Opponent: Northland Christian LD | Judge: Kayla Gerdes
AC War Pollution NC Legal Trust Asteroid Mining 1AR War Pollution NR Legal Trust Asteroid Mining 2AR War Pollution
Berkeley
3
Opponent: Coppell NP | Judge: Aisea Sanft
AC Space Debris Cap Bad NC Legal Trust Asteroid Mining 1AR Space Debris Cap Bad NR Legal Trust Asteroid Mining 2AR Space Debris Cap Bad
Heart of Texas
2
Opponent: Ellika LeSage | Judge: Joe Kieklak
Novice NC I negate the resolution
Because the resolution asks what we ought to do my value is Morality
The criterion for determining morality is minimizing suffering No coherent theory of justice or morality can deny that suffering is morally bad Each of us knows from our own experiences that suffering is a moral evil and that other people experience suffering in the same way we do Therefore if we regard everyones pain as morally equal we are obligated to minimize the amount of suffering people experience
Moreover maximizing utility is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human dignity Cummiskey 90 - David Cummiskey Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates CollegeKantian Consequentialism Ethics Vol 100 No 3 1990 httpwwwjstororgstable2381810
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract social entity It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive overall social good Instead the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons Robert Nozick for example argues that to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person that his is the only life he has But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons each with only one life who will bear the cost of our inaction In such a situation what would a conscientious Kantian agent an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings choose A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that rational nature exists as an end in itself (GMM 429) Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5) In order to avoid this conclusion the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints As we saw in chapter 1 however even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based rationale But we have seen that Kants normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends then what is the rationale for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value If I sacrifice some for the sake of others I do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings Persons may have dignity that is an unconditional and incomparable worth that transcends any market value (GMM 436) but persons also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7) The concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many
Contention 1 Innovation Intellectual property is critical to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research its also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines economic decline and future fatal diseases Macdole and Ezell 4-29 Jaci Mcdole and Stephen Ezell Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade McDole holds a double BA in Music Business and Radio-Television with a minor in Marketing an MS in Education and a JD with a specialization in intellectual property (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research an organization she co-founded to study and further robust global IP policies Stephen Ezell is vice president global innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) He comes to ITIF from Peer Insight an innovation research and consulting firm he cofounded in 2003 to study the practice of innovation in service industries At Peer Insight Ezell led the Global Service Innovation Consortium published multiple research papers on service innovation and researched national service innovation policies being implemented by governments worldwide Prior to forming Peer Insight Ezell worked in the New Service Development group at the NASDAQ Stock Market where he spearheaded the creation of the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk and the NASDAQ Corporate Services Network services for NASDAQ-listed corporations Previously Ezell cofounded two successful innovation ventures the high-tech services firm Brivo Systems and Lynx Capital a boutique investment bank Ezell holds a BS from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with an honors certificate from Georgetowns Landegger International Business Diplomacy program 21 - ("Ten Ways Ip Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain The World Through The Pandemic" Information Technology Innovation Foundation 4-29-2021 httpsitiforgpublications20210429ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through)marlborough-wr To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations technical fields and firm sizes This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a US-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic Some have adapted existing innovations while others have developed novel solutions All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future The case studies are Bharat Biotech Covaxin Gilead Remdesivir LumiraDX SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniera Mdica CpsulaXE Surgical Theater Precision VR Tombot Jennie Starship Technologies Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies Proximity Trace Zoom Video Conferencing As the case studies show IP is critical to enabling innovation Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections areand remainin place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care workplace and societal challenges in the future THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets such as IP rights comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SP 500 companies in 20184 For start-ups this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this) IP also plays an especially important role for RD-intensive industries5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry it is characterized by high-risk time-consuming and expensive processes including basic research drug discovery pre-clinical trials three stages of human clinical trials regulatory review and post-approval research and safety monitoring The drug development process spans an average of 115 to 15 years6 For every 5000 to 10000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases approximately 250 molecular compounds or 25 to 5 percent make it to preclinical testing Out of those 250 molecular compounds approximately 5 make it to clinical testing That is 005 to 01 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)7 In addition to high risks drug development is costly and the expenses associated with it are increasing A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RD and most confirm investing in new drug development requires 17 billion to 32 billion up front on average9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines stating In general vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars can take over 10 years to complete and has an average 94 percent chance of failure10 Yet a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugsthat is the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDAmade less than their capitalized RD costs11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry12 To say the least biopharmaceutical RD represents a high-stakes long-term endeavor with precarious returns Without IP protection biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RD which means less research into cancer drugs Alzheimer cures vaccines and more IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult risky and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RD costs of a given drug but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future13 THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO INNOVATION Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored or vitiated Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term COVID-19 innovations to include everything from vaccines therapeutics diagnostics and PPE to biotechnology AI-related data and educational materials14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report However much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RD incentives Although RD is an important aspect of IP as previously mentioned these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can beand often isused for other purposes including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and more importantly using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products This report highlights but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally In 2018 Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines therapeutics PPE and cleaning and sanitizing products17 Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines 18 In Mexico fake vaccines sold for approximately 1000 per dose19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants20 Meanwhile dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered 48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population In countries with strong IP protection the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks trade secrets and licensing agreements This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products Throughout this difficult time the world has seen unexpected collaborations especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen Inc Throughout history and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution IP has contributed toward greater economic growth23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance24 It states that IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (66 trillion US79 trillion)25 The study also shows 389 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises26 That concords with the United States where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than 6 trillion dollars to or 382 percent of GDP27 In 2020 global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organizations (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275900 filings amidst the pandemic growing 4 percent from 201928 The top-four nations which accounted for 180530 of the patent applications were China the United States Japan and Korea respectively29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent respectively30 The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a lot of things but it certainly couldnt stop innovation There are at least five principal benefits strong IP rights can generate for both developing and developed countries alike31 First stronger IP protection spurs the virtuous cycle of innovation by increasing the appropriability of returns enabling economic gain and catalyzing economic growth Second through patentswhich require innovators to disclose certain knowledge as a condition of protectionknowledge spillovers build a platform of knowledge that enables other innovators For instance studies have found that the rate of return to society from corporate RD and innovation activities is at least twice the estimated returns that each company itself receives32 Third countries with robust IP can operate more efficiently and productively by using IP to determine product quality and reduce transaction costs Fourth trade and foreign direct investment enabled and encouraged by strong IP protection offered to enterprises from foreign countries facilitates an accumulation of knowledge capital within the destination economy That matters when foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of productivity growth in most countries33 Theres also evidence suggesting that developing nations with stronger IP protections enjoy the earlier introduction of innovative new medicines34 And fifth strong IP boosts exports including in developing countries35 Research shows a positive correlation between stronger IP protection and exports from developing countries as well as faster growth rates of certain industries36 The following case studies illustrate these benefits of IP and how theyve enabled innovative solutions to help global society navigate the COVID-19 pandemic Reducing IP protections sets a precedent that spills over to future public health crises Hopkins 21 Jared S Hopkins Jared S Hopkins is a New York-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the pharmaceutical industry including companies such as Pfizer Inc and Merck Co He previously was a health-care reporter at Bloomberg News and an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune Jared started his career at The Times-News in Twin Falls Idaho covering politics In 2014 he was a finalist for the Livingston Award For Young Journalists for an investigation into charities founded by professional athletes In 2011 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series about neglect at a residential facility for disabled kids Jared graduated from the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park with a bachelor's degree in journalism 21 - ("US Support for Patent Waiver Unlikely to Cost Covid-19 Vaccine Makers in Short Term " WSJ 5-7-2021 httpswwwwsjcomarticlesu-s-support-for-patent-waiver-unlikely-to-cost-covid-19-vaccine-makers-in-short-term-11620414260)marlborough-wr The Biden administrations unexpected support for temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents wont have an immediate financial impact on the companies making the shots industry officials and analysts said Yet the decision could mark a shift in Washingtons longstanding support of the industrys valuable intellectual property patent-law experts said A waiver if it does go into effect may pose long-term risks to the vaccine makers analysts said Moderna Inc MRNA -412 Pfizer Inc PFE -310 and other vaccine makers werent counting on sales from the developing countries that would gain access to the vaccine technology analysts said If patents and other crucial product information behind the technology is made available it would take at least several months before shots were produced industry officials said Yet long-term Covid-19 sales could take a hit if other companies and countries gained access to the technologies and figured out how to use it Western drugmakers could also confront competition sooner for other medicines they are hoping to make using the technologies A World Trade Organization waiver could also set a precedent for waiving patents for other medicines a long-sought goal of some developing countries patient groups and others to try to reduce the costs of prescription drugs It sets a tremendous precedent of waiving IP rights thats likely going to come up in future pandemics or in other serious diseases said David Silverstein a patent lawyer at Axinn Veltrop Harkrider LLP who advises drugmakers Other than that this is largely symbolic Contention 2 Counterfeits Intellectual property protections are key to stopping counterfeits Kilbride 2020 Patrick vice president of International Intellectual Property for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the US Chamber of Commerce IP Watchdog "Calls for WTO to Suspend IP Rights for Vaccine Innovation Would Jeopardize Incredible Progress" December 9 httpswwwipwatchdogcom20201209calls-wto-suspend-ip-rights-vaccine-innovation-jeopardize-incredible-progressid=128085 Finally A safe legitimate marketplace Patents facilitate a market for innovative medicines throughout the development stage as well as in commercialization Licensing arrangements facilitate the types of collaborations that have proven so successful in 2020 they also ensure that third-party manufacturers are making using and selling COVID-19 solutions safely and ethically Without it counterfeiters and other bad actors could put shoddy unreliable and downright dangerous dupes on the market all the while marketing them as legitimate products Its literally a matter of life and death Thousands if not millions of people die each year at the hands of counterfeit drugs This is a catastrophic outcome because increased vaccine hesitancy means youll never solve Baschuk 2021 Bryce reporter for Bloomberg News "Covid-19 pandemic WTO holiday from vaccine talks draws calls for action" July 26 httpswwwbusiness-standardcomarticlecurrent-affairscovid-19-pandemic-wto-holiday-from-vaccine-talks-draws-calls-for-action-1210726017211html Specifically opponents to the waiver say it would create a chaotic patchwork of laws unravel existing industry partnerships lead to a supply crunch for scarce vaccine inputs and inject even more uncertainty into already complex arrangements Theres also the possibility that an IP waiver could result in the production of counterfeit and substandard medicines which could increase vaccine hesitancy thats already pervasive in even the worlds wealthiest nations Contention 3 Public Funding is a Better Alternative If high income countries provide direct government support of efforts to solve public health crises we dont need to take away the intellectual property rights that protect innovation Lindsay 611 - Brink Lindsay Brookings 6-11 2021 Why intellectual property and pandemics dont mix httpswwwbrookingsedublogup-front20210603why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix Waiving patent protections is certainly no panacea What is needed most urgently is a massive drive of technology transfer capacity expansion and supply line coordination to bring vaccine supply in line with global demand Dispensing with patents in no way obviates the need for governments to fund and oversee this effort Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital we cannot confine our attention to the short term First of all the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines most of the world isnt so lucky The virus is currently raging in India and throughout South America overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale And consider the fact that Australia which has been successful in suppressing the virus recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022 Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference Furthermore and probably even more important this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face Urbanization the spread of factory-farming methods and globalization all combine to increase the odds that a new virus will make the jump from animals to humans and then spread rapidly around the world Prior to the current pandemic the 21st century already saw outbreaks of SARS H1N1 MERS and Ebola Everything we do and learn in the current crisis should be viewed from the perspective of getting ready for next time The Nature of the Patent Bargain When we take the longer view we can see a fundamental mismatch between the policy design of intellectual property protection and the policy requirements of effective pandemic response Although patent law properly restrained constitutes one important element of a well-designed national innovation system the way it goes about encouraging technological progress is singularly ill-suited to the emergency conditions of a pandemic or other public health crisis Securing a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments would thus establish a salutary precedent that in emergencies of this kind governments should employ other more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs Here is the basic bargain offered by patent law encourage the creation of useful new ideas for the long run by slowing the diffusion of useful new ideas in the short run The second half of the bargain the half that imposes costs on society comes from the temporary exclusive rights or monopoly privileges that a patent holder enjoys Under US patent law for a period of 20 years nobody else can manufacture or sell the patented product without the permission of the patent holder This allows the patent holder to block competitors from the market or extract licensing fees before allowing them to enter and consequently charge above-market prices to its customers Patent rights thus slow the diffusion of a new invention by restricting output and raising prices The imposition of these short-run costs however can bring net long-term benefits by sharpening the incentives to invent new products In the absence of patent protection the prospect of easy imitation by later market entrants can deter would-be innovators from incurring the up-front fixed costs of research and development But with a guaranteed period of market exclusivity inventors can proceed with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment For the tradeoff between costs and benefits to come out positive on net patent law must strike the right balance Exclusive rights should be valuable enough to encourage greater innovation but not so easily granted or extensive in scope or term that this encouragement is outweighed by output restrictions on the patented product and discouragement of downstream innovations dependent on access to the patented technology Unfortunately the US patent system at present is out of balance Over the past few decades the expansion of patentability to include software and business methods as well as a general relaxation of patenting requirements have led to wildly excessive growth in these temporary monopolies the number of patents granted annually has skyrocketed roughly fivefold since the early 1980s One unfortunate result has been the rise of non-practicing entities better known as patent trolls firms that make nothing themselves but buy up patent portfolios and monetize them through aggressive litigation As a result a law that is supposed to encourage innovation has turned into a legal minefield for many would-be innovators In the pharmaceutical industry firms have abused the law by piling up patents for trivial therapeutically irrelevant innovations that allow them to extend their monopolies and keep raising prices long beyond the statutorily contemplated 20 years Patent law is creating these unintended consequences because policymakers have been caught in an ideological fog that conflates intellectual property with actual property rights over physical objects Enveloped in that fog they regard any attempts to put limits on patent monopolies as attacks on private property and view ongoing expansions of patent privileges as necessary to keep innovation from grinding to a halt In fact patent law is a tool of regulatory policy with the usual tradeoffs between costs and benefits like all tools it can be misused and as with all tools there are some jobs for which other tools are better suited A well-designed patent system in which benefits are maximized and costs kept to a minimum is just one of various policy options that governments can employ to stimulate technological advanceincluding tax credits for RD prizes for targeted inventions and direct government support Public Health Emergencies and Direct Government Support For pandemics and other public health emergencies patents mix of costs and benefits is misaligned with what is needed for an effective policy response The basic patent bargain even when well struck is to pay for more innovation down the road with slower diffusion of innovation today In the context of a pandemic that bargain is a bad one and should be rejected entirely Here the imperative is to accelerate the diffusion of vaccines and other treatments not slow it down Giving drug companies the power to hold things up by blocking competitors and raising prices pushes in the completely wrong direction What approach to encouraging innovation should we take instead How do we incentivize drug makers to undertake the hefty RD costs to develop new vaccines without giving them exclusive rights over their production and sale The most effective approach during a public health crisis is direct government support public funding of RD advance purchase commitments by the government to buy large numbers of doses at set prices and other related payouts And when we pay drug makers we should not hesitate to pay generously even extravagantly we want to offer drug companies big profits so that they prioritize this work above everything else and so that they are ready and eager to come to the rescue again the next time theres a crisis It was direct support via Operation Warp Speed that made possible the astonishingly rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and then facilitated a relatively rapid rollout of vaccine distribution (relative that is to most of the rest of the world) And its worth noting that a major reason for the faster rollout here and in the United Kingdom compared to the European Union was the latters misguided penny-pinching The EU bargained hard with firms to keep vaccine prices low and as a result their citizens ended up in the back of the queue as various supply line kinks were being ironed out This is particularly ironic since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed in Germany As this fact underscores the chief advantage of direct support isnt to get tough with drug firms and keep a lid on their profits Instead it is to accelerate the end of the public health emergency by making sure drug makers profit handsomely from doing the right thing Patent law and direct support should be seen not as either-or alternatives but as complements that apply different incentives to different circumstances and time horizons Patent law provides a decentralized system for encouraging innovation The government doesnt presume to tell the industry which new drugs are needed it simply incentivizes the development of whatever new drugs that pharmaceutical firms can come up with by offering them a temporary monopoly It is important to note that patent laws incentives offer no commercial guarantees Yes you can block other competitors for a number of years but that still doesnt ensure enough consumer demand for the new product to make it profitable The situation is different in a pandemic Here the government knows exactly what it wants to incentivize the creation of vaccines to prevent the spread of a specific virus and other drugs to treat that virus Under these circumstances the decentralized approach isnt good enough There is no time to sit back and let drug makers take the initiative on their own timeline Instead the government needs to be more involved to incentivize specific innovations now As recompense for letting it call the shots (pardon the pun) the government sweetens the deal for drug companies by insulating them from commercial risk If pharmaceutical firms develop effective vaccines and therapies the government will buy large predetermined quantities at prices set high enough to guarantee a healthy return For the pharmaceutical industry it is useful to conceive of patent law as the default regime for innovation promotion It improves pharmaceutical companies incentives to develop new drugs while leaving them free to decide which new drugs to pursue and also leaving them to bear all commercial risk In a pandemic or other emergency however it is appropriate to shift to the direct support regime in which the government focuses efforts on one disease In this regime it is important to note the government provides qualitatively superior incentives to those offered under patent law Not only does it offer public funding to cover the up-front costs of drug development but it also provides advance purchase commitments that guarantee a healthy return It should therefore be clear that the pharmaceutical industry has no legitimate basis for objecting to a TRIPS waiver Since because of the public health crisis drug makers now qualify for the superior benefits of direct government support they no longer need the default benefits of patent support Arguments that a TRIPS waiver would deprive drug makers of the incentives they need to keep developing new drugs when they are presently receiving the most favorable incentives available can be dismissed as the worst sort of special pleading That said it is a serious mistake to try to cast the current crisis as a morality play in which drug makers wear the black hats and the choice at hand is between private profits and public health We would have no chance of beating this virus without the formidable organizational capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry and providing the appropriate incentives is essential to ensure that the industry plays its necessary and vital role It is misguided to lament that private companies are profiting in the current crisis those profits are a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering cost of this pandemic in lives and economic damage What matters isnt the existence or size of the profits but how they are earned We have good reason to want drug makers to profit from vaccinating the world the comparative price is minuscule and the incentive effects are a vital safeguard of public health in the event of future crises What we want to avoid at all costs is putting drug makers in the position where drug companies can profit from standing in the way of rapid global vaccination That is why intellectual property rights need to be taken out of the equation Vaccinating the world in any kind of reasonable time frame will require large-scale technology transfer to drug firms in other countries and rapid expansion of their production capacity And looking beyond the current pandemic to the longer term we need ample redundant global vaccine production capacity that is widely distributed around the planet To achieve these goals as rapidly as possible will require the active cooperation of the US pharmaceutical industry which is why the direct support model now needs to be extended What is needed now is an Operation Warp Speed for the world in which we make it worth current vaccine producers while to share their know-how broadly and ramp up global capacity Here again we must recognize that the choice isnt between people on the one hand and profits on the other Rather the key to good pandemic response policy is ensuring that incentives are structured so that drug company profit-seeking and global public health are well aligned That means opting out of the default decentralized patent bargain in favor of generous but well-focused direct government support
AC Cap NC Legal Trust CP Asteroid Mining DA AC Cap NR Legal Trust CP Asteroid Mining DA 2AR Cap
WBFL
1
Opponent: Loyola - IB | Judge: Lesley Sluyter
AC Exploration Russia War NC Asteroid Mining 1AR Russia War NR Asteroid Mining 2AR Russia War
WBFL
3
Opponent: Loyola - SL | Judge: Robin Sipkins
AC Space Inequality NC Asteroid Mining 1AR Space Inequality NR Asteroid Mining Climate Change 2AR Space Inequality
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0-Contact info
Tournament: Contact Info | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA Hi I'm Elle My email is liladershewitz25@marlboroughorg and my phone number is (206)-476-4551 If you want to contact me try emailing me first
10/11/21
JF - Outer Space
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 1 | Opponent: Northland Christian LD | Judge: Kayla Gerdes Legal Trust CP TEXT: The Outer Space Treaty ought to be amended to establish an international legal trust system governing outer space. Finoa 21 Ivan Finoa (Department of Law University of Turin), “Building a New Legal Model for Settlements on Mars,” A. Froehlich (ed.), Assessing a Mars Agreement Including Human Settlements, Studies in Space Policy 30, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65013-1_7CT 7.5 A Proposal for an International Legal Trust System Since several legal and policy issues may arise from the actual legal framework, a new international legal regime for outer space shall: (a) Provide for property rights or a lease allocation system, both incentivising investments in the space sector. The system would be supervised and led by the United Nations (UN) through the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). (b) Establish the rule of law in outer space. A laissez faire system could turn into anarchy whereby countries and companies could race to grab as many resources as possible bringing considerable potential conflict. (c) Recognise outer space as common heritage of mankind, instead of res communis.24 (d) Provide a sustainable exploitation of celestial bodies, to avoid the uncontrolled production of space debris or to prevent the complete exhaustion of the celestial bodies’ masses or their natural orbits.25 The United Nations should manage the ordered and sustainable economic development in outer space for the present and future generations. (e) Prevent the militarisation of outer space and favours the international collaboration, which are the same aims of the Outer Space Treaty’ drafters. (f) Consider the weak points of the Moon Agreement which led to nations’ refusal to sign. Only a widely accepted agreement would have the power of law in the international context. The abovementioned requirements could be met by establishing an international Legal Trust System (ILTS). A trust is an arrangement that assigns assets to one or more trustees that will manage them in the interest of one or more beneficiaries. The latter may include the trustee or the settlor.26 Translated in the ILTS, mankind would assume the role of settlor and beneficiary of the outer space resources. The UNOOSA would act as main trustee of outer space resources and trading property rights and leases to companies and countries. The rights over the celestial bodies or over its resources would depend on the nature of the celestial body itself. For example, property rights are preferable to a lease over asteroids, as they could just disappear after the exploitation. Both leases and property rights can be provided over lands and mining sites on Mars. Leases or defeasible titles are preferable for some land mass on those celestial bodies which could hypothetically be used by humankind pending an Earth disaster. In the case of lucrative activities, such as mining, companies will choose whether to get the exclusive use over the resource through payment of the lease or through annual payment linked to net proceeds or to production charges. 7.6 The Functioning of the International Legal Trust System When a company is interested in leasing or buying an outer space resource, before starting any operations, it must send a plan of work to the United Nations. The plan of work shall include all the details of the activity that would be carried out; it shall be consistent with pre-established parameters of sustainability and shall not interfere with other space activities. If the UN approves the company plan of work, the country of the company assumes the role of co-trustee for the specific resource. Thus, as a cotrustee, countries must investigate whether all activities of their national companies are consistent with the plan of work authorised by the UN. These supervisory duties would be added to the responsibility of nations for all space objects that are launched within their territory.27 The UN, as main trustee, would oversee that countries are performing their duties. This model would be the ordinary one. There would be also an extraordinary model, in which the UN would be the only trustee. This model would be possible in two instances: when the country of the applicant for a private company is not technologically able to act as a trustee or when the applicant of the activity is a country itself. Furthermore, as stated previously, the beneficiaries of this trust are the countries of the world and their citizens; hence all mankind would take concrete profit from lease transactions and benefit sharing. The income from the sales, leases and benefit sharing can be distributed to mankind by financing international global goals, following a similar model of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, which addressed poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, and peace and justice. Finally, the International Legal Trust System would meet acceptance because every country would obtain benefit sharing to improve its living standard and space faring nations would rely on property rights.
The legal trust would incentivize investment in space while preventing conflict and ensuring sustainable development and the equitable distributions of resources. Finoa ’20 – Ivan Finoa Department of Law, University of Turin, “An international legal trust system to deal with the new space era,” 71st International Astronautical Congress (IAC) – The CyberSpace Edition, (12-14 October 2020). https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/66728932/_IAC_20_E7.VP.8.x58518_An_international_legal_trust_system_to_deal_with_the_new_space_era_BY_IVAN_FINO-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1642044926andSignature=asvt6StaK5n9UnpXuJIlo4ziI839WzFYjDZy37bm70ObGy3vFJyHwWNGxhn2beze4QzYDPPX0pVEXAwYvDaINVNxN01Ify8YwG5loNRddlat-grf3iawic7KvwqPowxFe2GuemVvbB-KW8ZVBxigwS-gelSKIVy4KYR9UgiDrM6e6deEBnUTcULSwmsH-JdHNg13ytZ3vNVMMlxZW2MPOCRuB2WlOHdCLoC86VqafSoMwuec-d~Aisbgyt5F2vO-GjvI60bR7h2MSp0iT6P7apIDUUpHUsDGbvcdxp22HSxXdlvr7lSqtLnL5rKxujGDYq~R9B~WuGiorVL2hn74UQ__andKey-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZACT Considering the worsening climate change, in the future outer space might be our last Noah’s Ark. Now, humans must look to space as an opportunity to support growing resource requirements. Asteroids are rich in metals, which could be transported back to Earth. Unfortunately, the existing international legal framework discourages investments in the space economy. Once an enterprise invests billions of dollars in discovering and developing a mining site, it cannot claim any ownership because of the non-appropriation principle stipulated in Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Thus, other entities could legally access and exploit the same resource without any participation in the initial financial investment, increasing the risk of potential conflict. Bearing this in mind, the question arises, which legal regime could ensure effective allocation of resources, avoiding a chaotic space race to acquire valuable assets? The aim of this research is to argue that the first two articles of OST should be amended, to set up an international legal trust system which would guarantee different kinds of rights, dependently on the nature of the celestial body. E.g., property rights could be preferable to a lease over asteroids, as they could be exploited to their disappearance. This proposed system would be led by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), as the main trustee. The co-trustees would be the nations of the world. Prior to initiating any space activity, every entity would send a request to their national government. If all the legal parameters are respected, the nation would forward the operational request to the UNOOSA. In the case of acceptance, UNOOSA would record the permit on an international public registry. The country in which the company has been registered would investigate whether the activities of its national company are consistent with the permit. This would be the ordinary model. The extraordinary model would be when the applicant for the space activity is a state, then the trustee would be the UN. All lucrative activities would be subject to benefit-sharing. Finally, this research will demonstrate the valuable outcome of the International Legal Trust System and its advantages for all humankind. Private companies would rely on property rights, while the benefit-sharing could be used to finance the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2015, which address peace, climate change, inequalities and poverty.
Asteroid Mining DA
The private sector is essential for asteroid mining – competition is key and government development is not effective, efficient, or cheap enough. Thiessen 21: Marc Thiessen, 6-1, 21, Washington Post, Opinion: SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/01/spacexs-success-is-one-small-step-man-one-giant-leap-capitalism/ It was one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism. Only three countries have ever launched human beings into orbit. This past weekend, SpaceX became the first private company ever to do so, when it sent its Crew Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and docked with the International Space Station. This was accomplished by a company Elon Musk started in 2002 in a California strip mall warehouse with just a dozen employees and a mariachi band. At a time when our nation is debating the merits of socialism, SpaceX has given us an incredible testament to the power of American free enterprise. While the left is advocating unprecedented government intervention in almost every sector of the U.S. economy, from health care to energy, today Americans are celebrating the successful privatization of space travel. If you want to see the difference between what government and private enterprise can do, consider: It took a private company to give us the first space vehicle with touch-screen controls instead of antiquated knobs and buttons. It took a private company to give us a capsule that can fly entirely autonomously from launch to landing — including docking — without any participation by its human crew. It also took a private company to invent a reusable rocket that can not only take off but land as well. When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong declared “the Eagle has landed.” On Saturday, SpaceX was able to declare that the Falcon had landed when its rocket settled down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean — ready to be used again. That last development will save the taxpayers incredible amounts of money. The cost to NASA for launching a man into space on the space shuttle orbiter was $170 million per seat, compared with just $60 million to $67 million on the Dragon capsule. The cost for the space shuttle to send a kilogram of cargo into to space was $54,500; with the Falcon rocket, the cost is just $2,720 — a decrease of 95 percent. And while the space shuttle cost $27.4 billion to develop, the Crew Dragon was designed and built for just $1.7 billion — making it the lowest-cost spacecraft developed in six decades. SpaceX did it in six years — far faster than the time it took to develop the space shuttle. The private sector does it better, cheaper, faster and more efficiently than government. Why? Competition. Today, SpaceX has to compete with a constellation of private companies — including legacy aerospace firms such as Orbital ATK and United Launch Alliance and innovative start-ups such as Blue Origin (which is designing a Mars lander and whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Post) and Virgin Orbit (which is developing rockets than can launch satellites into space from the underside of a 747, avoiding the kinds of weather that delayed the Dragon launch). In the race to put the first privately launched man into orbit, upstart SpaceX had to beat aerospace behemoth Boeing and its Starliner capsule to the punch. It did so — for more than $1 billion less than its competitor. That spirit of competition and innovation will revolutionize space travel in the years ahead. Indeed, Musk has his sights set far beyond Earth orbit. Already, SpaceX is working on a much larger version of the Falcon 9 reusable rocket called Super Heavy that will carry a deep-space capsule named Starship capable of carrying up to 100 people to the moon and eventually to Mars. Musk’s goal — the reason he founded SpaceX — is to colonize Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species. He has set a goal of founding a million-person city on Mars by 2050 complete with iron foundries and pizza joints. Can it be done? Who knows. But this much is certain: Private-sector innovation is opening the door to a new era of space exploration. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, just as capitalism is allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of our solar system, Americans decided to embrace socialism back here on Earth?
Taking away property rights scares investors away and spills over to other space activities. Freeland 05 Steven Freeland (BCom, LLB, LLM, University of New South Wales; Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Western Sydney, Australia; and a member of the Paris-based International Institute of Space Law). “Up, Up and … Back: The Emergence of Space Tourism and Its Impact on the International Law of Outer Space.” Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 4. 2005. JDN. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269andcontext=cjil V. THE NEED FOR CELESTIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS? ¶ The fundamental principle of "non-appropriation" upon which the international law of outer space is based stems from the desire of the international community to ensure that outer space remains an area beyond the jurisdiction of any state(s). Similar ideals emerge from UNCLOS (in relation to the High Seas) as well as the Antarctic Treaty, 42 although in the case of the latter treaty, it was finalised after a number of claims of sovereignty had already been made by various States and therefore was structured to "postpone" rather than prejudice or renounce those previously asserted claims.43 In the case of outer space, its exploitation and use is expressed in Article I of the Outer Space Treaty to be "the province of all mankind," a term whose meaning is not entirely clear but has been interpreted by most commentators as evincing the desire to ensure that any State is free to engage in space activities without reference to any sovereign claims of other States. This freedom is reinforced by other parts of the same Article and is repeated in the Moon Agreement (which also applies to "other celestial bodies within the solar system, other than the earth")." Even though both the scope for space activities and the number of private participants have expanded significantly since these treaties were finalised, it has still been suggested that the nonappropriation principle constitutes "an absolute barrier in the realization of every kind of space activity., 4 ' The amount of capital expenditure required to research, scope, trial, and implement a new space activity is significant. To bring this activity to the point where it can represent a viable "stand alone" commercial venture takes many years and almost limitless funding. From the perspective of a private enterprise contemplating such an activity, it would quite obviously be an important element in its decision to devote resources to this activity that it is able to secure the highest degree of legal rights in order to protect its investment. Security of patent and other intellectual property rights, for example, are vital prerequisites for private enterprise research activity on the ISS, and these rights are specifically addressed by the ISS Agreement between the partners to the project and were applicable to the experiments undertaken by Mark Shuttleworth when he was onboard the ISS.46
Asteroid mining can happen with private sector innovation and is key to solve a laundry list of impacts--climate change, economic decline and asteroid collisions. Taylor 19 Chris Taylor journalist, was senior news writer for Time.com, San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine, 19 - ("How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires," Mashable, 2019, accessed 12-13-2021, https://mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy)//ML How much, exactly? We’re only just beginning to guess. Asterank, a service that keeps track of some 6,000 asteroids in NASA’s database, prices out the estimated mineral content in each one in the current world market. More than 500 are listed as “$100 trillion.” The estimated profit on just the top 10 asteroids judged “most cost effective” — that is, the easiest to reach and to mine, subtracting rocket fuel and other operating costs, is around $1.5 trillion.¶ Is it ours for the taking? Well, here’s the thing — we’re taking it already, and have been doing so since we started mining metals thousands of years ago. Asteroid strikes are the only reason rare metals exist in the Earth’s crust; the native ones were all sucked into our planet’s merciless iron core millions of years ago. Why not go to the source?¶ As a side project, space mining can grab water from the rocks and comets — water which, with a little processing makes rocket fuel. Which in turn makes even more currently unimaginable space operations possible, including ones that could give the planet all the energy it needs to avert climate catastrophe. Cislunar space — the bit around us and the moon, the local neighborhood, basically — is about to get very interesting.¶ It’s hard, even for the most asteroid-minded visionaries, to truly believe the full scope of this future space economy right now. Just as hard as it would have been in 1945, when an engineer named Vannevar Bush first proposed a vast library of shared knowledge that people the world over would access via personal computers, to see that mushroom into a global network of streaming movies and grandmas posting photos and trolls and spies who move the needle on presidential elections. ¶ No technology’s pioneer can predict its second-order effects.¶ The space vision thing is particularly difficult in 2019. Not only do we have plenty of urgent problems with democracy and justice to keep us occupied, but the only two companies on the planet to have gone public with asteroid-mining business plans, startups that seemed to be going strong and had launched satellites already, were just bought by larger companies that are, shall we say, less comfortable executing on long-term visions.¶ Planetary Resources was founded in 2012 in a blaze of publicity. Its funding came from, among others, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot, and the country of Luxembourg. It had inked an orbital launch deal with Virgin Galactic. And it was sold last October to a blockchain software company. (To 21st century readers, this paragraph would look like I’m playing tech world mad libs.)¶ In January, the other company, Deep Space Industries, also partly funded by Luxembourg (way to get in the space race, Luxembourg!), was sold to Bradford Space, owned by a U.S. investment group called the American Industrial Acquisition Corporation. Maybe these new overlords plan on continuing their acquisitions' asteroid mining endeavors rather than stripping the companies for parts. Both companies have been notably silent on the subject. “The asteroid mining bubble has burst,” declared The Space Review, one of the few online publications to even pay attention.¶ That’s also to be expected. After all, anyone trying to build Google in 1945 would go bankrupt. Just as the internet needed a half-dozen major leaps forward in computing before it could even exist, space industry needs its launch infrastructure.¶ Currently, the world’s richest person and its most well-known entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, respectively, are working on the relatively cheap reusable rockets asteroid pioneers will need. (As I was writing this, Bezos announced in an email blast that one of his New Shepherd rockets had flown to space and back five times like it was nothing, delivering 38 payloads for various customers while remaining entirely intact.) ¶ Meanwhile, quietly, Earth’s scientists are laying the groundwork of research the space economy needs. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has been in orbit around asteroid Ryugu for the last year and a half, learning everything it can. (Ryugu, worth $30 billion according to Asterank, is the website's #1 most cost-effective target.) The craft dropped tiny hopping robot rovers and a small bomb on its target; pictures of the small crater that resulted were released afterwards.¶ Officially, the mission is to help us figure out how the solar system formed. Unofficially, it will help us understand whether all those useful metals clump together at the heart of an asteroid, as some theorize. If so, it’s game on for asteroid prospectors. If not, we can still get at the metals with other techniques, such as optical mining (which basically involves sticking an asteroid in a bag and drilling with sunlight; sounds nuts to us, but NASA has proved it in the lab). It’ll just take more time.¶ Effectively, we’ve just made our first mark at the base of the first space mineshaft. And there’s more to come in 2020 when Hayabusa 2 returns to Earth bearing samples. If its buckets of sand contain a modicum of gold dust, tiny chunks of platinum or pebbles of compressed carbon — aka diamonds — then the Duchy of Luxembourg won’t be the only deep-pocketed investor to sit up and take notice.¶ The possibility of private missions to asteroids, with or without a human crew, is almost here. The next step in the process that takes us from here to where you are? Tell us an inspiring story about it, one that makes people believe, and start to imagine themselves mining in space. How would you explain the world-changing nature of the internet to 1945? How would you persuade them that there was gold to be mined in Vannevar Bush’s idea? You’d let the new economy and its benefits play out in the form of a novel.¶ As Hayabusa dropped a bomb on Ryugu, Daniel Suarez was making the exact same asteroid the target of his fiction. Suarez is a tech consultant and developer turned New York Times bestselling author. His novels thus far have been techno-thrillers: his debut, Daemon, a novel of Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare, AI run rampant, made more than a million dollars.¶ So it was a telling shift in cultural mood that Suarez’s latest thriller is also a very in-depth description of — and thinly-disguised advocacy for — asteroid mining. In Delta-v, published in April, a billionaire in the 2030s named Nathan Joyce recruits a team of adventurers who know nothing about space — a world-renowned cave-diver, a world-renowned mountaineer — for the first crewed asteroid mission.¶ Elon Musk fans might expect this to be Joyce’s tale, but he soon fades into the background. The asteroid-nauts are the true heroes of Delta-v. Not only are they offered a massive payday — $6 million each for four years’ work — they also have agency in key decisions in the distant enterprise. Suarez deliberately based them on present-day heroes. The mission is essential, Joyce declares, to save Earth from its major problems. First of all, the fictional billionaire wheels in a fictional Nobel economist to demonstrate the actual truth that the entire global economy is sitting on a mountain of debt. It has to keep growing or it will implode, so we might as well take the majority of the industrial growth off-world where it can’t do any more harm to the biosphere.¶ Secondly, there’s the climate change fix. Suarez sees asteroid mining as the only way we’re going to build solar power satellites. Which, as you probably know, is a form of uninterrupted solar power collection that is theoretically more effective, inch for inch, than any solar panels on Earth at high noon, but operating 24/7. (In space, basically, it’s always double high noon). ¶ The power collected is beamed back to large receptors on Earth with large, low-power microwaves, which researchers think will be harmless enough to let humans and animals pass through the beam. A space solar power array like the one China is said to be working on could reliably supply 2,000 gigawatts — or over 1,000 times more power than the largest solar farm currently in existence. ¶ “We're looking at a 20-year window to completely replace human civilization's power infrastructure,” Suarez told me, citing the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the coming catastrophe. Solar satellite technology “has existed since the 1970s. What we were missing is millions of tons of construction materials in orbit. Asteroid mining can place it there.”¶ The Earth-centric early 21st century can’t really wrap its brain around this, but the idea is not to bring all that building material and precious metals down into our gravity well. Far better to create a whole new commodities exchange in space. You mine the useful stuff of asteroids both near to Earth and far, thousands of them taking less energy to reach than the moon. That’s something else we’re still grasping, how relatively easy it is to ship stuff in zero-G environments. ¶ Robot craft can move 10-meter boulders like they’re nothing. You bring it all back to sell to companies that will refine and synthesize it in orbit for a myriad of purposes. Big pharma, to take one controversial industry, would benefit by taking its manufacturing off-world. The molecular structure of many chemicals grows better in microgravity.¶ The expectation is that a lot of these space businesses — and all the orbital infrastructure designed to support them — will be automated, controlled remotely via telepresence, and monitored by AI. But Suarez is adamant that thousands if not millions of actual human workers will thrive in the space economy, even as robots take their jobs in old industries back on Earth.¶ “Our initial expansion into space will most likely be unsettled and experimental. Human beings excel in such environments,” he says. “Humans can improvise and figure things out as we go. Robots must be purpose-built, and it's going to take time and experience for us to design and build them.”¶ Which is another way startups back on Earth will get rich in the new economy: designing and building those robots, the nearest thing to selling picks and shovels to prospectors in the space gold rush. Thousands of humans in space at any one time will also require the design and construction of stations that spin to create artificial gravity. Again, this isn’t a great stretch: Using centrifugal force to simulate gravity in space was first proposed by scientists in the 19th century. NASA has had workable designs for spinning cislunar habitats called O’Neill cylinders since the 1970s. We just haven’t funded them. ¶ But the trillionaires clearly will.¶ In short, Suarez has carefully laid out a vision of the orbital economy that offers something for everyone in our divided society. For Green New Deal Millennials, there’s the prospect of removing our reliance on fossil fuels at a stroke and literally lifting dirty industries off the face of the planet. For libertarians and other rugged individualists, there’s a whole new frontier to be developed, largely beyond the reach of government. ¶ For those who worry about asteroids that could wipe out civilization — though luckily, this isn't likely to happen any time soon — here is a way for humanity to get proficient in moving them out of the way, fast. Indeed, the National Space Society has offered a proposal to capture the asteroid Aphosis (which is set to miss Earth in the year 2029, but not by a very comfortable margin), keep it in orbit, and turn it into 150 small solar-power satellites, as a proof of concept. ¶ For the woke folks who care about the bloody history of diamond production, there’s the likelihood that space mining would wipe out Earth’s entire diamond industry. “They will be found in quantities unattainable on Earth,” claims Suarez, with good reason. We are starting to discover that there is more crystalized carbon in the cosmos than we ever suspected. Astronomers have identified one distant planet made entirely of diamond; there may be more, but they are, ironically, hard to see. ¶ We don’t have diamond planets in our solar system (and we can’t do interstellar missions), but we do have diamond-studded asteroids. Mine them for long enough and you will wear diamonds on the soles of your shoes.¶ For investors and entrepreneurs, there is the thrill of racing to be the first member of the four-comma club. (Neil deGrasse Tyson believes that the first trillionaire will be an asteroid mining mogul; Suarez isn’t sure whether they’ll be the first, but he suspects that asteroid mining “will mint more trillionaires than any industry in history.”) ¶ For the regular guy or gal with a 401K, there’ll be a fast-rising stock market — inflated not by financial shenanigans this time, but an actual increase in what the world counts as wealth.¶ For workers, there is the promise of sharing in the untold riches, both legally and otherwise. It would be hard to stop miners attaining mineral wealth beyond their paycheck, under the table, when your bosses are millions of miles away. Then there’s the likelihood of rapid advancement in this new economy, where the miners fast gain the knowledge necessary to become moguls.¶ “After several tours in space working for others, perhaps on six-month or year-long contracts, it's likely that some workers will partner to set up their own businesses there,” says Suarez. “Either serving the needs of increasing numbers of workers and businesses in space, marketing services to Earth, or launching asteroid mining startups themselves.” All in all, it’s starting to sound a damn sight more beneficial to the human race than the internet economy is. Not a moment too soon. I’ve written encouragingly about asteroid mining several times before, each time touting the massive potential wealth that seems likely to be made. And each time there’s been a sense of disquiet among my readers, a sense that we’re taking our rapacious capitalist ways and exploiting space.¶ Whereas the truth is, this is exactly the version of capitalism humanity has needed all along: the kind where there is no ecosystem to destroy, no marginalized group to make miserable. A safe, dead space where capitalism’s most enthusiastic pioneers can go nuts to their hearts’ content, so long as they clean up their space junk. ¶ (Space junk is a real problem in orbital space because it has thousands of vulnerable satellites clustered closely together around our little blue rock. The vast emptiness of cislunar space, not so much.)¶ And because they’re up there making all the wealth on their commodities market, we down here on Earth can certainly afford to focus less on growing our stock market. Maybe even, whisper it low, we can afford a fully functioning social safety net, plus free healthcare and free education for everyone on the planet.¶ It’s also clearly the area where we should have focused space exploration all along. If we settle on Mars, we may disturb as-yet-undiscovered native bacteria — and as the character Nathan Joyce shouts at a group of “Mars-obsessed” entrepreneurs in Delta-V, Mars is basically filled with toxic sand and is thus looking increasingly impossible to colonize. (Sorry, Mark Watney from The Martian, those potatoes would probably kill you.) Warming causes extinction. Bill McKibben 19, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities; Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers. "This Is How Human Extinction Could Play Out." Rolling Stone. 4-9-2019. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/bill-mckibben-falter-climate-change-817310/ Oh, it could get very bad. In 2015, a study in the Journal of Mathematical Biology pointed out that if the world’s oceans kept warming, by 2100 they might become hot enough to “stop oxygen production by phyto-plankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.” Given that two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton, that would “likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.” A year later, above the Arctic Circle, in Siberia, a heat wave thawed a reindeer carcass that had been trapped in the permafrost. The exposed body released anthrax into nearby water and soil, infecting two thousand reindeer grazing nearby, and they in turn infected some humans; a twelve-year-old boy died. As it turns out, permafrost is a “very good preserver of microbes and viruses, because it is cold, there is no oxygen, and it is dark” — scientists have managed to revive an eight-million-year-old bacterium they found beneath the surface of a glacier. Researchers believe there are fragments of the Spanish flu virus, smallpox, and bubonic plague buried in Siberia and Alaska. Or consider this: as ice sheets melt, they take weight off land, and that can trigger earthquakes — seismic activity is already increasing in Greenland and Alaska. Meanwhile, the added weight of the new seawater starts to bend the Earth’s crust. “That will give you a massive increase in volcanic activity. It’ll activate faults to create earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis, the whole lot,” explained the director of University College London’s Hazard Centre. Such a landslide happened in Scandinavia about eight thousand years ago, as the last Ice Age retreated and a Kentucky-size section of Norway’s continental shelf gave way, “plummeting down to the abyssal plain and creating a series of titanic waves that roared forth with a vengeance,” wiping all signs of life from coastal Norway to Greenland and “drowning the Wales-sized landmass that once connected Britain to the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.” When the waves hit the Shetlands, they were sixty-five feet high. There’s even this: if we keep raising carbon dioxide levels, we may not be able to think straight anymore. At a thousand parts per million (which is within the realm of possibility for 2100), human cognitive ability falls 21 percent. “The largest effects were seen for Crisis Response, Information Usage, and Strategy,” a Harvard study reported, which is too bad, as those skills are what we seem to need most. I could, in other words, do my best to scare you silly. I’m not opposed on principle — changing something as fundamental as the composition of the atmosphere, and hence the heat balance of the planet, is certain to trigger all manner of horror, and we shouldn’t shy away from it. The dramatic uncertainty that lies ahead may be the most frightening development of all; the physical world is going from backdrop to foreground. (It’s like the contrast between politics in the old days, when you could forget about Washington for weeks at a time, and politics in the Trump era, when the president is always jumping out from behind a tree to yell at you.) But let’s try to occupy ourselves with the most likely scenarios, because they are more than disturbing enough. Long before we get to tidal waves or smallpox, long before we choke to death or stop thinking clearly, we will need to concentrate on the most mundane and basic facts: everyone needs to eat every day, and an awful lot of us live near the ocean. FOOD SUPPLY first. We’ve had an amazing run since the end of World War II, with crop yields growing fast enough to keep ahead of a fast-rising population. It’s come at great human cost — displaced peasant farmers fill many of the planet’s vast slums — but in terms of sheer volume, the Green Revolution’s fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery managed to push output sharply upward. That climb, however, now seems to be running into the brute facts of heat and drought. There are studies to demonstrate the dire effects of warming on coffee, cacao, chickpeas, and champagne, but it is cereals that we really need to worry about, given that they supply most of the planet’s calories: corn, wheat, and rice all evolved as crops in the climate of the last ten thousand years, and though plant breeders can change them, there are limits to those changes. You can move a person from Hanoi to Edmonton, and she might decide to open a Vietnamese restaurant. But if you move a rice plant, it will die. A 2017 study in Australia, home to some of the world’s highest-tech farming, found that “wheat productivity has flatlined as a direct result of climate change.” After tripling between 1900 and 1990, wheat yields had stagnated since, as temperatures increased a degree and rainfall declined by nearly a third. “The chance of that just being variable climate without the underlying factor of climate change is less than one in a hundred billion,” the researchers said, and it meant that despite all the expensive new technology farmers kept introducing, “they have succeeded only in standing still, not in moving forward.” Assuming the same trends continued, yields would actually start to decline inside of two decades, they reported. In June 2018, researchers found that a two-degree Celsius rise in temperature — which, recall, is what the Paris accords are now aiming for — could cut U.S. corn yields by 18 percent. A four-degree increase — which is where our current trajectory will take us — would cut the crop almost in half. The United States is the world’s largest producer of corn, which in turn is the planet’s most widely grown crop. Corn is vulnerable because even a week of high temperatures at the key moment can keep it from fertilizing. (“You only get one chance to pollinate a quadrillion kernels of corn,” the head of a commodity consulting firm explained.) But even the hardiest crops are susceptible. Sorghum, for instance, which is a staple for half a billion humans, is particularly hardy in dry conditions because it has big, fibrous roots that reach far down into the earth. Even it has limits, though, and they are being reached. Thirty years of data from the American Midwest show that heat waves affect the “vapor pressure deficit,” the difference between the water vapor in the sorghum leaf’s interior and that in the surrounding air. Hotter weather means the sorghum releases more moisture into the atmosphere. Warm the planet’s temperature by two degrees Celsius — which is, again, now the world’s goal — and sorghum yields drop 17 percent. Warm it five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit), and yields drop almost 60 percent. It’s hard to imagine a topic duller than sorghum yields. It’s the precise opposite of clickbait. But people have to eat; in the human game, the single most important question is probably “What’s for dinner?” And when the answer is “Not much,” things deteriorate fast. In 2010 a severe heat wave hit Russia, and it wrecked the grain harvest, which led the Kremlin to ban exports. The global price of wheat spiked, and that helped trigger the Arab Spring — Egypt at the time was the largest wheat importer on the planet. That experience set academics and insurers to work gaming out what the next food shock might look like. In 2017 one team imagined a vigorous El Niño, with the attendant floods and droughts — for a season, in their scenario, corn and soy yields declined by 10 percent, and wheat and rice by 7 percent. The result was chaos: “quadrupled commodity prices, civil unrest, significant negative humanitarian consequences . . . Food riots break out in urban areas across the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. The euro weakens and the main European stock markets lose ten percent.” At about the same time, a team of British researchers released a study demonstrating that even if you can grow plenty of food, the transportation system that distributes it runs through just fourteen major choke-points, and those are vulnerable to — you guessed it — massive disruption from climate change. For instance, U.S. rivers and canals carry a third of the world’s corn and soy, and they’ve been frequently shut down or crimped by flooding and drought in recent years. Brazil accounts for 17 percent of the world’s grain exports, but heavy rainfall in 2017 stranded three thousand trucks. “It’s the glide path to a perfect storm,” said one of the report’s authors. Five weeks after that, another report raised an even deeper question. What if you can figure out how to grow plenty of food, and you can figure out how to guarantee its distribution, but the food itself has lost much of its value? The paper, in the journal Environmental Research, said that rising carbon dioxide levels, by speeding plant growth, seem to have reduced the amount of protein in basic staple crops, a finding so startling that, for many years, agronomists had overlooked hints that it was happening. But it seems to be true: when researchers grow grain at the carbon dioxide levels we expect for later this century, they find that minerals such as calcium and iron drop by 8 percent, and protein by about the same amount. In the developing world, where people rely on plants for their protein, that means huge reductions in nutrition: India alone could lose 5 percent of the protein in its total diet, putting 53 million people at new risk for protein deficiency. The loss of zinc, essential for maternal and infant health, could endanger 138 million people around the world. In 2018, rice researchers found “significantly less protein” when they grew eighteen varieties of rice in high–carbon dioxide test plots. “The idea that food became less nutritious was a surprise,” said one researcher. “It’s not intuitive. But I think we should continue to expect surprises. We are completely altering the biophysical conditions that underpin our food system.” And not just ours. People don’t depend on goldenrod, for instance, but bees do. When scientists looked at samples of goldenrod in the Smithsonian that dated back to 1842, they found that the protein content of its pollen had “declined by a third since the industrial revolution — and the change closely tracks with the rise in carbon dioxide.” Bees help crops, obviously, so that’s scary news. But in August 2018, a massive new study found something just as frightening: crop pests were thriving in the new heat. “It gets better and better for them,” said one University of Colorado researcher. Even if we hit the UN target of limiting temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, pests should cut wheat yields by 46 percent, corn by 31 percent, and rice by 19 percent. “Warmer temperatures accelerate the metabolism of insect pests like aphids and corn borers at a predictable rate,” the researchers found. “That makes them hungrier, and warmer temperatures also speed up their reproduction.” Even fossilized plants from fifty million years ago make the point: “Plant damage from insects correlated with rising and falling temperatures, reaching a maximum during the warmest periods.” An asteroid collision would ensure extinction – would fundamentally alter the biosphere, don’t underestimate its risk. Hudson 19 Wesley Hudson ’19, news reporter for Express, “Asteroid alert: NASA warning as kilometre long space rock set to skim Earth at 25,000mph”, 8/28/19, Express, https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1170826/asteroid-news-NASA-latest-space-rock-asteroid-1998-HL1-earth-danger-apocalypse AN ASTEROID almost a kilometre wide is currently barreling through space at more than 25,000mph and is due to skim the earth towards the end of October. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) claim the space rock will shoot past the earth within a “close” proximity of the planet in the early hours of October 26. The asteroid, dubbed 1998 HL1, is a so-called Near-Earth Object (NEO) flying on a Close Approach Trajectory. NASA expects the 1998 HL1 to come flying by dangerously close around 1.21am BST (17.21pm PDT). The daunting moment will mark anther journey around the sun for the asteroid since it was discovered in 1998. The asteroid will be travelling at a staggering speed of over 25,000mph as it barrels past the Earth. The JPL predict the asteroid could be between 440m and 990m wide. At its largest an asteroid of this size is bigger than the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Even at it’s smallest, 1998 HL1 is still bigger than The Shard. Since it was discovered, 1998 HL1 has been seen up to 408 times. An NEO is an asteroid or comet which is on an orbital path intersecting that of the Earth's. This asteroid will miss the Earth by almost four million miles. If it were to strike the Earth, an asteroid of this size would cause catastrophic damage. The extinction of the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous-Tertiary event 65million years ago is famously believed to have been caused by a massive asteroid impact. The Chicxulub Crater in Mexico is the most commonly accepted point of impact, with the responsible body thought to be around 10km in diameter. A car-sized asteroid is estimated to hit the Earth roughly once a year. The majority of asteroids on track for the planet are usually burnt up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has previously warned a potential asteroid collision is more likely then people realise. He said: "We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood, it's not about the movies. "This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know, right now, to host life - and that is the planet Earth.” NASA is currently in the process of developing the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART will test if it is possible to redirect asteroids that are threatening to impact with Earth. SpaceX chief Elon Musk had previously tweeted fears of a deadly collision that Earth was not prepared for. Mr Musk tweeted: “A big rock will hit Earth eventually and we currently have no defence.”
Don’t write our impacts off as low probability – asteroid collision is complex and the existence of space keyholes exponentially increases the risk of collision. Vereš ’19 Peter Vereš ’19, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, “Chapter 6 Vision of Perfect Observation Capabilities”, 2019, Planetary Defense, Space and Society, https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/634091/mod_resource/content/1/Planetary20Defence.pdf Often, uncertain orbits are a source of elevated impact risks of some NEOs with the Earth. The impact probability of an asteroid with Earth is a complex problem. First, the orbits of Earth and the asteroid should be close enough or even intersect; second, the Earth and asteroid should meet at the intersection at the same time. If these conditions are met, then one can assess how close the asteroid flies around the Earth at a given time, or whether it will hit the Earth. One must remember that each asteroid orbit comes with uncertainties and therefore, instead of a single accurate solution where the asteroid will hit the Earth or miss it, there is always a realm of possible solutions within the orbit uncertainties. The tangent plane to the asteroid’s trajectory at the time of impact, or close approach, is called a b-plane. At a given time of a predicted impact, all possible closest distances to the Earth of possible orbits create an area on the tangent plane. If the area contains the Earth, then the impact probability for that epoch is non-zero and in a simple approximation can be denoted as a ratio of an area of Earth cross section and the entire area with possible orbits going through the b-plane. It happens that a newly discovered NEO with a short arc that is coming very close to the Earth has a non-zero impact probability, because its orbit is highly uncertain and the area on the b-plane is very large. Typically, further observations improve the orbit, and the impact risk for a given epoch falls to zero. Some objects, however, have orbits with low orbital uncertainty, but still have non-zero impact probability, such as Bennu. The non-zero impact probability is computed for a given time in the future, but even if the orbit is known very well today, small perturbations from planets and non-gravitational forces increase the uncertainty for future impacts. That is why NASA’s Sentry is providing predictions only for the next 100 years. A close flyby of a spacecraft around an asteroid may improve the asteroid’s orbit significantly, however, it does not fully mitigate its impact in the future, due to the presence of keyholes (Chodas 1999)—small areas in space near Earth. Keyholes are specific for asteroids flying very close to the Earth and are rather small, from a few to hundreds of kilometers across. If the keyhole is hit during the NEO flyby, the orbit of the NEO becomes resonant with Earth and the NEO will return to Earth regularly, increasing its impact probability. Thus, in case of a very near Earth flyby, the orbit needs to be known with such precision (km) that keyhole avoidance is confirmed. NASA has even created the NEO Deflection App,1 where the public can try to change the orbit of a hypothesized NEO on direct impact trajectory. For Earth impact monitoring, the accuracy of orbits and orbital uncertainties is crucial and deserves more attention. The future of orbit determination and uncertainty mitigation will depend more and more on sophisticated software that will be able to handle orbital computation in detail; assess uncertainties and errors of measurements; coordinate a list of objects that are crucial for follow-up or orbit improvement, or even automatically point the telescopes in a network to observe those asteroids; measure their positions; and submit the data to MPC. This automated process is more or less implanted by several surveys (CSS, LCOGT) and agencies (ESA, MPC).
Interp: The AFF must defend policy action in a plan text in the 1AC. "Resolved:" the appropriation of outer space by private entities is "unjust" entails policy action: 1---Resolved. Parcher 1 Jeff; former debate coach at Georgetown; Feb 26, 2001; https://web.archive.org/web/20020929065555/http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html brett (1) Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Frimness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination or decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or decided on. A formal statemnt of a deciion, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconcievable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desireablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committtee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the prelimanary wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasis the fact that it's policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. 2---Unjust. Black’s Law The Law Dictionary Featuring Black's Law Dictionary Free Online Legal Dictionary 2nd Ed. No Date. https://thelawdictionary.org/unjust/ brett What is UNJUST? Contrary to right and justice, or to the enjoyment of his rights by another, or to the standards of conduct furnished by the laws. Violation: There’s no plan, they defend the res as a general rule. Prefer: 1---Ground---absent meeting precise words in the res, we lose all the pre-round prep we did around the resolution, killing neg ground. 2---Vagueness---debates inevitably involve the AFF defending something, but only our interp lets them to clearly define that from the start. Their model leads to late-breaking debates that destroy ground, for example we won’t know if asteroid mining or space exploration are offense until the 1AR, which skews neg prep. 3---Topic ed---specific policies teach us to go deep into the topic, uniquely important given the evolving character of space law. outweighs bc we only have 2 month topics, and phil ed is solved by free textbooks. Counter-interp bc reasonability is arbitrary and invites judge intervention Drop the debater to deter future abuse No RVIs: 1 illogical, you shouldn’t win for being topical, 2 good theory debaters will read abusive positions to bait theory and dump on an RVI, 3 trades off with substance since we can’t kick out of T Neg theory first because AFF abuse made it impossible to engage so any neg abuse was to get back in the game. Case
Militarization Conflict Turn Space commercialization is a strong constraint on conflict – solves space war Wendy N. Whitman Cobb 20, is currently an associate professor of strategy and security studies at the US Air Force's School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 7-21-2020, "Privatizing Peace: How Commerce Can Reduce Conflict in Space," Routledge and CRC Press, https://www.routledge.com/Privatizing-Peace-How-Commerce-Can-Reduce-Conflict-in-Space/Cobb/p/book/9780367337834 AAli By the end of the twentieth century, scholars zeroed in on the democratic peace theory which attempts to explain why democracies do not go to war with other democracies and why, in some analyses, they seem to be more prone to peace in general than non-democracies. Similar to the golden arches, what is it about democracy that seems to induce such peacefulness? Academics have proposed everything from the nature of mediating institutions to the restraint of public opinion, to trade relations. While these variations will be explored further in Chapter 3, of interest here are the versions that focus explicitly on trade, commercial ties, and capitalism. Along these lines, Erik Gartzke argues, "peace ensues when states lack differences worthy of costly conflict."31 If the costs of conflict are too high, then states should be more unlikely to engage in it. To this end, economic globalization can provide the means through which costs are raised. “The integration of world markets not only facilitates commerce, but also creates new interests inimical to war. Financial interdependence ensures that damage inflicted on one economy travels through the global system, afflicting even aggressors."32 Focusing his analysis primarily on the influence of capitalism, Gartzke's findings suggest that states with markets more closely tied to the global economy are far less likely to experience a militarized dispute. In thinking about the space environment today, there are obvious principles of capitalism at work. However, China, a major spacefaring state that has been making capitalist reforms, arguably remains far from a true capitalist country. This is especially true in their space industry which is heavily subsidized by the state and almost wholly integrated with China's military.34 Many other states continue to subsidize space activities heavily as well. A better approach through which to examine conflict in space is presented by an offshoot of the capitalist peace which is termed the commercial peace. The commercial peace thesis emphasizes the role of trade and the connections made through it to explain a lack of conflict. Han Dorussen and Hugh Ward write: Trade is important not only because it creates an economic interest in peace but also because trade generates 'connections' between people that promote communication and understanding.... Based on these ideas, the flow of goods between countries creates a network of ties and communication links. If two countries are more embedded in this network, their relations should be more peaceful 35 Given the interconnectedness of the global economy to space-based assets, a version of the commercial peace thesis can be used to argue that the chance of conflict in space is less than is commonly understood or recognized precisely because of the extent to which the global economy has become dependent on space-based assets. To understand this argument, consider a scenario in which Russia, in preparation for a new assault on Eastern Europe, attacks a key US military satellite with the purpose of disrupting and disabling military communications in Europe. This action would conceivably enable the Russians to undertake their attack under more favorable conditions and prevent a quicker response from America and its allies. However, if the satellite was attacked via an ASAT that kinetically destroyed the US satellite, the debris cloud created from the attack could have disastrous consequences beyond military communications Much like the movie Gravity, the debris cloud could cause a chain reaction, hitting and disabling dismantling other satellites that would in turn disrupt civilian communications, business transactions, and perhaps even Russian military satellites. The economic effects of lost satellites would not be restricted to one country alone; the global economic consequences in terms of lost property (satellites), lost transactions, and financial havoc would echo throughout the world, including in Russia itself. Finally, the attack on one satellite could even ultimately endanger the ISS and its inhabitants, several of which are Russians. Destruction of the ISS would negate billions of dollars in investment from not just Russia, but other countries that have participated in it including Japan, Italy, and Canada. Therefore, an attack on a US military satellite would not just be an attack on one but an attack on all. While the previous scenario highlights several reasons why it would not be in Russia's best interest to attack a US satellite, this book argues that the economic argument is both the strongest and the most restraining especially as space becomes more congested, competitive, contested, and commercialized. The emergence of private space companies enhances this argument. "In the commercial sector, companies need reliability and legal enforcement mechanisms if they are going to operate profitably in a shared environment."36 In order to foster the growing area of space commercialization, companies must be assured that the activities they undertake in space will be protected in some way or, at a minimum, allowed to proceed to the extent where they can reap the profit. This could be done through international organizations that would provide some sort of space traffic control, but the likelihood of a major international breakthrough on rules regarding space is unlikely in the near term. Therefore, actors must rely on the protections afforded them by an increasingly globalized economy that is ever more dependent on space-based assets.
Considering the worsening climate change, in the future outer space might be our last Noah’s Ark. Now, humans must look to space as an opportunity to support growing resource requirements. Asteroids are rich in metals, which could be transported back to Earth. Unfortunately, the existing international legal framework discourages investments in the space economy. Once an enterprise invests billions of dollars in discovering and developing a mining site, it cannot claim any ownership because of the non-appropriation principle stipulated in Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty (OST). Thus, other entities could legally access and exploit the same resource without any participation in the initial financial investment, increasing the risk of potential conflict. Bearing this in mind, the question arises, which legal regime could ensure effective allocation of resources, avoiding a chaotic space race to acquire valuable assets? The aim of this research is to argue that the first two articles of OST should be amended, to set up an international legal trust system which would guarantee different kinds of rights, dependently on the nature of the celestial body. E.g., property rights could be preferable to a lease over asteroids, as they could be exploited to their disappearance. This proposed system would be led by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), as the main trustee. The co-trustees would be the nations of the world. Prior to initiating any space activity, every entity would send a request to their national government. If all the legal parameters are respected, the nation would forward the operational request to the UNOOSA. In the case of acceptance, UNOOSA would record the permit on an international public registry. The country in which the company has been registered would investigate whether the activities of its national company are consistent with the permit. This would be the ordinary model. The extraordinary model would be when the applicant for the space activity is a state, then the trustee would be the UN. All lucrative activities would be subject to benefit-sharing. Finally, this research will demonstrate the valuable outcome of the International Legal Trust System and its advantages for all humankind. Private companies would rely on property rights, while the benefit-sharing could be used to finance the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN in 2015, which address peace, climate change, inequalities and poverty.
Asteroid Mining DA
The private sector is essential for asteroid mining – competition is key and government development is not effective, efficient, or cheap enough. Thiessen 21: Marc Thiessen, 6-1, 21, Washington Post, Opinion: SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/01/spacexs-success-is-one-small-step-man-one-giant-leap-capitalism/ It was one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism. Only three countries have ever launched human beings into orbit. This past weekend, SpaceX became the first private company ever to do so, when it sent its Crew Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and docked with the International Space Station. This was accomplished by a company Elon Musk started in 2002 in a California strip mall warehouse with just a dozen employees and a mariachi band. At a time when our nation is debating the merits of socialism, SpaceX has given us an incredible testament to the power of American free enterprise. While the left is advocating unprecedented government intervention in almost every sector of the U.S. economy, from health care to energy, today Americans are celebrating the successful privatization of space travel. If you want to see the difference between what government and private enterprise can do, consider: It took a private company to give us the first space vehicle with touch-screen controls instead of antiquated knobs and buttons. It took a private company to give us a capsule that can fly entirely autonomously from launch to landing — including docking — without any participation by its human crew. It also took a private company to invent a reusable rocket that can not only take off but land as well. When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong declared “the Eagle has landed.” On Saturday, SpaceX was able to declare that the Falcon had landed when its rocket settled down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean — ready to be used again. That last development will save the taxpayers incredible amounts of money. The cost to NASA for launching a man into space on the space shuttle orbiter was $170 million per seat, compared with just $60 million to $67 million on the Dragon capsule. The cost for the space shuttle to send a kilogram of cargo into to space was $54,500; with the Falcon rocket, the cost is just $2,720 — a decrease of 95 percent. And while the space shuttle cost $27.4 billion to develop, the Crew Dragon was designed and built for just $1.7 billion — making it the lowest-cost spacecraft developed in six decades. SpaceX did it in six years — far faster than the time it took to develop the space shuttle. The private sector does it better, cheaper, faster and more efficiently than government. Why? Competition. Today, SpaceX has to compete with a constellation of private companies — including legacy aerospace firms such as Orbital ATK and United Launch Alliance and innovative start-ups such as Blue Origin (which is designing a Mars lander and whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Post) and Virgin Orbit (which is developing rockets than can launch satellites into space from the underside of a 747, avoiding the kinds of weather that delayed the Dragon launch). In the race to put the first privately launched man into orbit, upstart SpaceX had to beat aerospace behemoth Boeing and its Starliner capsule to the punch. It did so — for more than $1 billion less than its competitor. That spirit of competition and innovation will revolutionize space travel in the years ahead. Indeed, Musk has his sights set far beyond Earth orbit. Already, SpaceX is working on a much larger version of the Falcon 9 reusable rocket called Super Heavy that will carry a deep-space capsule named Starship capable of carrying up to 100 people to the moon and eventually to Mars. Musk’s goal — the reason he founded SpaceX — is to colonize Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species. He has set a goal of founding a million-person city on Mars by 2050 complete with iron foundries and pizza joints. Can it be done? Who knows. But this much is certain: Private-sector innovation is opening the door to a new era of space exploration. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, just as capitalism is allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of our solar system, Americans decided to embrace socialism back here on Earth?
Taking away property rights scares investors away and spills over to other space activities. Freeland 05 Steven Freeland (BCom, LLB, LLM, University of New South Wales; Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Western Sydney, Australia; and a member of the Paris-based International Institute of Space Law). “Up, Up and … Back: The Emergence of Space Tourism and Its Impact on the International Law of Outer Space.” Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 4. 2005. JDN. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269andcontext=cjil V. THE NEED FOR CELESTIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS? ¶ The fundamental principle of "non-appropriation" upon which the international law of outer space is based stems from the desire of the international community to ensure that outer space remains an area beyond the jurisdiction of any state(s). Similar ideals emerge from UNCLOS (in relation to the High Seas) as well as the Antarctic Treaty, 42 although in the case of the latter treaty, it was finalised after a number of claims of sovereignty had already been made by various States and therefore was structured to "postpone" rather than prejudice or renounce those previously asserted claims.43 In the case of outer space, its exploitation and use is expressed in Article I of the Outer Space Treaty to be "the province of all mankind," a term whose meaning is not entirely clear but has been interpreted by most commentators as evincing the desire to ensure that any State is free to engage in space activities without reference to any sovereign claims of other States. This freedom is reinforced by other parts of the same Article and is repeated in the Moon Agreement (which also applies to "other celestial bodies within the solar system, other than the earth")." Even though both the scope for space activities and the number of private participants have expanded significantly since these treaties were finalised, it has still been suggested that the nonappropriation principle constitutes "an absolute barrier in the realization of every kind of space activity., 4 ' The amount of capital expenditure required to research, scope, trial, and implement a new space activity is significant. To bring this activity to the point where it can represent a viable "stand alone" commercial venture takes many years and almost limitless funding. From the perspective of a private enterprise contemplating such an activity, it would quite obviously be an important element in its decision to devote resources to this activity that it is able to secure the highest degree of legal rights in order to protect its investment. Security of patent and other intellectual property rights, for example, are vital prerequisites for private enterprise research activity on the ISS, and these rights are specifically addressed by the ISS Agreement between the partners to the project and were applicable to the experiments undertaken by Mark Shuttleworth when he was onboard the ISS.46
Asteroid mining can happen with private sector innovation and is key to solve a laundry list of impacts--climate change, economic decline and asteroid collisions. Taylor 19 Chris Taylor journalist, was senior news writer for Time.com, San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine, 19 - ("How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires," Mashable, 2019, accessed 12-13-2021, https://mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy)//ML How much, exactly? We’re only just beginning to guess. Asterank, a service that keeps track of some 6,000 asteroids in NASA’s database, prices out the estimated mineral content in each one in the current world market. More than 500 are listed as “$100 trillion.” The estimated profit on just the top 10 asteroids judged “most cost effective” — that is, the easiest to reach and to mine, subtracting rocket fuel and other operating costs, is around $1.5 trillion.¶ Is it ours for the taking? Well, here’s the thing — we’re taking it already, and have been doing so since we started mining metals thousands of years ago. Asteroid strikes are the only reason rare metals exist in the Earth’s crust; the native ones were all sucked into our planet’s merciless iron core millions of years ago. Why not go to the source?¶ As a side project, space mining can grab water from the rocks and comets — water which, with a little processing makes rocket fuel. Which in turn makes even more currently unimaginable space operations possible, including ones that could give the planet all the energy it needs to avert climate catastrophe. Cislunar space — the bit around us and the moon, the local neighborhood, basically — is about to get very interesting.¶ It’s hard, even for the most asteroid-minded visionaries, to truly believe the full scope of this future space economy right now. Just as hard as it would have been in 1945, when an engineer named Vannevar Bush first proposed a vast library of shared knowledge that people the world over would access via personal computers, to see that mushroom into a global network of streaming movies and grandmas posting photos and trolls and spies who move the needle on presidential elections. ¶ No technology’s pioneer can predict its second-order effects.¶ The space vision thing is particularly difficult in 2019. Not only do we have plenty of urgent problems with democracy and justice to keep us occupied, but the only two companies on the planet to have gone public with asteroid-mining business plans, startups that seemed to be going strong and had launched satellites already, were just bought by larger companies that are, shall we say, less comfortable executing on long-term visions.¶ Planetary Resources was founded in 2012 in a blaze of publicity. Its funding came from, among others, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot, and the country of Luxembourg. It had inked an orbital launch deal with Virgin Galactic. And it was sold last October to a blockchain software company. (To 21st century readers, this paragraph would look like I’m playing tech world mad libs.)¶ In January, the other company, Deep Space Industries, also partly funded by Luxembourg (way to get in the space race, Luxembourg!), was sold to Bradford Space, owned by a U.S. investment group called the American Industrial Acquisition Corporation. Maybe these new overlords plan on continuing their acquisitions' asteroid mining endeavors rather than stripping the companies for parts. Both companies have been notably silent on the subject. “The asteroid mining bubble has burst,” declared The Space Review, one of the few online publications to even pay attention.¶ That’s also to be expected. After all, anyone trying to build Google in 1945 would go bankrupt. Just as the internet needed a half-dozen major leaps forward in computing before it could even exist, space industry needs its launch infrastructure.¶ Currently, the world’s richest person and its most well-known entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, respectively, are working on the relatively cheap reusable rockets asteroid pioneers will need. (As I was writing this, Bezos announced in an email blast that one of his New Shepherd rockets had flown to space and back five times like it was nothing, delivering 38 payloads for various customers while remaining entirely intact.) ¶ Meanwhile, quietly, Earth’s scientists are laying the groundwork of research the space economy needs. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has been in orbit around asteroid Ryugu for the last year and a half, learning everything it can. (Ryugu, worth $30 billion according to Asterank, is the website's #1 most cost-effective target.) The craft dropped tiny hopping robot rovers and a small bomb on its target; pictures of the small crater that resulted were released afterwards.¶ Officially, the mission is to help us figure out how the solar system formed. Unofficially, it will help us understand whether all those useful metals clump together at the heart of an asteroid, as some theorize. If so, it’s game on for asteroid prospectors. If not, we can still get at the metals with other techniques, such as optical mining (which basically involves sticking an asteroid in a bag and drilling with sunlight; sounds nuts to us, but NASA has proved it in the lab). It’ll just take more time.¶ Effectively, we’ve just made our first mark at the base of the first space mineshaft. And there’s more to come in 2020 when Hayabusa 2 returns to Earth bearing samples. If its buckets of sand contain a modicum of gold dust, tiny chunks of platinum or pebbles of compressed carbon — aka diamonds — then the Duchy of Luxembourg won’t be the only deep-pocketed investor to sit up and take notice.¶ The possibility of private missions to asteroids, with or without a human crew, is almost here. The next step in the process that takes us from here to where you are? Tell us an inspiring story about it, one that makes people believe, and start to imagine themselves mining in space. How would you explain the world-changing nature of the internet to 1945? How would you persuade them that there was gold to be mined in Vannevar Bush’s idea? You’d let the new economy and its benefits play out in the form of a novel.¶ As Hayabusa dropped a bomb on Ryugu, Daniel Suarez was making the exact same asteroid the target of his fiction. Suarez is a tech consultant and developer turned New York Times bestselling author. His novels thus far have been techno-thrillers: his debut, Daemon, a novel of Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare, AI run rampant, made more than a million dollars.¶ So it was a telling shift in cultural mood that Suarez’s latest thriller is also a very in-depth description of — and thinly-disguised advocacy for — asteroid mining. In Delta-v, published in April, a billionaire in the 2030s named Nathan Joyce recruits a team of adventurers who know nothing about space — a world-renowned cave-diver, a world-renowned mountaineer — for the first crewed asteroid mission.¶ Elon Musk fans might expect this to be Joyce’s tale, but he soon fades into the background. The asteroid-nauts are the true heroes of Delta-v. Not only are they offered a massive payday — $6 million each for four years’ work — they also have agency in key decisions in the distant enterprise. Suarez deliberately based them on present-day heroes. The mission is essential, Joyce declares, to save Earth from its major problems. First of all, the fictional billionaire wheels in a fictional Nobel economist to demonstrate the actual truth that the entire global economy is sitting on a mountain of debt. It has to keep growing or it will implode, so we might as well take the majority of the industrial growth off-world where it can’t do any more harm to the biosphere.¶ Secondly, there’s the climate change fix. Suarez sees asteroid mining as the only way we’re going to build solar power satellites. Which, as you probably know, is a form of uninterrupted solar power collection that is theoretically more effective, inch for inch, than any solar panels on Earth at high noon, but operating 24/7. (In space, basically, it’s always double high noon). ¶ The power collected is beamed back to large receptors on Earth with large, low-power microwaves, which researchers think will be harmless enough to let humans and animals pass through the beam. A space solar power array like the one China is said to be working on could reliably supply 2,000 gigawatts — or over 1,000 times more power than the largest solar farm currently in existence. ¶ “We're looking at a 20-year window to completely replace human civilization's power infrastructure,” Suarez told me, citing the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the coming catastrophe. Solar satellite technology “has existed since the 1970s. What we were missing is millions of tons of construction materials in orbit. Asteroid mining can place it there.”¶ The Earth-centric early 21st century can’t really wrap its brain around this, but the idea is not to bring all that building material and precious metals down into our gravity well. Far better to create a whole new commodities exchange in space. You mine the useful stuff of asteroids both near to Earth and far, thousands of them taking less energy to reach than the moon. That’s something else we’re still grasping, how relatively easy it is to ship stuff in zero-G environments. ¶ Robot craft can move 10-meter boulders like they’re nothing. You bring it all back to sell to companies that will refine and synthesize it in orbit for a myriad of purposes. Big pharma, to take one controversial industry, would benefit by taking its manufacturing off-world. The molecular structure of many chemicals grows better in microgravity.¶ The expectation is that a lot of these space businesses — and all the orbital infrastructure designed to support them — will be automated, controlled remotely via telepresence, and monitored by AI. But Suarez is adamant that thousands if not millions of actual human workers will thrive in the space economy, even as robots take their jobs in old industries back on Earth.¶ “Our initial expansion into space will most likely be unsettled and experimental. Human beings excel in such environments,” he says. “Humans can improvise and figure things out as we go. Robots must be purpose-built, and it's going to take time and experience for us to design and build them.”¶ Which is another way startups back on Earth will get rich in the new economy: designing and building those robots, the nearest thing to selling picks and shovels to prospectors in the space gold rush. Thousands of humans in space at any one time will also require the design and construction of stations that spin to create artificial gravity. Again, this isn’t a great stretch: Using centrifugal force to simulate gravity in space was first proposed by scientists in the 19th century. NASA has had workable designs for spinning cislunar habitats called O’Neill cylinders since the 1970s. We just haven’t funded them. ¶ But the trillionaires clearly will.¶ In short, Suarez has carefully laid out a vision of the orbital economy that offers something for everyone in our divided society. For Green New Deal Millennials, there’s the prospect of removing our reliance on fossil fuels at a stroke and literally lifting dirty industries off the face of the planet. For libertarians and other rugged individualists, there’s a whole new frontier to be developed, largely beyond the reach of government. ¶ For those who worry about asteroids that could wipe out civilization — though luckily, this isn't likely to happen any time soon — here is a way for humanity to get proficient in moving them out of the way, fast. Indeed, the National Space Society has offered a proposal to capture the asteroid Aphosis (which is set to miss Earth in the year 2029, but not by a very comfortable margin), keep it in orbit, and turn it into 150 small solar-power satellites, as a proof of concept. ¶ For the woke folks who care about the bloody history of diamond production, there’s the likelihood that space mining would wipe out Earth’s entire diamond industry. “They will be found in quantities unattainable on Earth,” claims Suarez, with good reason. We are starting to discover that there is more crystalized carbon in the cosmos than we ever suspected. Astronomers have identified one distant planet made entirely of diamond; there may be more, but they are, ironically, hard to see. ¶ We don’t have diamond planets in our solar system (and we can’t do interstellar missions), but we do have diamond-studded asteroids. Mine them for long enough and you will wear diamonds on the soles of your shoes.¶ For investors and entrepreneurs, there is the thrill of racing to be the first member of the four-comma club. (Neil deGrasse Tyson believes that the first trillionaire will be an asteroid mining mogul; Suarez isn’t sure whether they’ll be the first, but he suspects that asteroid mining “will mint more trillionaires than any industry in history.”) ¶ For the regular guy or gal with a 401K, there’ll be a fast-rising stock market — inflated not by financial shenanigans this time, but an actual increase in what the world counts as wealth.¶ For workers, there is the promise of sharing in the untold riches, both legally and otherwise. It would be hard to stop miners attaining mineral wealth beyond their paycheck, under the table, when your bosses are millions of miles away. Then there’s the likelihood of rapid advancement in this new economy, where the miners fast gain the knowledge necessary to become moguls.¶ “After several tours in space working for others, perhaps on six-month or year-long contracts, it's likely that some workers will partner to set up their own businesses there,” says Suarez. “Either serving the needs of increasing numbers of workers and businesses in space, marketing services to Earth, or launching asteroid mining startups themselves.” All in all, it’s starting to sound a damn sight more beneficial to the human race than the internet economy is. Not a moment too soon. I’ve written encouragingly about asteroid mining several times before, each time touting the massive potential wealth that seems likely to be made. And each time there’s been a sense of disquiet among my readers, a sense that we’re taking our rapacious capitalist ways and exploiting space.¶ Whereas the truth is, this is exactly the version of capitalism humanity has needed all along: the kind where there is no ecosystem to destroy, no marginalized group to make miserable. A safe, dead space where capitalism’s most enthusiastic pioneers can go nuts to their hearts’ content, so long as they clean up their space junk. ¶ (Space junk is a real problem in orbital space because it has thousands of vulnerable satellites clustered closely together around our little blue rock. The vast emptiness of cislunar space, not so much.)¶ And because they’re up there making all the wealth on their commodities market, we down here on Earth can certainly afford to focus less on growing our stock market. Maybe even, whisper it low, we can afford a fully functioning social safety net, plus free healthcare and free education for everyone on the planet.¶ It’s also clearly the area where we should have focused space exploration all along. If we settle on Mars, we may disturb as-yet-undiscovered native bacteria — and as the character Nathan Joyce shouts at a group of “Mars-obsessed” entrepreneurs in Delta-V, Mars is basically filled with toxic sand and is thus looking increasingly impossible to colonize. (Sorry, Mark Watney from The Martian, those potatoes would probably kill you.)
Warming causes extinction. Bill McKibben 19, Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities; Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers. "This Is How Human Extinction Could Play Out." Rolling Stone. 4-9-2019. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/bill-mckibben-falter-climate-change-817310/ Oh, it could get very bad. In 2015, a study in the Journal of Mathematical Biology pointed out that if the world’s oceans kept warming, by 2100 they might become hot enough to “stop oxygen production by phyto-plankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.” Given that two-thirds of the Earth’s oxygen comes from phytoplankton, that would “likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.” A year later, above the Arctic Circle, in Siberia, a heat wave thawed a reindeer carcass that had been trapped in the permafrost. The exposed body released anthrax into nearby water and soil, infecting two thousand reindeer grazing nearby, and they in turn infected some humans; a twelve-year-old boy died. As it turns out, permafrost is a “very good preserver of microbes and viruses, because it is cold, there is no oxygen, and it is dark” — scientists have managed to revive an eight-million-year-old bacterium they found beneath the surface of a glacier. Researchers believe there are fragments of the Spanish flu virus, smallpox, and bubonic plague buried in Siberia and Alaska. Or consider this: as ice sheets melt, they take weight off land, and that can trigger earthquakes — seismic activity is already increasing in Greenland and Alaska. Meanwhile, the added weight of the new seawater starts to bend the Earth’s crust. “That will give you a massive increase in volcanic activity. It’ll activate faults to create earthquakes, submarine landslides, tsunamis, the whole lot,” explained the director of University College London’s Hazard Centre. Such a landslide happened in Scandinavia about eight thousand years ago, as the last Ice Age retreated and a Kentucky-size section of Norway’s continental shelf gave way, “plummeting down to the abyssal plain and creating a series of titanic waves that roared forth with a vengeance,” wiping all signs of life from coastal Norway to Greenland and “drowning the Wales-sized landmass that once connected Britain to the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.” When the waves hit the Shetlands, they were sixty-five feet high. There’s even this: if we keep raising carbon dioxide levels, we may not be able to think straight anymore. At a thousand parts per million (which is within the realm of possibility for 2100), human cognitive ability falls 21 percent. “The largest effects were seen for Crisis Response, Information Usage, and Strategy,” a Harvard study reported, which is too bad, as those skills are what we seem to need most. I could, in other words, do my best to scare you silly. I’m not opposed on principle — changing something as fundamental as the composition of the atmosphere, and hence the heat balance of the planet, is certain to trigger all manner of horror, and we shouldn’t shy away from it. The dramatic uncertainty that lies ahead may be the most frightening development of all; the physical world is going from backdrop to foreground. (It’s like the contrast between politics in the old days, when you could forget about Washington for weeks at a time, and politics in the Trump era, when the president is always jumping out from behind a tree to yell at you.) But let’s try to occupy ourselves with the most likely scenarios, because they are more than disturbing enough. Long before we get to tidal waves or smallpox, long before we choke to death or stop thinking clearly, we will need to concentrate on the most mundane and basic facts: everyone needs to eat every day, and an awful lot of us live near the ocean. FOOD SUPPLY first. We’ve had an amazing run since the end of World War II, with crop yields growing fast enough to keep ahead of a fast-rising population. It’s come at great human cost — displaced peasant farmers fill many of the planet’s vast slums — but in terms of sheer volume, the Green Revolution’s fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery managed to push output sharply upward. That climb, however, now seems to be running into the brute facts of heat and drought. There are studies to demonstrate the dire effects of warming on coffee, cacao, chickpeas, and champagne, but it is cereals that we really need to worry about, given that they supply most of the planet’s calories: corn, wheat, and rice all evolved as crops in the climate of the last ten thousand years, and though plant breeders can change them, there are limits to those changes. You can move a person from Hanoi to Edmonton, and she might decide to open a Vietnamese restaurant. But if you move a rice plant, it will die. A 2017 study in Australia, home to some of the world’s highest-tech farming, found that “wheat productivity has flatlined as a direct result of climate change.” After tripling between 1900 and 1990, wheat yields had stagnated since, as temperatures increased a degree and rainfall declined by nearly a third. “The chance of that just being variable climate without the underlying factor of climate change is less than one in a hundred billion,” the researchers said, and it meant that despite all the expensive new technology farmers kept introducing, “they have succeeded only in standing still, not in moving forward.” Assuming the same trends continued, yields would actually start to decline inside of two decades, they reported. In June 2018, researchers found that a two-degree Celsius rise in temperature — which, recall, is what the Paris accords are now aiming for — could cut U.S. corn yields by 18 percent. A four-degree increase — which is where our current trajectory will take us — would cut the crop almost in half. The United States is the world’s largest producer of corn, which in turn is the planet’s most widely grown crop. Corn is vulnerable because even a week of high temperatures at the key moment can keep it from fertilizing. (“You only get one chance to pollinate a quadrillion kernels of corn,” the head of a commodity consulting firm explained.) But even the hardiest crops are susceptible. Sorghum, for instance, which is a staple for half a billion humans, is particularly hardy in dry conditions because it has big, fibrous roots that reach far down into the earth. Even it has limits, though, and they are being reached. Thirty years of data from the American Midwest show that heat waves affect the “vapor pressure deficit,” the difference between the water vapor in the sorghum leaf’s interior and that in the surrounding air. Hotter weather means the sorghum releases more moisture into the atmosphere. Warm the planet’s temperature by two degrees Celsius — which is, again, now the world’s goal — and sorghum yields drop 17 percent. Warm it five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit), and yields drop almost 60 percent. It’s hard to imagine a topic duller than sorghum yields. It’s the precise opposite of clickbait. But people have to eat; in the human game, the single most important question is probably “What’s for dinner?” And when the answer is “Not much,” things deteriorate fast. In 2010 a severe heat wave hit Russia, and it wrecked the grain harvest, which led the Kremlin to ban exports. The global price of wheat spiked, and that helped trigger the Arab Spring — Egypt at the time was the largest wheat importer on the planet. That experience set academics and insurers to work gaming out what the next food shock might look like. In 2017 one team imagined a vigorous El Niño, with the attendant floods and droughts — for a season, in their scenario, corn and soy yields declined by 10 percent, and wheat and rice by 7 percent. The result was chaos: “quadrupled commodity prices, civil unrest, significant negative humanitarian consequences . . . Food riots break out in urban areas across the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. The euro weakens and the main European stock markets lose ten percent.” At about the same time, a team of British researchers released a study demonstrating that even if you can grow plenty of food, the transportation system that distributes it runs through just fourteen major choke-points, and those are vulnerable to — you guessed it — massive disruption from climate change. For instance, U.S. rivers and canals carry a third of the world’s corn and soy, and they’ve been frequently shut down or crimped by flooding and drought in recent years. Brazil accounts for 17 percent of the world’s grain exports, but heavy rainfall in 2017 stranded three thousand trucks. “It’s the glide path to a perfect storm,” said one of the report’s authors. Five weeks after that, another report raised an even deeper question. What if you can figure out how to grow plenty of food, and you can figure out how to guarantee its distribution, but the food itself has lost much of its value? The paper, in the journal Environmental Research, said that rising carbon dioxide levels, by speeding plant growth, seem to have reduced the amount of protein in basic staple crops, a finding so startling that, for many years, agronomists had overlooked hints that it was happening. But it seems to be true: when researchers grow grain at the carbon dioxide levels we expect for later this century, they find that minerals such as calcium and iron drop by 8 percent, and protein by about the same amount. In the developing world, where people rely on plants for their protein, that means huge reductions in nutrition: India alone could lose 5 percent of the protein in its total diet, putting 53 million people at new risk for protein deficiency. The loss of zinc, essential for maternal and infant health, could endanger 138 million people around the world. In 2018, rice researchers found “significantly less protein” when they grew eighteen varieties of rice in high–carbon dioxide test plots. “The idea that food became less nutritious was a surprise,” said one researcher. “It’s not intuitive. But I think we should continue to expect surprises. We are completely altering the biophysical conditions that underpin our food system.” And not just ours. People don’t depend on goldenrod, for instance, but bees do. When scientists looked at samples of goldenrod in the Smithsonian that dated back to 1842, they found that the protein content of its pollen had “declined by a third since the industrial revolution — and the change closely tracks with the rise in carbon dioxide.” Bees help crops, obviously, so that’s scary news. But in August 2018, a massive new study found something just as frightening: crop pests were thriving in the new heat. “It gets better and better for them,” said one University of Colorado researcher. Even if we hit the UN target of limiting temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, pests should cut wheat yields by 46 percent, corn by 31 percent, and rice by 19 percent. “Warmer temperatures accelerate the metabolism of insect pests like aphids and corn borers at a predictable rate,” the researchers found. “That makes them hungrier, and warmer temperatures also speed up their reproduction.” Even fossilized plants from fifty million years ago make the point: “Plant damage from insects correlated with rising and falling temperatures, reaching a maximum during the warmest periods.”
Space Debris Space debris is the internal link for all impacts on this advantage. Solvency NASA’s own study proves that public sector can’t clean up the orbit and is not slowing launch nearly enough. Private cleanup is NECCISSARY to solve. NASA Office of Inspector General, 21 - ("NASA’S EFFORTS TO MITIGATE THE RISKS POSED BY ORBITAL DEBRIS," Nasa office of audits Jan 27, 2021, 1-2- https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-21-011.pdf/)//AW Given the rapid increase of space activity worldwide and the current state of orbital debris in LEO, international space agencies and the scientific community agree that mitigation-only activities focused solely on prevention are not sufficient to stabilize the orbital debris environment. Rather, to effectively address the orbital debris issue, global mitigation and strategic remediation efforts are necessary. Multiple studies have found that the growth of debris in LEO can be slowed by ensuring that at least 90 percent of all spacecraft are removed from orbit within 25 years of the end of their mission, and at least five defunct spacecraft (that will not deorbit on their own) are actively removed from orbit every year. NASA’s consistent position is that preventing future debris will have greater impact on mitigating orbital debris risks than pursuing development of costly remediation technologies. Although NASA’s compliance rate for end-of-mission disposal within 25 years stands at approximately 96 percent over the last decade, the global compliance rate has only averaged between 20 to 30 percent—much lower than the 90 percent required to slow the rate at which debris is generated in LEO. Despite presidential and congressional directives to NASA over the past decade to develop active debris removal technologies, the Agency has made little to no progress on such efforts. Moreover, debris removal technologies from international agencies and commercial entities are in the early stages of development and testing. We found that NASA models of the orbital debris environment lack sufficient data, putting the Agency at risk of underor over-protecting spacecraft from debris. For objects larger than 3 mm, ODPO’s data is limited by the decreasing amount of time available on the three radars it uses to detect and statistically estimate debris due to funding, inoperable equipment, and competing priorities from multiple users. ODPO has also been unsuccessful in securing a source of measurement data on debris 3 mm and smaller in the 400 to 1,000 km range of LEO with failed missions and others canceled due to a lack of funding, a shortcoming particularly concerning because millimeter-sized orbital debris represents the highest penetration risk to most missions operating in LEO. In addition, NASA does not have the ability to track debris smaller than 10 cm in the range of LEO where the International Space Station resides and plans to rely on DOD’s Space Fence to track such debris. However, this ground-based radar system has not yet reached full operational capability, leaving the Station’s critical elements vulnerable to damage from this size debris. Finally, NASA evaluates ODARs and EOMPs to ensure programs and projects are complying with Agency orbital debris requirements, such as limiting the generation of debris and disposing of spacecraft safely. While the Agency has made improvements to this evaluation process, we found that ODARs and EOMPs were not consistently submitted to the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance in a timely manner (with some submitted nearly a year late), and the process used to route the reports for approval was laborious. Delays in providing the documentation for review could result in a missed opportunity for alternative or low-cost fixes to address mitigation issues.
Doesn’t solve debris- governments are responsible for 38 of all operational satellites but an even higher percentage of junk. We’ll insert this chart from here. Wood 20- ("Visualizing All of Earth's Satellites: Who Owns Our Orbit?," Therese Wood, Visual Capitalist, Oct 20 2020, 1-20-2022https:www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-all-of-earths-satellites/)AW
Collisions Probability – 0.1 chance of a collision. Alexander William Salter, Economics Professor at Texas Tech, ’16, “SPACE DEBRIS: A LAW AND ECONOMICS ANALYSIS OF THE ORBITAL COMMONS” 19 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 221 *numbers replaced with English words The probability of a collision is currently low. Bradley and Wein estimate that the maximum probability in LEO of a collision over the lifetime of a spacecraft remains below one in one thousand, conditional on continued compliance with NASA’s deorbiting guidelines.3 However, the possibility of a future “snowballing” effect, whereby debris collides with other objects, further congesting orbit space, remains a significant concern.4 Levin and Carroll estimate the average immediate destruction of wealth created by a collision to be approximately $30 million, with an additional $200 million in damages to all currently existing space assets from the debris created by the initial collision.5 The expected value of destroyed wealth because of collisions, currently small because of the low probability of a collision, can quickly become significant if future collisions result in runaway debris growth. Space debris is hype---there are thousands of satellites and only 15 debris collisions ever Mark Albrecht 16, Chairman of the board of USSpace LLC and fmr. head of the National Space Council, “Congested space is a serious problem solved by hard work, not hysteria, 5/9/16, https://spacenews.com/op-ed-congested-space-is-a-serious-problem-solved-by-hard-work-not-hysteria/ There are over a half million pieces of human-made material in orbit around our planet. Some are the size of school buses, some the size of BB gun pellets. They all had a function at some point, but now most are simply space debris littered from 100 to 22,000 miles above the Earth. Yet, all behave perfectly according to the laws of physics. Many in the space community have called the collision hazard caused by space debris a crisis. Popular culture has embraced the risks of collisions in space in films like Gravity. Some participants have dramatized the issue by producing graphics of Earth and its satellites, which make our planet look like a fuzzy marble, almost obscured by a dense cloud of white pellets meant to conceptualize space congestion. Unfortunately, for the sake of a good visual, satellites are depicted as if they were hundreds of miles wide, like the state of Pennsylvania (for the record, there are no space objects the size of Pennsylvania in orbit). Unfortunately, this is the rule, not the exception, and almost all of these articles, movies, graphics, and simulations are exaggerated and misleading. Space debris and collision risk is real, but it certainly is not a crisis. So what are the facts? On the positive side, space is empty and it is vast. At the altitude of the International Space Station, one half a degree of Earth longitude is almost 40 miles long. That same one half a degree at geostationary orbit, some 22,000 miles up is over 230 miles long. Generally, we don’t intentionally put satellites closer together than one-half degree. That means at geostationary orbit, they are no closer than 11 times as far as the eye can see on flat ground or on the sea: That’s the horizon over the horizon 10 times over. In addition, other than minute forces like solar winds and sparse bits of atmosphere that still exist 500 miles up, nothing gets in the way of orbiting objects and they behave quite predictably. The location of the smallest spacecraft can be predicated within a 1,000 feet, 24 hours in advance. Since we first started placing objects into space there have been 11 known low Earth orbit collisions, and three known collisions at geostationary orbit. Think of it: 135 space shuttle flights, all of the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury flights, hundreds of telecommunications satellites, 1,300 functioning satellites on orbit today, half a million total objects in space larger than a marble, and fewer than 15 known collisions. Why do people worry? Kessler Time frame – Kessler effect 200 years away. Peter Stubbe, PhD in law @ Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, ’17, State Accountability for Space Debris: A Legal Study of Responsibility for Polluting the Space Environment and Liability for Damage Caused by Space Debris, Koninklijke Brill Publishing, ISBN 978-90-04-31407-8, p. 27-31 The prediction of possible scenarios of the future evolution of the debris p o p ulation involves many uncertainties. Long-term forecasting means the prediction of the evolution of the future debris environment in time periods of decades or even centuries. Predictions are based on models84 that work with certain assumptions, and altering these parameters significantly influences the outcomes of the predictions. Assumptions on the future space traffic and on the initial object environment are particularly critical to the results of modeling efforts.85 A well-known pattern for the evolution of the debris population is the so-called Kessler effect’, which assumes that there is a certain collision probability among space objects because many satellites operate in similar orbital regions. These collisions create fragments, and thus additional objects in the respective orbits, which in turn enhances the risk of further collisions. Consequently, the number of objects and collisions increases exponentially and eventually results in the formation of a self-sustaining debris belt around the Earth. While it has long been assumed that such a process of collisional cascading is likely to occur only in a very long-term perspective (meaning a time 1 n of several hundred years),87 a consensus has evolved in recent years that an uncontrolled growth of the debris population in certain altitudes could become reality much sooner.88 In fact, a recent cooperative study undertaken by various space agencies in the scope of i a d c shows that the current l e o debris population is unstable, even if current mitigation measures are applied. The study concludes: Even with a 90 implementation of the commonly-adopted mitigation measures ... the l e o debris population is expected to increase by an average of 30 in the next 200 years. The population growth is primarily driven by catastrophic collisions between 700 and 1000 km altitudes and such collisions are likely to occur every 5 to 9 years.89 Capitalism
Capitalism is the internal link to all elitism impacts.
Non-unique: Capitalism will expand elsewhere if not in space Shamas and Holden, 2019, Victor Shamas and, Oslo Metropolitan University, Work Research Institute (AFI), Oslo, Norway; Thomas Holden, Independent scholar, Oslo, Norway, 2019, Palgrave Communications, One giant leap for capitalistkind: private enterprise in outer space, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0218-9 Outer space serves at least two purposes in this regard. In the short-to medium-term, it allows for the export of surplus capital into emerging industries, such as satellite imaging and communication. These are significant sites of capital accumulation: global revenues in the worldwide satellite market in 2016 amounted to $260 billion (SIA, 2017, p. 4). Clearly, much of this activity is taking place ‘on the ground'; it is occurring in the ‘terrestrial economy'. But all that capital would have to find some other meaningful or productive outlet were it not for the expansion of capital into space.
Governments solve the excesses of capitalism in space. Fernolz 19 Tim Fernolz, 2019, How to build a space economy that avoids the mistakes of terrestrial capitalism, https://qz.com/work/1767415/can-nasa-build-a-space-economy-that-leaves-capitalisms-problems-behind/ The good news is that we aren’t close to a world like the one depicted in the movie Elysium, where the ultra-wealthy repair to space and leave the rest of us behind. Our public and private interests will be far more intertwined, in part because governments have designed it that way. Most of the major space agencies are compelled by law in their home countries to support private economic activity, which means for example that NASA, by law, views the success of US companies in space as part of its mission, and not a distraction or a threat. The reality is that public space agencies, particularly NASA in the United States, remain the largest spenders in space and control the conditions for private organizations acting in orbit. Their challenge—and opportunity—is to manage the transition to a new, multi-stakeholder world in orbit by successfully subsidizing new initiatives without letting the benefits escape the public at large. Much of the work of establishing our space economy is prosaically earthly: Competition policy, labor rights, and corporate taxation. But with critiques of capitalism’s distributional failures at the center of public discourse, there are also sweeping challenges to address: Namely, can the orbital economy be structured better than its terrestrial analogue?
Turn: Private entities working with governments resolves the link and better address the symptoms of capitalism by collaborating to solve climate change. Maanas Sharma, 21 - ("The Space Review: The privatized frontier: the ethical implications and role of private companies in space exploration," No Publication, 9-7-2021, 12-6-2021https:www.thespacereview.com/article/4238/1)AW In recent years, private companies have taken on a larger role in the space exploration system. With lower costs and faster production times, they have displaced some functions of government space agencies. Though many have levied criticism against privatized space exploration, it also allows room for more altruistic actions by government space agencies and the benefits from increased space exploration as a whole. Thus, we should encourage this development, as the process is net ethical in the end. Especially if performed in conjunction with adequate government action on the topic, private space exploration can overcome possible shortcomings in its risky and capitalistic nature and ensure a positive contribution to the general public on Earth. Critics contend that companies must answer to their shareholders and justify their profits. This contributes to a larger overall psyche that prioritizes cost and speed above all else, resulting in significantly increased risks The implications of commercial space exploration have been thrust into the limelight with the successes and failures of billionaire Elon Musk’s company SpaceX. While private companies are not new to space exploration, their prominence in American space exploration efforts has increased rapidly in recent years, fueled by technological innovations, reductions in cost, and readily available funding from government and private sources.1 In May 2020, SpaceX brought American astronauts to space from American soil for the first time in almost 10 years.2 Recognizing the greatly reduced costs of space exploration in private companies, NASA’s budget has shifted to significantly relying on private companies.3 However, private space companies are unique from government space agencies in the way they experience unique sets of market pressures that influence their decision-making process. Hence, the expansion of private control in the space sector turns into a multifaceted contestation of its ethicality. The most obvious ethical concern is the loss of human life. Critics contend that companies must answer to their shareholders and justify their profits. This contributes to a larger overall psyche that prioritizes cost and speed above all else, resulting in significantly increased risks.4 However, the possible increase in mishaps is largely overstated. Companies recognize the need for safety aboard their expeditions themselves.5 After all, the potential backlash from a mishap could destroy the company’s reputation and significantly harm their prospects. According to Dr. Nayef Al-Rodhan, Head of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy’s Geopolitics and Global Futures Programme, “because there were no alternatives to government space programs, accidents were seen to some degree as par for the course… By comparison, private companies actually have a far more difficult set of issues to face in the case of a mishap. In a worst case scenario, a private company could make an easy scapegoat.” 6 Another large ethical concern is the prominence capitalism may have in the future of private space exploration and the impacts thereof. The growth of private space companies in recent years has been closely intertwined with capitalism. Companies have largely focused on the most profitable projects, such as space travel and the business of space.7 Many companies are funded by individual billionaires, such as dearMoon, SpaceX’s upcoming mission to the Moon.8 Congress has also passed multiple acts for the purpose of reducing regulations on private space companies and securing private access to space. From this, many immediately jump to the conclusion that capitalism in space will recreate the same conditions in outer space that plague Earth today, especially with the increasing push to create a “space-for-space” economy, such as space tourism and new technologies to mine the Moon and asteroids. Critics, such as Jordan Pearson of VICE, believe that promises of “virtually unlimited resources” are only for the rich, and will perpetuate the growing wealth inequality that plagues the world today.9 However, others contend that just because private space exploration has some capitalist elements, it is by no means an embodiment of unrestricted capitalism. A healthy balance of restricted capitalism—for example, private space companies working through contracts with government agencies or independently under monitoring and regulation by national and international agreements—will avoid the pitfalls that capitalist colonialism faced down here on Earth. Even those who are generally against excessive government regulation should see the benefits of them in space. Lacking any consensus on definitions and rights in space will create undue competition between corporations as well as governments that will harm everyone rather than helping anyone. To create a conducive environment for new space-for-space exploration, one without confrontation but with protection for corporate astronauts, infrastructure, and other interests, governments must create key policies such as a framework for property rights on asteroids, the Moon, and Mars.7,10 hough there is no one set way governments will interact with companies, the consensus is that they must radically reimagine their main purpose as the role of private space exploration continues to grow. Another key matter to note is restricted capitalism in space “could also be our salvation.”11 Private space exploration could reap increased access to resources and other benefits that can be used to solve the very problems on Earth that critics of capitalism identify. Since governments offset some of their projects to private companies, government agencies can focus on altruistic projects that otherwise would not fit in the budget before and do not have the immediate commercial use that private companies look for. Scott Hubbard, an adjunct professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, discusses how “this strategy allows the space agency to continue ‘exploring the fringe where there really is no business case’” but still has important impacts on people down on Earth.12 Indeed, this idea is a particularly powerful one when considering the ideal future of private companies in space exploration. Though there is no one set way governments will interact with companies, the consensus is that they must radically reimagine their main purpose as the role of private space exploration continues to grow. As governments utilize services from private space companies, “instead of being bogged down by the routine application of old research, NASA can prioritize their limited budget to work more on research of other unknowns and development of new long-term space travel technologies.”13 According to the Council on Foreign Relations, such technologies have far-reaching benefits on Earth as well. Past developments obviously include communications satellites, by themselves a massive benefit to society, but also “refinements in artificial hearts; improved mammograms; and laser eye surgery… thermoelectric coolers for microchips; high-temperature lubricants; and a means for mass-producing carbon nanotubes, a material with significant engineering potential; and household products.”2 Agencies like NASA are the only actors able to pursue the next game-changing missions, “where the profit motive is not as evident and where the barriers to entry are still too high for the private sector to really make a compelling business case.”8 These technologies have revolutionized millions, if not billions, of lives, demonstrating the remarkable benefits of space exploration. It follows then that it is net ethical to prioritize these benefits.
2/20/22
JFM - Outer Space
Tournament: WBFL | Round: 1 | Opponent: Loyola - IB | Judge: Lesley Sluyter WBFL NC Because the resolution asks what is just, my value is Justice.
The criterion is minimizing suffering. No coherent theory of justice can deny that suffering is morally bad. Each of us knows from our own experiences that suffering is a moral evil, and that other people experience suffering in the same way we do. Therefore, if we regard everyone’s pain as morally equal, we are obligated to minimize the amount of suffering people experience.
Moreover, maximizing utility is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human dignity. Cummiskey ’90 - David Cummiskey. Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College.Kantian Consequentialism. Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 3. 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810.
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (GMM 429). Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based rationale. But we have seen that Kant’s normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have “dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth” that transcends any market value (GMM 436), but persons also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7). The concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many.
Contention 1: Allowing the private appropriation of outer space is critical to facilitate asteroid mining, which could transform life on Earth and solve an array of huge problems. The private sector is essential for asteroid mining – competition is key and government development is not effective, efficient, or cheap enough. Thiessen 21: Marc Thiessen, 6-1, 21, Washington Post, Opinion: SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/01/spacexs-success-is-one-small-step-man-one-giant-leap-capitalism/ It was one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism. Only three countries have ever launched human beings into orbit. This past weekend, SpaceX became the first private company ever to do so, when it sent its Crew Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and docked with the International Space Station. This was accomplished by a company Elon Musk started in 2002 in a California strip mall warehouse with just a dozen employees and a mariachi band. At a time when our nation is debating the merits of socialism, SpaceX has given us an incredible testament to the power of American free enterprise. While the left is advocating unprecedented government intervention in almost every sector of the U.S. economy, from health care to energy, today Americans are celebrating the successful privatization of space travel. If you want to see the difference between what government and private enterprise can do, consider: It took a private company to give us the first space vehicle with touch-screen controls instead of antiquated knobs and buttons. It took a private company to give us a capsule that can fly entirely autonomously from launch to landing — including docking — without any participation by its human crew. It also took a private company to invent a reusable rocket that can not only take off but land as well. When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong declared “the Eagle has landed.” On Saturday, SpaceX was able to declare that the Falcon had landed when its rocket settled down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean — ready to be used again. That last development will save the taxpayers incredible amounts of money. The cost to NASA for launching a man into space on the space shuttle orbiter was $170 million per seat, compared with just $60 million to $67 million on the Dragon capsule. The cost for the space shuttle to send a kilogram of cargo into to space was $54,500; with the Falcon rocket, the cost is just $2,720 — a decrease of 95 percent. And while the space shuttle cost $27.4 billion to develop, the Crew Dragon was designed and built for just $1.7 billion — making it the lowest-cost spacecraft developed in six decades. SpaceX did it in six years — far faster than the time it took to develop the space shuttle. The private sector does it better, cheaper, faster and more efficiently than government. Why? Competition. Today, SpaceX has to compete with a constellation of private companies — including legacy aerospace firms such as Orbital ATK and United Launch Alliance and innovative start-ups such as Blue Origin (which is designing a Mars lander and whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Post) and Virgin Orbit (which is developing rockets than can launch satellites into space from the underside of a 747, avoiding the kinds of weather that delayed the Dragon launch). In the race to put the first privately launched man into orbit, upstart SpaceX had to beat aerospace behemoth Boeing and its Starliner capsule to the punch. It did so — for more than $1 billion less than its competitor. That spirit of competition and innovation will revolutionize space travel in the years ahead. Indeed, Musk has his sights set far beyond Earth orbit. Already, SpaceX is working on a much larger version of the Falcon 9 reusable rocket called Super Heavy that will carry a deep-space capsule named Starship capable of carrying up to 100 people to the moon and eventually to Mars. Musk’s goal — the reason he founded SpaceX — is to colonize Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species. He has set a goal of founding a million-person city on Mars by 2050 complete with iron foundries and pizza joints. Can it be done? Who knows. But this much is certain: Private-sector innovation is opening the door to a new era of space exploration. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, just as capitalism is allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of our solar system, Americans decided to embrace socialism back here on Earth?
Space regulation scares investors away and spills over to other space activities. Freeland 05 Steven Freeland (BCom, LLB, LLM, University of New South Wales; Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Western Sydney, Australia; and a member of the Paris-based International Institute of Space Law). “Up, Up and … Back: The Emergence of Space Tourism and Its Impact on the International Law of Outer Space.” Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 4. 2005. JDN. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269andcontext=cjil V. THE NEED FOR CELESTIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS? ¶ The fundamental principle of "non-appropriation" upon which the international law of outer space is based stems from the desire of the international community to ensure that outer space remains an area beyond the jurisdiction of any state(s). Similar ideals emerge from UNCLOS (in relation to the High Seas) as well as the Antarctic Treaty, 42 although in the case of the latter treaty, it was finalised after a number of claims of sovereignty had already been made by various States and therefore was structured to "postpone" rather than prejudice or renounce those previously asserted claims.43 In the case of outer space, its exploitation and use is expressed in Article I of the Outer Space Treaty to be "the province of all mankind," a term whose meaning is not entirely clear but has been interpreted by most commentators as evincing the desire to ensure that any State is free to engage in space activities without reference to any sovereign claims of other States. This freedom is reinforced by other parts of the same Article and is repeated in the Moon Agreement (which also applies to "other celestial bodies within the solar system, other than the earth")." Even though both the scope for space activities and the number of private participants have expanded significantly since these treaties were finalised, it has still been suggested that the nonappropriation principle constitutes "an absolute barrier in the realization of every kind of space activity., 4 ' The amount of capital expenditure required to research, scope, trial, and implement a new space activity is significant. To bring this activity to the point where it can represent a viable "stand alone" commercial venture takes many years and almost limitless funding. From the perspective of a private enterprise contemplating such an activity, it would quite obviously be an important element in its decision to devote resources to this activity that it is able to secure the highest degree of legal rights in order to protect its investment. Security of patent and other intellectual property rights, for example, are vital prerequisites for private enterprise research activity on the ISS, and these rights are specifically addressed by the ISS Agreement between the partners to the project and were applicable to the experiments undertaken by Mark Shuttleworth when he was onboard the ISS.46
Asteroid mining can happen with private sector innovation and is key to solve climate change, economic decline and asteroid collisions. Taylor 19 Chris Taylor journalist, 19 - ("How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires," Mashable, 2019, accessed 12-13-2021, https://mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy)//ML How much, exactly? We’re only just beginning to guess. Asterank, a service that keeps track of some 6,000 asteroids in NASA’s database, prices out the estimated mineral content in each one in the current world market. More than 500 are listed as “$100 trillion.” The estimated profit on just the top 10 asteroids judged “most cost effective” — that is, the easiest to reach and to mine, subtracting rocket fuel and other operating costs, is around $1.5 trillion.¶ Is it ours for the taking? Well, here’s the thing — we’re taking it already, and have been doing so since we started mining metals thousands of years ago. Asteroid strikes are the only reason rare metals exist in the Earth’s crust; the native ones were all sucked into our planet’s merciless iron core millions of years ago. Why not go to the source?¶ As a side project, space mining can grab water from the rocks and comets — water which, with a little processing makes rocket fuel. Which in turn makes even more currently unimaginable space operations possible, including ones that could give the planet all the energy it needs to avert climate catastrophe. Cislunar space — the bit around us and the moon, the local neighborhood, basically — is about to get very interesting.¶ It’s hard, even for the most asteroid-minded visionaries, to truly believe the full scope of this future space economy right now. Just as hard as it would have been in 1945, when an engineer named Vannevar Bush first proposed a vast library of shared knowledge that people the world over would access via personal computers, to see that mushroom into a global network of streaming movies and grandmas posting photos and trolls and spies who move the needle on presidential elections. ¶ No technology’s pioneer can predict its second-order effects.¶ The space vision thing is particularly difficult in 2019. Not only do we have plenty of urgent problems with democracy and justice to keep us occupied, but the only two companies on the planet to have gone public with asteroid-mining business plans, startups that seemed to be going strong and had launched satellites already, were just bought by larger companies that are, shall we say, less comfortable executing on long-term visions.¶ Planetary Resources was founded in 2012 in a blaze of publicity. Its funding came from, among others, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot, and the country of Luxembourg. It had inked an orbital launch deal with Virgin Galactic. And it was sold last October to a blockchain software company. (To 21st century readers, this paragraph would look like I’m playing tech world mad libs.)¶ In January, the other company, Deep Space Industries, also partly funded by Luxembourg (way to get in the space race, Luxembourg!), was sold to Bradford Space, owned by a U.S. investment group called the American Industrial Acquisition Corporation. Maybe these new overlords plan on continuing their acquisitions' asteroid mining endeavors rather than stripping the companies for parts. Both companies have been notably silent on the subject. “The asteroid mining bubble has burst,” declared The Space Review, one of the few online publications to even pay attention.¶ That’s also to be expected. After all, anyone trying to build Google in 1945 would go bankrupt. Just as the internet needed a half-dozen major leaps forward in computing before it could even exist, space industry needs its launch infrastructure.¶ Currently, the world’s richest person and its most well-known entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, respectively, are working on the relatively cheap reusable rockets asteroid pioneers will need. (As I was writing this, Bezos announced in an email blast that one of his New Shepherd rockets had flown to space and back five times like it was nothing, delivering 38 payloads for various customers while remaining entirely intact.) ¶ Meanwhile, quietly, Earth’s scientists are laying the groundwork of research the space economy needs. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has been in orbit around asteroid Ryugu for the last year and a half, learning everything it can. (Ryugu, worth $30 billion according to Asterank, is the website's #1 most cost-effective target.) The craft dropped tiny hopping robot rovers and a small bomb on its target; pictures of the small crater that resulted were released afterwards.¶ Officially, the mission is to help us figure out how the solar system formed. Unofficially, it will help us understand whether all those useful metals clump together at the heart of an asteroid, as some theorize. If so, it’s game on for asteroid prospectors. If not, we can still get at the metals with other techniques, such as optical mining (which basically involves sticking an asteroid in a bag and drilling with sunlight; sounds nuts to us, but NASA has proved it in the lab). It’ll just take more time.¶ Effectively, we’ve just made our first mark at the base of the first space mineshaft. And there’s more to come in 2020 when Hayabusa 2 returns to Earth bearing samples. If its buckets of sand contain a modicum of gold dust, tiny chunks of platinum or pebbles of compressed carbon — aka diamonds — then the Duchy of Luxembourg won’t be the only deep-pocketed investor to sit up and take notice.¶ The possibility of private missions to asteroids, with or without a human crew, is almost here. The next step in the process that takes us from here to where you are? Tell us an inspiring story about it, one that makes people believe, and start to imagine themselves mining in space. How would you explain the world-changing nature of the internet to 1945? How would you persuade them that there was gold to be mined in Vannevar Bush’s idea? You’d let the new economy and its benefits play out in the form of a novel.¶ As Hayabusa dropped a bomb on Ryugu, Daniel Suarez was making the exact same asteroid the target of his fiction. Suarez is a tech consultant and developer turned New York Times bestselling author. His novels thus far have been techno-thrillers: his debut, Daemon, a novel of Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare, AI run rampant, made more than a million dollars.¶ So it was a telling shift in cultural mood that Suarez’s latest thriller is also a very in-depth description of — and thinly-disguised advocacy for — asteroid mining. In Delta-v, published in April, a billionaire in the 2030s named Nathan Joyce recruits a team of adventurers who know nothing about space — a world-renowned cave-diver, a world-renowned mountaineer — for the first crewed asteroid mission.¶ Elon Musk fans might expect this to be Joyce’s tale, but he soon fades into the background. The asteroid-nauts are the true heroes of Delta-v. Not only are they offered a massive payday — $6 million each for four years’ work — they also have agency in key decisions in the distant enterprise. Suarez deliberately based them on present-day heroes. The mission is essential, Joyce declares, to save Earth from its major problems. First of all, the fictional billionaire wheels in a fictional Nobel economist to demonstrate the actual truth that the entire global economy is sitting on a mountain of debt. It has to keep growing or it will implode, so we might as well take the majority of the industrial growth off-world where it can’t do any more harm to the biosphere.¶ Secondly, there’s the climate change fix. Suarez sees asteroid mining as the only way we’re going to build solar power satellites. Which, as you probably know, is a form of uninterrupted solar power collection that is theoretically more effective, inch for inch, than any solar panels on Earth at high noon, but operating 24/7. (In space, basically, it’s always double high noon). ¶ The power collected is beamed back to large receptors on Earth with large, low-power microwaves, which researchers think will be harmless enough to let humans and animals pass through the beam. A space solar power array like the one China is said to be working on could reliably supply 2,000 gigawatts — or over 1,000 times more power than the largest solar farm currently in existence. ¶ “We're looking at a 20-year window to completely replace human civilization's power infrastructure,” Suarez told me, citing the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the coming catastrophe. Solar satellite technology “has existed since the 1970s. What we were missing is millions of tons of construction materials in orbit. Asteroid mining can place it there.”¶ The Earth-centric early 21st century can’t really wrap its brain around this, but the idea is not to bring all that building material and precious metals down into our gravity well. Far better to create a whole new commodities exchange in space. You mine the useful stuff of asteroids both near to Earth and far, thousands of them taking less energy to reach than the moon. That’s something else we’re still grasping, how relatively easy it is to ship stuff in zero-G environments. ¶ Robot craft can move 10-meter boulders like they’re nothing. You bring it all back to sell to companies that will refine and synthesize it in orbit for a myriad of purposes. Big pharma, to take one controversial industry, would benefit by taking its manufacturing off-world. The molecular structure of many chemicals grows better in microgravity.¶ The expectation is that a lot of these space businesses — and all the orbital infrastructure designed to support them — will be automated, controlled remotely via telepresence, and monitored by AI. But Suarez is adamant that thousands if not millions of actual human workers will thrive in the space economy, even as robots take their jobs in old industries back on Earth.¶ “Our initial expansion into space will most likely be unsettled and experimental. Human beings excel in such environments,” he says. “Humans can improvise and figure things out as we go. Robots must be purpose-built, and it's going to take time and experience for us to design and build them.”¶ Which is another way startups back on Earth will get rich in the new economy: designing and building those robots, the nearest thing to selling picks and shovels to prospectors in the space gold rush. Thousands of humans in space at any one time will also require the design and construction of stations that spin to create artificial gravity. Again, this isn’t a great stretch: Using centrifugal force to simulate gravity in space was first proposed by scientists in the 19th century. NASA has had workable designs for spinning cislunar habitats called O’Neill cylinders since the 1970s. We just haven’t funded them. ¶ But the trillionaires clearly will.¶ In short, Suarez has carefully laid out a vision of the orbital economy that offers something for everyone in our divided society. For Green New Deal Millennials, there’s the prospect of removing our reliance on fossil fuels at a stroke and literally lifting dirty industries off the face of the planet. For libertarians and other rugged individualists, there’s a whole new frontier to be developed, largely beyond the reach of government. ¶ For those who worry about asteroids that could wipe out civilization — though luckily, this isn't likely to happen any time soon — here is a way for humanity to get proficient in moving them out of the way, fast. Indeed, the National Space Society has offered a proposal to capture the asteroid Aphosis (which is set to miss Earth in the year 2029, but not by a very comfortable margin), keep it in orbit, and turn it into 150 small solar-power satellites, as a proof of concept. ¶ For the woke folks who care about the bloody history of diamond production, there’s the likelihood that space mining would wipe out Earth’s entire diamond industry. “They will be found in quantities unattainable on Earth,” claims Suarez, with good reason. We are starting to discover that there is more crystalized carbon in the cosmos than we ever suspected. Astronomers have identified one distant planet made entirely of diamond; there may be more, but they are, ironically, hard to see. ¶ We don’t have diamond planets in our solar system (and we can’t do interstellar missions), but we do have diamond-studded asteroids. Mine them for long enough and you will wear diamonds on the soles of your shoes.¶ For investors and entrepreneurs, there is the thrill of racing to be the first member of the four-comma club. (Neil deGrasse Tyson believes that the first trillionaire will be an asteroid mining mogul; Suarez isn’t sure whether they’ll be the first, but he suspects that asteroid mining “will mint more trillionaires than any industry in history.”) ¶ For the regular guy or gal with a 401K, there’ll be a fast-rising stock market — inflated not by financial shenanigans this time, but an actual increase in what the world counts as wealth.¶ For workers, there is the promise of sharing in the untold riches, both legally and otherwise. It would be hard to stop miners attaining mineral wealth beyond their paycheck, under the table, when your bosses are millions of miles away. Then there’s the likelihood of rapid advancement in this new economy, where the miners fast gain the knowledge necessary to become moguls.¶ “After several tours in space working for others, perhaps on six-month or year-long contracts, it's likely that some workers will partner to set up their own businesses there,” says Suarez. “Either serving the needs of increasing numbers of workers and businesses in space, marketing services to Earth, or launching asteroid mining startups themselves.” All in all, it’s starting to sound a damn sight more beneficial to the human race than the internet economy is. Not a moment too soon. I’ve written encouragingly about asteroid mining several times before, each time touting the massive potential wealth that seems likely to be made. And each time there’s been a sense of disquiet among my readers, a sense that we’re taking our rapacious capitalist ways and exploiting space.¶ Whereas the truth is, this is exactly the version of capitalism humanity has needed all along: the kind where there is no ecosystem to destroy, no marginalized group to make miserable. A safe, dead space where capitalism’s most enthusiastic pioneers can go nuts to their hearts’ content, so long as they clean up their space junk. ¶ (Space junk is a real problem in orbital space because it has thousands of vulnerable satellites clustered closely together around our little blue rock. The vast emptiness of cislunar space, not so much.)¶ And because they’re up there making all the wealth on their commodities market, we down here on Earth can certainly afford to focus less on growing our stock market. Maybe even, whisper it low, we can afford a fully functioning social safety net, plus free healthcare and free education for everyone on the planet.¶ It’s also clearly the area where we should have focused space exploration all along. If we settle on Mars, we may disturb as-yet-undiscovered native bacteria — and as the character Nathan Joyce shouts at a group of “Mars-obsessed” entrepreneurs in Delta-V, Mars is basically filled with toxic sand and is thus looking increasingly impossible to colonize. (Sorry, Mark Watney from The Martian, those potatoes would probably kill you.) Contention 2: Private companies in outer space provide critical information needed to solve climate change. Empirical evidence proves that private space development is the only way to make sustainable energy feasible. Autry 19: Greg Autry {the director of the Southern California Commercial Spaceflight Initiative at the University of Southern California, vice president at the National Space Society, and chair of the International Space Development Conference, }, 19 - ("Space Research Can Save the Planet—Again," Foreign Policy, 7-20-2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/20/space-research-can-save-the-planet-again-climate-change-environment/)//marlborough-wr/ Today conservationists and other critics are more likely to see space programs as militaristic splurges that squander billions of dollars better applied to solving problems on Earth. These well-meaning complaints are misguided, however. Earth’s problems—most urgently, climate change—can be solved only from space. That’s where the tools and data already being used to tackle these issues were forged and where the solutions of the future will be too. Space research has already been critical in averting one major environmental disaster. It was NASA satellite data that revealed a frightening and growing hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole, galvanizing public concern that, in 1987, produced the Montreal Protocol: the first international agreement addressing a global environmental problem. Since then, thanks to worldwide restrictions on damaging chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone situation has stabilized, and a full planetary recovery is expected. As this case showed, space can provide the vital information needed to understand a problem—and a surprising range of ways to solve it. Climate change is a poster child for the critical role of space data. Trekking across the globe to measure ice sheets with drills and gauge sea temperatures from the sides of ships is an expensive, slow, and insufficient way to assay the state of the planet. Satellites operated by NASA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and an increasing number of commercial firms provide a plethora of multispectral imaging and radar measurements of developments such as coral reef degradation, harmful plankton blooms, and polar bears negotiating thinning ice. Much of the technology involved in observing the Earth today was initially developed for probes sent to explore other planets in our solar system. Indeed, understanding the evolution of other planets’ climates is essential for modeling possible outcomes on Earth. NASA probes revealed how, roughly 4 billion years ago, a runaway greenhouse gas syndrome turned Venus into a hot, hellish, and uninhabitable planet of acid rain. Orbiters, landers, and rovers continue to unravel the processes that transformed a once warm and wet Mars into a frigid, dry dust ball—and scientists even to conceive of future scenarios that might terraform it back into a livable planet. Discovering other worlds’ history and imagining their future offers important visions for climate change mitigation strategies on Earth, such as mining helium from the moon itself for future clean energy. Spinoff technologies from space research, from GPS to semiconductor solar cells, are already helping to reduce emissions; the efficiency gains of GPS-guided navigation shrink fuel expenditures on sea, land, and air by between 15 and 21 percent—a greater reduction than better engines or fuel changes have so far provided. Modern solar photovoltaic power also owes its existence to space. The first real customer for solar energy was the U.S. space program; applications such as the giant solar wings that power the International Space Station have continually driven improvements in solar cell performance, and NASA first demonstrated the value of the sun for powering communities on Earth by using solar in its own facilities. Promisingly, space-based solar power stations could overcome the inconvenient truth that wind and solar will never get us anywhere near zero emissions because their output is inherently intermittent and there is, so far, no environmentally acceptable way to store their power at a global scale, even for one night. Orbital solar power stations, on the other hand, would continually face the sun, beaming clean power back through targeted radiation to Earth day or night, regardless of weather. They would also be free from clouds and atmospheric interference and therefore operate with many times the efficiency of current solar technology. Moving solar power generation away from Earth—already possible but held back by the current steep costs of lifting the materials into space—would preserve land and cultural resources from the blight of huge panel farms and save landfills from the growing problem of discarded old solar panels. Sustainable energy advocates in the U.S. military and the Chinese government are actively pursuing space-based solar power, but just making solar cells damages the environment due to the caustic chemicals employed. Space technology offers the possibility of freeing the Earth’s fragile biosphere and culturally important sites from the otherwise unavoidable damage caused by manufacturing and mining. The U.S. start-up Made in Space is currently taking the first steps toward manufacturing in orbit. The company’s fiber-optic cable, produced by machinery on the International Space Station, is orders of magnitude more efficient than anything made on Earth, where the heavy gravity creates tiny flaws in the material. Made in Space and others are eventually planning to build large structures, such as solar power stations, in space. As these technologies develop, they will augment each other, bringing costs down dramatically; space manufacturing, for instance, slashes the cost of solar installations in space. Eventually, firms will be able to supply endeavors in space with materials from the moon and asteroids, avoiding the cost and environmental impact of lifting them into orbit. Mining the solar system comes with its own potential impacts, but extracting resources from distant and lifeless worlds is clearly preferable to the continued degradation of the Earth. Global warming can lead to extinction, which outweighs all the affirmative impacts. Miller-McDonald, 18 – (Samuel, Master of Environmental Management at Yale University studying energy politics and grassroots innovations in the US. 5-2-2018. "Extinction vs. Collapse." Resilience. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-02/extinction-vs-collapse/) Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been reigniting the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope. It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us. The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman’s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction. It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction. Who’s more right? Let’s take a closer look. First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There’s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don’t know how we’ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don’t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts. We don’t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth. One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups. It’s why The Road is so disturbingly plausible; there could be a scenario in which basically everything is dead but people, lingering in the last grey waste of the world. On the other hand, we’ve never lived outside of the very favorable conditions of the Holocene, and past civilizational and population collapses suggest humans are in fact quite sensitive to climatic shifts. Famed climate scientist James Hansen has discussed the possibility of “Venus syndrome,” for instance, which sits at the far end of worst case scenarios. While a frightening thought experiment, it is easily dismissed as it’s based on so many uncertainties and doesn’t carry the weight of anything near consensus. What’s more frightening than potentially implausible uncertainties are the currently existing certainties. For example: Ecology + The atmosphere has proven more sensitive to GHG emissions than predicted by mainstream science, and we have a high chance of hitting 2oC of warming this century. Could hit 1.5C in the 2020s. Worst-case warming scenarios are probably the most likely. + Massive marine death is happening far faster than anyone predicted and we could be on the edge of an anoxic event. + Ice melt is happening far faster than mainstream predictions. Greenland’s ice sheet is threatening to collapse and already slowing ocean currents, which too could collapse. + Which also means predictions of sea level rise have doubled for this century. + Industrial agriculture is driving massive habitat loss and extinction. The insect collapse – population declines of 75 to 80 have been seen in some areas – is something no one predicted would happen so fast, and portends an ecological sensitivity beyond our fears. This is causing an unexpected and unprecedented bird collapse (1/8 of bird species are threatened) in Europe. + Forests, vital carbon sinks, are proving sensitive to climate impacts. + We’re living in the 6th mass extinction event, losing potentially dozens of species per day. We don’t know how this will impact us and our ability to feed ourselves. Energy + Energy transition is essential to mitigating 1.5+C warming. Energy is the single greatest contributor to anthro-GHG. And, by some estimates, transition is happening 400 years too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming. + Incumbent energy industries (that is, oil and gas) dominate governments all over the world. We live in an oil oligarchy – a petrostate, but for the globe. Every facet of the global economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and every sector – from construction to supply chains to transport to electricity to extraction to agriculture and on and on – is built around FF consumption. There’s good reason to believe FF will remain subsidized by governments beholden to their interests even if they become less economically viable than renewables, and so will maintain their dominance. + We are living in history’s largest oil and gas boom. + Kilocalorie to kilocalorie, FF is extremely dense and extremely cheap. Despite reports about solar getting cheaper than FF in some places, non-hydro/-carbon renewables are still a tiny minority (2) of global energy consumption and will simply always, by their nature, be less dense kcal to kcal than FF, and so will always be calorically more expensive. + Energy demand probably has to decrease globally to avoid 1.5C, and it’s projected to dramatically increase. Getting people to consume less is practically impossible, and efficiency measures have almost always resulted in increased consumption. + We’re still setting FF emissions records. Politics + Conditions today resemble those prior to the 20th century’s world wars: extreme wealth inequality, rampant economic insecurity, growing fascist parties/sentiment, and precarious geopolitical relations, and the Thucydides trap suggests war between Western hegemons and a rising China could be likely. These two factors could disrupt any kind of global cooperation on decarbonization and, to the contrary, will probably mean increased emissions (the US military is one of the world’s single largest consumers/emitters of FF). + Neoliberal ideology is so thoroughly embedded in our academic, political, and cultural institutions, and so endemic to discourse today, that the idea of degrowth – probably necessary to avoid collapse – and solidarity economics isn’t even close to discussion, much less realization, and, for self-evident reasons, probably never will be. + Living in a neoliberal culture also means we’ve all been trained not to sacrifice for the common good. But solving climate change, like paying more to achieve energy transition or voluntarily consuming less, will all entail sacrificing for the greater good. Humans sometimes are great at that; but the market fundamentalist ideology that pervades all social, commercial, and even self relations today stands against acting for the common good or in collective action. + There’s basically no government in the world today taking climate change seriously. There are many governments posturing and pretending to take it seriously, but none have substantially committed to a full decarbonization of their economies. (Iceland may be an exception, but Iceland is about 24 times smaller than NYC, so…) + Twenty-five years of governments knowing about climate change has resulted in essentially nothing being done about it, no emissions reductions, no substantive moves to decarbonize the economy. Politics have proven too strong for common sense, and there’s no good reason to suspect this will change anytime soon. + Wealth inequality is embedded in our economy so thoroughly – and so indigenously to FF economies – that it will probably continue either causing perpetual strife, as it has so far, or eventually cement a permanent underclass ruled by a small elite, similar to agrarian serfdom. There is a prominent view in left politics that greater wealth equality, some kind of ecosocialism, is a necessary ingredient in averting the kind of ecological collapse the economy is currently driving, given that global FF capitalism by its nature consumes beyond carrying capacities. At least according to one Nasa-funded study, the combination of inequality and ecological collapse is a likely cause for civilizational collapse. Even with this perfect storm of issues, it’s impossible to know how likely extinction is, and it’s impossible to judge how likely or extensive civilizational collapse may be. We just can’t predict how human beings and human systems will respond to the shocks that are already underway. We can make some good guesses based on history, but they’re no more than guesses. Maybe there’s a miracle energy source lurking in a hangar somewhere waiting to accelerate non-carbon transition. Maybe there’s a swelling political movement brewing under the surface that will soon build a more just, ecologically sane order into the world. Community energy programs are one reason to retain a shred of optimism; but also they’re still a tiny fraction of energy production and they are not growing fast, but they could accelerate any moment. We just don’t know how fast energy transition can happen, and we just don’t know how fast the world could descend into climate-driven chaos – either by human strife or physical storms. What we do know is that, given everything above, we are living through a confluence of events that will shake the foundations of civilization, and jeopardize our capacity to sustain large populations of humans. There is enough certainty around these issues to justify being existentially alarmed. At this point, whether we go extinct or all but a thousand of us go extinct (again), maybe that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe the destruction of a few billion or 5 billion people is morally equivalent to the destruction of all 7 billion of us, and so should provoke equal degrees of urgency. Maybe this debate about whether we’ll go completely extinct rather than just mostly extinct is absurd. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is that, regardless of the answer, there’s no excuse to stop fighting for a world that sustains life.
Failure to colonize outer space guarantees extinction, so private appropriation of space is just because private companies are attempting to reach beyond Earth. Munevar '19 Gonzalo; 4/19/19; Professor at Lawrence Technical University; "Deflecting Existential Risk with Space Colonization," https://filling~-~-space.com/2019/04/19/deflecting~-~-existential~-~-risk~-~-with~-~-space~-~-colonization/ Why do you argue that “failure to move into the cosmos would condemn us to oblivion”? By having a significant presence in the solar system in the next few thousands of years and beyond, we will be in a better position to deflect asteroids and comets that might bring the end of humanity, and much other Earth life, in a horrible collision. And if perchance one such catastrophe proves inevitable (e.g. a rogue planet passing through the solar system), humanity would still survive by having colonized Mars and other bodies, as well as by having built artificial space colonies of the type advocated by Gerard O’Neill. Once the sun begins to turn into a red giant in a few billion years, we must have long moved into the outer solar system. In the very long run, we have to move into other solar systems. Relativistic--speed starships would be nice, but they are not necessary for the task of moving humanity to the stars. We can reach them, slowly but surely, by propelling some of our space colonies away from the sun, carrying perhaps millions of human beings. They would take advantage of the many resources to be found in the Oort Cloud, and then of equivalent clouds in other solar systems. Even interstellar space has resources to offer. Nuclear energy, probably fusion, would likely be required. It may take us tens of thousands of years, but in the cosmic time scale, that is but a blink in the eye. What are these catastrophic threats? Are there any records of catastrophic events happening before humans appeared on Earth? I have already mentioned collisions with asteroids and comets. Although the active geology of our planet tends to erase the record of many collisions, we can find a well--preserved record on the Moon and Venus, the two closest bodies to Earth. On the 600--million--years--old Venusian surface, the spacecraft Magellan discovered about one thousand impact craters at least twice the diameter of meteor craters on Earth. This impact record makes it reasonable to estimate a catastrophic impact on Earth every half a million years or so. Collisions with bodies of 5 km across would happen, on the average, every 20 million years. Apart from the Alvarez asteroid (crater near Yucatan) that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of species on Earth 65 million years ago, there have been at least two more impacts by asteroids 10 km or larger in the last 300 million years.
1/8/22
JFM - Outer Space
Tournament: WBFL | Round: 3 | Opponent: Loyola - SL | Judge: Robin Sipkins WBFL NC Because the resolution asks what is just, my value is Justice.
The criterion is minimizing suffering. No coherent theory of justice can deny that suffering is morally bad. Each of us knows from our own experiences that suffering is a moral evil, and that other people experience suffering in the same way we do. Therefore, if we regard everyone’s pain as morally equal, we are obligated to minimize the amount of suffering people experience.
Moreover, maximizing utility is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human dignity. Cummiskey ’90 - David Cummiskey. Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College.Kantian Consequentialism. Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 3. 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810.
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (GMM 429). Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based rationale. But we have seen that Kant’s normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have “dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth” that transcends any market value (GMM 436), but persons also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7). The concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many.
Contention 1: Allowing the private appropriation of outer space is critical to facilitate asteroid mining, which could transform life on Earth and solve an array of huge problems. The private sector is essential for asteroid mining – competition is key and government development is not effective, efficient, or cheap enough. Thiessen 21: Marc Thiessen, 6-1, 21, Washington Post, Opinion: SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/01/spacexs-success-is-one-small-step-man-one-giant-leap-capitalism/ It was one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism. Only three countries have ever launched human beings into orbit. This past weekend, SpaceX became the first private company ever to do so, when it sent its Crew Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and docked with the International Space Station. This was accomplished by a company Elon Musk started in 2002 in a California strip mall warehouse with just a dozen employees and a mariachi band. At a time when our nation is debating the merits of socialism, SpaceX has given us an incredible testament to the power of American free enterprise. While the left is advocating unprecedented government intervention in almost every sector of the U.S. economy, from health care to energy, today Americans are celebrating the successful privatization of space travel. If you want to see the difference between what government and private enterprise can do, consider: It took a private company to give us the first space vehicle with touch-screen controls instead of antiquated knobs and buttons. It took a private company to give us a capsule that can fly entirely autonomously from launch to landing — including docking — without any participation by its human crew. It also took a private company to invent a reusable rocket that can not only take off but land as well. When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong declared “the Eagle has landed.” On Saturday, SpaceX was able to declare that the Falcon had landed when its rocket settled down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean — ready to be used again. That last development will save the taxpayers incredible amounts of money. The cost to NASA for launching a man into space on the space shuttle orbiter was $170 million per seat, compared with just $60 million to $67 million on the Dragon capsule. The cost for the space shuttle to send a kilogram of cargo into to space was $54,500; with the Falcon rocket, the cost is just $2,720 — a decrease of 95 percent. And while the space shuttle cost $27.4 billion to develop, the Crew Dragon was designed and built for just $1.7 billion — making it the lowest-cost spacecraft developed in six decades. SpaceX did it in six years — far faster than the time it took to develop the space shuttle. The private sector does it better, cheaper, faster and more efficiently than government. Why? Competition. Today, SpaceX has to compete with a constellation of private companies — including legacy aerospace firms such as Orbital ATK and United Launch Alliance and innovative start-ups such as Blue Origin (which is designing a Mars lander and whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Post) and Virgin Orbit (which is developing rockets than can launch satellites into space from the underside of a 747, avoiding the kinds of weather that delayed the Dragon launch). In the race to put the first privately launched man into orbit, upstart SpaceX had to beat aerospace behemoth Boeing and its Starliner capsule to the punch. It did so — for more than $1 billion less than its competitor. That spirit of competition and innovation will revolutionize space travel in the years ahead. Indeed, Musk has his sights set far beyond Earth orbit. Already, SpaceX is working on a much larger version of the Falcon 9 reusable rocket called Super Heavy that will carry a deep-space capsule named Starship capable of carrying up to 100 people to the moon and eventually to Mars. Musk’s goal — the reason he founded SpaceX — is to colonize Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species. He has set a goal of founding a million-person city on Mars by 2050 complete with iron foundries and pizza joints. Can it be done? Who knows. But this much is certain: Private-sector innovation is opening the door to a new era of space exploration. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, just as capitalism is allowing us to explore the farthest reaches of our solar system, Americans decided to embrace socialism back here on Earth?
Space regulation scares investors away and spills over to other space activities. Freeland 05 Steven Freeland (BCom, LLB, LLM, University of New South Wales; Senior Lecturer in International Law, University of Western Sydney, Australia; and a member of the Paris-based International Institute of Space Law). “Up, Up and … Back: The Emergence of Space Tourism and Its Impact on the International Law of Outer Space.” Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 6: No. 1, Article 4. 2005. JDN. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1269andcontext=cjil V. THE NEED FOR CELESTIAL PROPERTY RIGHTS? ¶ The fundamental principle of "non-appropriation" upon which the international law of outer space is based stems from the desire of the international community to ensure that outer space remains an area beyond the jurisdiction of any state(s). Similar ideals emerge from UNCLOS (in relation to the High Seas) as well as the Antarctic Treaty, 42 although in the case of the latter treaty, it was finalised after a number of claims of sovereignty had already been made by various States and therefore was structured to "postpone" rather than prejudice or renounce those previously asserted claims.43 In the case of outer space, its exploitation and use is expressed in Article I of the Outer Space Treaty to be "the province of all mankind," a term whose meaning is not entirely clear but has been interpreted by most commentators as evincing the desire to ensure that any State is free to engage in space activities without reference to any sovereign claims of other States. This freedom is reinforced by other parts of the same Article and is repeated in the Moon Agreement (which also applies to "other celestial bodies within the solar system, other than the earth")." Even though both the scope for space activities and the number of private participants have expanded significantly since these treaties were finalised, it has still been suggested that the nonappropriation principle constitutes "an absolute barrier in the realization of every kind of space activity., 4 ' The amount of capital expenditure required to research, scope, trial, and implement a new space activity is significant. To bring this activity to the point where it can represent a viable "stand alone" commercial venture takes many years and almost limitless funding. From the perspective of a private enterprise contemplating such an activity, it would quite obviously be an important element in its decision to devote resources to this activity that it is able to secure the highest degree of legal rights in order to protect its investment. Security of patent and other intellectual property rights, for example, are vital prerequisites for private enterprise research activity on the ISS, and these rights are specifically addressed by the ISS Agreement between the partners to the project and were applicable to the experiments undertaken by Mark Shuttleworth when he was onboard the ISS.46
Asteroid mining can happen with private sector innovation and is key to solve climate change, economic decline and asteroid collisions. Taylor 19 Chris Taylor journalist, 19 - ("How asteroid mining will save the Earth — and mint trillionaires," Mashable, 2019, accessed 12-13-2021, https://mashable.com/feature/asteroid-mining-space-economy)//ML How much, exactly? We’re only just beginning to guess. Asterank, a service that keeps track of some 6,000 asteroids in NASA’s database, prices out the estimated mineral content in each one in the current world market. More than 500 are listed as “$100 trillion.” The estimated profit on just the top 10 asteroids judged “most cost effective” — that is, the easiest to reach and to mine, subtracting rocket fuel and other operating costs, is around $1.5 trillion.¶ Is it ours for the taking? Well, here’s the thing — we’re taking it already, and have been doing so since we started mining metals thousands of years ago. Asteroid strikes are the only reason rare metals exist in the Earth’s crust; the native ones were all sucked into our planet’s merciless iron core millions of years ago. Why not go to the source?¶ As a side project, space mining can grab water from the rocks and comets — water which, with a little processing makes rocket fuel. Which in turn makes even more currently unimaginable space operations possible, including ones that could give the planet all the energy it needs to avert climate catastrophe. Cislunar space — the bit around us and the moon, the local neighborhood, basically — is about to get very interesting.¶ It’s hard, even for the most asteroid-minded visionaries, to truly believe the full scope of this future space economy right now. Just as hard as it would have been in 1945, when an engineer named Vannevar Bush first proposed a vast library of shared knowledge that people the world over would access via personal computers, to see that mushroom into a global network of streaming movies and grandmas posting photos and trolls and spies who move the needle on presidential elections. ¶ No technology’s pioneer can predict its second-order effects.¶ The space vision thing is particularly difficult in 2019. Not only do we have plenty of urgent problems with democracy and justice to keep us occupied, but the only two companies on the planet to have gone public with asteroid-mining business plans, startups that seemed to be going strong and had launched satellites already, were just bought by larger companies that are, shall we say, less comfortable executing on long-term visions.¶ Planetary Resources was founded in 2012 in a blaze of publicity. Its funding came from, among others, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Perot, and the country of Luxembourg. It had inked an orbital launch deal with Virgin Galactic. And it was sold last October to a blockchain software company. (To 21st century readers, this paragraph would look like I’m playing tech world mad libs.)¶ In January, the other company, Deep Space Industries, also partly funded by Luxembourg (way to get in the space race, Luxembourg!), was sold to Bradford Space, owned by a U.S. investment group called the American Industrial Acquisition Corporation. Maybe these new overlords plan on continuing their acquisitions' asteroid mining endeavors rather than stripping the companies for parts. Both companies have been notably silent on the subject. “The asteroid mining bubble has burst,” declared The Space Review, one of the few online publications to even pay attention.¶ That’s also to be expected. After all, anyone trying to build Google in 1945 would go bankrupt. Just as the internet needed a half-dozen major leaps forward in computing before it could even exist, space industry needs its launch infrastructure.¶ Currently, the world’s richest person and its most well-known entrepreneur, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, respectively, are working on the relatively cheap reusable rockets asteroid pioneers will need. (As I was writing this, Bezos announced in an email blast that one of his New Shepherd rockets had flown to space and back five times like it was nothing, delivering 38 payloads for various customers while remaining entirely intact.) ¶ Meanwhile, quietly, Earth’s scientists are laying the groundwork of research the space economy needs. Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has been in orbit around asteroid Ryugu for the last year and a half, learning everything it can. (Ryugu, worth $30 billion according to Asterank, is the website's #1 most cost-effective target.) The craft dropped tiny hopping robot rovers and a small bomb on its target; pictures of the small crater that resulted were released afterwards.¶ Officially, the mission is to help us figure out how the solar system formed. Unofficially, it will help us understand whether all those useful metals clump together at the heart of an asteroid, as some theorize. If so, it’s game on for asteroid prospectors. If not, we can still get at the metals with other techniques, such as optical mining (which basically involves sticking an asteroid in a bag and drilling with sunlight; sounds nuts to us, but NASA has proved it in the lab). It’ll just take more time.¶ Effectively, we’ve just made our first mark at the base of the first space mineshaft. And there’s more to come in 2020 when Hayabusa 2 returns to Earth bearing samples. If its buckets of sand contain a modicum of gold dust, tiny chunks of platinum or pebbles of compressed carbon — aka diamonds — then the Duchy of Luxembourg won’t be the only deep-pocketed investor to sit up and take notice.¶ The possibility of private missions to asteroids, with or without a human crew, is almost here. The next step in the process that takes us from here to where you are? Tell us an inspiring story about it, one that makes people believe, and start to imagine themselves mining in space. How would you explain the world-changing nature of the internet to 1945? How would you persuade them that there was gold to be mined in Vannevar Bush’s idea? You’d let the new economy and its benefits play out in the form of a novel.¶ As Hayabusa dropped a bomb on Ryugu, Daniel Suarez was making the exact same asteroid the target of his fiction. Suarez is a tech consultant and developer turned New York Times bestselling author. His novels thus far have been techno-thrillers: his debut, Daemon, a novel of Silicon Valley’s worst nightmare, AI run rampant, made more than a million dollars.¶ So it was a telling shift in cultural mood that Suarez’s latest thriller is also a very in-depth description of — and thinly-disguised advocacy for — asteroid mining. In Delta-v, published in April, a billionaire in the 2030s named Nathan Joyce recruits a team of adventurers who know nothing about space — a world-renowned cave-diver, a world-renowned mountaineer — for the first crewed asteroid mission.¶ Elon Musk fans might expect this to be Joyce’s tale, but he soon fades into the background. The asteroid-nauts are the true heroes of Delta-v. Not only are they offered a massive payday — $6 million each for four years’ work — they also have agency in key decisions in the distant enterprise. Suarez deliberately based them on present-day heroes. The mission is essential, Joyce declares, to save Earth from its major problems. First of all, the fictional billionaire wheels in a fictional Nobel economist to demonstrate the actual truth that the entire global economy is sitting on a mountain of debt. It has to keep growing or it will implode, so we might as well take the majority of the industrial growth off-world where it can’t do any more harm to the biosphere.¶ Secondly, there’s the climate change fix. Suarez sees asteroid mining as the only way we’re going to build solar power satellites. Which, as you probably know, is a form of uninterrupted solar power collection that is theoretically more effective, inch for inch, than any solar panels on Earth at high noon, but operating 24/7. (In space, basically, it’s always double high noon). ¶ The power collected is beamed back to large receptors on Earth with large, low-power microwaves, which researchers think will be harmless enough to let humans and animals pass through the beam. A space solar power array like the one China is said to be working on could reliably supply 2,000 gigawatts — or over 1,000 times more power than the largest solar farm currently in existence. ¶ “We're looking at a 20-year window to completely replace human civilization's power infrastructure,” Suarez told me, citing the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the coming catastrophe. Solar satellite technology “has existed since the 1970s. What we were missing is millions of tons of construction materials in orbit. Asteroid mining can place it there.”¶ The Earth-centric early 21st century can’t really wrap its brain around this, but the idea is not to bring all that building material and precious metals down into our gravity well. Far better to create a whole new commodities exchange in space. You mine the useful stuff of asteroids both near to Earth and far, thousands of them taking less energy to reach than the moon. That’s something else we’re still grasping, how relatively easy it is to ship stuff in zero-G environments. ¶ Robot craft can move 10-meter boulders like they’re nothing. You bring it all back to sell to companies that will refine and synthesize it in orbit for a myriad of purposes. Big pharma, to take one controversial industry, would benefit by taking its manufacturing off-world. The molecular structure of many chemicals grows better in microgravity.¶ The expectation is that a lot of these space businesses — and all the orbital infrastructure designed to support them — will be automated, controlled remotely via telepresence, and monitored by AI. But Suarez is adamant that thousands if not millions of actual human workers will thrive in the space economy, even as robots take their jobs in old industries back on Earth.¶ “Our initial expansion into space will most likely be unsettled and experimental. Human beings excel in such environments,” he says. “Humans can improvise and figure things out as we go. Robots must be purpose-built, and it's going to take time and experience for us to design and build them.”¶ Which is another way startups back on Earth will get rich in the new economy: designing and building those robots, the nearest thing to selling picks and shovels to prospectors in the space gold rush. Thousands of humans in space at any one time will also require the design and construction of stations that spin to create artificial gravity. Again, this isn’t a great stretch: Using centrifugal force to simulate gravity in space was first proposed by scientists in the 19th century. NASA has had workable designs for spinning cislunar habitats called O’Neill cylinders since the 1970s. We just haven’t funded them. ¶ But the trillionaires clearly will.¶ In short, Suarez has carefully laid out a vision of the orbital economy that offers something for everyone in our divided society. For Green New Deal Millennials, there’s the prospect of removing our reliance on fossil fuels at a stroke and literally lifting dirty industries off the face of the planet. For libertarians and other rugged individualists, there’s a whole new frontier to be developed, largely beyond the reach of government. ¶ For those who worry about asteroids that could wipe out civilization — though luckily, this isn't likely to happen any time soon — here is a way for humanity to get proficient in moving them out of the way, fast. Indeed, the National Space Society has offered a proposal to capture the asteroid Aphosis (which is set to miss Earth in the year 2029, but not by a very comfortable margin), keep it in orbit, and turn it into 150 small solar-power satellites, as a proof of concept. ¶ For the woke folks who care about the bloody history of diamond production, there’s the likelihood that space mining would wipe out Earth’s entire diamond industry. “They will be found in quantities unattainable on Earth,” claims Suarez, with good reason. We are starting to discover that there is more crystalized carbon in the cosmos than we ever suspected. Astronomers have identified one distant planet made entirely of diamond; there may be more, but they are, ironically, hard to see. ¶ We don’t have diamond planets in our solar system (and we can’t do interstellar missions), but we do have diamond-studded asteroids. Mine them for long enough and you will wear diamonds on the soles of your shoes.¶ For investors and entrepreneurs, there is the thrill of racing to be the first member of the four-comma club. (Neil deGrasse Tyson believes that the first trillionaire will be an asteroid mining mogul; Suarez isn’t sure whether they’ll be the first, but he suspects that asteroid mining “will mint more trillionaires than any industry in history.”) ¶ For the regular guy or gal with a 401K, there’ll be a fast-rising stock market — inflated not by financial shenanigans this time, but an actual increase in what the world counts as wealth.¶ For workers, there is the promise of sharing in the untold riches, both legally and otherwise. It would be hard to stop miners attaining mineral wealth beyond their paycheck, under the table, when your bosses are millions of miles away. Then there’s the likelihood of rapid advancement in this new economy, where the miners fast gain the knowledge necessary to become moguls.¶ “After several tours in space working for others, perhaps on six-month or year-long contracts, it's likely that some workers will partner to set up their own businesses there,” says Suarez. “Either serving the needs of increasing numbers of workers and businesses in space, marketing services to Earth, or launching asteroid mining startups themselves.” All in all, it’s starting to sound a damn sight more beneficial to the human race than the internet economy is. Not a moment too soon. I’ve written encouragingly about asteroid mining several times before, each time touting the massive potential wealth that seems likely to be made. And each time there’s been a sense of disquiet among my readers, a sense that we’re taking our rapacious capitalist ways and exploiting space.¶ Whereas the truth is, this is exactly the version of capitalism humanity has needed all along: the kind where there is no ecosystem to destroy, no marginalized group to make miserable. A safe, dead space where capitalism’s most enthusiastic pioneers can go nuts to their hearts’ content, so long as they clean up their space junk. ¶ (Space junk is a real problem in orbital space because it has thousands of vulnerable satellites clustered closely together around our little blue rock. The vast emptiness of cislunar space, not so much.)¶ And because they’re up there making all the wealth on their commodities market, we down here on Earth can certainly afford to focus less on growing our stock market. Maybe even, whisper it low, we can afford a fully functioning social safety net, plus free healthcare and free education for everyone on the planet.¶ It’s also clearly the area where we should have focused space exploration all along. If we settle on Mars, we may disturb as-yet-undiscovered native bacteria — and as the character Nathan Joyce shouts at a group of “Mars-obsessed” entrepreneurs in Delta-V, Mars is basically filled with toxic sand and is thus looking increasingly impossible to colonize. (Sorry, Mark Watney from The Martian, those potatoes would probably kill you.) Contention 2: Private companies in outer space provide critical information needed to solve climate change. Empirical evidence proves that private space development is the only way to make sustainable energy feasible. Autry 19: Greg Autry {the director of the Southern California Commercial Spaceflight Initiative at the University of Southern California, vice president at the National Space Society, and chair of the International Space Development Conference, }, 19 - ("Space Research Can Save the Planet—Again," Foreign Policy, 7-20-2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/20/space-research-can-save-the-planet-again-climate-change-environment/)//marlborough-wr/ Today conservationists and other critics are more likely to see space programs as militaristic splurges that squander billions of dollars better applied to solving problems on Earth. These well-meaning complaints are misguided, however. Earth’s problems—most urgently, climate change—can be solved only from space. That’s where the tools and data already being used to tackle these issues were forged and where the solutions of the future will be too. Space research has already been critical in averting one major environmental disaster. It was NASA satellite data that revealed a frightening and growing hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole, galvanizing public concern that, in 1987, produced the Montreal Protocol: the first international agreement addressing a global environmental problem. Since then, thanks to worldwide restrictions on damaging chlorofluorocarbons, the ozone situation has stabilized, and a full planetary recovery is expected. As this case showed, space can provide the vital information needed to understand a problem—and a surprising range of ways to solve it. Climate change is a poster child for the critical role of space data. Trekking across the globe to measure ice sheets with drills and gauge sea temperatures from the sides of ships is an expensive, slow, and insufficient way to assay the state of the planet. Satellites operated by NASA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and an increasing number of commercial firms provide a plethora of multispectral imaging and radar measurements of developments such as coral reef degradation, harmful plankton blooms, and polar bears negotiating thinning ice. Much of the technology involved in observing the Earth today was initially developed for probes sent to explore other planets in our solar system. Indeed, understanding the evolution of other planets’ climates is essential for modeling possible outcomes on Earth. NASA probes revealed how, roughly 4 billion years ago, a runaway greenhouse gas syndrome turned Venus into a hot, hellish, and uninhabitable planet of acid rain. Orbiters, landers, and rovers continue to unravel the processes that transformed a once warm and wet Mars into a frigid, dry dust ball—and scientists even to conceive of future scenarios that might terraform it back into a livable planet. Discovering other worlds’ history and imagining their future offers important visions for climate change mitigation strategies on Earth, such as mining helium from the moon itself for future clean energy. Spinoff technologies from space research, from GPS to semiconductor solar cells, are already helping to reduce emissions; the efficiency gains of GPS-guided navigation shrink fuel expenditures on sea, land, and air by between 15 and 21 percent—a greater reduction than better engines or fuel changes have so far provided. Modern solar photovoltaic power also owes its existence to space. The first real customer for solar energy was the U.S. space program; applications such as the giant solar wings that power the International Space Station have continually driven improvements in solar cell performance, and NASA first demonstrated the value of the sun for powering communities on Earth by using solar in its own facilities. Promisingly, space-based solar power stations could overcome the inconvenient truth that wind and solar will never get us anywhere near zero emissions because their output is inherently intermittent and there is, so far, no environmentally acceptable way to store their power at a global scale, even for one night. Orbital solar power stations, on the other hand, would continually face the sun, beaming clean power back through targeted radiation to Earth day or night, regardless of weather. They would also be free from clouds and atmospheric interference and therefore operate with many times the efficiency of current solar technology. Moving solar power generation away from Earth—already possible but held back by the current steep costs of lifting the materials into space—would preserve land and cultural resources from the blight of huge panel farms and save landfills from the growing problem of discarded old solar panels. Sustainable energy advocates in the U.S. military and the Chinese government are actively pursuing space-based solar power, but just making solar cells damages the environment due to the caustic chemicals employed. Space technology offers the possibility of freeing the Earth’s fragile biosphere and culturally important sites from the otherwise unavoidable damage caused by manufacturing and mining. The U.S. start-up Made in Space is currently taking the first steps toward manufacturing in orbit. The company’s fiber-optic cable, produced by machinery on the International Space Station, is orders of magnitude more efficient than anything made on Earth, where the heavy gravity creates tiny flaws in the material. Made in Space and others are eventually planning to build large structures, such as solar power stations, in space. As these technologies develop, they will augment each other, bringing costs down dramatically; space manufacturing, for instance, slashes the cost of solar installations in space. Eventually, firms will be able to supply endeavors in space with materials from the moon and asteroids, avoiding the cost and environmental impact of lifting them into orbit. Mining the solar system comes with its own potential impacts, but extracting resources from distant and lifeless worlds is clearly preferable to the continued degradation of the Earth. Global warming can lead to extinction, which outweighs all the affirmative impacts. Miller-McDonald, 18 – (Samuel, Master of Environmental Management at Yale University studying energy politics and grassroots innovations in the US. 5-2-2018. "Extinction vs. Collapse." Resilience. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-02/extinction-vs-collapse/) Climate twitter – the most fun twitter – has recently been reigniting the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope. It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we’re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we’re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us. The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman’s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction. It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction. Who’s more right? Let’s take a closer look. First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There’s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don’t know how we’ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don’t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts. We don’t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth. One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups. It’s why The Road is so disturbingly plausible; there could be a scenario in which basically everything is dead but people, lingering in the last grey waste of the world. On the other hand, we’ve never lived outside of the very favorable conditions of the Holocene, and past civilizational and population collapses suggest humans are in fact quite sensitive to climatic shifts. Famed climate scientist James Hansen has discussed the possibility of “Venus syndrome,” for instance, which sits at the far end of worst case scenarios. While a frightening thought experiment, it is easily dismissed as it’s based on so many uncertainties and doesn’t carry the weight of anything near consensus. What’s more frightening than potentially implausible uncertainties are the currently existing certainties. For example: Ecology + The atmosphere has proven more sensitive to GHG emissions than predicted by mainstream science, and we have a high chance of hitting 2oC of warming this century. Could hit 1.5C in the 2020s. Worst-case warming scenarios are probably the most likely. + Massive marine death is happening far faster than anyone predicted and we could be on the edge of an anoxic event. + Ice melt is happening far faster than mainstream predictions. Greenland’s ice sheet is threatening to collapse and already slowing ocean currents, which too could collapse. + Which also means predictions of sea level rise have doubled for this century. + Industrial agriculture is driving massive habitat loss and extinction. The insect collapse – population declines of 75 to 80 have been seen in some areas – is something no one predicted would happen so fast, and portends an ecological sensitivity beyond our fears. This is causing an unexpected and unprecedented bird collapse (1/8 of bird species are threatened) in Europe. + Forests, vital carbon sinks, are proving sensitive to climate impacts. + We’re living in the 6th mass extinction event, losing potentially dozens of species per day. We don’t know how this will impact us and our ability to feed ourselves. Energy + Energy transition is essential to mitigating 1.5+C warming. Energy is the single greatest contributor to anthro-GHG. And, by some estimates, transition is happening 400 years too slowly to avoid catastrophic warming. + Incumbent energy industries (that is, oil and gas) dominate governments all over the world. We live in an oil oligarchy – a petrostate, but for the globe. Every facet of the global economy is dependent on fossil fuels, and every sector – from construction to supply chains to transport to electricity to extraction to agriculture and on and on – is built around FF consumption. There’s good reason to believe FF will remain subsidized by governments beholden to their interests even if they become less economically viable than renewables, and so will maintain their dominance. + We are living in history’s largest oil and gas boom. + Kilocalorie to kilocalorie, FF is extremely dense and extremely cheap. Despite reports about solar getting cheaper than FF in some places, non-hydro/-carbon renewables are still a tiny minority (2) of global energy consumption and will simply always, by their nature, be less dense kcal to kcal than FF, and so will always be calorically more expensive. + Energy demand probably has to decrease globally to avoid 1.5C, and it’s projected to dramatically increase. Getting people to consume less is practically impossible, and efficiency measures have almost always resulted in increased consumption. + We’re still setting FF emissions records. Politics + Conditions today resemble those prior to the 20th century’s world wars: extreme wealth inequality, rampant economic insecurity, growing fascist parties/sentiment, and precarious geopolitical relations, and the Thucydides trap suggests war between Western hegemons and a rising China could be likely. These two factors could disrupt any kind of global cooperation on decarbonization and, to the contrary, will probably mean increased emissions (the US military is one of the world’s single largest consumers/emitters of FF). + Neoliberal ideology is so thoroughly embedded in our academic, political, and cultural institutions, and so endemic to discourse today, that the idea of degrowth – probably necessary to avoid collapse – and solidarity economics isn’t even close to discussion, much less realization, and, for self-evident reasons, probably never will be. + Living in a neoliberal culture also means we’ve all been trained not to sacrifice for the common good. But solving climate change, like paying more to achieve energy transition or voluntarily consuming less, will all entail sacrificing for the greater good. Humans sometimes are great at that; but the market fundamentalist ideology that pervades all social, commercial, and even self relations today stands against acting for the common good or in collective action. + There’s basically no government in the world today taking climate change seriously. There are many governments posturing and pretending to take it seriously, but none have substantially committed to a full decarbonization of their economies. (Iceland may be an exception, but Iceland is about 24 times smaller than NYC, so…) + Twenty-five years of governments knowing about climate change has resulted in essentially nothing being done about it, no emissions reductions, no substantive moves to decarbonize the economy. Politics have proven too strong for common sense, and there’s no good reason to suspect this will change anytime soon. + Wealth inequality is embedded in our economy so thoroughly – and so indigenously to FF economies – that it will probably continue either causing perpetual strife, as it has so far, or eventually cement a permanent underclass ruled by a small elite, similar to agrarian serfdom. There is a prominent view in left politics that greater wealth equality, some kind of ecosocialism, is a necessary ingredient in averting the kind of ecological collapse the economy is currently driving, given that global FF capitalism by its nature consumes beyond carrying capacities. At least according to one Nasa-funded study, the combination of inequality and ecological collapse is a likely cause for civilizational collapse. Even with this perfect storm of issues, it’s impossible to know how likely extinction is, and it’s impossible to judge how likely or extensive civilizational collapse may be. We just can’t predict how human beings and human systems will respond to the shocks that are already underway. We can make some good guesses based on history, but they’re no more than guesses. Maybe there’s a miracle energy source lurking in a hangar somewhere waiting to accelerate non-carbon transition. Maybe there’s a swelling political movement brewing under the surface that will soon build a more just, ecologically sane order into the world. Community energy programs are one reason to retain a shred of optimism; but also they’re still a tiny fraction of energy production and they are not growing fast, but they could accelerate any moment. We just don’t know how fast energy transition can happen, and we just don’t know how fast the world could descend into climate-driven chaos – either by human strife or physical storms. What we do know is that, given everything above, we are living through a confluence of events that will shake the foundations of civilization, and jeopardize our capacity to sustain large populations of humans. There is enough certainty around these issues to justify being existentially alarmed. At this point, whether we go extinct or all but a thousand of us go extinct (again), maybe that shouldn’t make much difference. Maybe the destruction of a few billion or 5 billion people is morally equivalent to the destruction of all 7 billion of us, and so should provoke equal degrees of urgency. Maybe this debate about whether we’ll go completely extinct rather than just mostly extinct is absurd. Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I do know is that, regardless of the answer, there’s no excuse to stop fighting for a world that sustains life.
Failure to colonize outer space guarantees extinction, so private appropriation of space is just because private companies are attempting to reach beyond Earth. Munevar '19 Gonzalo; 4/19/19; Professor at Lawrence Technical University; "Deflecting Existential Risk with Space Colonization," https://filling~-~-space.com/2019/04/19/deflecting~-~-existential~-~-risk~-~-with~-~-space~-~-colonization/ Why do you argue that “failure to move into the cosmos would condemn us to oblivion”? By having a significant presence in the solar system in the next few thousands of years and beyond, we will be in a better position to deflect asteroids and comets that might bring the end of humanity, and much other Earth life, in a horrible collision. And if perchance one such catastrophe proves inevitable (e.g. a rogue planet passing through the solar system), humanity would still survive by having colonized Mars and other bodies, as well as by having built artificial space colonies of the type advocated by Gerard O’Neill. Once the sun begins to turn into a red giant in a few billion years, we must have long moved into the outer solar system. In the very long run, we have to move into other solar systems. Relativistic--speed starships would be nice, but they are not necessary for the task of moving humanity to the stars. We can reach them, slowly but surely, by propelling some of our space colonies away from the sun, carrying perhaps millions of human beings. They would take advantage of the many resources to be found in the Oort Cloud, and then of equivalent clouds in other solar systems. Even interstellar space has resources to offer. Nuclear energy, probably fusion, would likely be required. It may take us tens of thousands of years, but in the cosmic time scale, that is but a blink in the eye. What are these catastrophic threats? Are there any records of catastrophic events happening before humans appeared on Earth? I have already mentioned collisions with asteroids and comets. Although the active geology of our planet tends to erase the record of many collisions, we can find a well--preserved record on the Moon and Venus, the two closest bodies to Earth. On the 600--million--years--old Venusian surface, the spacecraft Magellan discovered about one thousand impact craters at least twice the diameter of meteor craters on Earth. This impact record makes it reasonable to estimate a catastrophic impact on Earth every half a million years or so. Collisions with bodies of 5 km across would happen, on the average, every 20 million years. Apart from the Alvarez asteroid (crater near Yucatan) that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of species on Earth 65 million years ago, there have been at least two more impacts by asteroids 10 km or larger in the last 300 million years.
1/8/22
ND - Unions
Tournament: Novice Circuit Tournament | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake NW | Judge: Claudia Ribera Notes The nb will probably be the organizing da, and the text might need to be editted PRO Act CP CP text: the US ought to pass the PRO act. The problem with worker organization isn’t the right to strike- it’s companies taking deliberate anti-union action. Means the aff can never solve. Heidi Shierholz, 20 - ("Weakened labor movement leads to rising economic inequality," Economic Policy Institute, 1-27-2020, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/weakened-labor-movement-leads-to-rising-economic-inequality/)AW The basic facts about inequality in the United States—that for most of the last 40 years, pay has stagnated for all but the highest paid workers and inequality has risen dramatically—are widely understood. What is less well-known is the role the decline of unionization has played in those trends. The share of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement dropped from 27 percent to 11.6 percent between 1979 and 2019, meaning the union coverage rate is now less than half where it was 40 years ago. Research shows that this de-unionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality over that period—around 13–20 percent for women and 33–37 percent for men. Applying these shares to annual earnings data reveals that working people are now losing on the order of $200 billion per year as a result of the erosion of union coverage over the last four decades—with that money being redistributed upward, to the rich. The good news is that restoring union coverage—and strengthening workers’ abilities to join together to improve their wages and working conditions in other ways—is therefore likely to put at least $200 billion per year into the pockets of working people. These changes could happen through organizing and policy reform. Policymakers have introduced legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, that would significantly reform current labor law. Building on the reforms in the PRO Act, the Clean Slate for Worker Power Project proposes further transformation of labor law, with innovative ideas to create balance in our economy. How is it that de-unionization has played such a large role in wage stagnation for working people and the rise of inequality? When workers are able to join together, form a union and collectively bargain, their pay goes up. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13.2 percent more than a peer with similar education, occupation and experience in a non-unionized workplace in the same sector. Furthermore, the benefits of collective bargaining extend well beyond union workers. Where unions are strong, they essentially set broader standards that non-union employers must match in order to attract and retain the workers they need and to avoid facing an organizing drive. The combination of the direct effect of unions on their members and this “spillover” effect to non-union workers means unions are crucial in fostering a vibrant middle class—and has also meant that as unionization has eroded, pay for working people has stagnated and inequality has skyrocketed. Unions also help shrink racial wage gaps. For example, black workers are more likely than white workers to be represented by a union, and black workers who are in unions get a larger boost to wages from being in a union than white workers do. This means that the decline of unionization has played a significant role in the expansion of the black–white wage gap. But isn’t the erosion of unionization because workers don’t want unions anymore? No—survey data show that in fact, a higher share of non-union workers say they would vote for a union in their workplace today than did 40 years ago. Isn’t the erosion of unionization due to the shifts in employment from manufacturing to service-producing industries? No again—changing industry composition explains only a small share of the erosion of union coverage. What has caused declining unionization? One key factor is fierce corporate opposition that has smothered workers’ freedom to form unions. Aggressive anti-union campaigns—once confined to the most anti-union employers—have become widespread. For example, it is now standard, when workers seek to organize, for their employers to hire union avoidance consultants to coordinate fierce anti-union campaigns. We estimate that employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring union avoidance advisers to help them prevent employees from organizing. And though the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes it illegal for employers to intimidate, coerce or fire workers in retaliation for participating in union-organizing campaigns, the penalties are grossly insufficient to provide a meaningful disincentive for such behavior. This means employers often engage in illegal activities, such as threatening to close the worksite, cutting union activists’ hours or pay, or reporting workers to immigration enforcement authorities if employees unionize. In at least 1 in 5 union elections, employers are charged with illegally firing workers involved in organizing. In the face of these attacks on union organizing, policymakers have egregiously failed to update labor laws to balance the system. Fundamental reform is necessary to build worker power and guarantee all workers the right to come together and have a real voice in their workplace. The PRO act solves way better than the aff by making it easier for workers to unionize. Celine McNicholas and Lynn Rhinehart, 19 - ("The PRO Act: Giving workers more bargaining power on the job," Economic Policy Institute, 5-2-2019, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/the-pro-act-giving-workers-more-bargaining-power-on-the-job/)AW Our economy is out of balance. Corporations and CEOs hold too much power and wealth, and working people know it. Workers are mobilizing, organizing, protesting, and striking at a level not seen in decades, and they are winning pay raises and other real change by using their collective voices. But, the fact is, it is still too difficult for working people to form a union at their workplace when they want to. The law gives employers too much power and puts too many roadblocks in the way of workers trying to organize with their co-workers. That’s why the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—introduced today by Senator Murray and Representative Scott—is such an important piece of legislation. The PRO Act addresses several major problems with the current law and tries to give working people a fair shot when they try to join together with their coworkers to form a union and bargain for better wages, benefits, and conditions at their workplaces. Here’s how: Stronger and swifter remedies when employers interfere with workers’ rights. Under current law, there are no penalties on employers or compensatory damages for workers when employers illegally fire or retaliate against workers who are trying to form a union. As a result, employers routinely fire pro-union workers, because they know it will undermine the organizing campaign and they will face no real consequences. The PRO Act addresses this issue, instituting civil penalties for violations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Specifically, the legislation establishes compensatory damages for workers and penalties against employers (including penalties on officers and directors) when employers break the law and illegally fire or retaliate against workers. Importantly, these back pay and damages remedies apply to workers regardless of their immigration status. The PRO Act also requires the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to go to court and get an injunction to immediately reinstate workers if the NLRB believes the employer has illegally retaliated against workers for union activity. With this reform, workers won’t be out of a job and a paycheck while their case works its way through the system. Finally, the PRO Act adds a right for workers to go to court to seek relief, bringing labor law in line with other workplace laws that already contain this right. And, the legislation prohibits employers from forcing workers to waive their right to class or collective litigation. More freedom to organize without employer interference. The PRO Act streamlines the NLRB election process so workers can petition to form a union and get a timely vote without their employer interfering and delaying the vote. The act makes clear it is workers’ decision to file for a union election and that employers have no standing in the NLRB’s election process. It prohibits companies from forcing workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings as a condition of continued employment. If the employer breaks the law or interferes with a fair election, the PRO Act empowers the NLRB to require the employer to bargain with the union if it had the support of a majority of workers prior to the election. And the PRO Act reinstates an Obama administration rule, which was repealed by the Trump administration, to require employers to disclose the names and payments they make to outside third-party union-busters that they hire to campaign against the union. Winning first contract agreements when workers organize and protecting fair share agreements. The law requires employers to bargain in good faith with the union chosen by their employees to reach a collective bargaining agreement—a contract—addressing wages, benefits, protections from sexual harassment, and other issues. But employers often drag out the bargaining process to avoid reaching an agreement. More than half of all workers who vote to form a union don’t have a collective bargaining agreement a year later. This creates a discouraging situation for workers and allows employers to foster a sense of futility in the process. The PRO Act establishes a process for reaching a first agreement when workers organize, utilizing mediation and then, if necessary, binding arbitration, to enable the parties to reach a first agreement. And the PRO Act overrides so-called “right-to-work” laws by establishing that employers and unions in all 50 states may agree upon a “fair share” clause requiring all workers who are covered by—and benefit from—the collective bargaining agreement to contribute a fair share fee towards the cost of bargaining and administering the agreement. Protecting strikes and other protest activity. When workers need economic leverage in bargaining, the law gives them the right to withhold their labor from their employer—to strike—as a means of putting economic pressure on the employer. But court decisions have dramatically undermined this right by allowing employers to “permanently replace” strikers—in other words, replace strikers with other workers so the strikers no longer have jobs. The law also prohibits boycotts of so-called “secondary” companies as a means of putting economic pressure on the workers’ employer, even if these companies hold real sway over the employer and could help settle the dispute. The PRO Act helps level the playing field for workers by repealing the prohibition on secondary boycotts and prohibiting employers from permanently replacing strikers. Organizing and bargaining rights for more workers. Too often, employers misclassify workers as independent contractors, who do not have the right to organize under the NLRA. Similarly, employers will misclassify workers as supervisors to deprive them of their NLRA rights. The PRO Act tightens the definitions of independent contractor and supervisor to crack down on misclassification and extend NLRA protections to more workers. And, the PRO Act makes clear that workers can have more than one employer, and that both employers need to engage in collective bargaining over the terms and conditions of employment that they control or influence. This provision is particularly important given the prevalence of contracting out and temporary work arrangements—workers need the ability to sit at the bargaining table with all the entities that control or influence their work lives. The PRO Act does not fix all the problems with our labor law, but it would address some fundamental problems and help make it more possible for workers to act on their federally-protected right to join together with their coworkers to bargain with their employer for improvements at their workplace. Research shows that workers want unions. There is a huge gap between the share of workers with union representation (11.9 percent) and the share of workers that would like to have a union and a voice on the job (48 percent). The PRO Act would take a major step forward in closing that gap.
NR Overview Extend the PRO act CP. The aff fails to solve the actual problem with unionization. It’s not that workers can’t strike in the squo, but the companies take explicit anti-union action to prevent workers from unionizing which include threats to turn in undocumented workers, hiring groups to give anti-union presentations required for employment, and just firing unionized employees. Even illegal actions are common because there are so few penalties. Means the aff can never solve for workers right and saving unions without other protections for employees and higher penalties for breaking the NLRA.
A2 Perm do the CP
The perm is severance because the counterplan doesn’t advocate an unconditional right to strike. Severance is bad because it makes the aff a moving target and isn’t a fair test of competition. A2 Perm do both
The perm doesn’t solve the net benefit. Increased strikes lead to backlash the destroys unions and (unconditional bad bc da) A2 Non-unionized workers
The PRO act helps non-unionized workers by increasing democracy. Sarah Jones, 21 - ("The PRO Act Could Do More Than Revive Unions," Intelligencer, 3-13-2021, 11-5-2021https:nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-the-pro-act.html)AW Should any of this matter to non-union workers? If the business of getting the PRO Act passed knocks a hole in the filibuster, it’ll remove a substantial obstacle to the democratization of the Senate. That possibility reveals another, under-considered consequence of the PRO Act: It’s good for democracy. Democracy is an expansive idea, encompassing more than electoral politics or arcane Senate procedure. Unions don’t exist to elect Democrats. They exist so that workers can bargain better conditions for themselves — an act of workplace democracy that reinforces the right to free association and the right to free speech. “I would say that America’s workplaces, absent a union contract, are probably the least democratic spaces we have in our society,” said Lane Windham, a Georgetown University professor and the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide. The bill will also have other, far-reaching ramifications. Unions, after all, are simply made up of workers; bills that are good for the former tend to be good for the latter. Workers who face racial and gender discrimination on the job could benefit the most from the PRO Act’s provisions. In unions, said Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute, “workers of color are not experiencing the same sort of wage suppression that they are in other, non-unionized settings.” Union membership thus correlates to lower racial wealth gaps. “The PRO Act promotes greater racial economic justice because unions allow for collective bargaining, essentially shrinks Black-white wage gaps, and brings greater fairness in terms of hiring opportunities,” she added. As long as employers have the broad right to wear workers down for trying to organize, the First Amendment might as well stop at the office or factory doors. Employers can even block workers from speaking during anti-union, captive audience meetings. “People think that they have a right to their job and they actually don’t,” Windham said. “Employers, with a few exceptions like discrimination issues, can generally fire people at will and can limit your free speech at any time.” To date, President Biden hasn’t endorsed calls to end the filibuster. But if he wants to build America back better, as he’s promised, advocates say the PRO Act is nonnegotiable. “In order to build an economy that is more just, that promotes greater equality, working people need a voice. They need access to unions,” said McNicholas. 2. Unlikely to harm freelancers. Sarah Jones, 21 - ("The PRO Act Could Do More Than Revive Unions," Intelligencer, 3-13-2021, 11-5-2021https:nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-the-pro-act.html)AW If it becomes law, the PRO Act would also prevent employers from misclassifying workers either as independent contractors or as supervisors, which excludes them from many protections of the National Labor Relations Act. That provision worries some freelancers, who believe they’ll be forced to unionize, or that companies will stop working with them. Those doomsday scenarios aren’t likely to occur, as labor lawyer Brandon Magner recently pointed out in his newsletter, Labor Law Lite. The PRO Act concerns itself with a narrow question: “whether certain workers possess rights” under the National Labor Relations Act, including “the right to strike, collectively bargain, and engage in various other ‘concerted activities’ for ‘mutual aid or protection.’” That doesn’t mean a freelancer writer will automatically lose work. Nor would they suddenly find themselves forced into a union overnight; Magner writes that “a demonstrated majority of their freelancing-colleagues at a website” would have to push for it. A2 Small Businesses The legislation likely won’t’ touch independent contractors. Gene Marks, 21 - ("Does Biden’s Pro Act contain a nasty surprise for small businesses?," Guardian, 5-9-2021, 11-5-2021https:www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/09/pro-act-freelancers-small-businesses-independent-contractors)AW The Freelancers Union, a trade group that’s in favor of the Pro Act, says that concerns about the employee/contractor classification issue are overblown. “Not only does the law itself specify that it is limited to amending the National Labor Relations Act,” the group writes on its blog. “An important amendment was also passed on the floor of the House explicitly spelling out that the ABC test applies to unionization alone and cannot change anyone’s employment status.” The problem really comes down to this: the legislation is still not clear Brandon Magner, a labor lawyer agrees. “The ABC test, if passed as part of the Pro Act, would only affect the analysis of employee v independent contractor status for the purposes of the NLRA,” he writes. “It would not change a worker’s employment status for the purposes of state laws, such as those involving minimum wage, overtime, unemployment compensation, or various benefit schemes. Thus, a worker could feasibly be classified as an employee with unionization rights under the NLRA while still qualifying as an independent contractor under said state laws.” Magner states, as an example, the many freelancers in California’s entertainment industry who have have no consistent employer but can now collectively bargain for superior wages and benefits compared with non-union counterparts.
The economy is steadily recovering now, but is fragile. Rugaber 11/8 - Christopher Rugaber Economics Reporter, Associated Press, “'A struggle and a journey': Report shows US economy recovering,” Christian Science Monitor (Web). Nov. 8, 2021. Accessed Nov. 8, 2021. https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/1108/A-struggle-and-a-journey-Report-shows-US-economy-recovering AT America’s employers accelerated their hiring last month, adding a solid 531,000 jobs, the most since July and a sign that the recovery from the pandemic recession is overcoming a virus-induced slowdown.¶ Friday’s report from the labor department also showed that the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 last month from 4.8 in September.¶ That is a comparatively low level though, still well above the pre-pandemic jobless rate of 3.5. And the job gains in August and September weren’t as weak as initially reported: The government increased its estimate of hiring for those two months by a hefty combined 235,000 jobs.¶ All told, the figures point to an economy that is steadily recovering from the pandemic recession, with healthy consumer spending prompting companies in nearly every industry to add workers. Though the effects of COVID-19 are still causing severe supply shortages, heightening inflation, and keeping many people out of the workforce, employers are finding gradually more success in filling near record-high job postings.¶ “This is the kind of recovery we can get when we are not sidelined by a surge in COVID cases,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research at the employment website Indeed. “The speed of employment gains has faltered at times this year, but the underlying momentum of the U.S. labor market is quite clear.”¶ The better-than-expected jobs report was welcomed on Wall Street, where investors sent stocks further into record territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 200 points, or roughly 0.6, in Friday trading. Short-term Treasury yields rose as some investors moved up their expectations for when the Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates. But longer-term yields dipped amid muted expectations for inflation over the long term.¶ By most barometers, the economic recovery appears solidly on track. Service companies in such areas as retail, banking, and warehousing have reported a sharp jump in sales. Sales of new and existing homes surged last month. And consumer confidence rose in October after three straight declines.¶ At the same time, though, the nation remains 4.2 million jobs short of the number it had before the pandemic flattened the economy in March 2020. The effects of the virus are still discouraging some people from traveling, shopping, eating out, and attending entertainment venues.¶ In October, the pickup in hiring was spread across nearly every major industry, with only government employers reporting a job loss, mostly in education. Shipping and warehousing companies added 54,000 jobs. The battered leisure and hospitality sector, which includes restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues, gained 164,000. Manufacturers, despite their struggles with supply shortages, added 60,000, the most since June 2020.¶ And employers, who have been competing to fill jobs from a diminished pool of applicants, raised wages at a solid clip: Average hourly pay jumped 4.9 in October compared with a year earlier, up from 4.6 the previous month. Even a gain that strong, though, is barely keeping pace with recent surges in consumer inflation.¶ Those price increases pose a headwind for the economy. Higher costs for food, heating oil, rents, and furniture have burdened millions of families. Prices rose 4.4 in September compared with 12 months earlier, the sharpest such jump in three decades.¶ Among people who are receiving pay raises, some of the biggest beneficiaries are the record-high number of people who have been quitting jobs to take new ones. One of them is Christian Frink, who has begun work as a business analyst at a digital consulting firm. In his new job, Mr. Frink of Ferndale, Michigan, helps business clients determine the technologies they need.¶ Earlier this year, Mr. Frink held a marketing job but left it because, like many people during COVID, he felt burnt out. He then worked for Door Dash during the spring and summer to earn money and searched for new work. Although employers were complaining about a labor shortage, several told him they wouldn’t hire anyone without a college degree. (Mr. Frink attended college but didn’t graduate.)¶ This past summer, Mr. Frink took coding classes at Tech Elevator, a boot camp, and then landed his new position. Now, he’s earning 35 more than in his previous job and says he’s “blown away” that he already has health care coverage and doesn’t have to wait months to become eligible.¶ Yet it isn’t only job-switchers who are receiving pay raises. Chad Leibundguth, a regional director in Tampa for the Robert Half staffing agency, said the job market is the strongest for workers he has seen in his 22-year career. Before the pandemic, he said, you could fill a customer service job in Florida for $14 an hour.¶ “Nowadays,” he said, “you’ve got to be closer to $20 an hour, because people have options.”¶ Job prospects are brightening even for people who have been out of work for prolonged periods. The number of long-term unemployed – people who have been jobless for six months or more – has fallen sharply in recent months, to 2.3 million in October from 4.2 million in April. That’s still double the pre-recession total. But it’s an encouraging sign because employers are typically wary of hiring people who haven’t held jobs for an extended time.¶ At the same time, disparities in the job market have persisted. The Black unemployment rate was unchanged in October at 7.9, for example, while for white workers, it fell to 4 from 4.2. The Latino jobless rate dropped to 5.9 from 6.3.¶ And though white-collar jobs in professional services like information technology, engineering, and architecture are nearly back to their pre-pandemic employment levels, leisure and hospitality still has 1.4 million fewer jobs.¶ Hari Ravichandran, CEO of digital security provider Aura in Boston, says his 800-person company has 140 positions open, mostly in software development.¶ Mr. Ravichandran is willing to hire remote workers; 170 of his staffers have never regularly worked in any of the company’s buildings. Still, hiring remains as tough as he’s ever experienced.¶ One disappointing note in Friday’s report is that the workforce – the number of people either working or looking for a job – was unchanged in October. That suggested that the reopening of schools in September, the waning of the virus, and the expiration of a $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement have yet to coax many people off the sidelines of the job market in large numbers.¶ Drawing many people back into the workforce after recessions is typically a prolonged process. There are now 7.4 million people officially out of work – just 1.7 million more than in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy. Yet millions more who lost jobs during the recession have given up their job hunts, and employers might have to raise pay and benefits to draw them back in, said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the University of Minnesota.¶ Even so, some companies still can’t find enough workers. Many parents, particularly mothers, haven’t returned to the workforce after having left jobs during the pandemic to care for children or other relatives. Yet there was evidence of a small rebound last month: The proportion of women who were either working or looking for work rose after two months of declines. Strikes cause widespread economic harm - GM strikes prove. John McElroy, 2019, Strikes Hurt Everybody.Wards Auto Industry News, October 25, https://www.wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/strikes-hurt-everybody But strikes don’t just hurt the people walking the picket lines or the company they’re striking against. They hurt suppliers, car dealers and the communities located near the plants. The Anderson Economic Group estimates that 75,000 workers at supplier companies were temporarily laid off because of the GM strike. Unlike UAW picketers, those supplier workers won’t get any strike pay or an $11,000 contract signing bonus. No, most of them lost close to a month’s worth of wages, which must be financially devastating for them. Suppliers also lost a lot of money. So now they’re cutting budgets and delaying capital investments to make up for the lost revenue, which is a further drag on the economy. According to CAR, the communities and states where GM’s plants are located collectively lost a couple of hundred million dollars in payroll and tax revenue. Some economists warn that if the strike were prolonged it could knock the state of Michigan – home to GM and the UAW – into a recession. That prompted the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, to call GM CEO Mary Barra and UAW leaders and urge them to settle as fast as possible. Strikes now trigger food shortages, undermine health care and threaten the economy. Shannon Pettypiece, 10-24, 21, Biden on the sidelines of 'Striketober,' with economy in the balance, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-sidelines-striketober-economy-balance-n1282094 But President Biden faces a different dynamic from candidate Biden, because strikes risk adding to labor shortages and supply chain disruptions that are already driving up prices as the global economy reels from pandemic strains. While the strikes could benefit workers by driving up wages in the long term, the near-term impact of persistent or growing work stoppages could include worst-case scenarios like food shortages or lack of access to hospitals. "This will come at an economic cost to employers and therefore the economy, and I think that may be why Biden has gone a little silent," said Ariel Avgar, an associate professor of labor relations, law and history at Cornell University. "It is tricky for him. On the one hand, he is on the record supporting unions and their ability to use collective action. On the other hand, the point of strikes is to extract an economic price for employers unwilling to negotiate in a way the union feels is appropriate." Economic downturns devastate people’s lives. EPI ’09 – Economic Policy Institute, “Economic Scarring: The long-term impacts of the recession,” Economic Policy Institute (Web). Briefing Paper #243. Sept. 30, 2009. Accessed Nov. 8, 2021. https://www.epi.org/publication/bp243/ AT Economic recessions are often portrayed as short-term events. However, as a substantial body of economic literature shows, the consequences of high unemployment, falling incomes, and reduced economic activity can have lasting consequences. For example, job loss and falling incomes can force families to delay or forgo a college education for their children. Frozen credit markets and depressed consumer spending can stop the creation of otherwise vibrant small businesses. Larger companies may delay or reduce spending on RandD.¶ In each of these cases, an economic recession can lead to “scarring”—that is, long-lasting damage to individuals’ economic situations and the economy more broadly. This report examines some of the evidence demonstrating the long-run consequences of recessions. Findings include:¶ Educational achievement: Unemployment and income losses can reduce educational achievement by threatening early childhood nutrition; reducing families’ abilities to provide a supportive learning environment (including adequate health care, summer activities, and stable housing); and by forcing a delay or abandonment of college plans.¶ Opportunity: Recession-induced job and income losses can have lasting consequences on individuals and families. The increase in poverty that will occur as a result of the recession, for example, will have lasting consequences for kids, and will impose long-lasting costs on the economy.¶ Private investment: Total non-residential investment is down by 20 from peak levels through the second quarter of 2009. The reduction in investment will lead to reduced production capacity for years to come. Furthermore, since technology is often embedded in new capital equipment, the investment slowdown can also be expected to reduce the adoption of new innovations.¶ Entrepreneurial activity and business formation: New and small businesses are often at the forefront of technological advancement. With the credit crunch and the reduction in consumer demand, small businesses are seeing a double squeeze. For example, in 2008, 43,500 businesses filed for bankruptcy, up from 28,300 businesses in 2007 and more than double the 19,700 filings in 2006. Only 21 active firms had an initial public offering in 2008, down from an average of 163 in the four years prior.¶ There is also substantial evidence that economic outcomes are passed across generations. As such, economic hardships for parents will mean more economic hurdles for their children. While it is often said that deficits can cause transfers of wealth from future generations of taxpayers to the present, this cost must also be compared with the economic consequences of recessions that are also passed to future generations.¶ This analysis also suggests that efforts to stimulate the economy can be very effective over both the short- and long-run. Using a simple illustrative accounting framework, it is shown that an economic stimulus can lead to a short-run boost in output that outweighs the additional interest costs of the associated debt increase. This is especially true over a short horizon.¶ A recession, therefore, should not be thought of as a one-time event that stresses individuals and families for a couple of years. Rather, economic downturns will impact the future prospects of all family members, including children, and will have consequences for years to come.
11/13/21
ND - Unions
Tournament: Novice Circuit Tournament | Round: 3 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake PJ | Judge: Sarah Roberts Notes The nb will probably be the organizing da, and the text might need to be edited PRO Act CP CP text: the US ought to pass the PRO act. The problem with worker organization isn’t the right to strike- it’s companies taking deliberate anti-union action. Means the aff can never solve. Heidi Shierholz, 20 - ("Weakened labor movement leads to rising economic inequality," Economic Policy Institute, 1-27-2020, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/weakened-labor-movement-leads-to-rising-economic-inequality/)AW The basic facts about inequality in the United States—that for most of the last 40 years, pay has stagnated for all but the highest paid workers and inequality has risen dramatically—are widely understood. What is less well-known is the role the decline of unionization has played in those trends. The share of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement dropped from 27 percent to 11.6 percent between 1979 and 2019, meaning the union coverage rate is now less than half where it was 40 years ago. Research shows that this de-unionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality over that period—around 13–20 percent for women and 33–37 percent for men. Applying these shares to annual earnings data reveals that working people are now losing on the order of $200 billion per year as a result of the erosion of union coverage over the last four decades—with that money being redistributed upward, to the rich. The good news is that restoring union coverage—and strengthening workers’ abilities to join together to improve their wages and working conditions in other ways—is therefore likely to put at least $200 billion per year into the pockets of working people. These changes could happen through organizing and policy reform. Policymakers have introduced legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, that would significantly reform current labor law. Building on the reforms in the PRO Act, the Clean Slate for Worker Power Project proposes further transformation of labor law, with innovative ideas to create balance in our economy. How is it that de-unionization has played such a large role in wage stagnation for working people and the rise of inequality? When workers are able to join together, form a union and collectively bargain, their pay goes up. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13.2 percent more than a peer with similar education, occupation and experience in a non-unionized workplace in the same sector. Furthermore, the benefits of collective bargaining extend well beyond union workers. Where unions are strong, they essentially set broader standards that non-union employers must match in order to attract and retain the workers they need and to avoid facing an organizing drive. The combination of the direct effect of unions on their members and this “spillover” effect to non-union workers means unions are crucial in fostering a vibrant middle class—and has also meant that as unionization has eroded, pay for working people has stagnated and inequality has skyrocketed. Unions also help shrink racial wage gaps. For example, black workers are more likely than white workers to be represented by a union, and black workers who are in unions get a larger boost to wages from being in a union than white workers do. This means that the decline of unionization has played a significant role in the expansion of the black–white wage gap. But isn’t the erosion of unionization because workers don’t want unions anymore? No—survey data show that in fact, a higher share of non-union workers say they would vote for a union in their workplace today than did 40 years ago. Isn’t the erosion of unionization due to the shifts in employment from manufacturing to service-producing industries? No again—changing industry composition explains only a small share of the erosion of union coverage. What has caused declining unionization? One key factor is fierce corporate opposition that has smothered workers’ freedom to form unions. Aggressive anti-union campaigns—once confined to the most anti-union employers—have become widespread. For example, it is now standard, when workers seek to organize, for their employers to hire union avoidance consultants to coordinate fierce anti-union campaigns. We estimate that employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring union avoidance advisers to help them prevent employees from organizing. And though the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes it illegal for employers to intimidate, coerce or fire workers in retaliation for participating in union-organizing campaigns, the penalties are grossly insufficient to provide a meaningful disincentive for such behavior. This means employers often engage in illegal activities, such as threatening to close the worksite, cutting union activists’ hours or pay, or reporting workers to immigration enforcement authorities if employees unionize. In at least 1 in 5 union elections, employers are charged with illegally firing workers involved in organizing. In the face of these attacks on union organizing, policymakers have egregiously failed to update labor laws to balance the system. Fundamental reform is necessary to build worker power and guarantee all workers the right to come together and have a real voice in their workplace. The PRO act solves way better than the aff by making it easier for workers to unionize. Celine McNicholas and Lynn Rhinehart, 19 - ("The PRO Act: Giving workers more bargaining power on the job," Economic Policy Institute, 5-2-2019, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/the-pro-act-giving-workers-more-bargaining-power-on-the-job/)AW Our economy is out of balance. Corporations and CEOs hold too much power and wealth, and working people know it. Workers are mobilizing, organizing, protesting, and striking at a level not seen in decades, and they are winning pay raises and other real change by using their collective voices. But, the fact is, it is still too difficult for working people to form a union at their workplace when they want to. The law gives employers too much power and puts too many roadblocks in the way of workers trying to organize with their co-workers. That’s why the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—introduced today by Senator Murray and Representative Scott—is such an important piece of legislation. The PRO Act addresses several major problems with the current law and tries to give working people a fair shot when they try to join together with their coworkers to form a union and bargain for better wages, benefits, and conditions at their workplaces. Here’s how: Stronger and swifter remedies when employers interfere with workers’ rights. Under current law, there are no penalties on employers or compensatory damages for workers when employers illegally fire or retaliate against workers who are trying to form a union. As a result, employers routinely fire pro-union workers, because they know it will undermine the organizing campaign and they will face no real consequences. The PRO Act addresses this issue, instituting civil penalties for violations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Specifically, the legislation establishes compensatory damages for workers and penalties against employers (including penalties on officers and directors) when employers break the law and illegally fire or retaliate against workers. Importantly, these back pay and damages remedies apply to workers regardless of their immigration status. The PRO Act also requires the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to go to court and get an injunction to immediately reinstate workers if the NLRB believes the employer has illegally retaliated against workers for union activity. With this reform, workers won’t be out of a job and a paycheck while their case works its way through the system. Finally, the PRO Act adds a right for workers to go to court to seek relief, bringing labor law in line with other workplace laws that already contain this right. And, the legislation prohibits employers from forcing workers to waive their right to class or collective litigation. More freedom to organize without employer interference. The PRO Act streamlines the NLRB election process so workers can petition to form a union and get a timely vote without their employer interfering and delaying the vote. The act makes clear it is workers’ decision to file for a union election and that employers have no standing in the NLRB’s election process. It prohibits companies from forcing workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings as a condition of continued employment. If the employer breaks the law or interferes with a fair election, the PRO Act empowers the NLRB to require the employer to bargain with the union if it had the support of a majority of workers prior to the election. And the PRO Act reinstates an Obama administration rule, which was repealed by the Trump administration, to require employers to disclose the names and payments they make to outside third-party union-busters that they hire to campaign against the union. Winning first contract agreements when workers organize and protecting fair share agreements. The law requires employers to bargain in good faith with the union chosen by their employees to reach a collective bargaining agreement—a contract—addressing wages, benefits, protections from sexual harassment, and other issues. But employers often drag out the bargaining process to avoid reaching an agreement. More than half of all workers who vote to form a union don’t have a collective bargaining agreement a year later. This creates a discouraging situation for workers and allows employers to foster a sense of futility in the process. The PRO Act establishes a process for reaching a first agreement when workers organize, utilizing mediation and then, if necessary, binding arbitration, to enable the parties to reach a first agreement. And the PRO Act overrides so-called “right-to-work” laws by establishing that employers and unions in all 50 states may agree upon a “fair share” clause requiring all workers who are covered by—and benefit from—the collective bargaining agreement to contribute a fair share fee towards the cost of bargaining and administering the agreement. Protecting strikes and other protest activity. When workers need economic leverage in bargaining, the law gives them the right to withhold their labor from their employer—to strike—as a means of putting economic pressure on the employer. But court decisions have dramatically undermined this right by allowing employers to “permanently replace” strikers—in other words, replace strikers with other workers so the strikers no longer have jobs. The law also prohibits boycotts of so-called “secondary” companies as a means of putting economic pressure on the workers’ employer, even if these companies hold real sway over the employer and could help settle the dispute. The PRO Act helps level the playing field for workers by repealing the prohibition on secondary boycotts and prohibiting employers from permanently replacing strikers. Organizing and bargaining rights for more workers. Too often, employers misclassify workers as independent contractors, who do not have the right to organize under the NLRA. Similarly, employers will misclassify workers as supervisors to deprive them of their NLRA rights. The PRO Act tightens the definitions of independent contractor and supervisor to crack down on misclassification and extend NLRA protections to more workers. And, the PRO Act makes clear that workers can have more than one employer, and that both employers need to engage in collective bargaining over the terms and conditions of employment that they control or influence. This provision is particularly important given the prevalence of contracting out and temporary work arrangements—workers need the ability to sit at the bargaining table with all the entities that control or influence their work lives. The PRO Act does not fix all the problems with our labor law, but it would address some fundamental problems and help make it more possible for workers to act on their federally-protected right to join together with their coworkers to bargain with their employer for improvements at their workplace. Research shows that workers want unions. There is a huge gap between the share of workers with union representation (11.9 percent) and the share of workers that would like to have a union and a voice on the job (48 percent). The PRO Act would take a major step forward in closing that gap.
NR Overview Extend the PRO act CP. The aff fails to solve the actual problem with unionization. It’s not that workers can’t strike in the squo, but the companies take explicit anti-union action to prevent workers from unionizing which include threats to turn in undocumented workers, hiring groups to give anti-union presentations required for employment, and just firing unionized employees. Even illegal actions are common because there are so few penalties. Means the aff can never solve for workers right and saving unions without other protections for employees and higher penalties for breaking the NLRA.
A2 Perm do the CP
The perm is severance because the counterplan doesn’t advocate an unconditional right to strike. Severance is bad because it makes the aff a moving target and isn’t a fair test of competition. A2 Perm do both
The perm doesn’t solve the net benefit. Increased strikes lead to backlash the destroys unions and (unconditional bad bc da) A2 Non-unionized workers
The PRO act helps non-unionized workers by increasing democracy. Sarah Jones, 21 - ("The PRO Act Could Do More Than Revive Unions," Intelligencer, 3-13-2021, 11-5-2021https:nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-the-pro-act.html)AW Should any of this matter to non-union workers? If the business of getting the PRO Act passed knocks a hole in the filibuster, it’ll remove a substantial obstacle to the democratization of the Senate. That possibility reveals another, under-considered consequence of the PRO Act: It’s good for democracy. Democracy is an expansive idea, encompassing more than electoral politics or arcane Senate procedure. Unions don’t exist to elect Democrats. They exist so that workers can bargain better conditions for themselves — an act of workplace democracy that reinforces the right to free association and the right to free speech. “I would say that America’s workplaces, absent a union contract, are probably the least democratic spaces we have in our society,” said Lane Windham, a Georgetown University professor and the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide. The bill will also have other, far-reaching ramifications. Unions, after all, are simply made up of workers; bills that are good for the former tend to be good for the latter. Workers who face racial and gender discrimination on the job could benefit the most from the PRO Act’s provisions. In unions, said Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute, “workers of color are not experiencing the same sort of wage suppression that they are in other, non-unionized settings.” Union membership thus correlates to lower racial wealth gaps. “The PRO Act promotes greater racial economic justice because unions allow for collective bargaining, essentially shrinks Black-white wage gaps, and brings greater fairness in terms of hiring opportunities,” she added. As long as employers have the broad right to wear workers down for trying to organize, the First Amendment might as well stop at the office or factory doors. Employers can even block workers from speaking during anti-union, captive audience meetings. “People think that they have a right to their job and they actually don’t,” Windham said. “Employers, with a few exceptions like discrimination issues, can generally fire people at will and can limit your free speech at any time.” To date, President Biden hasn’t endorsed calls to end the filibuster. But if he wants to build America back better, as he’s promised, advocates say the PRO Act is nonnegotiable. “In order to build an economy that is more just, that promotes greater equality, working people need a voice. They need access to unions,” said McNicholas. 2. Unlikely to harm freelancers. Sarah Jones, 21 - ("The PRO Act Could Do More Than Revive Unions," Intelligencer, 3-13-2021, 11-5-2021https:nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/what-is-the-pro-act.html)AW If it becomes law, the PRO Act would also prevent employers from misclassifying workers either as independent contractors or as supervisors, which excludes them from many protections of the National Labor Relations Act. That provision worries some freelancers, who believe they’ll be forced to unionize, or that companies will stop working with them. Those doomsday scenarios aren’t likely to occur, as labor lawyer Brandon Magner recently pointed out in his newsletter, Labor Law Lite. The PRO Act concerns itself with a narrow question: “whether certain workers possess rights” under the National Labor Relations Act, including “the right to strike, collectively bargain, and engage in various other ‘concerted activities’ for ‘mutual aid or protection.’” That doesn’t mean a freelancer writer will automatically lose work. Nor would they suddenly find themselves forced into a union overnight; Magner writes that “a demonstrated majority of their freelancing-colleagues at a website” would have to push for it. A2 Small Businesses The legislation likely won’t’ touch independent contractors. Gene Marks, 21 - ("Does Biden’s Pro Act contain a nasty surprise for small businesses?," Guardian, 5-9-2021, 11-5-2021https:www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/09/pro-act-freelancers-small-businesses-independent-contractors)AW The Freelancers Union, a trade group that’s in favor of the Pro Act, says that concerns about the employee/contractor classification issue are overblown. “Not only does the law itself specify that it is limited to amending the National Labor Relations Act,” the group writes on its blog. “An important amendment was also passed on the floor of the House explicitly spelling out that the ABC test applies to unionization alone and cannot change anyone’s employment status.” The problem really comes down to this: the legislation is still not clear Brandon Magner, a labor lawyer agrees. “The ABC test, if passed as part of the Pro Act, would only affect the analysis of employee v independent contractor status for the purposes of the NLRA,” he writes. “It would not change a worker’s employment status for the purposes of state laws, such as those involving minimum wage, overtime, unemployment compensation, or various benefit schemes. Thus, a worker could feasibly be classified as an employee with unionization rights under the NLRA while still qualifying as an independent contractor under said state laws.” Magner states, as an example, the many freelancers in California’s entertainment industry who have have no consistent employer but can now collectively bargain for superior wages and benefits compared with non-union counterparts.
The economy is steadily recovering now, but is fragile. Rugaber 11/8 - Christopher Rugaber Economics Reporter, Associated Press, “'A struggle and a journey': Report shows US economy recovering,” Christian Science Monitor (Web). Nov. 8, 2021. Accessed Nov. 8, 2021. https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2021/1108/A-struggle-and-a-journey-Report-shows-US-economy-recovering AT America’s employers accelerated their hiring last month, adding a solid 531,000 jobs, the most since July and a sign that the recovery from the pandemic recession is overcoming a virus-induced slowdown.¶ Friday’s report from the labor department also showed that the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 last month from 4.8 in September.¶ That is a comparatively low level though, still well above the pre-pandemic jobless rate of 3.5. And the job gains in August and September weren’t as weak as initially reported: The government increased its estimate of hiring for those two months by a hefty combined 235,000 jobs.¶ All told, the figures point to an economy that is steadily recovering from the pandemic recession, with healthy consumer spending prompting companies in nearly every industry to add workers. Though the effects of COVID-19 are still causing severe supply shortages, heightening inflation, and keeping many people out of the workforce, employers are finding gradually more success in filling near record-high job postings.¶ “This is the kind of recovery we can get when we are not sidelined by a surge in COVID cases,” said Nick Bunker, director of economic research at the employment website Indeed. “The speed of employment gains has faltered at times this year, but the underlying momentum of the U.S. labor market is quite clear.”¶ The better-than-expected jobs report was welcomed on Wall Street, where investors sent stocks further into record territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 200 points, or roughly 0.6, in Friday trading. Short-term Treasury yields rose as some investors moved up their expectations for when the Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates. But longer-term yields dipped amid muted expectations for inflation over the long term.¶ By most barometers, the economic recovery appears solidly on track. Service companies in such areas as retail, banking, and warehousing have reported a sharp jump in sales. Sales of new and existing homes surged last month. And consumer confidence rose in October after three straight declines.¶ At the same time, though, the nation remains 4.2 million jobs short of the number it had before the pandemic flattened the economy in March 2020. The effects of the virus are still discouraging some people from traveling, shopping, eating out, and attending entertainment venues.¶ In October, the pickup in hiring was spread across nearly every major industry, with only government employers reporting a job loss, mostly in education. Shipping and warehousing companies added 54,000 jobs. The battered leisure and hospitality sector, which includes restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues, gained 164,000. Manufacturers, despite their struggles with supply shortages, added 60,000, the most since June 2020.¶ And employers, who have been competing to fill jobs from a diminished pool of applicants, raised wages at a solid clip: Average hourly pay jumped 4.9 in October compared with a year earlier, up from 4.6 the previous month. Even a gain that strong, though, is barely keeping pace with recent surges in consumer inflation.¶ Those price increases pose a headwind for the economy. Higher costs for food, heating oil, rents, and furniture have burdened millions of families. Prices rose 4.4 in September compared with 12 months earlier, the sharpest such jump in three decades.¶ Among people who are receiving pay raises, some of the biggest beneficiaries are the record-high number of people who have been quitting jobs to take new ones. One of them is Christian Frink, who has begun work as a business analyst at a digital consulting firm. In his new job, Mr. Frink of Ferndale, Michigan, helps business clients determine the technologies they need.¶ Earlier this year, Mr. Frink held a marketing job but left it because, like many people during COVID, he felt burnt out. He then worked for Door Dash during the spring and summer to earn money and searched for new work. Although employers were complaining about a labor shortage, several told him they wouldn’t hire anyone without a college degree. (Mr. Frink attended college but didn’t graduate.)¶ This past summer, Mr. Frink took coding classes at Tech Elevator, a boot camp, and then landed his new position. Now, he’s earning 35 more than in his previous job and says he’s “blown away” that he already has health care coverage and doesn’t have to wait months to become eligible.¶ Yet it isn’t only job-switchers who are receiving pay raises. Chad Leibundguth, a regional director in Tampa for the Robert Half staffing agency, said the job market is the strongest for workers he has seen in his 22-year career. Before the pandemic, he said, you could fill a customer service job in Florida for $14 an hour.¶ “Nowadays,” he said, “you’ve got to be closer to $20 an hour, because people have options.”¶ Job prospects are brightening even for people who have been out of work for prolonged periods. The number of long-term unemployed – people who have been jobless for six months or more – has fallen sharply in recent months, to 2.3 million in October from 4.2 million in April. That’s still double the pre-recession total. But it’s an encouraging sign because employers are typically wary of hiring people who haven’t held jobs for an extended time.¶ At the same time, disparities in the job market have persisted. The Black unemployment rate was unchanged in October at 7.9, for example, while for white workers, it fell to 4 from 4.2. The Latino jobless rate dropped to 5.9 from 6.3.¶ And though white-collar jobs in professional services like information technology, engineering, and architecture are nearly back to their pre-pandemic employment levels, leisure and hospitality still has 1.4 million fewer jobs.¶ Hari Ravichandran, CEO of digital security provider Aura in Boston, says his 800-person company has 140 positions open, mostly in software development.¶ Mr. Ravichandran is willing to hire remote workers; 170 of his staffers have never regularly worked in any of the company’s buildings. Still, hiring remains as tough as he’s ever experienced.¶ One disappointing note in Friday’s report is that the workforce – the number of people either working or looking for a job – was unchanged in October. That suggested that the reopening of schools in September, the waning of the virus, and the expiration of a $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement have yet to coax many people off the sidelines of the job market in large numbers.¶ Drawing many people back into the workforce after recessions is typically a prolonged process. There are now 7.4 million people officially out of work – just 1.7 million more than in February 2020, before the pandemic struck the economy. Yet millions more who lost jobs during the recession have given up their job hunts, and employers might have to raise pay and benefits to draw them back in, said Aaron Sojourner, a labor economist at the University of Minnesota.¶ Even so, some companies still can’t find enough workers. Many parents, particularly mothers, haven’t returned to the workforce after having left jobs during the pandemic to care for children or other relatives. Yet there was evidence of a small rebound last month: The proportion of women who were either working or looking for work rose after two months of declines. Strikes cause widespread economic harm - GM strikes prove. John McElroy, 2019, Strikes Hurt Everybody.Wards Auto Industry News, October 25, https://www.wardsauto.com/ideaxchange/strikes-hurt-everybody But strikes don’t just hurt the people walking the picket lines or the company they’re striking against. They hurt suppliers, car dealers and the communities located near the plants. The Anderson Economic Group estimates that 75,000 workers at supplier companies were temporarily laid off because of the GM strike. Unlike UAW picketers, those supplier workers won’t get any strike pay or an $11,000 contract signing bonus. No, most of them lost close to a month’s worth of wages, which must be financially devastating for them. Suppliers also lost a lot of money. So now they’re cutting budgets and delaying capital investments to make up for the lost revenue, which is a further drag on the economy. According to CAR, the communities and states where GM’s plants are located collectively lost a couple of hundred million dollars in payroll and tax revenue. Some economists warn that if the strike were prolonged it could knock the state of Michigan – home to GM and the UAW – into a recession. That prompted the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, to call GM CEO Mary Barra and UAW leaders and urge them to settle as fast as possible. Strikes now trigger food shortages, undermine health care and threaten the economy. Shannon Pettypiece, 10-24, 21, Biden on the sidelines of 'Striketober,' with economy in the balance, NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-sidelines-striketober-economy-balance-n1282094 But President Biden faces a different dynamic from candidate Biden, because strikes risk adding to labor shortages and supply chain disruptions that are already driving up prices as the global economy reels from pandemic strains. While the strikes could benefit workers by driving up wages in the long term, the near-term impact of persistent or growing work stoppages could include worst-case scenarios like food shortages or lack of access to hospitals. "This will come at an economic cost to employers and therefore the economy, and I think that may be why Biden has gone a little silent," said Ariel Avgar, an associate professor of labor relations, law and history at Cornell University. "It is tricky for him. On the one hand, he is on the record supporting unions and their ability to use collective action. On the other hand, the point of strikes is to extract an economic price for employers unwilling to negotiate in a way the union feels is appropriate." Economic downturns devastate people’s lives. EPI ’09 – Economic Policy Institute, “Economic Scarring: The long-term impacts of the recession,” Economic Policy Institute (Web). Briefing Paper #243. Sept. 30, 2009. Accessed Nov. 8, 2021. https://www.epi.org/publication/bp243/ AT Economic recessions are often portrayed as short-term events. However, as a substantial body of economic literature shows, the consequences of high unemployment, falling incomes, and reduced economic activity can have lasting consequences. For example, job loss and falling incomes can force families to delay or forgo a college education for their children. Frozen credit markets and depressed consumer spending can stop the creation of otherwise vibrant small businesses. Larger companies may delay or reduce spending on RandD.¶ In each of these cases, an economic recession can lead to “scarring”—that is, long-lasting damage to individuals’ economic situations and the economy more broadly. This report examines some of the evidence demonstrating the long-run consequences of recessions. Findings include:¶ Educational achievement: Unemployment and income losses can reduce educational achievement by threatening early childhood nutrition; reducing families’ abilities to provide a supportive learning environment (including adequate health care, summer activities, and stable housing); and by forcing a delay or abandonment of college plans.¶ Opportunity: Recession-induced job and income losses can have lasting consequences on individuals and families. The increase in poverty that will occur as a result of the recession, for example, will have lasting consequences for kids, and will impose long-lasting costs on the economy.¶ Private investment: Total non-residential investment is down by 20 from peak levels through the second quarter of 2009. The reduction in investment will lead to reduced production capacity for years to come. Furthermore, since technology is often embedded in new capital equipment, the investment slowdown can also be expected to reduce the adoption of new innovations.¶ Entrepreneurial activity and business formation: New and small businesses are often at the forefront of technological advancement. With the credit crunch and the reduction in consumer demand, small businesses are seeing a double squeeze. For example, in 2008, 43,500 businesses filed for bankruptcy, up from 28,300 businesses in 2007 and more than double the 19,700 filings in 2006. Only 21 active firms had an initial public offering in 2008, down from an average of 163 in the four years prior.¶ There is also substantial evidence that economic outcomes are passed across generations. As such, economic hardships for parents will mean more economic hurdles for their children. While it is often said that deficits can cause transfers of wealth from future generations of taxpayers to the present, this cost must also be compared with the economic consequences of recessions that are also passed to future generations.¶ This analysis also suggests that efforts to stimulate the economy can be very effective over both the short- and long-run. Using a simple illustrative accounting framework, it is shown that an economic stimulus can lead to a short-run boost in output that outweighs the additional interest costs of the associated debt increase. This is especially true over a short horizon.¶ A recession, therefore, should not be thought of as a one-time event that stresses individuals and families for a couple of years. Rather, economic downturns will impact the future prospects of all family members, including children, and will have consequences for years to come.
11/15/21
SO-Covid Neg
Tournament: Heart of Texas | Round: 2 | Opponent: Ellika LeSage | Judge: Joe Kieklak Novice NC I negate the resolution.
Because the resolution asks what we ought to do, my value is Morality.
The criterion for determining morality is minimizing suffering. No coherent theory of justice or morality can deny that suffering is morally bad. Each of us knows from our own experiences that suffering is a moral evil, and that other people experience suffering in the same way we do. Therefore, if we regard everyone’s pain as morally equal, we are obligated to minimize the amount of suffering people experience.
Moreover, maximizing utility is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human dignity. Cummiskey ’90 - David Cummiskey. Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College.Kantian Consequentialism. Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 3. 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810.
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (GMM 429). Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based rationale. But we have seen that Kant’s normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have “dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth” that transcends any market value (GMM 436), but persons also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7). The concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many.
Contention 1: Innovation Intellectual property is critical to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research – it’s also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines, economic decline, and future fatal diseases. Macdole and Ezell 4-29: Jaci Mcdole and Stephen Ezell {Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade. McDole holds a double BA in Music Business and Radio-Television with a minor in Marketing, an MS in Education, and a JD with a specialization in intellectual property (Southern Illinois University Carbondale). McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research, an organization she co-founded to study and further robust global IP policies. Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He comes to ITIF from Peer Insight, an innovation research and consulting firm he cofounded in 2003 to study the practice of innovation in service industries. At Peer Insight, Ezell led the Global Service Innovation Consortium, published multiple research papers on service innovation, and researched national service innovation policies being implemented by governments worldwide. Prior to forming Peer Insight, Ezell worked in the New Service Development group at the NASDAQ Stock Market, where he spearheaded the creation of the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk and the NASDAQ Corporate Services Network, services for NASDAQ-listed corporations. Previously, Ezell cofounded two successful innovation ventures, the high-tech services firm Brivo Systems and Lynx Capital, a boutique investment bank. Ezell holds a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an honors certificate from Georgetown’s Landegger International Business Diplomacy program.}, 21 - ("Ten Ways Ip Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain The World Through The Pandemic," Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4-29-2021, https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through)//marlborough-wr/ To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges, this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations, technical fields, and firm sizes. This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a U.S.-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services, small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic. Some have adapted existing innovations, while others have developed novel solutions. All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future. The case studies are: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin Gilead: Remdesivir LumiraDX: SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio: Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniería Médica: CápsulaXE Surgical Theater: Precision VR Tombot: Jennie Starship Technologies: Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies: Proximity Trace Zoom: Video Conferencing As the case studies show, IP is critical to enabling innovation. Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections are—and remain—in place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care, workplace, and societal challenges in the future. THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RandD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets, such as IP rights, comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SandP 500 companies in 2018.4 For start-ups, this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this). IP also plays an especially important role for RandD-intensive industries.5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry, it is characterized by high-risk, time-consuming, and expensive processes including basic research, drug discovery, pre-clinical trials, three stages of human clinical trials, regulatory review, and post-approval research and safety monitoring. The drug development process spans an average of 11.5 to 15 years.6 For every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases, approximately 250 molecular compounds, or 2.5 to 5 percent, make it to preclinical testing. Out of those 250 molecular compounds, approximately 5 make it to clinical testing. That is, 0.05 to 0.1 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials. Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing, less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).7 In addition to high risks, drug development is costly, and the expenses associated with it are increasing. A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent.8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RandD, and most confirm investing in new drug development requires $1.7 billion to $3.2 billion up front on average.9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines, stating, “In general, vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars, can take over 10 years to complete, and has an average 94 percent chance of failure.”10 Yet, a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugs—that is, the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDA—made less than their capitalized RandD costs.11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry.12 To say the least, biopharmaceutical RandD represents a high-stakes, long-term endeavor with precarious returns. Without IP protection, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RandD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred. Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RandD which means less research into cancer drugs, Alzheimer cures, vaccines, and more. IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult, risky, and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations, which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RandD costs of a given drug, but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future.13 THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO INNOVATION Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard, the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored, or vitiated. Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term “COVID-19 innovations” to include everything from vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE to biotechnology, AI-related data, and educational materials.14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report. However, much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RandD incentives. Although RandD is an important aspect of IP, as previously mentioned, these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can be—and often is—used for other purposes, including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and, more importantly, using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products. This report highlights but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. In 2018, Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world.15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products, which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic, proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains.16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and cleaning and sanitizing products.17 Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines. 18 In Mexico, fake vaccines sold for approximately $1,000 per dose.19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants.20 Meanwhile, dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down.21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals. The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered $48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products.22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population. In countries with strong IP protection, the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower. This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue, and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks, trade secrets, and licensing agreements. This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products. By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP, voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate, while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products. Throughout this difficult time, the world has seen unexpected collaborations, especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen, Inc. Throughout history, and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution, IP has contributed toward greater economic growth.23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery. A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong, positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance.24 It states that “IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe,” with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (€6.6 trillion; US$7.9 trillion).25 The study also shows 38.9 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries, and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee, especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises.26 That concords with the United States, where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than $6 trillion dollars to, or 38.2 percent of, GDP.27 In 2020, global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275,900 filings amidst the pandemic, growing 4 percent from 2019.28 The top-four nations, which accounted for 180,530 of the patent applications, were China, the United States, Japan, and Korea, respectively.29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications, with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent, respectively.30 The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a lot of things, but it certainly couldn’t stop innovation. There are at least five principal benefits strong IP rights can generate, for both developing and developed countries alike.31 First, stronger IP protection spurs the virtuous cycle of innovation by increasing the appropriability of returns, enabling economic gain and catalyzing economic growth. Second, through patents—which require innovators to disclose certain knowledge as a condition of protection—knowledge spillovers build a platform of knowledge that enables other innovators. For instance, studies have found that the rate of return to society from corporate RandD and innovation activities is at least twice the estimated returns that each company itself receives.32 Third, countries with robust IP can operate more efficiently and productively by using IP to determine product quality and reduce transaction costs. Fourth, trade and foreign direct investment enabled and encouraged by strong IP protection offered to enterprises from foreign countries facilitates an accumulation of knowledge capital within the destination economy. That matters when foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of productivity growth in most countries.33 There’s also evidence suggesting that developing nations with stronger IP protections enjoy the earlier introduction of innovative new medicines.34 And fifth, strong IP boosts exports, including in developing countries.35 Research shows a positive correlation between stronger IP protection and exports from developing countries as well as faster growth rates of certain industries.36 The following case studies illustrate these benefits of IP and how they’ve enabled innovative solutions to help global society navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Reducing IP protections sets a precedent that spills over to future public health crises. – Hopkins 21: Jared S. Hopkins {Jared S. Hopkins is a New York-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the pharmaceutical industry, including companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck and Co. He previously was a health-care reporter at Bloomberg News and an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Jared started his career at The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho covering politics. In 2014, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award For Young Journalists for an investigation into charities founded by professional athletes. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series about neglect at a residential facility for disabled kids. Jared graduated from the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park with a bachelor's degree in journalism}, 21 - ("U.S. Support for Patent Waiver Unlikely to Cost Covid-19 Vaccine Makers in Short Term ," WSJ, 5-7-2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-support-for-patent-waiver-unlikely-to-cost-covid-19-vaccine-makers-in-short-term-11620414260)//marlborough-wr/ The Biden administration’s unexpected support for temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents won’t have an immediate financial impact on the companies making the shots, industry officials and analysts said. Yet the decision could mark a shift in Washington’s longstanding support of the industry’s valuable intellectual property, patent-law experts said. A waiver, if it does go into effect, may pose long-term risks to the vaccine makers, analysts said. Moderna Inc., MRNA -4.12 Pfizer Inc. PFE -3.10 and other vaccine makers weren’t counting on sales from the developing countries that would gain access to the vaccine technology, analysts said. If patents and other crucial product information behind the technology is made available, it would take at least several months before shots were produced, industry officials said. Yet long-term Covid-19 sales could take a hit if other companies and countries gained access to the technologies and figured out how to use it. Western drugmakers could also confront competition sooner for other medicines they are hoping to make using the technologies. A World Trade Organization waiver could also set a precedent for waiving patents for other medicines, a long-sought goal of some developing countries, patient groups and others to try to reduce the costs of prescription drugs. “It sets a tremendous precedent of waiving IP rights that’s likely going to come up in future pandemics or in other serious diseases,” said David Silverstein, a patent lawyer at Axinn, Veltrop and Harkrider LLP who advises drugmakers. “Other than that, this is largely symbolic.” Contention 2: Counterfeits Intellectual property protections are key to stopping counterfeits. Kilbride 2020 Patrick, vice president of International Intellectual Property for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, IP Watchdog, "Calls for WTO to Suspend IP Rights for Vaccine Innovation Would Jeopardize Incredible Progress" December 9, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/12/09/calls-wto-suspend-ip-rights-vaccine-innovation-jeopardize-incredible-progress/id=128085/ Finally: A safe, legitimate marketplace. Patents facilitate a market for innovative medicines, throughout the development stage, as well as in commercialization. Licensing arrangements facilitate the types of collaborations that have proven so successful in 2020; they also ensure that third-party manufacturers are making, using, and selling COVID-19 solutions safely and ethically. Without it, counterfeiters and other bad actors could put shoddy, unreliable, and downright dangerous dupes on the market, all the while marketing them as legitimate products. It’s literally a matter of life and death: Thousands, if not millions, of people die each year at the hands of counterfeit drugs. This is a catastrophic outcome, because increased vaccine hesitancy means you’ll never solve. Baschuk 2021 Bryce, reporter for Bloomberg News, "Covid-19 pandemic: WTO holiday from vaccine talks draws calls for action" July 26, https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/covid-19-pandemic-wto-holiday-from-vaccine-talks-draws-calls-for-action-121072601721_1.html Specifically, opponents to the waiver say it would create a chaotic patchwork of laws, unravel existing industry partnerships, lead to a supply crunch for scarce vaccine inputs and inject even more uncertainty into already complex arrangements.¶ There’s also the possibility that an IP waiver could result in the production of counterfeit and substandard medicines, which could increase vaccine hesitancy that’s already pervasive in even the world’s wealthiest nations. Contention 3: Public Funding is a Better Alternative If high income countries provide direct government support of efforts to solve public health crises, we don’t need to take away the intellectual property rights that protect innovation. Lindsay 6/11 - Brink Lindsay, Brookings, 6-11, 2021, Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ Waiving patent protections is certainly no panacea. What is needed most urgently is a massive drive of technology transfer, capacity expansion, and supply line coordination to bring vaccine supply in line with global demand. Dispensing with patents in no way obviates the need for governments to fund and oversee this effort.¶ Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is¶ currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference.¶ Furthermore, and probably even more important, this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Urbanization, the spread of factory-farming methods, and globalization all combine to increase the odds that a new virus will make the jump from animals to humans and then spread rapidly around the world. Prior to the current pandemic, the 21st century already saw outbreaks of SARS, H1N1, MERS, and Ebola. Everything we do and learn in the current crisis should be viewed from the perspective of getting ready for next time.¶ The Nature of the Patent Bargain¶ When we take the longer view, we can see a fundamental mismatch between the policy design of intellectual property protection and the policy requirements of effective pandemic response. Although patent law, properly restrained, constitutes one important element of a well-designed national innovation system, the way it goes about encouraging technological progress is singularly ill-suited to the emergency conditions of a pandemic or other public health crisis. Securing a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments would thus establish a salutary precedent that, in emergencies of this kind, governments should employ other, more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs.¶ Here is the basic bargain offered by patent law: encourage the creation of useful new ideas for the long run by slowing the diffusion of useful new ideas in the short run. The second half of the bargain, the half that imposes costs on society, comes from the temporary exclusive rights, or monopoly privileges, that a patent holder enjoys. Under U.S. patent law, for a period of 20 years nobody else can manufacture or sell the patented product without the permission of the patent holder. This allows the patent holder to block competitors from the market, or extract licensing fees before allowing them to enter, and consequently charge above-market prices to its customers. Patent rights thus slow the diffusion of a new invention by restricting output and raising prices.¶ The imposition of these short-run costs, however, can bring net long-term benefits by sharpening the incentives to invent new products. In the absence of patent protection, the prospect of easy imitation by later market entrants can deter would-be innovators from incurring the up-front fixed costs of research and development. But with a guaranteed period of market exclusivity, inventors can proceed with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment.¶ For the tradeoff between costs and benefits to come out positive on net, patent law must strike the right balance. Exclusive rights should be valuable enough to encourage greater innovation, but not so easily granted or extensive in scope or term that this encouragement is outweighed by output restrictions on the patented product and discouragement of downstream innovations dependent on access to the patented technology.¶ Unfortunately, the U.S. patent system at present is out of balance. Over the past few decades, the expansion of patentability to include software and business methods as well as a general relaxation of patenting requirements have led to wildly excessive growth in these temporary monopolies: the number of patents granted annually has¶ skyrocketed roughly fivefold since the early 1980s. One unfortunate result has been the rise of “non-practicing entities,” better known as patent trolls: firms that make nothing themselves but buy up patent portfolios and monetize them through aggressive litigation. As a result, a law that is supposed to encourage innovation has turned into a¶ legal minefield for many would-be innovators. In the pharmaceutical industry, firms have abused the law by piling up patents for trivial, therapeutically irrelevant “innovations” that allow them to¶ extend their monopolies and keep raising prices long beyond the statutorily contemplated 20 years.¶ Patent law is creating these unintended consequences because policymakers have been caught in an ideological fog that¶ conflates “intellectual property” with actual property rights over physical objects. Enveloped in that fog, they regard any attempts to put limits on patent monopolies as attacks on private property and view ongoing expansions of patent privileges as necessary to keep innovation from grinding to a halt. In fact, patent law is a tool of regulatory policy with the usual tradeoffs between costs and benefits; like all tools, it can be misused, and as with all tools there are some jobs for which other tools are better suited. A well-designed patent system, in which benefits are maximized and costs kept to a minimum, is just one of various policy options that governments can employ to stimulate technological advance—including tax credits for RandD, prizes for targeted inventions, and direct government support.¶ Public Health Emergencies and Direct Government Support¶ For pandemics and other public health emergencies, patents’ mix of costs and benefits is misaligned with what is needed for an effective policy response. The basic patent bargain, even when well struck, is to pay for more innovation down the road with slower diffusion of innovation today. In the context of a pandemic, that bargain is a bad one and should be rejected entirely. Here the imperative is to accelerate the diffusion of vaccines and other treatments, not slow it down. Giving drug companies the power to hold things up by blocking competitors and raising prices pushes in the completely wrong direction. What approach to encouraging innovation should we take instead? How do we incentivize drug makers to undertake the hefty RandD costs to develop new vaccines without giving them exclusive rights over their production and sale? The most effective approach during a public health crisis is direct government support: public funding of RandD, advance purchase commitments by the government to buy large numbers of doses at set prices, and other, related payouts. And when we pay drug makers, we should not hesitate to pay generously, even extravagantly: we want to offer drug companies big profits so that they prioritize this work above everything else, and so that they are ready and eager to come to the rescue again the next time there’s a crisis. It was direct support via Operation Warp Speed that made possible the astonishingly rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and then facilitated a relatively rapid rollout of vaccine distribution (relative, that is, to most of the rest of the world). And it’s worth noting that a major reason for the faster rollout here and in the United Kingdom compared to the European Union was the latter’s misguided penny-pinching. The EU bargained hard with firms to keep vaccine prices low, and as a result their citizens ended up in the back of the queue as various supply line kinks were being ironed out. This is particularly ironic since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed in Germany. As this fact underscores, the chief advantage of direct support isn’t to “get tough” with drug firms and keep a lid on their profits. Instead, it is to accelerate the end of the public health emergency by making sure drug makers profit handsomely from doing the right thing. Patent law and direct support should be seen not as either-or alternatives but as complements that apply different incentives to different circumstances and time horizons. Patent law provides a decentralized system for encouraging innovation. The government doesn’t presume to tell the industry which new drugs are needed; it simply incentivizes the development of whatever new drugs that pharmaceutical firms can come up with by offering them a temporary monopoly. It is important to note that patent law’s incentives offer no commercial guarantees. Yes, you can block other competitors for a number of years, but that still doesn’t ensure enough consumer demand for the new product to make it profitable. The situation is different in a pandemic. Here the government knows exactly what it wants to incentivize: the creation of vaccines to prevent the spread of a specific virus and other drugs to treat that virus. Under these circumstances, the decentralized approach isn’t good enough. There is no time to sit back and let drug makers take the initiative on their own timeline. Instead, the government needs to be more involved to incentivize specific innovations now. As recompense for letting it call the shots (pardon the pun), the government sweetens the deal for drug companies by insulating them from commercial risk. If pharmaceutical firms develop effective vaccines and therapies, the government will buy large, predetermined quantities at prices set high enough to guarantee a healthy return. For the pharmaceutical industry, it is useful to conceive of patent law as the default regime for innovation promotion. It improves pharmaceutical companies’ incentives to develop new drugs while leaving them free to decide which new drugs to pursue – and also leaving them to bear all commercial risk. In a pandemic or other emergency, however, it is appropriate to shift to the direct support regime, in which the government focuses efforts on one disease. In this regime, it is important to note, the government provides qualitatively superior incentives to those offered under patent law. Not only does it offer public funding to cover the up-front costs of drug development, but it also provides advance purchase commitments that guarantee a healthy return. It should therefore be clear that the pharmaceutical industry has no legitimate basis for objecting to a TRIPS waiver. Since, because of the public health crisis, drug makers now qualify for the superior benefits of direct government support, they no longer need the default benefits of patent support. Arguments that a TRIPS waiver would deprive drug makers of the incentives they need to keep developing new drugs, when they are presently receiving the most favorable incentives available, can be dismissed as the worst sort of special pleading. That said, it is a serious mistake to try to cast the current crisis as a morality play in which drug makers wear the black hats and the choice at hand is between private profits and public health. We would have no chance of beating this virus without the formidable organizational capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry, and providing the appropriate incentives is essential to ensure that the industry plays its necessary and vital role. It is misguided to lament that private companies are profiting in the current crisis: those profits are a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering cost of this pandemic in lives and economic damage. What matters isn’t the existence or size of the profits, but how they are earned. We have good reason to want drug makers to profit from vaccinating the world: the comparative price is minuscule, and the incentive effects are a vital safeguard of public health in the event of future crises. What we want to avoid at all costs is putting drug makers in the position where drug companies can profit from standing in the way of rapid global vaccination. That is why intellectual property rights need to be taken out of the equation. Vaccinating the world in any kind of reasonable time frame will require large-scale technology transfer to drug firms in other countries and rapid expansion of their production capacity. And looking beyond the current pandemic to the longer term, we need ample, redundant global vaccine production capacity that is widely distributed around the planet. To achieve these goals as rapidly as possible will require the active cooperation of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which is why the direct support model now needs to be extended. What is needed now is an Operation Warp Speed for the world, in which we make it worth current vaccine producers’ while to share their know-how broadly and ramp up global capacity. Here again, we must recognize that the choice isn’t between people on the one hand and profits on the other. Rather, the key to good pandemic response policy is ensuring that incentives are structured so that drug company profit-seeking and global public health are well aligned. That means opting out of the default, decentralized patent bargain in favor of generous but well-focused direct government support.
10/16/21
SO-Covid Neg
Tournament: Meadows Novice Scrimmage | Round: 4 | Opponent: Peninsula-AJ | Judge: Sam Gustavson AT Covid-19 AC
The Innovation contention that I read proves that the affirmative makes it more difficult to solve the pandemic. By reducing intellectual property protections, the affirmative takes away the incentive for companies to create new medicines, including better vaccines to combat emerging variants. The affirmative can’t solve for the pandemic.
Intellectual property does not serve as a barrier to vaccines in most countries. The fact that they are not manufacturing vaccines shows that they can’t manufacture one without transfer of technology, which the affirmative cannot do. Mercurio 21 Mercurio 2/12 - Bryan Mercurio; Chinese University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law, ; 2-12-2021; "Wto Waiver From Intellectual Property Protection For Covid-19 Vaccines And Treatments: A Critical Review (February 12, 2021)”; Virginia Journal Of International Law Online (Forthcoming 2021), Available At Ssrn: Https://Ssrn.Com/Abstract=3789820 Or Http://Dx.Doi.Org/10.2139/Ssrn.3789820"; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3789820, accessed 7-21-2021; JPark Second, the proposed waiver will do nothing to address the problem of lack of capacity or the transfer of technology and goodwill. Pharmaceutical companies have not applied for patents in the majority of developing countries – in such countries, any manufacturer is free to produce and market the vaccine inside the territory of that country or to export the vaccine to other countries where patents have not been filed.33 Patents cannot be the problem in the countries where no patent applications have been filed, but the lack of production in such countries points to the real problem – these countries lack manufacturing capacity and capability. While advanced pharmaceutical companies will have the technology, know-how and readiness to manufacture, store and transport complex vaccine formulations, such factories and logistics exist in only a handful of countries.34 Regardless of whether an IP waiver is granted, the remaining countries will be left without enhanced vaccine access and still reliant on imported supplies. With prices for the vaccine already very low, it is doubtful that generic suppliers will be able to provide the vaccine at significantly lower prices. Under such a scenario, the benefit of the waiver would go not to the countries in need but to the generic supplier who would not need to pay the licence fee or royalty to the innovator. Thus, the waiver would simply serve to benefit advanced generic manufacturers, most of which are located in a handful of countries, including China and Brazil as well as (unsurprisingly) India and South Africa. Countries would perhaps be better off obtaining the vaccine from suppliers that have negotiated a voluntary licence from the patent holder, as such licences include provisions for the transfer of technology, know-how and ongoing quality assurance support. 2. Existing licensing proves that the reason countries cannot create the vaccine is the supply of raw materials, not intellectual property. This means that the affirmative can’t eliminate all barriers to production. Tabarrok 21 - Alex Tabarrok (Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and am a professor of economics at George Mason University). “Patents are Not the Problem!” Marginal Revolution. 6 May 2021. JDN. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/05/ip-is-not-the-constraint.html For the last year and a half I have been shouting from the rooftops, “invest in capacity, build more factories, shore up the supply lines, spend billions to save trillions.” Fortunately, some boffins in the Biden administration have found a better way, “the US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic.”¶ Waive IP protections. So simple. Why didn’t I think of that???¶ Patents are not the problem. All of the vaccine manufacturers are trying to increase supply as quickly as possible. Billions of doses are being produced–more than ever before in the history of the world. Licenses are widely available. AstraZeneca have licensed their vaccine for production with manufactures around the world, including in India, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, China and South Africa. JandJ’s vaccine has been licensed for production by multiple firms in the United States as well as with firms in Spain, South Africa and France. Sputnik has been licensed for production by firms in India, China, South Korea, Brazil and pending EMA approval with firms in Germany and France. Sinopharm has been licensed in the UAE, Egypt and Bangladesh. Novavax has licensed its vaccine for production in South Korea, India, and Japan and it is desperate to find other licensees but technology transfer isn’t easy and there are limited supplies of raw materials:¶ Virtually overnight, Novavax set up a network of outside manufacturers more ambitious than one outside executive said he’s ever seen, but they struggled at times to transfer their technology there amid pandemic travel restrictions. They were kicked out of one factory by the same government that’s bankrolled their effort. Competing with larger competitors, they’ve found themselves short on raw materials as diverse as Chilean tree bark and bioreactor bags. They signed a deal with India’s Serum Institute to produce many of their COVAX doses but now face the realistic chance that even when Serum gets to full capacity — and they are behind — India’s government, dealing with the world’s worst active outbreak, won’t let the shots leave the country.¶ Plastic bags are a bigger bottleneck than patents. The US embargo on vaccine supplies to India was precisely that the Biden administration used the DPA to prioritize things like bioreactor bags and filters to US suppliers and that meant that India’s Serum Institute was having trouble getting its production lines ready for Novavax. CureVac, another potential mRNA vaccine, is also finding it difficult to find supplies due to US restrictions (which means supplies are short everywhere). As Derek Lowe said:¶ Abolishing patents will not provide more shaker bags or more Chilean tree bark, nor provide more of the key filtration materials needed for production. These processes have a lot of potential choke points and rate-limiting steps in them, and there is no wand that will wave that complexity away.¶ Technology transfer has been difficult for AstraZeneca–which is one reason they have had production difficulties–and their vaccine uses relatively well understood technology. The mRNA technology is new and has never before been used to produce at scale. Pfizer and Moderna had to build factories and distribution systems from scratch. There are no mRNA factories idling on the sidelines. If there were, Moderna or Pfizer would be happy to license since they are producing in their own factories 24 hours a day, seven days a week (monopolies restrict supply, remember?). Why do you think China hasn’t yet produced an mRNA vaccine? Hint: it isn’t fear about violating IP. Moreover, even Moderna and Pfizer don’t yet fully understand their production technology, they are learning by doing every single day. Moderna has said that they won’t enforce their patents during the pandemic but no one has stepped up to produce because no one else can.¶ The US trade representative’s announcement is virtue signaling to the anti-market left and will do little to nothing to increase supply.
3. There are too many legal barriers for the affirmative’s plan to work, but the status quo solves through cooperation and competition. Mercurio 6/24 Bryan Mercurio Simon F.S. Li Professor of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, 6-24-2021, "The IP Waiver for COVID-19: Bad Policy, Bad Precedent," IIC - International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40319-021-01083-5 accessed 8/12/2021 JH The role of intellectual property rights (IPRs) and access to medicines is contentious. On the one hand, IPRs encourage investment, innovation and the advancement of health science. On the other hand, the limited-term monopoly rights can result in artificially high prices and become a barrier to access to medicines. While the wisdom of the IPRs system has at times been tested, it has proven its value in the current COVID-19 pandemic as IPRs played a large role in the rapid (and unprecedented) development and availability of multiple vaccines. Despite the success, India and South Africa proposed that the World Trade Organization (WTO) waive IPRs under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) in order to increase access to vaccines and other COVID-19-related technologies.Footnote1 ¶The proposal, tabled at a meeting of the TRIPS Council in October 2020, calls on Members to waive IPRs relating to and having an impact on the “prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19”.Footnote2 The proposal attracted support from the majority of developing country Members,Footnote3 but was opposed by a handful of Members including the United States (US).Footnote4 Given that consensus could not be reached within the deadline of 90 days as set out in Art. IX:3 of the Agreement Establishing the WTO, Members agreed to keep the waiver proposal on the agenda of the TRIPS Council in 2021.Footnote5 ¶On 5 May 2021, the US reversed its position and announced that it would support a waiver for COVID-19 vaccines.Footnote6 To be clear, this does not mean that the US supported the waiver as proposed by India and South Africa. Instead, the US has simply agreed to negotiate the perimeters of a waiver. Others, including the European Union (EU), Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom (UK) and even leading developing countries such as Brazil, Chile and Mexico remain opposed or lukewarm on the waiver.Footnote7 The US dropping opposition does not mean the concerns of other Members will simply disappear – one would hope that these nations opposed the waiver for valid reasons and did not simply blindly follow the US. Indeed, many of the above-listed Members remain unconvinced that even such a draconian step as a waiver of IPRs would accomplish the goal of increased vaccine production.Footnote8 For its part, the EU continues to favour an approach which makes better use of existing flexibilities available in the TRIPS Agreement.Footnote9 ¶Thus, those expecting quick agreement on the waiver will be disappointed. Negotiations at the WTO are always difficult and lengthy, and US Trade Representative Katherine Tai acknowledged that the “negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved”.Footnote10 Issues of negotiation will include the scope of the waiver. Whereas the original proposal and its amended form extend the waiver beyond patents and vaccines to include nearly all forms of IP (i.e. copyright,Footnote11 industrial designs and trade secrets) as well as to all “health products and technologies including diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, medical devices, personal protective equipment, their materials or components, and their methods and means of manufacture for the prevention, treatment or containment of COVID-19”Footnote12 (with no requirement on how or the extent to which they are related to or useful in combatting COVID-19), the US and others seem to support a waiver limited to patents and vaccines.Footnote13 The length of the waiver will also be a contentious negotiating issue, with proponents seeking a virtual indefinite waiver lasting until the Membership agrees by consensus that it is no longer required – meaning even a single Member’s objection to ending the waiver would mean the waiver continues to remain in forceFootnote14 – as will the request that any action claimed to be taken under the waiver is outside the scope of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism.Footnote15 These provisions will almost certainly be opposed by other Members, who would perhaps agree to a time-limited waiver which could be extended rather than an unchallengeable indefinite waiver which will be difficult to reverse. The proposal also fails to mention anything in relation to transparency and notification requirements and lacks safeguards against abuse or diversion. These points will likely also prove contentious in the negotiations. ¶With so many initial divergences and as yet undiscussed issues, the negotiations at best could be completed by the time of the next WTO Ministerial Conference, scheduled to begin on 20 November 2021. There is precedent in this regard, as previous TRIPS negotiations involving IP and pharmaceuticals were not fully resolved until the days before the Ministerial Conferences (in 2003 and 2005).Footnote16 There is also a chance that the negotiations will continue past the calendar year 2021. ¶The chance for a swift negotiation diminished with the release of a revised proposal by India and South Africa on 22 May 2021. As mentioned above, the proposal contains no limit as to product coverage, scope, notification requirements or safeguards and proposes that the waiver will remain in effect for what could be an indefinite period. This was not a proposal designed to engender quick negotiations and a solution. Instead, the proposal perhaps reveals India’s and South Africa’s true intent to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to roll-back IPRs rather than a good-faith effort to rapidly increase access to lifesaving vaccines and treatments around the world. ¶It is not only the length of time which is an issue but also the ultimate impact of the waiver. A waiver simply means that a WTO Member would not be in violation of its WTO obligations if it does not protect and enforce the COVID-19-related IPRs for the duration of the waiver. The waiver would thus allow Members to deviate from their international obligations but not obligate Members to suspend protection and enforcement of the IPRs. Members like the US who support the waiver may not implement the necessary domestic legislation to waive IPRs within the jurisdiction. It is questionable whether the US could even legally implement the waiver given that IPRs are a matter of constitutional law.Footnote17 ¶The US announcement remains meaningful, however, for two reasons. First, it signals a departure from the longstanding and bipartisan support for the pharmaceutical industry, which for decades has been instrumental in setting the IP and trade agenda.Footnote18 Second, it sends a strong signal that the US does not oppose others from waiving patent protection for vaccines. This shift may also be part of a broader and alternative strategy to increase vaccine production and distribution, whereby the US is not viewing or supporting waiver negotiations as a legal tool but more so as a threat to encourage vaccine innovators to increase production. In essence, the desired reaction would be that the IP holders increase efforts to license, transfer technology and expand manufacturing – exactly what the world needs at this time. ¶Alan Beattie, writing in the Financial Times, believes that even the proponents of the waiver desire this outcome: “having talked to the proponents, the original proposal was always a tactical position designed to start a debate, identify possible support and flush out opponents rather than a likely outcome. To that end, it seems to have worked rather well.”Footnote19 India’s negotiator to the TRIPS Agreement and longtime WTO staffer, Jayashree Watal, agrees, stating the proposal is an “indirect attempt to put pressure on the original manufacturers to cooperate and license production to companies in their countries”.Footnote20 This view makes sense, as the proponents (and their supporters) have not even pointed to one credible instance where IPRs have blocked the production of a COVID-19 vaccine. Moreover, it is well known that the leading vaccines using mRNA are difficult to reproduce and having the “blueprints” does not guarantee safe and effective production. Simply stated, if a pastry chef provides instructions on how to bake a cake, the cake they bake is still going to be better than cakes baked by novices using the exact same recipe. The know-how and trade secrets are the key ingredient to the manufacture of quality, safe and effective pharmaceuticals or vaccines, and not only is it not transferred through compulsory licenses but it is hard to imagine how any government would force the transfer of such information even under a waiver. For this reason, instead of encouraging production everywhere – including in locations where safety and efficacy standards are virtually nonexistent – and accepting that there will be a flood of substandard vaccines coming onto the world market (with devastating effects) it is much more sensible to find out where potential manufacturing capabilities exist and find ways to exploit them and scale them up. ¶When asked if a waiver would improve vaccine availability and equity, Watal responded: “No. It won’t. That’s clear.”Footnote21 I share Watal’s view and do not support a TRIPS waiver for IPRs or even a limited waiver for patents. With evidence mounting that “what the proposal … will definitely not achieve is speeding up the Covid-19 vaccination rate in India or other parts of the Global South”Footnote22 I refuse to sacrifice academic integrity by supporting a proposal simply because it is gaining traction in some circles.Footnote23 IPRs played a key role in delivering vaccines within a year of the discovery of a new pathogen; it seems inexplicable that the world would abandon the system without any evidence that IPRs are limiting during the current crisis.Footnote24 Moreover, innovators have been generous in licensing technology transfer and production and one would be hard-pressed to find credible reports of qualified generic producers being refused a license. This is not surprising, since multiple competing vaccines are on the market it simply does not make economic sense for innovators to refuse a license – the generic manufacturer would simply obtain a license (and market share) and pay royalties to a competitor. ¶Instead, I support efforts to enable prompt and effective use of existing flexibilities in the TRIPS Agreement and concerted and coordinated efforts involving governments and the private sector to ensure all qualified generic producers willing and capable of manufacturing vaccines are doing so and to create supply by working to bring more facilities up to standard. Cooperation will not only lead us out of this pandemic but also put us in a better position to deal with the next one. Killing the goose that laid the golden egg may seem appealing to some in the short term but will only ensure that no eggs are delivered in the next pandemic.
Because the resolution asks what we ought to do, my value is Morality.
The criterion for determining morality is minimizing suffering. No coherent theory of justice or morality can deny that suffering is morally bad. Each of us knows from our own experiences that suffering is a moral evil, and that other people experience suffering in the same way we do. Therefore, if we regard everyone’s pain as morally equal, we are obligated to minimize the amount of suffering people experience.
Moreover, maximizing utility is the only way to affirm equal and unconditional human dignity. Cummiskey ’90 - David Cummiskey. Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College.Kantian Consequentialism. Ethics, Vol. 100, No. 3. 1990. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381810.
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract “social entity.” It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive “overall social good.” Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that “to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has.” But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? A morally good agent recognizes that the basis of all particular duties is the principle that “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (GMM 429). Rational nature as such is the supreme objective end of all conduct. If one truly believes that all rational beings have an equal value, then the rational solution to such a dilemma involves maximally promoting the lives and liberties of as many rational beings as possible (chapter 5). In order to avoid this conclusion, the non-consequentialist Kantian needs to justify agent-centered constraints. As we saw in chapter 1, however, even most Kantian deontologists recognize that agent-centered constraints require a non- value-based rationale. But we have seen that Kant’s normative theory is based on an unconditionally valuable end. How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings? If the moral law is based on the value of rational beings and their ends, then what is the rationale for prohibiting a moral agent from maximally promoting these two tiers of value? If I sacrifice some for the sake of others, I do not use them arbitrarily, and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have “dignity, that is, an unconditional and incomparable worth” that transcends any market value (GMM 436), but persons also have a fundamental equality that dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others (chapters 5 and 7). The concept of the end-in-itself does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration suggests that one may have to sacrifice some to save many.
Contention 1: Innovation Intellectual property is critical to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research – it’s also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines, economic decline, and future fatal diseases. Macdole and Ezell 4-29: Jaci Mcdole and Stephen Ezell {Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade. McDole holds a double BA in Music Business and Radio-Television with a minor in Marketing, an MS in Education, and a JD with a specialization in intellectual property (Southern Illinois University Carbondale). McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research, an organization she co-founded to study and further robust global IP policies. Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He comes to ITIF from Peer Insight, an innovation research and consulting firm he cofounded in 2003 to study the practice of innovation in service industries. At Peer Insight, Ezell led the Global Service Innovation Consortium, published multiple research papers on service innovation, and researched national service innovation policies being implemented by governments worldwide. Prior to forming Peer Insight, Ezell worked in the New Service Development group at the NASDAQ Stock Market, where he spearheaded the creation of the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk and the NASDAQ Corporate Services Network, services for NASDAQ-listed corporations. Previously, Ezell cofounded two successful innovation ventures, the high-tech services firm Brivo Systems and Lynx Capital, a boutique investment bank. Ezell holds a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an honors certificate from Georgetown’s Landegger International Business Diplomacy program.}, 21 - ("Ten Ways Ip Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain The World Through The Pandemic," Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4-29-2021, https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through)//marlborough-wr/ To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges, this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations, technical fields, and firm sizes. This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a U.S.-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services, small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic. Some have adapted existing innovations, while others have developed novel solutions. All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future. The case studies are: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin Gilead: Remdesivir LumiraDX: SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio: Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniería Médica: CápsulaXE Surgical Theater: Precision VR Tombot: Jennie Starship Technologies: Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies: Proximity Trace Zoom: Video Conferencing As the case studies show, IP is critical to enabling innovation. Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections are—and remain—in place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care, workplace, and societal challenges in the future. THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RandD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets, such as IP rights, comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SandP 500 companies in 2018.4 For start-ups, this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this). IP also plays an especially important role for RandD-intensive industries.5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry, it is characterized by high-risk, time-consuming, and expensive processes including basic research, drug discovery, pre-clinical trials, three stages of human clinical trials, regulatory review, and post-approval research and safety monitoring. The drug development process spans an average of 11.5 to 15 years.6 For every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases, approximately 250 molecular compounds, or 2.5 to 5 percent, make it to preclinical testing. Out of those 250 molecular compounds, approximately 5 make it to clinical testing. That is, 0.05 to 0.1 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials. Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing, less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).7 In addition to high risks, drug development is costly, and the expenses associated with it are increasing. A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent.8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RandD, and most confirm investing in new drug development requires $1.7 billion to $3.2 billion up front on average.9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines, stating, “In general, vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars, can take over 10 years to complete, and has an average 94 percent chance of failure.”10 Yet, a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugs—that is, the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDA—made less than their capitalized RandD costs.11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry.12 To say the least, biopharmaceutical RandD represents a high-stakes, long-term endeavor with precarious returns. Without IP protection, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RandD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred. Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RandD which means less research into cancer drugs, Alzheimer cures, vaccines, and more. IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult, risky, and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations, which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RandD costs of a given drug, but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future.13 THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO INNOVATION Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard, the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored, or vitiated. Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term “COVID-19 innovations” to include everything from vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE to biotechnology, AI-related data, and educational materials.14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report. However, much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RandD incentives. Although RandD is an important aspect of IP, as previously mentioned, these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can be—and often is—used for other purposes, including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and, more importantly, using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products. This report highlights but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. In 2018, Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world.15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products, which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic, proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains.16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and cleaning and sanitizing products.17 Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines. 18 In Mexico, fake vaccines sold for approximately $1,000 per dose.19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants.20 Meanwhile, dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down.21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals. The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered $48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products.22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population. In countries with strong IP protection, the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower. This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue, and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks, trade secrets, and licensing agreements. This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products. By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP, voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate, while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products. Throughout this difficult time, the world has seen unexpected collaborations, especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen, Inc. Throughout history, and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution, IP has contributed toward greater economic growth.23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery. A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong, positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance.24 It states that “IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe,” with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (€6.6 trillion; US$7.9 trillion).25 The study also shows 38.9 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries, and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee, especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises.26 That concords with the United States, where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than $6 trillion dollars to, or 38.2 percent of, GDP.27 In 2020, global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275,900 filings amidst the pandemic, growing 4 percent from 2019.28 The top-four nations, which accounted for 180,530 of the patent applications, were China, the United States, Japan, and Korea, respectively.29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications, with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent, respectively.30 The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a lot of things, but it certainly couldn’t stop innovation. There are at least five principal benefits strong IP rights can generate, for both developing and developed countries alike.31 First, stronger IP protection spurs the virtuous cycle of innovation by increasing the appropriability of returns, enabling economic gain and catalyzing economic growth. Second, through patents—which require innovators to disclose certain knowledge as a condition of protection—knowledge spillovers build a platform of knowledge that enables other innovators. For instance, studies have found that the rate of return to society from corporate RandD and innovation activities is at least twice the estimated returns that each company itself receives.32 Third, countries with robust IP can operate more efficiently and productively by using IP to determine product quality and reduce transaction costs. Fourth, trade and foreign direct investment enabled and encouraged by strong IP protection offered to enterprises from foreign countries facilitates an accumulation of knowledge capital within the destination economy. That matters when foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of productivity growth in most countries.33 There’s also evidence suggesting that developing nations with stronger IP protections enjoy the earlier introduction of innovative new medicines.34 And fifth, strong IP boosts exports, including in developing countries.35 Research shows a positive correlation between stronger IP protection and exports from developing countries as well as faster growth rates of certain industries.36 The following case studies illustrate these benefits of IP and how they’ve enabled innovative solutions to help global society navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Reducing IP protections sets a precedent that spills over to future public health crises. – Hopkins 21: Jared S. Hopkins {Jared S. Hopkins is a New York-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the pharmaceutical industry, including companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck and Co. He previously was a health-care reporter at Bloomberg News and an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Jared started his career at The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho covering politics. In 2014, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award For Young Journalists for an investigation into charities founded by professional athletes. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series about neglect at a residential facility for disabled kids. Jared graduated from the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park with a bachelor's degree in journalism}, 21 - ("U.S. Support for Patent Waiver Unlikely to Cost Covid-19 Vaccine Makers in Short Term ," WSJ, 5-7-2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-support-for-patent-waiver-unlikely-to-cost-covid-19-vaccine-makers-in-short-term-11620414260)//marlborough-wr/ The Biden administration’s unexpected support for temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents won’t have an immediate financial impact on the companies making the shots, industry officials and analysts said. Yet the decision could mark a shift in Washington’s longstanding support of the industry’s valuable intellectual property, patent-law experts said. A waiver, if it does go into effect, may pose long-term risks to the vaccine makers, analysts said. Moderna Inc., MRNA -4.12 Pfizer Inc. PFE -3.10 and other vaccine makers weren’t counting on sales from the developing countries that would gain access to the vaccine technology, analysts said. If patents and other crucial product information behind the technology is made available, it would take at least several months before shots were produced, industry officials said. Yet long-term Covid-19 sales could take a hit if other companies and countries gained access to the technologies and figured out how to use it. Western drugmakers could also confront competition sooner for other medicines they are hoping to make using the technologies. A World Trade Organization waiver could also set a precedent for waiving patents for other medicines, a long-sought goal of some developing countries, patient groups and others to try to reduce the costs of prescription drugs. “It sets a tremendous precedent of waiving IP rights that’s likely going to come up in future pandemics or in other serious diseases,” said David Silverstein, a patent lawyer at Axinn, Veltrop and Harkrider LLP who advises drugmakers. “Other than that, this is largely symbolic.” Contention 2: Counterfeits Intellectual property protections are key to stopping counterfeits. Kilbride 2020 Patrick, vice president of International Intellectual Property for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, IP Watchdog, "Calls for WTO to Suspend IP Rights for Vaccine Innovation Would Jeopardize Incredible Progress" December 9, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/12/09/calls-wto-suspend-ip-rights-vaccine-innovation-jeopardize-incredible-progress/id=128085/ Finally: A safe, legitimate marketplace. Patents facilitate a market for innovative medicines, throughout the development stage, as well as in commercialization. Licensing arrangements facilitate the types of collaborations that have proven so successful in 2020; they also ensure that third-party manufacturers are making, using, and selling COVID-19 solutions safely and ethically. Without it, counterfeiters and other bad actors could put shoddy, unreliable, and downright dangerous dupes on the market, all the while marketing them as legitimate products. It’s literally a matter of life and death: Thousands, if not millions, of people die each year at the hands of counterfeit drugs. This is a catastrophic outcome, because increased vaccine hesitancy means you’ll never solve. Baschuk 2021 Bryce, reporter for Bloomberg News, "Covid-19 pandemic: WTO holiday from vaccine talks draws calls for action" July 26, https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/covid-19-pandemic-wto-holiday-from-vaccine-talks-draws-calls-for-action-121072601721_1.html Specifically, opponents to the waiver say it would create a chaotic patchwork of laws, unravel existing industry partnerships, lead to a supply crunch for scarce vaccine inputs and inject even more uncertainty into already complex arrangements.¶ There’s also the possibility that an IP waiver could result in the production of counterfeit and substandard medicines, which could increase vaccine hesitancy that’s already pervasive in even the world’s wealthiest nations. Contention 3: Public Funding is a Better Alternative If high income countries provide direct government support of efforts to solve public health crises, we don’t need to take away the intellectual property rights that protect innovation. Lindsay 6/11 - Brink Lindsay, Brookings, 6-11, 2021, Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ Waiving patent protections is certainly no panacea. What is needed most urgently is a massive drive of technology transfer, capacity expansion, and supply line coordination to bring vaccine supply in line with global demand. Dispensing with patents in no way obviates the need for governments to fund and oversee this effort.¶ Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is¶ currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference.¶ Furthermore, and probably even more important, this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Urbanization, the spread of factory-farming methods, and globalization all combine to increase the odds that a new virus will make the jump from animals to humans and then spread rapidly around the world. Prior to the current pandemic, the 21st century already saw outbreaks of SARS, H1N1, MERS, and Ebola. Everything we do and learn in the current crisis should be viewed from the perspective of getting ready for next time.¶ The Nature of the Patent Bargain¶ When we take the longer view, we can see a fundamental mismatch between the policy design of intellectual property protection and the policy requirements of effective pandemic response. Although patent law, properly restrained, constitutes one important element of a well-designed national innovation system, the way it goes about encouraging technological progress is singularly ill-suited to the emergency conditions of a pandemic or other public health crisis. Securing a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments would thus establish a salutary precedent that, in emergencies of this kind, governments should employ other, more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs.¶ Here is the basic bargain offered by patent law: encourage the creation of useful new ideas for the long run by slowing the diffusion of useful new ideas in the short run. The second half of the bargain, the half that imposes costs on society, comes from the temporary exclusive rights, or monopoly privileges, that a patent holder enjoys. Under U.S. patent law, for a period of 20 years nobody else can manufacture or sell the patented product without the permission of the patent holder. This allows the patent holder to block competitors from the market, or extract licensing fees before allowing them to enter, and consequently charge above-market prices to its customers. Patent rights thus slow the diffusion of a new invention by restricting output and raising prices.¶ The imposition of these short-run costs, however, can bring net long-term benefits by sharpening the incentives to invent new products. In the absence of patent protection, the prospect of easy imitation by later market entrants can deter would-be innovators from incurring the up-front fixed costs of research and development. But with a guaranteed period of market exclusivity, inventors can proceed with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment.¶ For the tradeoff between costs and benefits to come out positive on net, patent law must strike the right balance. Exclusive rights should be valuable enough to encourage greater innovation, but not so easily granted or extensive in scope or term that this encouragement is outweighed by output restrictions on the patented product and discouragement of downstream innovations dependent on access to the patented technology.¶ Unfortunately, the U.S. patent system at present is out of balance. Over the past few decades, the expansion of patentability to include software and business methods as well as a general relaxation of patenting requirements have led to wildly excessive growth in these temporary monopolies: the number of patents granted annually has¶ skyrocketed roughly fivefold since the early 1980s. One unfortunate result has been the rise of “non-practicing entities,” better known as patent trolls: firms that make nothing themselves but buy up patent portfolios and monetize them through aggressive litigation. As a result, a law that is supposed to encourage innovation has turned into a¶ legal minefield for many would-be innovators. In the pharmaceutical industry, firms have abused the law by piling up patents for trivial, therapeutically irrelevant “innovations” that allow them to¶ extend their monopolies and keep raising prices long beyond the statutorily contemplated 20 years.¶ Patent law is creating these unintended consequences because policymakers have been caught in an ideological fog that¶ conflates “intellectual property” with actual property rights over physical objects. Enveloped in that fog, they regard any attempts to put limits on patent monopolies as attacks on private property and view ongoing expansions of patent privileges as necessary to keep innovation from grinding to a halt. In fact, patent law is a tool of regulatory policy with the usual tradeoffs between costs and benefits; like all tools, it can be misused, and as with all tools there are some jobs for which other tools are better suited. A well-designed patent system, in which benefits are maximized and costs kept to a minimum, is just one of various policy options that governments can employ to stimulate technological advance—including tax credits for RandD, prizes for targeted inventions, and direct government support.¶ Public Health Emergencies and Direct Government Support¶ For pandemics and other public health emergencies, patents’ mix of costs and benefits is misaligned with what is needed for an effective policy response. The basic patent bargain, even when well struck, is to pay for more innovation down the road with slower diffusion of innovation today. In the context of a pandemic, that bargain is a bad one and should be rejected entirely. Here the imperative is to accelerate the diffusion of vaccines and other treatments, not slow it down. Giving drug companies the power to hold things up by blocking competitors and raising prices pushes in the completely wrong direction. What approach to encouraging innovation should we take instead? How do we incentivize drug makers to undertake the hefty RandD costs to develop new vaccines without giving them exclusive rights over their production and sale? The most effective approach during a public health crisis is direct government support: public funding of RandD, advance purchase commitments by the government to buy large numbers of doses at set prices, and other, related payouts. And when we pay drug makers, we should not hesitate to pay generously, even extravagantly: we want to offer drug companies big profits so that they prioritize this work above everything else, and so that they are ready and eager to come to the rescue again the next time there’s a crisis. It was direct support via Operation Warp Speed that made possible the astonishingly rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and then facilitated a relatively rapid rollout of vaccine distribution (relative, that is, to most of the rest of the world). And it’s worth noting that a major reason for the faster rollout here and in the United Kingdom compared to the European Union was the latter’s misguided penny-pinching. The EU bargained hard with firms to keep vaccine prices low, and as a result their citizens ended up in the back of the queue as various supply line kinks were being ironed out. This is particularly ironic since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed in Germany. As this fact underscores, the chief advantage of direct support isn’t to “get tough” with drug firms and keep a lid on their profits. Instead, it is to accelerate the end of the public health emergency by making sure drug makers profit handsomely from doing the right thing. Patent law and direct support should be seen not as either-or alternatives but as complements that apply different incentives to different circumstances and time horizons. Patent law provides a decentralized system for encouraging innovation. The government doesn’t presume to tell the industry which new drugs are needed; it simply incentivizes the development of whatever new drugs that pharmaceutical firms can come up with by offering them a temporary monopoly. It is important to note that patent law’s incentives offer no commercial guarantees. Yes, you can block other competitors for a number of years, but that still doesn’t ensure enough consumer demand for the new product to make it profitable. The situation is different in a pandemic. Here the government knows exactly what it wants to incentivize: the creation of vaccines to prevent the spread of a specific virus and other drugs to treat that virus. Under these circumstances, the decentralized approach isn’t good enough. There is no time to sit back and let drug makers take the initiative on their own timeline. Instead, the government needs to be more involved to incentivize specific innovations now. As recompense for letting it call the shots (pardon the pun), the government sweetens the deal for drug companies by insulating them from commercial risk. If pharmaceutical firms develop effective vaccines and therapies, the government will buy large, predetermined quantities at prices set high enough to guarantee a healthy return. For the pharmaceutical industry, it is useful to conceive of patent law as the default regime for innovation promotion. It improves pharmaceutical companies’ incentives to develop new drugs while leaving them free to decide which new drugs to pursue – and also leaving them to bear all commercial risk. In a pandemic or other emergency, however, it is appropriate to shift to the direct support regime, in which the government focuses efforts on one disease. In this regime, it is important to note, the government provides qualitatively superior incentives to those offered under patent law. Not only does it offer public funding to cover the up-front costs of drug development, but it also provides advance purchase commitments that guarantee a healthy return. It should therefore be clear that the pharmaceutical industry has no legitimate basis for objecting to a TRIPS waiver. Since, because of the public health crisis, drug makers now qualify for the superior benefits of direct government support, they no longer need the default benefits of patent support. Arguments that a TRIPS waiver would deprive drug makers of the incentives they need to keep developing new drugs, when they are presently receiving the most favorable incentives available, can be dismissed as the worst sort of special pleading. That said, it is a serious mistake to try to cast the current crisis as a morality play in which drug makers wear the black hats and the choice at hand is between private profits and public health. We would have no chance of beating this virus without the formidable organizational capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry, and providing the appropriate incentives is essential to ensure that the industry plays its necessary and vital role. It is misguided to lament that private companies are profiting in the current crisis: those profits are a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering cost of this pandemic in lives and economic damage. What matters isn’t the existence or size of the profits, but how they are earned. We have good reason to want drug makers to profit from vaccinating the world: the comparative price is minuscule, and the incentive effects are a vital safeguard of public health in the event of future crises. What we want to avoid at all costs is putting drug makers in the position where drug companies can profit from standing in the way of rapid global vaccination. That is why intellectual property rights need to be taken out of the equation. Vaccinating the world in any kind of reasonable time frame will require large-scale technology transfer to drug firms in other countries and rapid expansion of their production capacity. And looking beyond the current pandemic to the longer term, we need ample, redundant global vaccine production capacity that is widely distributed around the planet. To achieve these goals as rapidly as possible will require the active cooperation of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which is why the direct support model now needs to be extended. What is needed now is an Operation Warp Speed for the world, in which we make it worth current vaccine producers’ while to share their know-how broadly and ramp up global capacity. Here again, we must recognize that the choice isn’t between people on the one hand and profits on the other. Rather, the key to good pandemic response policy is ensuring that incentives are structured so that drug company profit-seeking and global public health are well aligned. That means opting out of the default, decentralized patent bargain in favor of generous but well-focused direct government support.