AC Kafala Prison Labor Structural Violence NC case Work K 1ar all from NC Nr all from 1ar 2ar all from NR
Damien
1
Opponent: Meadows SW | Judge: Darbin Chan
AC - COVID Waiver NC - Innovation Da (bioterror future pandemics) COVID Funding CP Case 1AR All from NC NR All from 1AR 2AR All from NR
Silver and Black
1
Opponent: Homestead DA | Judge: Josh Weingarten
AC - China NC - T-can't spec government violence PIC collective bargaining CP 1ar - all from NC NR - all from 1ar kicked t 2ar - all from NR
St Marks
2
Opponent: Immaculate Heart SP | Judge: Eric He
AC - inherency waiver key to WTO credibility COVID causes tension in developing countries NC - COVID funding CP China PIC Innovation DA case 1ar - all from NC NR - China PIC case 2ar - all from NR
USC
1
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake KD | Judge: Jared Burke
AC Income inequality government shutdowns NC Postwork K Police Unions PIC case 1ar all from NC - kicked income inequality NR all from 1ar 2ar all from NR
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Cites
Entry
Date
Contact Information
Tournament: na | Round: 1 | Opponent: na | Judge: na Email: tatumzolkin25@marlborough.org Phone # (pls don't use unless I'm not responding to your email): 310-492-3510
10/11/21
JF - Set Col K
Tournament: Golden Desert | Round: 4 | Opponent: Brentwood MD | Judge: Claudia Ribera Settler colonialism is driven by the logic of elimination –settler societies establish the structure of invasion through the will-to-possession and structural occupation of indigenous land Rifkin 14 – Associate Professor of English and WGS @ UNC-Greensboro Mark, ‘Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance,’ pp. 7-10 If nineteenth-century American literary studies tends to focus on the ways Indians enter the narrative frame and the kinds of meanings and associa- tions they bear, recent attempts to theorize settler colonialism have sought to shift attention from its effects on Indigenous subjects to its implications for nonnative political attachments, forms of inhabitance, and modes of being, illuminating and tracking the pervasive operation of settlement as a system. In Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, Patrick Wolfe argues, “Settler colonies were (are) premised on the elimination of native societies. The split tensing reflects a determinate feature of settler colonization. The colonizers come to stay—invasion is a structure not an event” (2).6 He suggests that a “logic of elimination” drives settler governance and sociality, describing “the settler-colonial will” as “a historical force that ultimately derives from the primal drive to expansion that is generally glossed as capitalism” (167), and in “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” he observes that “elimination is an organizing principle of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superceded) occurrence” (388). Rather than being superseded after an initial moment/ period of conquest, colonization persists since “the logic of elimination marks a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler- colonial society” (390). In Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s work, whiteness functions as the central way of understanding the domination and displacement of Indigenous peoples by nonnatives.7 In “Writing Off Indigenous Sover- eignty,” she argues, “As a regime of power, patriarchal white sovereignty operates ideologically, materially and discursively to reproduce and main- tain its investment in the nation as a white possession” (88), and in “Writ- ing Off Treaties,” she suggests, “At an ontological level the structure of subjective possession occurs through the imposition of one’s will-to-be on the thing which is perceived to lack will, thus it is open to being possessed,” such that “possession . . . forms part of the ontological structure of white subjectivity” (83–84). For Jodi Byrd, the deployment of Indianness as a mobile figure works as the principal mode of U.S. settler colonialism. She observes that “colonization and racialization . . . have often been conflated,” in ways that “tend to be sited along the axis of inclusion/exclusion” and that “misdirect and cloud attention from the underlying structures of settler colonialism” (xxiii, xvii). She argues that settlement works through the translation of indigeneity as Indianness, casting place-based political collectivities as (racialized) populations subject to U.S. jurisdiction and manage- ment: “the Indian is left nowhere and everywhere within the ontological premises through which U.S. empire orients, imagines, and critiques itself ”; “ideas of Indians and Indianness have served as the ontological ground through which U.S. settler colonialism enacts itself ” (xix). The alternative is to give back the land and go to space. Tuck and Yang 12 (Eve Tuck. Associate Professor and Coordinator of Native American Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Wayne Yang. Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1), 31-6.)
More on incommensurability Incommensurability is an acknowledgement that decolonization will require a change in the order of the world (Fanon, 1963). This is not to say that Indigenous peoples or Black and brown peoples take positions of dominance over white settlers; the goal is not for everyone to merely swap spots on the settler-colonial triad, to take another turn on the merry-go-round. The goal is to break the relentless structuring of the triad - a break and not a compromise (Memmi, 1991). Breaking the settler colonial triad, in direct terms, means repatriating land to sovereign Native tribes and nations, abolition of slavery in its contemporary forms, and the dismantling of the imperial metropole. Decolonization “here” is intimately connected to anti-imperialism elsewhere. However, decolonial struggles here/there are not parallel, not shared equally, nor do they bring neat closure to the concerns of all involved - particularly not for settlers. Decolonization is not equivocal to other anti-colonial struggles. It is incommensurable. There is so much that is incommensurable, so many overlaps that can’t be figured, that cannot be resolved. Settler colonialism fuels imperialism all around the globe. Oil is the motor and motive for war and so was salt, so will be water. Settler sovereignty over these very pieces of earth, air, and water is what makes possible these imperialisms. The same yellow pollen in the water of the Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, Leslie Marmon Silko reminds us, is the same uranium that annihilated over 200,000 strangers in 2 flashes. The same yellow pollen that poisons the land from where it came. Used in the same war that took a generation of young Pueblo men. Through the voice of her character Betonie, Silko writes, “Thirty thousand years ago they were not strangers. You saw what the evil had done; you saw the witchery ranging as wide as the world" (Silko, 1982, p. 174). In Tucson, Arizona, where Silko lives, her books are now banned in schools. Only curricular materials affirming the settler innocence, ingenuity, and right to America may be taught. In “No”, her response to the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq, Mvskoke/Creek poet Joy Harjo (2004) writes, “Yes, that was me you saw shaking with bravery, with a government issued rifle on my back. I’m sorry I could not greet you, as you deserved, my relative.” Don’t Native Americans participate in greater rates in the military? asks the young-ish man from Viet Nam. “Indian Country” was/is the term used in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq by the U.S. military for ‘enemy territory’. The first Black American President said without blinking, “There was a point before folks had left, before we had gotten everybody back on the helicopter and were flying back to base, where they said Geronimo has been killed, and Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden.” Elmer Pratt, Black Panther leader, falsely imprisoned for 27 years, was a Vietnam Veteran, was nicknamed ‘Geronimo’. Geronimo is settler nickname for the Bedonkohe Apache warrior who fought Mexican and then U.S. expansion into Apache tribal lands. The Colt .45 was perfected to kill Indigenous people during the ‘liberation’ of what became the Philippines, but it was first invented for the ‘Indian Wars’ in North America alongside The Hotchkiss Canon- a gattling gun that shot canonballs. The technologies of the permanent settler war are reserviced for foreign wars, including boarding schools, colonial schools, urban schools run by military personnel. It is properly called Indian Country. Ideologies of US settler colonialism directly informed Australian settler colonialism. South African apartheid townships, the kill-zones in what became the Philippine colony, then nation-state, the checkerboarding of Palestinian land with checkpoints, were modeled after U.S. seizures of land and containments of Indian bodies to reservations. The racial science developed in the U.S. (a settler colonial racial science) informed Hitler’s designs on racial purity (“This book is my bible” he said of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race). The admiration is sometimes mutual, the doctors and administrators of forced sterilizations of black, Native, disabled, poor, and mostly female people - The Sterilization Act accompanied the Racial Integrity Act and the Pocohontas Exception - praised the Nazi eugenics program. Forced sterilizations became illegal in California in 1964. The management technologies of North American settler colonialism have provided the tools for internal colonialisms elsewhere. So to with philosophies of state and corporate land-grabbing24. The prominence of “flat world” perspectives asserts that technology has afforded a diminished significance of place and borders. The claim is that U.S. borders have become more flexible, yet simultaneously, the physical border has become more absolute and enforced. The border is no longer just a line suturing two nation-states; the U.S. now polices its borders interior to its territory and exercises sovereignty throughout the globe. Just as sovereignty has expanded, so has settler colonialism in partial forms. New Orleans’ lower ninth ward lies at the confluence of river channels and gulf waters, and at the intersection of land grabbing and human bondage. The collapsing of levies heralded the selective collapsibility of native-slave, again, for the purpose of reinvasion, resettlement, reinhabitation. The naturalized disaster of Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters laid the perfect cover for land speculation and the ablution of excess people. What can’t be absorbed, can’t be folded in (because the settlers won't give up THEIR land to advance abolition), translates into bodies stacked on top of one another in public housing and prisons, in cells, kept from the labor market, making labor for others (guards and other corrections personnel) making money for states -human homesteading. It necessitates the manufacturing of crime at rates higher than anywhere in the world. 1 in 6 people in the state of Louisiana are incarcerated, the highest number of caged people per capita, making it the prison capital of United States, and therefore the prison capital of the world. The Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers’ delta flood plain was once land so fertile that it could be squeezed for excess production of cotton, giving rise to exceptionally large-scale plantation slavery. Plantation owners lived in houses like pyramids and chattel slavery took an extreme form here, even for the South, beginning with enslaved Chitimachas, Choctaw, Natchez, Chaoüachas, Natchez, Westo, Yamasee, Euchee, Yazoo and Tawasa peoples, then later replaced by enslaved West Africans. Literally, worked to death. This “most Southern on earth”(Cobb, 1992) was a place of ultimate terror for Black people even under slavery (the worst place to be sold off too, the place of no return, the place of premature death). Black and Native people alike were induced to raid and enslave Native tribes, as a bargain for their own freedom or to defer their own enslavibility by the British, French, and then American settlers. Abolition has its incommensurabilities. The Delta is now more segregated than it was during Jim Crow in 1950 (Aiken, 1990). The rising number of impoverished, all black townships is the result of mechanization of agriculture and a fundamental settler covenant that keeps black people landless. When black labor is unlabored, the Black person underneath is the excess. Angola Farm is perhaps the more notorious of the two State Penitentiaries along the Mississippi River. Three hundred miles upriver in the upper Delta region is Parchment Farm. Both State Penitentiaries (Mississippi and Louisana, respectively), both former slave plantations, both turned convict-leasing farms almost immediately after the Civil War by genius land speculators-cum-prison wardens. After the Union victory in the Civil War ‘abolished’ slavery, former Confederate Major, Samuel Lawrence James, obtained the lease to the Louisiana State Penn in 1869, and then bought Angola Farm in 1880 as land to put his chattel to work. Cages on wheels. To mobilize labor on land by landless people whose crime was mobility on land they did not own. The largest human trafficker in the world is the carceral state within the United States, not some secret Thai triad or Russian mafia or Chinese smuggler. The U.S. carceral state is properly called neo-slavery, precisely because it is legal. It is not simply a product of exceptional racism in the U.S.; its racism is a direct function of the settler colonial mandate of land and people as property. Black Codes made vagrancy - i.e. landlessness - illegal in the Antebellum South, making the self-possessed yet dispossessed Black body a crime (similar logic allowed for the seizure, imprisonment and indenture of any Indian by any person in California until 1937, based on the ideology that Indians are simultaneously landless and land-like). Dennis Childs writes “the slave ship and the plantation” and not Bentham’s panopticon as presented by Foucault, “operated as spatial, racial, and economic templates for subsequent models of coerced labor and human warehousing - as America’s original prison industrial complex” (2009, p.288). Geopolitics and biopolitics are completely knotted together in a settler colonial context. Despite the rise of publicly traded prisons, Farms are not fundamentally capitalist ventures; at their core, they are colonial contract institutions much like Spanish Missions, Indian Boarding Schools, and ghetto school systems26. The labor to cage black bodies is paid for by the state and then land is granted, worked by convict labor, to generate additional profits for the prison proprietors. However, it is the management of excess presence on the land, not the forced labor, that is the main object of slavery under settler colonialism. Today, 85 of people incarcerated at Angola, die there. Conclusion An ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework. We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions - decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. Still, we acknowledge the questions of those wary participants in Occupy Oakland and other settlers who want to know what decolonization will require of them. The answers are not fully in view and can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers as we get there, “in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give decolonization historical form and content” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36). To fully enact an ethic of incommensurability means relinquishing settler futurity, abandoning the hope that settlers may one day be commensurable to Native peoples. It means removing the asterisks, periods, commas, apostrophes, the whereas’s, buts, and conditional clauses that punctuate decolonization and underwrite settler innocence. The Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone - these are the unwritten possibilities made possible by an ethic of incommensurability. when you take away the punctuation he says of lines lifted from the documents about military-occupied land its acreage and location you take away its finality opening the possibility of other futures -Craig Santos Perez, Chamoru scholar and poet (as quoted by Voeltz, 2012) Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an “and”. It is an elsewhere. The role of the judge is to refuse settler colonialism. Refusal turns settler colonialism into an object of research, de-naturalizing its totalizing western structure. Tuck and Yang 14 Eve (Uangax), and Y. Wayne, “R-Words: Refusing Research,” Humanizing Research (2014): https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-Yang-R-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf DH The Erased Lynching series yields another context in which we might consider what a social scientist’s refusal stance might comprise. Though indeed centering on the erasure of the former object, refusal need not be thought of as a subtractive methodology. Refusal prompts analysis of the festive spectators regularly backgrounded in favor of wounded bodies, strange fruit, interesting scars. Refusal shifts the gaze from the violated body to the violating instruments—in this case, the lynch mob, which does not disappear when the lynching is over, but continues to live, accumulating land and wealth through the extermination and subordination of the Other. Thus, refusal helps move us from thinking of violence as an event and toward an analysis of it as a structure. Gonzales-Day might have decided to reproduce and redistribute the images as postcards, which, by way of showing up in mundane spaces, might have effectively inspired reflection on the spectacle of violence and media of terror. However, in removing the body and the ropes, he installed limits on what the audience can access, and redirected our gaze to the bodies of those who were there to see a murder take place, and to the empty space beneath the branches. Gonzales-Day introduced a new representational territory, one that refuses to play by the rules of the settler colonial gaze, and one that refuses to satisfy the morbid curiosity derived from settler colonialism’s preoccupation with pain. Refusals are needed for narratives and images arising in social science research that rehumiliate when circulated, but also when, in Simpson’s words, “the representation would bite all of us and compromise the representational territory that we have gained for ourselves in the past 100 years” (p. 78). As researcher-narrator, Simpson tells us, “I reached my own limit when the data would not contribute to our sovereignty or complicate the deeply simplified, atrophied representations of Iroquois and other Indigenous peoples that they have been mired within anthropologically” (p. 78). Here Simpson makes clear the ways in which research is not the intervention that is needed—that is, the interventions of furthering sovereignty or countering misrepresentations of Native people as anthropological objects. Considering Erased Lynchings dialogically with On Ethnographic Refusal, we can see how refusal is not a prohibition but a generative form. First, refusal turns the gaze back upon power, specifically the colonial modalities of knowing persons as bodies to be differentially counted, violated, saved, and put to work. It makes transparent the metanarrative of knowledge production—its spectatorship for pain and its preoccupation for documenting and ruling over racial difference. Thus, refusal to be made meaningful first and foremost is grounded in a critique of settler colonialism, its construction of Whiteness, and its regimes of representation. Second, refusal generates, expands, champions representational territories that colonial knowledge endeavors to settle, enclose, domesticate. Simpson complicates the portrayals of Iroquois, without resorting to reportrayals of anthropological Indians. Gonzales-Day portrays the violations without reportraying the victimizations. Third, refusal is a critical intervention into research and its circular self-defining ethics. The ethical justification for research is defensive and self-encircling—its apparent self-criticism serves to expand its own rights to know, and to defend its violations in the name of “good science.” Refusal challenges the individualizing discourse of IRB consent and “good science” by highlighting the problems of collective harm, of representational harm, and of knowledge colonization. Fourth, refusal itself could be developed into both method and theory. Simpson presents refusal on the part of the researcher as a type of calculus ethnography. Gonzales-Day deploys refusal as a mode of representation. Simpson theorizes refusal by the Kahnawake Nation as anticolonial, and rooted in the desire for possibilities outside of colonial logics, not as a reactive stance. This final point about refusal connects our conversation back to desire as a counterlogic to settler colonial knowledge. Desire is compellingly depicted in Simpson’s description of a moment in an interview, in which the alternative logics about a “feeling citizenship” are referenced. The interviewee states, Citizenship is, as I said, you live there, you grew up there, that is the life that you know—that is who you are. Membership is more of a legislative enactment designed to keep people from obtaining the various benefits that Aboriginals can receive. (p. 76) Simpson describes this counterlogic as “the logic of the present,” one that is witnessed, lived, suffered through, and enjoyed (p. 76). Out of the predicaments, it innovates “tolerance and exceptions and affections” (p. 76). Simpson writes (regarding the Indian Act, or blood quantum), “‘Feeling citizenships’ . . . are structured in the present space of intra-community recognition, affection and care, outside of the logics of colonial and imperial rule” (p. 76). Simpson’s logic of the present dovetails with our discussion on the logics of desire. Collectively, Kahnawake refusals decenter damage narratives; they unsettle the settler colonial logics of blood and rights; they center desire. By theorizing through desire, Simpson thus theorizes with and as Kahnawake Mohawk. It is important to point out that Simpson does not deploy her tribal identity as a badge of authentic voice, but rather highlights the ethical predicaments that result from speaking as oneself, as simultaneously part of a collective with internal disputes, vis-à-vis negotiations of various settler colonial logics. Simpson thoughtfully differentiates between the Native researcher philosophically as a kind of privileged position of authenticity, and the Native researcher realistically as one who is beholden to multiple ethical considerations. What is tricky about this position is not only theorizing with, rather than theorizing about, but also theorizing as. To theorize with and as at the same time is a difficult yet fecund positionality—one that rubs against the ethnographic limit at the outset. Theorizing with (and in some of our cases, as) repositions Indigenous people and otherwise researched Others as intellectual subjects rather than anthropological subjects. Thus desire is an “epistemological shift,” not just a methodological shift (Tuck, 2009, p. 419). CULMINATION At this juncture, we don’t intend to offer a general framework for refusal, because all refusal is particular, meaning refusal is always grounded in historical analysis and present conditions. Any discussion of Simpson’s article would need to attend to the significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The particularities of Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal described above. We caution readers against expropriating Indigenous notions of sovereignty into other contexts, or metaphorizing sovereignty in a way that permits one to forget that struggles to have sovereignty recognized are very real and very lived. Yet from Simpson’s example, we are able to see ways in which a researcher might make transparent the coloniality of academic knowledge in order to find its ethical limits, expand the limits of sovereign knowledge, and expand decolonial representational territories. This is in addition to questions her work helpfully raises about who the researcher is, who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research matters. One way to think about refusal is how desire can be a framework, mode, and space for refusal. As a framework, desire is a counterlogic to the logics of settler colonialism. Rooted in possibilities gone but not foreclosed, “the not yet, and at times, the not anymore” (Tuck, 2010, p. 417), desire refuses the master narrative that colonization was inevitable and has a monopoly on the future. By refusing the teleos of colonial future, desire expands possible futures. As a mode of refusal, desire is a “no” and a “yes.” Another way to think about refusal is to consider using strategies of social science research to further expose the complicity of social science disciplines and research in the project of settler colonialism. There is much need to employ social science to turn back upon itself as settler colonial knowledge, as opposed to universal, liberal, or neutral knowledge without horizon. This form of refusal might include bringing attention to the mechanisms of knowledge legitimation, like the Good Labkeeping Seal of Approval (discussed under Axiom III); contesting appropriation, like the collection of pain narratives; and publicly renouncing the diminishing of Indigenous or local narratives with blood narratives in the name of science, such as in the Havasupai case discussed under Axiom II. As long as the objects of research are presumably damaged communities in need of intervention, the metanarrative of social science research remains unchallenged: which is that research at worst is simply an expansion of common knowledge (and therefore harmless), and that research at best is problem solving (and therefore beneficial). This metanarrative justifies a host of interventions into communities, and treats communities as frontiers to civilize, regardless of the specific conclusions of individual research projects. Consider, for example, wellintended research on achievement gaps that fuels NCLB and testing; the documentation of youth violence that provides the rationales for gang injunctions and the expansion of the prison industrial complex; the documentation of diabetes as justification for unauthorized genomic studies and the expansion of antiIndigenous theories. Instead, by making the settler colonial metanarrative the object of social science research, researchers may bring to a halt or at least slow down the machinery that allows knowledge to facilitate interdictions on Indigenous and Black life. Thus, this form of refusal might also involve tracking the relationships between social science research and expansions of state and corporate violence against communities. Social science researchers might design their work to call attention to or interrogate power, rather than allowing their work to serve as yet another advertisement for power. Further, this form of refusal might aim to leverage the resources of the academy to expand the representational territories fought for by communities working to thwart settler colonialism. We close this chapter with much left unsaid. This is both because there is so much to say, and also because, as we have noted, all refusal is particular. Refusal understands the wisdom in a story, as well as the wisdom in not passing that story on. Refusal in research makes way for other r-words—for resistance, reclaiming, recovery, reciprocity, repatriation, regeneration. Though understandings of refusal are still emergent, though so much is still coming into view, we want to consolidate a summary of take-away points for our readers. A parting gift, of sorts, as each of us takes our leave to map our next steps as researchers, as community members, within and without academe. We think of this list as a tear-away sheet, something to cut out and carry in your pocket, sew into a prayer flag, or paste into your field notebooks.
2/6/22
JF - Set Col K
Tournament: Golden Desert | Round: 4 | Opponent: Brentwood MD | Judge: Claudia Ribera Settler colonialism is driven by the logic of elimination –settler societies establish the structure of invasion through the will-to-possession and structural occupation of indigenous land Rifkin 14 – Associate Professor of English and WGS @ UNC-Greensboro Mark, ‘Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance,’ pp. 7-10 If nineteenth-century American literary studies tends to focus on the ways Indians enter the narrative frame and the kinds of meanings and associa- tions they bear, recent attempts to theorize settler colonialism have sought to shift attention from its effects on Indigenous subjects to its implications for nonnative political attachments, forms of inhabitance, and modes of being, illuminating and tracking the pervasive operation of settlement as a system. In Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, Patrick Wolfe argues, “Settler colonies were (are) premised on the elimination of native societies. The split tensing reflects a determinate feature of settler colonization. The colonizers come to stay—invasion is a structure not an event” (2).6 He suggests that a “logic of elimination” drives settler governance and sociality, describing “the settler-colonial will” as “a historical force that ultimately derives from the primal drive to expansion that is generally glossed as capitalism” (167), and in “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” he observes that “elimination is an organizing principle of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superceded) occurrence” (388). Rather than being superseded after an initial moment/ period of conquest, colonization persists since “the logic of elimination marks a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler- colonial society” (390). In Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s work, whiteness functions as the central way of understanding the domination and displacement of Indigenous peoples by nonnatives.7 In “Writing Off Indigenous Sover- eignty,” she argues, “As a regime of power, patriarchal white sovereignty operates ideologically, materially and discursively to reproduce and main- tain its investment in the nation as a white possession” (88), and in “Writ- ing Off Treaties,” she suggests, “At an ontological level the structure of subjective possession occurs through the imposition of one’s will-to-be on the thing which is perceived to lack will, thus it is open to being possessed,” such that “possession . . . forms part of the ontological structure of white subjectivity” (83–84). For Jodi Byrd, the deployment of Indianness as a mobile figure works as the principal mode of U.S. settler colonialism. She observes that “colonization and racialization . . . have often been conflated,” in ways that “tend to be sited along the axis of inclusion/exclusion” and that “misdirect and cloud attention from the underlying structures of settler colonialism” (xxiii, xvii). She argues that settlement works through the translation of indigeneity as Indianness, casting place-based political collectivities as (racialized) populations subject to U.S. jurisdiction and manage- ment: “the Indian is left nowhere and everywhere within the ontological premises through which U.S. empire orients, imagines, and critiques itself ”; “ideas of Indians and Indianness have served as the ontological ground through which U.S. settler colonialism enacts itself ” (xix). The alternative is to give back the land and go to space. Tuck and Yang 12 (Eve Tuck. Associate Professor and Coordinator of Native American Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Wayne Yang. Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego. (2012). Decolonization is Not a Metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 1(1), 31-6.)
More on incommensurability Incommensurability is an acknowledgement that decolonization will require a change in the order of the world (Fanon, 1963). This is not to say that Indigenous peoples or Black and brown peoples take positions of dominance over white settlers; the goal is not for everyone to merely swap spots on the settler-colonial triad, to take another turn on the merry-go-round. The goal is to break the relentless structuring of the triad - a break and not a compromise (Memmi, 1991). Breaking the settler colonial triad, in direct terms, means repatriating land to sovereign Native tribes and nations, abolition of slavery in its contemporary forms, and the dismantling of the imperial metropole. Decolonization “here” is intimately connected to anti-imperialism elsewhere. However, decolonial struggles here/there are not parallel, not shared equally, nor do they bring neat closure to the concerns of all involved - particularly not for settlers. Decolonization is not equivocal to other anti-colonial struggles. It is incommensurable. There is so much that is incommensurable, so many overlaps that can’t be figured, that cannot be resolved. Settler colonialism fuels imperialism all around the globe. Oil is the motor and motive for war and so was salt, so will be water. Settler sovereignty over these very pieces of earth, air, and water is what makes possible these imperialisms. The same yellow pollen in the water of the Laguna Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, Leslie Marmon Silko reminds us, is the same uranium that annihilated over 200,000 strangers in 2 flashes. The same yellow pollen that poisons the land from where it came. Used in the same war that took a generation of young Pueblo men. Through the voice of her character Betonie, Silko writes, “Thirty thousand years ago they were not strangers. You saw what the evil had done; you saw the witchery ranging as wide as the world" (Silko, 1982, p. 174). In Tucson, Arizona, where Silko lives, her books are now banned in schools. Only curricular materials affirming the settler innocence, ingenuity, and right to America may be taught. In “No”, her response to the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq, Mvskoke/Creek poet Joy Harjo (2004) writes, “Yes, that was me you saw shaking with bravery, with a government issued rifle on my back. I’m sorry I could not greet you, as you deserved, my relative.” Don’t Native Americans participate in greater rates in the military? asks the young-ish man from Viet Nam. “Indian Country” was/is the term used in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq by the U.S. military for ‘enemy territory’. The first Black American President said without blinking, “There was a point before folks had left, before we had gotten everybody back on the helicopter and were flying back to base, where they said Geronimo has been killed, and Geronimo was the code name for bin Laden.” Elmer Pratt, Black Panther leader, falsely imprisoned for 27 years, was a Vietnam Veteran, was nicknamed ‘Geronimo’. Geronimo is settler nickname for the Bedonkohe Apache warrior who fought Mexican and then U.S. expansion into Apache tribal lands. The Colt .45 was perfected to kill Indigenous people during the ‘liberation’ of what became the Philippines, but it was first invented for the ‘Indian Wars’ in North America alongside The Hotchkiss Canon- a gattling gun that shot canonballs. The technologies of the permanent settler war are reserviced for foreign wars, including boarding schools, colonial schools, urban schools run by military personnel. It is properly called Indian Country. Ideologies of US settler colonialism directly informed Australian settler colonialism. South African apartheid townships, the kill-zones in what became the Philippine colony, then nation-state, the checkerboarding of Palestinian land with checkpoints, were modeled after U.S. seizures of land and containments of Indian bodies to reservations. The racial science developed in the U.S. (a settler colonial racial science) informed Hitler’s designs on racial purity (“This book is my bible” he said of Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race). The admiration is sometimes mutual, the doctors and administrators of forced sterilizations of black, Native, disabled, poor, and mostly female people - The Sterilization Act accompanied the Racial Integrity Act and the Pocohontas Exception - praised the Nazi eugenics program. Forced sterilizations became illegal in California in 1964. The management technologies of North American settler colonialism have provided the tools for internal colonialisms elsewhere. So to with philosophies of state and corporate land-grabbing24. The prominence of “flat world” perspectives asserts that technology has afforded a diminished significance of place and borders. The claim is that U.S. borders have become more flexible, yet simultaneously, the physical border has become more absolute and enforced. The border is no longer just a line suturing two nation-states; the U.S. now polices its borders interior to its territory and exercises sovereignty throughout the globe. Just as sovereignty has expanded, so has settler colonialism in partial forms. New Orleans’ lower ninth ward lies at the confluence of river channels and gulf waters, and at the intersection of land grabbing and human bondage. The collapsing of levies heralded the selective collapsibility of native-slave, again, for the purpose of reinvasion, resettlement, reinhabitation. The naturalized disaster of Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters laid the perfect cover for land speculation and the ablution of excess people. What can’t be absorbed, can’t be folded in (because the settlers won't give up THEIR land to advance abolition), translates into bodies stacked on top of one another in public housing and prisons, in cells, kept from the labor market, making labor for others (guards and other corrections personnel) making money for states -human homesteading. It necessitates the manufacturing of crime at rates higher than anywhere in the world. 1 in 6 people in the state of Louisiana are incarcerated, the highest number of caged people per capita, making it the prison capital of United States, and therefore the prison capital of the world. The Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers’ delta flood plain was once land so fertile that it could be squeezed for excess production of cotton, giving rise to exceptionally large-scale plantation slavery. Plantation owners lived in houses like pyramids and chattel slavery took an extreme form here, even for the South, beginning with enslaved Chitimachas, Choctaw, Natchez, Chaoüachas, Natchez, Westo, Yamasee, Euchee, Yazoo and Tawasa peoples, then later replaced by enslaved West Africans. Literally, worked to death. This “most Southern on earth”(Cobb, 1992) was a place of ultimate terror for Black people even under slavery (the worst place to be sold off too, the place of no return, the place of premature death). Black and Native people alike were induced to raid and enslave Native tribes, as a bargain for their own freedom or to defer their own enslavibility by the British, French, and then American settlers. Abolition has its incommensurabilities. The Delta is now more segregated than it was during Jim Crow in 1950 (Aiken, 1990). The rising number of impoverished, all black townships is the result of mechanization of agriculture and a fundamental settler covenant that keeps black people landless. When black labor is unlabored, the Black person underneath is the excess. Angola Farm is perhaps the more notorious of the two State Penitentiaries along the Mississippi River. Three hundred miles upriver in the upper Delta region is Parchment Farm. Both State Penitentiaries (Mississippi and Louisana, respectively), both former slave plantations, both turned convict-leasing farms almost immediately after the Civil War by genius land speculators-cum-prison wardens. After the Union victory in the Civil War ‘abolished’ slavery, former Confederate Major, Samuel Lawrence James, obtained the lease to the Louisiana State Penn in 1869, and then bought Angola Farm in 1880 as land to put his chattel to work. Cages on wheels. To mobilize labor on land by landless people whose crime was mobility on land they did not own. The largest human trafficker in the world is the carceral state within the United States, not some secret Thai triad or Russian mafia or Chinese smuggler. The U.S. carceral state is properly called neo-slavery, precisely because it is legal. It is not simply a product of exceptional racism in the U.S.; its racism is a direct function of the settler colonial mandate of land and people as property. Black Codes made vagrancy - i.e. landlessness - illegal in the Antebellum South, making the self-possessed yet dispossessed Black body a crime (similar logic allowed for the seizure, imprisonment and indenture of any Indian by any person in California until 1937, based on the ideology that Indians are simultaneously landless and land-like). Dennis Childs writes “the slave ship and the plantation” and not Bentham’s panopticon as presented by Foucault, “operated as spatial, racial, and economic templates for subsequent models of coerced labor and human warehousing - as America’s original prison industrial complex” (2009, p.288). Geopolitics and biopolitics are completely knotted together in a settler colonial context. Despite the rise of publicly traded prisons, Farms are not fundamentally capitalist ventures; at their core, they are colonial contract institutions much like Spanish Missions, Indian Boarding Schools, and ghetto school systems26. The labor to cage black bodies is paid for by the state and then land is granted, worked by convict labor, to generate additional profits for the prison proprietors. However, it is the management of excess presence on the land, not the forced labor, that is the main object of slavery under settler colonialism. Today, 85 of people incarcerated at Angola, die there. Conclusion An ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework. We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions - decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. Still, we acknowledge the questions of those wary participants in Occupy Oakland and other settlers who want to know what decolonization will require of them. The answers are not fully in view and can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers as we get there, “in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give decolonization historical form and content” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36). To fully enact an ethic of incommensurability means relinquishing settler futurity, abandoning the hope that settlers may one day be commensurable to Native peoples. It means removing the asterisks, periods, commas, apostrophes, the whereas’s, buts, and conditional clauses that punctuate decolonization and underwrite settler innocence. The Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone - these are the unwritten possibilities made possible by an ethic of incommensurability. when you take away the punctuation he says of lines lifted from the documents about military-occupied land its acreage and location you take away its finality opening the possibility of other futures -Craig Santos Perez, Chamoru scholar and poet (as quoted by Voeltz, 2012) Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an “and”. It is an elsewhere. The role of the judge is to refuse settler colonialism. Refusal turns settler colonialism into an object of research, de-naturalizing its totalizing western structure. Tuck and Yang 14 Eve (Uangax), and Y. Wayne, “R-Words: Refusing Research,” Humanizing Research (2014): https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/evetuck/files/2013/12/Tuck-and-Yang-R-Words_Refusing-Research.pdf DH The Erased Lynching series yields another context in which we might consider what a social scientist’s refusal stance might comprise. Though indeed centering on the erasure of the former object, refusal need not be thought of as a subtractive methodology. Refusal prompts analysis of the festive spectators regularly backgrounded in favor of wounded bodies, strange fruit, interesting scars. Refusal shifts the gaze from the violated body to the violating instruments—in this case, the lynch mob, which does not disappear when the lynching is over, but continues to live, accumulating land and wealth through the extermination and subordination of the Other. Thus, refusal helps move us from thinking of violence as an event and toward an analysis of it as a structure. Gonzales-Day might have decided to reproduce and redistribute the images as postcards, which, by way of showing up in mundane spaces, might have effectively inspired reflection on the spectacle of violence and media of terror. However, in removing the body and the ropes, he installed limits on what the audience can access, and redirected our gaze to the bodies of those who were there to see a murder take place, and to the empty space beneath the branches. Gonzales-Day introduced a new representational territory, one that refuses to play by the rules of the settler colonial gaze, and one that refuses to satisfy the morbid curiosity derived from settler colonialism’s preoccupation with pain. Refusals are needed for narratives and images arising in social science research that rehumiliate when circulated, but also when, in Simpson’s words, “the representation would bite all of us and compromise the representational territory that we have gained for ourselves in the past 100 years” (p. 78). As researcher-narrator, Simpson tells us, “I reached my own limit when the data would not contribute to our sovereignty or complicate the deeply simplified, atrophied representations of Iroquois and other Indigenous peoples that they have been mired within anthropologically” (p. 78). Here Simpson makes clear the ways in which research is not the intervention that is needed—that is, the interventions of furthering sovereignty or countering misrepresentations of Native people as anthropological objects. Considering Erased Lynchings dialogically with On Ethnographic Refusal, we can see how refusal is not a prohibition but a generative form. First, refusal turns the gaze back upon power, specifically the colonial modalities of knowing persons as bodies to be differentially counted, violated, saved, and put to work. It makes transparent the metanarrative of knowledge production—its spectatorship for pain and its preoccupation for documenting and ruling over racial difference. Thus, refusal to be made meaningful first and foremost is grounded in a critique of settler colonialism, its construction of Whiteness, and its regimes of representation. Second, refusal generates, expands, champions representational territories that colonial knowledge endeavors to settle, enclose, domesticate. Simpson complicates the portrayals of Iroquois, without resorting to reportrayals of anthropological Indians. Gonzales-Day portrays the violations without reportraying the victimizations. Third, refusal is a critical intervention into research and its circular self-defining ethics. The ethical justification for research is defensive and self-encircling—its apparent self-criticism serves to expand its own rights to know, and to defend its violations in the name of “good science.” Refusal challenges the individualizing discourse of IRB consent and “good science” by highlighting the problems of collective harm, of representational harm, and of knowledge colonization. Fourth, refusal itself could be developed into both method and theory. Simpson presents refusal on the part of the researcher as a type of calculus ethnography. Gonzales-Day deploys refusal as a mode of representation. Simpson theorizes refusal by the Kahnawake Nation as anticolonial, and rooted in the desire for possibilities outside of colonial logics, not as a reactive stance. This final point about refusal connects our conversation back to desire as a counterlogic to settler colonial knowledge. Desire is compellingly depicted in Simpson’s description of a moment in an interview, in which the alternative logics about a “feeling citizenship” are referenced. The interviewee states, Citizenship is, as I said, you live there, you grew up there, that is the life that you know—that is who you are. Membership is more of a legislative enactment designed to keep people from obtaining the various benefits that Aboriginals can receive. (p. 76) Simpson describes this counterlogic as “the logic of the present,” one that is witnessed, lived, suffered through, and enjoyed (p. 76). Out of the predicaments, it innovates “tolerance and exceptions and affections” (p. 76). Simpson writes (regarding the Indian Act, or blood quantum), “‘Feeling citizenships’ . . . are structured in the present space of intra-community recognition, affection and care, outside of the logics of colonial and imperial rule” (p. 76). Simpson’s logic of the present dovetails with our discussion on the logics of desire. Collectively, Kahnawake refusals decenter damage narratives; they unsettle the settler colonial logics of blood and rights; they center desire. By theorizing through desire, Simpson thus theorizes with and as Kahnawake Mohawk. It is important to point out that Simpson does not deploy her tribal identity as a badge of authentic voice, but rather highlights the ethical predicaments that result from speaking as oneself, as simultaneously part of a collective with internal disputes, vis-à-vis negotiations of various settler colonial logics. Simpson thoughtfully differentiates between the Native researcher philosophically as a kind of privileged position of authenticity, and the Native researcher realistically as one who is beholden to multiple ethical considerations. What is tricky about this position is not only theorizing with, rather than theorizing about, but also theorizing as. To theorize with and as at the same time is a difficult yet fecund positionality—one that rubs against the ethnographic limit at the outset. Theorizing with (and in some of our cases, as) repositions Indigenous people and otherwise researched Others as intellectual subjects rather than anthropological subjects. Thus desire is an “epistemological shift,” not just a methodological shift (Tuck, 2009, p. 419). CULMINATION At this juncture, we don’t intend to offer a general framework for refusal, because all refusal is particular, meaning refusal is always grounded in historical analysis and present conditions. Any discussion of Simpson’s article would need to attend to the significance of real and representational sovereignty in her analysis and theorizing of refusal. The particularities of Kahnawake sovereignty throb at the center of each of the three dimensions of refusal described above. We caution readers against expropriating Indigenous notions of sovereignty into other contexts, or metaphorizing sovereignty in a way that permits one to forget that struggles to have sovereignty recognized are very real and very lived. Yet from Simpson’s example, we are able to see ways in which a researcher might make transparent the coloniality of academic knowledge in order to find its ethical limits, expand the limits of sovereign knowledge, and expand decolonial representational territories. This is in addition to questions her work helpfully raises about who the researcher is, who the researched are, and how the historical/ representational context for research matters. One way to think about refusal is how desire can be a framework, mode, and space for refusal. As a framework, desire is a counterlogic to the logics of settler colonialism. Rooted in possibilities gone but not foreclosed, “the not yet, and at times, the not anymore” (Tuck, 2010, p. 417), desire refuses the master narrative that colonization was inevitable and has a monopoly on the future. By refusing the teleos of colonial future, desire expands possible futures. As a mode of refusal, desire is a “no” and a “yes.” Another way to think about refusal is to consider using strategies of social science research to further expose the complicity of social science disciplines and research in the project of settler colonialism. There is much need to employ social science to turn back upon itself as settler colonial knowledge, as opposed to universal, liberal, or neutral knowledge without horizon. This form of refusal might include bringing attention to the mechanisms of knowledge legitimation, like the Good Labkeeping Seal of Approval (discussed under Axiom III); contesting appropriation, like the collection of pain narratives; and publicly renouncing the diminishing of Indigenous or local narratives with blood narratives in the name of science, such as in the Havasupai case discussed under Axiom II. As long as the objects of research are presumably damaged communities in need of intervention, the metanarrative of social science research remains unchallenged: which is that research at worst is simply an expansion of common knowledge (and therefore harmless), and that research at best is problem solving (and therefore beneficial). This metanarrative justifies a host of interventions into communities, and treats communities as frontiers to civilize, regardless of the specific conclusions of individual research projects. Consider, for example, wellintended research on achievement gaps that fuels NCLB and testing; the documentation of youth violence that provides the rationales for gang injunctions and the expansion of the prison industrial complex; the documentation of diabetes as justification for unauthorized genomic studies and the expansion of antiIndigenous theories. Instead, by making the settler colonial metanarrative the object of social science research, researchers may bring to a halt or at least slow down the machinery that allows knowledge to facilitate interdictions on Indigenous and Black life. Thus, this form of refusal might also involve tracking the relationships between social science research and expansions of state and corporate violence against communities. Social science researchers might design their work to call attention to or interrogate power, rather than allowing their work to serve as yet another advertisement for power. Further, this form of refusal might aim to leverage the resources of the academy to expand the representational territories fought for by communities working to thwart settler colonialism. We close this chapter with much left unsaid. This is both because there is so much to say, and also because, as we have noted, all refusal is particular. Refusal understands the wisdom in a story, as well as the wisdom in not passing that story on. Refusal in research makes way for other r-words—for resistance, reclaiming, recovery, reciprocity, repatriation, regeneration. Though understandings of refusal are still emergent, though so much is still coming into view, we want to consolidate a summary of take-away points for our readers. A parting gift, of sorts, as each of us takes our leave to map our next steps as researchers, as community members, within and without academe. We think of this list as a tear-away sheet, something to cut out and carry in your pocket, sew into a prayer flag, or paste into your field notebooks.
2/6/22
ND - Collective Bargaining CP
Tournament: Silver and Black | Round: 1 | Opponent: Homestead DA | Judge: Josh Weingarten TEXT: A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize the unconditional right of workers to collectively bargain.
Their own solvency card says this solves virtually the entire Aff. Evaluate the CP through a lens of sufficiency. If we solve virtually the entire Aff advantage then any risk of the Econ DA or a case turn is enough to negate. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there are strikes every day. Factory workers, hotel employees, teachers and taxi drivers regularly withdraw their labor and demand a better deal from their employer. Strikes are often successful, and these days strike leaders hardly ever get put in prison. It may seem ironic that workers in a nominally Communist country don’t have the right to strike, and that workers are apparently willing to defy the Communist Party by going out on strike. But China effectively abandoned Communism and embraced capitalism many years ago. And in a capitalist economy, strikes are a fact of life. Chinese scholars, government officials and even some businessmen have long recognized this fact and have called for the restoration of the right to strike, which was removed from the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 1982. Deng Xiaoping feared that the economic reforms he was introducing would lead to labor unrest. Although Deng and his successors were able to quiet labor unrest and strike action for a while, the trend over the last five years or so has been clear. As the business leader Zeng Qinghong noted recently, the number of strikes is increasing every year. Mr. Zeng, who is head of the Guangzhou Automobile Co., reported that in just two months last summer, there were more than 20 strikes in the automotive industry in the Pearl River Delta alone, and that new strikes were occurring all the time. Mr. Zeng suggested in a submission to this year’s National People’s Congress, China’s annual legislature, that the right to strike should be restored because it was a basic right of workers in a market economy and a natural adjunct to the right to work. I agree with Mr. Zeng on this point and would like to take his argument one step further. The right to strike is clearly important, but the most vital and fundamental right of workers is the right to collective bargaining. After all, why do workers go out on strike? Very simply, they go on strike for higher pay and better working conditions. The strike is not an end in itself but is part of a bargaining process. And if the collective bargaining process were more effective, in many cases, workers would not need to go out on strike at all. If you talk to factory workers, most will tell you they would rather not go on strike if they can avoid it. Indeed, most only go on strike because they have no alternative. China’s workers want and need an alternative. They want a system in which they can raise their demands for higher pay and discuss those demands in peaceful, equal and constructive negotiations with management. If workers can achieve their goals through peaceful collective bargaining, in the long run there will be fewer strikes, workers will be better paid and labor relations will be vastly improved. We also have to be aware that if the right to strike is reinstated in the Constitution in isolation — without the right to collective bargaining — there would be a danger that the right of workers to go on strike might actually be eroded. Just look at the right to stage a public demonstration. Chinese citizens do have the constitutional right to demonstrate but in reality they have to apply to the police for permission, and of course very few of those applications are granted. Likewise, if workers have to apply to the authorities before they can go on strike, the right to strike will become meaningless. Moreover, the number of strikes would not be reduced because workers would continue to go out on strike regardless and labor relations will deteriorate even further. On the other hand, if the right to strike is framed in a way that can liberate workers and encourage and empower them to engage in collective bargaining, safe in the knowledge that they have a powerful weapon that can be deployed if necessary, labor relations will be enhanced and the number of strikes might actually decrease. There is a saying in China that “you should not only focus on your head when you have headache because the real reason for the headache could be your foot.” As Mr. Zeng noted, the rapidly increasing number of strikes in China has become a major headache, not only for business but for the government as well. If the government wants to reduce the number of strikes in China, it needs to take a holistic approach and address the root cause of the problem — the absence of an effective collective bargaining system in which democratically elected workers’ representatives can negotiate better pay and conditions with their employer. If such a system can be implemented in China it would obviously benefit workers but it would also benefit employers like Mr. Zeng who are concerned about high worker turnover and the loss of production through strike action. Crucially, it is also in the interest of the Chinese government to introduce collective bargaining. The authorities may be nervous about handing power to the workers but they should bear in mind that by doing so they would aid the development of more harmonious labor relations, which could lead to the Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
Strikes cause widespread economic harm - GM strikes prove. This turns the Aff econ scenarios and controls the internal link to Chinese soft-power. 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."
12/3/21
ND - Police Unions CP
Tournament: USC | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard-Westlake KD | Judge: Jared Burke CP Text: A just government should recognize the unconditional right of non-police workers to strike by abolishing police unions.
The aff makes police collective bargaining worse and gives more power to police unions.
blue flu …walkouts to extract concessions
Police unions use collective bargaining to reinforce systems of racism and violence. Clark ‘19
police unions bear … who commit crimes
Police backed by unions are more violent than non-unionized police. Ingraham ’20.
demonstrations escalated calls …by police each year
Turns Union: Police unions are anti-labor- means the aff can never solve without getting rid of them AND turns case. Modak 20.
police suppress labor …pro-labor ideology
2/6/22
ND - Violence PIC
Tournament: Silver and Black | Round: 1 | Opponent: Homestead DA | Judge: Josh Weingarten Counterplan: China ought to guarantee the right to strike except for violent strike tactics. Strikes can be violent, South Africa proves. This link turns the AC by harming the affected sector and decking the economy. Tenzam ’20 - Mlungisi Tenzam LLB LLM LLD Senior Lecturer, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2020, The effects of violent strikes on the economy of a developing country: a case of South Africa, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttextandpid=S1682-58532020000300004 The Constitution guarantees every worker the right to join a trade union, participate in the activities and programmes of a trade union, and to strike.11The Constitution grants these rights to a "worker" as an individual.12However, the right to strike and any other conduct in contemplation or furtherance of a strike such as a picket13 can only be exercised by workers acting collectively.14¶ The right to strike and participation in the activities of a trade union were given more effect through the enactment of the Labour Relations Act 66 of 199515 (LRA). The main purpose of the LRA is to "advance economic development, social justice, labour peace and the democratisation of the workplace".16 The advancement of social justice means that the exercise of the right to strike must advance the interests of workers and at the same time workers must refrain from any conduct that can affect those who are not on strike as well members of society.¶ Even though the right to strike and the right to participate in the activities of a trade union that often flow from a strike 17 are guaranteed in the Constitution and specifically regulated by the LRA, it sometimes happens that the right to strike is exercised for purposes not intended by the Constitution and the LRA, generally.18 For example, it was not the intention of the Constitutional Assembly and the legislature that violence should be used during strikes or pickets. As the Constitution provides, pickets are meant to be peaceful.19 Contrary to section 17 of the Constitution, the conduct of workers participating in a strike or picket has changed in recent years with workers trying to emphasise their grievances by causing disharmony and chaos in public. A media report by the South African Institute of Race Relations pointed out that between the years 1999 and 2012 there were 181 strike-related deaths, 313 injuries and 3,058 people were arrested for public violence associated with strikes.20 The question is whether employers succumb easily to workers' demands if a strike is accompanied by violence? In response to this question, one worker remarked as follows:¶ "There is no sweet strike, there is no Christian strike ... A strike is a strike. You want to get back what belongs to you ... you won't win a strike with a Bible. You do not wear high heels and carry an umbrella and say '1992 was under apartheid, 2007 is under ANC'. You won't win a strike like that."21¶ The use of violence during industrial action affects not only the strikers or picketers, the employer and his or her business but it also affects innocent members of the public, non-striking employees, the environment and the economy at large. In addition, striking workers visit non-striking workers' homes, often at night, threaten them and in some cases, assault or even murder workers who are acting as replacement labour.22 This points to the fact that for many workers and their families' living conditions remain unsafe and vulnerable to damage due to violence. In Security Services Employers Organisation v SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU),23 it was reported that about 20 people were thrown out of moving trains in the Gauteng province; most of them were security guards who were not on strike and who were believed to be targeted by their striking colleagues. Two of them died, while others were admitted to hospitals with serious injuries.24In SA Chemical Catering and Allied Workers Union v Check One (Pty) Ltd,25striking employees were carrying various weapons ranging from sticks, pipes, planks and bottles. One of the strikers Mr Nqoko was alleged to have threatened to cut the throats of those employees who had been brought from other branches of the employer's business to help in the branch where employees were on strike. Such conduct was held not to be in line with good conduct of striking.26¶ These examples from case law show that South Africa is facing a problem that is affecting not only the industrial relations' sector but also the economy at large. For example, in 2012, during a strike by workers employed by Lonmin in Marikana, the then-new union Association of Mine and Construction Workers Union (AMCU) wanted to exert its presence after it appeared that many workers were not happy with the way the majority union, National Union of Mine Workers (NUM), handled negotiations with the employer (Lonmin Mine). AMCU went on an unprotected strike which was violent and resulted in the loss of lives, damage to property and negative economic consequences including a weakened currency, reduced global investment27, declining productivity, and increase unemployment in the affected sectors.27Further, the unreasonably long time it takes for strikes to get resolved in the Republic has a negative effect on the business of the employer, the economy and employment.
12/3/21
ND - Work K
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 1 | Opponent: Lakeville South KK | Judge: Joshua You Work K The aff’s refusal to work is not a refusal of work – their endorsement of striking reinforces the belief that withholding labor puts people in a position of power. This reduces humans to labor capital, which causes work-dependency and inhibits alternatives. Hoffmann, 20 (Maja, "Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research. Taylor and Francis, 4-1-2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2020.1790718)//usc-br/ The societal dependence on work If work is associated with environmental pressures in at least four different ways, why do we have to maintain it at constant or increased levels? We hold that in industrial society four distinct levels of structural and cultural dependency on work may be discerned. These are to be understood as broad analytical categories which in reality comprise and cross individual and structural levels in various ways, and are all interdependent. Personal dependence. A first aspect is individual or personal dependence on work: Work as regular, gainful employment constitutes one of the central social relations in modern ‘work society’ and is a central point of reference in people’s lives. As a principal source of income, waged work fulfils the existential function of providing livelihoods and social security. It is constructed to secure basic social rights, social integration, recognition, status, and personal identity (Frayne 2015b; Weeks 2011). This is probably why ‘social’ is so often equated with ‘work’. State dependence. Secondly, dependence on work pertains to the modern welfare state: the revenues and economic growth generated through work contribute substantially to the financing of social security systems. Affording welfare is therefore a main argument for creating jobs. Wage labour is thus a dominating tool for redistribution; through wages, taxes on wages and on the consumption that production generates, almost all distribution takes place. Hence, what the job is, and what is being produced, is of secondary importance (Paulsen 2017). Work is moreover a convenient instrument of control that structures and disciplines society, and ‘renders populations at once productive and governable’ (Weeks 2011, 54; Gorz 1982; Lafargue 2014 1883). Specifically, the dominant neoliberal ideology, its condemnation of laziness and idealisation of ‘hardworking people’ has intensified the ‘moral fortification of work’. Accordingly, the neoliberal ‘workfare’ reforms have focused on job creation and the relentless activation for the labour market, effectively ‘enforcing work (…) as a key function of the state’ (Frayne 2015b, 16). Economic dependence. Thirdly, besides the economic imperative for individuals to ‘earn a living’ and pay off debt, modern economies are dependent on work in terms of an industrious labour force, long working hours for increasing economic output under the imperatives of capital accumulation, growth and competition, and rising incomes for increasing purchasing power and demand. Creating or preserving jobs constitutes the standard argument for economic growth. In turn, work as one basic factor of production creates growth. However, the relation between growth and employment is conditioned, amongst other factors, primarily by constantly pursued labour productivity: for employment to rise or stay stable, the economy must grow at a sufficiently high rate to exceed productivity gains, in order to offset job losses and avoid ‘jobless growth’. Moreover, faltering expansion triggers a spiral of recession which not only affects economic stability but results in societal crises as a whole (Jackson 2009; Paech 2012). However, besides being unsustainable and insatiable, growth is also increasingly unlikely to continue at the rates required for economic stability (Kallis et al. 2018; IMF 2015). The individual and structural economic dependence on work and economic growth therefore implies profound vulnerability as livelihoods and political stability are fatefully exposed to global competition and the capitalist imperative of capital accumulation, and constrained by ‘systemically relevant’ job and growth creating companies, industries and global (financial) markets (Gronemeyer 2012; Paech 2012). Cultural dependence. A fourth aspect concerns cultural dependence: The ‘work ethic’ is the specific morality described by Max Weber (19921905) as constitutive of modern industrial culture, 2 and determining for all its subjects as shared ‘common senses’ about how work is valued and understood. It means an ingrained moral compulsion to gainful work and timesaving, manifested in the common ideals of productivity, achievement and entrepreneurship, in the feeling of guilt when time is ‘wasted’, in personal identification with one’s ‘calling’, in observations of busyness, even burnout as a ‘badge of honour’ (Paulsen 2014), and in descriptions of a culture that has lost the ‘capacity to relax in the old, uninhibited ways’ (Thompson 1967, 91). Even for those who do not share such attitudes towards work, in a work-centred culture it is normal to (seek) work. It is so commonsensical that it seems impractical to question it, and it continues to be normalised through socialisation and schooling. Consequently, people become limited in their imagination of alternatives, the prospect of losing one’s job usually causes heartfelt fear (Standing 2011). For a work society that ‘does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won’, there can be nothing worse than the cessation of work (Hannah Arendt, cited in Gorz 1989, 7–8). The wage relation based on the commodity labour is, in other words, an essential functional feature of the industrial-capitalist system, and the exaltation of work remains its social ethic. For modern industrial society work is ‘both its chief means and its ultimate goal’ (Gorz 1989, 13; Weber 1992 1905; Weeks 2011); it is centred and structurally dependent on work, despite work’s environmentally adverse implications. This constellation constitutes the dilemma between work and the environment, and it is why we argue that work is absolutely central to present-day unsustainability and should accordingly be dealt with in sustainability research. Work necessitates material throughput and waste that destroys the environment, even when the jobs are ‘green’ Hoffmann, 20 (Maja, "Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research. Taylor and Francis, 4-1-2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2020.1790718)//usc-br/ An ecological critique of work What is the problem with modern-day work from an environmental perspective? A number of quantitative studies have researched the correlation of working hours and environmental impacts in terms of ecological footprint, carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy consumption, both on micro/household and on macro/cross-national levels, and for both ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries (Fitzgerald, Jorgenson, and Clark 2015; Hayden and Shandra 2009; Knight, Rosa, and Schor 2013; Nässén and Larsson 2015; Rosnick and Weisbrot 2007). Based on these findings, and going beyond them, we develop a qualitative classification of ecological impacts of work broadly (not working hours only), distinguishing four analytically distinct factors (Hoffmann 2017). Fundamentally, all productive activity is based on material and energy throughputs within wider ecological conditions, which necessarily involves interference with the ecosphere. The appropriation and exploitation of non-human animals, land, soil, water, biomass, raw materials, the atmosphere and all other elements of the biosphere always to some extent causes pollution, degradation, and destruction. Thus, work is inherently both productive and destructive. However, this biophysical basis alone need not make work unsustainable, and it has not always been so (Krausmann 2017). Contributing to its unsustainability is, firstly, the Scale factor: the greater the amount of work, the more ‘inputs’ are required and the more ‘outputs’ generated, which means more throughput of resources and energy, and resulting ecological impacts. In other words, the more work, the larger the size of the economy, the more demands on the biosphere (Hayden and Shandra 2009; Knight, Rosa, and Schor 2013). Obviously, there are qualitative differences between different types of work and their respective environmental impacts. Moreover, besides the evident and direct impacts, indirect impacts matter also. The tertiary/service sector is therefore not exempt from this reasoning (Hayden and Shandra 2009; Knight, Rosa, and Schor 2013), not only due to its own (often ‘embodied’) materiality and energy requirements, but also because it administrates and supports industrial production processes in global supply chains (Fitzgerald, Jorgenson, and Clark 2015; Haberl et al. 2009; Paech 2012). Additionally, modern work is subject to certain integrally connected and mutually reinforcing conditions inherent in industrial economic structures, which aggravate ecological impacts by further increasing the Scale factor. These include the systematic externalisation of costs, and the use of fossil fuels as crucial energy basis, which combined with modern industrial technology enable continuously rising labour productivity independently of physical, spatial or temporal constraints (Malm 2013). Taken together, this leads to constantly spurred economic growth with a corresponding growth in material and energetic throughputs, and the creation of massive amounts of waste. The latter is not an adverse side-effect of modern work, but part of its purpose under the imperatives of growth, profitability, and constant innovation, as evident in phenomena such as planned obsolescence or the ‘scrapping premium’, serving to stimulate growth and demand, and hence, job creation (Gronemeyer 2012). These conditions and effects tend to be neglected when ‘green jobs’ are promised to resolve the ecological crisis (Paus 2018), disregarding that the systematically and continuously advanced scale of work and production has grown far beyond sustainable limits (Haberl et al. 2009). Unions are intrinsically invested in labor being good – they don’t strike to get rid of work; they strike to get people back to work. Lundström 14: Lundström, Ragnar; Räthzel, Nora; Uzzell, David {Uzell is Professor (Emeritus) of Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey with a BA Geography from the University of Liverpool, a PhD Psychology from the University of Surrey, and a MSc in Social Psychology from London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. Lundstrom is Associate professor at Department of Sociology at Umea University. Rathzel is an Affiliated as professor emerita at Department of Sociology at Umea University.}, 14 - ("Disconnected spaces: introducing environmental perspectives into the trade union agenda top-down and bottom-up," Taylor and Francis, 12-11-2014, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2015.1041212?scroll=topandamp;needAccess=true)//marlborough-wr/ Even though there was support for environmental perspectives in LO at this time – after all, the National Congress commissioned the programme, an environmental unit was established at headquarters and a majority of the congress accepted the programme – this waned significantly when the economy was threatened. This reflects the influence of the ‘jobs vs. environment’ conflict on processes of integrating environmental perspectives into the union agenda (Räthzel and Uzzell 2011). Union policies are embedded in a mode of production marked by what Marx called the ‘metabolic rift’. The concept is one of the pillars upon which Foster develops ‘Marx’s Ecology’ (Foster 2000, 155 f). It argues that the capitalist industrial system exploits the earth without restoring its constituents to it. More generally, Marx defined the labour process as metabolism (Stoffwechsel) between nature (external to humans) and human nature. When humans work on and with nature to produce the means of their survival, they also develop their knowledge and their capabilities, and transform their own human nature (Marx 1998). Polanyi later reduced the concept of the ‘metabolic rift’ to the commodification of land (Polanyi 1944), thus paving the way for a perspective that sees the solution in the control of the market, but disregards the relations of production as they are lived by workers in the production process. But to understand why trade unions have difficulties developing and especially holding on to environmental policies it is important to recognise that since nature has become a privately owned ‘means of production’ it has become workers’ Other. Unions have been reduced and have reduced themselves to care only for one part of the inseparable relationship between nature and labour. On the everyday level of policies this means that environmental strategies lose momentum in times of economic crises and when jobs are seen to be threatened. In this respect, unions are no different from political parties and governments. In spite of numerous publications by the ILO and Union organisations, which show that a move to a ‘green economy’ can create new jobs (Poschen 2012; Rivera Alejo and Martín Murillo 2014), unions have been reluctant to exchange ‘a bird in the hand for two in the bush’ – even if the bird in the hand becomes elusive. The alternative is rejecting the affirmative to embrace postwork – it questions the centrality of work and ontological attachments to productivity to enable emancipatory transformation of society to an ecologically sustainable form. Your ballot symbolizes an answer to the question of whether work can be used as the solution to social ills. The plan doesn’t “happen,” and you are conditioned to valorize work – vote neg to interrogate these ideological assumptions. Hoffmann, 20 (Maja, "Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research. Taylor and Francis, 4-1-2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23251042.2020.1790718)//usc-br/ What is postwork? How can a ‘postwork’ approach contribute to resolving these issues? The notions critique of work (Frayne 2015a, 2015b) or postwork (Weeks 2011) have emerged in recent years in social science research and popular culture, building on a long intellectual tradition of (autonomist and neo-)Marxist, anarchist, and feminist theory (Seyferth 2019; Weeks 2011). The critique of work targets work in a fundamental sense, not only its conditions or exploitation. It is aimed at the centrality of work in modern ‘work society’ as a pivotal point for the provision of livelihoods through monetary income, the granting of social security, social inclusion, and personal identity construction, on which grounds unemployed persons and unpaid activities are excluded from recognition, welfare provision and trade union support. Moreover, the crucial role of waged work in the functioning of the welfare state and the modern industrialised economy is part of this critique (Chamberlain 2018; Frayne 2015b; Paulsen 2017). Although commonly taken as naturally given, this kind of societal order and its institutions such as the wage relation, labour markets, unemployment, or abstract time are historically and culturally exceptional modes of human coexistence (Applebaum 1992; Graeber 2018; Gorz 1989; Polanyi 2001 1944; Thompson 1967). This critique of the structures and social relations of work society is accompanied by the critique of its cultural foundation, the work ethic; an ideological commitment to work and productivism as ends in themselves, moral obligations, and as intrinsically good, regardless of what is done and at what cost (Gorz 1982; Weber 1992 1905; Weeks 2001). Postwork, however, is not only a critical stance. Criticising work and work society, aware of their historical contingency, implies the potential for an emancipatory transformation of industrial society. The focus is thereby not necessarily on abolishing work tout-court, but rather on pointing out and questioning its relentless centrality and asking what a more desirable, free and sustainable society might look like; a society in which work is no longer the pivotal point of social organisation and ideological orientation, including all questions and debates around this objective (Chamberlain 2018; Frayne 2015a; Weeks 2011). As a relatively new and dynamically developing approach, postwork is, despite similar political claims, not uniform in its reasoning. Some, drawing on the classical ‘end-of-work’ argument (Frayne 2016), assume an imminent technology-induced massive rise in unemployment. This is welcomed as an opportunity to reduce and ultimately abolish work to liberate humankind (Srnicek and Williams 2015). Others emphasise the remarkable fact that throughout the past two centuries technological development has not challenged the centrality of work in modern lives, despite the prospect that technological change would allow for much shorter working hours (e.g., Keynes 1930). This has not materialised due to the requirements of a work-centred, work-dependent society. On the contrary, work has become more central to modern societies. These deeper structural and cultural aspects and dependencies seem to remain unaffected by technological trends (Paulsen 2017; Weeks 2011). The ecological case for postwork The perspective of postwork/critiques of work may enrich sustainability debates in many ways; here, our focus is again on ecological concerns. First, postwork offers a much needed change in focus in sustainability debates, away from narrow critiques of individual consumption and the overemphasis on ‘green jobs’, towards understanding work as one central cause of sustained societal unsustainability. Postwork directs the focus towards crucial overlooked issues, e.g. the ways in which work is ecologically harmful, or which problems arise due to the social and cultural significance of modern-day work, including existential dependencies on it. Postwork seeks to re-politicise work, recognising that its conception and societal organisation are social constructs and therefore political, and must accordingly be open to debate (Weeks 2011). This opens conceptual space and enables open-minded debates about the meaning, value and purpose of work: what kind of work is, for individuals, society and the biosphere as a whole, meaningful, pointless, or outright harmful (Graeber 2018)? Such debates and enhanced understanding about the means and ends of work, and the range of problems associated with it, would be important in several regards. In ecological regard it facilitates the ecologically necessary, substantial reduction of work, production and consumption (Frey 2019; Haberl et al. 2009). Reducing work/working hours is one of the key premises of postwork, aiming at de-centring and de-normalising work, and releasing time, energy and creativity for purposes other than work (Coote 2013). From an ecological perspective, reducing the amount of work would reduce the dependency on a commodity-intensive mode of living, and allow space for more sustainable practices (Frayne 2016). Reducing work would also help mitigate all other work-induced environmental pressures described above, especially the ‘Scale factor’ (Knight, Rosa, and Schor 2013), i.e. the amount of resources and energy consumed, and waste, including emissions, created through work. A postwork approach facilitates debate on the politics of ecological work reduction which entails difficult questions: for example, which industries and fields of employment are to be phased out? Which fields will need to be favoured and upon what grounds? Which kinds of work in which sectors are socially important and should therefore be organised differently, especially when altering the energy basis of work due to climate change mitigation which implies decentralised, locally specific, intermittent and less concentrated energy sources (Malm 2013)? These questions are decisive for future (un-)sustainability, and yet serious attempts at a solution are presently forestalled by the unquestioned sanctity that work, ‘jobs’ or ‘full employment’ enjoy (Frayne 2015b). Postwork is also conducive to rethinking the organisation of work. There are plausible arguments in favour of new institutions of democratic control over the economy, i.e. economic democracy (Johanisova and Wolf 2012). This is urgent and necessary to distribute a very tight remaining carbon budget fairly and wisely (IPCC 2018), to keep economic power in check, and to gain public sovereignty over fundamental economic decisions that are pivotal for (un-)sustainable trajectories (Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg 2004). An obstacle to this is one institution in particular which is rarely under close scrutiny: the labour market, a social construct linked to the advent of modern work in form of the commodity of labour (Applebaum 1992). It is an undemocratic mechanism, usually characterised by high levels of unfreedom and coercion (Anderson 2017; Graeber 2018; Paulsen 2015) that allocates waged work in a competitive mode as an artificially scarce, ‘fictitious’ commodity (Polanyi 2001 1944). 4 It does so according to availability of money and motives of gain on the part of employers, and appears therefore inappropriate for distributing labour according to sustainability criteria and related societal needs. As long as unsustainable and/or unnecessary jobs are profitable and/or (well-)paid, they will continue to exist (Gorz 1989), just as ‘green jobs’ must follow these same criteria in order to be created. An ecological postwork perspective allows to question this on ecological grounds, and it links to debates on different modes of organising socially necessary work, production and provisioning in a de-commodified, democratic and sustainable mode. Finally, postwork is helpful for ecological reasons because it criticises the cultural glorification of ‘hard work’, merit and productivism, and the moral assumption that laziness and inaction are intrinsically bad, regardless the circumstances. Postwork is about a different mindset which problematises prevailing productivist attitudes and allows the idea that being lazy or unproductive can be something inherently valuable. Idleness is conducive to an ecological agenda as nothing is evidently more carbon-neutral and environment-sparing than being absolutely unproductive. As time-use studies indicate, leisure, recreation and socialising have very low ecological impacts, with rest and sleep having virtually none (Druckman et al. 2012). Apart from humans, the biosphere also needs idle time for regeneration. In this sense, laziness or ‘ecological leisure’, ideally sleep, can be regarded as supremely ecofriendly states of being that would help mitigate ecological pressures. Moreover, as postwork traces which changes in attitudes towards time, efficiency and laziness have brought modern work culture and modern time regimes into being in the first place and have dominated ever since (Thompson 1967; Weber 1992 1905), it provides crucial knowledge for understanding and potentially changing this historically peculiar construction. It can thereby take inspiration from longstanding traditions throughout human history, where leisure has usually been a high social ideal and regarded as vital for realising genuine freedom and quality of life (Applebaum 1992; Gorz 1989). Conclusions: postwork politics and practices We argued that modern-day work is a central cause for unsustainability, and should therefore be transformed to advance towards sustainability. We have contributed to this field of research, firstly, by developing a systematisation of the ecological harms associated with work – comprising the factors Scale, Time, Income, and Work-induced Mobility, Infrastructure, and Consumption – taking those studies one step further which investigate the ecological impacts of working hours quantitatively. One of the analytical advantages of this approach is that it avoids the mystification of work through indirect measures of economic activity (such as per capita GDP), as in the numerous analyses of the conflict between sustainability and economic growth in general. Our second substantial contribution consists in combining these ecological impacts of work with an analysis of the various structural dependencies on work in modern society, which spells out clearly what the recurring jobs-environment-dilemma actually implies, and why it is so difficult to overcome. While this dilemma is often vaguely referred to, this has been the first more detailed analysis of the different dimensions that essentially constitute it. Reviewing the literature in environmental sociology and sustainability research more generally, we also found the work-environment-dilemma and the role of work itself are not sufficiently addressed and remain major unresolved issues. We proposed the field would benefit from taking up the long intellectual tradition of problematising modern-day work, through the approach of postwork or critiques of work. While the described problems of unsustainability and entrenched dependencies cannot easily be resolved, we discussed how postwork arguments can contribute to pointing out and understanding them, and to opening up new perspectives to advance sustainability debates. A third contribution is therefore to have introduced the concept of postwork/critiques of work into sustainability research and the work-environment debate, and to have conducted an initial analysis of the ways in which postwork may be helpful for tackling ecological problems. Besides being ecologically beneficial, it may also serve emancipatory purposes to ‘raise broader questions about the place of work in our lives and spark the imagination of a life no longer so subordinate to it’ (Weeks 2011, 33). In order to inspire such ‘postwork imagination’ (Weeks 2011, 35, 110) and show that postwork ideas are not as detached from reality as they may sound, in this last section we briefly outline examples of existing postwork politics and practices. The most obvious example is the reduction of working hours during the 19th and 20th centuries. These reforms were essential to the early labour movement, and the notion that increasing productivity entails shorter working hours has never been nearly as ‘radical’ as today (Paulsen 2017). As concerns about climate change are rising, there is also renewed awareness about the ecological benefits of worktime reduction, besides a whole range of other social and economic advantages (Coote 2013; Frey 2019). Worktime reduction is usually taken up positively in public debate. Carlsson (2015, 184) sees a ‘growing minority of people’ who engage in practices other than waged work to support themselves and make meaningful contributions to society. Frayne (2015b) describes the practical refusal of work by average people who wish to live more independently of the treadmill of work. Across society, the disaffection with work is no marginal phenomenon (Graeber 2018; Cederström and Fleming 2012; Paulsen 2014, 2015; Weeks 2011); many start to realise the ‘dissonance between the mythical sanctity of work on the one hand, and the troubling realities of people’s actual experiences on the other’ (Frayne 2015b, 228). Public debates are therefore increasingly receptive to issues such as industries’ responsibility for climate change, coercive ‘workfare’ policies, meaningless ‘bullshit jobs’, or ‘work-life-balance’, shorter hours, overwork and burnout; topics ‘that will not go away’ (Coote 2013, xix) and question the organisation of work society more fundamentally. 5 The debate about an unconditional basic income (UBI) will also remain. UBI would break the existential dependency of livelihoods on paid work and serve as a new kind of social contract to entitle people to social security regardless of paid economic activity. In addition to countless models in theory, examples of UBI schemes exist in practice, either currently implemented or planned as ‘experiments’ (Srnicek and Williams 2015). The critique and refusal of work also takes place both within the sphere of wage labour and outside it. Within, the notions of absenteeism, tardiness, shirking, theft, or sabotage (Pouget 1913 1898; Seyferth 2019) have a long tradition, dating back to early struggles against work and industrialisation (Thompson 1967), and common until today (Paulsen 2014). The idea of such deliberate ‘workplace resistance’ is that the ability to resist meaningless work and the internalised norms of work society, and be idle and useless while at work, can be recognised and successfully practised (Campagna 2013; Scott 2012). Similarly, there is a growing interest in productive practices, social relations, and the commons outside the sphere of wage labour and market relations, for example in community-supported agriculture. This initiates ways of organising work and the economy to satisfy material needs otherwise than by means of commodity consumption (Chamberlain 2018; Helfrich and Bollier 2015). For such modes of organising productive social relations in more varied ways, inspiration could be drawn from the forms of ‘work’ that are prevalent in the global South in the so-called informal sector and in non-industrial crafts and peasantry, neither of which resemble the cultural phenomenon of modern-day work with its origins in the colonial North (Comaroff and Comaroff 1987; Thompson 1967). This, however, contradicts the global development paradigm, under which industrialisation, ‘economic upgrading’, global (labour) market integration and ‘structural transformation’ are pursued. Modern work, especially industrial factory jobs and ideally in cities, is supposed to help ‘the poor’ to escape their misery (Banerjee and Duflo 2012; UNDP 2015). Many of these other forms of livelihood provisioning and associated ways of life are thus disregarded, denigrated or destroyed as underdeveloped, backward, poor, and lazy (Thompson 1967), and drawn into the formal system of waged work as cheap labour in capitalist markets and global supply chains – ‘improved living conditions’ as measured in formal pecuniary income (Rosling 2018; Comaroff and Comaroff 1987). There are indications that these transformations create structural poverty, highly vulnerable jobs and an imposed dependence on wage labour (while few viable wage labour structures exist) (Hickel 2017; Srnicek and Williams 2015). There is also clear evidence of numerous struggles against capitalist development and for traditional livelihood protection and environmental justice (Anguelovski 2015). These are aspects where a postwork orientation is relevant beyond the industrialised societies of the global North, as it puts a focus on the modern phenomenon ‘work’ itself and the conditions that led to its predominance, as it questions the common narrative that ‘jobs’ are an end in themselves and justify all kinds of problematic development, and as it allows to ask which alternative, postcolonial critiques and conceptualisations of ‘work’ exist and should be preserved. To conclude, we clearly find traces of postwork organisation and politics in the present. However, these ideas are contested; they concern the roots of modern culture, society and industrial-capitalist economies. Waged work continues to be normalised, alternatives beyond niches appear quite impractical for generalisation. Powerful economic interests, including trade unions, seek to perpetuate the status-quo (Lundström, Räthzel, and Uzzell 2015). Job creation and (global) labour market integration (regardless of what kind) are central policy goals of all political parties, and presently popular progressive debates on a Green New Deal tend to exhibit a rather productivist stance. There is one particular aspect that appears hopeful: the present socio-economic system is unsustainable in the literal sense that it is physically impossible to be sustained in the long run. It was Weber (19921905) who predicted that the powerful cosmos of the modern economic order will be determining with overwhelming force until the last bit of fossil fuel is burnt – and exactly this needs to happen soon to avert catastrophic climate change. 6 This is the battlefield of sustainability, and lately there has been renewed urgency and momentum for more profound social change, where it might be realised that a different societal trajectory beyond work and productivism for their own sake is more sustainable and desirable for the future.
11/5/21
ND T-Nebel
Tournament: Silver and Black | Round: 1 | Opponent: Homestead DA | Judge: Josh Weingarten Interpretation—the aff may not specify a single just government A is an generic indefinite singular. Cohen 01 Ariel Cohen (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), “On the Generic Use of Indefinite Singulars,” Journal of Semantics 18:3, 2001 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/188590876.pdf *IS generic = Indefinite Singulars French, then, expresses the two types of reading differently. In English, on¶ the other hand, generic BPs are ambiguous between inductivist and normative¶ readings. But even in English there is one type of generic that can express only¶ one of these readings, and this is the IS generic. While BPs are ambiguous¶ between the inductivist and the rules and regulations readings, ISs are not. In¶ the supermarket scenario discussed above, only (44.b) is true:¶ (44) a. A banana sells for $.49/lb.¶ b. A banana sells for $1.00/lb.¶ The normative force of the generic IS has been noted before. Burton-Roberts¶ (1977) considers the following minimal pair:¶ (45) a. Gentlemen open doors for ladies.¶ b. A gentleman opens doors for ladies.¶ He notes that (45.b), but not (45.a), expresses what he calls “moral necessity.”7¶ Burton-Roberts observes that if Emile does not as a rule open doors for ladies, his mother could utter (45.b) and thereby successfully imply that Emile was not, or was¶ not being, a gentleman. Notice that, if she were to utter. . . (45.a) she¶ might achieve the same effect (that of getting Emile to open doors for¶ ladies) but would do so by different means. . . For (45.a) merely makes a¶ generalisation about gentlemen (p. 188).¶ Sentence (45.b), then, unlike (45.a), does not have a reading where it makes¶ a generalization about gentlemen; it is, rather, a statement about some social¶ norm. It is true just in case this norm is in effect, i.e. it is a member of a set of¶ socially accepted rules and regulations.¶ An IS that, in the null context, cannot be read generically, may receive a¶ generic reading in a context that makes it clear that a rule or a regulation is¶ referred to. For example, Greenberg (1998) notes that, out of the blue, (46.a)¶ and (46.b) do not have a generic reading:¶ (46) a. A Norwegian student whose name ends with ‘s’ or ‘j’ wears green¶ thick socks.¶ b. A tall, left-handed, brown haired neurologist in Hadassa hospital¶ earns more than $50,000 a year.¶ However, Greenberg points out that in the context of (47.a) and (47.b),¶ respectively, the generic readings of the IS subject are quite natural:¶ (47) a. You know, there are very interesting traditions in Norway, concerning the connection between name, profession, and clothing. For¶ example, a Norwegian student. . .¶ b. The new Hadassa manager has some very funny paying criteria. For¶ example, a left-handed. . .¶ Even IS sentences that were claimed above to lack a generic reading, such¶ as (3.b) and (4.b), may, in the appropriate context, receive such a reading:¶ (48) a. Sire, please don’t send her to the axe. Remember, a king is generous!¶ b. How dare you build me such a room? Don’t you know a room is¶ square? That outweighs—only our evidence speaks to how indefinite singulars are interpreted in the context of normative statements like the resolution. This means throw out aff counter-interpretations that are purely descriptive Violation—they specified US Vote neg: 1 Precision –any deviation justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words in the resolution at their whim which decks negative ground and preparation because the aff is no longer bounded by the resolution. 2 Limits—specifying a just government offers huge explosion in the topic since they get permutations of hundreds of governments in the world depending on their definition of “just government”. DTD – same thing as drop the arg Topicality is a voting issue that should be evaluated through competing interpretations – it tells the negative what they do and do not have to prepare for No RVIs—it’s your burden to be topical.
12/3/21
SO - COVID NC v1
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 2 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart SP | Judge: Eric He Covid Funding CP Counterplan: Members of the WTO, backed by the United States and high-income countries, should provide all necessary funding to purchase COVID-19 vaccines developed by drug companies at any reasonable cost and distribute them as requested world-wide. 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. China PIC CP: The member nations of the World Trade Organization except the People’s Republic of China should reduce intellectual property protections on medicines Makes sure that only American vaccines are spread, which solves better because Chinese vaccines are too ineffective. Mcdonald 21. Joe Mcdonald, 21 - ("Top Chinese official admits vaccines have low effectiveness," AP NEWS, 4-10-2021, 9-5-2021https:apnews.com/article/china-gao-fu-vaccines-offer-low-protection-coronavirus-675bcb6b5710c7329823148ffbff6ef9)AW China currently has five vaccines in use in its mass immunization campaign, three inactivated-virus vaccines from Sinovac and Sinopharm, a one-shot vaccine from CanSino, and the last from Gao’s team in partnership with Anhui Zhifei Longcom. The effectiveness of the vaccines range from just over 50 to 79, based on what the companies have said. The shot from Gao’s team, was given emergency use approval a month ago, and has not publicly disclosed data yet about its efficacy. Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines, which are primarily being used in developed countries, have both been shown to be about 95 in protecting against COVID-19 in studies. As of April 2, some 34 million people in China have received the full two doses of Chinese vaccines and about 65 million received one, according to Gao. Innovation DA COVID has kept patents and innovation strong, but continued protection is key to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research – it’s also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines, economic collapse, and fatal diseases, which independently turns case. 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. This sets a precedent that spills over to all future diseases – 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.” Bioterror causes extinction---quick innovation key Farmer 17 (“Bioterrorism could kill more people than nuclear war, Bill Gates to warn world leaders” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/17/biological-terrorism-could-kill-people-nuclear-attacks-bill/) Bioterrorists could one day kill hundreds of millions of people in an attack more deadly than nuclear war, Bill Gates will warn world leaders. Rapid advances in genetic engineering have opened the door for small terrorism groups to tailor and easily turn biological viruses into weapons. A resulting disease pandemic is currently one of the most deadly threats faced by the world, he believes, yet governments are complacent about the scale of the risk. Speaking ahead of an address to the Munich Security Conference, the richest man in the world said that while governments are concerned with the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, they are overlooking the threat of biological warfare. Mr Gates, whose charitable foundationis funding research into quickly spotting outbreaks and speeding up vaccine production, said the defence and security establishment “have not been following biology and I’m here to bring them a little bit of bad news”. Mr Gates will today (Saturday) tell an audience of international leaders and senior officers that the world’s next deadly pandemic “could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist”. He told the Telegraph: “Natural epidemics can be extremely large. Intentionally caused epidemics, bioterrorism, would be the largest of all. “With nuclear weapons, you’d think you would probably stop after killing 100million. Smallpox won’t stop. Because the population is naïve, and there are no real preparations. That, if it got out and spread, would be a larger number.” He said developments in genetic engineering were proceeding at a “mind-blowing rate”. Biological warfare ambitions once limited to a handful of nation states are now open to small groups with limited resources and skills. He said: “They make it much easier for a non-state person. It doesn’t take much biology expertise nowadays to assemble a smallpox virus. Biology is making it way easier to create these things.” The increasingly common use of gene editing technology would make it difficult to spot any potential terrorist conspiracy. Technologies which have made it easy to read DNA sequences and tinker with them to rewrite or tweak genes have many legitimate uses. He said: “It’s not like when someone says, ‘Hey I’d like some Plutonium’ and you start saying ‘Hmmm.. I wonder why he wants Plutonium?’” Mr Gates said the potential death toll from a disease outbreak could be higher than other threats such as climate change or nuclear war. He said: “This is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that’s a one, 100 people that’s a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and nines. “With nuclear war, once you have got a six, or a seven, or eight, you’d think it would probably stop. With bioterrorism it’s just unbounded if you are not there to stop the spread of it.” By tailoring the genes of a virus, it would be possible to manipulate its ability to spread and its ability to harm people. Mr Gates said one of the most potentially deadly outbreaks could involve the humble flu virus. It would be relatively easy to engineer a new flu strain combining qualities from varieties that spread like wildfire with varieties that were deadly. The last time that happened naturally was the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic, which went on to kill more than 50 million people – or nearly three times the death toll from the First World War. By comparison, the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed just over 11,000 was “a Richter Scale three, it’s a nothing,” he said. But despite the potential, the founder of Microsoft said that world leaders and their militaries could not see beyond the more recognised risks. He said: “Should the world be serious about this? It is somewhat serious about normal classic warfare and nuclear warfare, but today it is not very serious about bio-defence or natural epidemics.” He went on: “They do tend to say ‘How easy is it to get fissile material and how accurate are the plans out on the internet for dirty bombs, plutonium bombs and hydrogen bombs?’ “They have some people that do that. What I am suggesting is that the number of people that look at bio-defence is worth increasing.” Whether naturally occurring, or deliberately started, it is almost certain that a highly lethal global pandemic will occur within our lifetimes, he believes. But the good news for those contemplating the potential damage is that the same biotechnology can prevent epidemics spreading out of control. Mr Gates will say in his speech that most of the things needed to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things needed to prepare for an intentional biological attack. Nations must amass an arsenal of new weapons to fight such a disease outbreak, including vaccines, drugs and diagnostic techniques. Being able to develop a vaccine as soon as possible against a new outbreak is particularly important and could save huge numbers of lives, scientists working at his foundation believe. Ecosystem sensitivity from climate change means future pandemics will cause extinction Supriya 4/19 Lakshmi Supriya got her BSc in Industrial Chemistry from IIT Kharagpur (India) and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech (USA). She has more than a decade of global industry experience working in the USA, Europe, and India. After her Ph.D., she worked as part of the RandD group in diverse industries starting with semiconductor packaging at Intel, Arizona, where she developed a new elastomeric thermal solution, which has now been commercialized and is used in the core i3 and i5 processors. From there she went on to work at two startups, one managing the microfluidics chip manufacturing lab at a biotechnology company and the other developing polymer formulations for oil extraction from oil sands. She also worked at Saint Gobain North America, developing various material solutions for photovoltaics and processing techniques and new applications for fluoropolymers. Most recently, she managed the Indian RandD team of Enthone (now part of MacDermid) developing electroplating technologies for precious metals.) “Humans versus viruses - Can we avoid extinction in near future?” News Medical Life Sciences, 4/19/21, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210419/Humans-versus-viruses-Can-we-avoid-extinction-in-near-future.aspx RM Expert argues that human-caused changes to the environment can lead to the emergence of pathogens, not only from outside but also from our own microbiome, which can pave the way for large-scale destruction of humans and even our extinction. Whenever there is a change in any system, it will cause other changes to reach a balance or equilibrium, generally at a point different from the original balance. Although this principle was originally posited by the French chemist Henry Le Chatelier for chemical reactions, this theory can be applied to almost anything else. In an essay published on the online server Preprints*, Eleftherios P. Diamandis of the University of Toronto and the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, argues that changes caused by humans, to the climate, and everything around us will lead to changes that may have a dramatic impact on human life. Because our ecosystems are so complex, we don’t know how our actions will affect us in the long run, so humans generally disregard them. Changing our environment Everything around us is changing, from living organisms to the climate, water, and soil. Some estimates say about half the organisms that existed 50 years ago have already become extinct, and about 80 of the species may become extinct in the future. As the debate on global warming continues, according to data, the last six years have been the warmest on record. Global warming is melting ice, and sea levels have been increasing. The changing climate is causing more and more wildfires, which are leading to other related damage. At the same time, increased flooding is causing large-scale devastation. One question that arises is how much environmental damage have humans already done? A recent study compared the natural biomass on Earth to the mass produced by humans and found humans produce a mass equal to their weight every week. This human-made mass is mainly for buildings, roads, and plastic products. In the early 1900s, human-made mass was about 3 of the global biomass. Today both are about equal. Projections say by 2040, the human-made mass will be triple that of Earth’s biomass. But, slowing down human activity that causes such production may be difficult, given it is considered part of our growth as a civilization. Emerging pathogens Although we are made up of human cells, we have almost ten times that of bacteria just in our guts and more on our skin. These microbes not only affect locally but also affect the entire body. There is a balance between the good and bad bacteria, and any change in the environment may cause this balance to shift, especially on the skin, the consequences of which are unknown. Although most bacteria on and inside of us are harmless, gut bacteria can also have viruses. If viruses don’t kill the bacteria immediately, they can incorporate into the bacterial genome and stay latent for a long time until reactivation by environmental factors, when they can become pathogenic. They can also escape from the gut and enter other organs or the bloodstream. Bacteria can then use these viruses to kill other bacteria or help them evolve to more virulent strains. An example of the evolution of pathogens is the cause of the current pandemic, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Several mutations are now known that make the virus more infectious and resistant to immune responses, and strengthening its to enter cells via surface receptors. The brain There is evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 can also affect the brain. The virus may enter the brain via the olfactory tract or through the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) pathway. Viruses can also affect our senses, such as a loss of smell and taste, and there could be other so far unkown neurological effects. The loss of smell seen in COVID-19 could be a new viral syndrome specific to this disease. Many books and movies have described pandemics caused by pathogens that wipe out large populations and cause severe diseases. In the essay, the author provides a hypothetical scenario where a gut bacteria suddenly starts producing viral proteins. Some virions spread through the body and get transmitted through the human population. After a few months, the virus started causing blindness, and within a year, large populations lost their vision. Pandemics can cause other diseases that can threaten humanity’s entire existence. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this possibility to the forefront. If we continue disturbing the equilibrium between us and the environment, we don’t know what the consequences may be and the next pandemic could lead us to extinction. Pandemics cause extinction – burnout wrong Kerscher 14—Professor, unclear where because every website about him is in German (Karl-Heinz, “Space Education”, Wissenschaftliche Studie, 2014, 92 Seiten) The death toll for a pandemic is equal to the virulence, the deadliness of the pathogen or pathogens, multiplied by the number of people eventually infected. It has been hypothesized that there is an upper limit to the virulence of naturally evolved pathogens. This is because a pathogen that quickly kills its hosts might not have enough time to spread to new ones, while one that kills its hosts more slowly or not at all will allow carriers more time to spread the infection, and thus likely out-compete a more lethal species or strain. This simple model predicts that if virulence and transmission are not linked in any way, pathogens will evolve towards low virulence and rapid transmission. However, this assumption is not always valid and in more complex models, where the level of virulence and the rate of transmission are related, high levels of virulence can evolve. The level of virulence that is possible is instead limited by the existence of complex populations of hosts, with different susceptibilities to infection, or by some hosts being geographically isolated. The size of the host population and competition between different strains of pathogens can also alter virulence. There are numerous historical examples of pandemics that have had a devastating effect on a large number of people, which makes the possibility of global pandemic a realistic threat to human civilization
Case
No inherency – governments and the WTO are already reducing IP protections for medicines related to COVID-19. This also solves for their WTO credibility advantage because the WTO will gain credibility from passing the waiver no matter if the plan is passed or not. WTO No Date WTO, no date, "TRIPS, the intellectual property system and COVID-19," No Publication, https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/trips_and_covid19_e.htm accessed 8/10/2021JH TRIPS, the intellectual property system and COVID-19 ¶The way in which an intellectual property (IP) system is designed at national or regional levels – and how effectively it is put to work - can be a significant factor in facilitating access to existing technologies and in supporting the creation, manufacturing and dissemination of new technologies, such as medicines, vaccines and medical devices, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This question – the relationship of IP to the pandemic response – has sparked a vigorous debate within and beyond the WTO, and is a high priority for technical assistance and policy support for WTO members. This page gives access to background information and current WTO documents (including members’ proposals) on this urgent question. ¶Introduction ¶From the beginning of the pandemic, the pressing need was clear for both the development of new vaccines and treatments, and access to these medicines for all – a global challenge unprecedented in both scope and urgency. ¶Governments and other stakeholders have therefore focused on how innovation mechanisms and tools for enhancing access to medical technologies can contribute to the pandemic response, well beyond a reliance on “business as usual”. This has led to a range of initiatives by international organizations, governments and private actors for the voluntary sharing, pooling or non-assertion of IP rights (IPRs), responding to the spirit of collaboration that dominates the global effort to tackle the pandemic. ¶A range of pro-health policy options and interventions are also available for WTO members under the TRIPS Agreement, as implemented in domestic law. ¶Transparency and the availability of up-to-date information on IP and COVID-19 respond to an immediate and critical need. They contribute to the empirical basis that is essential for policy-making in a rapidly evolving trade landscape in the mutual interest of all stakeholders, including governments and economic operators. ¶In furtherance of this objective, the following sections provide access to useful WTO and other resources that specifically address the interface between IPRs and COVID-19, as well as to the work of the TRIPS Council ¶Work of the TRIPS Council ¶Members have exchanged information and experiences relating to IP measures taken in the context of COVID-19 at the TRIPS Council, and have considered members’ proposals. The interface between IPRs and COVID-19 has been considered in TRIPS Council meetings since July 2020, supported by communications to the TRIPS Council. ¶WTO resources ¶Members have exchanged information and experiences relating to IP measures taken in the context of COVID-19 at the TRIPS Council, and have considered members’ proposals. The interface between IPRs and COVID-19 has been considered in TRIPS Council meetings since July 2020, supported by communications to the TRIPS Council. ¶COVID-19 and world trade ¶COVID-19: Measures regarding trade-related intellectual property rights ¶A non-exhaustive list has been compiled by the WTO Secretariat from official sources and confirmed with WTO members concerned. It represents an informal situation report and an attempt to provide transparency with respect to measures regarding trade-related IPRs taken by WTO members in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The list is regularly updated. ¶Information Note: The TRIPS Agreement and COVID-19¶This note discusses the role and some of the key contributions that the global IP system, including its policy options and flexibilities as implemented in domestic law, can make to address COVID-19. It also provides an overview of measures taken by members. ¶Information Note: How WTO members have used trade measures to expedite access to COVID-19 critical medical goods and services ¶This note on access to COVID-19 critical medical goods and services includes information on using IPRs and policy tools to facilitate innovation in and access to COVID-19-related technologies. ¶Information Note: Developing and delivering COVID-19 vaccines around the world ¶This note looks at issues with trade impact and discusses trade policy choices, including in the area of intellectual property rights, that may be considered along the vaccine value chain to support access to COVID-19 vaccines. ¶An integrated health, trade and IP approach to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic ¶A standalone section on COVID-19 in the 2020 study jointly published by the World Health Organization (WHO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and WTO, Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between public health, intellectual property and trade (second edition), maps the multiple challenges posed by the pandemic in relation to the integrated health, trade and IP policy frameworks set out in the study. ¶Working Paper: Patent-related actions taken in WTO members in response to the COVID-19 pandemic¶This working paper provides an overview of the patent landscape of medical treatments and technologies related to COVID-19, and of the patent status of two investigational medical treatments: remdesivir and lopinavir/ritonavir. It presents various patent-related actions taken by legislators, policymakers, industry sectors and civil society organizations in members since the outbreak. Furthermore, it elaborates on patent-related policy options provided by the TRIPS Agreement, and members' national implementation and utilization of these options in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2. No inherency - The Covid vaccine waiver will pass in the status quo—many countries are switching their positions now . Meyer 6/10 David Meyer senior writer for fortune, 6/10 - ("COVID-19 vaccine-patent pressure grows in Europe as lawmakers back temporary waiver," Fortune, 6-10-2021, accessed 7-5-2021, https://fortune.com/2021/06/10/covid-vaccine-patent-waiver-european-parliament-commission-wto/)//ML The temporary suspension of COVID vaccine patents—a move that's intended to help expand manufacturing and speed up the global vaccination drive, thus shortening the pandemic—was originally proposed by South Africa and India last year. Over recent months, it has gained new supporters like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pope, and, crucially, the Biden administration.¶ However, Europe—home to major players such as BioNTech and AstraZeneca—has resisted the waiver. Just last week, the European Commission submitted an alternative plan to the World Trade Organization (WTO), proposing other measures such as limits on export restrictions, and the compulsory licensing of the patents in some circumstances.¶ That doesn't go far enough, said members of the European Parliament on Thursday, as it passed an amendment calling for a temporary waiver of the WTO's TRIPS Agreement, the global intellectual-property rulebook, in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and equipment.¶ The amendment passed by 355 votes to 263, with 71 abstentions. The European Parliament cannot tell the Commission to change its influential tune on the issue, but the vote sent a strong political message nonetheless: Europe, with its many national votes at the WTO, is gradually shifting to the pro-waiver camp.¶ Within the Parliament—the only EU lawmaking institution whose members are directly elected by citizens—the split over the issue has largely followed left-right lines, with leftists such as the Socialists and Democrats (SandD, Parliament's second-biggest voting bloc) backing the waiver and those on the right, such as the European People's Party (EPP, the biggest bloc), opposing it.¶ "With today’s vote, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to finally do the right thing and save lives by supporting the lifting of patents for COVID-19 vaccines and medical equipment," said Kathleen Van Brempt, the SandD's lead negotiator on the subject, in a statement after the vote. "The TRIPS waiver may not prove to be a miracle solution, but it is one of the essential building blocks of a strong global vaccination campaign. Exceptional situations call for exceptional measures.¶ "The alternative proposal submitted by the European Commission to the WTO falls short in the face of the epochal challenge we are facing," she added.¶ But it is not just the European Commission that is becoming more isolated on the issue. Germany, too, is increasingly lonely in its opposition to the waiver.¶ French President Emmanuel Macron, who has previously sided with Germany, traveled to South Africa a couple of weeks ago to discuss the waiver with President Cyril Ramaphosa. On Wednesday, just ahead of the G7 summit, he flipped and joined the patent-suspension camp. That means at least two G7 leaders (also including U.S. President Joe Biden) now favor the waiver.¶ Add to that the fact that the WTO agreed on Wednesday to fully debate the waiver—a step that the EU and some other countries had previously resisted—and it seems the tide may be turning.¶ There is still a way to go, though. World Bank President David Malpass slammed the waiver idea on Wednesday, saying “it would run the risk of reducing the innovation and the RandD” in the pharmaceutical sector. (Malpass, a Trump appointee, is therefore now in opposition to the current White House.)¶ 3. IPR is 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. Turns case – 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. 4. Turn: Reductions in IPR could result in unsafe or ineffective medicines. Turns solvency because too many people will be afraid of the vaccine to achieve herd immunity. Crosby et al. 21Daniel Crosby, Evan Diamond, Isabel Fernandez De La Cuesta, Jamieson Greer, Jeffrey Telep, Brian White; Crosby specializes in international trade, investment and matters related to public international law. Diamond is a partner on our Intellectual Property, Patent, Trademark and Copyright Litigation team.; 3-5-2021; "Group of Nearly 60 WTO Members Seek Unprecedented Waiver from WTO Intellectual Property Protection for COVID-related Medical Products"; https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/group-of-nearly-60-wto-members-seek-2523821/, JD Supra, accessed 7-21-2021; JPark Waiver risks uncontrolled use of patented technologies, without improving vaccine access. Pharmaceutical companies can provide, and have provided, licenses to distribute or scale-up production of COVID-19 vaccines and therapies at reduced cost. Such license agreements allow for expanded access in low- and middle-income countries, while also setting reasonable parameters so that patents and other IP rights are used to address the specific medical needs of the COVID-19 pandemic at hand, and not for other purposes. License agreements also allow for orderly technology transfer, including of unpatented “trade secret” information and other critical “know-how,” that may be essential to efficiently producing and scaling-up safe and effective versions of technologically complex vaccines and biologic drug products. Under the present TRIPS waiver proposal, however, member countries could try to exploit an extraordinarily broad scope of IP and copy patented technologies so long as they are “in relation to prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19.” For example, under an expansive reading of the proposed waiver language, a member country could try to produce patented pharmaceutical compounds that have other indicated uses predating COVID-19, if such compounds had later been studied or experimentally used for potential symptomatic relief or antiviral activity in COVID-19 patients. The same risks may be faced by manufacturers of patented materials or devices that have multiple uses predating COVID-19, but also may be used as “personal protective equipment” or components thereof, or in other measures arguably relating to COVID-19 “prevention” or “containment.” At the same time, it is unclear how the proposed TRIPS waiver could provide the technology transfer and know-how critical for making the complex molecules and formulations constituting the various COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine manufacture undertaken by an unauthorized party without the proper processes and controls could result in a different product that is potentially ineffective or results in unwanted health consequences. And even if an unauthorized manufacturer could overcome those substantial hurdles to reverse-engineer and scale up a safe and effective vaccine copy, it would likely take substantial time and a series of failures to do so. Notably, several of the original COVID-19 vaccine developers have recently faced low product yield and other manufacturing challenges during pre-commercial scale-up efforts and the initial months of commercial production. 5. No solvency – There is no IP barrier in most countries. The fact that they are not manufacturing vaccine shows that they can’t without compulsory licensing. 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. 6. No solvency – the problem is supply. IP has already been voluntarily licensed. 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.
10/17/21
SSP PIC
Tournament: Golden Desert | Round: 4 | Opponent: Brentwood MD | Judge: Claudia Ribera CP text: The appropriation of space by private entities is unjust except for space-based solar power projects.
SSP is viable and requires privatization. Oberhaus 21 DANIEL OBERHAUS, “Space Solar Power: An Extraterrestrial Energy Resource For The U.S.,” Innovation Frontier Project, August 18, 2021. https://innovationfrontier.org/space-solar-power-an-extraterrestrial-energy-resource-for-the-u-s/ CT FUTURE OF SSP The United States’ reluctance to pursue SSP can be attributed to a number of causes. In the 1970s and 80s, the exorbitant projected costs of an SSP station guaranteed that the project would not be pursued by NASA, the DOE, or the DOD. At the same time, the agency’s emphasis on developing nuclear space technologies — a trend that continues to this day — undermined enthusiasm for other ambitious energy projects like SSP. Finally, the fact that SSP is a space project meant to provide commercial levels of electrical power on Earth meant that it wasn’t obvious whether it fell within the purview of NASA or the DOE, and so both agencies were reluctant to allocate a substantial portion of their budget for its development. Today, the low cost of natural gas and renewables like wind and solar makes it seem challenging to justify a space energy project of this scale. But SSP offers several unique benefits as an energy resource, including its resiliency, its ability to provide flexible baseload power to geographically distant locations, its capacity to accelerate decarbonization directly by providing clean energy and indirectly by expediting the transition to off-world heavy industry, and its strategic benefits as a tool for diplomacy and national security. Given SSP’s benefits and the interest in the technology from most other space agencies, it’s puzzling that policymakers in the United States have not prioritized SSP RandD. The development of key technologies such as reusable rockets and thin film solar panels has finally made SSP economically and technically viable. But there is still a lot of fundamental research on SSP that needs to be done and it is in the United States’ national interest to begin this research program as soon as possible. So far, the only glimmer of hope for an American SSP program has come from the DOD’s efforts. In 2019, the Air Force Research Lab awarded a $100 million contract to Northrop Grumman as part of the new Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) Project, which aims to develop hardware for in-orbit SSP experiments based on the design developed at Caltech.105 This is by far the United States’ largest federal expenditure on SSP RandD, but it is only a fraction of what will be required to build a large-scale SSP station and the specific technologies included in the SSPIDR program will not result in a system that could ever provide commercial power to civilians. SSP is a key tool for ensuring the prosperity and security of the United States in the latter half of the 21st century. It is imperative that NASA and the DOE prioritize the development of SSP. We believe the federal government should earmark approximately $1 billion for SSP research over the next five years with a special emphasis on advancing emerging technologies and in-space hardware demonstrations. Congress must take the first step in establishing a civilian SSP platform by directing NASA and the DOE to collaborate on a public-private initiative similar to NASA’s commercial crew program or its more recent commercial lunar payload services program. The directive must clearly delineate responsibilities between the agencies in order to avoid leadership paralysis that has stymied domestic SSP research in the past. Furthermore, a public-private program must be structured so that there is competition among multiple private companies, which must hit key milestones in order to continue receiving contracts. These contracts should be awarded with a fixed-price structure to avoid the massive cost overruns and delays that are typical of cost-plus contracts in the aerospace and defense sector. This is also an approach likely to find support among new launch providers and spacecraft manufacturers that have demonstrated the innovation that occurs when operating within the relative constraints of fixed price contracts. In fact, the main trade group for the aerospace sector has advocated for the increased use of fixed-price contracts in the past.106 Alternatively, it may be more efficient to establish a focused research organization (FRO) dedicated to SSP technologies to avoid delays associated with collaboration between two federal agencies on multi-year—and perhaps multi-decade—projects. FROs are independent entities that exist outside of national laboratories and universities. They are effectively a startup for basic research and deep technological development that requires large-scale engineering collaboration on technologies that may not yet have a market or are not readily monetizable.107 Recently, the U.S. Congress created five FRO-like centers in the DOE’s national labs as part of the National Quantum Initiative Act, which can serve as a framework for the creation of similar FROs dedicated to space solar power.108 While there are several approaches to a large-scale SSP system, we believe the most fruitful pathway is to focus on cost reduction over energy efficiency. This would prioritize highly modular systems similar to ALPHA, which benefit from the substantially reduced costs of mass manufacturing standardized components. We believe that it is possible to conduct a civilian SSP demonstration in low-Earth orbit within three years of the program’s start with less than $250 million in funding. The first phase of this program would involve conducting a series of ground tests with prototype systems over the course of about 18 months. Based on the results of this program, a system could be selected for an in-space demonstration capable of generating up to 300kw of power in low-Earth orbit. After a successful LEO demonstration mission, the next step would be to build a larger SSP system in mid-Earth orbit capable of producing commercial amounts of power (e.g., 1-10 MW). While this orbital altitude is not sufficient for maintaining the SSP system over a fixed spot on the Earth, it would stay on a fixed path so that it always passed over the same spots on the Earth. While the power from this MEO demonstrator would not be competitive with terrestrial electricity prices — we expect a cost of about $1/kwh — it would be a critical step toward proving the system’s ability to provide commercial power. We expect that the MEO demonstrator could be built and launched for approximately $1 billion. The success of the MEO demonstrator would lay the foundation for an SSP system in geostationary orbit that would be large enough to provide meaningful amounts of baseload power. We expect the initial version of this SSP system to be capable of delivering around 2 GW of solar energy to the surface. We expect that a 2 GW SSP system in geostationary orbit could be built for about $10 billion. Here we start to see the cost savings of mass manufacturing modular SSP components. This system would be capable of delivering more than 200 times more power than the MEO demonstrator for only 10 times the cost. We believe that a public-private SSP program jointly led by NASA and the DOE could result in a commercially viable SSP platform in geostationary orbit by the end of the decade. In addition to providing a critical pathway for SSP, it also has the potential to lead to substantial advancements in solar power and wireless power transmission technologies that would be useful on Earth. If policymakers do not take action on advancing domestic SSP capabilities soon, the United States will find itself losing its leadership position in space and increasingly vulnerable to natural and human-made disasters on the ground. SSP solves warming. In the short term provides cheap, renewable, and flexible baseload power for on and off-world applications. It’s also key to transition heavy industry to space.
Oberhaus 21 DANIEL OBERHAUS, “Space Solar Power: An Extraterrestrial Energy Resource For The U.S.,” Innovation Frontier Project, August 18, 2021. https://innovationfrontier.org/space-solar-power-an-extraterrestrial-energy-resource-for-the-u-s/ CT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY What is often left unsaid in discussions about extraterrestrial industrialization and deep space settlement is how to supply the energy needed for large scale infrastructure projects. Nuclear energy has long been the power source of choice for deep space missions.2 This is largely because nuclear power systems can operate for decades without intervention and in locations where there is limited or non-existent sunlight. But nuclear energy is limited in its ability to scale and also creates serious health hazards for near-Earth operation.3 In this paper, we make the case for space-based solar power (SSP) megaprojects as relatively low-cost, scalable, renewable, and always-on power source for on-and-off world applications. Although SSP is a space-based energy asset, it has the potential to rapidly accelerate decarbonization on Earth while also fulfilling space exploration priorities. SSP is a decades-old idea that has only recently become economically viable due to the rapidly falling costs of space access and technological advancements such as higher efficiency electronics, low-cost mass-production of modular space systems like satellites, robotic in-space construction, and wireless power transmission. NASA, the Department of Energy, and several other research agencies have conducted in-depth studies and limited experiments on SSP, but the development of this energy resource was hindered by unfavorable economics. Things have changed and it is time to reconsider SSP as a valuable tool in the nation’s decarbonization strategy. This paper shows how the development of SSP can serve several national imperatives at once. In space, it can provide a renewable and cost-effective source of energy for moon bases and deep space missions. SSP can also provide a valuable source of energy — both electric and thermal — for industrial processes in cislunar space. This will facilitate the transition of heavy industry from Earth to space, which will mitigate carbon emissions in the medium-to-long term on Earth. Critically, SSP will have a massive impact on terrestrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the near term through wireless energy transfer from space to Earth. This is SSP’s original “killer app,” and multiple studies have shown that SSP can meet a substantial portion of Earth’s energy needs. Unlike terrestrial solar power, SSP is always on. It can provide solar power rain or shine, day or night. It is also flexible and can be quickly redirected to ground stations in geographically distant locations to meet rapidly changing energy needs. The dream for SSP is to have a source of clean baseload energy that’s available regardless of weather, location, or time of day. The baseload is the minimum electrical energy demand on a grid, which has historically been provided by power stations that are able to generate large and relatively constant amounts of energy. But as more renewables penetrate the grid and create fluctuations in electric supply, the base load power stations of the future must be flexible enough to rapidly ramp up and down to meet the evolving supply and demand dynamics of the grid. Much like the advent of GPS, a robust SSP capacity would have profound geopolitical implications. China is investing heavily in SSP and plans to have the first operating SSP plant in orbit by the end of the decade.4 The Department of Defense (DOD) is also pursuing SSP research for military applications. Notably, the Air Force Research Laboratory recently created a $100 million program to advance key SSP technologies.5 This paper concludes that the U.S. must allocate substantially more human and financial capital to SSP as part of its national security, domestic energy, and space exploration strategies.
2/6/22
SSP PIC
Tournament: Golden Desert | Round: 4 | Opponent: Brentwood MD | Judge: Claudia Ribera CP text: The appropriation of space by private entities is unjust except for space-based solar power projects.
SSP is viable and requires privatization. Oberhaus 21 DANIEL OBERHAUS, “Space Solar Power: An Extraterrestrial Energy Resource For The U.S.,” Innovation Frontier Project, August 18, 2021. https://innovationfrontier.org/space-solar-power-an-extraterrestrial-energy-resource-for-the-u-s/ CT FUTURE OF SSP The United States’ reluctance to pursue SSP can be attributed to a number of causes. In the 1970s and 80s, the exorbitant projected costs of an SSP station guaranteed that the project would not be pursued by NASA, the DOE, or the DOD. At the same time, the agency’s emphasis on developing nuclear space technologies — a trend that continues to this day — undermined enthusiasm for other ambitious energy projects like SSP. Finally, the fact that SSP is a space project meant to provide commercial levels of electrical power on Earth meant that it wasn’t obvious whether it fell within the purview of NASA or the DOE, and so both agencies were reluctant to allocate a substantial portion of their budget for its development. Today, the low cost of natural gas and renewables like wind and solar makes it seem challenging to justify a space energy project of this scale. But SSP offers several unique benefits as an energy resource, including its resiliency, its ability to provide flexible baseload power to geographically distant locations, its capacity to accelerate decarbonization directly by providing clean energy and indirectly by expediting the transition to off-world heavy industry, and its strategic benefits as a tool for diplomacy and national security. Given SSP’s benefits and the interest in the technology from most other space agencies, it’s puzzling that policymakers in the United States have not prioritized SSP RandD. The development of key technologies such as reusable rockets and thin film solar panels has finally made SSP economically and technically viable. But there is still a lot of fundamental research on SSP that needs to be done and it is in the United States’ national interest to begin this research program as soon as possible. So far, the only glimmer of hope for an American SSP program has come from the DOD’s efforts. In 2019, the Air Force Research Lab awarded a $100 million contract to Northrop Grumman as part of the new Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) Project, which aims to develop hardware for in-orbit SSP experiments based on the design developed at Caltech.105 This is by far the United States’ largest federal expenditure on SSP RandD, but it is only a fraction of what will be required to build a large-scale SSP station and the specific technologies included in the SSPIDR program will not result in a system that could ever provide commercial power to civilians. SSP is a key tool for ensuring the prosperity and security of the United States in the latter half of the 21st century. It is imperative that NASA and the DOE prioritize the development of SSP. We believe the federal government should earmark approximately $1 billion for SSP research over the next five years with a special emphasis on advancing emerging technologies and in-space hardware demonstrations. Congress must take the first step in establishing a civilian SSP platform by directing NASA and the DOE to collaborate on a public-private initiative similar to NASA’s commercial crew program or its more recent commercial lunar payload services program. The directive must clearly delineate responsibilities between the agencies in order to avoid leadership paralysis that has stymied domestic SSP research in the past. Furthermore, a public-private program must be structured so that there is competition among multiple private companies, which must hit key milestones in order to continue receiving contracts. These contracts should be awarded with a fixed-price structure to avoid the massive cost overruns and delays that are typical of cost-plus contracts in the aerospace and defense sector. This is also an approach likely to find support among new launch providers and spacecraft manufacturers that have demonstrated the innovation that occurs when operating within the relative constraints of fixed price contracts. In fact, the main trade group for the aerospace sector has advocated for the increased use of fixed-price contracts in the past.106 Alternatively, it may be more efficient to establish a focused research organization (FRO) dedicated to SSP technologies to avoid delays associated with collaboration between two federal agencies on multi-year—and perhaps multi-decade—projects. FROs are independent entities that exist outside of national laboratories and universities. They are effectively a startup for basic research and deep technological development that requires large-scale engineering collaboration on technologies that may not yet have a market or are not readily monetizable.107 Recently, the U.S. Congress created five FRO-like centers in the DOE’s national labs as part of the National Quantum Initiative Act, which can serve as a framework for the creation of similar FROs dedicated to space solar power.108 While there are several approaches to a large-scale SSP system, we believe the most fruitful pathway is to focus on cost reduction over energy efficiency. This would prioritize highly modular systems similar to ALPHA, which benefit from the substantially reduced costs of mass manufacturing standardized components. We believe that it is possible to conduct a civilian SSP demonstration in low-Earth orbit within three years of the program’s start with less than $250 million in funding. The first phase of this program would involve conducting a series of ground tests with prototype systems over the course of about 18 months. Based on the results of this program, a system could be selected for an in-space demonstration capable of generating up to 300kw of power in low-Earth orbit. After a successful LEO demonstration mission, the next step would be to build a larger SSP system in mid-Earth orbit capable of producing commercial amounts of power (e.g., 1-10 MW). While this orbital altitude is not sufficient for maintaining the SSP system over a fixed spot on the Earth, it would stay on a fixed path so that it always passed over the same spots on the Earth. While the power from this MEO demonstrator would not be competitive with terrestrial electricity prices — we expect a cost of about $1/kwh — it would be a critical step toward proving the system’s ability to provide commercial power. We expect that the MEO demonstrator could be built and launched for approximately $1 billion. The success of the MEO demonstrator would lay the foundation for an SSP system in geostationary orbit that would be large enough to provide meaningful amounts of baseload power. We expect the initial version of this SSP system to be capable of delivering around 2 GW of solar energy to the surface. We expect that a 2 GW SSP system in geostationary orbit could be built for about $10 billion. Here we start to see the cost savings of mass manufacturing modular SSP components. This system would be capable of delivering more than 200 times more power than the MEO demonstrator for only 10 times the cost. We believe that a public-private SSP program jointly led by NASA and the DOE could result in a commercially viable SSP platform in geostationary orbit by the end of the decade. In addition to providing a critical pathway for SSP, it also has the potential to lead to substantial advancements in solar power and wireless power transmission technologies that would be useful on Earth. If policymakers do not take action on advancing domestic SSP capabilities soon, the United States will find itself losing its leadership position in space and increasingly vulnerable to natural and human-made disasters on the ground. SSP solves warming. In the short term provides cheap, renewable, and flexible baseload power for on and off-world applications. It’s also key to transition heavy industry to space.
Oberhaus 21 DANIEL OBERHAUS, “Space Solar Power: An Extraterrestrial Energy Resource For The U.S.,” Innovation Frontier Project, August 18, 2021. https://innovationfrontier.org/space-solar-power-an-extraterrestrial-energy-resource-for-the-u-s/ CT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY What is often left unsaid in discussions about extraterrestrial industrialization and deep space settlement is how to supply the energy needed for large scale infrastructure projects. Nuclear energy has long been the power source of choice for deep space missions.2 This is largely because nuclear power systems can operate for decades without intervention and in locations where there is limited or non-existent sunlight. But nuclear energy is limited in its ability to scale and also creates serious health hazards for near-Earth operation.3 In this paper, we make the case for space-based solar power (SSP) megaprojects as relatively low-cost, scalable, renewable, and always-on power source for on-and-off world applications. Although SSP is a space-based energy asset, it has the potential to rapidly accelerate decarbonization on Earth while also fulfilling space exploration priorities. SSP is a decades-old idea that has only recently become economically viable due to the rapidly falling costs of space access and technological advancements such as higher efficiency electronics, low-cost mass-production of modular space systems like satellites, robotic in-space construction, and wireless power transmission. NASA, the Department of Energy, and several other research agencies have conducted in-depth studies and limited experiments on SSP, but the development of this energy resource was hindered by unfavorable economics. Things have changed and it is time to reconsider SSP as a valuable tool in the nation’s decarbonization strategy. This paper shows how the development of SSP can serve several national imperatives at once. In space, it can provide a renewable and cost-effective source of energy for moon bases and deep space missions. SSP can also provide a valuable source of energy — both electric and thermal — for industrial processes in cislunar space. This will facilitate the transition of heavy industry from Earth to space, which will mitigate carbon emissions in the medium-to-long term on Earth. Critically, SSP will have a massive impact on terrestrial greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the near term through wireless energy transfer from space to Earth. This is SSP’s original “killer app,” and multiple studies have shown that SSP can meet a substantial portion of Earth’s energy needs. Unlike terrestrial solar power, SSP is always on. It can provide solar power rain or shine, day or night. It is also flexible and can be quickly redirected to ground stations in geographically distant locations to meet rapidly changing energy needs. The dream for SSP is to have a source of clean baseload energy that’s available regardless of weather, location, or time of day. The baseload is the minimum electrical energy demand on a grid, which has historically been provided by power stations that are able to generate large and relatively constant amounts of energy. But as more renewables penetrate the grid and create fluctuations in electric supply, the base load power stations of the future must be flexible enough to rapidly ramp up and down to meet the evolving supply and demand dynamics of the grid. Much like the advent of GPS, a robust SSP capacity would have profound geopolitical implications. China is investing heavily in SSP and plans to have the first operating SSP plant in orbit by the end of the decade.4 The Department of Defense (DOD) is also pursuing SSP research for military applications. Notably, the Air Force Research Laboratory recently created a $100 million program to advance key SSP technologies.5 This paper concludes that the U.S. must allocate substantially more human and financial capital to SSP as part of its national security, domestic energy, and space exploration strategies.