Opponent: Homestead SL | Judge: Ari Davidson, Colton Gilbert, Jonathan Hsu
1AC - Hapticality 1NC2NR - T-Framework
Jack Howe
1
Opponent: Perry JA | Judge: Lukas Krause
1AC - Zoom 1NC2NR - T-Framework
Jack Howe
3
Opponent: Peninsula EL | Judge: Jan Wimmer
1AC - Covid 1NC2NR - DA-Innovation
Jack Howe
6
Opponent: Archbishop Mitty AA | Judge: Saketh Kotapati
1AC - Data Exlcusivity 1NC2NR - DA-Drug Prices
Mid America Cup
1
Opponent: Princeton JG | Judge: Faizaan Dossani
1AC - Disability 1NC2NR - T-Framework
Mid America Cup
3
Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Cyrus Jackson
1AC - Covid 1NC - CP-Donations w Biotech nb DA-Debt 2NR - CP Biotech
Mid America Cup
5
Opponent: Mission San Jose SB | Judge: Spencer Orlowski
1AC - Preciado 1NC - T-Framework K-Cap Case 2NR - T-Framework Case
NDCA
1
Opponent: Strake Jesuit JS | Judge: Gordon Krauss
CITES NOT WORKING 1AC - Koorsgard w Megaconstellations 1NC - Util from lex jb China PIC Water DA Case 1AR - All Condo vi utopian fiat vi 2NR - CPDACase 2AR - Same
NDCA
3
Opponent: Immaculate Heart AW | Judge: Viren Abhyankar
1AC - China 1NC - Demilitarize Mining PIC Heg adv cp Mining Good DA Crypto PIC Case 1AR - All Condo Pics 2NR - Same
Nano Nagle
2
Opponent: Sequoia AS | Judge: Amy Nyberg
1AC- Jordan 1NC2NR - K-Cap
Nano Nagle
4
Opponent: Mission San Jose SR | Judge: Lukas Krause
1AC - Lunar Heritage 1NC - CP-Regulations DA-Innovation Case 2NR - DA Case
Palm Classic
4
Opponent: West Ranch SV | Judge: Lauren Woodall
1AC - PTD 1NC - T-Extra T-Appropriation CP-Guardianship DA-Rule of Law Case 2NR - CP Case
Palm Classic
6
Opponent: Lexington JB | Judge: Chris Castillo
1AC - China Kant 1NC - T-Extra NC-Util v4 CP-Kant adv lol DA-Xi Case 1AR - AFC Spec Status TJFs4Kant 2NR - Answering that crap DA Util
Palm Classic
Doubles
Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Holden Bukowsky
1AC - LEO 1NC - T-Extra DA-Innovation Adv CPs for OzoneDebrisAsteroids Case 2NR - DA Case
Palm Classic
Octas
Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Jacob Nails, Parker Hopkins, Gordon Krauss
1AC - China 1NC - CP-Demilitarized Mining PIC DA-Xi Case 2NR - PIC Case
turbografx16
Quads
Opponent: Contact | Judge: Contact
contact
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites
Entry
Date
0 - Contact
Tournament: turbografx16 | Round: Quads | Opponent: Contact | Judge: Contact 23muzzik@students.harker.org cites not working, just hit "round reports" at the top and expand all
3/5/22
0 - Palm Classic R6 Note
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 6 | Opponent: Lexington JB | Judge: Chris Castillo I can only get full text for this round 1NC was xi da, adv cp for kant, extra T, and util just check the o/s
3/25/22
GEN - K - Curry and Curry
Tournament: Nano Nagle | Round: 4 | Opponent: Mission San Jose SR | Judge: Lukas Krause
Academic philosophy is anti-Black – the 1AC’s abstraction from the material consequences of racialized violence absolves white philosophers of their contributions to America’s apathy towards racism
Tommy J. Curry and Curry 18 ~Tommy, PhD, Prof. of Philosophy @ TAMU, Gwenetta, PhD, Ass. Prof. of Gender and Race Studies @ Alabama~, "On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-September 2018). DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12244 We begin with the first author’s reflections on philosophy and its recurring problem of denying
AND
and build strategies against the present problems of racism in philosophy before us.
Even if they win that their theory is theoretically ideal, it is practically impossible because racialized bodies are marked by their skin color – the psychological construction of Black as inferior makes their impacts inevitable
Tommy J. Curry and Curry 18 ~Tommy, PhD, Prof. of Philosophy @ TAMU, Gwenetta, PhD, Ass. Prof. of Gender and Race Studies @ Alabama~, "On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-September 2018). DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12244 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010: 15) explains that colorblind racism emerged as
AND
or friends who live within their social environment. Academic philosophy operates similarly.
Racism deems Black life disposable and demands racialized violence – we’re not an ad-hom that criticizes the positionality or personal views of their authors – their philosophy is actively used as an expression of white supremacy
Tommy J. Curry and Curry 18 ~Tommy, PhD, Prof. of Philosophy @ TAMU, Gwenetta, PhD, Ass. Prof. of Gender and Race Studies @ Alabama~, "On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-September 2018). DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12244 Far too often, the Black philosopher is charged with making sense of the irrationality
AND
that Black philosophers and graduate students share with whites become more worthwhile topics.
This turns the aff – America is organized around the subjugation and death of non-white people – discriminatory applications of their policy are inevitable absent a recognition of racialization in the law – their colorblindness is mutually exclusive with the necessary upheaval of the racial dynamics that necessitate inequality.
Tommy J. and Gwenetta Curry and Curry 18 ~Tommy, PhD, Prof. of Philosophy @ TAMU, Gwenetta, PhD, Ass. Prof. of Gender and Race Studies @ Alabama~, "On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-September 2018). DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12244 It is now accepted fact that scientists have been able to demonstrate that race does
AND
rely on institutional racism to produce social structures that reward and elevate whites.
Instead, the alternative is to affirm Black philosophy as a site to engage in radical theorizations that are a genuine reflection of Black experience – attempts at integration commodifies Black philosophers as extensions of white thinkers which waters down Black philosophy to a form for white philosophers to deem respectable scholarship – a fundamental reorientation of the discipline away from universal reason is key.
Tommy J. Curry and Curry 18 ~Tommy, PhD, Prof. of Philosophy @ TAMU, Gwenetta, PhD, Ass. Prof. of Gender and Race Studies @ Alabama~, "On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-September 2018). DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12244 The debate about what constitutes or is real philosophy continues to dominate the discussions concerning
AND
levels of thought is what is at stake in the Black philosophical project.
The role of the ballot is to endorse a pedagogical investment of rejecting racism – they have to win that the aff is not racist to engage in the first place – it comes first because it determines academic spaces and is an accessibility magnifier
Don’t evaluate the plan if we win a link: colorblindness is the structuring ideological conflict of debate that pervades the performances and behavior of the community
3/23/22
GEN - NC - Util
Tournament: College Prep | Round: 3 | Opponent: Hamilton AL | Judge: April Ma The standard is maximizing expected well being
1 Extinction o/ws –
a trillions of people in future generations means the future holds a lot of value which extinction destroys – outweighs their offense under any framework, regardless of whether they are deontic or aretaic
b Gateway issue - we need to be alive to assign value and debate competing moral theories- extinction literally ends the debate on “ought”.
be acting very wrongly.” (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
3 Non util ethics are impossible Greene 10 – Joshua, Associate Professor of Social science in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul published in Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, accessed: www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf) What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human
AND
religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question.
3/25/22
GEN - NC - Util v3
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake MT | Judge: Vanessa Nguyen Reducing existential risks is the top priority in any coherent moral theory Plummer, PhD, 15 (Theron, Philosophy @St. Andrews http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/moral-agreement-on-saving-the-world/) There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent
AND
be acting very wrongly.” (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
No space industrial complex – they have no evidence that our authors are biased and you should reject generalizing statements – just as likely that their authors are paid off by anti-space privatization hacks
Rejecting strategic predictions of threats makes them inevitable—decisionmakers will rely on preconceived conceptions of threat rather than the more qualified predictions of analysts Michael Fitzsimmons 7, Washington DC defense analyst, “The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning”, Survival, Winter 06-07, online) But handling even this weaker form of uncertainty is still quite challeng- ing.
AND
, such decisions may be poorly understood by the decision-makers themselves.
Off their slow violence framing cards – our DAs turn it – war, environmental destruction, etc. all disproportionately harm the most marginalized – don’t conflate small magnitude with high probability – they still need to win that they solve their impacts before they can say case outweighs
3/25/22
GEN - NC - Util v3
Tournament: NDCA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit JS | Judge: Gordon Krauss The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing Independently: 1~ Death outweighs Burns 2017 (Elizabeth Finneron-Burns is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick and an Affiliated Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, What’s wrong with human extinction?, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00455091.2016.1278150?needAccess=true, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2017) Many, though certainly not all, people might believe that it would be wrong to bring about the end of the human species, and the reasons given for this belief are various. I begin by considering four reasons that could be given against the moral permissibility of human extinction. I will argue that only those reasons that impact the people who exist at the time that the extinction or the knowledge of the upcoming extinction occurs, can explain its wrongness. I use this conclusion to then consider in which cases human extinction would be morally permissible or impermissible, arguing that there is only a small class of cases in which it would not be wrong to cause the extinction of the human race or allow it to happen. 2.1. It would prevent the existence of very many happy people One reason of human extinction might be considered to be wrong lies in the value of human life itself. The thought here might be that it is a good thing for people to exist and enjoy happy lives and extinction would deprive more people of enjoying this good. The ‘good’ in this case could be understood in at least two ways. According to the first, one might believe that you benefit a person by bringing them into existence, or at least, that it is good for that person that they come to exist. The second view might hold that if humans were to go extinct, the utility foregone by the billions (or more) of people who could have lived but will now never get that opportunity, renders allowing human extinction to take place an incidence of wrongdoing. An example of this view can be found in two quotes from an Effective Altruism blog post by Peter Singer, Nick Beckstead and Matt Wage: One very bad thing about human extinction would be that billions of people would likely die painful deaths. But in our view, this is by far not the worst thing about human extinction. The worst thing about human extinction is that there would be no future generations. Since there could be so many generations in our future, the value of all those generations together greatly exceeds the value of the current generation. (Beckstead, Singer, and Wage 2013) The authors are making two claims. The first is that there is value in human life and also something valuable about creating future people which gives us a reason to do so; furthermore, it would be a very bad thing if we did not do so. The second is that, not only would it be a bad thing for there to be no future people, but it would actually be the worst thing about extinction. Since happy human lives have value, and the number of potential people who could ever exist is far greater than the number of people who exist at any one time, even if the extinction were brought about through the painful deaths of currently existing people, the former’s loss would be greater than the latter’s. Both claims are assuming that there is an intrinsic value in the existence of potential human life. The second claim makes the further assumption that the forgone value of the potential lives that could be lived is greater than the disvalue that would be accrued by people existing at the time of the extinction through suffering from painful and/or premature deaths. The best-known author of the post, Peter Singer is a prominent utilitarian, so it is not surprising that he would lament the potential lack of future human lives per se. However, it is not just utilitarians who share this view, even if implicitly. Indeed, other philosophers also seem to imply that they share the intuition that there is just something wrong with causing or failing to prevent the extinction of the human species such that we prevent more ‘people’ from having the ‘opportunity to exist’. Stephen Gardiner (2009) and Martin O’Neill (personal correspondence), both sympathetic to contract theory, for example, also find it intuitive that we should want more generations to have the opportunity to exist, assuming that they have worth-living lives, and I find it plausible to think that many other people (philosophers and non-philosophers alike) probably share this intuition. When we talk about future lives being ‘prevented’, we are saying that a possible person or a set of possible people who could potentially have existed will now never actually come to exist. To say that it is wrong to prevent people from existing could either mean that a possible person could reasonably reject a principle that permitted us not to create them, or that the foregone value of their lives provides a reason for rejecting any principle that permits extinction. To make the first claim we would have to argue that a possible person could reasonably reject any principle that prevented their existence on the grounds that it prevented them in particular from existing. However, this is implausible for two reasons. First, we can only wrong someone who did, does or will actually exist because wronging involves failing to take a person’s interests into account. When considering the permissibility of a principle allowing us not to create Person X, we cannot take X’s interest in being created into account because X will not exist if we follow the principle. By considering the standpoint of a person in our deliberations we consider the burdens they will have to bear as a result of the principle. In this case, there is no one who will bear any burdens since if the principle is followed (that is, if we do not create X), X will not exist to bear any burdens. So, only people who do/will actually exist can bear the brunt of a principle, and therefore occupy a standpoint that is owed justification. Second, existence is not an interest at all and a possible person is not disadvantaged by not being caused to exist. Rather than being an interest, it is a necessary requirement in order to have interests. Rivka Weinberg describes it as ‘neutral’ because causing a person to exist is to create a subject who can have interests; existence is not an interest itself.3 In order to be disadvantaged, there must be some detrimental effect on your interests. However, without existence, a person does not have any interests so they cannot be disadvantaged by being kept out of existence. But, as Weinberg points out, ‘never having interests itself could not be contrary to people’s interests since without interest bearers, there can be no ‘they’ for it to be bad for’ (Weinberg 2008, 13). So, a principle that results in some possible people never becoming actual does not impose any costs on those ‘people’ because nobody is disadvantaged by not coming into existence.4 It therefore seems that it cannot be wrong to fail to bring particular people into existence. This would mean that no one acts wrongly when they fail to create another person. Writ large, it would also not be wrong if everybody decided to exercise their prerogative not to create new people and potentially, by consequence, allow human extinction. One might respond here by saying that although it may be permissible for one person to fail to create a new person, it is not permissible if everyone chooses to do so because human lives have value and allowing human extinction would be to forgo a huge amount of value in the world. This takes us to the second way of understanding the potential wrongness of preventing people from existing — the foregone value of a life provides a reason for rejecting any principle that prevents it. One possible reply to this claim turns on the fact that many philosophers acknowledge that the only, or at least the best, way to think about the value of (individual or groups of) possible people’s lives is in impersonal terms (Parfit 1984; Reiman 2007; McMahan 2009). Jeff McMahan, for example, writes ‘at the time of one’s choice there is no one who exists or will exist independently of that choice for whose sake one could be acting in causing him or her to exist … it seems therefore that any reason to cause or not to cause an individual to exist … is best considered an impersonal rather than individual-affecting reason’ (McMahan 2009, 52). Another reply along similar lines would be to appeal to the value that is lost or at least foregone when we fail to bring into existence a next (or several next) generations of people with worth-living lives. Since ex hypothesi worth-living lives have positive value, it is better to create more such lives and worse to create fewer. Human extinction by definition is the creation of no future lives and would ‘deprive’ billions of ‘people’ of the opportunity to live worth-living lives. This might reduce the amount of value in the world at the time of the extinction (by killing already existing people), but it would also prevent a much vaster amount of value in the future (by failing to create more people). Both replies depend on the impersonal value of human life. However, recall that in contractualism impersonal values are not on their own grounds for reasonably rejecting principles. Scanlon himself says that although we have a strong reason not to destroy existing human lives, this reason ‘does not flow from the thought that it is a good thing for there to be more human life rather than less’ (104). In contractualism, something cannot be wrong unless there is an impact on a person. Thus, neither the impersonal value of creating a particular person nor the impersonal value of human life writ large could on its own provide a reason for rejecting a principle permitting human extinction. It seems therefore that the fact that extinction would deprive future people of the opportunity to live worth-living lives (either by failing to create either particular future people or future people in general) cannot provide us with a reason to consider human extinction to be wrong. Although the lost value of these ‘lives’ itself cannot be the reason explaining the wrongness of extinction, it is possible the knowledge of this loss might create a personal reason for some existing people. I will consider this possibility later on in section (d). But first I move to the second reason human extinction might be wrong per se. 2.2. It would mean the loss of the only known form of intelligent life and all civilization and intellectual progress would be lost A second reason we might think it would be wrong to cause human extinction is the loss that would occur of the only (known) form of rational life and the knowledge and civilization that that form of life has created. One thought here could be that just as some might consider it wrong to destroy an individual human heritage monument like the Sphinx, it would also be wrong if the advances made by humans over the past few millennia were lost or prevented from progressing. A related argument is made by those who feel that there is something special about humans’ capacity for rationality which is valuable in itself. Since humans are the only intelligent life that we know of, it would be a loss, in itself, to the world for that to end. I admit that I struggle to fully appreciate this thought. It seems to me that Henry Sidgwick was correct in thinking that these things are only important insofar as they are important to humans (Sidgwick 1874, I.IX.4).5 If there is no form of intelligent life in the future, who would there be to lament its loss since intelligent life is the only form of life capable of appreciating intelligence? Similarly, if there is no one with the rational capacity to appreciate historic monuments and civil progress, who would there be to be negatively affected or even notice the loss?6 However, even if there is nothing special about human rationality, just as some people try to prevent the extinction of nonhuman animal species, we might think that we ought also to prevent human extinction for the sake of biodiversity. The thought in this, as well as the earlier examples, must be that it would somehow be bad for the world if there were no more humans even though there would be no one for whom it is bad. This may be so but the only way to understand this reason is impersonally. Since we are concerned with wrongness rather than badness, we must ask whether something that impacts no one’s well-being, status or claims can be wrong. As we saw earlier, in the contractualist framework reasons must be personal rather than impersonal in order to provide grounds for reasonable rejection (Scanlon 1998, 218–223). Since the loss of civilization, intelligent life or biodiversity are per se impersonal reasons, there is no standpoint from which these reasons could be used to reasonably reject a principle that permitted extinction. Therefore, causing human extinction on the grounds of the loss of civilization, rational life or biodiversity would not be wrong. 2.3. Existing people would endure physical pain and/or painful and/or premature deaths Thinking about the ways in which human extinction might come about brings to the fore two more reasons it might be wrong. It could, for example, occur if all humans (or at least the critical number needed to be unable to replenish the population, leading to eventual extinction) underwent a sterilization procedure. Or perhaps it could come about due to anthropogenic climate change or a massive asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out the species in the same way it did the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Each of these scenarios would involve significant physical and/or non-physical harms to existing people and their interests. Physically, people might suffer premature and possibly also painful deaths, for example. It is not hard to imagine examples in which the process of extinction could cause premature death. A nuclear winter that killed everyone or even just every woman under the age of 50 is a clear example of such a case. Obviously, some types of premature death themselves cannot be reasons to reject a principle. Every person dies eventually, sometimes earlier than the standard expected lifespan due to accidents or causes like spontaneously occurring incurable cancers. A cause such as disease is not a moral agent and therefore it cannot be wrong if it unavoidably kills a person prematurely. Scanlon says that the fact that a principle would reduce a person’s well-being gives that person a reason to reject the principle: ‘components of well-being figure prominently as grounds for reasonable rejection’ (Scanlon 1998, 214). However, it is not settled yet whether premature death is a setback to well-being. Some philosophers hold that death is a harm to the person who dies, whilst others argue that it is not.7 I will argue, however, that regardless of who is correct in that debate, being caused to die prematurely can be reason to reject a principle when it fails to show respect to the person as a rational agent. Scanlon says that recognizing others as rational beings with interests involves seeing reason to preserve life and prevent death: ‘appreciating the value of human life is primarily a matter of seeing human lives as something to be respected, where this involves seeing reasons not to destroy them, reasons to protect them, and reasons to want them to go well’ (Scanlon 1998, 104). The ‘respect for life’ in this case is a respect for the person living, not respect for human life in the abstract. This means that we can sometimes fail to protect human life without acting wrongfully if we still respect the person living. Scanlon gives the example of a person who faces a life of unending and extreme pain such that she wishes to end it by committing suicide. Scanlon does not think that the suicidal person shows a lack of respect for her own life by seeking to end it because the person whose life it is has no reason to want it to go on. This is important to note because it emphasizes the fact that the respect for human life is person-affecting. It is not wrong to murder because of the impersonal disvalue of death in general, but because taking someone’s life without their permission shows disrespect to that person. This supports its inclusion as a reason in the contractualist formula, regardless of what side ends up winning the ‘is death a harm?’ debate because even if death turns out not to harm the person who died, ending their life without their consent shows disrespect to that person. A person who could reject a principle permitting another to cause his or her premature death presumably does not wish to die at that time, or in that manner. Thus, if they are killed without their consent, their interests have not been taken into account, and they have a reason to reject the principle that allowed their premature death.8 This is as true in the case of death due to extinction as it is for death due to murder. However, physical pain may also be caused to existing people without killing them, but still resulting in human extinction. Imagine, for example, surgically removing everyone’s reproductive organs in order to prevent the creation of any future people. Another example could be a nuclear bomb that did not kill anyone, but did painfully render them infertile through illness or injury. These would be cases in which physical pain (through surgery or bombs) was inflicted on existing people and the extinction came about as a result of the painful incident rather than through death. Furthermore, one could imagine a situation in which a bomb (for example) killed enough people to cause extinction, but some people remained alive, but in terrible pain from injuries. It seems uncontroversial that the infliction of physical pain could be a reason to reject a principle. Although Scanlon says that an impact on well-being is not the only reason to reject principles, it plays a significant role, and indeed, most principles are likely to be rejected due to a negative impact on a person’s well-being, physical or otherwise. It may be queried here whether it is actually the involuntariness of the pain that is grounds for reasonable rejection rather than the physical pain itself because not all pain that a person suffers is involuntary. One can imagine acts that can cause physical pain that are not rejectable — base jumping or life-saving or improving surgery, for example. On the other hand, pushing someone off a cliff or cutting him with a scalpel against his will are clearly rejectable acts. The difference between the two cases is that in the former, the person having the pain inflicted has consented to that pain or risk of pain. My view is that they cannot be separated in these cases and it is involuntary physical pain that is the grounds for reasonable rejection. Thus, the fact that a principle would allow unwanted physical harm gives a person who would be subjected to that harm a reason to reject the principle. Of course the mere fact that a principle causes involuntary physical harm or premature death is not sufficient to declare that the principle is rejectable — there might be countervailing reasons. In the case of extinction, what countervailing reasons might be offered in favour of the involuntary physical pain/ death-inducing harm? One such reason that might be offered is that humans are a harm to the natural environment and that the world might be a better place if there were no humans in it. It could be that humans might rightfully be considered an all-things-considered hindrance to the world rather than a benefit to it given the fact that we have been largely responsible for the extinction of many species, pollution and, most recently, climate change which have all negatively affected the natural environment in ways we are only just beginning to understand. Thus, the fact that human extinction would improve the natural environment (or at least prevent it from degrading further), is a countervailing reason in favour of extinction to be weighed against the reasons held by humans who would experience physical pain or premature death. However, the good of the environment as described above is by definition not a personal reason. Just like the loss of rational life and civilization, therefore, it cannot be a reason on its own when determining what is wrong and countervail the strong personal reasons to avoid pain/death that is held by the people who would suffer from it.9 Every person existing at the time of the extinction would have a reason to reject that principle on the grounds of the physical pain they are being forced to endure against their will that could not be countervailed by impersonal considerations such as the negative impact humans may have on the earth. Therefore, a principle that permitted extinction to be accomplished in a way that caused involuntary physical pain or premature death could quite clearly be rejectable by existing people with no relevant countervailing reasons. This means that human extinction that came about in this way would be wrong. There are of course also additional reasons they could reject a similar principle which I now turn to address in the next section. 2.4. Existing people could endure non-physical harms I said earlier than the fact in itself that there would not be any future people is an impersonal reason and can therefore not be a reason to reject a principle permitting extinction. However, this impersonal reason could give rise to a personal reason that is admissible. So, the final important reason people might think that human extinction would be wrong is that there could be various deleterious psychological effects that would be endured by existing people having the knowledge that there would be no future generations. There are two main sources of this trauma, both arising from the knowledge that there will be no more people. The first relates to individual people and the undesired negative effect on well-being that would be experienced by those who would have wanted to have children. Whilst this is by no means universal, it is fair to say that a good proportion of people feel a strong pull towards reproduction and having their lineage continue in some way. Samuel Scheffler describes the pull towards reproduction as a ‘desire for a personalized relationship with the future’ (Scheffler 2012, 31). Reproducing is a widely held desire and the joys of parenthood are ones that many people wish to experience. For these people knowing that they would not have descendants (or that their descendants will endure painful and/or premature deaths) could create a sense of despair and pointlessness of life. Furthermore, the inability to reproduce and have your own children because of a principle/policy that prevents you (either through bans or physical interventions) would be a significant infringement of what we consider to be a basic right to control what happens to your body. For these reasons, knowing that you will have no descendants could cause significant psychological traumas or harms even if there were no associated physical harm. The second is a more general, higher level sense of hopelessness or despair that there will be no more humans and that your projects will end with you. Even those who did not feel a strong desire to procreate themselves might feel a sense of hopelessness that any projects or goals they have for the future would not be fulfilled. Many of the projects and goals we work towards during our lifetime are also at least partly future-oriented. Why bother continuing the search for a cure for cancer if either it will not be found within humans’ lifetime, and/or there will be no future people to benefit from it once it is found? Similar projects and goals that might lose their meaning when confronted with extinction include politics, artistic pursuits and even the type of philosophical work with which this paper is concerned. Even more extreme, through the words of the character Theo Faron, P.D. James says in his novel The Children of Men that ‘without the hope of posterity for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruins’ (James 2006, 9). Even if James’ claim is a bit hyperbolic and all pleasures would not actually be lost, I agree with Scheffler in finding it not implausible that the knowledge that extinction was coming and that there would be no more people would have at least a general depressive effect on people’s motivation and confidence in the value of and joy in their activities (Scheffler 2012, 43). Both sources of psychological harm are personal reasons to reject a principle that permitted human extinction. Existing people could therefore reasonably reject the principle for either of these reasons. Psychological pain and the inability to pursue your personal projects, goals, and aims, are all acceptable reasons for rejecting principles in the contractualist framework. So too are infringements of rights and entitlements that we accept as important for people’s lives. These psychological reasons, then, are also valid reasons to reject principles that permitted or required human extinction. 2~ All other frameworks fail Mack 4 ~(Peter, MBBS, FRCS(Ed), FRCS (Glasg), PhD, MBA, MHlthEcon) "Utilitarian Ethics in Healthcare." International Journal of the Computer, the Internet, and Management Vol. 12, No.3. 2004. Department of Surgery. Singapore General Hospital.~ SJDI Medicine is a costly science, but of greater concern to the health economist is that it is also a limitless art. Every medical advance created new needs that did not exist until the means of meeting them came into existence. Physicians are reputed to have an infinite capacity to do ever more things, and perform ever more expensive interventions for their patients so long as any of their patients’ health needs remain unfulfilled. The traditional stance of the physician is that each patient is an isolated universe. When confronted with a situation in which his duty involves a competition for scarce medications or treatments, he would plead the patient’s cause by all methods, short of deceit. However, when the physician’s decision involves more than just his own patient, or has some commitment to public health, other issues have to be considered. He then has to recognise that the unbridled advocacy of the patient may not square with what the economist perceives to be the most advantageous policy to society as a whole. Medical professionals characteristically deplore scarcities. Many of them are simply not prepared to modify their intransigent principle of unwavering duty to their patients’ individual interest. However, in decisions involving multiple patients, making available more medication, labour or expenses for one patient will mean leaving less for another. The physician is then compelled by his competing loyalties to enter into a decision mode of one versus many, where the underlying constraint is one of finiteness of the commodities. Although the medical treatment may be simple and inexpensive in many instances, there are situations such as in renal dialysis, where prioritisation of treatment poses a moral dilemma because some patients will be denied the treatment and perish. Ethics and economics share areas of overlap. They both deal with how people should behave, what policies the state should pursue and what obligations citizens owe to their governments. The centrality of the human person in both normative economics and normative ethics is pertinent to this discussion. Economics is the study of human action in the marketplace whereas ethics deals with the "rightness" or "wrongness" of human action in general. Both disciplines are rooted in human reason and human nature and the two disciplines intersect at the human person and the analysis of human action. From the economist’s perspective, ethics is identified with the investigation of rationally justifiable bases for resolving conflict among persons with divergent aims and who share a common world. Because of the scarcity of resources, one’s success is another person’s failure. Therefore ethics search for rationally justifiable standards for the resolution of interpersonal conflict. While the realities of human life have given rise to the concepts of property, justice and scarcity, the management of scarcity requires the exercise of choice, since having more of some goods means having less of others. Exercising choice in turn involves comparisons, and comparisons are based on principles. As ethicists, the meaning of these principles must be sought in the moral basis that implementing them would require. For instance, if the implementation of distributive justice in healthcare is founded on the basis of welfare-based principles, as opposed to say resource-based principles, it means that the health system is motivated by the idea that what is of primary moral importance is the level of welfare of the people. This means that all distributive questions should be settled according to which distribution maximises welfare. Utilitarianism is fundamentally welfarist in its philosophy. Application of the principle to healthcare requires a prior understanding of the welfarist theory as expounded by the economist. Conceptually, welfarist theory is built on four tenets: utility maximisation, consumer sovereignty, consequentialism and welfarism. Utility maximisation embodies the behavioural proposition that individuals choose rationally, but it does not address the morality of rational choice. Consumer sovereignty is the maxim that individuals are the best judge of their own welfare. Consequentialism holds that any action or choice must be judged exclusively in terms of outcomes. Welfarism is the proposition that the "goodness" of the resource allocation be judged solely on the welfare or utility levels in that situation. Taken together these four tenets require that a policy be judged solely in terms of the resulting utilities achieved by individuals as assessed by the individuals themselves. Issues of who receives the utility, the source of the utility and any non-utility aspects of the situation are ignored. 3~ Non util ethics are impossible Greene 10 – Joshua, Associate Professor of Social science in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul published in Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, accessed: www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf) What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human moral judgment is not a pristine rational enterprise, that our moral judgments are driven by a hodgepodge of emotional dispositions, which themselves were shaped by a hodgepodge of evolutionary forces, both biological and cultural. Because of this, it is exceedingly unlikely that there is any rationally coherent normative moral theory that can accommodate our moral intuitions. Moreover, anyone who claims to have such a theory, or even part of one, almost certainly doesn't. Instead, what that person probably has is a moral rationalization. It seems then, that we have somehow crossed the infamous "is"-"ought" divide. How did this happen? Didn't Hume (Hume, 1978) and Moore (Moore, 1966) warn us against trying to derive an "ought" from and "is?" How did we go from descriptive scientific theories concerning moral psychology to skepticism about a whole class of normative moral theories? The answer is that we did not, as Hume and Moore anticipated, attempt to derive an "ought" from and "is." That is, our method has been inductive rather than deductive. We have inferred on the basis of the available evidence that the phenomenon of rationalist deontological philosophy is best explained as a rationalization of evolved emotional intuition (Harman, 1977). Missing the Deontological Point I suspect that rationalist deontologists will remain unmoved by the arguments presented here. Instead, I suspect, they will insist that I have simply misunderstood what Kant and like-minded deontologists are all about. Deontology, they will say, isn't about this intuition or that intuition. It's not defined by its normative differences with consequentialism. Rather, deontology is about taking humanity seriously. Above all else, it's about respect for persons. It's about treating others as fellow rational creatures rather than as mere objects, about acting for reasons rational beings can share. And so on (Korsgaard, 1996a; Korsgaard, 1996b). This is, no doubt, how many deontologists see deontology. But this insider's view, as I've suggested, may be misleading. The problem, more specifically, is that it defines deontology in terms of values that are not distinctively deontological, though they may appear to be from the inside. Consider the following analogy with religion. When one asks a religious person to explain the essence of his religion, one often gets an answer like this: "It's about love, really. It's about looking out for other people, looking beyond oneself. It's about community, being part of something larger than oneself." This sort of answer accurately captures the phenomenology of many people's religion, but it's nevertheless inadequate for distinguishing religion from other things. This is because many, if not most, non-religious people aspire to love deeply, look out for other people, avoid self-absorption, have a sense of a community, and be connected to things larger than themselves. In other words, secular humanists and atheists can assent to most of what many religious people think religion is all about. From a secular humanist's point of view, in contrast, what's distinctive about religion is its commitment to the existence of supernatural entities as well as formal religious institutions and doctrines. And they're right. These things really do distinguish religious from non-religious practices, though they may appear to be secondary to many people operating from within a religious point of view. In the same way, I believe that most of the standard deontological/Kantian self-characterizatons fail to distinguish deontology from other approaches to ethics. (See also Kagan (Kagan, 1997, pp. 70-78.) on the difficulty of defining deontology.) It seems to me that consequentialists, as much as anyone else, have respect for persons, are against treating people as mere objects, wish to act for reasons that rational creatures can share, etc. A consequentialist respects other persons, and refrains from treating them as mere objects, by counting every person's well-being in the decision-making process. Likewise, a consequentialist attempts to act according to reasons that rational creatures can share by acting according to principles that give equal weight to everyone's interests, i.e. that are impartial. This is not to say that consequentialists and deontologists don't differ. They do. It's just that the real differences may not be what deontologists often take them to be. What, then, distinguishes deontology from other kinds of moral thought? A good strategy for answering this question is to start with concrete disagreements between deontologists and others (such as consequentialists) and then work backward in search of deeper principles. This is what I've attempted to do with the trolley and footbridge cases, and other instances in which deontologists and consequentialists disagree. If you ask a deontologically-minded person why it's wrong to push someone in front of speeding trolley in order to save five others, you will get characteristically deontological answers. Some will be tautological: "Because it's murder!" Others will be more sophisticated: "The ends don't justify the means." "You have to respect people's rights." But, as we know, these answers don't really explain anything, because if you give the same people (on different occasions) the trolley case or the loop case (See above), they'll make the opposite judgment, even though their initial explanation concerning the footbridge case applies equally well to one or both of these cases. Talk about rights, respect for persons, and reasons we can share are natural attempts to explain, in "cognitive" terms, what we feel when we find ourselves having emotionally driven intuitions that are odds with the cold calculus of consequentialism. Although these explanations are inevitably incomplete, there seems to be "something deeply right" about them because they give voice to powerful moral emotions. But, as with many religious people's accounts of what's essential to religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question. 4~ That justifies util – it’s impartial, specific to public actors, and resolves infinite regress which explains all value. Greene 15 — (Joshua Greene, Professor of Psychology @ Harvard, being interviewed by Russ Roberts, "Joshua Greene on Moral Tribes, Moral Dilemmas, and Utilitarianism", The Library of Economics and Liberty, 1-5-15, Available Online at https://www.econtalk.org/joshua-greene-on-moral-tribes-moral-dilemmas-and-utilitarianism/~~#audio-highlights, accessed 5-17-20, HKR-AM) NB: Guest = Greene, and only his lines are highlighted/underlined Guest: Okay. So, I think utilitarianism is very much misunderstood. And this is part of the reason why we shouldn't even call it utilitarianism at all. We should call it what I call 'deep pragmatism', which I think better captures what I think utilitarianism is really like, if you really apply it in real life, in light of an understanding of human nature. But, we can come back to that. The idea, going back to the tragedy of common-sense morality is you've got all these different tribes with all of these different values based on their different ways of life. What can they do to get along? And I think that the best answer that we have is—well, let's back up. In order to resolve any kind of tradeoff, you have to have some kind of common metric. You have to have some kind of common currency. And I think that what utilitarianism, whether it's the moral truth or not, is provide a kind of common currency. So, what is utilitarianism? It's basically the idea that—it's really two ideas put together. One is the idea of impartiality. That is, at least as social decision makers, we should regard everybody's interests as of equal worth. Everybody counts the same. And then you might say, 'Well, but okay, what does it mean to count everybody the same? What is it that really matters for you and for me and for everybody else?' And there the utilitarian's answer is what is sometimes called, somewhat accurately and somewhat misleadingly, happiness. But it's not really happiness in the sense of cherries on sundaes, things that make you smile. It's really the quality of conscious experience. So, the idea is that if you start with anything that you value, and say, 'Why do you care about that?' and keep asking, 'Why do you care about that?' or 'Why do you care about that?' you ultimately come down to the quality of someone's conscious experience. So if I were to say, 'Why did you go to work today?' you'd say, 'Well, I need to make money; and I also enjoy my work.' 'Well, what do you need your money for?' 'Well, I need to have a place to live; it costs money.' 'Well, why can't you just live outside?' 'Well, I need a place to sleep; it's cold at night.' 'Well, what's wrong with being cold?' 'Well, it's uncomfortable.' 'What's wrong with being uncomfortable?' 'It's just bad.' Right? At some point if you keep asking why, why, why, it's going to come down to the conscious experience—in Bentham's terms, again somewhat misleading, the pleasure and pain of either you or somebody else that you care about. So the utilitarian idea is to say, Okay, we all have our pleasures and pains, and as a moral philosophy we should all count equally. And so a good standard for resolving public disagreements is to say we should go with whatever option is going to produce the best overall experience for the people who are affected. Which you can think of as shorthand as maximizing happiness—although I think that that's somewhat misleading. And the solution has a lot of merit to it. But it also has endured a couple of centuries of legitimate criticism. And one of the biggest criticisms—and now we're getting back to the Trolley cases, is that utilitarianism doesn't adequately account for people's rights. So, take the footbridge case. It seems that it's wrong to push that guy off the footbridge. Even if you stipulate that you can save more people's lives. And so anyone who is going to defend utilitarianism as a meta-morality—that is, a solution to the tragedy of common sense morality, as a moral system to adjudicate among competing tribal moral systems—if you are going to defend it in that way, as I do, you have to face up to these philosophical challenges: is it okay to kill on person to save five people in this kind of situation? So I spend a lot of the book trying to understand the psychology of cases like the footbridge case. And you mention these being kind of unrealistic and weird cases. That's actually part of my defense. 5~ Reducing existential risks is the top priority in any coherent moral theory Pummer, PhD, 15 (Theron, Philosophy @St. Andrews http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/moral-agreement-on-saving-the-world/) There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we’re consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all agree that we should try to save the world. According to consequentialism, we should maximize the good, where this is taken to be the goodness, from an impartial perspective, of outcomes. Clearly one thing that makes an outcome good is that the people in it are doing well. There is little disagreement here. If the happiness or well-being of possible future people is just as important as that of people who already exist, and if they would have good lives, it is not hard to see how reducing existential risk is easily the most important thing in the whole world. This is for the familiar reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. There are so many possible future people that reducing existential risk is arguably the most important thing in the world, even if the well-being of these possible people were given only 0.001 as much weight as that of existing people. Even on a wholly person-affecting view – according to which there’s nothing (apart from effects on existing people) to be said in favor of creating happy people – the case for reducing existential risk is very strong. As noted in this seminal paper, this case is strengthened by the fact that there’s a good chance that many existing people will, with the aid of life-extension technology, live very long and very high quality lives. You might think what I have just argued applies to consequentialists only. There is a tendency to assume that, if an argument appeals to consequentialist considerations (the goodness of outcomes), it is irrelevant to non-consequentialists. But that is a huge mistake. Non-consequentialism is the view that there’s more that determines rightness than the goodness of consequences or outcomes; it is not the view that the latter don’t matter. Even John Rawls wrote, "All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy." Minimally plausible versions of deontology and virtue ethics must be concerned in part with promoting the good, from an impartial point of view. They’d thus imply very strong reasons to reduce existential risk, at least when this doesn’t significantly involve doing harm to others or damaging one’s character. What’s even more surprising, perhaps, is that even if our own good (or that of those near and dear to us) has much greater weight than goodness from the impartial "point of view of the universe," indeed even if the latter is entirely morally irrelevant, we may nonetheless have very strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Even egoism, the view that each agent should maximize her own good, might imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. It will depend, among other things, on what one’s own good consists in. If well-being consisted in pleasure only, it is somewhat harder to argue that egoism would imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk – perhaps we could argue that one would maximize her expected hedonic well-being by funding life extension technology or by having herself cryogenically frozen at the time of her bodily death as well as giving money to reduce existential risk (so that there is a world for her to live in!). I am not sure, however, how strong the reasons to do this would be. But views which imply that, if I don’t care about other people, I have no or very little reason to help them are not even minimally plausible views (in addition to hedonistic egoism, I here have in mind views that imply that one has no reason to perform an act unless one actually desires to do that act). To be minimally plausible, egoism will need to be paired with a more sophisticated account of well-being. To see this, it is enough to consider, as Plato did, the possibility of a ring of invisibility – suppose that, while wearing it, Ayn could derive some pleasure by helping the poor, but instead could derive just a bit more by severely harming them. Hedonistic egoism would absurdly imply she should do the latter. To avoid this implication, egoists would need to build something like the meaningfulness of a life into well-being, in some robust way, where this would to a significant extent be a function of other-regarding concerns (see chapter 12 of this classic intro to ethics). But once these elements are included, we can (roughly, as above) argue that this sort of egoism will imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Add to all of this Samuel Scheffler’s recent intriguing arguments (quick podcast version available here) that most of what makes our lives go well would be undermined if there were no future generations of intelligent persons. On his view, my life would contain vastly less well-being if (say) a year after my death the world came to an end. So obviously if Scheffler were right I’d have very strong reason to reduce existential risk. We should also take into account moral uncertainty. What is it reasonable for one to do, when one is uncertain not (only) about the empirical facts, but also about the moral facts? I’ve just argued that there’s agreement among minimally plausible ethical views that we have strong reason to reduce existential risk – not only consequentialists, but also deontologists, virtue ethicists, and sophisticated egoists should agree. But even those (hedonistic egoists) who disagree should have a significant level of confidence that they are mistaken, and that one of the above views is correct. Even if they were 90 sure that their view is the correct one (and 10 sure that one of these other ones is correct), they would have pretty strong reason, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, to reduce existential risk. Perhaps most disturbingly still, even if we are only 1 sure that the well-being of possible future people matters, it is at least arguable that, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, reducing existential risk is the most important thing in the world. Again, this is largely for the reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. (For more on this and other related issues, see this excellent dissertation). Of course, it is uncertain whether these untold trillions would, in general, have good lives. It’s possible they’ll be miserable. It is enough for my claim that there is moral agreement in the relevant sense if, at least given certain empirical claims about what future lives would most likely be like, all minimally plausible moral views would converge on the conclusion that we should try to save the world. While there are some non-crazy views that place significantly greater moral weight on avoiding suffering than on promoting happiness, for reasons others have offered (and for independent reasons I won’t get into here unless requested to), they nonetheless seem to be fairly implausible views. And even if things did not go well for our ancestors, I am optimistic that they will overall go fantastically well for our descendants, if we allow them to. I suspect that most of us alive today – at least those of us not suffering from extreme illness or poverty – have lives that are well worth living, and that things will continue to improve. Derek Parfit, whose work has emphasized future generations as well as agreement in ethics, described our situation clearly and accurately: "We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy…. Our descendants might, I believe, make the further future very good. But that good future may also depend in part on us. If our selfish recklessness ends human history, we would be acting very wrongly." (From chapter 36 of On What Matters) 6~ No act-omission distinction for private entities – they need to manage limited resources and manage tradeoffs 7~ Reject consequentialism indicts A~ empirics prove governments and individuals make accurate predictions all the time B~ indicts are all reasons why consequentialism is imperfect and difficult, not a reason they’re impossible or bad C~ ALL phil cares about consequentialism, they use past causal events to determine the nature of reality and ethics
Interp: Our Interpretation is the affirmative should instrumentally defend the resolution about the RTS – hold the line, CX and the 1AC prove there’s no I-meet – anything new in the 1AR is either extra-T since it includes the non-topical parts of the Aff or effects-T since it’s a future result of the advocacy which both link to our offense.
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.
"Resolved" means enactment of a law.
Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). "Resolved". 1964. Definition of the word "resolve," given by Webster is "to express an
AND
," which is defined by Bouvier as meaning "to establish by law".
Violation – ~they don't~
TVA- ~talk about how all black federal workers can strike which collapses industries or the government or people could refuse to do labor for the state or labor for civil society by divesting labor — tons of iterations of this ~ – you can still include performance and the criticism. Disads to the TVA prove neg ground and no right to a perfect 1ac
Switch side debate – critiques of liberalism and performance can be read on the neg – solves dogmatism by testing different viewpoints
Vote Neg – The resolution is the only common stasis point that anchors negative preparation. Allowing any aff deviation from the resolution is a moral hazard which justifies an infinite number of unpredictable arguments with thin ties to the resolution. Because debate is a competitive game, their interpretation incentivizes affirmatives to run further towards fringes and revert to truisms which are exceedingly difficult to negate—this asymmetry is compounded by their monopoly on preparation
Otherwise, they have passive opinions without meaningful advocacy – MeToo, BlackLives Matter, and other movements are grounded in particular policies that can help marginalized people – they abstract from those impacts which means movement failure is inevitable and its likely they support worse, dogmatic policies that harm marginalized people more, which internal link turns the aff.
Debate doesn’t have any effect on the political and the individual arguments we read have no effect on our subjectivity, even if they spur immediate reflection, those insights aren’t integrated into deep-stored memory—this means you can vote negative on presumption. Encouraging focused, nuanced research and clash is the only chance to change attitudes long term—which means they can’t solve their impact turns but our model can.
filter their impacts through predictable testability —-debate inherently judges relative truth value by whether or not it gets answered—-a combination of a less predictable case neg, the burden of rejoinder, and them starting a speech ahead will always inflate the value of their impacts, which makes non-arbitrarily weighing whether they should have read the 1ac in the first place impossible within the structure of a debate round so even if we lose framework, vote neg on presumption. They also create a moral hazard that leads to affs only about individual self-care so even if you think this aff is answerable, the ones they incentivize are not, so assume the worst possible affirmative when weighing our impacts.
Ballot Paradox: Placing the decision-making potential within the ballot is violent, since no change spill out of round and makes the judge a violent arbiter of your subjectivity
TFW has to be drop the debater – it indicts their method of engagement and proves we couldn’t engage fairly with their aff
No RVIs – this includes impact turns and independent voting issues –
1 – exclusions are inevitable – we only have 45 minutes to discuss things – doesn’t prove harmful intent
2 – T is an aff burden – doesn’t justify them winning
3 – forces unreasonable standard of epistemic perfection – bad arguments should be rejected, but that doesn’t implicate the team
3/23/22
GEN - T - Framework vs Hapticality
Tournament: Heart of Texas | Round: Quarters | Opponent: Homestead SL | Judge: Ari Davidson, Colton Gilbert, Jonathan Hsu ERRORInterp: Affirmatives must defend that the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.
Resolved" means enactment of a law.
Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). "Resolved". 1964. Definition of the word "resolve," given by Webster is "to express an
AND
," which is defined by Bouvier as meaning "to establish by law".
WTO is an international trade organization
WTO ~"What is the WTO?"~ ~DS~ The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with
AND
producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.
Violation – ~they defend hapticality w/o the consequences of the aff~
No I meets – at best they’re still extra T which kills ground and engagement because they can use it to solve back our links
TVA- ~Read the vaccine apartheid aff it makes the exast argument that you claim proven by their taglines~ – it necessarily solves all of the affs offense. Disads to the TVA prove neg ground and no right to a perfect 1ac
Switch side debate – critiques of liberalism and permformance can be read on the neg – solves dogmatism by testing different viewpoints
Vote Neg – their interpretation eviscerates negative ground because they’ll say no implementation makes the results of the aff irrelevant – kills negative engagement and testing which internal link turns any terminal impact to debate. — proven by 1ac cx shiftiness
Otherwise, they have passive opinions without meaningful advocacy – MeToo, BlackLives Matter, and other movements are grounded in particular policies that can help marginalized people – they abstract from those impacts which means movement failure is inevitable and its likely they support worse, dogmatic policies that harm marginalized people more, which internal link turns the aff.
3/23/22
GEN - T - Framework vs Mollow
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 1 | Opponent: Princeton JG | Judge: Faizaan Dossani
1
Interp: Affirmatives must defend that the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.
Violation:
Resolved" means enactment of a law.
Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). "Resolved". 1964. Definition of the word "resolve," given by Webster is "to express an
AND
," which is defined by Bouvier as meaning "to establish by law".
Used generically
Dictionary.com ~Online Dictionary and Thesaurus, "the"~ ~DS~ (used to mark a noun as being used generically):
"The" is a generic
OED ~Oxford English Dictionary, "the"~ ~DS~ used to make a generalized reference to something rather than identifying a particular instance.
Here is a list of the member nations of the WTO – aff is not that
WTO 7/29/16 ~World Trade Organization, "Updated Member List"~ ~DS~ Members and Observers 164 members since 29 July 2016 , with dates of WTO membership. Click
AND
Sudan Syrian Arab Republic Timor-Leste Turkmenistan Uzbekistan
Nation is a group of people possessing sovereign territory and government
a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government
"of" relates a part to a whole
OED ~Oxford English Dictionary, "of"~ ~DS~ expressing the relationship between a part and a whole.
WTO is an international trade organization
WTO ~"What is the WTO?"~ ~DS~ The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with
AND
producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.
"Ought to"
moral obligation==== Collins Dictionary ~https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/ought~~ You use ought to to mean that it is morally right to do a particular thing or that it is morally right for a particular situation to exist, especially when giving or asking for advice or opinions.
Reduce
diminish ==== Merriam Webster ~Encyclopedia Britannica, "Reduce"~ ~DS~ to diminish in size, amount, extent, or number reduce taxes reduce the likelihood of war
IP protections cover patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets
SpencePC 4/4/16 ~Legal Counsel, "Four Types of Intellectual Property for Business"~ ~DS~ If you are a business owner, you should familiarize yourself with the four types of intellectual property, otherwise known as IP. We speak with many entrepreneurs who don’t know where to begin when it comes to protecting their ideas and inventions. They need this information frequently so we decided to create a quick and easy guide to educate them. It was popular so we decided to post it to our blog. Let us know if you found this useful and if there are any other guides you would like us to make in the comment section below. If you feel you need to speak with a lawyer directly, call Spence PC
AND
The post Four Types of Intellectual Property for Businesses appeared first on SpencePC
Medicine is for treatment of disease
CED ~Cambridge English Dictionary, "Medicine"~ ~DS~ treatment for illness or injury, or the study of this:
Offense:
1. Limits OW —-bounded debate is the only way to guarantee preparation and defense against a well-prepared opponent—-that’s a prerequisite to using the form of debate effectively, no matter what for. Disruption alone isn’t justification for an aff ballot, they need an interpretation that guarantees pre-round relationality, genuine argumentative challenges and an agreed-upon end-point. Their model of debate allows the most powerful to disrupt the communicative forum – their interp is an insular victory at best and disastrous at worst for debate’s liberatory potential.
Hansen, PhD, 18 (Ejvind, PoliSci@Danish School of Media and Journalism, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 44.1) In a certain sense this aporia embodies a common experience that communicative exchanges are best
AND
be limited according to unconscious power structures, the rules of the strongest?
2. Fairness
A. Non topical advocacies mean they can defend anything outside the resolution which is unpredictable, and also defend uncontestable offense like racism bad. This kills NEG ground and thus equal access to the ballot.
B. Debate is a game: forced winner/loser, competitive norms, and the tournament invite prove. Alternative impacts like activism or education can be pursued in other forums. This makes fairness the most important impact
C. Preparation- repacking the topic gives the aff a huge edge, they can prepare for 6 months on an issue that catches us by surprise. Preparation is better than thinking on your feet- research demonstrates pedagogical humility and research skills are the only portable debate training
D. Library DA- there are a finite amount of ways to stop IP protections, but an infinite number of non topical affirmatives. not debating the topic allows someone to specialize in one area of the library for 4 years giving them a huge edge over people who switch research focus ever 2 months.
E. Exclusionary rule- you can’t vote on the case outweighs T because lack of preparation prevents rigorous testing of the AC claims. If we win fairness we don’t have to "outweigh" other impacts
F. TVA – ~Read this as an advantage under wholeres; lack of medicine access disproportionately effects those with disability who need medicine but dont receive it~. Solves their education offense. Our TVA is purposefully imperfect to ensure negative ground and force SSD.
Outweighs their impacts - Links best to the role of the judge to determine the winner as per the ballot – that’s impossible if the round’s unfair. Even if their method is good for education there’s no reason you vote on it, just as even if exercise is good for soccer players you don’t vote for the team that ran most.
Voter: Drop the debater on T – the round is already skewed from the beginning because their advocacy excluded by ability to generate NC offense– letting them sever doesn’t solve any of the abuse
Theory is an issue of competing interpretations because reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters will exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.
3/23/22
GEN - T - Framework vs Preciado
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 5 | Opponent: Mission San Jose SB | Judge: Spencer Orlowski Interp: Affirmatives must defend that the member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.
Resolved” means enactment of a law. Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). “Resolved”. 1964. Definition of the word “resolve,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved by the legislature;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law”. WTO is an international trade organization WTO “What is the WTO?” DS The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only global international organization dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business. Violation – insert No I meets – at best they’re still extra T which kills ground and engagement because they can use it to solve back our links
TVA- Defend the actual implementation of removing IPP -- the aff is very close to wholeres – you can still include performance and the criticism. Disads to the TVA prove neg ground and no right to a perfect 1ac
Switch side debate – critiques of liberalism and permformance can be read on the neg – solves dogmatism by testing different viewpoints
Vote Neg – their interpretation eviscerates negative ground because they’ll say no implementation makes the results of the aff irrelevant – kills negative engagement and testing which internal link turns any terminal impact to debate. -- proven by 1ac cx shiftiness
Otherwise, they have passive opinions without meaningful advocacy – MeToo, BlackLives Matter, and other movements are grounded in particular policies that can help marginalized people – they abstract from those impacts which means movement failure is inevitable and its likely they support worse, dogmatic policies that harm marginalized people more, which internal link turns the aff. Nations bad isn’t offense against topicality bc they don’t have to endorse the state, just have an opinion on it AND you can criticize the nation bc you defend a change from the squo Drop the debater – the round shouldn’t have happened in the first place
No RVIs – this includes impact turns and independent voting issues – 1 – exclusions are inevitable – we only have 45 minutes to discuss things – doesn’t prove harmful intent 2 – T is an aff burden – doesn’t justify them winning 3 – forces unreasonable standard of epistemic perception – bad arguments should be rejected, but that doesn’t implicate the team
3/23/22
GEN - T - Framework vs Zoom
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 1 | Opponent: Perry JA | Judge: Lukas Krause
Interp: Affirmatives must defend ~~~
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter.
Violation:
"Resolved" means enactment of a law.
Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). "Resolved". 1964. Definition of the word "resolve," given by Webster is "to express an
AND
," which is defined by Bouvier as meaning "to establish by law".
"The" refers to the whole group in this instance
Merriam Webster ~The Free Dictionary, "the" – definite article~ ~DS~ —used as a function word before a noun or a substantivized adjective to indicate reference to a group as a whole
Nation is an official territorial division independent and sovereign
a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status
"Ought to"
moral obligation==== Collins Dictionary ~https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/ought~~ You use ought to to mean that it is morally right to do a particular thing or that it is morally right for a particular situation to exist, especially when giving or asking for advice or opinions.
Reduce
diminish ==== Merriam Webster ~Encyclopedia Britannica, "Reduce"~ ~DS~ to diminish in size, amount, extent, or number reduce taxes reduce the likelihood of war reduce taxes reduce the likelihood of war
Medicine Includes anything that leads to physical, mental, or social well being
John Walford Todd 9/7/20 ~Encyclopedia Britannica, "Medicine"~ ~DS~ Medicine, the practice concerned with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease. The World Health Organization at its 1978 international conference held in the Soviet Union produced
AND
promotion and care of health—is concerned with this ideal.
Offense:
1. Limits OW —-bounded debate is the only way to guarantee preparation and defense against a well-prepared opponent—-that’s a prerequisite to using the form of debate effectively, no matter what for. Disruption alone isn’t justification for an aff ballot, they need an interpretation that guarantees pre-round relationality, genuine argumentative challenges and an agreed-upon end-point. Their model of debate allows the most powerful to disrupt the communicative forum – their interp is an insular victory at best and disastrous at worst for debate’s liberatory potential.
Hansen, PhD, 18 (Ejvind, PoliSci@Danish School of Media and Journalism, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 44.1) In a certain sense this aporia embodies a common experience that communicative exchanges are best
AND
be limited according to unconscious power structures, the rules of the strongest?
2. Fairness
A. Non topical advocacies mean they can defend anything outside the resolution which is unpredictable, and also defend uncontestable offense like racism bad. This kills NEG ground and thus equal access to the ballot.
B. Debate is a game: forced winner/loser, competitive norms, and the tournament invite prove. Alternative impacts like activism or education can be pursued in other forums. This makes fairness the most important impact
C. Preparation- repacking the topic gives the aff a huge edge, they can prepare for 6 months on an issue that catches us by surprise. Preparation is better than thinking on your feet- research demonstrates pedagogical humility and research skills are the only portable debate training
D. Library DA- there are a finite amount of ways to stop ~~, but an infinite number of non topical affirmatives. not debating the topic allows someone to specialize in one area of the library for 4 years giving them a huge edge over people who switch research focus ever 2 months.
E. Exclusionary rule- you can’t vote on the case outweighs T because lack of preparation prevents rigorous testing of the AC claims. If we win fairness we don’t have to "outweigh" other impacts
F. TVA – You could read a Covid aff that focuses on the data aspects of IPP bc medicines requires tons of RandD and innovation and you can discuss the gatekeeping of medicines had forced us into the pandemic and on zoom. This could just be an advantage under that aff.
- Solves their education offense. Our TVA is purposefully imperfect to ensure negative ground and force SSD.
Outweighs their impacts - Links best to the role of the judge to determine the winner as per the ballot – that’s impossible if the round’s unfair. Even if their method is good for education there’s no reason you vote on it, just as even if exercise is good for soccer players you don’t vote for the team that ran most.
Voter: Drop the debater on T – the round is already skewed from the beginning because their advocacy excluded by ability to generate NC offense– letting them sever doesn’t solve any of the abuse
T is an issue of competing interpretations because reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters will exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.
A. Interpretation: Debaters may only read positions that are disclosed before the debate on their NDCA wiki page under their own name with full citations, tags, and first three/last three words.
B. Violation: screenshots in the doc my timestamps are weird b/c im on west coast
C. Standards:
Quality engagement – disclosure allows in-depth preparation before the round which checks back against unpredictable positions and allows debaters to effectively write case negs and blocks – allows for reciprocal engagement where each side has an equal opportunity to prepare as opposed to scouting capacity to determine success, and incentivizes in-depth debates which is key to clash and good topic education.
Reciprocity – the majority of national circuit buys into disclosure and put stuff on the wiki. They get access to cites and cards for cases and prep, which improves quality ground and means they can predict what other people are running, but we can’t predict them proven by they have a wiki but wont disclose. That outweighs – a) every reason disclosure is good is an advantage for them and not me, b) view their counter-interp with a grain of salt since it’s self-serving.
Academic Ethics – disclosure deters mis-cutting, power-tagging, abuse of brackets and ellipses, and plagiarism since it allows debaters to check for those issues out of round. Academic honesty outweighs – it’s a real-world norm and debate loses all educational value if we can just make up cards.
Deep Research – disclosure incentivizes specific, in-depth research
Nails ’13 (Jacob, "A Defense of Disclosure (Including Third-Party Disclosure)", 10/10/2013) I fall squarely on the side of disclosure. I find that the largest advantage
AND
, backfiles and briefs would have done LD in a long time ago.
Fairness- the ballot asks who did the better debating not the better cheating- the round is skewed which prevents evaluating substance their args in cx dont make cx
Education- it’s the purpose of debate
Competing-interpretations- reasonability is arbitrary, invites judge intervention, and collapses into competing-interps
No RVIs- they chill legitimate theory and are illogical since you don’t win for being fair. You can make you-violates and I-meets and read theory, solves reciprocity supercharged b/c they have a wiki with contact info but wont disclose so they'll have it prepped out.
3/23/22
JF - CP - Africa Large Sats PIC
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: 5 | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Luke Bagdon Text : The appropriation of outer space by private entities in Africa via Large Satellite Constellations in Lower Earth Orbit for the purposes of
- - open-source Earth Observation science
- - internet broadband
- - and national security
is just.
LEO is uniquely accessible to African industry due to cheaper launch and production costs – that solves Earth Observation, internet, national security, and spills over to enrich the economy Samanga 21 Ruvimbo Samanga, Zimbabwean scholar and lawyer working with the Space Law and Policy, holds a BA Law (cum laude), an LLB and an LLM in International Trade and Investment Law from the University of Pretoria. "Why Africa Should Expand its Mega-Satellite Constellation Capacity." Space Legal Issues, 3 May. 2021, www.spacelegalissues.com/why-africa-should-expand-its-mega-satellite-constellation-capacity. Since 1988, Africa has spent approx. USD$4 billion towards the launch
AND
towards increase of space and satellite capacity in an affordable and beneficial manner.
LEO Earth Science Observation Satellites uniquely solve a host of environmental threats – pollution, climate change, biod, defo, soil erosion Ustin and Middleton 20 Ustin, S.L. John Muir Institute of the Environment, University of California, Davis , Middleton, E.M NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center (Emerita). Current and near-term advances in Earth observation for ecological applications. Ecol Process 10, 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13717-020-00255-4 There is an unprecedented array of new satellite technologies with capabilities for advancing our understanding
AND
conditions have developed from past environmental drivers in order to predict future conditions.
Warming causes extinction David Spratt 19, Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Ian Dunlop, member of the Club of Rome, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association, May 2019, “Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach,” https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf2365336ff23b.pdf An existential risk to civilisation is one posing permanent large negative consequences to humanity which
AND
the “fat-tail” outcomes, as illustrated in Figure 1.
Independent African broadband network key to push out Chinese investment – which kills African democracy Tuerk 20 Tuerk, Miriam. CEO and cofounder of Clear Blue Technologies Inc."Africa Is The Next Frontier For The Internet." Forbes, 8 June 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/miriamtuerk/2020/06/09/africa-is-the-next-frontier-for-the-internet/?sh=1f5e9eec4900. Expanding network connectivity across sub-Saharan Africa will open up digital services that many
AND
to secure the future of this region and our economic relationships with it.
Chinese expansion in Africa escalates absent democratic relations Maru 19 - a scholar of peace and security, law and governance, strategy and management, human rights and migration issues. (Mehari, “A new cold war in Africa” Aljazeera. July 1, 2019. DOA: November 17, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/cold-war-africa-190630102044847.html)//MGalian Increasing tensions between China and the US will be detrimental to African prosperity and peace
AND
itself, not on containing and undermining the business of a third party.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Africa Mining PIC
Tournament: Cal | Round: 3 | Opponent: Little Rock Central MG | Judge: Claudia Ribera Only getting full text for this - see o/s
3/25/22
JF - CP - Asteroid Detection
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Doubles | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Holden Bukowsky CP: Private entities should place infrared asteroid monitoring satellites in outer space for the purpose of asteroid detection
Solves Better Blumberg 19 Nick Blumberg 9-10-2019, WTTW, How Satellites Can Detect and Protect Earth From Asteroids https://news.wttw.com/2019/09/10/how
AND
of the greatest unsung victories that NASA and maybe even civilization has accomplished.”
3/25/22
JF - CP - China Demil PIC
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Octas | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Jacob Nails, Parker Hopkins, Gordon Krauss CP Text: The appropriation of outer space by private entities in the People’s Republic of China is unjust except for Space Mining
The People's republic of China - de-militarizing its civilian, military, and commercial space industry. - dismantling and removing ASAT weapons. - dismantling the People’s Liberation Army. - ending China-Russian cooperation in Outer Space. - banning cooperation attempts with Russia on military matters - adopting a policy of No First Use
Is just
The Counterplan solves the Case – gets rid of space militarization
It competes “appropriation” includes “extraction of resources.” Comprehensive analysis Leon 18 Amanda, JD from UVA “Mining for Meaning: An Examination of the Legality of Property Rights in Space Resources” Vol. 104:497, Virginia Law Review, https://www.capdale.com/files/24323_leon_final_note.pdf, 2018 RE Employing the treaty interpretation tools of ordinary meaning, preparatory materials, historical context,
AND
Act contravenes its international obligations established by the OST.
3/25/22
JF - CP - China Mining PIC
Tournament: NDCA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit JS | Judge: Gordon Krauss CP Text: The appropriation of outer space by private entities in the People’s Republic of China is unjust except for Space Mining. Resource-Sharing of resources extracted from private asteroid operations between the people's republic of China and all other states for the purpose of resolving water scarcity is just. It competes "appropriation" includes "extraction of resources." Comprehensive analysis Leon 18 ~Amanda, JD from UVA~ "Mining for Meaning: An Examination of the Legality of Property Rights in Space Resources" Vol. 104:497, Virginia Law Review, https://www.capdale.com/files/24323'leon'final'note.pdf, 2018 RE Employing the treaty interpretation tools of ordinary meaning, preparatory materials, historical context, state practice, and state interpretation offers many possible understandings of the obligations imparted by Articles I and II of the OST. For example, while the ordinary meaning of "use" could reasonably include the exploitation of materials, the meeting summaries of the Fifth Session of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Legal Sub-Committee make clear that no consensus was ever reached regarding whether "use" includes large-scale exploitation of space resources, let alone fee-simple ownership and the ability to sell commercially. State practice dealing with extraterrestrial samples also sheds little light on the confusion, as the examples cited all deal instead with scientific samples of limited quantity. The international community’s rejection of the Moon Agreement also fails to bring clarity. While on the one hand the rejection could be read as a rejection of the idea that the OST prohibits private property rights, it could also be read as a rejection of the common heritage of mankind doctrine. Finally, the prospect of private venture space mining and extraterrestrial resource extraction remained far off and futuristic at the time of the Treaty’s negotiation, making drawing legal conclusions about the legality of these revolutionary activities extremely difficult. Overall, however, the Treaty’s structure and its purposes (preserving peace and avoiding international conflict in outer space) ultimately indicate that private property rights in space resources are prohibited by Article II’s non-appropriation principle, at least until future international delegation determines otherwise (like in the Antarctic). The Treaty’s structure confirms this interpretation. Article I lays down a general rule for activity in space. Subsequent articles of the Treaty then lay out more specific requirements of and qualifications to this general rule. Much like Article IV restricts the use of nuclear weapons in space, Article II restricts the use of space in ways that might result in potentially controversial property claims. Historically, claims to mineral rights have resulted in just as contentious conflict as those over sovereign lands. Treaty efforts to avoid conflicts in Antarctica and the high seas reflect similar sentiments. The Soviet Union’s representative even hinted at this structural relationship between Articles I and II during Treaty negotiations.232 In light of the imminent need to ease Cold War tensions, the potential for conflict over property, and the final structure of the Treaty, this Note concludes that the large-scale extraction of space resources is incompatible with the non-appropriation principle of Article II of the OST.233 As a result, the United States’ provision of property rights to its citizens to possess, own, transport, use, and sell space and asteroid resources extracted through the SREU Act contravenes its international obligations established by the OST. Solves the util advantage - every card is in the context of mega constellations creating cascades which the coutnerplan explicitly condemns
4/9/22
JF - CP - Debris
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Doubles | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Holden Bukowsky States should:
- - Remove the most volatile and largest Debris pieces from the most congested orbits
- - Mandate UN guidelines on space debris mitigation
- - Collaborate on techniques to track and display the location of objects in real time and AI to automate debris-avoidance maneuvers
- - Indefinitely stall deployment of low earth orbit ASAT’s.
That solves satellites, miscalc, Kessler, and debris collisions Nature 8/11 (Nature Editorial Board, peer-reviewed, comprises experimental scientists and data-standards experts from across different fields of science) “The world must cooperate to avoid a catastrophic space collision,” Nature, 8/11/2021 JL But there are no traffic cops in space, nor international borders with clearly delineated
AND
and capable of — managing the flow of space traffic is long overdue.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Guardianship
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 4 | Opponent: West Ranch SV | Judge: Lauren Woodall States should declare that public guardianship obligations created by the non-ownership doctrine necessitate a reduction in private actor appropriation of Outer Space.
The public trust doctrine is inseparable from an anthropocentric politics of human chauvinism – further application can only strengthen exploitative relationships to nature – guardianship asserts the doctrine of non-ownership, which solves better and competes Adler 05, Dean College of Law at Utah (Robert, The Law at the Water's Edge: Limits to ""Ownership"" of Aquatic Ecosystems, in Wet Growth: Should Water Law Control Land Use?, pg. 244) I argue instead that the idea of a public “trust” should be replaced
AND
a trustee, of the resource and must exercise its legal responsibilities accordingly.
That human-centric ethic ensures escalating cycles of ecological collapse and exclusion – ethical obligation to reject Ahkin ‘10 (Melanie Ahkin, Monash University, 2010, “Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of Rationalism in Val Plumwood’s Critical Ecological Feminism,” Emergent Australian Philosophers, a peer reviewed journal of philosophy,http://www.eap.philosophy-australia.com/archives.html)
These five features provide the basis for hegemonic centrism insofar as they promote certain conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality which universalise and naturalise the standpoint of the superior relata as primary or centre, and deny and subordinate the standpoints of inferiorised others as secondary or derivative. Using standpoint theory analysis, Plumwood's reconceptualisation of human chauvinist frameworks locates and dissects these logical characteristics of dualism, and the conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality common to centric structures, as follows. Radical exclusion is found in the rationalist emphasis on differences between humans and non-human nature, its valourisation of a human rationality conceived as exclusionary of nature, and its minimisation of similarities between the two realms. Homogenisation and stereotyping occur especially in the rationalist denial of consciousness to nature, and its denial of the diversity of mental characteristics found within its many different constituents, facilitating a perception of nature as homogeneous and of its members as interchangeable and replaceable resources. This definition of nature in terms of its lack of human rationality and consciousness means that its identity remains relative to that of the dominant human group, and its difference is marked as deficiency, permitting its inferiorisation. Backgrounding and denial may be observed in the conception of nature as extraneous and inessential background to the foreground of human culture, in the human denial of dependency on the natural environment, and denial of the ethical and political constraints which the unrecognised ends and needs of non-human nature might otherwise place on human behaviour. These features together create an ethical discontinuity between humans and non-human nature which denies nature's value and agency, and thereby promote its instrumentalisation and exploitation for the benefit of humans.11 This dualistic logic helps to universalise the human centric standpoint, making invisible and seemingly inevitable the conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality and oppression of non-human nature it enjoins. The alternative standpoints and perspectives of members of the inferiorised class of nature are denied legitimacy and subordinated to that of the class of humans, ultimately becoming invisible once this master standpoint becomes part of the very structure of thought.12 Such an anthropocentric framework creates a variety of serious injustices and prudential risks, making it highly ecologically irrational.13 The hierarchical value prescriptions and epistemic distortions responsible for its biased, reductive conceptualisation of nature strips the non-human natural realm of non-instrumental value, and impedes the fair and impartial treatment of its members. Similarly, anthropocentrism creates distributive injustices by restricting ethical concern to humans, admitting partisan distributive relationships with non-human nature in the forms of commodification and instrumentalisation. The prudential risks and blindspots created by anthropocentrism are problematic for nature and humans alike and are of especial concern within our current context of radical human dependence on an irreplaceable and increasingly degraded natural environment. These prudential risks are in large part consequences of the centric structure's promotion of illusory human disembeddedness, self-enclosure and insensitivity to the significance and survival needs of non-human nature: The logic of centrism naturalises an illusory order in which the centre appears to itself to be disembedded, and this is especially dangerous in contexts where there is real and radical dependency on an Other who is simultaneously weakened by the application of that logic.14 Within the context of human-nature relationships, such a logic must inevitably lead to failure, either through the catastrophic extinction of our natural environment and the consequent collapse of our species, or more hopefully by the abandonment and transformation of the human centric framework.15
Our evidence is explicitly comparative – ptd will be applied arbitrarily and cases will drag on – non-ownership is key to uniformity and broad ecological benefits, but the plan permanently sells away the environment Adler 05, Dean College of Law at Utah (Robert, The Law at the Water's Edge: Limits to ""Ownership"" of Aquatic Ecosystems, in Wet Growth: Should Water Law Control Land Use?, pg. 244) There are several other ways in which the non-ownership doctrine as applied to
AND
, not to choose from among a large number of potentially competing uses.
Conflicting decisions ensure the permutation has no force of law Arnold and Porter 10 2010, Arnold and Porter is a Preeminent International Law Firm, “Reforming the Immigration System”, new.abanet.org/Immigration/PublicDocuments/aba_complete_full_report.pdf Consequently, there is now a convoluted labyrinth of case law construing the exceptions (
AND
a mechanism to insulate dysfunctional administrative processes and questionable exercise of executive discretion.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Ozone
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: Octas | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Ari Davidson, Gordon Krauss, David Dosch CP: States should ban rocket propellants that produce alumina particles in the stratosphere or deposit black soot in the stratosphere.
There are empirical alternatives, and the CP solves ozone depletion Mortillaro 21 (Nicole Mortillaro, Senior Reporter, Science, She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books., 4/22/21, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “Rocket launches could be affecting our ozone layer, say experts”, https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/rocket-launches-environment-1.5995252, Accessed 1/27/22, HKR-RKT) Black soot in the atmosphere The stratosphere is an important weather driver for Earth's systems
AND
. It's the alumina and black soot that is most concerning to experts.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Ozone v2
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Doubles | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Ben Cortez, Gordon Krauss, Holden Bukowsky CP: States should inject large amounts of ice particles into the lower stratosphere in late fall, especially in Antarctica.
Solves ozone depletion - Note: PSCs = polar stratospheric clouds Nagase et al. 15 (H. Nagase, D. E. Kinnison, A. K. Petersen, F. Vitt, G. P. Brasseur, 3/30/15, American Geophysical Union, “Effects of injected ice particles in the lower stratosphere on the Antarctic ozone hole”, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014EF000266, Accessed 1/27/22, HKR-RKT) In this study, it was found that the depth of the ozone hole could
AND
models and investigate possible influences on the climate system over a long period.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Polycentricity
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: 4 | Opponent: Peninsula RM | Judge: Samantha McLoughlin Polycentric space governance coming now - no action is needed Tepper 20 Eytan Tepper, 2020-03-23, Faculty of Law, Institute of Air and Space Law McGill University, Montréal, The Big Bang of Space Governance: Towards Decentralized Regulation of Space Activities, McGill University, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/9019s670j There is no fundamental need to adjust space law in order for polycentric space governance
AND
and elsewhere. The OST remains the normative framework for the space quest.
Including all actors is key only they the relevant knowledge and rules in establishing governance Tepper 20 Eytan Tepper, 2020-03-23, Faculty of Law, Institute of Air and Space Law McGill University, Montréal, The Big Bang of Space Governance: Towards Decentralized Regulation of Space Activities, McGill University, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/9019s670j In practice, polycentric space governance means that instead of space governance developing top-
AND
establish a governance system that is continuously evolving and meeting the changing needs.
Absent the private sector we'll backslide Bushley 14 Bryan R. Bushley., 9-9-2014, "Ecology and Society: REDD+ policy making in Nepal: toward state-centric, polycentric, or market-oriented governance?," No Publication, https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss3/art34/ With its uneven, multi-sector institutional landscape characterized by strong influence and ties
AND
benefit from REDD+ and hinders the development and implementation of effective policies.
Polycentricity solves better - it's self-correcting and is key to address specific issues instead of a broad government approach Tepper 20 Eytan Tepper, 2020-03-23, Faculty of Law, Institute of Air and Space Law McGill University, Montréal, The Big Bang of Space Governance: Towards Decentralized Regulation of Space Activities, McGill University, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/9019s670j The conventional wisdom was that multiplicity of political units makes governance “a pathological phenomenon
AND
its agencies and powerful actors like the OECD, G7 and major powers.
We don't need to win the private sector is key just that each additional actor massively decreases the probability of failure Carisle and Gruby 17 Keith Carlisle,Rebecca L. Gruby, 08-08-2017, " Polycentric Systems of Governance: A Theoretical Model for the Commons", Policy Studies Journal, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psj.12212 The final theoretical advantage we address is the claim that polycentric governance systems mitigate the
AND
catastrophic resource collapses have resulted when central governments exerted sole authority over resources.
Solves Conflict Carlisle and Gruby 17Keith Carlisle,Rebecca L. Gruby, 08-08-2017, " Polycentric Systems of Governance: A Theoretical Model for the Commons", Policy Studies Journal, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psj.12212 Rather than creating strict hierarchical systems, E. Ostrom (2008) proposes “
AND
diversity of governance actors with varying degrees of political standing and material resources.
Solves debris, weaponization, and resource issues better Tepper 20 Eytan Tepper, 2020-03-23, Faculty of Law, Institute of Air and Space Law McGill University, Montréal, The Big Bang of Space Governance: Towards Decentralized Regulation of Space Activities, McGill University, https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/9019s670j In practice, polycentric space governance means that instead of space governance developing top-
AND
establish a governance system that is continuously evolving and meeting the changing needs.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Regulations
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Leah Clark Villanueva CP: States should create and adopt a new set of flexible regulations concerning responsible space colonization through the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs. The appropriation of outer space through asteroid mining by private entities should be regulated by the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs.
Current government issues to resolve colony governance are insufficient – as is the OST – but new flexible regulations solve Kovic 21 Kovic, Marko. PhD Communication and Media Studies, University of Zurich. "Risks of space colonization." Futures 126 (2021): 102638. Quality Control Overall, it seems fair to say that space governance is in shambles today.
AND
of years, but the practical timescale for achieving results should be decades.
1AC Foster agrees that regulation through an international agreement is all that’s necessary to solve their space war advantage – it says nothing about banning being key. -- im in green Foster 16 – Craig, J.D., University of Illinois College of Law, “EXCUSE ME, YOU’RE MINING MY ASTEROID: SPACE PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE U.S. SPACE RESOURCE EXPLORATION AND UTILIZATION ACT OF 2015”, JOURNAL OF LAW, TECHNOLOGY and POLICY, No. 2, page 428-430, http://illinoisjltp.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Foster.pdf There are many reasons to be excited about the prospect of mining resources from space
AND
discussion stages and is likely to take a while to come to fruition.
1AC Mallick evidence also says the problem is lack of global consensus and clarity, not the existence of asteroid mining which they cant solve because they just ban mining they dont fiat in an intnl organization or body. -- im in green Mallick and Rajagopalan 19 - Law Researcher at the High Court of Delhi from 2016 to 2018 and is currently pursuing LL.M in International Law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, USA, Distinguished Fellow and Head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at Observer Research Foundation. She is also the Technical Adviser to the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS). (Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Senjuti Mallick, “If Space is ‘the Province of Mankind’, Who Owns its Resources? The Potential of Space Mining and its Legal Implications”, ORF Occasional Paper No. 182, January 2019, Observer Research Foundation., https://www.orfonline.org/research/if-space-is-the-province-of-mankind-who-owns-its-resources-47561/) NAR The first concern is establishing clear regulations regarding asteroid mining. With an intent to
AND
instead of earning admiration and exultation, will only be enmeshed in litigation.
3/25/22
JF - CP - Regulations v2
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 2 | Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Aashir Sanjrani Counterplan: States should create and adopt a new set of flexible regulations concerning responsible space activities focused on issues of governance of lunar heritage, and scientific research and development, including but not limited to revising treaties to allow for private outer space appropriation with taxation paid to the United Nations to be used for redistributive efforts.
Process comes before product – the only way to create better policies is to bring the people impacted by decisions into the decision-making process – only property rights can guarantee a seat at the table Barter 98 PhD, Coordinator, Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia and the Pacific A Rahman, UNCHS (Habitat) Regional Symposium on Urban Poverty in Asia, Transport and Urban Poverty in Asia: A Brief Introduction to the Key Issues, http://www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org/docs/occasional_papers/project_a/06/transport-barter-e.html The Recife Declaration includes a strong emphasis on recognising the fundamental right of the poor
AND
countries. This is a serious obstacle to a gender-aware approach.
Citizen participation in decision-making spills over to greater openness and improvements in the planning process Willson 01 Willson, R. Assessing communicative rationality as a transportation planning paradigm. Transportation 28, 1–31 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005247430522 The effects of this approach are greater attention to ends (goals), better integration
AND
because developing the planning process is an explicit part of the planning activity.
Private entities don’t act on debris because of uncertainty about property rights – CP creates incentives for management, tracking and cleanup Larsen 18 Paul B. "Solving the space debris crisis." J. Air L. and Com. 83 (2018): 475. Uncertainty about ownership of unidentifiable space debris represents a difficulty in appropriation and removal of
AND
space debris to facilitate removal of debris by third parties is recommended.64
3/25/22
JF - DA - China Mining Good
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Octas | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Jacob Nails, Parker Hopkins, Gordon Krauss China’s Asteroid Mining efforts are light-years ahead of everyone else – now is key for Asteroid Mining. Successful Mining solves Warming through Green Transition. Cohen 21 Ariel Cohen 10-26-2021 "China’s Space Mining Industry Is Prepping For Launch – But What About The US?" https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/10/26/chinas-space-mining-industry-is-prepping-for-launch~-~-but-what-about-the-us/?sh=6b8bea862ae0 (I am a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Founding Principal of International Market Analysis, a Washington, D.C.-based global risk advisory boutique.)Elmer Exploration of space-based natural resources are on the Chinese policy makers’ mind.
AND
– are no doubt a driving factor of China’s ever increasing space ambitions.
Warming causes extinction Klein 14(Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, member of the board of directors of 350.org), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, pp. 12-14 In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by that
AND
now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.”
Asteroid mining solves water access – only NEOs are sufficiently proximate and hydrated – independently, storing launch fuel on asteroids reduces space debris – turns case Tillman 19 (Nola Taylor, has been published in Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Scientific American, New Scientist, Science News (AAS), Space.com, and Astrobiology magazine, BA in Astrophysics) “Tons of Water in Asteroids Could Fuel Satellites, Space Exploration,” Space, 9/29/2019 JL When it comes to mining space for water, the best target may not be
AND
and 'cost-effective' are defined by each company is to be seen."
Inevitable water shortages cause hydro-political conflict escalation which goes nuclear Jamail 19 (Dahr, writes for Truthout about climate change issues, recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, frequent guest on Democracy Now!) “The World Is on the Brink of Widespread Water Wars,” Truth Out, 2/11/2019 JL But even more conservative organizations have been sounding the alarm. “Water insecurity could
AND
scenarios of water wars that could spark nuclear exchanges are now becoming possible.
3/25/22
JF - DA - China Mining Good v2
Tournament: NDCA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit JS | Judge: Gordon Krauss China’s Asteroid Mining efforts are light-years ahead of everyone else – now is key for Asteroid Mining. Successful Mining solves Warming through Green Transition. Cohen 21 Ariel Cohen 10-26-2021 "China’s Space Mining Industry Is Prepping For Launch – But What About The US?" https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/10/26/chinas-space-mining-industry-is-prepping-for-launch—but-what-about-the-us/?sh=6b8bea862ae0 (I am a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Founding Principal of International Market Analysis, a Washington, D.C.-based global risk advisory boutique.)Elmer Exploration of space-based natural resources are on the Chinese policy makers’ mind. The question is, what Joe Biden thinks? In April of this year, China’s Shenzen Origin Space Technology Co. Ltd. launched the NEO-1, the first commercial spacecraft dedicated to the mining of space resources – from asteroids to the lunar surface. Falling costs of space launches and spacecraft technology alongside existing infrastructure provides a unique opportunity to explore extraterrestrial resource extraction. Current technologies are equipped to analyze and categorize asteroids within our solar system with a limited degree of certainty. One of the accompanying payloads to the NEO-1 was the Yuanwang-1, or "little hubble" satellite, which searches the stars for possible asteroid mining targets. The NEO-1 launch marks another milestone in private satellite development, adding a new player to space based companies which include Japan’s Astroscale. Private asteroid identification via the Sentinel Space Telescope was supported by NASA until 2015. As private investment in space grows, the end goal is to be capable of harvesting resources to bring to Earth. "Through the development and launch of the spacecraft, Origin Space is able to carry out low-Earth orbit space junk cleanup and prototype technology verification for space resource acquisition, and at the same time demonstrate future asteroid defense related technologies." In the end, it will come down to progressively lowering the cost of launched unit of weight and booster rocket reliability – before fundamentally new engines may drive the launch costs even further down. The April launch demonstrates that China is already succeeding while the West is spinning its wheels. The much touted Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries (DSI) DSI -1 were supposed to be the vanguard of extra-terrestrial resource acquisition with major backers including Google’s GOOG -1.4 Larry Page. But both have since been acquired, the former by block chain company ConsenSys and the latter by Bradford Space, neither of which are prioritizing asteroid mining. This is too bad, given that that supply chain crunches here on Earth – coupled with the global green energy transition – are spiking demand for strategic minerals that are increasingly hard to come by on our environmentally stressed planet. And here China currently holds a monopoly on rare earth element (REE) extraction and processing to the tune of 90. REE’s 17 minerals essential for modern computing and manufacturing technologies for everything from solar panels to semi-conductors. Resource-hungry China also has major involvement in global critical mineral supply chains, which include cobalt, tungsten, and lithium. As I’ve written before, the Chinese hold of upstream and downstream markets is staggering. Possessing 30 of the global mined ore, 80 of the global processing facilities, and an ever increasing list of high dollar investments around the world, China boasts over $36 billion invested in mining projects in Africa alone. Beijing’s space program clearly indicates that the Chinese would also like to tighten their grip on space-based resources as well. According to research, it is estimated that a small asteroid roughly 200 meters in length that is rich in platinum could be worth up to $300 million. Merrill Lynch predicts the space industry — including extraterrestrial mining industry – to value $2.7 trillion in the next three decades. REEs are fairly common in the solar system, but to what degree remains unknown. The most sought after are M-type asteroids which are mostly metal and hundreds of cubic meters. While these are not the most common, the 27,115 Near Earth asteroids are bound to contain a few. This – and military applications – are no doubt a driving factor of China’s ever increasing space ambitions. Asteroid mining solves water access – only NEOs are sufficiently proximate and hydrated – independently, storing launch fuel on asteroids reduces space debris – turns case Tillman 19 ~(Nola Taylor, has been published in Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Scientific American, New Scientist, Science News (AAS), Space.com, and Astrobiology magazine, BA in Astrophysics) "Tons of Water in Asteroids Could Fuel Satellites, Space Exploration," Space, 9/29/2019~ JL When it comes to mining space for water, the best target may not be the moon: Entrepreneurs' richest options are likely to be asteroids that are larger and closer to Earth. A recent study suggested that roughly 1,000 water-rich, or hydrated, asteroids near our planet are easier to reach than the lunar surface is. While most of these space rocks are only a few feet in size, more than 25 of them should be large enough to each provide significant water. Altogether, the water locked in these asteroids should be enough to fill somewhere around 320,000 Olympics-size swimming pools — significantly more than the amount of water locked up at the lunar poles, the new research suggested. Because asteroids are small, they have less gravity than Earth or the moon do, which makes them easier destinations to land on and lift off from. If engineers can figure out how to mine water from these space rocks, they could produce a source of ready fuel in space that would allow spacecraft designers to build refuelable models for the next generation of satellites. Asteroid mining could also fuel human exploration, saving the expense of launching fuel from Earth. In both cases, would-be space-rock miners will need to figure out how to free the water trapped in hydrated minerals on these asteroids. "Most of the hydrated material in the near-Earth population is contained in the largest few hydrated objects," Andrew Rivkin, an asteroid researcher at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Research Laboratory in Maryland, told Space.com. Rivkin is the lead author on the paper, which estimated that near Earth asteroids could contain more easily accessible water than the lunar poles. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, more than 5,200 of the objects launched into space are still in orbit today. While some continue to function, the bulk of them buzz uselessly over our heads every day. They carry fuel on board, and when they run out, they are either lowered into destructive orbits or left to become space junk, useless debris with the potential to cause enormous problems for working satellites. Refueling satellites in space could change that model, replacing it with long-lived, productive orbiters. "It's easier to bring fuel from asteroids to geosynchronous orbit than from the surface of the Earth," Rivkin said. "If such a supply line could be established, it could make asteroid mining very profitable." Hunting for space water from the surface of the Earth is challenging because the planet's atmosphere blocks the wavelength of light where water can be observed. The asteroid warming as it draws closer to the sun can also complicate measurements. Instead, Rivkin and his colleagues turned to a class of space rocks called Ch asteroids. Although these asteroids don't directly exhibit a watery fingerprint, they carry the telltale signal of oxidized iron seen only on asteroids with signatures of water-rich minerals, which means the authors felt confident assuming that all Ch asteroids carry this rocky water. Based on meteorite falls, a previous study estimated that Ch asteroids could make up nearly 10 of the near-Earth objects (NEOs). With this information, the researchers determined that there are between 26 and 80 such objects that are hydrated and larger than 0.62 miles (1 km) across. Right now, only three NEOs have been classified as Ch asteroids, although others have been spotted in the asteroid belt. Most NEOs are discovered and observed at wavelengths too short to reveal the iron band that marks the class. Carbon-rich asteroids, which include Ch asteroids and other flavors, are also darker than the more common stony asteroids, making them more challenging to observe. Although Ch asteroids definitely contain water-rich minerals, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will always be the best bet for space mining. It comes down to risk. Would an asteroid-mining company rather visit a smaller asteroid that definitely has a moderate amount of water, or a larger one that could yield a larger payday but could also come up dry? "Whether getting sure things with no false positives, like the Ch asteroids, is more important or if a greater range of possibilities is acceptable with the understanding that some asteroids will be duds is something the miners will have to decide," Rivkin said. In addition to estimating the number of large, water-rich asteroids might be available, the study also found that as many as 1,050 smaller objects, roughly 300 feet (100 meters) across, may also linger near Earth. Their small bulk will make them easier to mine because their low gravity will require less fuel to escape from, but they will produce less water overall, and Rivkin expects that the handful of larger space rocks will be the first targets. "It seems likely that the plan for these companies will be to find the largest accessible asteroid with mineable material with the expectation that it will be more cost-effective than chasing down a large number of smaller objects," Rivkin said. "How 'accessible' and 'mineable material' and 'cost-effective' are defined by each company is to be seen." Inevitable water shortages cause hydro-political conflict escalation which goes nuclear Jamail 19 ~(Dahr, writes for Truthout about climate change issues, recipient of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, frequent guest on Democracy Now!) "The World Is on the Brink of Widespread Water Wars," Truth Out, 2/11/2019~ JL But even more conservative organizations have been sounding the alarm. "Water insecurity could multiply the risk of conflict," warns one of the World Bank’s reports on the issue. "Food price spikes caused by droughts can inflame latent conflicts and drive migration. Where economic growth is impacted by rainfall, episodes of droughts and floods have generated waves of migration and spikes in violence within countries." Meanwhile, a study published in the journal Global Environmental Change, looked at how "hydro-political issues" — including tensions and potential conflicts — could play out in countries expected to experience water shortages coupled with high populations and pre-existing geopolitical tensions. The study warned that these factors could combine to increase the likelihood of water-related tensions — potentially escalating into armed conflict in cross-boundary river basins in places around the world by 74.9 to 95 percent. This means that in some places conflict is practically guaranteed. These areas include regions situated around primary rivers in Asia and North Africa. Noted rivers include the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, the Nile, and the Ganges-Brahmaputra. Consider the fact that 11 countries share the Nile River basin: Egypt, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. All told, more than 300 million people already live in these countries, — a number that is projected to double in the coming decades, while the amount of available water will continue to shrink due to climate change. For those in the US thinking these potential conflicts will only occur in distant lands — think again. The study also warned of a very high chance of these "hydro-political interactions" in portions of the southwestern US and northern Mexico, around the Colorado River. Potential tensions are particularly worrisome in India and Pakistan, which are already rivals when it comes to water resources. For now, these two countries have an agreement, albeit a strained one, over the Indus River and the sharing of its water, by way of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty. However, water claims have been central to their ongoing, burning dispute over the Kashmir region, a flashpoint area there for more than 60 years and counting. The aforementioned treaty is now more strained than ever, as Pakistan accuses India of limiting its water supply and violating the treaty by placing dams over various rivers that flow from Kashmir into Pakistan. In fact, a 2018 report from the International Monetary Fund ranked Pakistan third among countries facing severe water shortages. This is largely due to the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalaya that are the source of much of the water for the Indus. To provide an idea of how quickly water resources are diminishing in both countries, statistics from Pakistan’s Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry from 2018 show that water availability (per capita in cubic meters per year) shrank from 5,260 in 1951, to 940 in 2015, and are projected to shrink to 860 by just 2025. In India, the crisis is hardly better. According to that country’s Ministry of Statistics (2016) and the Indian Ministry of Water Resources (2010), the per capita available water in cubic meters per year was 5,177 in 1951, and 1,474 in 2015, and is projected to shrink to 1,341 in 2025. Both of these countries are nuclear powers. Given the dire projections of water availability as climate change progresses, nightmare scenarios of water wars that could spark nuclear exchanges are now becoming possible.
4/9/22
JF - DA - Innovation
Tournament: College Prep | Round: 3 | Opponent: Hamilton AL | Judge: April Ma Strong commercial space catalyzes tech innovation – progress at the margins and spinoff tech change global information networks Joshua Hampson 2017, Security Studies Fellow at the Niskanen Center, 1-25-2017, “The Future of Space Commercialization”, Niskanen Center, https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/TheFutureofSpaceCommercializationFinal.pdf Innovation is generally hard to predict; some new technologies seem to come out of
AND
to global networks, and new opportunities could lead to wider economic growth.
Short innovation cycles mean every contract counts John J. Klein 19, Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research Inc. and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, 1-15-2019, "Rethinking Requirements and Risk in the New Space Age," Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/rethinking-requirements-and-risk-in-the-new-space-age Unfortunately, these variances in models between the MDAP’s lengthy development cycle and the commercial
AND
verify that satellites can perform missions with a very low probability of failure.
explained Col. Steve Butow, the Defense Innovation Unit’s space portfolio director.
Tech innovation solves every existential threat – cumulative extinction events outweigh the aff Dylan Matthews 18. Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University. 10-26-2018. "How to help people millions of years from now." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions
AND
far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.*
3/25/22
JF - DA - Innovation v2
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: 5 | Opponent: St Agnes EH | Judge: Luke Bagdon Strong commercial space catalyzes tech innovation – progress at the margins and spinoff tech change global information networks Joshua Hampson 2017, Security Studies Fellow at the Niskanen Center, 1-25-2017, “The Future of Space Commercialization”, Niskanen Center, https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/TheFutureofSpaceCommercializationFinal.pdf Innovation is generally hard to predict; some new technologies seem to come out of
AND
to global networks, and new opportunities could lead to wider economic growth.
Short innovation cycles mean every contract counts John J. Klein 19, Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research Inc. and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, 1-15-2019, "Rethinking Requirements and Risk in the New Space Age," Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/rethinking-requirements-and-risk-in-the-new-space-age Unfortunately, these variances in models between the MDAP’s lengthy development cycle and the commercial
AND
verify that satellites can perform missions with a very low probability of failure.
Fiat means the plan circumvents normal procedures for industry dialogue-~--that wrecks certainty and confidence, even if the substance of the plan is pro-business Jeff Foust 18. Editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. 11-5-2018. "The Space Review: Turning space policy into space regulation." The Space Review. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3598/1 More than five months ago, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive (SPD)
AND
will be incorporated into development of a final rule, haven’t been announced.
Tech innovation solves every existential threat – cumulative extinction events outweigh the aff Dylan Matthews 18. Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University. 10-26-2018. "How to help people millions of years from now." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions
AND
far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.*
3/25/22
JF - DA - Innovation v3
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: Octas | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Ari Davidson, Gordon Krauss, David Dosch Strong commercial space catalyzes tech innovation – progress at the margins and spinoff tech change global information networks Joshua Hampson 2017, Security Studies Fellow at the Niskanen Center, 1-25-2017, “The Future of Space Commercialization”, Niskanen Center, https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/TheFutureofSpaceCommercializationFinal.pdf Innovation is generally hard to predict; some new technologies seem to come out of
AND
to global networks, and new opportunities could lead to wider economic growth.
Short innovation cycles mean every contract counts John J. Klein 19, Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research Inc. and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, 1-15-2019, "Rethinking Requirements and Risk in the New Space Age," Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/rethinking-requirements-and-risk-in-the-new-space-age Unfortunately, these variances in models between the MDAP’s lengthy development cycle and the commercial
AND
verify that satellites can perform missions with a very low probability of failure.
when the benefits to liberalizing the regulations in this industry are so pronounced.
Fiat means the plan circumvents normal procedures for industry dialogue-~--that wrecks certainty and confidence, even if the substance of the plan is pro-business Jeff Foust 18. Editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. 11-5-2018. "The Space Review: Turning space policy into space regulation." The Space Review. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3598/1 More than five months ago, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive (SPD)
AND
will be incorporated into development of a final rule, haven’t been announced.
Tech innovation solves every existential threat – cumulative extinction events outweigh the aff Dylan Matthews 18. Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University. 10-26-2018. "How to help people millions of years from now." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions
AND
far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.*
Commercial space is key to tourism-~--that solves aerospace competitiveness. Olena Suschenko 18. (Candidate of Economic Sciences, Associate Professor Faculty of International Economic Relations, Department of Tourism Simon Kuznets Kharkiv National University of Economics "ECONOMICS OF AEROSPACE TOURISM: PECULIARITIES AND PROSPECTS OF MARKETING FOR POTENTIAL SPACE TOURISM COMPANIES." http://www.visnyk-econom.uzhnu.uz.ua/archive/20_3_2018ua/19.pdf/ Introduction and formulation of the study’s problema tic. Spaceflight is expensive, especially given
AND
services. A range of government policies should be revised to reflect this.
Aerospace decline causes global nuclear war Pfaltzgraff 10 – Robert L, Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies at. The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and President of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, et al., Final Report of the IFPA-Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy and Policy, “Air, Space, and Cyberspace Power in the 21st-Century”, p. xiii-9 Deterrence Strategy In stark contrast to the bipolar Cold War nuclear setting, today’s security
AND
that airpower would play in U.S. strategy and crisis management.
3/25/22
JF - DA - Innovation v4
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 2 | Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Aashir Sanjrani Strong commercial space catalyzes tech innovation – progress at the margins and spinoff tech change global information networks Joshua Hampson 2017, Security Studies Fellow at the Niskanen Center, 1-25-2017, “The Future of Space Commercialization”, Niskanen Center, https://republicans-science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/TheFutureofSpaceCommercializationFinal.pdf Innovation is generally hard to predict; some new technologies seem to come out of
AND
to global networks, and new opportunities could lead to wider economic growth.
Short innovation cycles mean every contract counts John J. Klein 19, Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research Inc. and adjunct professor at the George Washington University Space Policy Institute, 1-15-2019, "Rethinking Requirements and Risk in the New Space Age," Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/rethinking-requirements-and-risk-in-the-new-space-age Unfortunately, these variances in models between the MDAP’s lengthy development cycle and the commercial
AND
verify that satellites can perform missions with a very low probability of failure.
when the benefits to liberalizing the regulations in this industry are so pronounced.
Fiat means the plan circumvents normal procedures for industry dialogue-~--that wrecks certainty and confidence, even if the substance of the plan is pro-business Jeff Foust 18. Editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. 11-5-2018. "The Space Review: Turning space policy into space regulation." The Space Review. http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3598/1 More than five months ago, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive (SPD)
AND
will be incorporated into development of a final rule, haven’t been announced.
Tech innovation solves every existential threat – cumulative extinction events outweigh the aff Dylan Matthews 18. Co-founder of Vox, citing Nick Beckstead @ Rutgers University. 10-26-2018. "How to help people millions of years from now." Vox. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/26/18023366/far-future-effective-altruism-existential-risk-doing-good If you care about improving human lives, you should overwhelmingly care about those quadrillions
AND
far future, then effective altruism just becomes plain ol’ do-goodery.*
3/25/22
JF - DA - Mining
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Leah Clark Villanueva Commercial asteroid mining is coming now – lower costs and improving tech make it economically viable – and the legal basis is already in place in multiple countries– that helps acquire water for rocket fuel and rare earth metals Gilbert, PhD student in space resources at the Colorado School of Mines, writes in 21 alex gilbert, is a complex systems researcher and a PhD student in space resources at the Colorado School of Mines. "Mining in Space Is Coming." Milken Institute Review, April 26, 2021, www.milkenreview.org/articles/mining-in-space-is-coming. Quality Control Space exploration is back. after decades of disappointment, a combination of better technology
AND
making the transition from fossil fuels to renewables backed up by battery storage.
Asteroid mining offsets terrestrial growth that ruins the environment and enables solar power satellites – both solve climate change Taylor 19 Chris Taylor is a veteran journalist. Previously senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and West Coast web editor for Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. "How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires." Mashable, 2019, mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy. Quality Control The mission is essential, Joyce declares, to save Earth from its major problems
AND
how relatively easy it is to ship stuff in zero-G environments.
Asteroid mining solves rare earth metal depletion – prevents tech stagnation and unsustainable resource extraction — it would last millions of years which takes out the resource depletion scenario Mitchell 20 Robin Mitchell is an electronic engineer who has been involved in electronics since the age of 13. After completing a BEng at the University of Warwick, Robin moved into the field of online content creation developing articles. "How might asteroid mining be key to electronics future?" 28-09-2020, www.electropages.com/blog/2020/09/how-might-asteroid-mining-be-key-electronics-future. Quality Control As electronics continue to become increasingly more important in everyday life, so is the
AND
that orbit the sun, planets, and rings around Saturn / Jupiter.
Asteroid mining tech solves asteroid collisions - extinction Taylor 19 Chris Taylor is a veteran journalist. Previously senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and West Coast web editor for Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. "How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires." Mashable, 2019, mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy. Quality Control For those who worry about asteroids that could wipe out civilization — though luckily,
AND
into 150 small solar-power satellites, as a proof of concept.
3/25/22
JF - DA - NASA
Tournament: College Prep | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough LF | Judge: Asher Towner NASA is preserving resources by leveraging private partnerships Miriam Kramer 21, author of Space, “NASA's plans for the future hinge on the success of private companies,” Axios, 12-7-2021, https://www.axios.com/nasa-private-spaceflight-plans-5a5710e6-5223-4da3-8c5d-5a712e1d862e.html The private space players who will drive NASA's plans for the coming decade are declaring
AND
of commercial space companies to start designing and building privately operated space stations.
Plan forces trade-offs that crush effective Earth sciences --- risks catastrophic climate change Haymet 7 (Tony, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – University of California, San Diego, Mark Abbott, Dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science – Oregon State University, and Jim Luyten, Acting Director – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “The Planet NASA Needs to Explore”, Washington Post, 5-10, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902451.html) Decades ago, a shift in NASA priorities sidelined progress in human space exploration.
AND
afford to be so starry-eyed that we overlook our own planet.
economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."
3/25/22
JF - DA - Rule of Law
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 4 | Opponent: West Ranch SV | Judge: Lauren Woodall Expanding PTD shatters the entire legal-regulatory balance Huffman 15 James L. Huffman is Dean Emeritus of Lewis and Clark Law School and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He holds degrees from Montana State University (BS), The Fletcher School of Tufts University (MA) and the University of Chicago (JD). "WHY LIBERATING THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE IS BAD FOR THE PUBLIC." https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/19611-45-2huffman Since the beginning of the modern environmental movement in the 1960s, environmental advocates have
AND
property rights, and the economic prosperity on which environmental protection ultimately depends.
Expanding PTD beyond precedent allows for unchecked judicial activism across the law – the plan applies it everywhere on earth, which ensures circumvention, authoritarianism, and shocks global rule of law Huffman 15 James L. Huffman is Dean Emeritus of Lewis and Clark Law School and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He holds degrees from Montana State University (BS), The Fletcher School of Tufts University (MA) and the University of Chicago (JD). "WHY LIBERATING THE PUBLIC TRUST DOCTRINE IS BAD FOR THE PUBLIC." https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/19611-45-2huffman Modern progressives, like their early twentieth century predecessors, tend to be skeptical of
AND
law, many a nation has failed to solve much lesser challenges.230
Rule of law solves war Feldman ‘8 Noah; September 28; Professor of Law at Harvard University School of Law; New York Times, “When Judges Make Foreign Policy,” lexis Why We Need More Law, More Than Ever So what do we need
AND
it, the way dictators and juntas have often done the world over.
SOP decline causes global nuke war Dr. G. John Ikenberry 15, PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, “Getting Hegemony Right”, in Korean Attitudes Toward the United States: Changing Dynamics, Ed. Steinberg, p. 17-18 A critical ingredient in stabilizing international relations in a world of radical power disparities is
AND
policies that do not reflect the capricious and idiosyncratic whims of an autocrat.
3/25/22
JF - DA - Xi
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: Octas | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Jacob Nails, Parker Hopkins, Gordon Krauss Xi’s regime is stable now, but its success depends on strong growth and private sector development. Mitter and Johnson 21 Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson, Rana Mitter is a professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford. Elsbeth Johnson, formerly the strategy director for Prudential PLC’s Asian business, is a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the founder of SystemShift, a consulting firm. May-June 2021, "What the West Gets Wrong About China," Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-china accessed 12/14/21 Adam In China, however, growth has come in the context of stable communist rule
AND
University thanks to social mobility and the party’s significant investment in scientific research.
Shifts in regime perception threatens CCP’s legitimacy from nationalist hardliners Weiss 19 Jessica Weiss 1-29-2019 “Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises: Evidence from China” http://www.jessicachenweiss.com/uploads/3/0/6/3/30636001/19-01-24-elite-statements-isq-ca.pdf (Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University)Elmer Public support—or the appearance of it—matters to many autocracies. As
AND
to it more directly than even the U.S. government.”11
Xi will launch diversionary war to domestic backlash – escalates in multiple hotspots Norris 17, William J. Geostrategic Implications of China’s Twin Economic Challenges. CFR Discussion Paper, 2017. (Associate professor of Chinese foreign and security policy at Texas AandM University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service)Elmer Populist pressures might tempt the party leadership to encourage diversionary nationalism. The logic of
AND
resource is directed shifts away from industrial and export production toward domestic consumption.
US–China war goes nuclear – crisis mis-management ensures conventional escalation - extinction Kulacki 20 Dr. Gregory Kulacki focuses on cross-cultural communication between the United States and China on nuclear and space arms control and is the China Project Manager for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, 2020. Would China Use Nuclear Weapons First In A War With The United States?, Thediplomat.com, https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/would-china-use-nuclear-weapons-first-in-a-war-with-the-united-states/ srey Admiral Charles A. Richard, the head of the U.S. Strategic
AND
a military crisis, but it would make one far less likely.s
3/25/22
JF - NC - Util v2
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 4 | Opponent: Stockdale GS | Judge: Ari Davidson The standard is maximizing expected well being
Life is intrinsically and infinitely valuable because it is a prerequisite to any subjective pleasure – it should be preserved as an apriori issue. Kacou 08 Amien, “Why Even Mind? On The A Priori Value Of “Life”, Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 4, No 1-2, 2008, cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/92/184JIH Furthermore, that manner of finding things good that is in pleasure can certainly not
AND
inquiry—on the subjective or circumstantial or a posteriori value of life.
be acting very wrongly.” (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
They didn't make an arg for this in the 1ac so I should get my pick
3/25/22
JF - T - Appropriation
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 2 | Opponent: Dwight Englewood EK | Judge: Leah Clark Villanueva Interp - “Appropriation of outer space” is exclusive and permanent TIMOTHY JUSTIN TRAPP, JD Candidate @ UIUC Law, ’13 quoting Smith 92, TAKING UP SPACE BY ANY OTHER MEANS: COMING TO TERMS WITH THE NONAPPROPRIATION ARTICLE OF THE OUTER SPACE TREATY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW Vol. 2013 No. 4 The issues presented in relation to the nonappropriation article of the Outer Space Treaty should
AND
the Bogotá Declaration were trying to accomplish, albeit through different means.219
Violation: the non-Appropriation principle does not apply to resource extraction. International consensus and rejection of the Moon Treaty support the distinction between sovereign ownership and resource extraction Wrench 19 John, JD Candidate at Case Western, BA from Pace University “Non-Appropriation, No Problem: The Outer Space Treaty Is Ready for Asteroid Mining,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 51 Issue 1, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2546andcontext=jil, 2019 RE An interpretation of Article II supporting a blanket ban on resource ownership is unwarranted by
AND
of property rights in resources extracted from that land, is nothing new.
Prefer:
1 Precision--analogous treaties prove Wrench 19 John, JD Candidate at Case Western, BA from Pace University “Non-Appropriation, No Problem: The Outer Space Treaty Is Ready for Asteroid Mining,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 51 Issue 1, https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2546andcontext=jil, 2019 RE Although the OST does not provide a comprehensive guideline for resource extraction in outer space
AND
in extracted resources despite being restricted from claiming sovereignty over the underlying land.
Consensus of the literature votes neg—means our interp is most predictable Tronchetti 10 Fabio, Co-Director of the Institute of Space Law and Strategy and as a Zhuoyue Associate Professor at Beihang University, PhD in International Space Law from Leiden University “The Moon Agreement in the 21st Century: Addressing its Potential Role in the Era of Commercial Exploitation of the Natural Resources of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” Journal of Space Law, Vol. 36 No. 2, Winter 2010, https://airandspace.confit.dev/pdfs/jsl-36-2.pdf RE A key issue, which is not directly addressed by the Treaty and which is
AND
.30 This paper shares the opinion of the second group of authors.
That o/w any deviation justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words in the resolution at their whim which decks negative ground and preparation because the aff is no longer bounded by the resolution.
2 limits and ground: expanding the topic beyond appropriation allows for affs about any miniscule use of space resources which decimates links to generics which are based on property rights in space and results in a litany of small affirmatives that cause a race to the margins
Topicality is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interpretations – it tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for
No RVIs—it’s your burden to be topical.
3/25/22
JF - T - Appropriation v2
Tournament: Barkley Forum | Round: Octas | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Ari Davidson, Gordon Krauss, David Dosch Interpretation: Appropriation means use, exploitation, or occupation that is permanent and to the exclusion of others Babcock 19 Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Cente. Babcock, Hope M. "The Public Trust Doctrine, Outer Space, and the Global Commons: Time to Call Home ET." Syracuse L. Rev. 69 (2019): 191. Article II is one of those succeeding provisions that curtails “the freedom of use
AND
term use and permanent occupation, to the exclusion of all others.”151
Violation: Space tourism is, by definition, temporary – people briefly go to space in a rocket ship and then return to Earth
1 Precision – if we win definitions the aff doesn’t defend a shift from the squo or solve their advantages – so at best vote negative on presumption. The resolution is the only predictable stasis point for dividing ground—any deviation justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words in the resolution at their whim which decks negative ground and preparation because the aff is no longer bounded by the resolution.
2 Predictable limits—Letting temporary occupation be appropriation is a limits diaster - any aff about a single space ship, satellite, or weapon would be T because they temporarily occupy space. Limits explodes neg prep burden and draws un-reciprocal lines of debate, where the aff is always ahead, turns their pragmatics offense
Topicality is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interpretations – it tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for—there’s no way for the negative to know what constitutes a “reasonable interpretation” when we do prep – reasonability is arbitrary and causes a race to the bottom, proliferating abuse
No RVIs—it’s your burden to be topical.
3/25/22
JF - T - Appropriation v3
Tournament: Palm Classic | Round: 4 | Opponent: West Ranch SV | Judge: Lauren Woodall Interpretation: appropriation involves permanent, exclusive use of land and resource extraction. The aff must defend that appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Stephen Gorove, Stephen Gorove (1917-2001) was a space law education pioneer. He served as a professor of space law and director of space studies and policy, from 1991-1998, at the University of Mississippi., 1969 " Interpreting Article II of the Outer Space Treaty" Fordham Law Review, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1966andcontext=flr With respect to the concept of appropriation the basic question is what constitutes "appropriation
AND
with intention of keeping for one's own exclusive use would amount to appropriation.
Violation – application of PTD to space isn’t permanent, it’s context dependent and depends on cost benefit analysis WEF n.d. -- (“Public Trust Doctrine.” Water Education Foundation, The Water Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide unbiased, balanced information on water issues in California and the Southwestern United States. The Foundation's mission, since its founding in 1977, has been "to create a better understanding of water resources and foster public understanding and resolution of water resource issues through facilitation, education and outreach,” https://www.watereducation.org/aquapedia/public-trust-doctrine, HKR-AS) Rooted in Roman law, the public trust doctrine recognizes the public right to many
AND
Purchase the Layperson’s Guide to Water Rights to learn more about public trust.
Plan text in a vacuum bad for fairness because it allows for incongruency between 99 of the aff and 1 of the aff – the worst version of their model is that the plan text is different from the advantage, so it makes no sense – hold them to reading a plan text defined contextually with the advantage
Vote neg –
1 Ground – allowing affs to not defend permanent appropriation kills negative ground – we can’t read the innovation DA, since they can say innovative appropriation efforts are allowed, we can’t read asteroid mining or disads to specific types of appropriation since they can defend an exemption for that, etc. – Since the government gets to interpret whether or not the PTD applies to appropriation in specific instances, the negative can’t reasonably predict what the aff defends restricting and what it doesn’t. Ground controls the internal link to clash and fairness since the aff makes being neg impossible.
T is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interps – it tells the negative what to prepare for and reasonability invites judge intervention
3/25/22
JF - T - Extra
Tournament: College Prep | Round: 6 | Opponent: Archbishop Mitty AA | Judge: Alex Baez Interpretation – the affirmative must defend that the appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Violation – they also defend the PDT
Extra-T is a voting issue for fairness and education it makes being negative impossible
A) Infinitely regressive – they can attach literally anything onto the resolution – that lets them fiat out of Kritik links and any disad by attaching as many words onto the plan as they want B) Predictable limits – infinite options means we can’t predict advantage areas – this leads to terrible debates where we’re forced to go for generics – that crushes topic education C) Clash – they circumvent clash by justifying adding on anything onto the resolution – its not what they do its what they justify – clash is the most portable skill in debate because it’s the only unique advantage to the activity that can’t be solved anywhere else. Our interp is key to third and fourth level testing of the aff which results in more rigorous and nuanced debates even if they win K v K debates good our model means link and alt debating gets much more specific.
3/25/22
JF - T - Extra v2
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 4 | Opponent: Stockdale GS | Judge: Ari Davidson Interpretation – the affirmative must defend that the appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust.
Violation – they also defend the c
Extra-T is a voting issue for fairness and education it makes being negative impossible
A) Infinitely regressive – they can attach literally anything onto the resolution – that lets them fiat out of Kritik links and any disad by attaching as many words onto the plan as they want
B) Predictable limits – infinite options means we can’t predict advantage areas – this leads to terrible debates where we’re forced to go for generics – that crushes topic education
C) Clash – they circumvent clash by justifying adding on anything onto the resolution – its not what they do its what they justify – clash is the most portable skill in debate because it’s the only unique advantage to the activity that can’t be solved anywhere else. Our interp is key to third and fourth level testing of the aff which results in more rigorous and nuanced debates
c/i
no rvis
3/25/22
JF - T - Extra v3
Tournament: Cal | Round: 3 | Opponent: Little Rock Central MG | Judge: Claudia Ribera Interpretation – the affirmative must defend that the appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust. Violation –they’ve spiked on transpacific reimagining to the res Extra-T is a voting issue for fairness and education it makes being negative impossible A) Infinitely regressive – they can attach literally anything onto the resolution – that lets them fiat out of Kritik links and any disad by attaching as many words onto the plan as they want B) Predictable limits – infinite options means we can’t predict advantage areas – this leads to terrible debates where we’re forced to go for generics – that crushes topic education C) Clash – they circumvent clash by justifying adding on anything onto the resolution – its not what they do its what they justify – clash is the most portable skill in debate because it’s the only unique advantage to the activity that can’t be solved anywhere else. Our interp is key to third and fourth level testing of the aff which results in more rigorous and nuanced debates even if they win K v K debates good our model means link and alt debating gets much more specific. D) Accessibility extra T pushes out the engagement of debaters who wouldn’t be able to engage with infinite number of changes to the resolution because of a lack of institutional support which flips their accessibility arguments – we think that you can still get offense from your framework but you shouldn’t be able to gain extra offense from the process reimagining -locust of debate under their model is about reimagining – 4/5 of their cards are about this view of the world – our model is that we talk about space but changes the way the aff frames their offense Competing interps on T – It tells the negative what they do and do not have to do not have to prepare for when doing prep – there’s no way for us to understand what a predictable No RVI’s T is an aff burden
3/25/22
JF - Th - ASPEC
Tournament: Harvard Westlake | Round: 6 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake MT | Judge: Vanessa Nguyen Interpretation: the affirmative must specify the agent of the plan in the plan text or in cx if asked Violation: they don’t Vote neg for stable predictable ground – letting the aff reclarify their plan text in the 1AR ensures shifty debates that delink from negative offense such as process CPs, PICs, etc. which destroys clash and indepth engagement C/I – reasonability is arbitrary and invites judge intervention Reject the team for abuse
3/25/22
ND - CP - NLRB
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 7 | Opponent: Strake Jesuit MS | Judge: Gordon Krauss The National Labor Relations Bureau should, after soliciting notice and comment, find that US noncompliance is a violation of the right to strike.
Solves and competes - Notice and comment rulemaking solves the case and spills over to set a precedent that the courts will uphold they haven't read a spillover claim so this solves better Zeisler 14 Royce Zeisler, J.D. Candidate 2014, Columbia Law School; B.S., B.A. 2012, University of British Columbia, "CHEVRON DEFERENCE AND THE FTC: HOW AND WHY THE FTC SHOULD USE CHEVRON TO IMPROVE ANTITRUST ENFORCEMENT", Columbia Business Law Review, 2014, HeinOnline An instructive use of this style of regulation occurred in 1991 with the National Labor
AND
presumption for generalist courts to deploy in deciding the existence of bargaining units.
Key to democracy and court acquiescence---notice and comment engages participants and creates deference. Harry First and Spencer Weber Waller 13. Harry First, New York University School of Law. Spencer Weber Waller, Loyola University Chicago School of Law. “Antitrust’s Democracy Deficit”. Fordham Law Review, Volume 81 Issue 5 Article 13. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4890andcontext=flr Redressing antitrust’s democracy deficit on the procedural side can be done with the tools of
AND
antitrust, the market economy, and the democratic branches of government themselves.
US democratic retreat causes terrorism, great power war, famine, and poverty. Garry Kasparov 17. Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, founded the Renew Democracy Initiative. “Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership”. Feb 16 2017. U.S. Senate. http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021617_Kasparov_20Testimony.pdf The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the
AND
for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you
They haven't identified a test case per which the aff would be passed the courts cabn't just pick up anything and choose to do it -- there has to be an incoming piece of legislation in the docket that they would rule on where the govt has violated customary international law where they've restricted a strike
3/23/22
ND - DA - Debt Ceiling
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake CR | Judge: Lena Mizrahi Debt ceiling passes now and solves collapse, but floor time is limited and avoiding new fights is key Zhou 10/7 ~Li, politics and policy reporter for Vox, "The debt ceiling fight is far from over" https://www.vox.com/22711441/debt-ceiling-congress-december~~ Lawmakers have ended another standoff over the debt ceiling — at least temporarily. On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-48 to increase the debt ceiling (a legal cap to how much the US can borrow) by $480 billion, an action the House is expected to take too. That money will enable the US government to cover its loan obligations until early December, when Congress will once again have to either pass a longer-term increase or another stopgap suspension. The current agreement is the product of a weekslong stalemate on the issue that saw Democrats trying to pressure the GOP into giving up their roadblock of an increase or suspension of the debt ceiling, and Republicans repeatedly refusing to do so. The impasse had high stakes, as the US faced a rapidly approaching default deadline. According to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the US could run out of money as early as October 18. Passing that deadline without an increase or suspension would have likely triggered a massive domestic and international economic collapse. Ultimately, Republican senators decided to cooperate with Democrats, for now. However, in approving this short-term fix, lawmakers have failed to address the issues that brought them to a stalemate in the first place. They’ve now set themselves up for another dangerous impasse when this bill expires after December 3. The standoff, briefly explained Republicans have been intent on using the debt ceiling to make Democrats look bad. Prior to their offer to back an increase this week, Republicans had not only said that they wouldn’t vote for a suspension but also that they would be blocking Democrats’ attempts to approve one using regular legislative order. If Republicans didn’t previously block the vote, Democrats would have been able to pass it with 51 votes — but because they did, the measure required 60 to advance. Instead, Republicans pushed Democrats to use budget reconciliation — another process that would enable them to raise the debt limit with just 51 votes — to increase the cap on their own. Democrats were reluctant to use budget reconciliation both because it can be a lengthy and convoluted process and because it would have required them to specify how much they are raising the debt limit (something they ended up having to do anyway for the December increase). Effectively, Republicans wanted Democrats on the record as having increased the debt limit by trillions of dollars in order to portray them during the midterms as big spenders. Additionally, Republicans argued that because Democrats are working on a partisan basis to pass an expansive social spending bill, they should take care of any debt ceiling increases on a partisan basis, too. "Republicans’ position is simple," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote to President Joe Biden on Monday. "We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) talks with reporters on October 7. The Senate voted to increase the debt ceiling, enabling the US government to cover its loan obligations until early December. Win McNamee/Getty Images Democrats, on the other hand, have argued that Republicans ought to work with them to pass a suspension or increase, or simply get out of the way. One, because avoiding a gigantic economic collapse is in everyone’s interest, and the minority party hasn’t typically blocked action to this degree in the past. And two, because both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the actual debt that this legislation would address. Both points are true: The debt grew nearly $8 trillion during the Trump administration as a result of massive tax cuts and pandemic relief. In that time frame, Republicans and Democrats both voted to suspend the debt limit three times. But that didn’t sway Republican lawmakers. Because Republicans had refused to give up their opposition and Democrats were intent on keeping the pressure on the GOP, the two sides were at an impasse until this week. How the debt deal came together On Wednesday, McConnell reversed his position and told Democrats that Republicans would not block a short-term increase to the debt limit into December. Adamant that they would not pursue reconciliation to raise the ceiling (and, given the deadline, likely out of time to try doing so) Democrats raised the possibility of creating a carve-out in the filibuster rules that would also allow them to pass debt ceiling measures with the 51 Democratic votes they have, rather than the 60 votes filibuster rules require. That latter option appeared to be gaining momentum this week, although key moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) were still wary of it. As a sign of its traction, however, Biden — who has traditionally been cautious of altering filibuster rules — called carving out a special debt-ceiling-related exemption to the filibuster a "real possibility." That possibility may have spurred McConnell’s decision to cave for the time being. According to CNN’s Manu Raju, McConnell was worried about potential threats to the filibuster when he offered Democrats a deal to increase the debt ceiling for now. The filibuster has allowed McConnell to block a range of Democratic priorities — from police to voting reforms — despite his party being in the minority. The assumption is that exempting the debt ceiling from the filibuster would increase pressure on Democrats to do so for other issues Republicans oppose, like expanding protections for voting rights. For now, the filibuster stands. And the GOP’s move helps prevent the US from going into default in the near term. It does little to resolve the central conflict at hand, however. Republicans are still insisting, after all, that Democrats use budget reconciliation to approve a longer-term debt ceiling increase on a partisan basis. Democrats, meanwhile, are refusing to do so and may consider a filibuster carve-out again in December. "We’re not doing it on reconciliation," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) emphasized earlier this week. There will be more debt drama in December The use of the debt limit as political leverage is nothing new. As Republicans have been fond of pointing out, Biden was among the Democratic senators who voted against raising it in 2006 in order to send a message about his disagreement with Republican policies. In that scenario, though, Democrats did not filibuster the legislation or prevent Republicans from approving it with a simple majority. Additionally, Republicans have previously withheld votes for debt ceiling increases in exchange for policy concessions, something that’s not the case this time around. This year, as Republicans emphasized, they took issue with the debt limit in order to simply make a point, a tough position to negotiate with. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks to reporters as the Senate was nearing a deal on a short-term increase to the debt ceiling. Bloomberg via Getty Images This short-term fix does help Democrats in that it allows them to focus their time and energies instead on a larger social spending bill they’ve struggled to complete. "McConnell caved," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told reporters. "And now we’re going to spend our time doing child care, health care, and fighting climate change." But the larger disagreements between Republicans and Democrats regarding how to move forward remain. And by procrastinating on solving them, lawmakers have set themselves up for a difficult December. The new deadline to address the debt ceiling also coincides with another deadline to pass more government appropriations — that is, the money needed to keep the government functioning. That means Congress will find itself in a tough spot yet again in just a few months. Not only will lawmakers have to solve their debt ceiling disagreements and stave off economic disaster, but they’ll have to do so while fighting over how to avoid a government shutdown. Manchin and Sinema would fight the plan – that’s a massive floor time suck Harold 21 ~Zack, staf reporter for The Guardian, "US minimum wage activists face their toughest foe: Democrat Joe Manchin" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/22/us-15-dollar-minimum-wage-joe-manchin-west-virginia~~ Hopes that the US will finally increase the federal minimum wage for the first time in nearly 12 years face a seemingly unlikely opponent: a Democrat senator from one of the poorest states in the union. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the state’s former governor and the Democrats’ most conservative senator, has long opposed his party’s progressive wing and is on record saying he does not support increasing the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour, the first increase since 2009. "I’m supportive of basically having something that’s responsible and reasonable," he told the Hill. He has advocated for a rise to $11. Industry lobbying allied to Republican and – until relatively recently – Democrat opposition has locked the US’s minimum wage at $7.25 since the last raise in 2009. 'Hopefully it makes history': Fight for $15 closes in on mighty win for US workers None of this has found favor with some low-wage workers in a state where an estimated 278,734 West Virginians lived in poverty in 2019, 16 of the population and the sixth highest poverty rate in the US. Last Thursday Manchin reaffirmed his stance during a virtual meeting with members of the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign (WVPPC), a group pushing for an increased minimum wage and other policy changes that would benefit the working class. That meeting was closed to the media but at an online press conference immediately afterward, participants said Manchin refused to budge. "He was kind of copping out," said WVPPC member Brianna Griffith, a restaurant worker and whitewater rafting guide who, due to exemptions for tipped workers, only makes $2.62 an hour. As a result of her sub-minimum wage job, Griffith received only $67 a week in unemployment benefits until that ran out in August. She lost her house and was forced to move in with her grandmother. Although she has now returned to work, business is slow and she estimates tips have fallen by 75. When Griffith told Manchin about her plight on Thursday, she said he asked about the $600 stimulus check approved by Congress in December. "He seemed to think that $600 … was enough to get me by," she said. "I feel like he’s got his head in the clouds and he doesn’t understand what’s happening to poor people in West Virginia." Despite Manchin’s insistence on an $11 minimum wage, according to MIT’s living wage calculator, even a $15 minimum wage would only provide a living wage for single West Virginians without children. For a West Virginia family with two working parents and two children, both parents would need to be making at least $20.14 an hour to make ends meet. Griffith said if the minimum wage was increased to $15 an hour, "I could afford to live on my own. I could afford a car that’s not 25 years old." The Rev Dr William Barber, co-chair of the national Poor People’s Campaign, was in last week’s meeting and said Manchin agreed the current $7.25 minimum wage was "not enough". But Barber said he was "amazed" Manchin could hear from people like Griffith and still oppose increasing the minimum wage to $15. "What he is suggesting would just further keep people in poverty and hurting," he said. Raising the minimum wage was a key part of Democrats’ 2020 platform. The former presidential candidate and now Senate budget committee chairman, Bernie Sanders, has referred to the current $7.25 rate as "a starvation wage". The wage hike, formally known as the Raise the Wage Act of 2021, is now part of a proposed $1.9tn Covid-19 relief bill. The measure would incrementally raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over the next four years. With only a razor-thin majority in the Senate, all 50 Democrat senators need to be onboard for the bill to pass. But in addition to Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has told Politico she does not want the minimum wage increase to be part of the Covid relief package. Debt default is the easiest way to wreck the US economy—ruins the US dollar and financial reputation Egan 9/8 ~Matt Egan is an award-winning reporter at CNN, covering business, the economy and financial markets across CNN's television and digital platforms, "'Financial Armageddon.' What's at stake if the debt limit isn't raised", 9/8/21, https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/08/business/debt-ceiling-default-explained/index.html~~ The easiest way to spark a financial crisis and wreck the US economy would be to allow the federal government to default on its debt. It would be an epic, unforced error — and millions of Americans would pay the price. And yet that unlikely situation is once again being contemplated. If Congress doesn't raise the limit on federal borrowing the federal government will most likely run out of cash and extraordinary measures next month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned lawmakers on Wednesday. In short, a default would be an economic cataclysm. Interest rates would spike, the stock market would crater, retirement accounts would take a beating, the value of the US dollar would erode and the financial reputation of the world's only superpower would be tarnished. "It would be financial Armageddon," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told CNN. "It's complete craziness to even contemplate the idea of not paying our debt on time." But it's a crazy world. Lawmakers in Washington are again playing chicken with America's creditworthiness. And the path to raising the debt ceiling is not clear. Even though Congress has in the past raised the debt ceiling with a bipartisan vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed in July that Republicans will not vote to raise the debt ceiling. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon urged lawmakers not to even think about going down this path again. During a hearing in May, Dimon said an actual default "could cause an immediate, literally cascading catastrophe of unbelievable proportions and damage America for 100 years." 'Irreparable damage' In her letter to Congress, Yellen said history shows that waiting "until the last minute" to suspend or increase the debt limit "can cause serious harm" to business and consumer confidence, raise borrowing costs for taxpayers and hurt America's credit rating. "A delay that calls into question the federal government's ability to meet all its obligations would likely cause irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets," Yellen wrote. A US default would undermine the bedrock of the modern global financial system. "We pay our debt. That's what distinguishes the United States from almost every other country on the planet," Zandi of Moody's said. Because of America's long track record of paying its debt, it's very cheap for Washington to borrow. But a default would force ratings companies to downgrade US debt and shatter that borrowing advantage. Markets plunged in 2011 when that debt ceiling standoff caused Standard and Poor's to downgrade America's credit rating. Higher borrowing costs would make it much harder for Washington to borrow to pay for infrastructure, the climate crisis or to fight future recessions. And refinancing America's nearly $29 trillion mountain of existing debt would become that much more expensive. Interest expenses, which totaled $345 billion in fiscal 2020, would quickly rival what Washington spends on defense. Nuke war Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Vladimir Popov 19. Former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. Former senior economics researcher in the Soviet Union, Russia and the United Nations Secretariat, is now Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin "Economic Crisis Can Trigger World War." http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/02/economic-crisis-can-trigger-world-war/. Economic recovery efforts since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis have mainly depended on unconventional monetary policies. As fears rise of yet another international financial crisis, there are growing concerns about the increased possibility of large-scale military conflict. More worryingly, in the current political landscape, prolonged economic crisis, combined with rising economic inequality, chauvinistic ethno-populism as well as aggressive jingoist rhetoric, including threats, could easily spin out of control and ‘morph’ into military conflict, and worse, world war. Crisis responses limited The 2008-2009 global financial crisis almost ‘bankrupted’ governments and caused systemic collapse. Policymakers managed to pull the world economy from the brink, but soon switched from counter-cyclical fiscal efforts to unconventional monetary measures, primarily ‘quantitative easing’ and very low, if not negative real interest rates. But while these monetary interventions averted realization of the worst fears at the time by turning the US economy around, they did little to address underlying economic weaknesses, largely due to the ascendance of finance in recent decades at the expense of the real economy. Since then, despite promising to do so, policymakers have not seriously pursued, let alone achieved, such needed reforms. Instead, ostensible structural reformers have taken advantage of the crisis to pursue largely irrelevant efforts to further ‘casualize’ labour markets. This lack of structural reform has meant that the unprecedented liquidity central banks injected into economies has not been well allocated to stimulate resurgence of the real economy. From bust to bubble Instead, easy credit raised asset prices to levels even higher than those prevailing before 2008. US house prices are now 8 more than at the peak of the property bubble in 2006, while its price-to-earnings ratio in late 2018 was even higher than in 2008 and in 1929, when the Wall Street Crash precipitated the Great Depression. As monetary tightening checks asset price bubbles, another economic crisis — possibly more severe than the last, as the economy has become less responsive to such blunt monetary interventions — is considered likely. A decade of such unconventional monetary policies, with very low interest rates, has greatly depleted their ability to revive the economy. The implications beyond the economy of such developments and policy responses are already being seen. Prolonged economic distress has worsened public antipathy towards the culturally alien — not only abroad, but also within. Thus, another round of economic stress is deemed likely to foment unrest, conflict, even war as it is blamed on the foreign. International trade shrank by two-thirds within half a decade after the US passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, ostensibly to protect American workers and farmers from foreign competition! Liberalization’s discontents Rising economic insecurity, inequalities and deprivation are expected to strengthen ethno-populist and jingoistic nationalist sentiments, and increase social tensions and turmoil, especially among the growing precariat and others who feel vulnerable or threatened. Thus, ethno-populist inspired chauvinistic nationalism may exacerbate tensions, leading to conflicts and tensions among countries, as in the 1930s. Opportunistic leaders have been blaming such misfortunes on outsiders and may seek to reverse policies associated with the perceived causes, such as ‘globalist’ economic liberalization. Policies which successfully check such problems may reduce social tensions, as well as the likelihood of social turmoil and conflict, including among countries. However, these may also inadvertently exacerbate problems. The recent spread of anti-globalization sentiment appears correlated to slow, if not negative per capita income growth and increased economic inequality. To be sure, globalization and liberalization are statistically associated with growing economic inequality and rising ethno-populism. Declining real incomes and growing economic insecurity have apparently strengthened ethno-populism and nationalistic chauvinism, threatening economic liberalization itself, both within and among countries. Insecurity, populism, conflict Thomas Piketty has argued that a sudden increase in income inequality is often followed by a great crisis. Although causality is difficult to prove, with wealth and income inequality now at historical highs, this should give cause for concern. Of course, other factors also contribute to or exacerbate civil and international tensions, with some due to policies intended for other purposes. Nevertheless, even if unintended, such developments could inadvertently catalyse future crises and conflicts. Publics often have good reason to be restless, if not angry, but the emotional appeals of ethno-populism and jingoistic nationalism are leading to chauvinistic policy measures which only make things worse. At the international level, despite the world’s unprecedented and still growing interconnectedness, multilateralism is increasingly being eschewed as the US increasingly resorts to unilateral, sovereigntist policies without bothering to even build coalitions with its usual allies. Avoiding Thucydides’ iceberg Thus, protracted economic distress, economic conflicts or another financial crisis could lead to military confrontation by the protagonists, even if unintended. Less than a decade after the Great Depression started, the Second World War had begun as the Axis powers challenged the earlier entrenched colonial powers. They patently ignored Thucydides’ warning, in chronicling the Peloponnesian wars over two millennia before, when the rise of Athens threatened the established dominance of Sparta! Anticipating and addressing such possibilities may well serve to help avoid otherwise imminent disasters by undertaking pre-emptive collective action, as difficult as that may be.
3/23/22
ND - DA - Debt Ceiling v2
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Patrick Fox Debt ceiling passes now and solves collapse, but floor time is limited and avoiding new fights is key Zhou 10/7 Li, politics and policy reporter for Vox, “The debt ceiling fight is far from over” https://www.vox.com/22711441/debt-ceiling-congress-december Lawmakers have ended another standoff over the debt ceiling — at least temporarily.
AND
have to do so while fighting over how to avoid a government shutdown.
Plan is the worst of both worlds – progressives think it’s not enough and moderates think its too radical Broadwater and Edmondson 20 Luke; Catie; political reporters; “Police Groups Wield Strong Influence in Congress, Resisting the Strictest Reforms”; The New York Times; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/us/politics/police-reforms-congress.html Edited for offensive language Indeed, the bill that Mr. Scott introduced the
AND
at least for now, that their legislation is not even worth debating.
Nuke war Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Vladimir Popov 19. Former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. Former senior economics researcher in the Soviet Union, Russia and the United Nations Secretariat, is now Research Director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin “Economic Crisis Can Trigger World War.” http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/02/economic-crisis-can-trigger-world-war/. Economic recovery efforts since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis have mainly depended on
AND
undertaking pre-emptive collective action, as difficult as that may be.
3/23/22
ND - DA - Interest Rates
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake CR | Judge: Lena Mizrahi Rates hikes are coming but gradual Beckworth and Horan 10/12/21 (David Beckworth is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a former international economist at the US Department of the Treasury. He is the author of Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession. His research focuses on monetary policy, and his work has been cited by the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the Economist. He has advised congressional staffers on monetary policy and has written for Barron’s, Investor’s Business Daily, the New Republic, the Atlantic, and National Review. David is the author of the Macro Musings blog and also hosts the weekly Macro Musings podcast., Patrick Horan is the Program Manager for Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Patrick received an MA in economics from George Mason University and a BA in economics and political science from the College of the Holy Cross. Previously, he worked as a researcher for the political news website, RealClearPolitics., "Inflation Is Painful, But the Fed Shouldn’t Overreact", https://www.discoursemagazine.com/economics/2021/10/12/inflation-is-painful-but-the-fed-shouldnt-overreact/) But if the present inflation is due to transitory supply shocks rather than Fed policy, then the Fed should be careful not to tighten prematurely, which could choke economic recovery. This is not a purely theoretical concern: In the summer of 2008, the Fed was hesitant to cut its target interest rate—which would have made it easier to borrow money and stimulated economic growth—out of a mistaken concern for higher inflation. But the greater threat at that time was financial instability and a contracting economy, which could have been mitigated had the Fed cut its rate sooner. Even more egregiously, the European Central Bank, fearing inflation, raised its target interest rate in 2008 and then again in 2010 and 2011 as it drove the Eurozone into crisis. In both cases, the central banks were misled by inflation caused by supply shocks and responded inappropriately. Checking the Forecasts When in doubt over whether inflation is driven by Fed policy or external forces, it is helpful to look at medium-term forecasts for inflation. The figure below shows one popular example: the five-year, five-year-forward inflation forecast that comes from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. This is a five-year forecast of the average inflation rate, beginning five years in the future. For example, the current forecast is for the average inflation rate from 2026 to 2031. This horizon is useful since it allows us to see beyond the near term, where supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic are affecting inflation. Inflation forecasts this far out, in other words, should be largely reflecting the stance of monetary policy without interference from short-term changes. The figure below shows that the professional forecasters’ outlook for inflation is very close to 2. They see the Fed keeping inflation anchored over the medium to long term. The next figure shows another five-year, five-year-forward inflation rate. This measure comes from the bond market and is based on Treasury bonds indexed for inflation. This forecast, unlike the previous one, comes from the interaction of all bond traders around the world. These individuals have skin in the game since they are trying to be profitable in their trades. Consequently, this forecast provides a nice cross-check on the one from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. The figure below demonstrates that here too the forecast is now close to 2, indicating that bond traders also believe the Fed is committed to keeping inflation near its target over the medium term. Forecasts over the medium term, then, show that the Fed’s current performance is about right, but that could change depending on how events play out over the next year. If the economic recovery continues to be strong and puts additional upward pressure on inflation, then it might make sense for the Fed to pump the brakes on inflation by tightening its monetary policy. However, if other factors such as the pandemic and supply chain bottlenecks continue to stymie economic activity, then the Fed shouldn’t be too quick to raise interest rates. For now, the Fed has signaled it will begin slowly reducing bond purchases near the end of this year. The Fed has also indicated it is likely to start incrementally raising interest rates next year if the economic recovery continues. This gradual approach to tightening monetary policy is sensible given the current state of recovery. Therefore, if lawmakers want to address the high prices caused by inflation, rather than blaming the Fed, they should work on ameliorating bottlenecks and shortages. Expanding organized labor’s bargaining power creates upward pressure on interest rates da Costa 17 ~Pedro Nicolaci da Costa was a senior correspondent at Business Insider. He wrote commentary and analysis on economics, the Federal Reserve and financial markets, and is based in Washington, DC. "The shrinking role of unions helps shed light on an economic trend that is puzzling Fed officials." https://www.businessinsider.com/decline-of-unions-helps-fed-solve-low-inflation-puzzle-2017-12~~ Weak wage growth has been part and parcel of the low inflation trend, with average hourly earnings gaining just 2.5 annually at latest blush. For Andrew Kenningham, chief global economist at Capital Economics, there’s an important story behind the subdued price and wage increases that policymakers are largely ignoring. Technological change and globalization have "reduced the demand for unskilled labor in advanced economies" and caused "trade union membership and the frequency of strikes to fall steeply and has contributed to a surge in part-time, contract and casual work, which has further reduced the bargaining power of labor," he writes in a research note. The official data bear him out. US union membership peaked at a third of the private sector workforce around 1960, and has declined steadily since to just 6.4. Research suggests the prevalence of unions has a positive effect not just on the wages of union workers but also spills over to non-union counterparts, which must raise pay to compete. The opposite is true when unionization declines. In 2015, there were 7.6 million union members in the private sector, 4.4 million fewer than in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number slipped further to an all-time low in 2016. The low inflation phenomenon is prevalent not just in the United States but across rich economies, suggesting the loss of bargaining power has crossed borders. "Since the global financial crisis, inflation has been below target in most advanced economies most of the time. The core inflation rate since January 2009 has averaged around 0, 1 and 1½ in Japan, the euro-zone and the US respectively,"Kenningham said. "And the Fed’s preferred measure of core inflation has been below 2 for 100 of the 104 months since the crisis!" Fed Chair Janet Yellen conceded in recent testimony "this year’s low inflation could reflect something more persistent" rather than the transitory factors many central bank officials have cited. Against that backdrop, it’s little wonder markets are questioning the Fed’s own estimates for three interest rate hikes in 2018 and further increases in 2019. The Fed has raised interest rates four times since December 2015 to a 1 to 1.25 range, and looks set to raise interest rates again this week. It has also began shrinking its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, expanded during the Great Recession in an effort to keep long-term rates low while the federal funds rate was already at zero. Over-aggressive monetary policy causes a global debt crisis. Shang Lin Wei, Professor of Finance @ Columbia, Chief Economist @ ADB, 7-9-21, "The Global Dangers of Rising US Inflation" Project Syndicate. https://www.project-syndicate.org/bigpicture/stagflation-ahead To anticipate the international consequences of higher US inflation, we need to recognize the risk that the Fed may tighten monetary policy more suddenly and dramatically than its current 3.4 inflation forecast might suggest. For now, a majority of US households, firms, and investors still believe that the Fed will adjust the money-supply spigot in a timely, measured way to prevent inflation from getting out of hand. But such "inflation anchoring" could prove fragile if Americans see more evidence of the Fed failing to keep inflation near its desired 2 target. Should that happen, both employees’ wage demands and firms’ price-setting will start to reflect the possibility that inflation could shoot up to 5 or more unless the Fed applies the brakes by raising interest rates aggressively. If US rates rise sharply, history tells us that two types of countries may experience serious financial and economic difficulties. The first group comprises economies that finance a significant part of their investment or consumption with foreign-currency debt, by borrowing either from foreign banks or on international bond markets. Countries with large short-term foreign-currency debts (with less than one year to maturity) and relatively low foreign-exchange reserves are particularly vulnerable to a severe debt or banking crisis. The second group consists of countries with an overvalued fixed exchange rate, which makes them vulnerable to a run on their currencies and an exchange-rate crisis. So, if the Fed tightens policy significantly, we can expect to see a number of debt and currency crises in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia in the next 2-5 years. Because significant foreign-currency debt and overvalued fixed exchange rates are not mutually exclusive, some countries may suffer several types of crises. This is why US inflation and interest-rate policy is so important to so many. When the United States sneezes, the rest of the world may catch a cold. But other countries should not expect America to conduct its monetary policy any differently as a result, and nor should they count on the International Monetary Fund or the G7 to be able to direct the US to be more globally minded in managing interest-rate movements. Even countries not in either of the risk categories will need to address the challenge of imported inflation. China, for example, is deeply concerned about this, even though it currently has relatively modest foreign-currency debts and retains a high level of foreign-exchange reserves. To prevent imported inflation from fueling domestic inflation, the People’s Bank of China would need to tighten its own supply of liquidity to the economy. For such a policy to be effective, China must either introduce more exchange-rate flexibility or tighten its capital controls, with the former approach promising to be much better for the economy in the long run. Post-covid debt crisis causes nuclear war through hotspot escalation and collapses multilateral governance. Strategic Partners Marsh McLennan SK Group Zurich Insurance Group, Academic Advisers National University of Singapore Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, University of Pennsylvania, ’21, "The Global Risks Report 2021 16th Edition" "http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF'The'Global'Risks'Report'2021.pdf Forced to choose sides, governments may face economic or diplomatic consequences, as proxy disputes play out in control over economic or geographic resources. The deepening of geopolitical fault lines and the lack of viable middle power alternatives make it harder for countries to cultivate connective tissue with a diverse set of partner countries based on mutual values and maximizing efficiencies. Instead, networks will become thick in some directions and non-existent in others. The COVID-19 crisis has amplified this dynamic, as digital interactions represent a "huge loss in efficiency for diplomacy" compared with face-to-face discussions.23 With some alliances weakening, diplomatic relationships will become more unstable at points where superpower tectonic plates meet or withdraw. At the same time, without superpower referees or middle power enforcement, global norms may no longer govern state behaviour. Some governments will thus see the solidification of rival blocs as an opportunity to engage in regional posturing, which will have destabilizing effects.24 Across societies, domestic discord and economic crises will increase the risk of autocracy, with corresponding censorship, surveillance, restriction of movement and abrogation of rights.25 Economic crises will also amplify the challenges for middle powers as they navigate geopolitical competition. ASEAN countries, for example, had offered a potential new manufacturing base as the United States and China decouple, but the pandemic has left these countries strapped for cash to invest in the necessary infrastructure and productive capacity.26 Economic fallout is pushing many countries to debt distress (see Chapter 1, Global Risks 2021). While G20 countries are supporting debt restructure for poorer nations,27 larger economies too may be at risk of default in the longer term;28 this would leave them further stranded—and unable to exercise leadership—on the global stage. Multilateral meltdown Middle power weaknesses will be reinforced in weakened institutions, which may translate to more uncertainty and lagging progress on shared global challenges such as climate change, health, poverty reduction and technology governance. In the absence of strong regulating institutions, the Arctic and space represent new realms for potential conflict as the superpowers and middle powers alike compete to extract resources and secure strategic advantage.29 If the global superpowers continue to accumulate economic, military and technological power in a zero-sum playing field, some middle powers could increasingly fall behind. Without cooperation nor access to important innovations, middle powers will struggle to define solutions to the world’s problems. In the long term, GRPS respondents forecasted "weapons of mass destruction" and "state collapse" as the two top critical threats: in the absence of strong institutions or clear rules, clashes— such as those in Nagorno-Karabakh or the Galwan Valley—may more frequently flare into full-fledged interstate conflicts,30 which is particularly worrisome where unresolved tensions among nuclear powers are concerned. These conflicts may lead to state collapse, with weakened middle powers less willing or less able to step in to find a peaceful solution. Nuke war causes extinction – won’t stay limited 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 — MMG 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.
3/23/22
ND - DA - Oil Spills
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Patrick Fox Low wages and labor law exemptions are key for pandemic and national disaster response, the AFF makes this impossible – even the NAACP isn’t supporting strike tactics and advocates for “gentle advice” Kutz 21 (Jessica Kutz – Assistant Editor for High Country News who is interviewing Carlee Purdum who researches incarcerated labor conditions and trends, “The essential — and dangerous — work prisoners do: Incarcerated people respond to pandemics, wildfires, avian flu outbreaks, mudslides and more”, https://www.hcn.org/articles/south-labor-the-essential-and-dangerous-work-prisoners-do, 23 April 2021, EmmieeM) Last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic swept through nursing homes, exhausted
AND
visible and to hold those agencies accountable for how they are treating people.
Lack of quick oil spill response (OSR) is an existential threat – innovative clean-up tech has slowed and barriers prevent alternate prevention measures or different actors solving, citing meta analysis of studies and spills from 67’ to now Little et al 21 (David I. Little (Environmental Consultancy @ Cambridgeshire), Stephen R.J. Sheppard (Collaboration for Advanced Landscape Planning and Department of Forest Resource Management @ Faculty of Foresty @ University of British Columbia), David Hulme (Global Development Institute @ University of Manchester), “A perspective on oil spills: What we should have learned about global warming”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0964569120304166, Ocean and Coastal Management, Volume 202, 1 March 2021, EmmieeM) Scientific knowledge of marine pollution and oil spill response (OSR) innovation has diffused
AND
avoid the conclusion that industry, governments and people must now rapidly decarbonise.
3/23/22
ND - T - A
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Marlborough JH | Judge: Patrick Fox Interpretation—the aff may not specify a just government
Rules readings are always generalized – specific instances are not consistent. Cohen 01 Ariel Cohen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), “On the Generic Use of Indefinite Singulars,” Journal of Semantics 18:3, 2001 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/188590876.pdf In general, as, again, already noted by Aristotle, rules and definitions
AND
, it suddenly changes¶ direction, for example to avoid hitting something.
That outweighs—only our evidence speaks to how indefinite singulars are interpreted in the context of normative statements like the resolution. This means throw out aff counter-interpretations that are purely descriptive
Violation—they specified the United States
Vote neg:
1 Precision –any deviation justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words in the resolution at their whim which decks negative ground and preparation because the aff is no longer bounded by the resolution.
2 Limits—specifying a just government offers huge explosion in the topic since they get permutations of hundreds of governments in the world depending on their definition of “just government”. TVA Solves -- read it as an advantage
Topicality is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interpretations – it tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for
No RVIs—it’s your burden to be topical.
3/23/22
SO - CP - Donations
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 3 | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Cyrus Jackson CP: France, Germany, Sweden, and Italy should: - substantially increase COVID vaccine production to meet the global demand - sign bilateral intellectual property licensing contracts with low and middle-income countries to share vaccines - donate all necessary vaccines at no cost to low and middle-income nations unable to license intellectual property rights
Eliminating IPR for vaccines gives China a massive competitive edge on innovation broadly – tanks pharma, undermines pandemic response, and tech leadership – BUT domestic production and distribution solves Okutsu and Sharma 21 Akane, staff writer for Nikkei International, and Kiran, LPC, The College of Law, Guildford, 1997 BA (Hons), Law, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, 1996. “Vaccine Patent Waiver: COVID Stopper or Innovation Killer?” https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/COVID-vaccines/Vaccine-patent-waiver-COVID-stopper-or-innovation-killer Western pharmaceutical companies are ... distribute vaccines to developing countries
3/23/22
SO - DA - Biotech
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 3 | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Cyrus Jackson
Biopharma innovation is key to overall competitiveness – US still has a razor thin lead but IP is uniquely key
Ezell 20 ~Stephen Ezell, Director of Global Innovation Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). "Ensuring U.S. Biopharmaceutical Competitiveness." 7/16/20. https://itif.org/publications/2020/07/16/ensuring-us-biopharmaceutical-competitiveness~~ Nations are competing for increased market share in a wide array of advanced-innovation
AND
time for Washington to articulate and embrace a robust national biopharmaceutical competitiveness strategy.
Chinese tech leadership causes nuke war
Kroenig and Gopalaswamy 18, *Associate Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and Deputy Director for Strategy in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. Director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. He holds a PhD in mechanical engineering with a specialization in numerical acoustics from Trinity College, Dublin. (Matthew and Bharath, 11-12-2018, "Will disruptive technology cause nuclear war?", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/will-disruptive-technology-cause-nuclear-war/) Rather, we should think more broadly about how new technology might affect global politics
AND
second-strike capabilities, but to preserve prevailing power balances more broadly.
3/23/22
SO - DA - Climate Patents
Tournament: Heart of Texas | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough JK | Judge: David Dosch ====Climate innovation is high and solving warming, but continued investment is key — reducing IP collapses collaboration and investments.==== Brand 5-26, ~Melissa. "Trips Ip Waiver Could Establish Dangerous Precedent for Climate Change and Other Biotech Sectors." IPWatchdog.com | Patents and Patent Law, 26 May 2021, www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/05/26/trips-ip-waiver-establish-dangerous-precedent-climate-change-biotech-sectors/id=133964/~ "If an IP waiver is purportedly necessary to solve the COVID-19 global
AND
the biotech sector addressing climate change may be next on the chopping block.
Only a strong private sector can solve climate change
, but it’s the reality we hear privately in the Capitol.
Medical IP takes time, energy, and political capital away from domestic legislation – big pharma and EU allies
Bhadrakumar 5/9 M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. "Biden’s talk of vaccine IP waiver is political theater." Asia Times, May 9, 2021, asiatimes.com/2021/05/bidens-talk-of-vaccine-ip-waiver-is-political-theater. On the other hand, Biden, whose political life of half a century was
AND
, the European Union and the US, who all opposed the idea.
foreign policy issues (Edwards and Wood 1999; Wood and Peake 1998).
Debt default is the easiest way to wreck the US economy—ruins the US dollar and financial reputation
Egan 9/8 ~Matt Egan is an award-winning reporter at CNN, covering business, the economy and financial markets across CNN's television and digital platforms, "'Financial Armageddon.' What's at stake if the debt limit isn't raised", 9/8/21, https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/08/business/debt-ceiling-default-explained/index.html~~ The easiest way to spark a financial crisis and wreck the US economy would be
AND
billion in fiscal 2020, would quickly rival what Washington spends on defense.
Extinction
Joshua Zoffer 20, Investor at Cove Hill Partners, Fellow at New America, JD Candidate at Yale University Law School, AB from Harvard University, "To End Forever War, Keep the Dollar Globally Dominant", The New Republic, 2/3/2020, https://newrepublic.com/article/156417/end-forever-war-keep-dollar-globally-dominant In early 2016, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cautioned that the dollar’s dominance as
AND
consortium of countries is prepared to fund, such as climate change mitigation.
The Debt Ceiling expansion gives Democrats two months to finalize and pass Biden’s spending package – every moment is necessary to resolve intraparty disputes
Cochrane 10/7 Cochrane, Emily. Emily Cochrane is a correspondent based in Washington. She has covered Congress since late 2018, focusing on the annual debate over government funding and economic legislation, ranging from emergency pandemic relief to infrastructure. "Senate Leaders Agree to Vote on Short-Term Debt Ceiling Increase." N.Y. Times, 7 Oct. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/politics/debt-ceiling-senate.html. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, announced that he reached
AND
" to use the reconciliation process to approve a long-term increase.
Pushing a WTO takes time, energy, and political capital away from domestic legislation – big pharma and EU allies
Bhadrakumar 5/9 M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. "Biden’s talk of vaccine IP waiver is political theater." Asia Times, May 9, 2021, asiatimes.com/2021/05/bidens-talk-of-vaccine-ip-waiver-is-political-theater. On the other hand, Biden, whose political life of half a century was
AND
, the European Union and the US, who all opposed the idea.
Infrastructure package is sufficient, necessary, and the last opportunity to solve climate change – extinction
Leber 10/7 Leber, Rebecca. Rebecca Leber covers climate change for Vox. Before joining Vox, she was an environmental reporter at Mother Jones, where her investigations exposed government corruption and fossil fuel industry disinformation. She has worked as a staff writer at Grist, The New Republic, and ThinkProgress. A dozen more outlets have published her work over her decade as a climate journalist. "A last chance for US climate action: Democrats’ Build Back Better and infrastructure bills." Vox, 7 Oct. 2021, www.vox.com/22685920/democrats-infrastructure-build-back-better-climate-change. The United States — the largest carbon polluter in history — is closer than it’s
AND
that can really help catalyze more ambition from other countries," Cleetus said.
3/23/22
SO - DA - Drug Pricing
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 6 | Opponent: Archbishop Mitty AA | Judge: Saketh Kotapati
OFF
Drug price reform coming now – fight is ramping up but Biden has the opportunity
Cancryn 9/9 Cancryn, Adam. Adam Cancryn is a health care reporter for POLITICO Pro, graduate of Washington and Lee University."Biden admin backs direct government drug price negotiations." POLITICO, 9 Sept. 2021, www.politico.com/news/2021/09/09/biden-drug-price-negotiations-510828. A new Biden administration plan aimed at lowering prescription drug prices endorses giving the government
AND
at improving competition across a range of industries, including the drug sector.
Biden’s PC is key to wrangle democrats and counter pharma lobbying
Johnson 8/12 Johnson, Jake, writer for Alternet . "Joe Biden throws support behind bold reforms to slash drug prices." Alternet, August 12, 2021, www.alternet.org/2021/08/biden-medicare-negotiate-prices. The powerful industry's public and behind-closed-doors lobbying push is likely to
AND
capital to push for congressional action at a pivotal moment in the debate."
External action takes time, energy, and political capital away from domestic legislation – big pharma and EU allies
Bhadrakumar 5/9 M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. "Biden’s talk of vaccine IP waiver is political theater." Asia Times, May 9, 2021, asiatimes.com/2021/05/bidens-talk-of-vaccine-ip-waiver-is-political-theater. On the other hand, Biden, whose political life of half a century was
AND
, the European Union and the US, who all opposed the idea.
Drug price controls massively reduce healthcare costs across the board – even assuming conservative models
Gamba 6/9 Gamba, Tyler. Author at the AJMC. "Adoption of the Lower Drug Costs Now Act May Lead to Billions in Savings." AJMC, 9 June 2021, www.ajmc.com/view/adoption-of-the-lower-drug-costs-now-act-may-lead-to-billions-in-savings. H.R.3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now
AND
on the significant portion it pays toward member premiums in the individual marketplaces.
Collapses the economy
Howrigon, 16 — Ron Howrigon, M.S. in Economics with a focus on Health Economics from North Carolina State University, President and Founder of Fulcrum Strategies, 18 Years of Experience in Healthcare, 12-30-2016, "Flatlining: How Healthcare Could Kill the U.S. Economy," Greenbranch Publishing, 1st Edition, Accessed via Minnesota Libraries, Date Accessed: 8-10 Ok, let’s shift from looking at individuals to looking at the big picture—
AND
resulting fallout could be could be much worse than even the housing crisis.
Economic decline causes nuclear war
Tønnesson, 15 — Stein Tønnesson, Leader of East Asia Peace program at Uppsala University, Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, "Deterrence, Interdependence and Sino–US Peace" International Area Studies Review, Review Essay, Volume 18, Issue 3, Pages 297-311, SAGE Journals, Minnesota Libraries, Date Accessed: 8-4 Several recent works on China and Sino–US relations have made substantial contributions to
AND
each other, with a view to obliging Washington or Beijing to intervene.
We’re experts at coming right up against the edge and pulling a miracle."
Pushing a WTO Waiver takes time, energy, and political capital away from domestic legislation – big pharma and EU allies
Bhadrakumar 5/9 M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. "Biden’s talk of vaccine IP waiver is political theater." Asia Times, May 9, 2021, asiatimes.com/2021/05/bidens-talk-of-vaccine-ip-waiver-is-political-theater. On the other hand, Biden, whose political life of half a century was
AND
, the European Union and the US, who all opposed the idea.
Quickly secures the vulnerable grid.
Carney 21 ~Chris, August 6; Senior Policy Advisor at Nossaman LLC, former US Representative, Former Professor of Political Science at Penn State University; JD Supra, "The US Senate Infrastructure Bill: Securing Our Electrical Grid Through P3s and Grants," https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-us-senate-infrastructure-bill-4989100/~~ As we begin to better understand the main components of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
AND
partnerships and grants, the nation can quickly secure its infrastructure from cyberattacks.
. Their offices did not return HuffPost’s requests for comment on this proposal.
Fighting against big pharma moves time energy and political capital away from domestic legislation
Bhadrakumar 5/9 M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat. "Biden’s talk of vaccine IP waiver is political theater." Asia Times, May 9, 2021, asiatimes.com/2021/05/bidens-talk-of-vaccine-ip-waiver-is-political-theater. On the other hand, Biden, whose political life of half a century was
AND
, the European Union and the US, who all opposed the idea.
Infrastructure secures the vulnerable grid.
Carney 21 ~Chris, August 6; Senior Policy Advisor at Nossaman LLC, former US Representative, Former Professor of Political Science at Penn State University; JD Supra, "The US Senate Infrastructure Bill: Securing Our Electrical Grid Through P3s and Grants," https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-us-senate-infrastructure-bill-4989100/~~ As we begin to better understand the main components of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
AND
partnerships and grants, the nation can quickly secure its infrastructure from cyberattacks.
regulatory changes increasingly limit U.S. export opportunities to hemp fiber.
Hemp biofuels help achieve energy independence which lowers global oil prices
Keller 13 ~Nicole Keller, "NOTE: THE LEGALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR INDIANA'S BIOFUEL INDUSTRY," Indiana International and Comparative Law Review 23 Ind. Int'l and Comp. L. Rev. 555, Lexis~ These countries, which have been able to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, are
AND
64 largely because industrial hemp is illegal to grow in the United States.
Price collapse causes Russian nuclear war
Felgenhauer 16 Pavel Felgenhauer, PhD, defense analyst and columnist for Novaya Gazeta, weekly contributor to The Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jamestown Foundation, July 6, 2016, "Pavel Felgenhauer – Russia’s Future: A Stability That Will Not Last, a Revolution That Will Not Win", Russia In Decline Volume: 1 Issue: 1 To guarantee Putin’s continued rule, the Kremlin must try to tread a fine path
AND
to be dominated by the Chechens to seriously contemplate outright secession from Russia.
3/23/22
SO - DA - Innovation
Tournament: Jack Howe | Round: 3 | Opponent: Peninsula EL | Judge: Jan Wimmer
Innovation
Pharmaceutical innovation is accelerating now – new medicines are substantially better than existing treatments.
Wills, MBA, and Lipkus, PhD, 20 – Todd J. Wills ~Managing Director @ Chemical Abstracts Service, MBA from THE Ohio State University~ and Alan H. Lipkus ~Senior Data Analyst @ Chemical Abstracts Service, PhD Physical Chemistry from the University of Rochester~, "Structural Approach to Assessing the Innovativeness of New Drugs Finds Accelerating Rate of Innovation," ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, Vol. 11, 2020, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsmedchemlett.0c00319 C.VC Despite recent concerns over an innovation crisis, this analysis shows pharmaceutical innovation has actually
AND
never been used as the basis for a molecule) to further explore.
The biopharmaceutical industry is uniquely reliant on IP protections – undermining them would kill innovation by making an already expensive process completely unfeasible.
shaping the biopharmaceutical industry, its profitability, productivity, and innovative future.
Pharmaceutical innovation is key to protecting against future pandemics, bioterrorism, and antibiotic resistance.
Marjanovic and Fejiao ‘20 Marjanovic, Sonja, and Carolina Feijao. Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitive biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon. "Pharmaceutical Innovation for Infectious Disease Management: From Troubleshooting to Sustainable Models of Engagement." (2020). ~Quality Control~ As key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sci-ences
AND
health threats to an even greater extent under improved innova-tion conditions.
Bioterrorism and future pandemics cause extinction.
Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, CBRN Expert @ British Army, 20 ~Director @ DBG Defense, Consultant on CBRN and Biosecurity~, "Biosecurity in the Wake of COVID-19: The Urgent Action Needed," Combatting Terrorism Center Sentinel, November/December 2020, Volume 13, Issue 11, https://ctc.usma.edu/biosecurity-in-the-wake-of-covid-19-the-urgent-action-needed/ C.VC Policymakers around the world did not grasp just how large the impact of a bio
AND
forward, there should no higher priority for the international community than biosecurity.
Regulating intellectual property participates in a scarcity logic that re-affirms a broader market ownership over information – that consolidates neoliberal control through a shift to private protections, even if the individual act of the aff is good
Soderberg 1 ~Johan, BA from Falmouth College of the Arts. "Copyleft vs Copyright: A Marxist Critique" https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860~~** "The contradiction that lies at the heart of the political economy of intellectual property
AND
32~. It is predominantly this struggle that I now will attend to.
IP tinkering represents a myopic focus on making capitalism nicer, but only legitimates the broader process of informatic commodification as integral to class violence
Soderberg 1 ~Johan, BA from Falmouth College of the Arts. "Copyleft vs Copyright: A Marxist Critique" https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860~~** Though I stress the importance of recognising the social construction of information into a commodity
AND
But because of the intangible nature of information, contradictions emerges out of attempts
Capitalism is quickly reaching its ecological, structural, and psychological limits and causes near-term extinction – laundry list.
Robinson 16 (William, Professor of sociology, global studies and Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. | "Sadistic Capitalism: Six Urgent Matters for Humanity in Global Crisis" in Truth-out, April 12, 2016. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35596-sadistic-capitalism-six-urgent-matters-for-humanity-in-global-crisis )tbrooks The "luxury shanty town" in South Africa is a fitting metaphor for global
AND
financial system, despite a series of emergency summits to discuss such regulation.
The alternative is to engage in anticapitalism, an act of radical resistance grounded in grassroots movements. Anticapitalism does not represent an unattainable utopia but challenges common myths about capitalism as a whole.
, and in turn motivated action in order to try to address them.
case
3/23/22
SO - K - Cap v2
Tournament: Heart of Texas | Round: 1 | Opponent: Marlborough JK | Judge: David Dosch ERROR====Regulating intellectual property participates in a scarcity logic that re-affirms a broader market ownership over information – that consolidates neoliberal control through a shift to private protections, even if the individual act of the aff is good ==== Soderberg 1 ~Johan, BA from Falmouth College of the Arts. "Copyleft vs Copyright: A Marxist Critique" https://firstmonday.org/article/view/938/860~~ "The contradiction that lies at the heart of the political economy of intellectual property
AND
32~. It is predominantly this struggle that I now will attend to.
Capitalism is quickly reaching its ecological, structural, and psychological limits and causes near-term extinction – laundry list.
Robinson 16 (William, Professor of sociology, global studies and Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. | "Sadistic Capitalism: Six Urgent Matters for Humanity in Global Crisis" in Truth-out, April 12, 2016. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/35596-sadistic-capitalism-six-urgent-matters-for-humanity-in-global-crisis )tbrooks The "luxury shanty town" in South Africa is a fitting metaphor for global
AND
financial system, despite a series of emergency summits to discuss such regulation.
The alternative is to engage in anticapitalism, an act of radical resistance grounded in grassroots movements. Anticapitalism does not represent an unattainable utopia but challenges common myths about capitalism as a whole.