AC-Kant-AFCC-Util adv NC-Util Fwk-Innovation Da-Case 1ar-Util fwk-innovation DA- Kant-util adv-new off win one layer Nr-AFCC-Independent voter-Case 2ar-Indepndent voter-case
Loyola
3
Opponent: Vestavia Hills DS | Judge: Joey Georges
Ac-Kant Nc- Innovation DA-Util-case-Kant independent voter 1ar- theory afc- theory must spec status in nc- Util Independent voter- skep-kant independent voter Nr- all 2ar- Theory afc-kant independent voter
Loyola
1
Opponent: Marlborough AW | Judge: Gordon Krauss
Ac-Cap Global South Nc- Innovation DA Util Case rest was all
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites
Entry
Date
00-Contact Information
Tournament: All | Round: Finals | Opponent: All | Judge: All Hey Im Emerson (He/him).
email: emersonskang@gmail.com
number:646-770-6577
Message me about docs if there is a problem and ill try to send them.
Lmk about trigger warnings. Lmk about Pronouns as well. Ill default to they/them otherwise
Please tell me if there are any interps you would like me to meet before round and I will be happy to comply to a reasonable extent.
10/16/21
00-DebateDrills
Tournament: All | Round: 1 | Opponent: All | Judge: All I’m on DebateDrills - the following URL has our roster, conflict, policy, code of conduct, relevant team policies, and harassment/bullying complaint form: https://www.debatedrills.com/debate-club?ld
10/16/21
00-Wiki Glitches
Tournament: any | Round: 7 | Opponent: you | Judge: all So it turns out some of my cites aren't uploading, but the open-source is available or some open-sources aren't uploading but the cites are.
Contact me if you want anything specific.
10/16/21
1-FWK-Util
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough AW | Judge: Gordon Krauss Framing Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valueable and disvalueable – everything else regresses. Evolutionary knowledge is reliable – broad consensus and robust neuroscience prove. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not AND and addiction or RDS. Thus, the standard is maximizing expected well-being or act hedonistic util. Prefer additionally –
1 Outweighs – A Predictability – most authors assume util when discussing the cost/benefit tradeoffs of voting B topic ed – other frameworks don’t engage with key questions of implemented policy impacts – that’s key, b/c we only have 2 months for this topic. C TJFs first because they assume the framework being good for debate 2 Death is bad and outweighs – a) agents can’t act if they fear for their bodily security which constrains every ethical theory, b) it destroys the subject itself – kills any ability to achieve value in ethics since life is a prerequisite which means it’s a side constraint since we can’t reach the end goal of ethics without life 3 Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
9/5/21
1-FWK-Util v2
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 5 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit EP | Judge: Brett Cyan The standard is maximizing expected well being Actor spec—governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied. Extinction first – 1 Forecloses future improvement – we can never improve society because our impact is irreversible 2 Turns suffering – mass death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities 3 Objectivity – body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical
9/5/21
G-Kant Reps
Tournament: Heart of Texas | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake DL | Judge: Devin Hernandez Vote them down – their framework justifies homophobia which makes debate unsafe – it’s a teachable moment and you have an obligation as an educator to preserve the existence of debate and keep it safe Soble quotes Kant, 03 Alan Soble, 2003, “Kant and Sexual Perversion,” The Monist 86:1 (Jan. 2003), pp. 55-89., https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324025, SJBE Kant immediately continues by completing his sparse inventory of three objectionable, sexually unnatural, practices: A second crimen carnis contra naturam is intercourse between sexus homogenii, in which the object of sexual impulse is a human being but there is homogeneity instead of heterogeneity of sex. . . . This practice too is contrary to the ends of humanity; for the end of humanity in respect of sexuality is to preserve the species without debasing the person; but in this instance the species is not being preserved (as it can be by a crimen carnis secundum naturam), but the person is set aside, the self is degraded below the level of the animals, and humanity is dishonoured. The third crimen carnis contra naturam occurs when the object of the desire is in fact of the opposite sex but is not human. Such is sodomy, or intercourse with animals. This, too, is contrary to the ends of humanity and against our natural instinct. It degrades mankind below the level of animals, for no animal turns in this way from its own species.75
Kantianism is racist – this is not just Kant himself, but his transcendental system. Kant’s philosophy depends on the character and capacity individuals have for moral reasoning. Eze: Eze 97—1997 (Emmanuel, Professor of Philosophy @DePaul University, “The Color of Reason” in PostColonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 1997, 103-131 Over and beyond Buffon or Linnaeus, Kant, in his transcendental philosophy (e.g., Critique of Pure Reason), describes ways of orienting oneself geographically in space, mathematically in space and time, and, logically, in the construction of both categories into other sorts of consistent whole. In the Observations on the Feeling o/the Beautiful and Sublime, a work which ought to be considered as primarily anthropological, Kant shows the theoretic transcendental philosophical position at work when he attempts to work out and establish how a particular (moral) feeling relates to humans generally, and how it differs between men and women, and among different races. For example, "feeling" as it appears in the title of the work refers to a specific refinement of character which is universally properly human: that is, belonging to human nature as such. And we recall that for Kant "human nature" resides in the developmental expression of rational-moral "character." Since it is character that constitutes the specificity of human nature, "human nature proper," then whatever dignity or moral worth the individual" may have is derived from the fact that one has struggled to develop one's character, or one's· humanity, as universal. Kant states: In order to assign man into a system of living nature, and thus to characterize him, no other alternative is left than this: that he has a character which he himself creates by being capable of perfecting himself after the purposes chosen by himself. Through this, he, as an animal endowed with reason (animale rationabile) can make out of himself a rational animal (animale rationale). "Character," as the moral formation of personality, seems to be that on which basis humans have worth and dignity,and one consequence of this is that those peoples and "races" to whom Kant assigns minimal or pseudo rational-moral capacity - either because of their non-"white" skin color (evidence of lack of "true talent") or because of the presence of phlogiston in their blood or both - are seriously naturally or inherently inferior to those who have the "gift" of higher rational attainments, evidence of which is seen in their superior "white" skin color, the absence of phlogiston in their blood, and the superior European civilization While the non-European may have "value," it is not certain that he or she has true "worth." According to Kant: everything has either a value or a worth. What has value has a substitute which can replace it as its equivalent; but whatever is, on the other hand, exalted above all values, and thus lacks an equivalent ... has no merely relative value, that is, a price, but rather an inner worth,. that is dignity ... Hence morality, and humanity, in so far as it is capable of morality, can alone possess dignity. If non-white peoples lack "true" rational character (Kant believes, for example, that the character of the Mohr is made up of imagination rather than reason) and therefore lack "true" feeling and moral sense, then they do not have "true" worth, or dignity. The black person, for example, can accordingly be denied full humanity, since full and "true" humanity accrues only to the white European. For Kant European humanity is the humanity par excellence. Their failure to acknowledge historical racism associated with Kant’s philosophy is a link—no matter what, their principles are rooted in racism Reps matter – that’s a prerequisite to evaluating their framework which outweighs since they kill accessibility – comes first since without accessibility we can’t debate.
10/16/21
G-T-Framework
Tournament: AppleValley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sharon RG | Judge: Richard Li 1 Interpretation: The affirmative must only defend the hypothetical implementation of the Uncondo Right to Strike.
Violation: 1. Cross-ex 2. Their advocacy states the aff as a general principle which is not the same as a policy action because we don’t get to use comparative worlds 3. AT BEST is extra-t because they also “adopt a deterritorialized form of possession and a nomadic property model to create a commons, where Daoist models of creativity and ownership can thrive.” which is outside the scope of the resolution. Hold them to the text of the 1ac since anything else allows them to shift our of our offense in the 1ar.
Standards: Ground- we don’t get to read CPs or even DAs because those all are predicated upon the aff being a policy and they can spike out of links by saying we must prove the aff as a general principle is bad in a normative sense, kills fairness because none of my arguments stick and education because they can skirt questions of topic literature. Burden of Rejoinder- the burden of the neg is to prove that the aff is a bad idea but we can’t do this when they’re a general principle because we become constrained to solely normative indicts and can’t test the aff from multiple angles. Kills neg flex and our ability to engage.
Engagement—they transform debate into a monologue where we can’t read CPs which means their arguments are presumptively false because they haven’t been subjected to well researched scrutiny.
TVA: Literally just defend the aff as a policy plan. Vote neg – they’ve destroyed the round from the beginning and topicality’s key to set the correct model of debate which means it comes first. Voter: Evaluate T through competing interps—it tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for. Reasonability is arbitrary and unpredictable Precision o/w – anything else justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words in the resolution at their whim Drop the debater to deter future abuse Fairness is an impact and comes before substance – deciding any other argument in this debate cannot be disentangled from our inability to prepare for it – any argument you think they’re winning is a link, not a reason to vote for them, since it’s just as likely that they’re winning it because we weren’t able to effectively prepare to defeat it. This means they don’t get to weigh the aff. Education is an impact – it’s the only reason schools fund debate No RVIs—it’s your burden to be fair and T—same reason you don’t win for answering inherency or putting defense on a disad. 2 incentivizes baiting theory
11/5/21
G-Util Framing
Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 4 | Opponent: Silver Creek KZ | Judge: Quentin Clark Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valueable and disvalueable – everything else regresses. Evolutionary knowledge is reliable – broad consensus and robust neuroscience prove. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/, R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. Thus, the standard is maximizing expected well-being or act hedonistic util. Prefer additionally –
10/16/21
Midterms-Politix DA
Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough LF | Judge: Samantha Mcloughlin Dems win the Senate now, but it’s close---it determines the Biden presidency. Shane Goldmacher 7/17. Reporter, New York Times, “Democrats See Edge in Early Senate Map as Trump Casts Big Shadow,” The New York Times, July 17, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/us/politics/midterm-elections.html, RJP, DebateDrills. Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fund-raising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled G.O.P. primaries. Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party. But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.
The plan is unpopular---it’s seen as soft on China. Cynthia Hicks 21. Director of Public Affairs at PhRMA focusing on polling and opinion research that supports advocacy communications and strategy. “New polling shows Americans are sounding the alarm on the TRIPS IP waiver,” PhRMA, May 14, 2021, https://catalyst.phrma.org/new-polling-shows-americans-are-sounding-the-alarm-on-the-trips-ip-waiver, RJP, DebateDrills *NOTE – the stuff after “include the following” is a picture that couldn’t be pasted. Go to the URL if you want to see it.
2. Americans are concerned that the TRIPS waiver could risk patient safety, sow public confusion, and cede America’s global innovation leadership to China. Americans worry that waiving intellectual property introduces unnecessary and dangerous risks to safety and vaccine manufacturing. The top concerns – expressed by more than six in ten voters – include the following:
Democrats and Republicans in purple states are already leaning into U.S. competition with China as a key issue in the fight to control the Senate in 2022. Why it matters: American voters hold increasingly negative feelings toward the Chinese government, particularly around bilateral economic relations and following the nation’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. President Biden also has made it clear that confronting China remains a foreign policy priority. Possibly vulnerable Democratic senators are capitalizing on the passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a sweeping global competition bill focused on China that recently passed by a rare bipartisan vote. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) visited Kia’s West Point factory in Georgia to address how the bill could address the recent semiconductor shortage and avoid future plant shutdowns, like one the factory experienced. Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) wrote op-eds in their local news outlets highlighting the bill's benefits. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and state Democratic parties are calling out Republicans like Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), both of whom voted against the bill. They’ve also targeted Republicans running in open Senate seats who have expressed opposition to the bill. Meanwhile, Rubio has been making a play for China hawks in Florida, Axios’ Lachlan Markay reported last week. Rubio, who is up for re-election next year, has been sending campaign emails with subject lines such as, "Dems 3 China," and, "Is it time to stand up to Communist China?" to a list maintained by a nonprofit group called Stand Up to China. In Arizona, Republicans latched onto Kelly's ties to a Chinese tech firm last year, and it's likely they'll continue to use that strategy. The senator's team has argued he isn't beholden to Chinese authorities. Republicans have long branded Democrats as "weak" on China as a line of attack. Expect that to continue through the campaign cycle, as Democratic candidates tout the passage of the U.S. Innovation Act and reframe the narrative. They plan to focus on increasing the United States' competitive edge with China as a policy priority. What they’re saying: David Bergstein, a spokesman for the DSCC, said the campaign committee will be “reminding voters that any Republican who refused to back this critical bill was too weak to stand up to China in order to protect and grow good-paying jobs.” Chris Hartline, spokesman for the NRSC, said in a statement that "no one believes that Joe Biden and Senate Democrats will do what it takes to confront the geopolitical and economic threat posed by (President) Xi (Jinping) and the Chinese Communist Party. GOP control of the Senate will be used to usher in a new wave of Trumpism, crushing democracy. Morton Kondracke 21. Retired executive editor of Roll Call, a former "McLaughlin Group" and Fox News commentator and co-author, with Fred Barnes, of Jack Kemp: The Bleeding Heart Conservative Who Changed America. “Why Democrats Must Retain Control of Congress in 2022,” RealClearPolitics, August 4, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/08/04/why_democrats_must_retain_control_of_congress_in_2022_146189.html, RJP, DebateDrills
The 2020 election demonstrated how fragile our democracy is. As Donald Trump tried, by means both legal and illegal, to overturn the results of a free and fair election, only the courts and a thin line of courageous Republican election officials guaranteed that the peoples’ choice prevailed. But the safeguards are weaker. Although the Supreme Court upheld the last lower-court dismissal of multiple Trump-inspired lawsuits charging election fraud, in July the court upheld new voting restrictions enacted in Arizona. And many of the Republican election officials who refused to back up Trump’s bogus fraud charges have been threatened, fired, or are being challenged for reelection by Trump followers. Meanwhile, 17 Republican-controlled state legislatures have joined Arizona in making voting more difficult: In several of them, legislators are trying to seize control of election management, including power to replace county election officials or even decide how a state’s election results should be certified, regardless of the popular vote. Republicans claim they are acting restore faith in elections, but—with fraud repeatedly shown to be rare and of no effect in in 2020—Trump and his followers are really undermining faith in American elections. The result of this frenzy of activity in furtherance of Trump’s “Big Lie”—that he won the 2020 election (and that he won in a “landslide,” no less) —is that the preservation of American-style self-government depends on Democrats retaining control of Congress in 2022. Republicans have shown that they simply can’t be trusted to safeguard democracy. Donald Trump now owns the Republican Party as GOP politicians up and down the line do his bidding, out of fear or belief. Even after a mob of Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Republicans in Congress voted overwhelmingly against impeaching and convicting him for his actions and inaction. Eight GOP senators and 147 representatives voted not to certify Electoral College counts submitted by two states (had they prevailed, there would have more). Then only six GOP senators voted in favor of forming a truly bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the insurrection, killing the proposal by filibuster. After Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi established a select committee to conduct an investigation, Republican leaders attacked her as responsible for the riot, falsely claiming she is in charge of security at the Capitol. Republicans who voted against Trump on any issue relating to Jan. 6 now face primary opponents backed by him and censure by their state parties. Rep. Liz Cheney, the most vocal Trump critic in the GOP, lost her House leadership post. Trump has even attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who criticized him after Jan. 6 but also blocked creation of the 9/11 commission. It’s classic authoritarian behavior—demanding total loyalty from his followers and total control of his faction, and assailing any rivals in power. Lately, Trump reportedly has encouraged his followers to believe he can somehow be reinstated as president later this month, and the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that the violent acts of Jan. 6 may be repeated when he’s not. The sad, but inevitable conclusion is that if Republicans take control of either chamber in Congress, they will not try to do what’s best for America as a whole. They will do what Trump tells them to do, probably starting with trying to undo everything President Biden and the Democrats in Congress have done during the previous two years. For starters, if Democrats are to prevail next November, Biden must be seen as a successful moderate-progressive president—one who can defy the historical pattern that presidential parties almost invariably lose seats in their first midterm election. The last two Democratic presidents s who launched major initiatives without GOP support, Bill Clinton (tax increases and health care reform) and Barack Obama (Obamacare and anti-recession stimulus spending), suffered historic shellackings in the ensuing midterms—54 House seats and eight Senate seats in 1994, and 63 House and six Senate seats in 2010. Biden, who has multiple big programs in his policy agenda, has smaller Democratic margins in Congress than Clinton and Obama. In other words, the Democrats must hang on to almost all of their contested districts and states. McConnell, who earned the moniker “grim reaper” for blocking Obama, was supposed to be a willing negotiating partner for Biden. Instead, the Senate Republican leader has pronounced himself “100 focused” on defeating Biden’s legislative agenda. So far, Biden has succeeded in passing a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package (with no Republican votes). He is trying to work out a bipartisan $1 trillion “physical infrastructure” package. McConnell isn’t the obstruction with this legislation, as Senate negotiators and the White House sound optimistic. But with Rep. Kevin McCarthy openly angling for Pelosi’s job, nothing is certain in the House. Trump is actively trying to scuttle infrastructure spending. He’s telling Republicans to oppose it, saying passage means letting “the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers,” and he has threatened primary challenges against GOP legislators who support it. This, despite his promising to pass a $2 trillion bill while president (then never delivering). Republicans who support it obviously want money for roads, bridges and broadband for their constituents. But they don’t like the contents of Biden’s follow-up proposal—a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” program, which would expand Medicare, caregiving for the disabled and elderly, and child care, while funding universal pre-kindergarten, free community college, national paid family leave, and extended child tax credits. And they don’t like the corporate and capital gains tax increases Democrats propose to pay for it all. So the Democratic plan is to pass it as a “budget reconciliation” measure requiring only Democratic votes. If, next November, the GOP captures one chamber—most likely, the House—whatever Biden can get done in his first two years can’t be easily undone, but he will get nothing more passed. If the GOP gets control of both chambers, Republicans will try to reverse anything he has accomplished. He’ll have only his veto pen as protection. Stalemate from 2023 through 2024—and an unsuccessful-seeming Biden presidency—could reelect Trump (or someone backed by him), in which case constitutional norms and respect for election results and the rule of law would again be in peril. Extinction Kasparov 17 Garry Kasparov, Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, former World Chess Champion, “Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership,” Testimony Before The Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women's Issues of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 16th, https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021617_Kasparov_20Testimony.pdf
As one of the countless millions of people who were freed or protected from totalitarianism by the United States of America, it is easy for me to talk about the past. To talk about the belief of the American people and their leaders that this country was exceptional, and had special responsibilities to match its tremendous power. That a nation founded on freedom was bound to defend freedom everywhere. I could talk about the bipartisan legacy of this most American principle, from the Founding Fathers, to Democrats like Harry Truman, to Republicans like Ronald Reagan. I could talk about how the American people used to care deeply about human rights and dissidents in far-off places, and how this is what made America a beacon of hope, a shining city on a hill. America led by example and set a high standard, a standard that exposed the hypocrisy and cruelty of dictatorships around the world. But there is no time for nostalgia. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, Americans, and America, have retreated from those principles, and the world has become much worse off as a result. American skepticism about America’s role in the world deepened in the long, painful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their aftermaths. Instead of applying the lessons learned about how to do better, lessons about faulty intelligence and working with native populations, the main outcome was to stop trying. This result has been a tragedy for the billions of people still living under authoritarian regimes around the world, and it is based on faulty analysis. You can never guarantee a positive outcome— not in chess, not in war, and certainly not in politics. The best you can do is to do what you know is right and to try your best. I speak from experience when I say that the citizens of unfree states do not expect guarantees. They want a reason to hope and a fighting chance. People living under dictatorships want the opportunity for freedom, the opportunity to live in peace and to follow their dreams. From the Iraq War to the Arab Spring to the current battles for liberty from Venezuela to Eastern Ukraine, people are fighting for that opportunity, giving up their lives for freedom. The United States must not abandon them. The United States and the rest of the free world has an unprecedented advantage in economic and military strength today. What is lacking is the will. The will to make the case to the American people, the will to take risks and invest in the long-term security of the country, and the world. This will require investments in aid, in education, in security that allow countries to attain the stability their people so badly need. Such investment is far more moral and far cheaper than the cycle of terror, war, refugees, and military intervention that results when America leaves a vacuum of power. The best way to help refugees is to prevent them from becoming refugees in the first place. The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the world, and the American people. There existential threat today is not found on a map, but it is very real. The forces of the past are making steady progress against the modern world order. Terrorist movements in the Middle East, extremist parties across Europe, a paranoid tyrant in North Korea threatening nuclear blackmail, and, at the center of the web, an aggressive KGB dictator in Russia. They all want to turn the world back to a dark past because their survival is threatened by the values of the free world, epitomized by the United States. And they are thriving as the U.S. has retreated. The global freedom index has declined for ten consecutive years. No one like to talk about the United States as a global policeman, but this is what happens when there is no cop on the beat. American leadership begins at home, right here. America cannot lead the world on democracy and human rights if there is no unity on the meaning and importance of these things. Leadership is required to make that case clearly and powerfully. Right now, Americans are engaged in politics at a level not seen in decades. It is an opportunity for them to rediscover that making America great begins with believing America can be great. The Cold War was won on American values that were shared by both parties and nearly every American. Institutions that were created by a Democrat, Truman, were triumphant forty years later thanks to the courage of a Republican, Reagan. This bipartisan consistency created the decades of strategic stability that is the great strength of democracies. Strong institutions that outlast politicians allow for long-range planning. In contrast, dictators can operate only tactically, not strategically, because they are not constrained by the balance of powers, but cannot afford to think beyond their own survival. This is why a dictator like Putin has an advantage in chaos, the ability to move quickly. This can only be met by strategy, by long-term goals that are based on shared values, not on polls and cable news. The fear of making things worse has paralyzed the United States from trying to make things better. There will always be setbacks, but the United States cannot quit. The spread of democracy is the only proven remedy for nearly every crisis that plagues the world today. War, famine, poverty, terrorism–all are generated and exacerbated by authoritarian regimes. A policy of America First inevitably puts American security last. American leadership is required because there is no one else, and because it is good for America. There is no weapon or wall that is more powerful for security than America being envied, imitated, and admired around the world. Admired not for being perfect, but for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you.
10/16/21
NOVDEC-Dean K
Tournament: AppleValley | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sharon RG | Judge: Richard Li 2-Dean K Delueze’s understanding of capitalism is outdated and ensures a weakening of anti-capitalist movement structures. Scapira and Dean 12 (Michael Schapira and Jodi Dean. 11-14-2012, "Jodi Dean," interview with Jodi Dean. Full Stop. https://www.full-stop.net/2012/11/14/interviews/michael-schapira/jodi-dean/) azi Michael Schapira: We’re speaking on Election Day, concluding what you called on your blog a “bloated, hell storm of an election.” During the Republican primary and running through the general election you would hear people from the Right accuse Obama of being a Communist, Marxist, or Socialist, and pushing his ideological agenda on the American people. The Left would disavow these charges, saying how he is not any of these. Do you see anything revealed in the Right’s continued willingness to use the word Communist, verses the Left’s hesitation to claim any relationship to this word? Jodi Dean: In short, the Left has been cowardly. The Left has let itself be completely defeated and beaten by not holding on to its own best achievements. It pushes away from these ideas and doctrines that have given it strength for 150 years – Socialism, Communism, Marxism, letting some of the facts of history incapacitate it. The Right on the other hand takes its defeats and uses them to strengthen itself. It assumes that the Left does the same, but we just hide the fact that we are Marxists. It uses this to bring folks out by saying “you’re a Marxist,” knowing that the Left will retreat from it. On that one scale you see the difference in how the Right learns from and embraces its failures and the Left wallows in them in this pathetic way. Additionally the Right knows that words matter, knows that there is a strength there, and I think the Left is sometimes afraid of strength, or afraid of what happens when the people have power. But that’s also changing. We seem to be in a process where the Left is waking up. It’s been a long time since there has been a vocal Communist, Marxist, or Socialist Left. There have been individuals who have been Leftist obviously, but one significant change is that the Foucauldian/Deleuzian position doesn’t have legs anymore. People are tired of that. It doesn’t seem to address the primary problems facing the world. Michael Schapira: This seems to relate to what you write in the book about the party. You write that “the power of the return of communism stands or falls on its capacity to inspire large-scale organized collective struggle toward a goal,” and to this end you are against calls to work exclusively outside of a party structure. Slavoj Zizek has been pointing to Syriza in Greece as an example of what this might look like (a coalition of the radical Left). Do you think Syriza is a good example of a renewed embrace of the party structure on the Left? My discussion of the party in the book is really abstract, and for a couple of reasons. First, I want to encourage Leftists who have been influenced by Deleuze, Hart and Negri, identity politics, and all this swarmy stuff to think more seriously about tighter organizational structures. So that’s the first addressee, this general Left feeling of dispersion as a good thing. I want the Left to think, no, maybe it’s not a good thing, and maybe we need to think in terms of tighter structures like the party. The next part is to think that maybe one way to do this and make it more attractive is to rethink what it is that a party does, what’s the point of a party. A typical critique of the Leninist party is that “oh it knows everything and tries to put itself at the vanguard of a linear theory of history, that it’s the one group that knows the truth.” Well, that’s actually historically wrong, it’s a parody and a ridiculous way to think about the party. So what I try and do in the book is to use Georg Lukács to think about the party as this overlap of two lacks. There is a kind of non-knowledge on the part of the party, and a non-knowledge on the part of the people. But these are held together in the commitment to a collective process, a collective moving forward. So it’s an effort to just try and rethink how one might even imagine a party. To me that’s the theoretical part that matters. If we begin to ask whether it is necessarily a revolutionary party, or a reformist party, these questions are coming too quickly when in fact what we need to do is think about how we even understand organization. Delueze’s approach to capital creates revolutionary ambivalence, hierarchy and subjective paralysis that sabotages an effective challenge to capital. Nail 13 (Thomas Nail, post-doctoral lecturer in European Philopsphy. 2013. “Deleuze, Occupy and the Actuality of Revolution.” Theory and Event , Volume: 16 Issue 1. https://www.academia.edu/2973497/Deleuze_Occupy_and_the_Actuality_of_Revolution) azi (1) Political Ambivalence “Affirming Difference in the state of permanent revolution affirmer la Différence dans l’état de révolution permanente,” as Deleuze says in Difference and Repetition (75/53),8 may escape the previous problems of vanguardism and the party-state, but it also poses a new danger: that the “pure affirmation of Difference” will be ultimately ambivalent. Revolution may provide a new non-representational space of liberty, or it may provide a ruptured “open” domain for a new discourse of rights and military occupation by the state, or it may merely reproduce a complicity with the processes of capitalist deterritorialization necessary for new capitalist reterritorializations. Slavoj Žižek, in particular, frequently attributes this capitalist ambivalence to Deleuze and Guattari’s politics (2004, 184). But to say, with Alain Badiou, that affirming the potentiality for transformation as such is to affirm a “purely ideological radicality” that “inevitably changes over into its opposite: once the mass festivals of democracy and discourse are over, things make place for the modernist restoration of order among workers and bosses,” would be to overstate the problem (Badiou and Balmès 1976, 83). Rather, it would be much more appropriate to say, with Paolo Virno, that “the multitude is a form of being that can give birth to one thing but also to the other: ambivalence” (Virno 2003, 131). Accordingly, the affirmation of this ambivalence as a political commitment, and the “politico-ontological optimism and unapologetic vitalism” it assumes in Hardt, Negri, and Deleuze’s work, according to Bruno Bosteels, remains radically insufficient (2004, 95). While the purely creative power of the multitude may be the condition for global liberation from Empire, it is also the productive condition for Empire as well. With no clear political consistency to organize or motivate any particular political transformation “vitalist optimism” is politically ambivalent, speculative, and spontaneous. Showing the nonfoundational or ungrounded nature of politics provides no more of a contribution for organized politics than does the creative potentiality of desire. “A subject’s intervention,” Bosteels suggests, “cannot consist merely in showing or recognizing the traumatic impossibility, void, or antagonism around which the situation as a whole is structured” (2004, 104). Rather, following Badiou, a “political organization is necessary in order for the intervention, as wager, to make a process out of the trajectory that goes from an interruption to a fidelity. In this sense, organization is nothing but the consistency of politics” (Badiou 1985, 12). And in so far as Deleuze and Guattari, and those inspired by their work, do not offer developed concepts of political consistency and organization that would bring differential multiplicities into specific political interventions and distributions, they remain, at most, ambivalent toward revolutionary politics. (2) Virtual Hierarchy In addition to this first danger of revolutionary ambivalence, Deleuze’s concept of revolution, according to Badiou and Hallward, risks a second danger; namely, that of creating a political hierarchy of virtual potential. Badiou argues at length in The Clamor of Being that, … contrary to all egalitarian or “communitarian” norms, Deleuze’s conception of thought is profoundly aristocratic. Thought only exists in a hierarchized space. This is because, for individuals to attain the point where they are seized by their preindividual determination and, thus, by the power of the One-All—of which they are, at the start, only meager local configurations—they have to go beyond their limits and endure the transfixion and disintegration of their actuality by infinite virtuality, which is actuality’s veritable being. And individuals are not equally capable of this. Admittedly, Being is itself neutral, equal, outside all evaluation … But ‘things reside unequally in this equal being’ (Deleuze 1994, 60/37). And, as a result, it is essential to think according to ‘a hierarchy which considers things and beings from the point of view of power’ (Deleuze 1994, 60/37; Badiou 1999, 12–13). The political thrust of this argument is that, if we understand revolutionary change as the pure potential for change as such, and not actual change for or against certain forms, then, contrary to any kind of egalitarianism, there will instead be a hierarchy of actual political beings that more or less participate in this degree of pure potential transformation. The more actual political beings renounce their specific and local determinations and affirm their participation in the larger processes of difference-in-itself, the more powerful they become. Thus, if the point of examining any local political intervention is in every case to show to what degree it renounces its concrete determinations and might “become other than it is” (as a virtuality or potentiality), there is, according to Badiou, a risk of “asceticism” and hierarchy in such a relationship of potential (Badiou 1999, 13). Similarly, Peter Hallward has argued that Deleuze’s political philosophy is “indifferent to the politics of this world” (2006, 162). Hallward claims that “once a social field is defined less by its conflicts and contradictions than by the lines of flight running through it” any distinctive space for political action can only be subsumed within the more general dynamics of creation, life, and potential transformation (2006, 62n16). And since these dynamics are “themselves antidialectical if not anti-relational, there can be little room in Deleuze’s philosophy for relations of conflict and solidarity” (2006, 162). If each concrete, localized, actual political being is important only in so far as it realizes a degree of pure potentiality of a virtual event, “and every mortal event in a single Event” (Deleuze 1990, 178/152), then the processional “telos” of absolute political deterritorialization is completely indifferent to the actual politics of this world (2006, 97). By valorizing this pure potentiality for transformation as such against all actual political determinations, Hallward argues, Deleuze is guilty of affirming an impossible utopianism. “By posing the question of politics in the starkly dualistic terms of war machine or state,” Hallward argues, “by posing it, in the end, in the apocalyptic terms of a new people and a new earth or else no people and no earth—the political aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy amounts to little more than utopian distraction” (2006, 162). (3) Subjective Paralysis The differential reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of revolution may be able to avoid the problem of representational subjectivity—that it can reject or affirm particular desires but never change the nature of the “self that desires”—but it does so only at the risk of diffusing the self into an endless multiplicity of impersonal drives: a self in perpetual transformation. This leads to the third danger, that of subjective paralysis. Firstly, to read Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of revolutionary subjectivity as the “simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality” (Agamben 1993, 43), or as Paul Patton calls it, one’s “critical freedom” (“the freedom to transgress the limits of what one is presently capable of being or doing, rather than just the freedom to be or do those things” (2000, 85) suggests an ambivalence of action. What are the conditions and factors by which one might decide to take an action or not? Emancipation and enslavement in this sense are merely just different things to be done. Secondly, without a pre-given unity of subjectivity, how do agents qua multiplicities deliberate between and distinguish (in themselves) different political decisions? Without the representational screen of reason, or the stateguaranteed grounds of political discourse, what might something like a dispute or agreement look like? If “becoming other is not a capacity liberated individuals possess to constitute themselves as autonomous singularities,” but “what defines ‘autonomy’ itself” (2006, 146), as Simon Tormey argues, then the political danger, according to Hallward, is that the subject is simply replaced by the larger impersonal process of transformation as such: “pure autonomy.” The radical affirmation of the ambivalent and unlocalizable processes of subjective potentiality (qua pure multiplicities) seems then to have nothing to contribute to an analysis of the basic function of participatory democracy and collective decision-making, which remains at the core of many of today’s radical political struggles (See Starr, Martinez-Torres, and Rosset 2011). Insofar as a theory of subjectivity is defined only by its potential for transformation, it is stuck in a kind of paralysis of endless potential change no less disempowering than subjective stasis. Or, as Hallward frames this criticism, Deleuze “abandons the decisive subject in favor of our more immediate subjection to the imperative of creative life or thought” (2006, 163). These criticisms articulate three dangers to be avoided, both in reading Deleuze and Guattari as well as in the practical philosophy of revolution.
The alternative is embracing party politics. This means building a radical coalition that unifies all marginalized by different forms of oppression to challenge capitalism and imperialism. Black Panther Party proves concrete action outside of the state is possible and successful. Curry Stephenson Malott. “In Defense of Communism Against Critical Pedagogy, Capitalism, and Trump.” Critical Education 8, no. 1 (2017). WWEY In her discussion of the International Section of the Black Panther Party Kathleen Cleaver (1998), echoing Harry Haywood, notes that the Party understood that, “Black self-determination was not feasible under American imperialist domination” (p. 212). Cleaver (1998) notes that while the BPP’s membership was exclusively Black, their message and practice was geared more toward the communist ethic of power to the people and the unification of all anti-imperialist movements and workers’ states rather than on the more isolationist practice of Black nationalism and Black Power. Regarding the revolution in Algeria, which the CIA was concerned would pave the way for rise to power of communists through the National Liberation Front (NLF) (Blum, 2004), Cleaver (1998) notes that, “the Panthers admired the Algerian revolution and considered its victory a powerful example of the ability of oppressed people to attain power over their destiny” (p. 213). Black Panther Party members would be represented at the Organization of African Unity conferences hosted in Algeria and had visited and established relationships with workers’ states as Cuba and the DPRK. The BPP therefore struggled to extend the communist movement in the U.S. which was difficult given the limitations of the CP-USA and the SWP as demonstrated by Marcy (1976). Huey P. Newton was not only the BPP’s co-founder, but he was also its revolutionary theoretician, and, as such, was continuously engaged in the process of developing the Party’s tendency, the influences of which were wide-ranging, including Marxist-Leninism. Newton (1995) would eventually come to adopt what is obviously Lenin’s (1917/2015) framework outlined in The State and Revolution. For example, Newton (1995), in a creative twist on Lenin, would argue that U.S. imperialism had negated the conditions for states to exist such as economic and territorial sovereignty. Newton (1995) therefore argued that the world consisted not of states or nations, but of imperialists, on one hand, and dominated or colonized oppressed communities on the other. From this point of view Cuba, China, the Soviet Union, and the DPRK were examples of liberated communities. Oppressed communities within the U.S. such as the Black community, from this perspective, should follow the example of liberated communities adopting their revolutionary goals adapted for the American context. The Panthers therefore argued for a unified struggle of all oppressed communities the world over aimed at destroying imperialism and the capitalist system in general and replacing it with communism. Under communism, in accordance with Lenin’s model, Newton was adamant that oppressed communities would retain their right to self-determination, realized under the protection of democratic centralism dedicated to fighting the counterrevolutionaries of the capitalist class. Newton also understood that racism and all manner of bigotry would also have to be eradicated through education in order for the proletarian state to be able to wither away and for communism to be able to flourish freely. The BPP’s first campaign was the establishment of a regularized armed patrol targeting the state’s Oakland Police Department due to their history of terrorizing and murdering members of the Black community, the vast majority of which represented some of the highest concentrations of unskilled, super-exploited workers. The BPP understood that the role of the police was to employ deadly force to create an intimidation-based consent to extreme exploitation. Huey Newton, who has been described as a youth of rare brilliance, at the height of his popularity, commanded the respect and commitment of the African American community across the country, leading to the establishment of BPP chapters from coast to coast. A fundamental component of why Newton was so dangerous in the eyes of the U.S. bourgeoisie was because he understood that the global proletariat was a great chain, and each conglomeration of workers around the world can be thought of as links in the great chain. What happens to workers in England affects workers and the price of their labor in the U.S. Lenin applied this insight to unions and the role of the strike. When one shop strikes and wins victories, they affect the average price of labor within the whole branch of industry, and can also inspire workers in the same region to take similar actions, thereby affecting other branches of industry. Newton, familiar with the work and tradition of Harry Haywood, employed this concept in the U.S. to understand how racism was used to push down the price of labor amongst Black and Brown workers, and in turn, their communities, and because all workers are links in the same chain, the overall price of labor within the whole country is suppressed. From this view it makes little sense to hold on to colonial structures and pressure more privileged white workers to paternalistically support more oppressed and exploited workers as a moral act because it is far more revolutionary for more privileged workers and less privileged workers to dissolve their class differences through revolutionary struggle as comrades. This requires an engagement with racial differences within the labor market rather than pretending they do not exist. The anti-communism of the American Left is so deep-seated that it is uncommon in retrospective discussions of the BPP to acknowledge that they were a Party in the communist sense that stood in solidarity with workers’ states. For example, as a political prisoner in the U.S., BPP leader George Jackson found inspiration in the political writings of imprisoned Palestinians in Israel (Pierce, 2015). The BPP not only was a descendant of Malcolm X, but they were also following in the communist footsteps of Harry Haywood, adopting much of his analysis and practice. They regularly sent delegations to workers’ states, and routinely distributed Maoist literature at their rallies. Perhaps the internal contradictions of the BPP were too great to overcome, as some commentators suggest. However great their errors were, however, the evidence seems to suggest that the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Programs) operations played the most decisive role in the destruction and elimination of the BPP. The same can be said of the SWP and the CP-USA who had been subjected to COINTELPRO operations since the 1940s (Churchill and Vander Wall, 1990). The goal of COINTELPRO was to disrupt, discredit, and neutralize communism and the political Left in general. Churchill and Vander Wall (1990) describe this war as secret because it was. The FBI, for example, would employ agent provocateurs who would infiltrate the ranks of the BPP in order to foment internal dissent within the organization as well as provide authorities with critical intelligence that could be used against the radicals. For example, the FBI would employ convicts as undercover agents to infiltrate groups like the BPP. William O’Neal was such a character who joined the BPP as an undercover FBI agent. O’Neal would eventually work his way up the ranks of the BPP and become Fred Hampton’s personal security guard. Hampton was of interest to the FBI because he was the Chairman of the Chicago chapter of the BPP and a dynamic, influential revolutionary leader who had made great strides in fostering working class solidarity across racial lines. O’Neal seems to have drugged Hampton and provided the FBI and Chicago PD with a floor plan of Hampton’s apartment making it much easier to execute his assassination, which was carried out in1969 on December 4that approximately 4:30 AM (Churchill and Vander Wall, 1990). Among the tactics employed by COINTELPRO operatives to neutralize the BPP nationwide included eavesdropping, sending bogus mail, “black propaganda” operations, disinformation or “gray propaganda,” harassment arrests, infiltrators and agent provocateurs, “pseudo gangs,” bad-jacketing, fabrication of evidence, and assassinations (Churchill and Vander Wall, 1990). While most of these tactics require explanations and examples to develop a full understanding, suffice it to say that the FBI’s efforts to destroy the communist movement within America’s Black working class was only limited by the creative deviancy of COINTELPRO agents. At the first Black Radical Tradition conference at Temple University in early January 2016, Mumia Abu-Jamal, phoning in from prison to deliver a keynote presentation, argued that the FBI’s secret war to exterminate and neutralize the BPP was designed to not only obliterate them, but to replace them. That is, the goal was to remove the Black community’s organic leadership and replace it with a puppet leadership no different than the way the imperialist U.S. military has instituted regime changes across the globe, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan and as is the current goal for Syria. The Black bourgeois leadership class that has emerged in the U.S. might be understood as serving this purpose. Globally, the Soviet Union, and the communist movement more generally, have suffered the same fate at the hands of the imperialist counterrevolutionaries. Whether operating within the U.S. through federal and state police agencies or outside the U.S. through the military and the CIA the physical bourgeois assault on the communist horizon has been fundamental. This imperialist thread is also another link in the chain of the global class war. The coalescing of the revolutionary center of gravity with that of the economic center will be the great turning point in...history. The first truly revolutionary outburst on the social soil of the American continent will light the flames of a new revolutionary conflagration which is sure to envelop the entire globe. It will graphically demonstrate how "East meets west” not by the construction of new and more tortuous artificial, boundaries, but by the revolutionary destruction of all of them. It will be the supreme and ultimate alliance of the great truly progressive classes of the East and West in a final effort to accomplish their own dissolution. This in turn will terminate the first great cycle of man’s development from sub-man—man—to Communist Man, and set him on the path to new and higher syntheses.(Marcy, 1950, p. 41)What Marcy describes here began to take place in 1966 with the birth of the Black Panther Party. Rather than realizing its global revolutionary vision, its leaders were murdered, imprisoned and demonized. Despite this and other setbacks, the ultimate unification of the world’s proletarian masses, united around a shared vision of communism, remains the unrealized potential of the present, capitalist moment. However, even though it is changing, the communist vision is still stigmatized as incomplete, outdated, or hopelessly Eurocentric. That is, this communist coming-to-be should not be interpreted as the violent imposition of a European conception of being forced onto non-European and indigenous subjectivities. Rather, communism offers a global economic structure where indigenous subjectivities can be reformulated after centuries of physical, biological and cultural genocide. The communist traditions ‘conception of Oppressed Nations offers a more complete picture of how the sovereignty of the world’s indigenous peoples would be an integral component of a socialist future. Marx’s notion of each according to her ability and each according to her need offers a more philosophical approach to understanding the inclusiveness of a communist ethic. Marcy’s work is crucial because he is absolutely clear that the threat of US imperialism situated in a world forever at war, makes all states dedicate such a large portion of their national productive capacity on the military to render serious efforts for socialist planning nearly impossible. For this reason, Marcy (1950) argues that the center of global capitalist economic power, which is the U.S., must develop into the center of global revolutionary gravity. Marcy therefore suggests that only through the defeat of U.S. imperialism can the unification of the global proletarian class camp be realized. This, perhaps, remains true today. Each day then, Lenin (1917/2015) grows more relevant and more urgent. Ironically enough there is a strong tendency within the U.S. Left, and the educational Left in particular, that argues that the actual communists, communists in China, the former Soviet Union, and the DPRK, are not the real communists, but state capitalists betraying the spirit and intent of Marx. The arrogance of such positions is absurd, even taking into consideration the imperfections of real existing communism. Given the anti-communist nature of U.S. society, I believe that other potential communists, people like myself who had been involved in Marxism and/or critical pedagogy for decades, might struggle with the necessary solidarity with the aforementioned communist states. This is important because members of communist parties cannot pick and choose which aspects of the Party’s platform to support and defend. Party members, correctly in my view, must support and defend the entireplatform. To clarify whata communist Party program entails I will briefly turn to the PSL as an example. The purpose here is not to provide a complete overview, but to spark the reader’s interest. The role of the ballot is consistency with the politics of comradery. This results in a clean break in capitalism that allows us to reimagine political work and transcend capital’s limitations on what is possible and feasible. Absent this framing, all movements and coalitions inevitably collapse under the strain of competing interests and the lack of connection. Jodi Dean 19 () “Comrade - An Essay on Political Belonging” Verso, 10-01-2019, http://library.lol/main/429C9EC2E2F0AA8DCC33FE2CC178B11D. Accessed 6-27-2021, WWEY The comrade relation remakes the place from which one sees, what it is possible to see, and what possibilities can appear. It enables the revaluation of work and time, what one does, and for whom one does it. Is one’s work done for the people or for the bosses? Is it voluntary or done because one has to work? Does one work for personal provisions or for a collective good? We should recall Marx’s lyrical description of communism in which work becomes “life’s prime want.” We get a glimpse of that in comradeship: one wants to do political work. You don’t want to let down your comrades; you see the value of your work through their eyes, your new collective eyes. Work, determined not by markets but by shared commitments, becomes fulfilling. French communist philosopher and militant Bernard Aspe discusses the problem of contemporary capitalism as a loss of “common time”; that is, the loss of an experience of time generated and enjoyed through our collective being-together.10 From holidays, to meals, to breaks, whatever common time we have is synchronized and enclosed in forms for capitalist appropriation. Communicative capitalism’s apps and trackers amplify this process such that the time of consumption can be measured in much the same way that Taylorism measured the time of production: How long did a viewer spend on a particular web page? Did a person watch a whole ad or click off of it after five seconds? In contrast, the common action that is the actuality of communist movement induces a collective change in capacities. Breaking from capitalism’s 24-7 injunctions to produce and consume for the bosses and owners, the discipline of common struggle expands possibilities for action and intensifies the sense of its necessity. The comrade is a figure for the relation through which this transformation of work and time occurs. How do we imagine political work? Under conditions where political change seems completely out of reach, we might imagine political work asself-transformation. At the very least, we can work on ourselves. In the intensely mediated networks of communicative capitalism, we might see our social media engagements as a kind of activism where Twitter and Facebook function as important sites of struggle. Perhaps we understand writing as important political work and hammer out opinion pieces, letters to the editors, and manifestoes. When we imagine political work, we often take electoral politics as our frame of reference, focusing on voting, lawn signs, bumper stickers, and campaign buttons. Or we think of activists as those who arrange phone banks, canvass door-to-door, and set up rallies. In yet another political imaginary, we might envision political work as study, whether done alone or with others. We might imagine political work as cultural production, the building of new communities, spaces, and ways of seeing. Our imaginary might have a militant, or even militarist, inflection: political work is carried out through marches, occupations, strikes, and blockades; through civil disobedience, direct action, and covert operations. Even with the recognition of the wide array of political activities, the ways people use them to respond to specific situations and capacities, and how they combine to enhance each other, we might still imagine radical political work as punching a Nazi in the face. Throughout these various actions and activities, how are the relations among those fighting on the same side imagined? How do the activists and organizers, militants and revolutionaries relate to one another? During the weeks and months when the Occupy movement was at its peak, relations with others were often infused with a joyous sense of being together, with an enthusiasm for the collective co-creation of new patterns of action and ways of living.11 But the feeling didn’t last. The pressures of organizing diverse people and politics under conditions of police repression and real material need wore down even the most committed activists. Since then, on social media and across the broader left, relations among the politically engaged have again become tense and conflicted, often along lines of race and gender. Dispersed and disorganized, we’re uncertain of whom to trust and what to expect. We encounter contradictory injunctions to self-care and call out. Suspicion undermines support. Exhaustion displaces enthusiasm. Attention to comradeship, to the ways that shared expectations make political work not just possible but also gratifying, may help redirect our energies back to our common struggle. As former CPUSA member David Ross explained to Gornick:
11/5/21
NOVDEC-Econ DA v1
Tournament: AppleValley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harrison AA | Judge: Pratham Soni 1-DA
Econ is strong now and will grow World Bank 21 (June 8th 2021, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2021/06/08/the-global-economy-on-track-for-strong-but-uneven-growth-as-covid-19-still-weighs)//AK A year and a half since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global economy is poised to stage its most robust post-recession recovery in 80 years in 2021. But the rebound is expected to be uneven across countries, as major economies look set to register strong growth even as many developing economies lag. Global growth is expected to accelerate to 5.6 this year, largely on the strength in major economies such as the United States and China. And while growth for almost every region of the world has been revised upward for 2021, many continue to grapple with COVID-19 and what is likely to be its long shadow. Despite this year’s pickup, the level of global GDP in 2021 is expected to be 3.2 below pre-pandemic projections, and per capita GDP among many emerging market and developing economies is anticipated to remain below pre-COVID-19 peaks for an extended period. As the pandemic continues to flare, it will shape the path of global economic activity. The United States and China are each expected to contribute about one quarter of global growth in 2021. The U.S. economy has been bolstered by massive fiscal support, vaccination is expected to become widespread by mid-2021, and growth is expected to reach 6.8 this year, the fastest pace since 1984. China’s economy – which did not contract last year – is expected to grow a solid 8.5 and moderate as the country’s focus shifts to reducing financial stability risks. Lasting Legacies Growth among emerging market and developing economies is expected to accelerate to 6 this year, helped by increased external demand and higher commodity prices. However, the recovery of many countries is constrained by resurgences of COVID-19, uneven vaccination, and a partial withdrawal of government economic support measures. Excluding China, growth is anticipated to unfold at a more modest 4.4 pace. In the longer term, the outlook for emerging market and developing economies will likely be dampened by the lasting legacies of the pandemic – erosion of skills from lost work and schooling; a sharp drop in investment; higher debt burdens; and greater financial vulnerabilities. Growth among this group of economies is forecast to moderate to 4.7 in 2022 as governments gradually withdraw policy support. Among low-income economies, where vaccination has lagged, growth has been revised lower to 2.9. Setting aside the contraction last year, this would be the slowest pace of expansion in two decades. The group’s output level in 2022 is projected to be 4.9 lower than pre-pandemic projections. Fragile and conflict-affected low-income economies have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, and per capita income gains have been set back by at least a decade. Regionally, the recovery is expected to be strongest in East Asia and the Pacific, largely due to the strength of China’s recovery. In South Asia, recovery has been hampered by serious renewed outbreaks of the virus in India and Nepal. The Middle East and North Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to post growth too shallow to offset the contraction of 2020. Sub-Saharan Africa’s recovery, while helped by spillovers from the global recovery, is expected to remain fragile given the slow pace of vaccination and delays to major investments in infrastructure and the extractives sector. With relief from the pandemic tantalizingly close in many places but far from reach in others, policy actions will be critical. Securing equitable vaccine distribution will be essential to ending the pandemic. Far-reaching debt relief will be important to many low-income countries. Policymakers will need to nurture the economic recovery with fiscal and monetary measures while keeping a close eye on safeguarding financial stability. Policies should take the long view, reinvigorating human capital, expanding access to digital connectivity, and investing in green infrastructure to bolster growth along a green, resilient, and inclusive path. It will take global coordination to end the pandemic through widespread vaccination and careful macroeconomic stewardship to avoid crises until we get there.
Strikes are terrible for the economy Haas and Stack 83 (Haas, A., and Stack, S. (1983). Economic Development and Strikes: A Comparative Analysis. The Sociological Quarterly, 24(1), 43–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106362)//AK Theorists of class conflict have debated the nature of the relationship between economic development and the incidence of strikes. The liberal perspective contends that such developmentsas the growth in size of corporations and the separationof owner- ship from control enable modern management to institutionalize industrial conflict in the form of collective bargaining. In contrast, writers in the radical perspective argue that conflict will increase in late industrializationowing to such forces as the bi- polarizationof classes and an increasein union strength.The presentpapertests these structuralisttheories by using data from a sampling of seventy-one nations represent- ing a wide range in economic development. A polynomial regression analysis indi- cates that strikevolume, a chief measureof overall strikeactivity,follows a parabolic curve-increasing until a GNP per capita of about $4,700 is reached and then declining. No support is found for the radical thesis of an upswing in strike activity at high levels of economic development. The findings on control variables indicate that the inflationrate and mass-mediadevelopmenthave significantlypositive effects on strike activity. Finally, a democraticpolitical climate tends to lower strike volume. Research on the determinants of industrial disputes has pursued a number of re- current themes. First, there is the economic paradigm which links current eco- nomic conditions such as unemployment, real wage change, and profit rates to the incidence of strikes (Yoder, 1940; Rees, 1952; Weintraub, 1966; Ashenfelter and Johnson, 1969; Farber, 1978; Edwards, 1978, 1981). Second, there are those who stress structural factors in industrial organization, such as plant size, the extent of unionization, absentee ownership, industrial specialization, and the degree of centralization in collective bargaining (Britt and Galle, 1972, 1974; Kerr and Seigel, 1954; Crouch and Pizzorno, 1981; Lincoln, 1978). Third, some have stressed contextual factors such as the degree of institutionalization of col- lective bargaining and the political climate as mediating the linkage between so- cial conditions and strikes (Shorter and Tilly, 1974; Snyder, 1975). In contrast to this macrosociological or structuralist literature, another tradition calls for a microsociological approach which investigates the impact of the nature of management-worker relations in explaining individual cases of strikes (Batstone, Boraston, and Frenkel, 1978; Gouldner, 1954; Stern, 1978). Finally, there is a body of work testing theories on the effect of industrialization on strike rates (Ross and Hartman, 1960; Mann, 1975; Hibbs, 1976; Cronin, 1979; Korpi and Shalev, 1979). Macrosociological theories of poltical economy reveal a debate over the relation- ship between the level of economic development and strikes. Authors from vari- ous schools of thought tend to agree only on the thesis that strikes tend to increase during the period of early industrialization. These are the times of widespread social and economic problems such as the uprootedness felt by people involved in the necessary and large-scale rural-to-urban migration, eighteen-hour workdays, mass impoverishment, overcrowded housing, fits and starts in the business cycle, and so on. Such conditions are the breeding grounds of industrial disputes (Ross and Hartman, 1960:44; Mann, 1975). However, theorists disagree about the period of late industrialization. On the one hand, many writers in the radical tra- dition contend that such forces as the bipolarization of classes will produce a period of intensified class antagonisms and industrial conflicts in late industriali- zation (Korpi, 1978; Korpi and Shalev, 1979). On the other hand, liberal political economists expect class war to be increasingly institutionalized and contained through such processes as collective bargaining. Such liberal authors have spoken of the withering away of the strike owing to such developments as the separation of ownership from control and such other imperatives of technological development as the shrinking in the relative size of the blue-collar labor force (Ross and Hartman, 1960; Clegg, 1976; Galbraith, 1967; Kerr and Seigel, 1954).special attention was drawn to two opposed theories of the long-term effects of industrializationor strike volume. The results give support to the liberal position in this debate. The effect of economic development on strikes follows a parabolic curve. The position of the radicals that strikes should follow a linear increase with late industrialization was not supported. More work, especially that following a micromethodological pattern, is needed to detect exactly what conditions in late industrialization are responsible for the general decline in strike volume. Several investigations using (postwar) time-series data on strikes in industrial nations have found a resurgence of strike activity in recent years (Korpi, 1978; Korpi and Shalev, 1979, 1980; Hibbs, 1976, 1978). How, then, might an explana- tion be constructed for the opposed findings of the present paper? While it is true that several industrial nations such as Sweden have had a marked increase in strikes in the 1970s, this level of strike activity is considerably less on the average than that found in the nation at the mid-stages of industrialization.While there are signs of a resurgence of strike activity in some industrial countries, the objective magnitude of the resulting level of activity is overshadowed by that of nations at a GNP level of $4-5,000 U.S. 1977 dollars. There is a possibilty that the radical position would be supported by an alterna- tive specification using a cubic development term: S= bE + b2E2+ b3E3+ c This would represent a curve wherein strike activity increases up to mid-industrial- ization then decreases to late industrialization where the curve swings upward again, although not to the level of mid-industrialization.This cubic polynomial was tested in a separate analysis and did not provide a significantfit for the curve. On the whole, the upswing in strike activity noted by the radicals for some nations is offset by a decline in other nations. It is still too early to discount the radical position altogether. History is not over. If the trend toward an increase in strike activity continues in the nations where it has already developed and spreads to other industrialnations, the cubic model may provide the definitive statement on individual disputes. Such would provide ma- terial for a synthesis of sorts between the two opposed positions. Economic decline goes Nuclear. Tønnesson 15, Stein. "Deterrence, interdependence and Sino–US peace." International Area Studies Review 18.3 (2015): 297-311. (the Department of Peace and Conflict, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Peace research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway) Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to the current understanding of how and under what circumstances a combination of nuclear deterrence and economic interdependence may reduce the risk of war between major powers. At least four conclusions can be drawn from the review above: first, those who say that interdependence may both inhibit and drive conflict are right. Interdependence raises the cost of conflict for all sides but asymmetrical or unbalanced dependencies and negative trade expectations may generate tensions leading to trade wars among inter-dependent states that in turn increase the risk of military conflict (Copeland, 2015: 1, 14, 437; Roach, 2014). The risk may increase if one of the interdependent countries is governed by an inward-looking socio-economic coalition (Solingen, 2015); second, the risk of war between China and the US should not just be analysed bilaterally but include their allies and partners. Third party countries could drag China or the US into confrontation; third, in this context it is of some comfort that the three main economic powers in Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) are all deeply integrated economically through production networks within a global system of trade and finance (Ravenhill, 2014; Yoshimatsu, 2014: 576); and fourth, decisions for war and peace are taken by very few people, who act on the basis of their future expectations. International relations theory must be supplemented by foreign policy analysis in order to assess the value attributed by national decision-makers to economic development and their assessments of risks and opportunities. If leaders on either side of the Atlantic begin to seriously fear or anticipate their own nation’s decline then they may blame this on external dependence, appeal to anti-foreign sentiments, contemplate the use of force to gain respect or credibility, adopt protectionist policies, and ultimately refuse to be deterred by either nuclear arms or prospects of socioeconomic calamities. Such a dangerous shift could happen abruptly, i.e. under the instigation of actions by a third party – or against a third party. Yet as long as there is both nuclear deterrence and interdependence, the tensions in East Asia are unlikely to escalate to war. As Chan (2013) says, all states in the region are aware that they cannot count on support from either China or the US if they make provocative moves. The greatest risk is not that a territorial dispute leads to war under present circumstances but that changes in the world economy alter those circumstances in ways that render inter-state peace more precarious. If China and the US fail to rebalance their financial and trading relations (Roach, 2014) then a trade war could result, interrupting transnational production networks, provoking social distress, and exacerbating nationalist emotions. This could have unforeseen consequences in the field of security, with nuclear deterrence remaining the only factor to protect the world from Armageddon, and unreliably so. Deterrence could lose its credibility: one of the two great powers might gamble that the other yield in a cyber-war or conventional limited war, or third party countries might engage in conflict with each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene. Extinction Edwards 17 Paul N. Edwards, CISAC’s William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Being interviewed by EarthSky. How nuclear war would affect Earth’s climate. September 8, 2017. earthsky.org/human-world/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-earths-climate Note, we are only reading parts of the interview that are directly from Paul Edwards -- In the nuclear conversation, what are we not talking about that we should be? We are not talking enough about the climatic effects of nuclear war. The “nuclear winter” theory of the mid-1980s played a significant role in the arms reductions of that period. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, this aspect of nuclear war has faded from view. That’s not good. In the mid-2000s, climate scientists such as Alan Robock (Rutgers) took another look at nuclear winter theory. This time around, they used much-improved and much more detailed climate models than those available 20 years earlier. They also tested the potential effects of smaller nuclear exchanges. The result: an exchange involving just 50 nuclear weapons — the kind of thing we might see in an India-Pakistan war, for example — could loft 5 billion kilograms of smoke, soot and dust high into the stratosphere. That’s enough to cool the entire planet by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.25 degrees Celsius) — about where we were during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century. Growing seasons could be shortened enough to create really significant food shortages. So the climatic effects of even a relatively small nuclear war would be planet-wide. What about a larger-scale conflict? A U.S.-Russia war currently seems unlikely, but if it were to occur, hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption. The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs. Many people are concerned about North Korea’s advancing missile capabilities. Is nuclear war likely in your opinion? At this writing, I think we are closer to a nuclear war than we have been since the early 1960s. In the North Korea case, both Kim Jong-un and President Trump are bullies inclined to escalate confrontations. President Trump lacks impulse control, and there are precious few checks on his ability to initiate a nuclear strike. We have to hope that our generals, both inside and outside the White House, can rein him in. North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die, including hundreds of thousands of Americans currently living in South Korea and Japan (probable North Korean targets). Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any “victory” wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S. It has been more than 70 years since the last time a nuclear bomb was used in warfare. What would be the effects on the environment and on human health today? To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called “battlefield” weapons with lower explosive yields are part of some arsenals now — but it’s quite unlikely that any exchange between two nuclear powers would stay limited to these smaller, less destructive bombs.
11/6/21
NOVDEC-HealthCare PIC
Tournament: AppleValley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harrison AA | Judge: Pratham Soni 2– CP-Pandemics Text: A Just government ought to recognize a conditional right of workers to strike whereby Healthcare Workers are not permitted to strike during a pandemic. Strikes During a Pandemic decks preparedness – responsivity is slowed, faith is deterred, and resources are overstretched. Its try or die for medical preparedness to mitigate the next pandemic. Jamaluddin et al. 21 Jamaluddin, J., Baharum, N. N., Jamil, S. N., and Kamel, M. A. M. (2021). Doctors Strike During COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia: Between Right and Wrong. Voices in Bioethics, 7. https://doi.org/10.52214/vib.v7i.8586 DD HJ Although doctor strikes do not seem to increase patient mortality, they can disrupt delivery of healthcare.32 Disruptions in delivery of service from prolonged strikes can result in decline of in-patient admissions and outpatient service utilization, as suggested during strikes in the UK in 2016.33 When emergency services were affected during the last strike in April, regular service was also significantly affected. Additionally, people might need to seek alternative sources of care from the private sector and face increased costs of care. HCWs themselves may feel guilty and demotivated because of the strikes. The public health system may also lose trust as a result of service disruption caused by high recurrence of strikes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as the healthcare system remains stretched, the potential adverse effects resulting from doctor strikes remain uncertain and potentially disruptive. In the UK, it is an offence to “willfully and maliciously…endanger human life or cause serious bodily injury.”34 Likewise, the General Medical Council (GMC) also requires doctors to ensure that patients are not harmed or put at risk by industrial action. In the US, the American Medical Association code of ethics prohibits strikes by physicians as a bargaining tactic, while allowing some other forms of collective bargaining.35 However, the American College of Physicians prohibits all forms of work stoppages, even when undertaken for necessary changes to the healthcare system. Similarly, the Delhi Medical Council in India issued a statement that “under no circumstances doctors should resort to strike as the same puts patient care in serious jeopardy.”36 On the other hand, the positions taken by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) and Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) on doctors’ strikes are less clear when compared to their Western counterparts. The MMC, in their recently updated Code of Professional Conduct 2019, states that “the public reputation of the medical profession requires that every member should observe proper standards of personal behavior, not only in his professional activities but at all times.” Strikes may lead to imprisonment and disciplinary actions by MMC for those involved. Similarly, the MMA Code of Medical Ethics published in 2002 states that doctors must “make sure that your personal beliefs do not prejudice your patients' care.”37 The MMA which is traditionally meant to represent the voices of doctors in Malaysia, may hold a more moderate position on strikes. Although HCW strikes are not explicitly mentioned in either professional body’s code of conduct and ethics, the consensus is that doctors should not do anything that will harm patients and they must maintain the proper standard of behaviors. These statements seem too general and do not represent the complexity of why and how a strike could take place. Therefore, it has been suggested that doctors and medical organizations should develop a new consensus on issues pertaining to medical professional’s social contract with society while considering the need to uphold the integrity of the profession. Experts in law, ethics, and medicine have long debated whether and when HCW strikes can be justified. If a strike is not expected to result in patient harm it is perhaps acceptable.38 Although these debates have centered on the potential risks that strikes carry for patients, these actions also pose risks for HCWs as they may damage morale and reputation.39 Most fundamentally, strikes raise questions about what healthcare workers owe society and what society owes them. For strikes to be morally permissible and ethical, it is suggested that they must fulfil these three criteria:40 a. Strikes should be proportionate, e., they ‘should not inflict disproportionate harm on patients’, and hospitals should as a minimum ‘continue to provide at least such critical services as emergency care.’ b. Strikes should have a reasonable hope of success, at least not totally futile however tough the political rhetoric is. c. Strikes should be treated as a last resort: ‘all less disruptive alternatives to a strike action must have been tried and failed’, including where appropriate ‘advocacy, dissent and even disobedience’. The current strike does not fulfil the criteria mentioned. As Malaysia is still burdened with a high number of COVID-19 cases, a considerable absence of doctors from work will disrupt health services across the country. Second, since the strike organizer is not unionized, it would be difficult to negotiate better terms of contract and career paths. Third, there are ongoing talks with MMA representing the fraternity and the current government, but the time is running out for the government to establish a proper long-term solution for these contract doctors. One may argue that since the doctors’ contracts will end in a few months with no proper pathways for specialization, now is the time to strike. However, the HCW right to strike should be invoked only legally and appropriately after all other options have failed. CONCLUSION The strike in Malaysia has begun since the drafting of this paper. Doctors involved assure that there will not be any risk to patients, arguing that the strike is “symbolic”.41 Although an organized strike remains a legal form of industrial action, a strike by HCWs in Malaysia poses various unprecedented challenges and ethical dilemmas, especially during the pandemic. The anonymous and uncoordinated strike without support from the appropriate labor unions may only spark futile discussions without affirmative actions. It should not have taken a pandemic or a strike to force the government to confront the issues at hand. It is imperative that active measures be taken to urgently address the underlying issues relating to contract physicians. As COVID-19 continues to affect thousands of people, a prompt reassessment is warranted regarding the treatment of HCWs, and the value placed on health care. Disease causes extinction – weakening health care preparedness is the death knell Ord ‘20 (Toby Ord is a moral philosopher, Oxford University, Future of Life Institute. Ord has advised the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, the US National Intelligence Council, the UK Prime Minister’s Office, Cabinet Office, and Government Office for Science; “Why we need worst-case thinking to prevent pandemics”; The Guardian; D.A. April 18th 2020, Published March 6th 2020; https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/06/worst-case-thinking-prevent-pandemics-coronavirus-existential-risk) TITLE: Why we need worst-case thinking to prevent pandemics The world is in the early stages of what may be the most deadly pandemic of the past 100 years. In China, thousands of people have already died; large outbreaks have begun in South Korea, Iran and Italy; and the rest of the world is bracing for impact. We do not yet know whether the final toll will be measured in thousands or hundreds of thousands. For all our advances in medicine, humanity remains much more vulnerable to pandemics than we would like to believe. To understand our vulnerability, and to determine what steps must be taken to end it, it is useful to ask about the very worst-case scenarios. Just how bad could a pandemic be? In science fiction, we sometimes encounter the idea of a pandemic so severe that it could cause the end of civilisation, or even of humanity itself. Such a risk to humanity’s entire future is known as an existential risk. We can say with certainty that the novel coronavirus, named Covid-19, does not pose such a risk. But could the next pandemic? To find out, and to put the current outbreak into greater context, let us turn to the past. In 1347, death came to Europe. It entered through the Crimean town of Caffa, brought by the besieging Mongol army. Fleeing merchants unwittingly carried it back to Italy. From there, it spread to France, Spain and England. Then up as far as Norway and across the rest of Europe – all the way to Moscow. Within six years, the Black Death had taken the continent. Tens of millions fell gravely ill, their bodies succumbing to the disease in different ways. Some bore swollen buboes on their necks, armpits and thighs; some had their flesh turn black from haemorrhaging beneath the skin; some coughed blood from the necrotic inflammation of their throats and lungs. All forms involved fever, exhaustion and an intolerable stench from the material that exuded from the body. There were so many dead that mass graves needed to be dug and, even then, cemeteries ran out of room for the bodies. The Black Death devastated Europe. In those six years, between a quarter and half of all Europeans were killed. The Middle East was ravaged, too, with the plague killing about one in three Egyptians and Syrians. And it may have also laid waste to parts of central Asia, India and China. Due to the scant records of the 14th century, we will never know the true toll, but our best estimates are that somewhere between 5 and 14 of all the world’s people were killed, in what may have been the greatest catastrophe humanity has seen. The Black Death was not the only biological disaster to scar human history. It was not even the only great bubonic plague. In AD541 the plague of Justinian struck the Byzantine empire. Over three years, it took the lives of roughly 3 of the world’s people. When Europeans reached the Americas in 1492, the two populations exposed each other to completely novel diseases. Over thousands of years, each population had built up resistance to their own set of diseases, but were extremely susceptible to the others. The American peoples got by far the worse end of the exchange, through diseases such as measles, influenza and, especially, smallpox. During the next 100 years, a combination of invasion and disease took an immense toll – one whose scale may never be known, due to great uncertainty about the size of the pre-existing population. We can’t rule out the loss of more than 90 of the population of the Americas during that century, though the number could also be much lower. And it is very difficult to tease out how much of this should be attributed to war and occupation, rather than disease. At a rough estimate, as many as 10 of the world’s people may have been killed. Centuries later, the world had become so interconnected that a truly global pandemic was possible. Towards the end of the first world war, a devastating strain of influenza, known as the 1918 flu or Spanish flu, spread to six continents, and even remote Pacific islands. About a third of the world’s population were infected and between 3 and 6 were killed. This death toll outstripped that of the first world war. Yet even events like these fall short of being a threat to humanity’s long-term potential. In the great bubonic plagues we saw civilisation in the affected areas falter, but recover. The regional 25-50 death rate was not enough to precipitate a continent-wide collapse. It changed the relative fortunes of empires, and may have substantially altered the course of history, but if anything, it gives us reason to believe that human civilisation is likely to make it through future events with similar death rates, even if they were global in scale. The Spanish flu pandemic was remarkable in having very little apparent effect on the world’s development, despite its global reach. It looks as if it was lost in the wake of the first world war, which, despite a smaller death toll, seems to have had a much larger effect on the course of history. The full history of humanity covers at least 200,000 years. While we have scarce records for most of these 2,000 centuries, there is a key lesson we can draw from the sheer length of our past. The chance of human extinction from natural catastrophes of any kind must have been very low for most of this time – or we would not have made it so far. But could these risks have changed? Might the past provide false comfort? Our population now is a thousand times greater than it was for most of human history, so there are vastly more opportunities for new human diseases to originate. And our farming practices have created vast numbers of animals living in unhealthy conditions within close proximity to humans. This increases the risk, as many major diseases originate in animals before crossing over to humans. Examples include HIV (chimpanzees), Ebola (bats), Sars (probably civets or bats) and influenza (usually pigs or birds). We do not yet know where Covid-19 came from, though it is very similar to coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins. Evidence suggests that diseases are crossing over into human populations from animals at an increasing rate. Modern civilisation may also make it much easier for a pandemic to spread. The higher density of people living together in cities increases the number of people each of us may infect. Rapid long-distance transport greatly increases the distance pathogens can spread, reducing the degrees of separation between any two people. Moreover, we are no longer divided into isolated populations as we were for most of the past 10,000 years. Together these effects suggest that we might expect more new pandemics, for them to spread more quickly, and to reach a higher percentage of the world’s people. But we have also changed the world in ways that offer protection. We have a healthier population; improved sanitation and hygiene; preventative and curative medicine; and a scientific understanding of disease. Perhaps most importantly, we have public health bodies to facilitate global communication and coordination in the face of new outbreaks. We have seen the benefits of this protection through the dramatic decline of endemic infectious disease over the past century (though we can’t be sure pandemics will obey the same trend). Finally, we have spread to a range of locations and environments unprecedented for any mammalian species. This offers special protection from extinction events, because it requires the pathogen to be able to flourish in a vast range of environments and to reach exceptionally isolated populations such as uncontacted tribes, Antarctic researchers and nuclear submarine crews. It is hard to know whether these combined effects have increased or decreased the existential risk from pandemics. This uncertainty is ultimately bad news: we were previously sitting on a powerful argument that the risk was tiny; now we are not. We have seen the indirect ways that our actions aid and abet the origination and spread of pandemics. But what about cases where we have a much more direct hand in the process – where we deliberately use, improve or create the pathogens? Our understanding and control of pathogens is very recent. Just 200 years ago, we didn’t even understand the basic cause of pandemics – a leading theory in the west claimed that disease was produced by a kind of gas. In just two centuries, we discovered it was caused by a diverse variety of microscopic agents and we worked out how to grow them in the lab, to breed them for different traits, to sequence their genomes, to implant new genes and to create entire functional viruses from their written code. This progress is continuing at a rapid pace. The past 10 years have seen major qualitative breakthroughs, such as the use of the gene editing tool Crispr to efficiently insert new genetic sequences into a genome, and the use of gene drives to efficiently replace populations of natural organisms in the wild with genetically modified versions. This progress in biotechnology seems unlikely to fizzle out anytime soon: there are no insurmountable challenges looming; no fundamental laws blocking further developments. But it would be optimistic to assume that this uncharted new terrain holds only familiar dangers. To start with, let’s set aside the risks from malicious intent, and consider only the risks that can arise from well-intentioned research. Most scientific and medical research poses a negligible risk of harms at the scale we are considering. But there is a small fraction that uses live pathogens of kinds that are known to threaten global harm. These include the agents that cause the Spanish flu, smallpox, Sars and H5N1 or avian flu. And a small part of this research involves making strains of these pathogens that pose even more danger than the natural types, increasing their transmissibility, lethality or resistance to vaccination or treatment. In 2012, a Dutch virologist, Ron Fouchier, published details of an experiment on the recent H5N1 strain of bird flu. This strain was extremely deadly, killing an estimated 60 of humans it infected – far beyond even the Spanish flu. Yet its inability to pass from human to human had so far prevented a pandemic. Fouchier wanted to find out whether (and how) H5N1 could naturally develop this ability. He passed the disease through a series of 10 ferrets, which are commonly used as a model for how influenza affects humans. By the time it passed to the final ferret, his strain of H5N1 had become directly transmissible between mammals. The work caused fierce controversy. Much of this was focused on the information contained in his work. The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity ruled that his paper had to be stripped of some of its technical details before publication, to limit the ability of bad actors to cause a pandemic. And the Dutch government claimed that the research broke EU law on exporting information useful for bioweapons. But it is not the possibility of misuse that concerns me here. Fouchier’s research provides a clear example of well-intentioned scientists enhancing the destructive capabilities of pathogens known to threaten global catastrophe. Of course, such experiments are done in secure labs, with stringent safety standards. It is highly unlikely that in any particular case the enhanced pathogens would escape into the wild. But just how unlikely? Unfortunately, we don’t have good data, due to a lack of transparency about incident and escape rates. This prevents society from making well-informed decisions balancing the risks and benefits of this research, and it limits the ability of labs to learn from each other’s incidents. Security for highly dangerous pathogens has been deeply flawed, and remains insufficient. In 2001, Britain was struck by a devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in livestock. Six million animals were killed in an attempt to halt its spread, and the economic damages totalled £8bn. Then, in 2007, there was another outbreak, which was traced to a lab working on the disease. Foot-and-mouth was considered a highest-category pathogen, and required the highest level of biosecurity. Yet the virus escaped from a badly maintained pipe, leaking into the groundwater at the facility. After an investigation, the lab’s licence was renewed – only for another leak to occur two weeks later. In my view, this track record of escapes shows that even the highest biosafety level (BSL-4) is insufficient for working on pathogens that pose a risk of global pandemics on the scale of the Spanish flu or worse. Thirteen years since the last publicly acknowledged outbreak from a BSL-4 facility is not good enough. It doesn’t matter whether this is from insufficient standards, inspections, operations or penalties. What matters is the poor track record in the field, made worse by a lack of transparency and accountability. With current BSL-4 labs, an escape of a pandemic pathogen is only a matter of time. One of the most exciting trends in biotechnology is its rapid democratisation – the speed at which cutting-edge techniques can be adopted by students and amateurs. When a new breakthrough is achieved, the pool of people with the talent, training, resources and patience to reproduce it rapidly expands: from a handful of the world’s top biologists, to people with PhDs in the field, to millions of people with undergraduate-level biology. The Human Genome Project was the largest ever scientific collaboration in biology. It took 13 years and $500m to produce the full DNA sequence of the human genome. Just 15 years later, a genome can be sequenced for under $1,000, and within a single hour. The reverse process has become much easier, too: online DNA synthesis services allow anyone to upload a DNA sequence of their choice then have it constructed and shipped to their address. While still expensive, the price of synthesis has fallen by a factor of 1,000 in the past two decades, and continues to drop. The first ever uses of Crispr and gene drives were the biotechnology achievements of the decade. But within just two years, each of these technologies were used successfully by bright students participating in science competitions. Such democratisation promises to fuel a boom of entrepreneurial biotechnology. But since biotechnology can be misused to lethal effect, democratisation also means proliferation. As the pool of people with access to a technique grows, so does the chance it contains someone with malign intent. People with the motivation to wreak global destruction are mercifully rare. But they exist. Perhaps the best example is the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan, active between 1984 and 1995, which sought to bring about the destruction of humanity. It attracted several thousand members, including people with advanced skills in chemistry and biology. And it demonstrated that it was not mere misanthropic ideation. It launched multiple lethal attacks using VX gas and sarin gas, killing more than 20 people and injuring thousands. It attempted to weaponise anthrax, but did not succeed. What happens when the circle of people able to create a global pandemic becomes wide enough to include members of such a group? Or members of a terrorist organisation or rogue state that could try to build an omnicidal weapon for the purposes of extortion or deterrence? The main candidate for biological existential risk in the coming decades thus stems from technology – particularly the risk of misuse by states or small groups. But this is not a case in which the world is blissfully unaware of the risks. Bertrand Russell wrote of the danger of extinction from biowarfare to Einstein in 1955. And, in 1969, the possibility was raised by the American Nobel laureate for medicine, Joshua Lederberg: “As a scientist I am profoundly concerned about the continued involvement of the United States and other nations in the development of biological warfare. This process puts the very future of human life on earth in serious peril.” In response to such warnings, we have already begun national and international efforts to protect humanity. There is action through public health and international conventions, and self-regulation by biotechnology companies and the scientific community. Are they adequate? National and international work in public health offers some protection from engineered pandemics, and its existing infrastructure could be adapted to better address them. Yet even for existing dangers this protection is uneven and under-provided. Despite its importance, public health is underfunded worldwide, and poorer countries remain vulnerable to being overwhelmed by outbreaks. Biotechnology companies are working to limit the dark side of the democratisation of their field. For example, unrestricted DNA synthesis would help bad actors overcome a major hurdle in creating extremely deadly pathogens. It would allow them to get access to the DNA of controlled pathogens such as smallpox (whose genome is readily available online) and to create DNA with modifications to make the pathogen more dangerous. Therefore, many synthesis companies make voluntary efforts to manage this risk, screening their orders for dangerous sequences. But the screening methods are imperfect, and they only cover about 80 of orders. There is significant room for improving this process, and a strong case for making screening mandatory. We might also look to the scientific community for careful management of biological risks. Many of the dangerous advances usable by states and small groups have come from open science. And we’ve seen that science produces substantial accident risk. The scientific community has tried to regulate its dangerous research, but with limited success. There are a variety of reasons why this is extremely hard, including difficulty in knowing where to draw the line, lack of central authorities to unify practice, a culture of openness and freedom to pursue whatever is of interest, and the rapid pace of science outpacing that of governance. It may be possible for the scientific community to overcome these challenges and provide strong management of global risks, but it would require a willingness to accept serious changes to its culture and governance – such as treating the security around biotechnology more like that around nuclear power. And the scientific community would need to find this willingness before catastrophe strikes. Threats to humanity, and how we address them, define our time. The advent of nuclear weapons posed a real risk of human extinction in the 20th century. There is strong reason to believe the risk will be higher this century, and increasing with each century that technological progress continues. Because these anthropogenic risks outstrip all natural risks combined, they set the clock on how long humanity has left to pull back from the brink. I am not claiming that extinction is the inevitable conclusion of scientific progress, or even the most likely outcome. What I am claiming is that there has been a robust trend towards increases in the power of humanity, which has reached a point where we pose a serious risk to our own existence. How we react to this risk is up to us. Nor am I arguing against technology. Technology has proved itself immensely valuable in improving the human condition. The problem is not so much an excess of technology as a lack of wisdom. Carl Sagan put this especially well: “Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology – but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise. The world-altering powers that technology has delivered into our hands now require a degree of consideration and foresight that has never before been asked of us.” Because we cannot come back from extinction, we cannot wait until a threat strikes before acting – we must be proactive. And because gaining wisdom takes time, we need to start now. I think that we are likely to make it through this period. Not because the challenges are small, but because we will rise to them. The very fact that these risks stem from human action shows us that human action can address them. Defeatism would be both unwarranted and counterproductive – a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, we must address these challenges head-on with clear and rigorous thinking, guided by a positive vision of the longterm future we are trying to protect.
11/6/21
SEPTOCT-Addiction DA
Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lynbrook SM | Judge: Felicity Park Addiction DA Increasing access to addictive medicines means an increase in addiction – previous legalization proves. DuPont Robert L., M.D. (member, Rivermend Health Scientific Advisory Board, President, Institute for Behavior and Health Inc. First Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse) “Marijuana Legalization Has Led to More Use and Addiction While Illegal Market Continues to Thrive”, Rivermend Health, https://www.rivermendhealth.com/resources/marijuana-legalization-led-use-addiction-illegal-market-continues-thrive/DebateDrills LC It comes as no surprise that the prevalence of marijuana use has significantly increased over the last decade. With marijuana legal for recreational use in four states and the District of Columbia and for medical use in an additional 31 states, the public perception about marijuana has shifted, with more people reporting that they support legalization. However, there is little public awareness, and close to zero media attention, to the near-doubling of past year marijuana use nationally among adults age 18 and older and the corresponding increase in problems related to its use. Because the addiction rate for marijuana remains stable—with about one in three past year marijuana users experiencing a marijuana use disorder—the total number of Americans with marijuana use disorders also has significantly increased. It is particularly disturbing that the public is unaware of the fact that of all Americans with substance use disorders due to drugs other than alcohol, nearly 60 percent are due to marijuana. That means that more Americans are addicted to marijuana than any other drug, including heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and the nonmedical use of prescription drugs. Stores in Colorado and Washington with commercialized marijuana sell innovative marijuana products offering users record-high levels of THC potency. Enticing forms of marijuana, including hash oil used in discreet vaporizer pens and edibles like cookies, candy and soda are attractive to users of all ages, particularly those underage. The legal marijuana producers are creatively and avidly embracing these new trends in marijuana product development, all of which encourage not only more users but also more intense marijuana use. Yet despite the expansion of state legal marijuana markets, the illegal market for marijuana remains robust, leaving state regulators two uncomfortable choices: either a ban can be placed on the highest potency—and most enticing—marijuana products which will push the legal market back to products with more moderate levels of THC, or the current evolution to ever-more potent and more attractive products can be considered acceptable despite its considerable negative health and safety consequences. If tighter regulations are the chosen option, the illegal market will continue to exploit the desire of marijuana users to consume more potent and attractive products. If state governments let the market have its way, there will be no limit to the potency of legally marketed addicting marijuana products. Cannabis addiction has drastic and unknown impacts. CDC 21 “Addiction (Marijuana or Cannabis Use Disorder)”, Centers for Disease Control, https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/addiction.htmlDebateDrills LC People who have marijuana use disorder may also be at a higher risk of other negative consequences, such as problems with attention, memory, and learning. Some people who have marijuana use disorder may need to use more and more marijuana or greater concentrations of marijuana over time to experience a “high.” The greater the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana (in other words, the concentration or strength), the stronger the effects the marijuana may have on the brain.5,6 The amount of THC in marijuana has increased over the past few decades.6 In a study of cannabis research samples over time, the average delta-9 THC (the main form of THC in the cannabis plant) concentration almost doubled, from 9 in 2008 to 17 in 2017.7 Products from dispensaries often offer much higher concentrations than seen in this study. In a study of products available in online dispensaries in 3 states with legal non-medical adult marijuana use, the average THC concentration was 22, with a range of 0 to 45.8 In addition, some methods of using marijuana (for example, dabbing and vaping concentrates) may deliver very high levels of THC to the user.6,9 Researchers do not yet know the full extent of the consequences when the body and brain are exposed to high concentrations of THC or how recent increases in concentrations affect the risk of someone developing marijuana use disorder.6 Cannabis is also a gateway drug, leading to increased use of other, more dangerous drugs. National Institute on Drug Abuse (lead federal agency supporting scientific research on drug use and its consequences) National Institutes of Health, https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/marijuana-gateway-drugDebateDrills LC Some research suggests that marijuana use is likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances45 and the development of addiction to other substances. For instance, a study using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol Use and Related Disorders found that adults who reported marijuana use during the first wave of the survey were more likely than adults who did not use marijuana to develop an alcohol use disorder within 3 years; people who used marijuana and already had an alcohol use disorder at the outset were at greater risk of their alcohol use disorder worsening.46 Marijuana use is also linked to other substance use disorders including nicotine addiction. Early exposure to cannabinoids in adolescent rodents decreases the reactivity of brain dopamine reward centers later in adulthood.47 To the extent that these findings generalize to humans, this could help explain the increased vulnerability for addiction to other substances of misuse later in life that most epidemiological studies have reported for people who begin marijuana use early in life.48 It is also consistent with animal experiments showing THC’s ability to "prime" the brain for enhanced responses to other drugs.49 For example, rats previously administered THC show heightened behavioral response not only when further exposed to THC but also when exposed to other drugs such as morphine—a phenomenon called cross-sensitization.50
10/16/21
SEPTOCT-Innovation DA
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough AW | Judge: Gordon Krauss Covid-19 has supercharged innovation in the status quo Ramalingam and Prabhu 20 Ben Ramalingam- Overseas Development Institute, United Kingdom. Jaideep Prabhu University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. “Innovation, development and COVID-19: Challenges, opportunities and ways forward.” OECD. 1 December 2020. Link: https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/innovation-development-and-covid-19-challenges-opportunities-and-ways-forward-0c976158/ JV Coronavirus (COVID-19) innovation: AND global coronavirus outbreak (SARS in 2002–04).
The risks associated with creating new drugs means that patents are key to biopharmaceutical innovation Cockburn and Long 15 Iain Cockburn, Richard C. Shipley Professor of Management. Genia Long, senior advisor and part of analysis group. “The importance of patents to innovation: updates cross-industry comparison with biopharmaceuticals.” Taylor and Francis online, Volume 25, Issue 7, 2015. Published online: 30 April 2015. Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1517/13543776.2015.1040762 JV
Due to distinctive AND in other industries 7.
Pharma collapses without strong IP protections Buckland 17 - Danny Buckland (award-winning journalist who writes about health, general features and news, shortlisted for the prestigious Mind Media Awards for his work covering mental health issues), April 26, 2017, “Patents are lifeblood of pharmas”, https://www.raconteur.net/legal/intellectual-property/patents-are-lifeblood-of-pharmas/ WJ Pharmaceutical companies are AND without good IP.
Pandemics are a non-linear, existential risk-~--encompasses AND outweighs other threats. Empirically proven by historic epidemics such as the Black Death and Spanish flu Pamlin and Armstrong 15, Dennis Pamlin, Executive Project Manager Global Risks, Global Challenges Foundation, and Stuart Armstrong, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, February 2015, “Global Challenges: 12 Risks that threaten human civilization: The case for a new risk category,” Global Challenges Foundation, p.30-93, https://api.globalchallenges.org/static/wp-content/uploads/12-Risks-with-infinite-impact.pdfRe DE EK Global A pandemic effective anti-pandemic solutions.
9/5/21
SEPTOCT-Opiods CP
Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lynbrook SM | Judge: Felicity Park Opioids CP
CP Text: States ought to ban the prescription of opioids.
Same strcutures- no other drugs. Opiods is adv. Solves case – if there aren’t opioids medically prescribed then people can’t overdose on them. Even if people can get them illegally that isn’t a solvency deficit because in the aff they could do that too.
10/16/21
SEPTOCT-T Cant Spec IP Protection
Tournament: Nano Nagle Voices | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lynbrook SM | Judge: Felicity Park T – Nebel IP protections Interpretation – the Aff may not specify a specific type of IP protection Intellectual property protections is a generic bare plural Leslie and Lerner 16 Sarah-Jane Leslie (Ph.D., Princeton, 2007) is the dean of the Graduate School and Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy. She has previously served as the vice dean for faculty development in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, director of the Program in Linguistics, and founding director of the Program in Cognitive Science at Princeton University. She is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Psychology, the University Center for Human Values, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy, and Adam Lerner, Ph.D, Postgraduate Research Associate in the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University, 4-24-2016, accessed 9-4-2021, "Generic Generalizations (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)," https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/generics/ HWIC There are some tests that are helpful in distinguishing these two readings. For example, the existential interpretation is upward entailing, meaning that the statement will always remain true if we replace the subject term with a more inclusive term. Consider our examples above. In (1b), we can replace “tiger” with “animal” salva veritate, but in (1a) we cannot. If “tigers are on the lawn” is true, then “animals are on the lawn” must be true. However, “tigers are striped” is true, yet “animals are striped” is false. (1a) does not entail that animals are striped, but (1b) entails that animals are on the front lawn (Lawler 1973; Laca 1990; Krifka et al. 1995). Another test concerns whether we can insert an adverb of quantification with minimal change of meaning (Krifka et al. 1995). For example, inserting “usually” in the sentences in (1a) (e.g., “tigers are usually striped”) produces only a small change in meaning, while inserting “usually” in (1b) dramatically alters the meaning of the sentence (e.g., “tigers are usually on the front lawn”). (For generics such as “mosquitoes carry malaria”, the adverb “sometimes” is perhaps better used than “usually” to mark off the generic reading.) It applies to medicines:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that nations ought to reduce IPP for one medicine does not entail that those nations ought to reduce IPP for all medicines 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a reduction is universal and permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Ground – spec guts core generics like innovation that rely on reducing IP for all medicines because individual medicines don’t affect the pharmaceutical industry broadly – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
3. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly. Illogical 5. Fairness is a voter – necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate 7. T first- Arguments only function under the current topic. So we need to comprehend the topic first before other arguments like theory. We only have 2 months to talk about the topic but we have unlimited time to debate theory T o/w on time frame