structure allows us to hear the voices of those who are silenced or systematically marginalized in the current system. By making space for the subaltern discourses, we allow the most inclusive and productive means of seeking solutions for the criminal justice system that don’t replicate the racism and prejudice that NWA explains.
Narrative is a compositional method that offers the possibility of social criticism from the design of the argument as well as the content of the argument. For example, it’s a opportunity for the presentation of counter narratives that challenge the dominant, state-disseminated information about how effective or good the law is at making life better for people, which is ultimately the narrative the affirmative engages in.
Narrative is an effort to incorpoate subject analysis in debate – this means the person who is the speaker matters. Instead of pretending to serve as a mouthpiece for published information that upholds the legitimacy of the law, we should present information from other subject positions to best understand how power and oppression operates from the standpoint whose universal stories indicate that the system is not serving their intersts.
KRITIK - CLS
A. Framework:
1. Method is the foremost departure for any political query: Method underpins and informs practice. Even if there is a lengthy lag between the high point of theory and its incorporation into public debates, a flawed methodology will inevitably reproduce the harms of the aff.
a. The method of the aff reifies the dominance of the legal system and reinforces the notion that reformism is a productive way to engage with the system without questioning the destructive and prejudicial practices iherent to the criminal justice system.
b. Instead, the negative asks the question why the system needs reforming in the first place and utilizes the method of narrative to put the system on trial. This is most effective to criticize the oppression the affirmative upholds and glosses over. By criticizing from the outside, we can most effectively point out the flaws inherent to the justice system and ultimately allow the system to collapse on itself.
2. Fiat is illusory and bad: Your plan doesn’t acutally happen regardless of the ballot. Fiat-centric education only replicates the exclusionary models of policymaking that searches for reforms or policy adjustments that only serve those in power and mask the exploitative nature of the criminal justice system. In addition, fiat ultimately demands that we pretend to be someone else instead of taking on the role of individuals with our own political orientations to the topic who are searching for better, more inclusive solutions. This is made impossible if we refuse to engage with the topic as individuals and only repeat hegemonic discourses that make life unlivable for a large portion of the population. In addition, fiat does nothing to teach us about the flaws inherent to using the system, only that reformism is productive and that imagining government-centric solutions is best.
3. Thus, the role of the ballot is to endorse the methodological approach which best resolves structural injustice within the legal system.
B. Thesis: CLS attempts to identify the role played by law in the process through which social structures acquire the appearance of being inevitable, natural, or just. By demonstrating the fundamental contradictions within the legal structure of liberalism, CLS is seen to be committed to exposing both the indeterminacy of the legal order and the political facets underlying the adjudication process. It concludes that law is not so much a rational enterprise as a vast exercise in rationalization.
C. Links (lots of them – pick based on caps tag):
1. [GENERIC] Law legitimates fundamentally illegitmate authority: Society's shared ideas about human and social relations that are embedded in legal consciousness legitimate unjust social relations by making these relations seem either necessary or desirable. If people believe the social structure they inhabit is natural and necessary, rather than social and contingent, they’ll accept it and not be able to imagine alternatives.
2. [LAW DISCOURSE] Law discourse entrenches existing power structures: Discourses of legal and technical rationality, of rights and consent are discourses of power. To have access to these discourses, to be able to use them or pay others to use them on your behalf, is a large part of what it means to possess power. Further, they are discourses that express the interests and the perspectives of the powerful people who use them, not of the disempowered groups they occasionally make concessions to.
2. [LAW DISCOURSE] Legal discourse helps construct the reality of exploitation: It takes law seriously and does not acknowledge that law is just a mask for priviledge and exploitation, thus it participates in constructing the reality that law is controlled and written by elites.
3. [REFORMISM] Liberal reforms are piecemeal and reinforce harmful practices: Liberal reforms alleviate only a small part of the problems in American society while affirming and strengthening a broad range of pernicious practices. For example, employment laws requiring that men and women receive equal pay for equal work are said to have diverted attention from the need for radical change in the societal roles of men and women. Moreover, it increases faith in a bankrupt system’s ability to reform itself, which ensures the same errors will be created in new and wose ways.
3. [RIGHTS] Rights claims are indeterminate and arbitrary, making any short term symbolic victory meaningless: Because the language of rights is formalistic and indeterminate, rather than concrete and specific, the application of a "right" in a particular setting will depend on factors external to the legal concepts involved. This causes rights rhetoric to become incoherent, because decision makers arbitrarily select varied and often contradictory rationales to justify outcomes that are not logically compelled by the premises chosen.
4. [SCOTUS] Supreme Court rulings are meant to placate the masses to accept hierarchy: The objective of the Supreme Court is to pacify conflict through the mediation of a false social-meaning system. Either a conflict is assimilated into an existing prevailing world-view, or the existing world-view accommodates itself somewhat to absorb the conflict. But in either case the objective is to maintain a relatively coherent, though false, sense of social-meaning and connection.
5. [LAW UPHOLDS CAPITALISM] The law legitimates capitalist system – when you grant rights, that’s how it chains the workers to be slaves, because they come to the master (the courts) to gain hollow victories over workers comp and get $0.50 more per hour. They get punked for $0.50 instead of challengin the system that keeps them oppressed.
Cap is characterized by a traumatic lack of connectedness. Allowing connectedness allows you to perceive yourself as constituted by capitalism. Being in a disconnected role allows you to be thinglike, which is the essence of alienation. The law gives us the impression that the system operates according to a collective law. Thus function of law is legitimation.
When we use the law, it reifies subject-object dichotomy of cap.
When you go to the courts, it reifies the subject and the object, making cap easier and more powerful.
Impacts:
1. Rights rhetoric masks oppression and demobilizes social justice – turning the case: It legitimizes governmental exercises of power and makes the government appear as though it is resolving disputes fairly and objectively under the rule of law. It also makes mass political resistance unlikely, because rights discourse disguises the role of coercive state power in creating inequality in the first place via wealth, opportunities, and resources. This ensures we only have more confidence in a bankrupt system and ensures oppression is inevitable.
2. Rule of law undermines democracy – turning the case: If law is not determinate or neutral or a function of reason and logic rather than values and politics, government by law reduces to government by lawyers, and there is little justification for the broad-scale displacement of democracy. The extraordinary role of law in our society and culture is hard to justify once the idealized model is recognized as mythic.
3. Political annihilation: When individuals are granted small concessions but continue to be enslaved to a broader system that at best selectively enforces access to material benefits of law, they are legitimated or excluded at the will of the soverign. This system of receiving gifts in the form of rights generates an obligation to reciprocate. The gift "debases" the one who receives when there is no possibility of reciprocation, thus the receiver cedes status or power to the giver. This debt is a condition of social subjugation that informs all interactions between the recipient and the benefactor, ensuring self-actualization is never possible and political power is always out of reach.
4. Cap bad: (you can insert cap bad arguments if you’d like to read the law upholds capitalism link)
Alternative: Vote negative to embrace a critical legal approach that seeks to step outside the system, expose its flaws and allows it collapse on itself.
Solvency:
1. Changing consciousness is key to overcoming domination: Things can only get better when people break out of their accustomed ways of responding to domination, by acting as if the constraints on their improving their lives were not real and that they could change things. Critical analysis exposes the law's proclamations as false and opens up the possibility of alternatives. This provides both a deeper understanding of law and society and an essential tool for engaging in the system. If society is constituted by the world views that give meaning to social interaction, then to change consciousness is to change society itself.
2. The alternative opens up space for real justice to emerge: Oppositionism does away with the confining blueprint of the legal system and exposes the contingent character of all social institutions. The CLS critique of rights attempts to expose how mere power becomes legitimate right. Thus, the critique aims to strip social structures of their appearance of inevitability, which opens up the possibility of true rights for every form of injustice.
3. Permutation won’t solve – it only traps us into solutions that we don’t want: By emphasizing law as policy, it reserves the direction of social change to be determined by a very small group of elites. Because it assumes a natural harmony of interests in the fulfillment of social needs, it has trouble seeing conflict as other than dysfunctional disturbance of equilibrium rather than a systemic problem with the way laws and decisions are made. This traps us into replicating the kinds of solutions that keep us running in place and never ends inequality.
KRITIK - DEVELOPMENT
A. FRAMEWORK
1. ROLE OF THE BALLOT: The role of the ballot is to evaluate the justifications for action and our relationship to neocolonialism. Our kritik calls into question the justification of the affirmative through rethinking production of representations and truth claims of the 1AC.
2. K COMES FIRST: representations needs to be evaluated first because they determine the how we define political subjects. They also delineate which knowledge claims that can be evaluated and which are marginalized. Truth does not exist objectively; it is created through systems of power which we as policy makers subscribe to.
3. BASIS OF ACTION: detaching the power of truth from the forms of social, economic, and political hegemony allows for a critical rupture with the status quo. Only through a critical rupture with the status quo can we generate new power relations and new paths of action.
a. Once theory is established as common sense, they become incredibly powerful since they delineate not simply what can be known but also what it is sensible to talk about or suggest – thus representations are the ultimate act of political power.
B. LINKS
1. TELOS OF DEVELOPMENT: the 1AC creates an ordering of the world based in the center/periphery divide. Your aff assumes that there is a rational-logical trajectory of nation state development. This inevitably favors a western ontology of statehood. The artifices of ‘democracy’, ‘economic development,’ and ‘liberation politics’ are projected onto an entire people who can never catch up. This condemns the periphery to the state of our representation of them as inadequate and lacking.
a. LACK OF INTROSPECTION: the assumption that the western state is the ideal state prevents us from looking at the flaws within our own society and the way that we promote humanitarian aid. -- WE WILL ALWAYS POINT THE FINGER AT CHINA OR INDIA FOR CLIMATE CHANGE INITIATIVES WHEN WE PRODUCE 5 X AS MUCH CARBON EMISSIONS. THE
b. DEVALUATION OF THE LOCAL: The telos of development discourse devalues local political, economic, and social structures, favoring a homogeneous global consumer culture. The WEST ignored the value of Rwanda’s TRC and we continue to seek violent, redemptive measures to ameliorate genocide -- SUDAN.
c. REPRESENTATIONS OF SUFFERING- the 1AC uses a narrative of suffering that is located square in the center of Western liberal senimentalities, prioritizing harms scenarios that we find coherent/amenable to policy action. We will spend billions to fight FGM and ignore the need for Malaria drugs or the establishment of village religious institutions because those representations of suffering don’t tug at our heart strings.
1. CYCLES OF DEBT: The logic of the 1AC places western intervention into states of suffering as an act of incalculable value -- one which can never be repaid. This debt is more than economic; it is a condition of social subjugation that informs all interactions between the recipient and the benefactor. Jamaica/WORLD BANK.
a. GIFT GIVING: As French sociologist, Marcel Mauss developed the gift theory in which receiving gifts generates an obligation to reciprocate. The gift "debases" the one who receives when there is no possibility of reciprocation, thus the receiver cedes status or power to the giver.
b. VICTIMIZATION: after conducting research in Somali refugee’s camps, sociologist Hyndman notes that the people have been representing themselves as victims for so long that, along with convincing the donors of its reality, they've also convinced themselves. This inculcated the Somalian refugees with the logic that the only way to improve their material circumstance is to beg, plead, and maintain an image of suffering that the WEST finds worthy of attention.
2. VIOLENT INTERVENTION: Human rights violations are the new red scare, we seek to civilize the savage body through policies that are blind to the thousands of people killed or livlihoods destroyed -- because we didn’t much value these livlihoods to begin with.
a. ECONOMIC: Inflating humanitarian aid with economistic thinking, not only assumes that there is a common global market. Global growth at expense of local lives. EX: NAFTA article 14 put a ban in Mexico on indigenous farming to reallocate to cooperate farms
b. DISREGARD OF LOCAL POLITICS: progress is only measured through the lense of the market meaning we ignore local farming infrastructure developing in rural Uganda and push for large-scale damming projects that dislocate 10K indigenous lives. This creates a mistrust of democratic/populist institutions -- just like we saw in Iran with the Islamic Revolution.
C. IMPACTS
1. POLITICAL ANNIHILATION:
a. COLONIZES THE MIND (FANON): Subjects of the colonial order assume violence as an existential condition of their own being, which is bad because it conditions them for self-genocide and devalues their lives from the stand point of the developed world.
b. COLONIAL POWER STRUCTURES RENDERED NORMAL, ORGANIC, and INEVITABLE, we will control the root cause of structural violence. The logic of subjugation makes violence an accepted state of being, both for the colonizer and for the colonized.
c. SELF ACTUALIZATION: Self-actualization is never possible, political power is always out of reach, and society eats its young. The “WEST IS BEST” mantra is inculcated into entire peoples, negating their ability to value their own culture, history, or political narrative. You dislocate the political being from the social being, creating transgenerational cultural murder.
2. UNENDING CYCLES OF VIOLENCE:
a. VIOLENT US INTERVENTION: Imposing human rights law justifies the domination of foreign people because they are unable to regulate themselves. The undeveloped other represents a threat to western infrastructure as a whole, when they cannot be subverted by humanitarian aid the conflicts turn violent. This lowers the brink for violence against others and creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
b. DO-NO-EVIL MENTALITY: In a world where you act as the utmost moral authority, you make impossible to introspection necessary to solve for US over-consumption, First Nations genocide, and American trigger happy jingoism that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide and puts us on the brink of global nuclear annihilation.
c. SACRIFICIAL GENOCIDE: Development necessitates the genocide of the global periphery and the poor because it is a system built to maximize economic expansion for the First World. We use any mean necessary to open up new markets -- imposing totalitarian violence and funding/starting wars to help control resources (CONFLICT MINING).
3. NO RISK OF PRAGMATIC SOLVENCY: They will say that their impact justify their policy action, BUT this rests on the assumption that they are capable of solving the internal links to their impacts. The 1NC acts as a terminal solvency take out, because it shows the ugly truth behind humanitarian aid.
D. ALTERNATIVE
VOTE NEG AS AN ACT OF REJECTION OF THE 1AC’s LOGIC OF NEOCOLONIAL ORDERING.
SOLVENCY
1. REJECTION SOLVES: we take a radical stance against the perpetuated logic of neocolonialism. This fractures the metanarrative of neocolonialism and opens space for us to realize that the humanitarianism of the 1AC is only smoke and mirrors.
a. ATTACKING AT THE HEART: The neocolonial narrative gains its power as a representational system by our acceptance of it. This means that the individual is capable of attacking the heart of the system by refusing to accept the truth claims the aff proposes.
b. UNMASKING POWER: As Foucault put it, "the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them."
c. REJECTION KEY: we need to fracture the Neocolonial narrative at every juncture -- every act is key, including this round. Radicalism is neutered when the movement accepts concessions to it’s political form.
2. PERMFAILS: Permutation assumes that any component of the 1AC is an advisable advocacy to adopt -- this is undermined by the K, the permutation is logically incoherent. NO NB TO PERM: we are controlling the root cause of all their impact scenarios, this means that the alternative alone is capable of solving and there is no NB to the perm.
a. MASKING: the perm gives the state the ability to represent itself as a benign and humanitarian institution without ever changing the discursive practices that link it to the K. This increase in humanitarian political capital allows the state to justify things like military intervention and excessive violence under the mask of liberalism.
b. EPISTEMOLOGY TURN: dominant or hegemonic epistemologies cannot be combined with individual or standpoint epistemologies without overpowering them. Because we already have faith in the truth of dominant epistemologies their incorporation into the alternative ensures that we never allow for the possibility of a new truth and never question existing truths. This ensures that new epistemologies get corrupted and subsumed into the dominant one, making rethinking impossible.
KRITIK - FEYERABEND
--FW
From Feyerabend’s “Farewell to Reason”, “Against Method”, and “Science in a Free Society”
1. Epistomology should come first - questioning the knowledge of the affirmative should precede an evaluation of political implications because it renders all subsequent claims suspect. And theory underpins and informs practice - once established as common sense, theories become incredibly powerful since they delineate not simply what can be known but also what it is sensible to talk about or suggest – thus representations are the ultimate act of political power.
2. We should get to test the methodological assumptions that underpin the justifications of the affirmative – Every methodological rule is associated with cosomological assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Empriricsm takes it for granted that the scientific method is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Whatever fails to fit into the established category system or is said to be at odds with this system is declared to be false and non-existent, thus it is crucial to question it at every juncture.
--Thesis
The image of science as producing miricales thanks to their empricism and strict adherence to a rational method is a fairy-tale. According to the fairy-tale the success of science is the result of carefully balanced inventiveness and control. Scientists have ideas. And they have special methods for improving ideas. The theories of scientists have passed the test of method, and they give a better account of the world than ideas which have not passed the test.
The fairy tale is false. Scientists do not solve problems because they have a magic method, but because they have studied a problem for a long time, because they know the situation fairly well, and because they are capable of inventing a solution. The greatest scientific discoveries have happened because the rigidity of the scienfitic method was abandoned. This is not just a fact of the history of science, but it necessary for the growth of knowledge.
--Links
1. Regulations: Regulations work to limit the epistemic norms of science and work to benefit and priviledge certain groups of people – namly the normative scientific community with a common epistomological background. This causes totalitarianism in that spectrum of science and society, because it limits who the [research or money] is devoted to and ensures that those people hold a monopoly on truth.
a. Method of regulation: The methodology of necessitating regulations presumes that the government has superior knowledge on what technology or research would be good or bad. It also presumes perfect scientific objectivity – that we should consult the specialists in the field and do whatever they want to achieve the most desirable results for everyone.
2. Rationality and infalibility of science: They assume that science is objective, fact driven, and thus can help progress society forward in the most efficient and best manner because science rejects unfalsifiable and non-empirical evidence that does not align with accepted knowledge. However, science preferences older knowledge and eliminates ideas because they do not fit into an older framework of thought.
3. You claim that we can have better science and get more breakthroughs under the current scientific methodology. Flawed logic that prevents true progress.
Fracking
The United States federal government should substantially increase restrictions on hydraulic fracturing.
1. The effects of hyrdofracturing priviledge royal science – penetration of the earth is problametic because of reasons outside of science is ignored. You have to justify all of your effects through royal science, which reinforces their dominance over the world. The cost-benefit analysis that goes into establishing whether or not it’s good for us is jusfitied through royal science – can’t talk about how it effects the aestetics of the area or is psycholically bad.
2. The royal sciences are heavily invested in capital and visa versa – this is what allows royal science ot have justification, because capitalism backs it. Your justifications are economically based. We know a form of energy is good because it’s efficient, which reenforces capitalism, which reinforces the royal sciences.
3. You talk about natural gas for energy and it has to be a top down solution and process that is a total mystery to people – we turn on lights and somehow electricity enters our homes. Science keeps its knowledge base protected from us by creating expert classes – disconnect our phenomological experiences from us – their experts disconnect our experiences and knowledges. We call for experts to come in and do expert mediation.
** Impacts: expert mediation means ew don’t understand our own involvement iwht our environment. We have no idea what the impacts are – no idea how recycling even works or whatever. That means you can participate in what destroys the environment without feeling bad.
Experts can be baught and soldfor what’s best for cap.
Experts can tell you to do things that are bad for you and you’ll do it because they’re experts – take meds
4. Technocratic Language: We don’t know if it is bad and why we don’t use the technocratic language of science so we can’t approach their scientific community and voice our opinions – we have to let them decide if our lives have been negatively effected by fracking.
5. Knowability: Because royal science is infinitively generative – can always know more things – that means that the capital required to invest in royal science is also infinitively generative. Scam feeds us mythology that it’s knowable question – the knowability is a mythos. Because we’ve come to think knowabilities are possiblilities, we feel as though as we can act through the egotistical cartesian subjectivity. This is a demonstration of Western Egotictical Cartesian Subjectivity which means that the individual can do whatever they want.
ECS –Assumes all knowabiility is contained within subject and is granted imporance by being a subject. Other parts of the world live community based you act based on what’s best for your community. Priveldging one over the other means no connections and no combinaiton of ways of doing things. The way the biggest truths have come about with rejecting big truths.
6. Aff is a mythology in which royal science and capital is fed upon each other – the aff is a fairy tale.
AGI
1. Artificial intelligence operates on the premise that we need to reinforce or ehhance human capaciites and those capacities are based on royal sciences – no one creates a machine that loves. Royal science determines what’s possible and what we invest in. Whatever general intelligence they make furthers this, because now there’s another one out there that’s been programmed to think in the same way and can’t break out of the royal sciences.
2. Politically motivated – military is the largest investment in AIG, means it’s always state motivated which means it can never advocate for the emancipatory interests of civil society. No one wants to invent military AI that will turn guns off. They’ll only invent bigger, badder war robots.
3. The idea that restricting the development of AI is somehow restriction royal science – you’re just reconfiguring the capacities of AI development – the assumption that you can restrict royal science just forces them to be more sinister. You’re just regulating epistemic norms – this is the creation of royal science – restricting possibilities is science because it polices what’s possible and not possible. The first science was alchemy, which said you can only do one thing – figure out how to make gold.
4. The assumption that regulation restricts science creates and reinfoces isea that science is arboresic, which feeds power to certain bodies – this gives agency over to the expert class.
5. This creates AI as a distinct science – now AI is a thing – before it was somehting multiple disciplines participated in (combining with cultural theory to create cyborg fem or afro futurism). Once it has boundaries, it’s policed and people are prohibited from participating.
Internet Privacy
The United States federal government should substantially increase Internet privacy protections for individuals in the United States.
Once you’re on the no call list, the gov has your phone number. In order to insure privacy, the encryption needs to change, which means you’ll be on the grid. This creates the possibilities for surveilence in the future. You create this possiblity, which is bad because it turns the aff.
Masking: Your action is a myth that royal science can be venerable – rescinds its grasp into your life and gives you liberties. This notion makes you look the other way when all they’re relaly doing is iimptingint your internet expeirences with its encryptions.
Computer scientists can protect you as an individual and your notion of who you are is wrapped up in who you are. You grant your privacy over to this expert class. You hand your access to agency over to them.
Architecture of the internet is different from coding in real space – coding and architectures determine the possiblities within the space – royal science controlling this is bad. It’s a space in which the impact of royal science is heightened because it’s mediated by the royal class – no creativitiy or encourtering the globe in a certain way. There’s a framework and limit to how you can operate that determines what’s legally permissable.
The idea that the internet could be private or free is just wrong. Every action done in the internet has a direct line to whoever’s providing that internet service. To make it so websites don’t drop cookies, you have to put a cookie on your computer, for example. This inacurate understanding of internet is same as knowability of royal science and that medicine will take care of it. Privacy will be taken care of by capital and royal science interests – the space is regulated, controlled, and surveiled by them.
None of us have code literacy, you create/reentrench the technocratic divide.
Individual as a subject, because the world individual is in the resolution. The Cartesian individual assumes you are a whole all that matters is your interactions (interactivitiy). The more your priviledge individual, you break away from interactivity. Makes it impossible to have a free society, because every cultural group and interactitivity should have access to knowledge.
**Impact: Data mining creates information about human society because can emprically measure people’s activities.
Cybersecurity
The United States federal government should adopt a cyber security strategy substantially increasing regulation of critical computer infrastructure.
Threats are determined by an expert class. Some dangerous hacker out there who has computer wizzadry that we don’t have who can cause devastation. Nothing we can do to stop it, so we have to trust computer scientists to save us. Ambivialant threats we’ll throw agency behind to solve for the ominous threat we’re not literate in.
Coding links
It’s a restrictive action, which is bad because it prevents rhizomatic knowledge production.
Idea of critical computer threats allows us to perpetuate our xenophoia – we think people are threats because we’re racist. This lets us use threats as a cover for racism.
Critical compuer infra is a demonstration about how royal sciences are invested in structures of power – elite class is able to keep episto models and invest in own eliteness – gov throws money at them and then they throw solutions back at the gov to justify their own existence.
Synthetic Bio
USFG should increase restrictions on synthetic biology through substantially enhancing containment and control measures.
Restrictions and regulations - controll and contain as if there is a puricism and it can be clean not just people doing random things. Best way to protect science is more sceince and it can solve all of its own problems, so there’s no need to pull back the veil.
Containing means denying access to other groups – it’s like maybe if it escaped someone else could study it and find something amazing, but we have to keep it to ourselves. It could be a good thing, but elites are the only ones allowed to create and handle it.
Reenforces idea that royal science can have dominion over the earth – can categorize and typographize but also create it. And ew live in infometric society - knowing and cretaing life means you’re the arbitor of life.
Containment seeks to preserve the scientific method because we’re saying “do what you do in a bubble”. Create more industries centered around this and reenforces the royal science enterprise. It also inhibits other types of enterprise and collaboration.
Safety argument is ludacris – there’s only so much assurity to things. You try to breed some bacteria that escapes and anthrax floats around everywhere. Makes sense of security to create more sinister things (we’ll create nukes, but they’ll be safe). Separates science from civil society even more by building up walls and denying laypeople access to the scientific disco and community.
Containing protects the sciences more. If something leaked, it would make science look like they don’t know what they’re doing, so people have blind faith in science. If you secure it, their faith in the royal sicence increases and it polices the disciplinary borders (like the AI link) to police what it is in the academy. Parameters on what is bio and what is life (what is “synthetic bio” vs. other branches of science).
Bayh-Dole Act
Assumes government control of patents is best and good. Allows power to configure who has access to royal sicence and who does not. At very least the University system trains people to enter it, but government keeps it to themselves.
Grey goo args – these inacurate reps of scientific discoveries feed the idea that science is mythology that no normal people can understand and control. Also feeds idea that science can cure itself of all its problems.
Gives the enterprise and knowledge formation to 1 of 2 places – government or capital. Creates a binary as to where knolwedge formation can go. Makes it so civil society cannot participate or produce knowledge. Even in civil society we imagine it can only exist in those places, so we can never access it. Constricts my imagination as a knowing being and collapses into nihilism.
Royal science can only serve the government or capital, which means nanotech can never serve civil society (no nanocats for Sarah) or you can only get useful things from the gov or capital, never produce them yourself.
Possibly misconstruing all of these threats – put our agency behind them.
You create the disciplne of nanotech – you police their border.
Wehther or not it exists doesn’t matter – you police the boundaries.
I don’t know nanotech and neither can you. Makes the aff speculative
Your method of inquiry was royal science – we’re saying there’s no way of knowing if you know because the only truth regime is the royal sciences.
Space Links
2. Rationality and infalibility of science: They assume that science is objective, fact driven, and thus can help progress society forward in the most efficient and best manner because science rejects unfalsifiable and non-empirical evidence that does not align with accepted knowledge. However, science preferences older knowledge and eliminates ideas because they do not fit into an older framework of thought.
3. You talk about natural gas for energy and it has to be a top down solution and process that is a total mystery to people – we turn on lights and somehow electricity enters our homes. Science keeps its knowledge base protected from us by creating expert classes – disconnect our phenomological experiences from us – their experts disconnect our experiences and knowledges. We call for experts to come in and do expert mediation.
** Impacts: expert medicaiton means ew don’t understand our own involvement iwht our environment. We have no idea what the impacts are – no idea how recycling even works or whatever. That means you can participate in what destroys the environment without feeling bad.
4. Technocratic Language: We don’t know if it is bad and why we don’t use the technocratic language of science so we can’t approach their scientific community and voice our opinions – we have to let them decide if our lives have been negatively effected by fracking.
5. Knowability: Because royal science is infinitively generative – can always know more things – that means that the capital required to invest in royal science is also infinitively generative. Scam feeds us mythology that it’s knowable question – the knowability is a mythos. Because we’ve come to think knowabilities are possiblilities, we feel as though as we can act through the egotistical cartesian subjectivity. This is a demonstration of Western Egotictical Cartesian Subjectivity which means that the individual can do whatever they want.
Reinforces idea that royal science can have dominion over the earth – can categorize and typographize but also create it. And ew live in infometric society - knowing and cretaing life means you’re the arbitor of life.
1. Your aff relegates science to an expert class that cannot be accessed by the majority of people. This means that there is only one kind of subjectivitty allowed to participate in scientific disco, which precludes solutions that take into account traditional forms of knowledge.
--Impacts
1. Forestalls progress: This aim of the older methodology is to test older views, not to invent new ones, because new experiments are interpreted in accordance with older theories. Putting the burden of proof on new theories means taking the observational ideeology for granted without ever having examined it. Turns the aff.
2. Causes cultural destruction and otherization: Science is imported, taught, and pushes aside all traditional elements. Scientific chauvinism dictates that what is compatible with Western Science should live and what does not is backwards and should be eliminated. This sets up in out dynamics in all problem solving situations, in which the civil society and subjectivity can be pushed down or eliminated when in conflict with the royal sciences. We go re-educate natives on their medicine practices because it doesn’t align with traditional practices. Acupuncture.
--Alternative
Text: Vote negative to embrace the “anything goes” nature of epistomological anarchy.
--Alt Solvency
1. The first step in our criticism of customary concepts is to step outside the circle and embrace a plurality of methodologies. This pluralistic approach is best to adopt episotmological anarchy where anything goes. Feyerabend says we should be able to adopt multiple perspectives to best approach and solve scientific problems, becaue it opens up who can contribute to and access the knowledge of the royal sciences.
2. Solves the aff better – in adopting epistomological anarchy, we best solve for scientific progress. They royal sciences are limited in their scope, accessability, and the knolwedge they priviledge in the world of the affirmative. The alternative is key to opening up these new knowledge spaces and allowing the hegemonic episotomology of the affirmative to be broken down. Only we we allow new knowledge to enter the royal sciences can we hope for scientific breakthroughs and discoveries.
a. Maybe something about rhizomatic knowledge?
3. Permutation fails – any incorporation of the affirmative’s epistomology would reassert the episto of the royal sciences because it necessitates the priveledging of knowledge systems that would exclude the alternative. Our episto stance is key to overcome the dominance of the royal sciences.
KRITIK - MARX
(A) Framework
Interpretation: Evaluate the debate as a dialectical materialist—you are a historian inquiring into the determinant factors behind the PMC—The role of the ballot is to endorse the historical outlook of the topic with the most explanatory power.
1. Particular facts are irrelevant without totalizing historical theory—the aff makes universal what is particular to capitalism—methodological inquiry is prior to action. Focus on method is key to praxis—otherwise ideology constrains political imagination and implementation.
2. The insistence on locating all political discussion within the state is used by capitalist’s to destroy the universal consciousness of class—a marxist method is necessary to explode this horizon. Policies aren’t made based on the superior arguments—they are based on what rich people want, unless popular opposition is mobilized outside of policy circles.
3. Debate is the critical site of resistance. The way we frame and decide our educational debates over capitalism will determine the strength of capitalism’s hold over all of this. We must set limits on capital in every sphere of human life.
(B) It’s the Method, Man. Marx’s labor theory of value is the best description:
1. Primacy—life is determined by wealth—our experiences are ordered by the economic conditions we are born into. States of conscious are intelligible only through their prior causes—the aff is futile without prior theorization of social totality because it overlooks the systemic necessity of their impacts.
2. Universality—totalizing theory is most productive—allows for inclusive coalition-building to resist structures of power—particularisms cause internal dissent which quashes political potency—DA to the perm
3. Ideology—capital imposes epistemic blind-spots which bankrupts their decision-making—causes us to dismiss radicalism and submit to the confines of the status quo—their impacts are propaganda that should be ignored. Only dialectical critique allows for the production of truly objective knowledge.
(C) Links:
1. Their advocacy of government action frames dialogue as democratic participation when it is in fact a formal strategy for legitimating the established order. The performance of fiat pretends that it is useful to advocate limited reform within the legal framework designed by capitalist elites. It assumes that we have some kind of power to influence our government and that dialogue is a form of democratic participation. In reality, there can be no democracy in a society founded on class exploitation, there can only be brutal class dictatorship. The civic dialogue the affirmative participates in is a bourgeois strategy aimed at arriving at a consensus by which this violence becomes naturalized. They don’t get to weigh any of their impacts, because they are all based on the ideological delusion of fiat.
2. Reformism—Their move no matter how benevolent compromises—Exploitative systems reproduce these relations as a means of creating profits which means that the bourgeois solutions obscure the role that capitalism plays in the reproduction of social relations which turns the case because the same errors will only be created in new and worse ways.
[Insert topic-specific links]
(D) Impacts:
1. Capitalism fuels imperial drive to secure new sources of expansion—this organizing principle of the planet necessitates structural crisis and massive warfighting that ends in extinction threatening social life and the biosphere.
2. Capital’s destructive logic will exceed material and social spheres—
a. Eco-limits—Capitalism will inevitably exhaust the itself through climate change, energy exhaustion, water and agriculture collapse and the overshooting of carrying capacity
b. Expansion—There are no new markets for capital to expand into, devouring itself through it’s contradictions—the new structuralism of unemployment proves this——capital only needs 20% of the labor force, leaving the rest of the world out
c. Ideology—the increasingly failure of capital to be a universal solution to meet needs will destroy the foundations of the system sooner or laterthe aff only delays this
3. The determinism of capital is responsible for the instrumentalization of all life—it is this logic that mobilizes and allows for the PMC’s scenarios in the first place.
4. Turns case—Their impact calculus entirely misrepresents how state capitalism makes decisions. The ruling class is well aware of the PMC impacts, but because capitalism places a premium on short-term greed, it will continue to recklessly promote its interests anyway. Their impacts are exactly why we should challenge the system at the level of theory.
(E) Alternative: Vote negative to endorse Marxist labor theory of value.
1. Revolutionary theory is a prior question—the aff is irrelevant in the grand scheme of capitalism—we should instead affirm the historical necessity of communism
a. Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. We are confronted with an historic crisis of global proportions that demands of us that we take Marxism seriously as something that needs to be studied to find solutions to the problems of today. Activating this stance by using the resolution as a site to interrogate class politics creates valuable knowledge.
b. Perhaps then we can even begin to understand communism in the way that The Communist Manifesto presents it as "the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" to end inequality forever.
2. Voting negative acts upon the ethical necessity of criticism by bringing to the fore practices of violence which we are complicit with. We should reject their move of affirmation to best confront the failings of reformist politics and the violent context of the PMC.
a. Condemnation is key – The affirmative politics of positive action against structural forces of oppression disavows critical relations of power which constitutes complicity and ethical irresponsibility.
b. Our ethical act of condemnation calls class hierarchies into question and redeploys class universality to open up space for investigation and critique.
3. The alternative creates enmity versus capital, which is key to revolutionary politics—using your ballot to mark the crude points of the PMC’s epistemology.
a. Anti-capitalist method is key – if we win that social antagonisms are rooted in material inequalities, then vote.
b. Because capital determines knowledge through intellectual hegemony, our responsibility isn’t to formulate a specific alternative, but to produce the conditions necessary for such an alternative to emerge—failure to reject capital totally naturalizes specific sites of oppression like the state, ensuring their continuance.
--Democracy Links
DEMOCRACY LINKS:
1. Talking about ‘democracy” without discussing class is a joke--ignores the exploitive nature of our current political system to talk about "democracy"--without talking about the class nature of that democracy and which class it serves--is meaningless, and worse. So long as society is divided into classes, there can be no "democracy for all": one class will rule
2. Democracy is meaningless outside the context of class because such a discussion ignores the questions of leadership and the exploitative nature of the current political system including inequality. Without structural changes attempts to fix current dilemmas will only make things worse.
3. And, cannot posit democracy as an ends unto itself--ignores it situated within a society defined by class struggleThere is no democratic process that goes on in which mere individuals, divorced from social relations--and, in class society, class relations and class struggle--seek to pursue their own individual interests and somehow through that manage to bring about a result which is in the interests of the majority of people and works for the greater good. There can't be any democratic process as an end in itself which is divorced from or doesn't have to be evaluated in relation to the social relations in society
--Formal Politics Links
1. FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF STRUCTURAL KRITIK, THERE CAN BE NO SUCH THING AS ‘MAKING THINGS BETTER’— THEIR MODEL OF POLITICS, NO MATTER HOW SUBVERSIVE OR CONSERVATIVE, ALL FUNDAMENTALLY EXAGERATE THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FORMAL INSTITUTION OF POLITICS AND POWER, IGNORING THE WAYS SUCH A SYSTEM CREATES KNOWLEDGE—ONLY A MARXIST SHIFT TO KRITIK THE STRUCTURE AND CREATE MASS SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS WILL OVERCOME THIS FAILURE OF POLITICS
The reformists focus on the administration of political power and the exercise of government as the fundamental and sole form of political practic
2. THE INSISTENCE ON LOCATING ALL POLITICAL DISCUSSION WITHIN THE STATE IS USED BY CAPITALIST’S TO DESTROY THE UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF CLASS—A MARXIST METHOD IS NECESSARY TO EXPLODE THIS HORIZON and IT’S NOT EDUCATIONAL OR USEFUL to locate political discussion within the state —BECAUSE
A) GAINING INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE ON HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN A SYSTEM THAT THE GREAT MAJORITY OF US WILL NEVER HAVE ACCESS TO SEEMS LIKE A STUPID WAY TO TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES AND B) EVALUATING ONLY WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN DO TO HELP PEOPLE FORECLOSES UPON A WIDE HORIZON OF ALTERNATIVE POLITICS, PRODUCING THE STUNTED KNOWLEDGE.
--Heg Links
1. The hegemonic expansion of the United States is rooted in capital and the drive for profits. This imperialist expansion will end humanity through nuclear warfare and ecological destruction: when one capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the means of destruction, the temptation for that state to attempt to seize full-spectrum dominance and to transform itself into the de facto global state governing the world economy is irresistible. The course on which U.S and world capitalism is now headed points to global barbarism.
--Law Links
1. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE POLICY-MAKING FROM CLASS—THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION IS EXPRESSED THROUGH LEGAL DECLARATIONS
every law is the law of the ruling class. Attempts to consider law as a social relationship which transcends class society, lead either to superficial categorization of diverse phenomena, or to speculative idealistic constructs in the spirit of the bourgeois philosophy of law
2. liberal legal practice is obsessed with preventing the breakdown in individual relationships of the subjects of capital. Challenges are selectively initiated by the ruling class in order to contain particular contradictions of capitalism. Liberal state forms try to rely on the self-reproduction of social relations. The availability of recourse to law aims to facilitate circulation by preventing breakdown in individual transactions
3. LAW GIVES EXPRESSION TO OTHERWISE IMAGINARY RULING CLASS POWER—THAT POWER WHICH IS ABOVE AND BEYOND MATERIAL, VIOLENTLY COERCIVE POWER. THE DOMINATED EXPERIENCE LAW AS THE PLACE THEY MUST OCCUPY
--Rights/Liberation Movement Links
1. Rights discourse is capitalist--reduces individuals to mere competitors: It is a negative view which reduces people to individuals in competition with other individuals, and which sees the question of rights as in essence limiting the impingement of other individuals and of the state (or perhaps of society as a whole) upon the rights of individuals. This is the "highest" vision of freedom that the bourgeois outlook is capable of.
2. And, capitalism metabolizes “liberation” struggles like the aff, nullifying their “solvency” claims: Whatever capitalism achieves with regard to “horizontal” liberation is negated by the dominant “vertical” ordering that always constitutes its decisive moment. Capitalism is chiefly concerned with production and its control. With this comes the domination of labor and dependence on labor. Any liberation the aff seeks would be rolled back by capitalism’s need to control labor as a means of production.
3. And, international human rights are western, and designed to facilitate capital markets that are at odds with human rights: The hegemonic nature of the Western legal system continues to play an important part in the formation of postcolonial relationships. This has been the larger pattern of the post-colonial law and development movement. The imposition of Western legal regimes appears dedicated to the establishment of "regulatory regimes and systems of private rights" to facilitate capital markets, which are often at odds with human rights.
4. And, the framework of rights undermines class solidarity: the first moment of the capitalist state is to establish and guarantee exchange as the mediation of production and consumption. This involves the creation and maintenance of individuals as economic and legal subjects, the bearers of reified property rights. This individual legal subjectivity is enshrined and maintained by legal procedures. A "right" in bourgeois legal form does not create but fragments class solidarity, because it is based on modes of inclusion and exclusion that priviledge those most beneficial to the expansion of capitalist markets.
--State Links
1. State is both a tool of domination and a means of propagating capitalism
The state is also a tool for mobilization, a means for the dominant classes to convince the working classes that their desires and their destiny are in common. However, the state itself is nothing but an arrangement of laws, a set of bureaucratic institutions, and a monopoly on the means to violence. On a purely technical level, it reproduces itself through procedural formalities, the allocation and expenditure of resources, and the peaceful passing on of political power. As Marx states, bureaucracy is not just the mechanics of capitalism, but its spirit. The same could be said for the bureaucracy of the state that governs the capitalist economy.
2. THEIR GESTURE TO FIAT IGNORES THE COMPLETE CONSUMPTION OF THE POLITICAL BY THE ECONOMIC, REGARDLESS OF THEIR PARTICULAR POLITICAL STANCE
the U.S. state is designed to serve the economy and nothing else, abolishing the contradictory and dialectical relationship between economy and politics manipulated by the ruling class, at the expense of the maturation of class consciousness-have all combined to produce the political monopoly of U.S. society by the single party of capital
--Alt Solvency
1. Debate is the critical site of resistance. The way we frame and decide our educational debates over capitalism will determine the strength of capitalism’s hold over all of this: behind the state apparatus is the educational apparatus, which has replaced the previously dominant church as contributing to the learning, normalizing, and reproduction of capitalist relations of exploitation. Education takes the years in which we are most vulnerable and drums into us the ruling ideology. It is by this apprenticeship that the ideology of the ruling class and capitalist social formations are inculcated and reproduced. We must use this as a point of departure to criticize the strategy of the bourgeoise and foster the revolution.
2. Spread of anti-capitalist consciousness in the US is critical to fostering the revolution: In an imperialist country like the U.S., this means leading the masses of people in fighting against the outrages and injustices of this system, and to do this in a way that prepares for the great revolution ahead. It must enable growing numbers of people to see the necessity and possibility of the historic mission of communism to embrace the universalism and solidarity of class consciousness.
KRITIK - NEOLIB
Framework:
1. Our thesis is that neoliberalism and democracy are competing interests—It’s a prerequisite to the aff impact evaluation and action because as our alternative indicates the way that we choose to think and organize ourselves determines the actions that are possible. Thus ideology is the foundation upon which political action is based and is always a prerequisite to political decision-making.
2. Ontology comes first – we must interrogate the foundations of our knowledge and understanding of reality. The K is a gateway to the affirmative – we have to rethink our relationship with the economy and humanity if there is any chance of creating more responsible policies and avoiding the harms caused by de-regulatory econoimcs. Before we debate about the best way to engage in neoliberal economics we should debate about whether neoliberalism is good or not.
3. Thus, the role of the ballot should be a question of which team establishes the best relationship to neoliberalism.
Links:
1. Democracy: a mission to ‘democratize’ involves the imposition of a Western, neolibral form of democracy on other people. It is primarily concerned with manufacturing mentalities and consent around the dominant neoliberal notion of democracy. Western agencies – such as the EU – routinely prioritize liberalization over democratization in the discourse surrounding their economic zone, or use democrazation as primarily a means of stabilizing access to neoliberal zones of trade, not as something intrinsically valuable.
2. Stabilization/Securitization: The aff securitizes their populations by treating them as the illiberal other who must be incorporated into the neoliberal order in order to gain stability. Token reforms like the plan serve to absolve the EU of responsibility for underlying problems while leaving fundamental issues unchanged. The fusion of neoliberalism and security politics makes war inevitable through illiberal interventions to “civilize” the barbarians.
3. Growth: The focus on economic growth and expansion perpetuates neoliberal principles, which engender an eonomic authoritarianism bent on reducing all citizens to a means by which economic markets can achieve their ultimate goals unhindered by restrictive policies.
a. Association Agreement – bringing another country into the economic folds of the EU is the ultimate expression of a literally growth-centered economic system. This places the market above all else in an attempt to create infinate growth in these zones unhindered by regulation and strips the Ukraine of its ability to regulate its own economic policies – it is now at the mercy of the larger market of the EU.
b. TTIP – The TTIP cuts tarrifs across all sectors and removes customs barriers to make it easier to buy and sell goods – obviously this promotes little government intervention and regulations in the market – exploding the scope and practice of neoliberal economics between the US and the EU.
4. Globalization from above: globalization promotes the economic and societal interests of the dominant elite. All others are viewed as cheap sources of labor or expendible commodities. EU economic reform focuses on increasing the capacity of the European market over the survival of local buisnesses and economies. Rapid reform is often pushed upon local economies causing them to collapse and recreate economies based in international interests
5. Profit: ‘Globalization’ of economic affairs forces virtually all countries of the world to embrace the world market if they wish to achieve economic development.
Impacts:
1. Kill to save mentality: in neoliberalism individuals lose autonomy and agency. The periphery and semiperiphery of economic life are defined only in terms of their economic value to the elite. This causes either devaluation which creates discardable populations and infinitely lowers the brink for violence or justification of collateral damage that destroys innocent lives embracing a mentality where we become convinced we must save humanity be destroying part of it.
a. Dehum: dehumanization destroys everything that makes life meaningful to the point that death no longer has meaning. It also creates perpetual suffering that outweighs an instant death. Neoliberalism also destroys cultures and therefore causes transgenerational oppression and cyclical material precarity for those on the periphery.
b. Extinction: when life has no meaning it infinitely lowers the brink for violence. We become convinced that we must save humanity be destroying part of it. This culminates in cycles of violence that result in extinction.
2. Turns Case: The affirmative’s acceptance of a neoliberal ontology perpetuate the view that there is no alternative to present day reality; we become convinced that social problems are the result of market laws that have not been fully applied, not the inevitable consequences of a market centered society. This aims to reproduce infinitly the status quo and makes political alternatives impossible – ensuring the same errors are reproduced in new and worse ways.
3. Poverty: neoliberalism allows cyclical poverty to self-perpetuate, since the free market has determined that these people are not fit enough to survive in the economic sphere. The invisibility of the poverty crisis due to their lack of access to the political system ensures the harms are infinitely reproduced. This culminates in cyclical dehumanization and oppression, creating the logic of disposability that permits any atrocity against them. We’ll control the internal link to violence, because violence is only possible when you’ve created a disposable other that can and should be sacrificed to benefit the rest of society.
Alternative: Reject the affirmative by refusing to participate in the acceptance of institutions we can only affirm globalization from below by disengaging from institutions—this is an ontological imperative that precedes calculation
1. Overcoming the myth: We break the cycle of neolib and introduce new solutions. This fractures the overarching narrative of neoliberalism and is a prerequisite to social change, because it creates new possibilities for political solutions – ensuring more responsible policies in the future.
a. Discursive space: neoliberalism is a discursive system that can only function as long as individuals accept its values and norms. Individual rejection fractures the truth claims of the system and creates an ontological space to generate new value norms.
2. Globalization from below solves: strengthens civil society by rejecting passive acceptance of social norms and creating society based on human solidarity. Beginning politics from the grass roots level affirms democracy and agency. This purges us of biases and dispositions that create economic power structures which prevents assimilation and ensures cultural diversity. This ruptures the foundation of modern neoliberalism and offers an interruption that creates new ways of orienting ourselves to neolib.
3. Permutation fails: The combination of neoliberalism and liberal democracy assures the failure of the alternative, because they rely on competing value systems. Economics functions on a cost benefit analysis, and democracy is based on substantive political participation. In addition, any incorporation of the aff destroys attempts at globalization from below, as the alternative’s efforts of solidarity and democracy will be crushed by the plan’s neoliberal hegemonic ontology – we have to create a new space in order to distance ourselves from the institutions of the plan.
KRITIK - NON VIOLENCE
A) Framework:
1. Our interpretation is that questions of ethics proceed utilitarian questions of impacts. The role of the ballot is to endorse ethical commitment that priviledges compassion for human suffering over utilitarian calculations.
2. Utilitarianism without ethical questioning results in genocide – Without ethical questioning utilitarian logic collapses into a philosophy of “might makes right.” It justifies infinite violence against the other as long as the majority is preserved.
3. Priviledging Utilitarianism solvency – Plan is always justifiable through and ends-justifies-the-means mentality under a utilitarian framework. As long as there exists an external threat, action becomes justified without an examination of the ethical. This locks policymakers into an endless cycle of reactionary legislation that preserves the Status Quo.
4. Utilitarianism alone prevents an examination of rights – There is no ability for a debate that incorporates a discussion of the value of rights under a utilitarian framework. Rights can't be weighed out against a death toll, resulting in a totalitarian state that rolls back human rights.
B) Links:
[GENERIC]
1. Just War – The affirmative plan through their advocacy of violence constructs the idea of “Just War.” That is the idea that there exists a moral scenario for which violence is justified. This moral acceptance of violence creates a worldview that doesn't examine the validity of violent action just if it's justifiable in a specific instance. This worldview fails to challenge militarism and props up its long term existence by holding up violence as a viable option in conflict solving.
2. Positive/Negative Peace – The affirmative plan understands peace as a mere absence of war. This understanding of violence allows for systematic violence within a state as long as the state isn't formally engaged in war. This understanding of peace prevents us from confronting the effects of militarism within the confines of society. Reactionary steps to solve for violence ignore the systematic causes that lead to conflict.
3. The act of using violence to resolve international conflict legitimizes its use as a tool of diplomacy. If we were to bomb the fuck out of some ethnic group it would only prove that bombing people is a justifiable strategy. This locks us all into a cycle of ever escalating violence as violence is seen as the only means to achieve one’s agenda in the international arena.
4. The affirmative team constructs violence as an external phenomenon existing within the power structures of society. This externalization of violence ignores the personal responsibility that individuals have in their daily lives. It creates a separation between the political and the personal that allows for the tacit consent to organization structures of violence.
a. Externalization of violence leads to a political nihilism where we view the state as an unconfrontable entity. We view it as the wielder of power, of violence, and view its actions as larger than those of the individual. This means we don’t question the state’s use of violence and can never overcome the cycle of violence within society.
[PEACEKEEPING]
1. Peacekeeping efforts represent an institutional usage of violence in an effort to establish peace. This usage of violence carries an ideological assumption that peace can be forced on a population. As long as violence has been oppressed then peace has been created. This approach constructs peace as a mere absence of war and allows for social acceptance of violent means as justified responses to problem-solving.
[THE BOMB]
1. The existence of nuclear weapons is a link to the criticism – Mere possession implies usage. As long a weapon exists its use is inevitable, owning one implies a willingness to use one.
2. The bomb is a deterrent force - Holding on to one is a signal to the international community that your are willing to resort to violence in defense of your agenda. The scale of destruction that the bomb carries adds additional deterrent force.
3. Existence of the bomb prevents a non-violent ethic – As with any weapon, non-violence is impossible in a world of the bomb. Holding it out as a last resort means you still legitimize its use.
C) Impacts:
1. Violence psychologically damages the self – Roughly a third of Vietnam vets have PTSD. A quarter of the prison population is made up of ‘Nam vets. 80,000 have committed suicide. 50% of all homeless men are vets.
2. Racial, Gender, Homophobic violence – Sexual violence and racist attacks don’t exist as individual phenonmenons within society. Just like war doesn’t just suddenly break out in a peaceful society. These are implications of a societal acceptance of violence. By accepting violence as a possibility we create the groundwork that results in violent choices. This ideology itself is the reason for all instances of sexual and racial violence.
3. No solvency: The use of violence to end violence affirms the principals of violence. As long as affirmative plan uses violence as a tool of problem solving it legitimizes subsequent uses. This destroys solvency because the opposition will continue to follow the same principals and violently retaliate to plan action.
4. Militarism inevitably results in extinction – Militarism results in an inevitable arms race between nation. The nuclear bomb was created as a tool of destruction for use in warfare, has the capability to destroy the earth, and it was invented over 60 years ago. Technological progress ensures eventual extinction by creating ever more destructive forces. State or sub-state use is inevitable as long as militarism exists.
Alternative: Vote negative to embrace a non-violent ethic.
Solvency:
1. Alt Solves: Empirics – Non-Violence has historically stopped various forms of violence. Gandhi and MLK, while being important examples, aren’t the only ones who have successfully utilized non-violence resistance. There are numerous examples of peace teams acting as human shields in Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Haiti, and protected the lives of those who would certainly have been killed.
2. More Empirics - Ernesto Cardenal, the former Minister of culture in the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, despite being far from non-violent himself is quoted as saying that “we need more of these groups and we need them quickly. Whatever they have been there has been no violence.” When his translator erringly said, “there has been almost no violence” Cardenal pounded the table insisting, “I said absolutely no violence.”
3. More Empirics – During WW2, the Danish resistance to Nazi power was one of non-violence resistance. In 1943 Denmark refused to cooperate with Nazi power, but also refused to violently oppose it as well. In non-violence acts of defiance, Denmark sunk all of its naval vessels and sent its military officers to Sweden. In further defiance of Nazi goals, the population of Denmark, from the King on down united in defense of its Jewish citizenry and managed to save every single one from Nazi death camps. Even in the face of genocide, the worst of human evils, non-violent resistance has empirical success.
4. Only action in this debate round – Your plan doesn’t exist, the only part of it that does is the idea of action within the minds of those in the room. An individualized rejection of plan based off its violent underpinnings represents the only avenue for solvency in this round because it reshapes the way we conceptualize plan.
5. Only individual action solves – Rejection of violence requires a rejection of a widespread ideology. That can’t exist on an institutional level, only via individual reform because it requires acceptance of individual responsibility for violence.
6. Each individual rejection of violence is solvent – A Non-Violent ethic requires an acceptance of individual responsibility for all actions. Each rejection of violence is as important as each other because violence as a power relation exists in all situations. This means the judge’s rejection of plan action solves no matter how “non-unique” our advocacy is.
KRITIK - ORIENTALISM
A. THESIS
The aff’s projection of the other as knowable and necessary of reform to western standards is orientalist. The distinction between the orient and the occident creates an institutionalizes epistemological way to interact with what is perceived as an inferior culture. Without examining orientalism as a discourse in every instance, the orient will be confined to an autonomous subject without the ability to think or act.
B. FRAMEWORK
1. ROLE OF THE BALLOT: The role of the ballot is to evaluate the justifications for action and our relationship to orientalism. Our kritik calls into question the justification of the affirmative through rethinking production of representations and truth claims of the 1AC.
2. K COMES FIRST: representations needs to be evaluated first because they determine the how we define political subjects. They also delineate which knowledge claims that can be evaluated and which are marginalized. Truth does not exist objectively; it is created through systems of power which we as policy makers subscribe to.
a. Once theory is established as common sense, they become incredibly powerful since they delineate not simply what can be known but also what it is sensible to talk about or suggest – thus representations are the ultimate act of political power.
C. LINKS
1. THE STEROTYPICAL PORTRAYAL OF THE NON-WEST MAKES WAR INEVITABLE AND PREVENTS THE AFF FROM SOLVING. Systems of exclusion and prejudiced thinking manifest obsessional motifs, manipulative rhetoric and undocumented blanket assertions and create a drive to construct the Orient in line with Western policy interests. This creates a binary where western values connote reason, enlightenment, progress and civility while the Orient is shown to be negative and backwards to those values. This makes conflict inevitable because the west has a moral imperative to correct the structural flaws in the Orient; this thinking justified the invasion of Iraq because the US was able to justify violence when Iraq could not justify its sovereignty in America’s framework.
2. THE LANGUAGE OF DOMINATION. The largest construction of the Orient is the manifestations it incorporates. This construction essentializes the prototypical Oriental who is a biological inferior that is culturally backward and unchanging. This discourse is laced with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonizing mission on the part of the west. This creates a single subject where none existed before that is a compilation of unspoken notions of the other.
3. THE USE OF TERRORISTS THREAT WITHOUT CONSIDERATION FOR MOTIVE ENTRENCHES THE SYSTEM OF ORIENTALISM. The blanket assessment of non-military combatants is a part of the historical tradition of inflaming indignant passion among members of the west in conflict against people who stand in the way of empire. The War on Terror completely ignores the long historical context, which frames the everyday lives of people living in the east. So long as we continue to ignore motive and attack method we will never break down the structural barriers to ending all violence.
4. THE PMC DRAWS A LINE BETWEEN WESTERN TECHNOLOGY AND ISLAMS INCORPORATION IN MODERNITY. This creates a fortified material barrier between the West and Islam and also past and present, to say nothing of excluding entire populations from the universal notions of sovereignty and self-determination. This allows the west to de-legitimize forms of resistance and justify all conflicts as moral imperatives because it frames specific types of violence as crimes against humanity will allowing the west to justify the killing of over 800,00 innocent Iraqi civilians because of a terrorist attack that killed 3,000.
5. RESPRECT FOR THE OTHER IS COVERT OPPRESSION. Orientalism is not a system that neglects the existence of the culture of the other, but instead creates aesthetic exceptionalism of the other which creates understanding that is inherently flawed because it disallows communication that is critical to new forms of understanding.
6. HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS. The notion that western civilization has determined the end all is all to life on earth allows us to continually justify our militaristic intervention because we can claim a monopoly on morality.
7. US FOREGIN POLICIES INHERENTLY PROMOTE WESTERN DOMINATION. The United States is more heavily invested in the Middle East then any other place on the planet is build on the myths of modernization and stability which are old Orientalism stereotypes dressed up in 21st century jargon. American foreign policies only allow room for coexistence when it is prepared to come on western terms.
8. DEPICTING THE PMC AS A SINGULAR PROBLEM CONSTURCTS THE OTHER AS THE ORIENT. Creating Orientals as an object of study stamped with otherness and endowed with a historical subjectivity that is non-autonomous, non-sovereign with regards to itself. This means the harms of your PMC will be replicated inevitably because it seeks to locate singular instances of exclusion in a much broader framework.
D. IMPACTS
1. ORIENTALIST DEPICTIONS OF THE WORLD LEAD TO RACISM, WHICH JUSTIFIES GENOCIDE, because they adopt an essentialist conception of nations and peoples which expresses itself through an inalienable bias of all things being considered. This separates all action from intent and creates an ahistoric identity for all individuals within an entire population, which is the key incubator for the justification of genocide because it paints the most innocent individuals within a society as war criminals.
2. ORIENTALISM MAKES COLONIALISM INEVITABLE. Orientalist rhetoric incentivizes the impulse towards super nationalism. By the end of WWI Europe colonized 85% of the earth on the notion that Europeanization was the most efficient means of bringing the Orient into modernity because it relied on the notions of assimilation to and accumulation of empire. Colonization empirically causes long-term death and dehumanization because it creates social systems of exclusion and privilege that destroy social cohesiveness and create cycles of violence based on retribution. This lasting resentment makes extinction inevitable because when humans are robbed of their value to life there is no opportunity cost to using all means necessary. Colonialism leads to extinction because it requires frequent drastic changes within indigenous societies, which causes complete extinction because humans become disconnected to the sustainable practices in local areas and assume the resource exploitative practices of western society.
3. CONTINUED ORIETALISM KEEPS THE ORIENT OPPRESSED INEVITABLY DEHUMANIZING THE OTHER because it creates as essentialized version of peoples lives and then forces continual replications of repressed actions because human actions are always fixed in a time and place. Entire cultural movements are not interpreted in their own framework but are instead mere responses to the dominant western culture. In this social ordering the west is always the adjudicator who gives value to Oriental action as it sees fit. The destructive toll of dehumanization outweighs all war, famine, plague or natural disaster because of the damage it causes to the fabric of society. When people become things they are dispensable at that point all violence can be justified against them, dehumanization is evils most powerful weapon.
4. ORIENTALISM MAINTAINS HARMS OF DOMINATION, WHICH TURNS CASE, because the occident can use its judgment and commendation of the orient to justify its atrocities towards internationally through shaming and moralistic language. The creation of rights and international legalist frameworks molded entirely out of western conceptions allows the Occident free reign under the guise of cultural superiority. This turns your case because it proves the occident can inevitably replicate your harms with sound legal justification.
E. ALTERNATIVE
TEXT: VOTE NEG IN REJECTION OF THE AHISTORICAL DEPICTIONS OF THE PMC.
F. SOLVENCY:
1. REJECTION SOLVES: we take a radical stance against the perpetuated logic of orientalism. This fractures the metanarrative of neocolonialism and opens space for us to realize that the humanitarianism of the 1AC is only smoke and mirrors.
a. ATTACKING AT THE HEART: The neocolonial narrative gains its power as a representational system by our acceptance of it. This means that the individual is capable of attacking the heart of the system by refusing to accept the truth claims the aff proposes.
b. REJECTION KEY: we need to fracture the Neocolonial narrative at every juncture -- every act is key, including this round. Radicalism is neutered when the movement accepts concessions to it’s political form.
2. THE ALTERNATIVE ALONE IS CRITICAL TO CREATING A HISTORICAL ANCHOR FOR ORIENTALIST MISCONCEPTIONS. Because we force the western establishment to sacrifice its own desires to embrace a firm understanding of their prejudicial flaws that infect policy decisions. Because Orientalism is something that permeates culture it is critical to create a clean space to distant we from the historical framework that guides our relationship with the Orient.
PERM PRE-EMPTS:
1. PERM FAILS: Permutation assumes that any component of the 1AC is an advisable advocacy to adopt -- this is undermined by the K, the permutation is logically incoherent. NO NB TO PERM: we are controlling the root cause of all their impact scenarios, this means that the alternative alone is capable of solving and there is no NB to the perm.
a. MASKING: the perm gives the state the ability to represent itself as a benign and humanitarian institution without ever changing the discursive practices that link it to the K. This increase in humanitarian political capital allows the state to justify things like military intervention and excessive violence under the mask of liberalism.
b. EPISTEMOLOGY TURN: dominant or hegemonic epistemologies cannot be combined with individual or standpoint epistemologies without overpowering them. Because we already have faith in the truth of dominant epistemologies their incorporation into the alternative ensures that we never allow for the possibility of a new truth and never question existing truths. This ensures that new epistemologies get corrupted and subsumed into the dominant one, making rethinking impossible.
2. ANY INCORPORATION OF PLAN CREATES NOSTALGIC CONNECTIONS TO OLD HABITS. Orientalism relies on continual enforcement of patterns of thought to justify their existence. The combat of prejiduce must target the essence of their existence because this form locates immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession. The search for that which is already there necessitates the removal of every mask to disclose it original identity because it allows us to dissect our internal decision making process and remove our destructive prejudices.
KRITIK - PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED
A. Thesis
The PMC portrays a world of oppressed and dehumanized people who are currently helpless victims. By appealing to the government, the Plan divests political agency from these oppressed people without interrogating the nature of their oppression. This notion of a generous governmental savior fosters a relationship of dependence between the oppressed and the oppressors, those members of society that possess the political power to direct governmental objectives. Instead, we should align ourselves with the oppressed and begin their re-humanization by empowering them to transform their own situation.
B. Links
The PMC depicts dehumanization as inevitable without governmental action.
C. Internal Links
1. Dehumanization must only be seen as a historical reality, and not a historical vocation or inevitability for humans. If we accept dehumanization as such, oppression becomes inevitable by entrenching cynicism and despair. Struggle against dehumanization is only possible by positioning ourselves against the source of oppression.
2. The oppressed are conditioned by the contradictions of their existential situation; their ideal is to be human, but to be human is to be oppressors. They adopt an attitude of “adhesion,” in which they cannot consider the oppressors as outside of themselves and therefore cannot reject oppressive tendencies. They are defined solely by their distinction from the oppressors and therefore aspire to their opposite pole in the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy rather than attempting to humanize.
3. The oppressed do not perceive their struggle as resolving the contradiction that defines their existence, their contraposition against the oppressors. Therefore, their struggles will not attain humanization but merely a more subversive oppression in which they become a class of sub-oppressors. Because the model of resolution is individualistic, they cannot identify themselves as members of an oppressed class.
4. The oppressed are inhibited from waging their struggle when they feel incapable of taking the risks it requires, when they feel as though situations cannot be transformed. This fear prevents them from appealing to their oppressed comrades and forming a class-based resistance.
5. The duality facing the oppressed is their simultaneous desire for and fear of freedom. Their choice is to be divided, housing the oppressor, or being unitary beings, wholly themselves. This is the difference between being a spectator and being an active agent.
D. Impacts
1. Since oppressors derive their own humanity from dominating the oppressed, the freedom of the oppressed subverts their humanity. However, in their drive to ensure their own humanity, oppressors transform people into inanimate things. In doing so, they deprive humans of freedom, which is the essential quality of life. Their destruction of life is thus tantamount to sadism.
2. Allowing the oppressed to maintain their current fear of their own freedom culminates in their perpetual domination. This destroys all value to life:
a. It destroys the lives of the oppressed by denying them agency. To be human is to encounter infinite potential in the world and have the freedom to direct one’s life. The cycle of oppressive dominance replaces this with a myth of safety that comes at the cost of humanity.
b. It destroys the lives of oppressors because it fosters a logic in which only the Self is truly human, capable of making choices, whereas others are merely objects to be commanded. This limits the possibilities for the oppressors by denying them a genuine ethical confrontation with humanity.
3. Destroys democracy: The plan makes oppressors accountable to no-one as every citizen is indebted to the government for its safety. The lack of democratic awareness and accountability culminates in:
(Insert Cap Bad impacts, Global Warming impacts, Securitization based impacts)
E. Alternative: Vote negative to consider the PMC as a cultural artifact of oppression and begin an interrogation of the nature of political oppression.
Vote Negative to foster a pedagogy of the oppressed that undermines governmental claims to power at the expense of the oppressed via the rejection of the PMC
Vote negative to re-read the PMC as a problematic text that confines the politically oppressed into a relationship of dependence upon their oppressors.
F. Alt Solvency
a. Alternative allows the oppressed to transcend their dehumanizing relation of subjugation with oppressors
1. The relationship between the oppressed and the oppressors is predicated on Prescription, which is the imposition of one individual’s choice or worldview upon another, which transforms the person prescribed to into a conformist. Therefore, the oppressed are fearful of freedom, as it would require them to eject the facet of their identity that houses the image of the oppressor. However, since freedom is not an ideal located outside of man but rather acquired by conquest, the oppressed must claim their own freedom by ejecting the image of the oppressor.
2. Rejecting their identity as hosts of the oppressors is key to breaking from their duality. It allows the oppressed to avoid the conception of humanity that “to be” is “to be like,” and “to be like” is “to be like the oppressors.”
3. The formation of oppressor/oppressed identities occurs in concrete situations and therefore must be resolved in a concrete situation that is objectively verifiable. Rejection of the plan serves to codify the reality of oppression and signal the injustice of such treatment.
b. The Alternative allows the oppressed to empower themselves politically and transform the world, preventing violence that was previously considered inevitable.
1. Objective social reality does not exist as the result of some predetermined force, or by chance, but through subjective human action and intervention as they transform their realities.
2. The world exists as that which is “Not I,” and provides a prompt for human action, challenging them to transcend themselves. Similarly, humans constantly act upon the world, transforming it. Transformative change is therefore not a single liberating action but a preoccupation, involving both action and reflection. Every interaction between humans and the world produces new objective realities, which in turn produce new subjective positions for engaging reality. This requires humans to consider their past considerations, realize the limitations of their previous thought. Such recognition is a prerequisite to transcending the previous limitations on their thought.
3. Problem-posing education disrupts the contradiction between the knowledgeable and the hopeless, the politically empowered and disempowered, by acknowledging that students and teachers create knowledge through their dialogical interaction.
4. The Alternative has a durable effect that spills over and transforms all relations of domination. The continuous nature of problem-posing involves the constant unveiling of challenges. In response to the challenge at hand, new challenges will arise; understanding the problem’s relation to them as beings within the world, and the interrelatedness of these problems, they will see the resolution of such problems as necessary to their future and find themselves committed. Furthermore, each new challenge provides for new understandings.
KRITIK - POSITIVE PEACE
Framework:
[Episto]
Links:
1. War as an Event: Viewing war as an event ignores the fact that war is an act of consumption that transgresses the normal pattern of life, however it is also not an event because it is a connection to the chaotic cosmos. Not understanding this binary allows us to create an image of civil society as innocent because it is the opposite of the violence and chaos of war.
2. Democracy: The aff is trapped into thinking that peace comes from democratic zones of peace that do not go to war with each other. This blinds them to the fact that hegemonic ideals infiltrate peace zones and cause oppression.
3. Failure to challenge negative peace: Challenging negative peace is key- passive acceptance thwarts movements toward positive peace. The language of negative peace is generally privileged within public policy discussions. In commenting on the distinction between the language of negative peace and the language of positive peace the structures and rules of public policy discourse provide greater linguistic capital to speakers of the language of negative peace.
4. Entering/Exiting conflict: When questions of entering and exiting war become the central questions in political discussion war is discursively created as a bounded event, this creates a new moral paradigm for situations of war that are incapable of evaluating both the root cause of conflict and recognizing structural violence.
Impacts:
1. Structural Violence: The theory of “Just War” theory perpetuates the war peace dichotomy and ignores the violence that exists in every day life. This ensures that as long as the state is not formally engaged in war, the structural violence that pervades society is ignored and normalized – creating infinite and invisible cycles of dehumanization and violence more deadly than the warfighting they fear, because it involves systemic destruction and oppression of marginalized groups.
2. Extinction: The dichotomy of positive/negative peace makes militarism inevitable – ensuring constant warfighting.
a. Logic of anihilation: War is a process by which a subject alienates themselves from their own subjectivity by making another into an object and then annihilating it, this logic appears both in peacetime and in wartime, and justifies its own continuation.
3. Turns the case: The process by which the aff justifies action dooms them to failure. Their justifications assume the war/peace dichotomy and create the illusion that the problem of violence is being addressed – assuming the validity of militaristic action. Thus they have no hope of evaluating the real actions or impacts of the institutions they engage in, so they cannot address the ways in which the same errors are created in new and worse ways. In addition, plan action ensures violent retaliation against US militarism/hegemony, which creates new and unending cycles of violence.
Alternative: Vote negative to reject the affirmative’s representations of war as an event in order to examine war as a constant phenomenon.
1. Rethinking war as a constant presence instead of an event prevents us from creating totalizing images of war and peace, it also allows us to see the many ways in which militarism influences daily life and causes specific forms of structural violence. This enables us to engage in a more effective, local, textured, multiplicities discussion of specific examples and issues of militarism, especially during "peacetime".
2. Expanding the field of vision when considering the ethical issues of war allows us to better perceive and reflect upon the connections among various effects and causes of militarism, and between aspects of everyday militarism and military activities. Only by imagining alternatives to militaristic economies, symbolic systems, values, and political institutions as well as a world without war can the oppression be escaped.
3. Solves the aff: By changing the way we orient ourselves to violence, we are able to figure out how to create and sustain movements that are attentive to local realities and particularities about war, about violence, and about the enmeshment of various systems of oppression – allowing us to solve the root cause of the PMC harms and create more effective policies in the future.
4. Permutation fails: Institutions of violence will co-opt any permutation, because any residual link will still allow violence to defend the weak, shifting militarism’s justifications for war, but replicating the same harms. This means the military machine will fight the same wars with different justifications, allowing it to shift its dominance to a new locus and go unchallenged.
KRITIK - SECURITY
The thesis:
1. Securitization is a political decision that discursively constructs certain phenomena as threats to justify their management and extermination. The practice of security erases alternate perspectives through the dominance of Western rationalism, permitting unchecked violence against alterity. We should use this round to create space for an epistemological multiplicity that breaks down dominant discourses of North Korea.
2. Danger is not neutral—it’s a phenomenological attachment made by discursive formations. Nothing is a danger in itself—it’s only a question of how we interpret it.
The framework: discursive strategy should be evaluated prior to cost-benefit analysis of the plan. This is best:
1. Productivity—the USFG doesn’t exist, it’s just an assemblage of discursive identities operating as a policy machine, and any nodal connection is as important as any other. The decision to role play as the USFG reifies a set of meanings which strengthens the power of securitization. Refusing this role strikes against power structures and creates space for new discursive relations.
2. Serial policy failure—systems of meaning we rely on shape our policy responses—it determines what knowledge is considered valid. If we win the justifications of the plan are problematic then they make harmful policy inevitable—the PMC is more than just the plan.
3. Their framework isn’t competitive—our argument changes the axis through which we predict the result of policy decisions. The alt is more net beneficial then the plan because it produces better policies.
(B) The links:
Middle East Links:
1. Instability—the PMC constructs the US military as the savior of the occident, capable of wiping away violence through mere military drawdown. This reflexively constitutes the Middle East as an unsafe local which will require continued American intervention.
2. Politics—painting Middle Eastern governments is a common rhetorical strategy used in public discourse to make us feel better about our own bankrupt system of governance. Justifies any act in the name of benevolent “democracy promotion.”
3. Terrorism—the figure of the fundamentalist bent on suicide bombing the West fuels constant public unease which justifies disregarding personal rights and fuels global police intervention under the guise of the never-ending “war on terror”
(C) Impacts:
1. Militarism—securitization necessitates deterrence breakdown or miscalculation because all sides are constantly on edge—this is the critical internal link to all-out nuclear war and global adventurism. Threatening discourses motivate the populace to approve of militaristic intervention into any instance of uncertainty.
2. Turns case—threat discourse makes necessary its realization in actual conflict to reassure the public of imminent danger—also creates attitudes of paranoia that increase the likelihood of miscalculation or aggression
(D) Our alternative is to endorse a post-positivist understanding of the other which refuses to make it comprehensibly knowable within Western discourse.
1. Discursive critique solves—rejecting the aff’s attachment to homogenous understandings of other political entities allows a multiplicity of knowledge to spring forth. Through questioning, alternative practices and applications of knowledge reveal themselves in critical encounters. The alt acknowledges the failings of realist discourses and pushes us to consider more responsible methods.
2. Solves the aff better—refusing to render the other intelligible in Western terms of knowledge guides us to craft policies that don’t box it into drastic decisions, but lets it coexist with the US on its own terms. This better supports peaceful relations with others and prevents violence.
3. This round is important—debate is a rhetorical space in which college students discursively engage with one another—each chain of communication is as important as every other. Rejecting their discourse now encourages less violent discussion in the future.
4. The permutation can’t solve—even if they’re right that constructive engagement is a change from present policy, their discourse used to justify it fuels more neoconservative xenophobia. If we win our framework then the particular advocacy of the PMC isn’t as important as its justifications, because they are the root cause of the PMC impact claims, and lead us to make problematic policy decisions in the future.
KRITIK - TRANSHUMANISM
Now is key to embrace transhumanism:
Technological advancements have brought us to a crossroads – unless transhumanist education is promoted, technology will allow us to violently cause our own extinction. Action is key- every day we delay transitioning risks extinction: Violent impulses, miscalculation and the building of weapons capable of destroying the earth ensure that a time will come when we will either reach doomsday or transcivilization. The risk of humantranshuman extinction is very small compared to the possible extinction of humans by humans. Our ignorance and lack of intelligence increase the prospect of doomsday regardless of our good intentions – every delay risks extinction.
Mathematically, either extinction is inevitable without a
posthuman transition or our potential for a transition is closing: Technological civilization will oscillate continuously within a relatively narrow band of development. If there is any chance that a cycle will either break through to the posthuman level or plummet into extinction, then there is for each period a chance that the oscillation will end. Unless the chance of such a breakout converges to zero at a sufficiently rapid rate, then with probability one the pattern will eventually be broken.
The cumulative probability of extinction increases monotonically over time. The current century will be a critical phase for humanity, since we now are capable of developing to the post-human. The new civilization would have vastly improved survival prospects since it would be guided by superintelligent foresight and planning, thus breaking out of our current cycle of oscillation.
Framework:
Links:
The affirmative conceptualizes humans as separate from other entities – that denies the potential of transhumanism: The boundaries that Western thinking has relied on for so long, such as between the organic and the artificial, the human and the animal, and between the physical and the non-physical are progressively breached by technoscience. These distinctions and categories and idea that humans can be separated from a web of other beings reifies these notions that hold us back from the cyborgian understanding of being and embrace of plurality not based on biology.
A view of [whatever] involving human control over a subservient technology is doomed to fail and prevents transhumanist progress: The man/machine debate is a false dichotomy. Viewing technological progress in these terms forestalls progress towards our cyborgian existence, because the architects of your understanding view humans and robots as separate entities. The transhumanist or post-biological approach abolishes that separation.
The affirmative’s portrayal of the inevitability of technology prevents us from progressing to a transhuman future: From this standpoint, announcements that particular outcomes are "inevitable" can be little more than attempts to hijack what might otherwise be a debate, excluding most people from the negotiations. A group of privileged actors proclaims: "Good news! The future has been foreclosed.” This forestalls the inclusivity of the transhuman movement and prevents alternative technological possibilities from being contemplated or brought about.
Impacts:
[Insert turns the case impact]
And the meaning of those immortal lives gain in depth, richness and beauty with an embrace of transhumanism. It allows us to affirm life in completely new ways: It suggests a necessity for a political cartography of bodily formation that attends to how bodies are imbued with the capacity to act and be acted on. It means accepting that politics come before being – not the reverse – because life is no longer a median or distribution of norms instead of biological essence being threatened by technology. Only then will we see the post-human is the ongoing differentiation of ways of life and modes of being. Then we can evaluate beings in terms of their affirmation of life rather than their distance from it.
This transhumanist ethic solves back for all structural otherizations – solves the root cause of structural violence and oppression: Transhumanism is compatible with a variety of ethical systems and holds that people are not disposable. Transhumanists reject speciesism and insist that all beings that can experience pain have moral status and that post-human persons could have at least the same level of moral status as humans do in their current form.
Transhumanism is key to breaking down binaries, and accepting pluralities of identities. It is the ultimate expansion into an acceptance of new identities: A cyborgian existence allows people to manipulate their gender identity, create new ones, and challenge the key assumptions of Western culture that ‘biology is destiny’ and destiny is binary.
Finally, the transhumanist ethic is logically prior to all other impacts. We’re key to the possibility of evaluating anything: Discussions of values are incapable of framing the world we have created. Even as technology evolves around us, we fall back into classic European Enlightenment terms of liberty and egalitarianism. We are evolving toward a level of complexity and integration of human and synthetic systems that we cannot grasp with our outdated ideologies and human limitations. Without a new rationale suitable for the evolving world, we will forfeit our ability to evaluate any question of ethics.
Alternative: Vote neg to embrace our inevitably technological selves.
Solvency:
[Insert Zizek card]
Alt solves the case – it’s the best way to do [whatever the plan does]
This synthesis of man and machine breaks down Aristotelian views that man and machine are separate entities. This is key to reshaping the human experience, opening ourselves to new knowledge, new beings, and sparking the transhumanist ethic: Conceiving of technology as a prosthesis that alters the nature of its user reminds us how technical innovations produce unforeseeable transformations. The deconstruction of Aristotelian systems enables each invention to be seen as an eruption of the other. This involves a negotiation with what one can’t or doesn’t know, whereby knowledge could have secured itself as an ‘invention of the other’ produces undecidability as to agency. This undecidability allows us to open ourselves to new forms of being.
Furthermore, complete immortality is possible... there’s no reason to accept death: Machines are becoming more organic, selfmodifying, and intelligent. Driving these developments are new neural networks, fuzzy logic, intelligent agents, and machine intelligence. At the same time, we are beginning to incorporate our technology into ourselves.
We began with pacemakers, artificial joints, and contact lenses. The abolition of aging and most involuntary death will be one result. Immortality is next.
Machine intelligence researchers, roboticists, and cognitive scientists foresee even more radical posthuman possibilities. Using nanocomputers our mental processors could run a million times faster and allow easier and more extensive modification than our natural brains.
**COUNTERPLANS**
Delegation CP
Text: The should . All appropriate and necessary actors should defer to the mandates of the counterplan.
Competition:
1. MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE: The counterplan is competitive – plan is enacted through Congress, while the counterplan relies on rulemaking authority. These actions are mutually exclusive.
a. there are two alternative modes for policy. Policy can be made through the typical legislative process, in which a majority must agree on a bill to enact. Alternatively, Congress can pass a law that delegates authority to agencies. The key is that, , these two modes of policymaking are substitutes for each other. To the degree that one is used more, the other will be used less.
2. NET BENEFITS:
a. The counterplan avoids politics
Delegation can shield lawmakers from blame. lawmakers can use delegation to escape blame for imposing costs. a statute delegates when it empowers an agency to state the rules. When Congress delegates, it promises without restricting In striking poses popular to each and every constituency, Congress ducks conflicts. delegation allows legislators to claim credit for the benefits which a regulatory statute promises yet escape the blame for the burdens, because they do not issue the laws needed to achieve those benefits
Solvency:
1. More knowledgeable, better able to find solutions for plan
2. Solves just as well as plan – just uses an alternative pathway
*ADVANTAGE COUNTERPLANS*
THE SHELL
Competiton:
1. The Net benefit:
a. The CP does not link to the case turn that is only triggered by the affirmative solvency mechanism. (i.e. We still solve warming, but don’t link to wind power is bad turns)
b. The CP does not link to the impact turns on the advantage. (i.e. the CP solves proliferation by passing the CTBT but does not link to the turns on the ‘intervene in X nation’ advantage)
c. The CP does not link to the DA that is specific to the case or the nations that the case interacts with. (i.e. the CP still increases soft power by banning the DP, but it doesn’t upset China by avoiding the bashing link)
2. Theory:
Yes that is all one CP.
We have a list of other actions, that we think solve the advantages to the AFF, better than the AFF, without nearly as many DAs. There are important and subtle reasons to reject the AFF that would otherwise be overwhelmed with generic big advantages, with tenuous links, that are hardly unique to the action the affirmative takes. Without allowing for multiple advantage CP tests like this, AFFs will continue to dominate with stale soft power and credibility advantages to bad policies.
The CP and all of its parts are conditional. This CP does not affect the debate in the same fashion as other CPs would. It is an entirely separate list of actions designed to refocus the debate to the intrinsic questions of the value of the affirmative actions. If you can’t defend your AFF as a good idea without non-intrinsic advantages you will/should lose. If real unique advantage to the case is better than the damage of the case turns you should/will win.
Therefore, we’ll kick out of whatever part of the CP we want, whenever we want. It really only asks one question; are there other ways to get the good things the AFF results in, without the DAs to the AFF? If they prove there aren’t they should win.
Furthermore this, “here’s what the world would look like without that concept” is what K teams do all the time. You have no problem with commas and “ands” in the alt text, why should the CP be any different – especially when it ensures that we debate about THE topic.
MO Overview
Our CP is the most fundamental question of the opportunity cost of the AFF. The list CP has the permutation as a foregone conclusion that always ends the same. There are 10s of large external advantages to the things in the list we don’t even read because the permutation sucks them all up. Similarly, there are large portions of the AFF the list CP solves every single time.
This is the missing link in parli debate. If the neg can have the list advantage CP, and is not able to access the external benefits of their expansion of fiat, this argument will always resolve itself the same way:
Are the benefits that the AFF has an ability to uniquely bring to the world greater than the costs of that action? If there are other ways to get the same advantages with less harm it would be stupid to not consider that action.
If and when this argument takes the nation by storm it will change parli. It will make debaters think of the actual small scale stakeholders in the affirmative action and allow negatives to go for case turns as a salient strategy that isn’t just pwned by soft power every debate.
If you vote against us for some stupid theory argument that basically says: “Oregon should lose because we don’t know and should not have to know, what our AFF actually does”, you smack them down for complaining about a perfectly justifiable theoretical test of the AFF and the logic game of debate, parli will be better this year than ever.
People can't be trusted to debate about what the topic is actually about in good faith, that's why magnitude is so preferred. But give the neg this CP and we go back to debating about the merits of the topic and the aff case.
The necessity of our counterplan is a result of too many teams going for soft power every single debate, which is symptomatic of a larger problem with parli that our counterplan seeks to correct. We ask the question, “Has your affirmative successfully identified the advantages that are intrinsic to the topic?” Our argument will shake down like the T debate and say that if you have not, you should lose.
Condo Good – List CP
1. Education – we force the aff to actually talk about and research the topic. They’ll say it’s unreasonable to make aff’s research [x topic] in 20 minutes, but that is exactly the unique educational value and challenge of parli debate. If you can’t stand the heat, go back to policy where you can have infinite prep.
Alt Energy
Algae biofuel, kite wind turbines,
Biodiversity
Protecting big animals on land:
CP: something about poaching – poaching worse because it kills them intentionally, worse than accidental death.
CP: UN convention on Bodiversity
Border
Securing the borde
CP: Put drones on the border
CEDAW
CP: Pass the ERA
Constitutional amendment solves the aff better, treaties bad and don’t solve, politics with treaties links and CP shell about how ERA doesn’t Link to tix.
China Relations
CP: don’t tarriff something as much, withdraw complaints against their currency.
Econ – Deficit Spending
CP: end the drug war, solve social security
CP: cut military spending
Econ – De-Regulation
Entitlements are bad for the economy
CP: Privatize something that’s nationalized (Social Security)
Econ - Jobs
CP: Build the grid or some infrastructure
Econ - Regulating
CP: High frequency trading taxes, ending excessive speculation, financial transactions tax
Plan: The USFG should impose a financial transactions tax on trades of stock, currency, derivatives and other financial assets beyond the first $100,000 equal to 0.25% of the value of the trade for stock and derivative trades and 0.01% on currency and other trades.
Background:
5. The US had a financial transactions tax for decades until it was phased out starting in 1966.
6. In the wake of the financial crisis, the idea of imposing a financial transactions tax gained some attention in the United States and the EU, as there was considerable ill will toward the financial services industry and national governments needed to raise revenue.
7. The push for FTT gained momentum when runaway trading caused a ‘Flash Crash’ in which the Dow Jones plunged 1000 points in less than half an hour- the largest drop in history. We’ll discuss the causes and case solvency on the advantages. Although the market later recovered, investors were spooked and policy-makers were rightly worried that such crashes created a unstable investment environment. These efforts have lagged and are unlikely to make progress until after the US presidential elections, however.
8. Empirically, countries with such a tax haven’t seen a loss of productive trading or a decline in the health of their financial services industries as a result. The UK has such a tax and London remains one of the world’s oldest and largest financial services hubs, and is one of the most profitable today.
SOLVENCY:
3. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that the tax will raise about $177 billion an year in the Untied States alone, and that virtually all of the tax will be paid by individuals engaging in speculative trading or derivative trading.
4. The Center also estimates that the tax would be highly effective, leading to a 50% reduction in trading volumes.
Harms
FLASH TRADING CAUSES FLASH CRASHES: On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones made history when it plummeted 1000 points in less than half an hour. The crash caused absurd downs and a few equally absurd ups in the market. Accenture shares fell by over 99%, from $40 to $0.01. While that was happening shares in Sotheby’s became three thousand times more valuable, going from $34 to $99,999.99 Although the exact cause is unknown, we know for certain that it was enabled by computer executed high frequency trading, in which trades are executed under certain market conditions, like a rise or drop in the price of the given financial asset, or a change in the value of some related asset, and so on. Without this sort of vacuous high frequency trading, it would be almost impossible for this sort of self-sustaining market crash to occur except world where it did not reflect some sort of underlying economic problem, because people have to base their decisions on substantive economic considerations.
FLASH CRASHES COULD HAVE LASTING CONSEQUENCES: In an unstable economy like the current one, a flash crash could precipitate a broader run on the markets by causing a market panic, causing a collapse in private investment and capital hoarding of the sort that caused the great depression. At the very least, flash crashes will shake confidence and perpetuate economic gloom by demonstrating market instability, hurting business confidence and perpetuating low consumer spending.
THE BROADER ECONOMY IS HAMPERED BY MEANINGLESS SPECULATIVE TRADING: The focus on speculative trading is largely enabled by the low cost of making a trade and by the focus on high frequency trading. The result is a derivatives market that is supposed to be worth 66 times the value of the entire world economy and a financial services industry that even the IMF calls “too big.” These sorts of trades make up 50-75% of the total in the US. This hurts the economy in two ways:
3. IT WASTES RESOURCES: The type of trading we’re describing has almost nothing to do with what is happening in the real economy; it just follows, and then amplifies, market trends, regardless of whether they are good, bad, or just meaningless noise. The whole point of investment is supposed to be to allocate capital in such a way that the most successful and profitable, and (hopefully) USEFUL enterprises are rewarded for success and get access to the resources needed to be productive. Esoteric financial instruments and high-volume trading trade-off directly with more productive endeavors by consuming capital that would otherwise be allocated elsewhere.
4. IT FOSTERS FUTURE BUBBLES: This sort of trading isn’t what caused the 2008 crisis, but it could be a factor in future ones. By allocating resources in computer-propelled cycles without regard to fundamentals, high frequency trading encourages investors to participate in the creation of speculative bubbles like the housing bubbles because they become focused on following blips on computer screens without consideration for the fundamentals underlying market movements.
SHADY DEALS: The Greek debt crisis was enabled by shady, high frequency transaction as part of a shady deal with Goldman Sachs, who helped Greece cook their books to hide their debts from their European allies. The scheme was very complex, but involved many currency swaps, and, had a financial transactions tax like the one we are proposing been in place, would have cost Greek investors alone tens of millions of dollars, which, considering the difference in GDP sizes, is kind of like a transaction costing US investors almost $3 billion.
Solvency
CROSS APPLY THE CASE SOLVENCY
DISCOURAGES HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING. This argument is intuitive. During the most frightening 20 minutes of the 2010 flash crash, the tax would have raised as much as $7 million dollars a minute total from those involved. Just the prospect of such large losses will discourage computer-focused high frequency trading. And, of course, the actual costs involved will help too.
ENCOURAGES MORE MEANINGFUL TRADING. The plan will promote more meaningful investment by forcing frequent traders to consider their trades somewhat more carefully, take into account the economic fundamentals that underlie their trades, and simply by making meaningless high frequency trades unfavorable, forcing investors to look to more traditional ways of making money.
MAKES CHEATING LESS LIKELY: It’s difficult to predict exactly when another situation like Greece will arise, but it is clear that bad behavior is enabled when there is no cost to engaging in such financial transactions, leading to a ‘why the fuck not’ attitude among those who, like Greece, most need to consider smarter and harder decisions. Imposing a cost on this behavior makes them think twice.
IMPACTS:
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE: 1) Short term because Flash Crashes could happen literally at any moment when the markets are open 2) Medium term because the revenue from the plan will help make sure that cool new enterprises or lagging but generally deserving companies get the investment capital they need 3) Long term because the plan will prevent future collapses and puts long term investment on the right path
Econ - Trade
CP: Pass an FTA with a first world nation, give the president fast track authority (Makes it so trade agreements get an up/down vote instead of their drawn out process – shows support for FTA’s without actually causing an FTA)
Education
K-12:
(solves fuck ups) CP:
CP: get rid of NCLB
CP: give more money to DOE to give to state education budgets
CP: bust the teachers unions
18 and older:
CP: do the draft
CP: student loan forgiveness
Heg
CP: put rail guns on boats and everything
Should be able to explain how they work and that they’re going to work.
Next level of deterence:
CP: space weaponization
CP: NMD
Immigration
Smart people:
CP: USFG should pass the 3192 smart jobs act and do something with infrastructure for low skill jobs. (Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act by establishing an F-4 nonimmigrant visa for aliens persuing an advanced degree in mathamatics, engineering, technology, or the physical sciences in the United Sates, to authoirze such aliens to become permanent residents if they obtain employment in the United States related to their field of study)
CP: Give the people here amnesty (solves more people come because they think they’ll get amnesty)
Infrastructure
CP: do wireless electricity
CP: do electric grid update
CP: do a high speed rail
CP: nationwide 4G (low skill and high skill) with internet for everyone is good.
Minority Rights
CP: overturn this and results in the affirmative right to delete (increase in civil liberty than whatever civil right the aff is passing because it effects so many more people so much more often).
Make the world less racist:
CP: SCOTUS strike down Arizona laws – take your pick (no constitutionally allowed racist states)
CP: Anmendment outining racial profiling by the policy
Women:
CP: Pass the ERA
Movements:
CP: put internet on boats and give it to them like we did during the Arab Spring. Or do it with sattelites.
North Korea
CP: give them food aid
Oceans
Ocean Zoning (solves overfishing), sink trashed ships to build more reefs with cards that say ocean acidification good.
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION GOOD:
Dinoflagellates are a group of single-celled organisms that make coral reefs possible. In return for shelter and some minerals, they provide their host with food: in some cases, as much as 90 percent of the coral’s nutrition. Different dinoflagellates cause corals to grow at different speeds, and allow them to grow in water of different acidity. By increasing the acidity of the ocean, natural selection will select for the types that speed corral growth, which increases the volume of these epicenters of oceanic biodiversity.
Oil
Oil dependence/lowering oil prices
CP: open strategic reserves with a NB that says it’s dangerous to have it sitting in the barrels in the ground.
Prisons
CP: nationalize all domestic private prisons, legalize drugs, end the drug war
Proliferation
CP: do the CTBT (first time testers will get caught)
CP: reduce our arsenal
Pollution
CP: do nanotech
Nanotech is coming, nanotech solves your impact (solves anything environmental and food-related). Fixing the environment means you can always solve food.
Russia Relations
CP: Reduce nuke arensal size – offer them matching reductiong in nuke arsenals. (Costs them a lot of money to keep it up, economic boon to both countries)
Soft Power
CP: End the death penalty, end the drug war
CP: Stop using predator drones (ME)
STEM
CP: put a man on Mars
Subsidies – Decoupling CP
SAMPLE TEXT: The United States federal government should decouple subsidies from production and/or market prices and instead base those subsidies on a rate per acre formula.
First is CP solves the aff-
A. Counterplan decouples payments from production levels and uses a base acres formula
-this prevents trade and production distortion while guaranteeing a minimum income
USDA Economic Research Service in 2008
, March 25
When commodity program payments are tied to current production or net returns, they can introduce market distortions by influencing planting decisions, overall production, and market prices. In contrast to such "coupled" programs, benefits from "decoupled" programs do not depend on the farmer's production choices, output levels, or market conditions. By severing the link between payments and production decisions, decoupled payments provide a way to support farm incomes that is less distorting to commodity markets.
Under the 1996 and 2002, producers of selected field crops could qualify for fixed payments tied to historical plantings (base acres). These payments are considered "historical entitlements" that are unrelated to current production. For example, farmers with corn base acres do not need to grow corn in order to receive the payment, which is fixed by legislation. Indeed, they do not need to plant anything—although they have to keep base acres in approved agricultural use. (For more details on current U.S. commodity programs, see the Program Provisions chapter.)
So regular subsidies => incentive to produce way to much per acre and to do monocultures. Decoupling solves this by giving the incentive based on acres farmed, this means people go easy on the ol environment.
Second are the net benefits-
A. Counterplan avoids the politics DA
Baffes and De Gorter 2005
[John, Senior Economist with the Development Prospects Group, and Harry, Professor in the Department of Applied Economics and Management Cornell University, ]
Agricultural protection and subsidies, particularly in high-income countries, have induced overproduction, thereby depressing world commodity prices and reducing export shares of countries which do not support agriculture. Furthermore, not only is support costly, but it also goes to unintended beneficiaries—unintended as they relate to the stated objectives—thus exacerbating rather than eliminating the presumed income inequalities that justified its introduction in the first place. The stated objectives of such protection are numerous, but raising income to small farms appears to have been by far the most frequently used justification. Given the harmful effects of such support on world markets along with the mismatch of stated objectives and ultimate outcomes, advocating outright elimination of support would be the natural way to proceed but this would reduce farm income in some instances and not be politically feasible. Thus, the relevant question is not the existence of support but what can be done with respect to the way it is given. One—and perhaps the only—effective way to bring a socially acceptable and politically feasible reform is to replace payments linked to current production levels, input use, and prices by payments which are decoupled from these measures.
1NC Shell 2/3
Second is Small Farmers-
A.Elimination of subsidies destroys small farms-the best alternative is decoupling
Beitel 2005
[Karl, policy analyst at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, “US Farm Subsidies and the Farm Economy”, 8/23, , AVLB]
The commodities market by itself will never guarantee farmers a price that will cover their costs, because it cannot correct itself in the ways other market sectors can. Deregulating this market further—which is what eliminating subsidies would entail—will not and cannot defend the existence of small- to medium-sized family farms, either in the US or abroad.
The only way to stabilize farmers’ incomes and preserve a viable, diverse agricultural system is through some combination of price supports and supply management. Government price supports are the most effective means of stabilizing price and offsetting the negative consequences of rapidly falling prices: farmer bankruptcy, land loss, accelerated farm consolidation, and the competitive pressure to shift to more input-intensive farming methods. Supply management programs, which allow the government to mandate land set-asides when surpluses arise, can help compensate for farmers’ lack of control over commodity prices; they can also be extended to embrace conservation initiatives and sustainable land management practices, benefiting the environment as well.
To be effective, price supports need to be complemented by better tariff controls on imported farm goods. Such a policy prescription, of course, runs completely counter to the entire neoliberal thrust of the last twenty-five years, and would effectively remove US farm policy from the regulatory jurisdiction of the WTO, signaling the end of the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture. This would, in our estimation, be a welcome development. If tied to complementary reforms of the international financial system that would allow developing countries to determine and direct their own internal development policies, this shift could open the path to real alternatives that would allow small and midsize farms to cover their costs and continue to serve as stewards of the land.[11]
Pursuing such alternatives is an urgent necessity. Market liberalization does not, in itself, launch developing countries on a path of sustainable long-term growth capable of lifting their populations out of poverty. In fact the market, left to operate free from government intervention, will only exacerbate economic pressures in large segments of the rural farm sector, both in the US and globally. The farm sector has historically been subjected to extensive regulatory controls, which are needed to compensate for the market’s inherent failures. An alternative to crippling free market policies exists: what is required is the political will to bring it about. Progressive agricultural and trade groups North and South must move beyond the subsidy debate and unite in support of alternatives that will sustain the world’s farmers and ecosystems.
1NC Shell 3/3
B. Small farms protect biodiversity while large farms have a “scorched earth” mentality
Rosset in 1999
[Peter, PhD, Executive Director of Food First and co-author of World Hunger: Twelve Myths, December, “Small is bountiful”, The Ecologist, Vol. 29, Iss. 8; pg. 452, 5 pgs, ProQuest document ID: 47608302, Accessed: 7/16/08, BM]
The benefits of small farms extend, of course, beyond the economic sphere. Whereas large, industrial-style farms impose a scorched-earth mentality on resource management - no trees, no wildlife, endless monocultures - small farmers can be very effective stewards of natural resources and the soil. To begin with, small farmers utilise a broad array of resources and have a vested interest in their sustainability. At the same time, their farming systems are diverse, incorporating and preserving significant biodiversity within the farm. As such, small farms provide valuable 'ecosystem services' to society at large. In the US, small farmers devote 17 per cent of their area to woodlands, compared with only five per cent on large farms. Small farms maintain nearly twice as much of their land in "soil-improving uses", including cover crops and green manures." In the Third World, peasant farmers show a tremendous ability to prevent and even reverse land degradation, including soil erosion." In many areas, traditional farmers have developed and/or inherited complex farming systems, which are highly adapted to local conditions. This allows them to sustainably manage production in harsh environments while meeting their subsistence needs, without depending on mechanisation, chemical fertilisers, pesticides or other technologies of modem agricultural science.211Compared with the ecological wasteland of a modem export plantation, the small farm landscape contains a myriad of biodiversity: the forested areas from which wild foods and leaf litter are extracted; the wood lot; the farm itself, with intercropping, agroforestry, and large and small livestock; the fish pond; the back garden, allow for the preservation of hundreds if not thousands of wild and cultivated species.
C. Biodiversity loss risks extinction
Diner in 1994
[David N., Military Law Review Winter 43 Mil. L. Rev. 161 THE ARMY AND THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: WHO'S ENDANGERING WHOM? Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army.]
The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. 77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. 78 [*173] Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
Treaties - HR
States CP:
TEXT: THE 50 UNITED STATES, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, AND ALL RELEVANT TERRITORIES SHOULD IMPLEMENT LEGISLATION INCORPORATING THE STANDARDS OF ______________________ INTO BINDING LAW.
Competition:
1. CP is Net Beneficial – avoids the disads of federal action, solves all of case better, and has a specific net benefit only unilateral state action can solve for.
Theory
1. The CP is predictable it goes to the heart of the topic (for ILO only)
a. U.S. labor laws are for the most part regulated by the states, and this treaty would create a new set of federal regulations regarding domestic work.
b. The Department of Labor earlier this year conducted an inter-agency review and found that the U.S. is already in compliance with the treaty. This means that plan has no fundamental change in US labor policy but rather is a question of who is the best actor control that policy, the federal government or the states
Solvency
SOLVENCY – PRECEDENT
1. State and local governments have adopted human rights treaties and other international norms. In the absence of federal ratification, San Francisco has incorporated "principles of CEDAW" into binding local law.
In 1991, the National Conference of Commissioners of Uniform State Laws adopted a Model Employment Termination Act (META) which would protect workers employed on average 20 hours a week for at least 26 weeks in the preceding year if they are dismissed without good cause by an employer of at least five persons. The model legislation, which has not been enacted into law, is similar in scope and intention to the ILO Termination of Employment Convention, 1982 (No. 158)
2. Subnational government units have international recognition in certain contexts. Subnational government units have participated on a limited basis in the WTO in trade negotiations, and in various international environmental conferences.
SOLVENCY – FEDERAL COORDINATION
1. The Fed can be a steward of state action. There is precedent for the federal government coordinating and encouraging participation of state and local governments in international lawmaking in the trade area, which could provide a possible model. The federal government or other national entity must serve the important role of coordinating information regarding local initiatives. In exchange for permitting state and local governments the flexibility to experiment, national coordinating agencies could require state and local actors to share their knowledge regarding implementation and compliance,in order to encourage exchange of information, mutual learning, and coordination.
2. National coordinating agencies could then monitor compliance through best practice performance standards developed at the local level and shared with other communities while, at the same time, strengthening democratic accountability through participation of people in decision making that affects them.
3. Even if the FG is unwilling, other national entities can step in. These entities might include national networks of state and local governments or NGOs. A dialogic federalism account of constitutionalism differs from democratic experimentalism in at least one critical respect: it envisions a role for state and local participation even before there is a federal commitment to coordinate this participation.
SOLVENCY – =>HIGHER STANDARDS
Cooperative federalism is reinforced by a sense of competition.
a. NGOs are increasingly using the global marketplace as a means to exact economic retribution on governments that fail to observe human rights. This economic discipline facilitates competition that stimulates "races to the top" toward improved compliance.
Example: Arizona lost a lot of business for being racist. AZ lost total economic output of $253 million. The fact that the Supreme Court will review the constitutionality will revive controversy, and provoke a fresh round of damage already. A Center on American Progress report stated that the total potential losses from future convention cancellation could add up to $750 million or more. Transnational networks that support human rights through this system multiply the effect.
b. The co-opetition approach to federalism maintains the national government as a primary site for international lawmaking and accountability, while encouraging cooperation with subnational authorities, who in turn may be incentivized to adopt human rights standards through competitive pressures that "ratchet" standards upward.
c. Federal law establishes minimum wages and overtime rights for most workers in the private and public sectors; state and local laws may provide more expansive rights. Similarly, federal law provides minimum workplace safety standards, but allows the states to take over those responsibilities and to provide more stringent standards.
SOLVENCY – CP RESULTS IN PLAN
1. Lack of federal ratification is a product of US treatment of I-Law. State and local adoption of international human rights standards, where the federal government has failed to ratify a treaty, represents a response to the federal government's failure to incorporate the standards. the federal government's failure to ratify human rights treaties is rooted in the structure of international law, which derives primarily from the will and consent of national governments. A dialogic approach views these institutional realities as anticipating a radical re-definition of our democratic and constitutional ideals.
2. This is an opportunity to reconceptualize available avenues for deliberation and develop new methods that broaden and deepen consensus over human rights law. The direct incorporation of human rights norms by state and local governments should be seen as providing a method for creating momentum and building pressure for change at the federal level. The "adoption" of human rights treaties and standards at the state and local levels largely represents a form of communication through which people and communities, who are more effectively able to mobilize at the local level, signify the need for the federal government to play a more active role in human rights lawmaking.
3. CP solves more HR Law – without radical redefinition the FG won’t implement more treaties. Despite the 1954 defeat of the Bricker Amendment, which would have formally limited the treaty power beyond the constraints of federalism, the current practice by the Senate and executive branch of attaching federalist understandings and other conditions to treaties during the ratification process achieves the same result. This means Congress is hesitant to regulate conduct deemed to be local in nature (such as criminal and family law). At the domestic level, a federalism understanding represents a political gesture to reassure state and local governments that the federal government will not use the treaty in question to disturb existing divisions of power between national and subnational units.
SOLVENCY – CEDAW
1. Despite promises, the U.S. government has done little at the federal level to incorporate commitments already undertaken to support women’s rights.
a. The work of the Inter-Agency Council on the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China, in 1995, has been almost entirely symbolic.
b. The Supreme Court has ignored the fact that international human rights law (as incorporated into U.S. law) not only authorizes Congress to enact effective remedies to challenge gender-based violence, but in fact compels the U.S. government to provide such remedies to meet current obligations under the treaty.
2. States and cities have responded. As of August, 2000, 39 cities, 17 counties, 16 states, and the Territory of Guam had adopted resolutions calling for the United States to ratify CEDAW. Some local governments have incorporated CEDAW directly into local law. The City of San Francisco pioneered this approach by making CEDAW part of its local law in 1998. Following San Francisco's lead, the Los Angeles City Council has adopted a Resolution in Support of CEDAW.
3. This policy coordination solves best – the coordination of these local efforts to affect national norms operates along democratic experimentalist lines in that local governments are learning from each other through national organizations of state and local elected officials, as well as through networks of scholars and activists.
SOLVENCY – CIVIL SOCIETY AND INTERNATIONAL MODELING
1. Disaggregation of sovereignty means the state level solves best – Participation by subnational governments and NGOs in incorporating human rights law is useful in the context of the "disaggregation" of sovereignty, the permeability of national borders, and the ascendancy of a transnational civil society. The theory that the State is disaggregating concludes that the formation of transnational networks between and among government bureaucrats and judges within these States leads to greater convergence and harmonization, not less.
2. Different models solve international differences that are the main problem with treaty reservation now – implementing human rights law at various levels of government are consistent with what other scholars have described as the emergence and utilization of norm entrepreneurs, who develop transnational networks as communication structures that use information strategically.
SOLVENCY – POSITIVE RIGHTS
1. Solves positive rights without coercion – the FG alone will never solve positive rights, it’s seen as commandeering states. The federal government will be able to sidestep a central dilemma that has arisen in the context of enforcing international norms in a federalist system: while Congress cannot commandeer states under U.S. domestic law, international law essentially depends on a form of commandeering.
2. The U.S. federal government is caught between a negative and mixed-rights paradigm that stems from its domestic legal traditions and a fuller conception of rights found in international human rights law. Negative rights win now by the Fed being unable to “intervene” or “commandeer” to protect rights.
3. Working cooperatively with state and local governments to achieve domestic implementation of human rights, the federal government need not commandeer the states. International law requires national governments to implement legislation and makes national governments liable for failure to bring constituent actors into compliance, but if the states act they avoid the fed having to intervene.
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**THE ECONOMY FOR DUMMIES**
Aggregate Demand Theory
Aggregate Demand (the amount of stuff that everyone wants) Theory (Keynesian School)
Why do we have econ crisis?
Recessions are caused by a decrease in aggregate demand, so we produce less (the equilibrium point where supply and demand intersect is lowered). The government should, then, increase spending to push the demand back up (works projects) and increase the amount of jobs that exist.
Fiscal stimulus is associated with this to drive up demand (a more immediate effect on aggregate demand) – increase spending without increasing taxes
Loose monetary policy is also associated with this – issuing money into the economy to increase people’s confidence (allows businesses to decide how to spend that money rather than the government guiding it).
Bubbles
A trade in products or assets with artificially high values. Caused when asset prices deviate a lot from “intrinsic value” (what it’s actually worth).
Many believe that bubbles can’t be identified in advance, only in retrospect.
Why do they happen?
While many explanations have been suggested, it has been recently shown that bubbles appear even without uncertainty, speculation, or bounded rationality. It has also been suggested that bubbles might ultimately be caused by processes of price coordination or emerging social norms (everyone can achieve the American Dream of home ownership).
Market participants with overvalued assets tend to spend more because they "feel" richer (the wealth effect). Many observers quote the housing market in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and parts of the United States in recent times, as an example of this effect.
When the bubble inevitably bursts, those who hold on to these overvalued assets usually experience a feeling of reduced wealth and tend to cut discretionary spending at the same time, hindering economic growth or, worse, exacerbating the economic slowdown.
Capital Gains Taxes
A capital gain is a profit that results from a disposition of a capital asset, such as stock, bond or real estate, where the amount realized on the disposition exceeds the purchase price. The gain is the difference between a higher selling price and a lower purchase price.
In the United States, individuals and corporations pay income tax on the net total of all their capital gains just as they do on other sorts of income. Capital gains are generally taxed at a preferential rate in comparison to ordinary income.
Short-term capital gains are taxed at the investor's ordinary income tax rate and are defined as investments held for a year or less before being sold. Long-term capital gains, which are gains on dispositions of assets held for more than one year, are taxed at a lower rate than short-term gains
Consumer Price Index (CPI)
Measures a ‘basket’ of goods
Measures the prices of various goods and synthesizes them into an index
Measures the price level, or inflation and then measures the growth of this index – prices increasing a lot of a little
Goods vs. Assets
Goods are subject to supply and demand rules, because goods are purchased with the intent of using it – when the price increases, demand decreases.
Assets are not subject to supply and demand rules, because people buy assets with the intention of selling them later for a higher price than they paid (like a house). When the price goes up, demand follows and also goes up. If we buy a house and the value increases, we think we’ve made a really good, smart investment, and we can borrow more against that house to buy another house. This cycle contributed to the housing bubble in the US.
Interest Rates
These are largely a mystery to me…
Liquidity
In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value. Money, or cash, is the most liquid asset, and can be used immediately to perform economic actions like buying, selling, or paying debt, meeting immediate wants and needs.
An act of exchange of a less liquid asset with a more liquid asset is called liquidation. Liquidity also refers both to a business's ability to meet its payment obligations, in terms of possessing sufficient liquid assets, and to such assets themselves.
Multiplier Effect
I think it’s something that causes a positive ripple effect in the economy as a whole (can be positive or negative seeming to start).
For example:
Boy throws a rock at a window and breaks it. Everyone is upset. One person in the crowd realizes they need a new window. The window maker gets $150 to fix it. He spends it on a new suit, so the tailor gets $150. So from this destruction, a positive chain of events happens.
The problem with this is that it would have happened in the status quo eventually (maybe the window maker would have gotten another job). So all that happened was a window was broken.
Quantitative Easing
A policy used to stimulate the national economy when conventional monetary policy isn’t effective.
A central bank buys financial assets to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to keep market interest rates at a specified target value. A central bank implements quantitative easing by purchasing financial assets from banks and other private sector businesses with new electronically created money. This action increases the excess reserves of the banks, and also raises the prices of the financial assets bought, which lowers their yield
Risks:
Quantitative easing may cause higher inflation than desired if the amount of easing required is overestimated, and too much money is created. On the other hand, it can fail if banks remain reluctant to lend money to small business and households in order to spur demand.
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**SCOTUS FOR DUMMIES**
Justices
John Roberts (Chief Justice) – George W. Bush apointee, conservative
Antonin Scalia – Reagan apointee, thinks we should execute mentally retarded people, general asshole, conservative
Anthony Kennedy – Reagan apointee, usually a swing vote, only cares about states rights
Clarence Thomas – H.W. Bush apointee, sexual harassment enthusiast, conservative
Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Clinton apointee, general badass, Nororious R.B.G., liberal (please live forever)
Stephen Breyer – Clinton apointee, liberal
Samuel Alito – George W. Bush apointee, smarmy asshole, conservative
Sonia Sotomayor – Obama apointee, liberal
Elena Kagan – Obama apointee, liberal
Summer 2013 Decisions
Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin
7-1 decision
SCOTUS asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to re-evaluate the case of plaintiff Abigail Fisher, who claimed that the university unconstitutionally discriminated against her as a white woman in rejecting her application.
The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the University and remanded the case (sent it back to the lower court where it may be retried) holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny to the University's admissions program.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.
Shelby County v. Holder
RACISM IS OVER GUYZ!!!!!
5-4 decision
Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito (majority);
Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, Breyer (minority)
From SCOTUSblog: the Court did not invalidate the principle that preclearance can be required. But much more importantly, it held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which sets out the formula that is used to determine which state and local governments must comply with Section 5’s preapproval requirement, is unconstitutional and can no longer be used. Thus, although Section 5 survives, it will have no actual effect unless and until Congress can enact a new statute to determine who should be covered by it.
From AP:
Struck down a section of the Voting Rights act requiring regions with histories of institutionalized racial discrimination to receive federal approval before changing voting laws, saying it doesn’t reflect racial progress and that it intrudes on states’ rights to conduct elections.
The Obama administration and civil rights groups said there is a continuing need for Federal oversight and pointed to the Justice Department's efforts to block voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas last year, as well as a redistricting plan in Texas that a federal court found discriminated against the state's large and growing Hispanic population.
The justices said in 5-4 vote that the law Congress most recently renewed in 2006 relies on 40-year-old data that does not reflect racial progress and changes in U.S. society.
The decision effectively puts an end to the advance approval requirement that has been used, mainly in the South, to open up polling places to minority voters in the nearly half century since it was first enacted in 1965, unless Congress can come up with a new formula that Chief Justice John Roberts said meets "current conditions" in the United States.
Advance approval was put into the law to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep blacks from voting.
The provision was a huge success because it shifted the legal burden and required governments that were covered to demonstrate that their proposed changes would not discriminate. Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent extension was overwhelmingly approved by a Republican-led Congress and signed by President George W. Bush.
Tuesday's decision means that a host of state and local laws that have not received Justice Department approval or have not yet been submitted will be able to take effect. Prominent among those are voter identification laws in Alabama and Mississippi.
Obama stated he was “deeply disappointed” in the ruling.
United States v. Windsor
5-4 decision
Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer, Kennedy – Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Scalia
Grounds: Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.
This ruling established that DOMA (which definef “marriage,” for purposes of over a thousand federal laws and programs, as a union between a man and a woman only) is unconstitutional
The Court explained that the states have long had the responsibility of regulating and defining marriage, and some states have opted to allow same-sex couples to marry to give them the protection and dignity associated with marriage. By denying recognition to same-sex couples who are legally married, federal law discriminates against them to express disapproval of state-sanctioned same-sex marriage.
Kennedy, the swing vote who wrote the majority opinion, based his decision more on states’ rights rather than an explicit support for gay couples.
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