Tournament: UT | Round: 3 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart Riley Rees | Judge: Elmer Yang
I value morality
Being that the resolution is a question of individual action, in the determination of moral culpability, our natural starting point or analysis must rest within the individual, as a rational agent
All actions by rational agents must be consistent with self-interest which entails evaluating consequences.
Vallentyne explains Gauthier, Peter, ed. 1991, Contractarianism and Rational Choice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gauthier defends an instrumental conception of practical rationality, according to which a choice is rational if and only if relative to the agent's beliefs it is the most effective means for achieving the agent's goals. Except for certain minimal formal conditions of coherence, the instrumental conception of rational choice rejects any attempt to assess the rationality of the goals themselves. Value (utility), Gauthier argues, is subjective (dependent on the affective attitudes of individuals). Therefore there are no external norms for assessing someone's preferences, Gauthier claims, except the formal coherence properties.
Even though we look to consequences, aggregation is impossible as people have different conceptions of the good.
Furthermore, these moral agents not only work for immediate self-interest, but also can constrain themselves to appear credible for the others.
"Notes on David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement" Dick Arneson For Philosophy 160
David Gauthier's view is close to egoism. He holds that the sole rational goal for each person is maximizing the satisfaction of her own interests. Here one's interests are fixed by one's basic (noninstrumental) preferences or desires. If you happen to desire the good of others in some ways or to some degree, then your interests include achieving the good of others is some ways or to some degree. But the mere fact that another person would benefit from getting some good does not per se give you any reason to bring about the person's getting that good. Gauthier thinks that practical reason so understood justifies moral constraints. He says, "We shall defend the traditional conception of morality as a rational constraint on the pursuit of individual interest" (p. 2). Example: If morality as traditionally conceived includes the rule that one should not steal other people's property, this rule is a constraint on the pursuit of my own interests. Morality tells me not to steal other people's property even when doing so would be the best way available to advance my interests. How can this be? If what is rational is maximizing the satisfaction of one's interest and morality constrains the pursuit of one's own interest, how can acceptance of moral constraint be rational? Gauthier asserts, "rational constraints on the pursuit of interest have themselves a foundation in the interest they constrain. Duty overrides advantage, but the acceptance of duty is truly advantageous" (p. 2). Here's a story that illustrates what Gauthier has in mind. Suppose that if you are a nice, cooperative person, one who keeps her agreements, you will be recognized as such by other persons and admitted by them into mutually profitable cooperative arrangements. If you are not a nice, cooperative person, but instead prone not to keep your agreements, you will be recognized as such by other persons and shunned by them. They will avoid interaction with you. If the social world you face has these features, then it is easy to see that being disposed to keep one's agreements will sometimes lead you to do disadvantageous acts—acts that are really disadvantageous, disadvantageous to you even in the long run, not merely seemingly disadvantageous or disadvantageous-in-the-short-run-but-advantageous-in-the-long-run. However, being disposed this way will still lead you to be better off if the disadvantages of keeping your word are outweighed by the advantages of being recognized as a trustworthy person and being admitted into mutually profitable associations. Having the character trait of being disposed to keep one's promises can be advantageous even if the act of keeping one's promises is sometimes truly disadvantageous. Example: suppose tom and sally are farmers growing crops on adjacent fields. Tom's crop ripens first, Sally's a few weeks later. Both will be better off if they Sally helps Tom harvest his crop and then Tom helps Sally harvest her crop. So a mutually advantageous deal is possible. But this is threatened, if Tom acts according to egoismn on each occasion of choice. Having already been helped by Sally, he has nothing to gain from helping her later. So he won't. Foreseeing this, Sally will not help Tom first. If Tom had disposed himself to be what Gauthier calls a constrained maximizer, specifically one who pursues his own interests except that he keeps his promises, then if sally recognizes this is so, she will be willing to make a deal with tom and be willing to help him first, foreseeing he will do his part of the bargain later, when her crop ripens. Note: In this situation, Tom's helping Sally to harvest her crop is really and not merely seemingly disadvantageous for him.
And contracts are the only means to take into account this self-interest as rational people would never join a contract that harms themselves
Vallentyne explains Gauthier, Peter, ed. 1991, Contractarianism and Rational Choice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gauthier agrees that a rational agreement should make everybody at least as well off as under the non cooperative outcome, but argues nontheless that the non cooperative outcome should not be treated as the initial bargaining position. A rational agreement, Gauthier claims, must be one with which it is rational for the agents to comply, and agreements based on the noncooperative outcome do not satisfy that condition. In particular, it is irrational, he argues, for those who would be net victims of noncooperative interaction (ie those who would be worse off in the presence of the noncooperative activities of others than they would be if left completely alone) to comply with agreements based on the non-cooperative outcome. Such agreements would perpetuate the benefits and costs of coercive activity even though such activitiy would no longer take place, and therefore be unstable. Gauthier claims that, in order for there to be a rational basis for all to comply with an agreement, the initial bargaining position must be the hypothetical result of noncooperative interaction constrained by the Lock-ean Proviso, that is, of noncooperative interaction subject to the constraint that no one makes him/herself better off by making someone else worse off. Like the noncooperative outcome, this represents an outcome where all social cooperation ceases. Unlike the noncooperative outcome, however, it is based on the assumption that no one engages in coercive or predatory activity. People neither help nor harm others.
This means that there can be no objective side constraints as it's up to the individual to decide if following a particular constraint or action is consistent with self-interest. Contracts resolve potential issues with moral subjectivity because people can subjectively decide which agreement is best for them.
These contracts must exist outside a realm of coercion and be free from undue duress and coercive practices otherwise it violates the autonomy of agents
Bigwood, Rick (1996). Coercion in Contract: The Theoretical Constructs of Duress. The University of Toronto Law Journal, 46(2) doi:10.2307/825693 Pp 204
Doubtless, freedom and choice play central roles in liberal societies such as our own. Choice, after all, is a morally valuable expression of our autonomy, and of our freedom to shape, for good or for ill, our own lives." The freedom to undertake binding contractual obligations is but one important aspect of this autonomy.12 The freedom to exer- cise the power one acquires by virtue of physical or economic strength is yet another."' Freedom and coercion, however, are generally con- sidered to be 'antithetical relations or realities,' such that 'freedom entails the absence of coercion, and coercion involves the absence of freedom."' Thus, to say that D forced or coerced P to do X, or that P did X under duress, understandably gives rise to some powerfully emotive questions about precisely what it means to be 'coerced.' To denominate D's conduct toward P as 'coercive' is generally to condemn D. But beyond its obvious tendency emotively to persuade in favour of the coerced party, a 'coercion claim' (or any of its more technical ana- logues) can have special significance in law. For what one is really claiming when one complains of 'being coerced' is that because of coercion or duress, one should be relieved of the normal moral or legal consequences of one's actions.'5 Hence, as a result of coercion in this context, contracts are not binding: the 'consent' brought to them is treated in law as revocable.16
This means that there cannot be coercion used in the deliberation and association of individuals that are established through contracts.
Thus my value criterion is maintaining consistency with the contractarian system of mutual constraint, we specifically do this through preserving social contracts between members of a society.
Prefer this criterion because:
Contracts are the only consistent view of morality regardless of culture or ideas.
Jan Narveson OC is professor of philosophy emeritus at the University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada "The Libertarian Idea" 2001
Why accept the contractarian view of morals? Because there is no other view that can serve the requirements: namely, of providing reasons to everyone for accepting it, no matter what their personal values or philosophy of life may be, and thus motivating this informal, yet society- wide "institution". Without resort to any obfuscating intuitions, of "self- evident rights" and the like, the contractarian view offers an intelligible account both of why it is rational to want a morality and of what, broadly speaking, the essentials of that morality must consist in: namely, those general rules that are universally advantageous to rational agents. We each need morality, first because we are vulnerable to the depredations of others, and second because we can all benefit from cooperation with others. So we need protection, in the form of the ability to rely on our fellows not to engage in activities harmful to us; and we need to be able to rely on those with whom we deal. We each need this regardless of what else we need or want or value.
The thesis of the Affirmative is that an unconditional right to strike preserves the ability of workers to enter and create contracts with other agents.
Contention 1- is Coercion
Current contractual engagements between employees and employers are coercive and violate the contractual system of mutual constraint. This manifests itself in two key ways:
First, a majority of workers are forced to work for survival while some possess the ability to choose to work for pleasure or own the means of production; this represents an inherent deprivation of freedom of workers
GOUREVITCH, ALEX (2018). The Right to Strike: A Radical View. American Political Science Review, (), 1–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055418000321
Oppression is the unjustifiable deprivation of freedom. Some deprivations or restrictions of freedom are justified and therefore do not count as oppression. The oppression that matters for this article is the class-based oppression of a typical liberal capitalist society. By the class-based oppression, I mean the fact that the majority of able-bodied people find themselves forced to work for members of a relatively small group who dominate control over productive assets and who, thereby, enjoy unjustifiable control over the activities and products of those workers. There are workers and then there are owners and their managers. The facts I refer to here are mostly drawn from the United States to keep a consistent description of a specific society. While there is meaningful variation across liberal capitalist nations, the basic facts of class-based oppression do not change in a way that vitiates my argument's applicability to those countries too. Empirical analysis of each country to which the argument applies, and how it would apply, is a separate project. The first element of oppression in a class society resides in the fact that (a) there are some who are forced into the labor market while others are not and (b) those who are forced to work—workers—have to work for those who own productive resources. Workers are forced into the labor market because they have no reasonable alternative but to find a job.8 They cannot produce necessary goods for themselves, nor can they rely on the charity of others, nor can they count on adequate state benefits. The only way most people can gain reliable access to necessary goods is by buying them. The most reliable, often only, way most people have of acquiring enough money to buy those goods is through employment. That is the sense in which they have no reasonable alternative but to find a job working for an employer. Depending on how we measure income and wealth, about 60–80 of Americans are in this situation for most of their adult lives.9 This forcing is not symmetrical. A significant minority is not similarly forced to work for someone else, though they might do so freely. That minority has enough wealth, either inherited or accumulated or both, that they have a reasonable alternative to entering the labor market. So, this first dimension of oppression comes not from the fact that some are forced to work, but from the fact that the forcing is unequal and that asymmetry means some are forced to work for others.10 That is to say, what makes it oppressive is the wrong of unequally forcing the majority to work, for whatever purpose, while others face no such forcing at all.11 That way of organizing and distributing coercive work obligations, and of imposing certain kinds of forcing on workers, is an unjustifiable way of limiting their freedom and therefore oppressive. To fix ideas, I call this the structural element of oppression in class societies.
Second, workers are forced by employers to abdicate agency by the nature of work and managerial processing. This represents an uncontrolled level of coercion as there are no alternatives for workers without challenging the system
GOUREVITCH, ALEX (2018). The Right to Strike: A Radical View. American Political Science Review, (), 1–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055418000321
This structural element leads to a second, interpersonal dimension of oppression in the workplace itself. Workers are forced to join workplaces typically characterized by large swathes of uncontrolled managerial power and authority. This oppression is interpersonal in the sense that it is power that specific individuals— employers and their managers—have to get other specific individuals—employees—to do what they want. We can distinguish between three overlapping forms that this interpersonal, workplace oppression takes: subordination, delegation, and dependence. Subordination: Employers have what are sometimes called "managerial prerogatives,"12 which are legislative and judicial grants of authority to owners and their managers to make decisions about investment, hiring and firing, plant location, work process, and the like.13 These powers come from judicial precedent and from the constellation of corporate, labor, contract, and property law. Managers may change working speeds and assigned tasks, the hours of work, or even force workers to spend up to an hour going through security lines after work without paying them (Integrity Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Busk 2014). Managers may fire workers for Facebook comments, their sexual orientation, for being too sexually appealing, or for not being appealing enough (Emerson 2011; Hess 2013; Strauss 2013; Velasco 2011). Workers may be given more tasks than can be performed in the allotted time, locked in the workplace overnight, required to work in extreme heat and other physically hazardous conditions, or punitively isolated from other coworkers (Greenhouse 2009, 26–27, 49–55, 89, 111–112; Hsu 2011; JOMO 2013; Urbina 2013). Managers may pressure employees into unwanted political behavior (Hertel- Fernandez 2015). In all of these cases, managers are exercising legally permitted prerogatives.14 The law does not require that workers have any formal say in how those powers are exercised. In fact, in nearly every liberal capitalist country, employees are defined, in law, as "subordinates."15 This is subordination in the strict sense: workers are subject to the will of the employer. Delegation: There are also other discretionary legal powers that managers have not by legal statute or precedent but because workers have voluntarily delegated these powers in the contract. For instance, workers might sign a contract that allows managers to require employees to submit to random drug testing or unannounced searches (American Civil Liberties Union 2017). In the United States, 18 of current employees and 37 of workers in their lifetime work under noncompete agreements (Bunker 2016).These clauses give managers legal power to forbid workers from working for competitors. The contract that the Communications Workers of America had with Verizon until 2015 included a right for managers to force employers to perform from 10 to 15 hours of overtime per week and to take some other day instead of Saturday as an off-day (Gourevitch 2016a). These legal powers are not parts of the managerial prerogatives that all employers have. Rather, they are voluntarily delegated to employers by workers. In many cases, though the delegation is in one sense voluntary, in another sense it is forced. This will especially be the case if workers, who are forced to find jobs, can only find jobs in sectors where the only contracts available are ones that require these kinds of delegations. Dependence: Finally, managers might have the material power to force employees to submit to commands or even to accept violations of their rights because of the worker's dependence on the employer. A headline example is wage-theft, which affects American workers to the tune of $8– $14 billion per year (Eisenbray 2015; Judson and Francisco-McGuire 2012; NELP 2013; Axt 2013). In other cases, workers have been forced to wear diapers rather than go to the bathroom, refused legally required lunch breaks, or pressured to work through them, forced to keep working after their shift is up, or denied the right to read or turn on air conditioning during break (Oxfam 2015; Bennett- Smith 2012; Egelko 2011; Greenhouse 2009, 3– 12; Little 2013; Vega 2012). Other employers have forced their workers to stay home rather than go out on weekends or to switch churches and alter religious practices on pain of being fired and deported (Garrison, Bensinger, and Singer-Vine 2015). In these cases, employers are not exercising legal prerogatives, they are instead taking advantage of the material power that comes with threatening to fire or otherwise discipline workers. This material power to get workers to do things that employers want is in part a function of the class structure of society, both in the wide sense of workers being asymmetrically dependent on owners, and in the narrower sense of workers being legally subordinate to employers. Subordination, delegation, and dependence add up to a form of interpersonal oppression that employers and their managers have over their employees. The weight and scope of this oppression will vary, but those are variations on a theme. Employers and managers enjoy wide swaths of uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled power over their employees. This is the second face of oppression in a class society and it is a live issue.
Affirming solves, strikes represent the only legitimate form for workers to be able to reclaim their agency and challenge coercive contracts that exist between employers and employees
GOUREVITCH, ALEX (2018). The Right to Strike: A Radical View. American Political Science Review, (), 1–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055418000321
Workers have an interest in resisting the oppression of class society by using their collective power to reduce that oppression. Their interest is a liberty interest in a double sense. First, it is an interest in not being oppressed, or in not facing certain kinds of forcing, coercion, and subjection to authority that they shouldn't have to. Any resistance to those kinds of unjustified limitations of freedom carries with it, at least implicitly, a demand for liberties not yet enjoyed.19 That is a demand for a control over portions of one's life that one does not yet. Workers have an interest in resisting the oppression of class society by using their collective power to reduce that oppression. Their interest is a liberty interest in a double sense. First, it is an interest in not being oppressed, or in not facing certain kinds of forcing, coercion, and subjection to authority that they shouldn't have to. Any resistance to those kinds of unjustified limitations of freedom carries with it, at least implicitly, a demand for liberties not yet enjoyed.19 That is a demand for a control over portions of one's life that one does not yet enjoy. Second, and consequently, the right to strike is grounded in an interest in using one's own individual and collective agency to resist—or even overcome— that oppression. The interest in using one's own agency to resist oppression flows naturally from the demand for liberties not yet enjoyed.T After all, that demand for control is in the name of giving proper space to workers' capacity for self-determination, which is the same capacity that expresses itself in the activity of striking for greater freedom. On this radical view, the right to strike has both an intrinsic and instrumental relation to liberty. It has intrinsic value as an (at least implicit) demand for self-emancipation or the winning of greater liberty through one's own efforts. It has instrumental value insofar as the strike is on the whole an effective means for resisting the oppressiveness of a class society. For the right to strike to enjoy its proper connection to liberty, workers must have a reasonable chance of carrying out an effective strike, otherwise it would lose its instrumental value as a way of resisting oppression. If prevented from using a reasonable array of effective means, exercising the right to strike would not be a means of reducing oppression and, therefore, strikes would also be of very limited value as acts of self-emancipation. It would not be an instance of workers attempting to use their own capacity for self-determination to increase the control they ought to have over the terms of their daily activity.
Contention 2- Is Association
The right to association represents a fundamental right to workers as it represents the ability for agents within the workplace to engage in contractual engagements with other employees.
ILO. (n.d.). Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining (declaration). Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining (DECLARATION). Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.ilo.org/declaration/principles/freedomofassociation/lang—en/index.htm.
The freedoms to associate and to bargain collectively are fundamental rights. They are rooted in the ILO Constitution and the Declaration of Philadelphia annexed to the ILO Constitution. Their core value has been reaffirmed by the international community, notably at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen and in the 1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. These enabling rights make it possible to promote and realize decent conditions at work. ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, adopted in 2008, noted that freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining are particularly important to the attainment of all ILO strategic objectives. Strong and independent workers' and employers' organizations, and the effective recognition of their right to engage in collective bargaining, are major tools for labour market governance. Collective bargaining is a way of attaining beneficial and productive solutions to potentially conflictual relations between workers and employers. It provides a means of building trust between the parties through negotiation and the articulation and satisfaction of the different interests of the negotiating partners. Collective bargaining plays this role by promoting peaceful, inclusive and democratic participation of representative workers' and employers' organizations. The continuing importance of collective bargaining in the twenty-first century derives from its potential as a powerful tool for engagement between employers' and workers' organizations to address economic and social concerns. It can strengthen weak voices and reduce poverty and social disadvantage. This can be done by applying collective bargaining to the needs of the parties and promoting voluntary agreements that sustain the well-being of individuals and enterprises.
This fundamental right to association is foundational to the concept of employment within an economy grounded on contracts
GOUREVITCH, ALEX (2018). The Right to Strike: A Radical View. American Political Science Review, (), 1–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055418000321
It is understood as one way of exercising the right of free association and freedom of contract in the economy. As part of those rights, individuals are free to associate together and to decide to make contracts they all agree to. This is what the exercise of those basic rights can look like in the economy. John Stuart Mill made roughly this argument when saying the strike was an "indispensable means of enabling the sellers of labour to take due care of their own interests under a system of competition… Strikes, therefore, and the trade societies which render strikes possible, are for these various reasons not a mischievous, but on the contrary, a valuable part of the existing machinery of society." (Mill 1909, V.10.32)
An unconditional right to strikes represents a form of preservation of the economic arrangements of freedom of association and engagement with other workers, thus preserving the contractual conditions of mutual constraint
GOUREVITCH, ALEX (2018). The Right to Strike: A Radical View. American Political Science Review, (), 1–13. doi:10.1017/S0003055418000321
Far from a rejection or critique of existing economic arrangements, the right to strike is a permitted, even "valuable part," of the way they function. As with the exercise of any basic right, the right to strike is limited by the requirement to respect everyone else's equal freedom to exercise their basic rights. Therefore, workers may not interfere in any coercive way with others' exercise of their rights. As Mill put it, "It is, however, an indispensable condition of tolerating combinations, that they should be voluntary. No severity, necessary to the purpose, is too great to be employed against attempts to compel workmen to join a union, or take part in a strike by threats or violence. Mere moral compulsion, by the expression of opinion, the law ought not to interfere with; it belongs to more enlightened opinion to restrain it, by rectifying the moral sentiments of the people." (V.10.33) While strikes are acceptable ways for workers to pursue their interests, their refusal to work must be unforced. Likewise, strikers may attempt to use moral suasion or otherwise reason with employers and replacement workers, but strikers may not coercively interfere with others' personal or economic freedoms.