1ac-anti racism 1nc-consistency with universal freedom case 1ar-anti racism 2nr-consistency with universal freedom 2ar-anti racism
Ridge Debate
1
Opponent: Newark Science LF | Judge: Keith Lo
1AC-structural violence public sector workers 1NC-util hospital and racial strikes 1AR-all 2NC-all 2AR-all
Ridge Debate
4
Opponent: CR North KL | Judge: Shikha Jain
lay util
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Tournament: NA | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA Hi I am David Wang. He/Him pronouns. My email is dwang23@scarsdaleschools.org and my number is 9146082019
Formatting Request PLS READ please have an enter space between your analytic arguments. it is hard to read and flow, and if you don't accommodate i'll be possibly reading theory
how to format:
argument a. subpoint
b. subpoint
2. argument
a. subpoint
b. subpoint
how not to format part 1
argument a. subpoint b. subpoint 2. argument a. subpoint b. subpoint how not to format part 2
argument a. subpoint b. subpoint 2. argument a. subpoint b. subpoint
1/15/22
consistency with universal freedom case
Tournament: Newark Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Lexington AA | Judge: Rao, Anand Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out and have no motivation to follow them which means they fail to guide action. Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of. Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – to question why one should reason concedes its authority since it is an act of reasoning itself which proves it’s binding and inescapable 2 Agents can shift between different identities but doing so requires reason - it unifies the subject and is the only enterprise agents cannot escape Ferrero 09 (Luca Ferrero, Luca Ferrero is a Philosophy professor at University of California, Riverside. His areas of interest are Agency Theory, including Intentionality and Personal identity; Practical Reasoning; and Meta-Ethics, “Constitutivism and the Inescapability of Agency”. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. IV, Jan 12, 2009. https://philarchive.org/archive/FERCATv1 BHHS AK recut Agency is special in two respects. First, agency is the enterprise with the largest jurisdiction.¹² All ordinary enterprises fall under it. To engage in any ordinary enterprise is ipso facto to engage in the enterprise of agency. In addition, there are instances of behavior that fall under no other enterprise but agency. First, intentional transitions in and out of particular enterprises might not count as moves within those enterprises, but they are still instances of intentional agency, of bare intentional agency, so to say. Second, agency is the locus where we adjudicate the merits and demerits of participating in any ordinary enterprise. Reasoning whether to participate in a particular enterprise is often conducted outside of that enterprise, even while one is otherwise engaged in it. Practical reflection is a manifestation of full-fledged intentional agency but it does not necessarily belong to any other specific enterprise. Once again, it might be an instance of bare intentional agency. In the limiting case, agency is the only enterprise that would still keep a subject busy if she were to attempt a ‘radical re-evaluation’ of all of her engagements and at least temporarily suspend her participation in all ordinary enterprises.
That justifies universalizability - insofar as there is no a priori distinction between reasoners, a reason for one agent must also be a reason for another; if all agents cannot set and pursue an end, it is not constitutive of agency. Willing a maxim that violates freedom is a contradiction in conception – you cannot violate someone’s freedom without having your own freedom to do so. Thus, the standard is consistency with the universal freedom– actions that terminate in contradictions when universalized are bad, so only our restrictions can solve Impact calc: Intentions first – only the intention in pursuing a certain end is relevant when considering whether or not it is universalizable. Prefer for action theory - Any action can be split into infinite smaller actions. For example, when I’m taking a bite of food, I am making infinite movements of my hand and mouth – only the intention unifies the action. If we can’t unify action, we can’t call actions moral or immoral because they are made up of infinite parts.
Also Prefer Additionally –
1 We must value freedom insofar as we value our ends which justifies valuing the freedom of agents setting and pursuing ends since anything else would be contradictory. This means we can’t treat others as a mere means to an end Gewirth ’84 Alan Gewirth, “The Ontological Basis of Natural Law: A Critique and an Alternative,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1984), Pg. 95–121. Gewirth was professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. CHSTM Brackets for gendered language/grammar BHHS AK recut Let me briefly sketch the main line of argument that leads to this conclusion. As I have said, the argument is based on the generic features of human action. To begin with, every agent acts for purposes he they regards as good. Hence, he they must regard as necessary goods the freedom and well-being that are the generic features and necessary conditions of his action and successful action in general. From this, it follows that every agent logically must hold or accept that he has they have rights to these conditions. For if he were to deny that he has they have these rights, then he they would have to admit that it is permissible for others persons to remove from him the very conditions of freedom and well-being that, as an agent, he they must have. But it is contradictory for him to hold both that he must have these conditions and also that he may not have them. Hence, on pain of self-contradiction, every agent must accept that he has rights to freedom and well-being. Moreover, every agent must further admit that all other agents also have those rights, since all other actual or prospective agents they have the same general characteristics of agency on which they must ground his their own right-claims.¶ What I am saying, then, is that every agent, simply by virtue of being an agent, must regard his freedom and well being as necessary goods and must hold that he and all other actual or prospective agents have rights to these necessary goods. Hence, every agent, on pain of self-contradiction, must accept the following principle: Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself. The generic rights are rights to the generic features of action, freedom, and well-being. I call this the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), because it combines the formal consideration of consistency with the material consideration of the generic features and rights of action
2 Performativity – arguing against my framework presupposes freedom because without freedom to reason you would not be able to make arguments and try to win. – this means that contesting any of my arguments proves my framework true.
3 A posteriori ethics fail: a Problem of induction Vickers 14, John Vickers, 2014, The Problem of Induction, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved. b Is/Ought Gap – experience just describes how the world is but doesn’t indicate how it ought to be which means there must be an a priori conception of good c Inability to know each other’s experience makes it an unreliable basis for ethics because different experiences bring different concepts of truth – only a priori ethics solve since a priori truths are accessible to all agents 4 Consequentialism fails – A Predictions assumes specific causes of past consequences which can’t be verified as the actual cause B Butterfly effect - every action has infinite consequences so it is impossible to evaluate an action; one government policy could end up causing nuclear war in a million years. C Aggregation is impossible – pleasure and pain are subjective
Acquisition of property can never be unjust – to create rights violations, there must already be an owner of the property being violated, but that presupposes its appropriation by another entity. Feser 1, (Edward Feser, 1-1-2005, accessed on 12-15-2021, Cambridge University Press, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNJUST INITIAL ACQUISITION | Social Philosophy and Policy | Cambridge Core", Edward C. Feser is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/article/abs/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-unjust-initial-acquisition/5C744D6D5C525E711EC75F75BF7109D1)brackets for gen langphs st There is a serious difficulty with this criticism of Nozick, however. It is just this: There is no such thing as an unjust initial acquisition of resources; therefore, there is no case to be made for redistributive taxation on the basis of alleged injustices in initial acquisition. This is, to be sure, a bold claim. Moreover, in making it, I contradict not only Nozick’s critics, but Nozick himself, who clearly thinks it is at least possible for there to be injustices in acquisition, whether or not there have in fact been any (or, more realistically, whether or not there have been enough such injustices to justify continual redistributive taxation for the purposes of rectifying them). But here is a case where Nozick has, I think, been too generous to the other side. Rather than attempt —unsatisfactorily, in the view of his critics—to meet the challenge to show that initial acquisition has not in general been unjust, he ought instead to have insisted that there is no such challenge to be met in the first place. Giving what I shall call “the basic argument” for this audacious claim will be the task of Section II of this essay. The argument is, I think, compelling, but by itself it leaves unexplained some widespread intu- itions to the effect that certain specific instances of initial acquisition are unjust and call forth as their remedy the application of a Lockean proviso, or are otherwise problematic. (A “Lockean proviso,” of course, is one that forbids initial acquisitions of resources when these acquisitions do not leave “enough and as good” in common for others.) Thus, Section III focuses on various considerations that tend to show how those intuitions are best explained in a way consistent with the argument of Section II. Section IV completes the task of accounting for the intuitions in question by considering how the thesis of self-ownership itself bears on the acqui- sition and use of property. Section V shows how the results of the previ- ous sections add up to a more satisfying defense of Nozickian property rights than the one given by Nozick himself, and considers some of the implications of this revised conception of initial acquisition for our under- standing of Nozick’s principles of transfer and rectification. II. The Basic Argument The reason there is no such thing as an unjust initial acquisition of resources is that there is no such thing as either a just or an unjust initial acquisition of resources. The concept of justice, that is to say, simply does not apply to initial acquisition. It applies only after initial acquisition has already taken place. In particular, it applies only to transfers of property (and derivatively, to the rectification of injustices in transfer). This, it seems to me, is a clear implication of the assumption (rightly) made by Nozick that external resources are initially unowned. Consider the following example. Suppose an individual A seeks to acquire some previously unowned resource R. For it to be the case that A commits an injustice in acquiring R, it would also have to be the case that there is some individual B (or perhaps a group of individuals) against whom A commits the injustice. But for B to have been wronged by A’s acquisi- tion of R, B would have to have had a rightful claim over R, a right to R. By hypothesis, however, B did not have a right to R, because no one had a right to it—it was unowned, after all. So B was not wronged and could not have been. In fact, the very first person who could conceivably be wronged by anyone’s use of R would be, not B, but A himself, since A is the first one to own R. Such a wrong would in the nature of the case be an injustice in transfer—in unjustly taking from A what is rightfully his—not in initial acquisition. The same thing, by extension, will be true of all unowned resources: it is only after some- one has initially acquired them that anyone could unjustly come to possess them, via unjust transfer. It is impossible, then, for there to be any injustices in initial acquisition.7
To own yourself and use your own freedom is to be able to interact with external objects. Anything else makes you unable to exercise your own freedom on other things and creates a contradiction. Feser 2, (Edward Feser, 1-1-2005, accessed on 12-15-2021, Cambridge University Press, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNJUST INITIAL ACQUISITION | Social Philosophy and Policy | Cambridge Core", Edward C. Feser is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/article/abs/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-unjust-initial-acquisition/5C744D6D5C525E711EC75F75BF7109D1)brackets for gen langphs st There is. An alternative, soft-line approach could acknowledge that the initial acquirer who abuses a monopoly over a water hole (or any similar crucial resource) does commit an injustice against those who are disad- vantaged, but such an approach could still hold that the acquirer never- theless has not committed an injustice in acquisition —his acquisition was, as I have said, neither just nor unjust. Nor does he fail to own what he has acquired; he still cannot be said to have stolen the water from anyone. Rather, his injustice is an unjust use of what he owns, on a par with the unjust use I make of my self-owned fist when I wield it, unprovoked, to bop you on your self-owned nose. In what sense does the water-hole owner use his water unjustly, though? He doesn’t try to drown anyone in it, after all— indeed, the whole problem is that he won’t let anybody near it! Eric Mack gives us the answer we need in what he has put forward as the “self-ownership proviso” (SOP).28 This is a proviso not (as the Lock- ean proviso is) on the initial acquisition of property, but rather on how one can use his property in a way that respects others’ self-ownership rights. It is motivated by consideration of the fact that the talents, abilities, capac- ities, energies, etc., that a person rightfully possesses as a self-owner are inherently “world-interactive”; that is, it is of their very essence that they are directed toward the extra-personal environment.29 Your capacity to use your hand, for instance, is just a capacity to grasp and manipulate external objects; thus, what you own in owning your hand is something essentially grasping and manipulating.30 Now if someone were to cut off your hand or invasively keep you from using it (by tying your arm against your body or holding it behind your back), he would obviously be violating your self-ownership rights. But there are, Mack suggests, other, noninvasive ways in which those rights might be violated. If, to use an example of Mack’s, I effectively nullify your ability to use your hand by creating a device that causes anything you reach for to be propelled beyond your grasp, making it impossible for you ever to grasp or manip- ulate anything, I have violated your right to your hand as much as if I had cut it off or tied it down. I have, in any case, prevented your right to your hand from being anything more than a formal right, one that is practically useless. In the interests of guaranteeing respect for substantive, robust rights of self-ownership, then, “the SOP requires that persons not deploy their legitimate holdings, i.e., their extra-personal property, in ways that severely, albeit noninvasively, disable any person’s world-interactive powers.” 31 The SOP follows, in Mack’s view, from the thesis of self-ownership itself; or, at any rate, the considerations that would lead anyone to accept that thesis should also, in his view, lead one to accept the proviso.32 A brief summary of a few of Mack’s thought experiments should suffice to give a sense of why this is so.33 In what Mack calls the Adam’s Island example, Adam acquires a previously uninhabited island and later refuses a shipwrecked Zelda permission to come ashore, as a result of which she remains struggling at sea (and presumably drowns). In the Paternalist Caging example, instead of drowning, Zelda becomes caught offshore in a cage Adam has constructed for catching large sea mammals, and, rather than releasing her, Adam keeps her in the cage and feeds her regularly. In the Knuckle-Scraper Barrier example, Zelda falls asleep on some unowned ground, whereupon a gang of oafish louts encircles her and, using their bodies and arms as barriers, refuses to let her out of the circle (accusing her of assault if she touches them in order to climb over or break through). In the Disabling Property Barrier example, instead of a human barrier, Adam constructs a plastic shield over and around the unowned plot of ground upon which Zelda sleeps, accusing her of trespassing upon his property when she awakens and tries to escape by breaking through the plastic. And in the (similarly named) Disabling Property Barriers example, seem to suggest an Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of natural function, and though this by no means troubles me, it might not be what Mack himself has in mind (nor, of course, is it something every philosopher is going to sympathize with). Mack’s view nevertheless seems to require something like this conception. And something like it —enough like it to do the job Mack needs to be done, anyway—is arguably to be found in Larry Wright’s well- known reconstruction, in modern Darwinian terms, of the traditional notion of natural function. See Larry Wright, “Functions,” Philosophical Review 82, no. 2 (1973): 139–68. Adam, instead of enclosing Zelda in a plastic barrier, encloses in plastic barriers every external object that Zelda would otherwise be able to use — thus, in effect, enclosing her in a larger, all-encompassing plastic barrier of a more eccentric shape. In all of these cases, Mack says, although Zelda’s formal rights of self-ownership have not been violated—no one has invaded the area enclosed by the surface of her skin —her rights over her self-owned powers, and in particular her ability to exercise those powers, have nevertheless been nullified. But a plausible self-ownership- based theory surely cannot allow for this. It cannot, for instance, allow the innocent Zelda justly to be imprisoned in any of the ways described! If Mack is right, then it seems we have, in the SOP, grounds for holding that a water-hole monopolist would indeed be committing an injustice against anyone he refuses water to, or to whom he charges exorbitant prices for access. The injustice would be a straightforward violation of a person’s rights to self-ownership, a case of nullifying a person’s self- owned powers in a way analogous to Adam’s or the knuckle-scrapers’ nullification of Zelda’s self-owned powers. It would not be an injustice in initial acquisition, however. The water-hole monopolist still owns the water hole as much as he ever did; he just cannot use it in a way that violates other individuals’ self-ownership rights (either by drowning them in it or by nullifying their self-owned powers by denying them access to it when there is no alternative way for them to gain access to the water necessary for the use of their self-owned powers). Is Mack right? The hard-liner might dig in his heels and insist that none of Mack’s examples amount to self-ownership-violating injustices; instead, they are merely subtle but straightforward property rights violations or cases of moral failings of various other sorts (cruelty, selfishness, etc.). The Adam’s Island case, for starters, is roughly analogous to the example of the water-hole monopolist, so that it arguably cannot give any non-question- begging support to the SOP, if the SOP is then supposed to show that the water-hole example involves an injustice. The Disabling Property Barriers case might also be viewed as unable to provide any non-question-begging support, since Adam’s encasing everything in plastic might plausibly be interpreted as his acquiring everything, in which case we are back to a water-hole-type monopoly example. The Knuckle-Scraper Barrier and Dis- abling Property Barrier examples might be explained by saying that in falling asleep on the unowned plot of land, Zelda in effect has come (at least temporarily) to acquire it, and (by virtue of walking) to acquire also the path she took to get to it, so that the knuckle-scrapers and Adam violate her property rights (not her self-ownership rights) in not allowing her to escape. The Paternalist Caging example can perhaps be explained by arguing that in building the cage, Adam has acquired the water route leading to it, so that in swimming this route (and thus getting caught in the cage) Zelda has violated his property rights and, therefore, can justly be caged. Accordingly, the hard-liner might insist, we can explain all of these examples in a hard-line way and thus avoid commitment to the SOP. Such a hard-line response would be ingenious (well, maybe), but still, I think, ultimately doomed to failure. Can the Paternalist Caging example, to start with, plausibly be explained away in the manner that I have suggested? Does Adam commit no injustice against Zelda even if he never lets her out? It will not do to write this off merely as a case of excessive punishment (explaining the injustice of which would presumably not require commitment to the SOP). For suppose Adam says, after a mere five minutes of confinement, “I’m no longer punishing you; you’ve paid your debt and are free to go, as far as I’m concerned. But I’m not going to bother exerting the effort to let you out. I never forced you to get in the cage, after all —you did it on your own —and you have no right to the use of my self-owned cage-opening powers to fix your mistake! So teleport out, if you can. Or get someone else —if you can find someone —to let you out.” Adam would be neither violating Zelda’s rights to external property nor excessively punishing her in this case; nor would he be invasively vio- lating her self-ownership rights. But wouldn’t he still be committing an injustice, however noninvasively? Don’t we need something like the SOP to explain why this is so? The barrier examples, for their part, do not require Zelda’s walking and falling asleep on virgin territory, which thus (arguably) becomes her prop- erty. We can, to appeal to the sort of science-fiction scenario beloved of philosophers, imagine instead a bizarre chance disruption of the structure of space-time that teleports Zelda into Adam’s plastic shell or into the midst of the knuckle-scrapers. There is no question now of their violating her property rights; yet don’t they still commit an injustice by nullifying her self-owned powers in refusing to allow her to exit? Consider a parallel example concerning property ownership itself. If your prized $50,000 copy of Captain America Comics number 1, due to another rupture in space-time or just to a particularly strong wind that blows it out of your hands and through my window, suddenly appears on the floor of my living room, do I have the right to refuse to bring it back out to you or to allow you to come in and get it? Suppose I attempt to justify my refusal by saying, “I won’t touch it, and you’re free to have it back if you can arrange another space-time rupture or gust of wind. But I refuse to exert my self-owned powers to bring it out to you, or to allow you on my property to get it. I never asked for it to appear in my living room, after all!” Would anyone accept this justification? Doesn’t your property right in the comic book require me to give it back to you? The hard-liner might suggest that this example transports the SOP advocate out of the frying pan and into the fire. For if the SOP is true, wouldn’t we also have to commit ourselves to a “property-ownership proviso” (POP) that requires us not to nullify anyone’s ability to use his external private property in a way consistent with its “world-interactive powers”? If I build a miniature submarine in my garage, and you have the only swimming pool within one thousand miles, must you allow me the use of your pool lest you nullify my ability to use the sub? If (to take an example of Cohen’s cited by Mack) I own a corkscrew, must I be provided with wine bottles to open lest the corkscrew sadly fail to fulfill its full potential?34 Mack’s response to this line of thought seems basically to amount to a bit of backpedaling on the claim that his proviso really follows from the notion of self-ownership per se —so as to avoid the conclusion that a (rather unlibertarian and presumably redistributionist) POP would also, in par- allel fashion, follow from the concept of property ownership. His response seems, instead, to emphasize the idea that the considerations favoring self-ownership also favor, via an independent line of reasoning, the SOP.35 In my view, however, a better response would be one that took note of some relevant disanalogies between property in oneself and property in external things. Note first that the self-owned world-interactive powers, the possible use of which the SOP is intended to guarantee, are possessed by a living being who is undergoing development, which involves passing through various stages; therefore, these powers are ones that flourish with use and atrophy or even disappear with disuse.36 To nullify these powers even for a limited time, then, is (very often at least) not merely temporarily to inconvenience their owner, but, rather, to bring about a permanent reduc- tion or even disablement of these powers. By contrast, a submarine (or a corkscrew) retains its powers even when left indefinitely in a garage (or a drawer). This difference in the effect that nullification has on self-owned powers versus extra-personal property plausibly justifies a difference in our judgments concerning the acceptability, from the point of view of justice, of such nullification in the two cases; that is, it justifies adoption of the SOP but not of the POP.37 Second, there is an element of choice (and in particular, of voluntary acquisition) where extra-personal property is concerned that is morally relevant here.
1/15/22
consistency with universal freedom case v2
Tournament: Newark Invitational | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harrison JC | Judge: Frenkel, Nathan Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out and have no motivation to follow them which means they fail to guide action. Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of. Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – to question why one should reason concedes its authority since it is an act of reasoning itself which proves it’s binding and inescapable 2 Agents can shift between different identities but doing so requires reason - it unifies the subject and is the only enterprise agents cannot escape Ferrero 09 (Luca Ferrero, Luca Ferrero is a Philosophy professor at University of California, Riverside. His areas of interest are Agency Theory, including Intentionality and Personal identity; Practical Reasoning; and Meta-Ethics, “Constitutivism and the Inescapability of Agency”. Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. IV, Jan 12, 2009. https://philarchive.org/archive/FERCATv1 BHHS AK recut Agency is special in two respects. First, agency is the enterprise with the largest jurisdiction.¹² All ordinary enterprises fall under it. To engage in any ordinary enterprise is ipso facto to engage in the enterprise of agency. In addition, there are instances of behavior that fall under no other enterprise but agency. First, intentional transitions in and out of particular enterprises might not count as moves within those enterprises, but they are still instances of intentional agency, of bare intentional agency, so to say. Second, agency is the locus where we adjudicate the merits and demerits of participating in any ordinary enterprise. Reasoning whether to participate in a particular enterprise is often conducted outside of that enterprise, even while one is otherwise engaged in it. Practical reflection is a manifestation of full-fledged intentional agency but it does not necessarily belong to any other specific enterprise. Once again, it might be an instance of bare intentional agency. In the limiting case, agency is the only enterprise that would still keep a subject busy if she were to attempt a ‘radical re-evaluation’ of all of her engagements and at least temporarily suspend her participation in all ordinary enterprises.
That justifies universalizability - insofar as there is no a priori distinction between reasoners, a reason for one agent must also be a reason for another; if all agents cannot set and pursue an end, it is not constitutive of agency. Willing a maxim that violates freedom is a contradiction in conception – you cannot violate someone’s freedom without having your own freedom to do so. Thus, the standard is consistency with the universal freedom– actions that terminate in contradictions when universalized are bad, so only our restrictions can solve Impact calc: Intentions first – only the intention in pursuing a certain end is relevant when considering whether or not it is universalizable. Prefer for action theory - Any action can be split into infinite smaller actions. For example, when I’m taking a bite of food, I am making infinite movements of my hand and mouth – only the intention unifies the action. If we can’t unify action, we can’t call actions moral or immoral because they are made up of infinite parts.
Also Prefer Additionally –
1 We must value freedom insofar as we value our ends which justifies valuing the freedom of agents setting and pursuing ends since anything else would be contradictory. This means we can’t treat others as a mere means to an end Gewirth ’84 Alan Gewirth, “The Ontological Basis of Natural Law: A Critique and an Alternative,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1984), Pg. 95–121. Gewirth was professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. CHSTM Brackets for gendered language/grammar BHHS AK recut Let me briefly sketch the main line of argument that leads to this conclusion. As I have said, the argument is based on the generic features of human action. To begin with, every agent acts for purposes he they regards as good. Hence, he they must regard as necessary goods the freedom and well-being that are the generic features and necessary conditions of his action and successful action in general. From this, it follows that every agent logically must hold or accept that he has they have rights to these conditions. For if he were to deny that he has they have these rights, then he they would have to admit that it is permissible for others persons to remove from him the very conditions of freedom and well-being that, as an agent, he they must have. But it is contradictory for him to hold both that he must have these conditions and also that he may not have them. Hence, on pain of self-contradiction, every agent must accept that he has rights to freedom and well-being. Moreover, every agent must further admit that all other agents also have those rights, since all other actual or prospective agents they have the same general characteristics of agency on which they must ground his their own right-claims.¶ What I am saying, then, is that every agent, simply by virtue of being an agent, must regard his freedom and well being as necessary goods and must hold that he and all other actual or prospective agents have rights to these necessary goods. Hence, every agent, on pain of self-contradiction, must accept the following principle: Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself. The generic rights are rights to the generic features of action, freedom, and well-being. I call this the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), because it combines the formal consideration of consistency with the material consideration of the generic features and rights of action
2 Performativity – arguing against my framework presupposes freedom because without freedom to reason you would not be able to make arguments and try to win. – this means that contesting any of my arguments proves my framework true.
3 Consequentialism fails – A Predictions assumes specific causes of past consequences which can’t be verified as the actual cause B Butterfly effect - every action has infinite consequences so it is impossible to evaluate an action; one government policy could end up causing nuclear war in a million years. C Aggregation is impossible – pleasure and pain are subjective
4 Kant is a heuristic by which we should approach problems of justice – the rejection of deceit and coercion creates rigid constraints, but leaves room for specificity and more detailed answers to conflict. O'Neill, Onora (2000). Bounds of Justice. Cambridge University Press. This sketch of a reading of Kant's account of practical reason by itself does nothing to rebut the classic charge that the Categorical Imperative leads only to empty formalism. Perhaps the demand for universalizability will draw no significant ethical distinctions, let alone help us to think about justice. After all, the limited conception of practical reason just proposed enjoins only the rejection of non-universalizable principles, on the grounds that these are not even competent for general authority in guiding thought or action. Kant's account of reason is only a second-order constraint on our adoption of principles for dealing with life and thought Here I can offer no more than the merest sketches to suggest why there may be arguments from the demand of universalizability to certain principles of obligation, some of them relevant to any public domain, and so to justice.25 The sketches do not stick to Kant's own way of developing his practical philosophy, which is often designed around rather awkwardly schematic illustrations designed to give instances that fill out a set grid of perfect and imperfect duties to self and to others, of which he thinks only perfect duties to others relevant to questions of justice. 26 If we take simply the idea that we can offer reasons for the adoption only of those principles which (we take it) others on the receiving end of reasoning could also adopt, then a range of types of action must be rejected. We cannot offer reasons to all for adopting principles of deceit (one of Kant's favourite examples), of injury or of coercion. For we cannot coherently assume that all could adopt these principles: we know that were they even widely adopted, those acting on them would meet at least some success, and hence that at least some others would be the victims of this success, so that contrary to hypothesis they could not be universally adopted. The rejection of these principles provides a starting point for constructing a more detailed account of principles of justice. Of course, these are very indeterminate principles: but they are less indeterminate than many of the principles of liberty and equality that have recently been the preferred building blocks for theories of justice. One of the interesting respects in which they are more determinate is that they are evidently principles for finite, mutually vulnerable beings – for beings who might in principle suffer by being the victims of deceit, injury or coercion. Principles of equality and liberty are on the surface more abstract. However, despite the fact that they leave so much open, these are significant constraints, since there are also many sorts of action and institution whose fundamental principles could not be followed by all – for example, principles based on deceit, injury or coercion.27 Those who refuse to base lives or policies on injury or on deceit may have many options in most situations - and yet taken both individually and jointly, these constraints can be highly demanding.
5Oppression is caused by arbitrary exclusion of others – only universalizability makes sure that we include everyone equally. Farr 02 Arnold Farr. Arnold Farr is a Philosophy professor at the University of Kentucky. His research interests are German idealism, Marxism, critical theory, philosophy of race, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, and liberation philosophy. He has published numorous articles and book chapters on all of these subjects, “Can a Philosophy of Race Afford to Abandon the Kantian Categorical Imperative?”, 2002, blog.ufba.br/kant/files/2009/12/Can-a-Philosophy-of-Race-Afford-to-Abandon-the.pdf. /BHHS AK recut The attack on Kantian formalism began with Hegel’s criticism of the Kantian philosophy.14 The list of contemporary theorists who follow Hegel’s line of criticism is far too long to deal with in the scope of this paper. Although these theorists may approach the problem of Kantian formalism from a variety of angles, the spirit of their criticism is basically the same: The universality of the categorical imperative is an abstraction from one’s empirical conditions. Kant is often accused of making the moral agent an abstract, empty, noumenal subject. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Kantian subject is an embodied, empirical, concrete subject. However, this concrete subject has a dual nature. Kant claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as in the Grounding that human beings have an intelligible and empirical character.15 It is impossible to understand and do justice to Kant’s moral theory without taking seriously the relation between these two characters. The very concept of morality is impossible without the tension between the two. By “empirical character” Kant simply means that we have a sensual nature. We are physical creatures with physical drives or desires. The very fact that I cannot simply satisfy my desires without considering the rightness or wrongness of my actions suggests that my empirical character must be held in check by something, or else I behave like a Freudian id. My empirical character must be held in check by my intelligible character, which is the legislative activity of practical reason. It is through our intelligible character that we formulate principles that keep our empirical impulses in check. The categorical imperative is the supreme principle of morality that is constructed by the moral agent in his/her moment of self-transcendence. What I have called self-transcendence may be best explained in the following passage by Onora O’Neill: In restricting our maxims to those that meet the test of the categorical imperative we refuse to base our lives on maxims that necessarily make our own case an exception. The reason why a universilizability criterion is morally significant is that it makes our own case no special exception (G, IV, 404). In accepting the Categorical Imperative we accept the moral reality of other selves, and hence the possibility (not, note, the reality) of a moral community. The Formula of Universal Law enjoins no more than that we act only on maxims that are open to others also.16 O’Neill’s description of the universalizability criterion includes the notion of self-transcendence that I am working to explicate here to the extent that like self-transcendence, universalizable moral principles require that the individual think beyond his or her own particular desires. The individual is not allowed to exclude others as rational moral agents who have the right to act as he acts in a given situation. For example, if I decide to use another person merely as a means for my own end I must recognize the other person’s right to do the same to me. I cannot consistently will that I use another as a means only and will that I not be used in the same manner by another. Hence, the universalizability criterion is a principle of consistency and a principle of inclusion. That is, in choosing my maxims I attempt to include the perspective of other moral agents.
Offense Acquisition of property can never be unjust – to create rights violations, there must already be an owner of the property being violated, but that presupposes its appropriation by another entity. Feser 1, (Edward Feser, 1-1-2005, accessed on 12-15-2021, Cambridge University Press, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNJUST INITIAL ACQUISITION | Social Philosophy and Policy | Cambridge Core", Edward C. Feser is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/article/abs/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-unjust-initial-acquisition/5C744D6D5C525E711EC75F75BF7109D1)brackets for gen langphs st There is a serious difficulty with this criticism of Nozick, however. It is just this: There is no such thing as an unjust initial acquisition of resources; therefore, there is no case to be made for redistributive taxation on the basis of alleged injustices in initial acquisition. This is, to be sure, a bold claim. Moreover, in making it, I contradict not only Nozick’s critics, but Nozick himself, who clearly thinks it is at least possible for there to be injustices in acquisition, whether or not there have in fact been any (or, more realistically, whether or not there have been enough such injustices to justify continual redistributive taxation for the purposes of rectifying them). But here is a case where Nozick has, I think, been too generous to the other side. Rather than attempt —unsatisfactorily, in the view of his critics—to meet the challenge to show that initial acquisition has not in general been unjust, he ought instead to have insisted that there is no such challenge to be met in the first place. Giving what I shall call “the basic argument” for this audacious claim will be the task of Section II of this essay. The argument is, I think, compelling, but by itself it leaves unexplained some widespread intu- itions to the effect that certain specific instances of initial acquisition are unjust and call forth as their remedy the application of a Lockean proviso, or are otherwise problematic. (A “Lockean proviso,” of course, is one that forbids initial acquisitions of resources when these acquisitions do not leave “enough and as good” in common for others.) Thus, Section III focuses on various considerations that tend to show how those intuitions are best explained in a way consistent with the argument of Section II. Section IV completes the task of accounting for the intuitions in question by considering how the thesis of self-ownership itself bears on the acqui- sition and use of property. Section V shows how the results of the previ- ous sections add up to a more satisfying defense of Nozickian property rights than the one given by Nozick himself, and considers some of the implications of this revised conception of initial acquisition for our under- standing of Nozick’s principles of transfer and rectification. II. The Basic Argument The reason there is no such thing as an unjust initial acquisition of resources is that there is no such thing as either a just or an unjust initial acquisition of resources. The concept of justice, that is to say, simply does not apply to initial acquisition. It applies only after initial acquisition has already taken place. In particular, it applies only to transfers of property (and derivatively, to the rectification of injustices in transfer). This, it seems to me, is a clear implication of the assumption (rightly) made by Nozick that external resources are initially unowned. Consider the following example. Suppose an individual A seeks to acquire some previously unowned resource R. For it to be the case that A commits an injustice in acquiring R, it would also have to be the case that there is some individual B (or perhaps a group of individuals) against whom A commits the injustice. But for B to have been wronged by A’s acquisi- tion of R, B would have to have had a rightful claim over R, a right to R. By hypothesis, however, B did not have a right to R, because no one had a right to it—it was unowned, after all. So B was not wronged and could not have been. In fact, the very first person who could conceivably be wronged by anyone’s use of R would be, not B, but A himself, since A is the first one to own R. Such a wrong would in the nature of the case be an injustice in transfer—in unjustly taking from A what is rightfully his—not in initial acquisition. The same thing, by extension, will be true of all unowned resources: it is only after some- one has initially acquired them that anyone could unjustly come to possess them, via unjust transfer. It is impossible, then, for there to be any injustices in initial acquisition.7
To own yourself and use your own freedom is to be able to interact with external objects. Anything else makes you unable to exercise your own freedom on other things and creates a contradiction. Feser 2, (Edward Feser, 1-1-2005, accessed on 12-15-2021, Cambridge University Press, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN UNJUST INITIAL ACQUISITION | Social Philosophy and Policy | Cambridge Core", Edward C. Feser is an American philosopher. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy-and-policy/article/abs/there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-unjust-initial-acquisition/5C744D6D5C525E711EC75F75BF7109D1)brackets for gen langphs st There is. An alternative, soft-line approach could acknowledge that the initial acquirer who abuses a monopoly over a water hole (or any similar crucial resource) does commit an injustice against those who are disad- vantaged, but such an approach could still hold that the acquirer never- theless has not committed an injustice in acquisition —his acquisition was, as I have said, neither just nor unjust. Nor does he fail to own what he has acquired; he still cannot be said to have stolen the water from anyone. Rather, his injustice is an unjust use of what he owns, on a par with the unjust use I make of my self-owned fist when I wield it, unprovoked, to bop you on your self-owned nose. In what sense does the water-hole owner use his water unjustly, though? He doesn’t try to drown anyone in it, after all— indeed, the whole problem is that he won’t let anybody near it! Eric Mack gives us the answer we need in what he has put forward as the “self-ownership proviso” (SOP).28 This is a proviso not (as the Lock- ean proviso is) on the initial acquisition of property, but rather on how one can use his property in a way that respects others’ self-ownership rights. It is motivated by consideration of the fact that the talents, abilities, capac- ities, energies, etc., that a person rightfully possesses as a self-owner are inherently “world-interactive”; that is, it is of their very essence that they are directed toward the extra-personal environment.29 Your capacity to use your hand, for instance, is just a capacity to grasp and manipulate external objects; thus, what you own in owning your hand is something essentially grasping and manipulating.30 Now if someone were to cut off your hand or invasively keep you from using it (by tying your arm against your body or holding it behind your back), he would obviously be violating your self-ownership rights. But there are, Mack suggests, other, noninvasive ways in which those rights might be violated. If, to use an example of Mack’s, I effectively nullify your ability to use your hand by creating a device that causes anything you reach for to be propelled beyond your grasp, making it impossible for you ever to grasp or manip- ulate anything, I have violated your right to your hand as much as if I had cut it off or tied it down. I have, in any case, prevented your right to your hand from being anything more than a formal right, one that is practically useless. In the interests of guaranteeing respect for substantive, robust rights of self-ownership, then, “the SOP requires that persons not deploy their legitimate holdings, i.e., their extra-personal property, in ways that severely, albeit noninvasively, disable any person’s world-interactive powers.” 31 The SOP follows, in Mack’s view, from the thesis of self-ownership itself; or, at any rate, the considerations that would lead anyone to accept that thesis should also, in his view, lead one to accept the proviso.32 A brief summary of a few of Mack’s thought experiments should suffice to give a sense of why this is so.33 In what Mack calls the Adam’s Island example, Adam acquires a previously uninhabited island and later refuses a shipwrecked Zelda permission to come ashore, as a result of which she remains struggling at sea (and presumably drowns). In the Paternalist Caging example, instead of drowning, Zelda becomes caught offshore in a cage Adam has constructed for catching large sea mammals, and, rather than releasing her, Adam keeps her in the cage and feeds her regularly. In the Knuckle-Scraper Barrier example, Zelda falls asleep on some unowned ground, whereupon a gang of oafish louts encircles her and, using their bodies and arms as barriers, refuses to let her out of the circle (accusing her of assault if she touches them in order to climb over or break through). In the Disabling Property Barrier example, instead of a human barrier, Adam constructs a plastic shield over and around the unowned plot of ground upon which Zelda sleeps, accusing her of trespassing upon his property when she awakens and tries to escape by breaking through the plastic. And in the (similarly named) Disabling Property Barriers example, seem to suggest an Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of natural function, and though this by no means troubles me, it might not be what Mack himself has in mind (nor, of course, is it something every philosopher is going to sympathize with). Mack’s view nevertheless seems to require something like this conception. And something like it —enough like it to do the job Mack needs to be done, anyway—is arguably to be found in Larry Wright’s well- known reconstruction, in modern Darwinian terms, of the traditional notion of natural function. See Larry Wright, “Functions,” Philosophical Review 82, no. 2 (1973): 139–68. Adam, instead of enclosing Zelda in a plastic barrier, encloses in plastic barriers every external object that Zelda would otherwise be able to use — thus, in effect, enclosing her in a larger, all-encompassing plastic barrier of a more eccentric shape. In all of these cases, Mack says, although Zelda’s formal rights of self-ownership have not been violated—no one has invaded the area enclosed by the surface of her skin —her rights over her self-owned powers, and in particular her ability to exercise those powers, have nevertheless been nullified. But a plausible self-ownership- based theory surely cannot allow for this. It cannot, for instance, allow the innocent Zelda justly to be imprisoned in any of the ways described! If Mack is right, then it seems we have, in the SOP, grounds for holding that a water-hole monopolist would indeed be committing an injustice against anyone he refuses water to, or to whom he charges exorbitant prices for access. The injustice would be a straightforward violation of a person’s rights to self-ownership, a case of nullifying a person’s self- owned powers in a way analogous to Adam’s or the knuckle-scrapers’ nullification of Zelda’s self-owned powers. It would not be an injustice in initial acquisition, however. The water-hole monopolist still owns the water hole as much as he ever did; he just cannot use it in a way that violates other individuals’ self-ownership rights (either by drowning them in it or by nullifying their self-owned powers by denying them access to it when there is no alternative way for them to gain access to the water necessary for the use of their self-owned powers). Is Mack right? The hard-liner might dig in his heels and insist that none of Mack’s examples amount to self-ownership-violating injustices; instead, they are merely subtle but straightforward property rights violations or cases of moral failings of various other sorts (cruelty, selfishness, etc.). The Adam’s Island case, for starters, is roughly analogous to the example of the water-hole monopolist, so that it arguably cannot give any non-question- begging support to the SOP, if the SOP is then supposed to show that the water-hole example involves an injustice. The Disabling Property Barriers case might also be viewed as unable to provide any non-question-begging support, since Adam’s encasing everything in plastic might plausibly be interpreted as his acquiring everything, in which case we are back to a water-hole-type monopoly example. The Knuckle-Scraper Barrier and Dis- abling Property Barrier examples might be explained by saying that in falling asleep on the unowned plot of land, Zelda in effect has come (at least temporarily) to acquire it, and (by virtue of walking) to acquire also the path she took to get to it, so that the knuckle-scrapers and Adam violate her property rights (not her self-ownership rights) in not allowing her to escape. The Paternalist Caging example can perhaps be explained by arguing that in building the cage, Adam has acquired the water route leading to it, so that in swimming this route (and thus getting caught in the cage) Zelda has violated his property rights and, therefore, can justly be caged. Accordingly, the hard-liner might insist, we can explain all of these examples in a hard-line way and thus avoid commitment to the SOP. Such a hard-line response would be ingenious (well, maybe), but still, I think, ultimately doomed to failure. Can the Paternalist Caging example, to start with, plausibly be explained away in the manner that I have suggested? Does Adam commit no injustice against Zelda even if he never lets her out? It will not do to write this off merely as a case of excessive punishment (explaining the injustice of which would presumably not require commitment to the SOP). For suppose Adam says, after a mere five minutes of confinement, “I’m no longer punishing you; you’ve paid your debt and are free to go, as far as I’m concerned. But I’m not going to bother exerting the effort to let you out. I never forced you to get in the cage, after all —you did it on your own —and you have no right to the use of my self-owned cage-opening powers to fix your mistake! So teleport out, if you can. Or get someone else —if you can find someone —to let you out.” Adam would be neither violating Zelda’s rights to external property nor excessively punishing her in this case; nor would he be invasively vio- lating her self-ownership rights. But wouldn’t he still be committing an injustice, however noninvasively? Don’t we need something like the SOP to explain why this is so? The barrier examples, for their part, do not require Zelda’s walking and falling asleep on virgin territory, which thus (arguably) becomes her prop- erty. We can, to appeal to the sort of science-fiction scenario beloved of philosophers, imagine instead a bizarre chance disruption of the structure of space-time that teleports Zelda into Adam’s plastic shell or into the midst of the knuckle-scrapers. There is no question now of their violating her property rights; yet don’t they still commit an injustice by nullifying her self-owned powers in refusing to allow her to exit? Consider a parallel example concerning property ownership itself. If your prized $50,000 copy of Captain America Comics number 1, due to another rupture in space-time or just to a particularly strong wind that blows it out of your hands and through my window, suddenly appears on the floor of my living room, do I have the right to refuse to bring it back out to you or to allow you to come in and get it? Suppose I attempt to justify my refusal by saying, “I won’t touch it, and you’re free to have it back if you can arrange another space-time rupture or gust of wind. But I refuse to exert my self-owned powers to bring it out to you, or to allow you on my property to get it. I never asked for it to appear in my living room, after all!” Would anyone accept this justification? Doesn’t your property right in the comic book require me to give it back to you? The hard-liner might suggest that this example transports the SOP advocate out of the frying pan and into the fire. For if the SOP is true, wouldn’t we also have to commit ourselves to a “property-ownership proviso” (POP) that requires us not to nullify anyone’s ability to use his external private property in a way consistent with its “world-interactive powers”? If I build a miniature submarine in my garage, and you have the only swimming pool within one thousand miles, must you allow me the use of your pool lest you nullify my ability to use the sub? If (to take an example of Cohen’s cited by Mack) I own a corkscrew, must I be provided with wine bottles to open lest the corkscrew sadly fail to fulfill its full potential?34 Mack’s response to this line of thought seems basically to amount to a bit of backpedaling on the claim that his proviso really follows from the notion of self-ownership per se —so as to avoid the conclusion that a (rather unlibertarian and presumably redistributionist) POP would also, in par- allel fashion, follow from the concept of property ownership. His response seems, instead, to emphasize the idea that the considerations favoring self-ownership also favor, via an independent line of reasoning, the SOP.35 In my view, however, a better response would be one that took note of some relevant disanalogies between property in oneself and property in external things. Note first that the self-owned world-interactive powers, the possible use of which the SOP is intended to guarantee, are possessed by a living being who is undergoing development, which involves passing through various stages; therefore, these powers are ones that flourish with use and atrophy or even disappear with disuse.36 To nullify these powers even for a limited time, then, is (very often at least) not merely temporarily to inconvenience their owner, but, rather, to bring about a permanent reduc- tion or even disablement of these powers. By contrast, a submarine (or a corkscrew) retains its powers even when left indefinitely in a garage (or a drawer). This difference in the effect that nullification has on self-owned powers versus extra-personal property plausibly justifies a difference in our judgments concerning the acceptability, from the point of view of justice, of such nullification in the two cases; that is, it justifies adoption of the SOP but not of the POP.37 Second, there is an element of choice (and in particular, of voluntary acquisition) where extra-personal property is concerned that is morally relevant here. Case ROTB is to vote for the debater who best proves the truth/falsity of the resolution 1) Debate is a competitive game- even if there are different ways to play the game, you would not determine who wins based on those factors 2) Jurisdiction: All the judge has the power to do is vote for the better debater. This entails determining who wins. Jurisdiction functions first since judges are not bound to anything else; there is no need for you to act as a critical educator if a debater tells you to in the same way you don't have to dance if I read that in my speech. 3) The definition of to affirm is state as a fact while to negate is to to deny the truth of- constitutive of both debate and the judge to vote off TT, ow bc Constituvism is non optional and inescapable 4) Inclusion- Any offense can function under truth testing
CP CP: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust in all instances except Active Debris Removal. Governments ought to permit the appropriation of outer space for designated safety zones and tech stationing for active debris removal by private entities. Debris removal is necessary and only private entities have the incentive and capability to do it. Giordano 21 (David Giordano is the Vice President of Mentorship for CBLA. Elsewhere at Columbia Law School, he serves on the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, and is the Treasurer of Columbia OutLaws. During his 1L Summer, David was an intern at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance. Prior to law school, David worked as a Corporate Paralegal at the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton LLP. David attended The George Washington University where he obtained a B.A. in psychology. “Space Debris: Another Frontier in the Commercialization of Space”. October 31, 2021.) As satellites and other projectiles blast into orbit, upon collision they can disintegrate into shards, sometimes just centimeters wide, that remain in orbit, risking further collision. Hollywood captured the potential perils of fairly large pieces of space debris in the opening minutes of the 2013 film Gravity, where space junk threatens the lives of astronauts on a mission. Outside the realms of fictional space-thrillers, even the smallest pieces of space junk can present real danger. In 2016, a tiny piece of space junk, believed to be a paint chip or a piece of metal no more than a few thousandths of a millimeter across, cracked the window of the International Space Station. In May 2021, a piece of space debris punctured the robotic arm of the International Space Station. This is seriously concerning, as, according to the European Space Agency, there are 670,000 pieces of space debris larger than 1cm and 170,000,000 between 1mm and 1cm in width. Unfortunately, public action and policy struggles to keep up with these risks. International law affords little clarity on the problem, as its control is a novel, emerging field with many technical tracking and removal challenges. None of the existing space treaties directly tackle the issue, rendering responsibility for it ambiguous. Absent such responsibility, legal incentives are non-existent. Guidelines are occasionally issued by international governing bodies, but provide little legal significance and are more targeted at the practicalities of tracking and removal. The nation best positioned to notify space actors of collision risks is the United States, and the burden of that task currently falls on the Department of Defense. However, the Trump administration issued a directive in 2018, shifting the responsibility from the DoD to the Department of Commerce, and the transition has yet to materialize, leaving DoD struggling to keep pace with increasing commercial activity. In the face of public paralysis, addressing the problem through industry looks more and more attractive. This has led some to call for a new legal order that still leaves room for government, but reframes who the rules exist to serve. Rather than our current, rudimentary treaty regime designed to prevent international conflict, commentators have called for an additional regime resembling maritime law that preserves the interests of a more diverse set of stakeholders, including those in the future that can bring technology and interests to space that may not yet exist. These commentators shun the common conception that space regulation should resemble air-traffic control, which is suited to a narrower set of uses (transport). Under such a “maritime” regime, the light touch of central regulatory bodies, and perhaps their non-existence, is preferred, just as it has been on the seas. This way, individual nations have a degree of flexibility in instituting controls they see fit while leaving room for industry to address problems and introduce new uses for space. Furthermore, governments seem ready and willing to construct the legal and incentive framework in concert with such private action. In a joint statement this summer, G7 members expressed openness to resolving the technical aspects of the debris problem with private institutions, and there is some promising progress. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak signaled his plans to address the problem through a new company with a telling name: Privateer Space. Astroscale, a UK-based company, successfully launched a pair of satellites in the Spring of 2021 that will remove certain space debris from orbit. Astroscale also stated their desire to work with governments and international governing bodies to craft policy with private efforts to control the problem top of mind. In light of public policy’s silence on space debris, the initiative of actors like Astroscale involving themselves in policy may be advised, as it could promote further private investment in technology for space debris removal. A popular policy recommendation among experts is the establishment of public-private partnerships, and Astroscale has entered several such agreements including with Japan and the European Space Agency. Other actors include ClearSpace, OneWeb, and D-Orbit. Some may want to push back against further private involvement. The congestion of space is, in part, industry’s fault, and if we conceptualize orbital space as a common resource, it might be right to fear the effects of the Tragedy of the Commons. Critics may seek to bolster international treaties, give legal teeth to the guidelines occasionally issued by the UN, and preserve the public posture of the heavens. These may be welcome adjustments, but unlike a pond that industry overfishes or a well that industry dries up, here industry is working to add more fish and water. Moreover, governments stand to benefit from this private decluttering, as well, as they are expected to be major customers of some of these private actors. As for the public posture, space has long been a commercial place. Telecommunications companies and government contractors historically depend on space. As the number of commercial satellites set to launch skyrockets, it seems natural to craft policies that are responsive to their interests and provide incentives to remedy issues created in the course of spacefaring, such as space debris. In light of the long silence of international law on such issues and the demonstrated motivation by private actors, space debris represents the latest frontier in the abdication of space from the public concern to the private.
1/15/22
specify util
Tournament: Newark Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: Lexington AA | Judge: Rao, Anand Spec util Interpretation: If the affirmative defends a consequentialist framework, they must explicitly delineate which theory of the good they defend in the form of a text in the 1ac. Each nuance of the ethic entails different obligations and would exclude different offense – there are 7 different versions. Mastin Luke Mastin, Consequentialism, The basics of philosophy http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_consequentialism.htmlMassa Some consequentialist theories include: Utilitarianism, which holds that an action is right if it leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people ("happiness" here is defined as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain). Hedonism, which is the philosophy holds that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and that individuals should strive to maximise their own total pleasure (net of any pain or suffering). Epicureanism is a more moderate approach (which still seeks to maximize happiness, but which defines happiness more as a state of tranquillity than pleasure). Egoism, which holds that an action is right if it maximizes good for the self. Thus, Egoism may license actions which are good for an individual even if detrimental to the general welfare. Asceticism, in some ways, the opposite of Egoism in that it describes a life characterized by abstinence from egoistic pleasures especially to achieve a spiritual goal. Altruism, which prescribes that an individual take actions that have the best consequences for everyone except for himself, according to Auguste Comte's dictum, "Live for others". Thus, individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self-interest. Rule Consequentialism, which is a theory (sometimes seen as an attempt to reconcile Consequentialism and Deontology), holds that moral behaviour involves following certain rules, but that those rules should be chosen based on the consequences that the selection of those rules have. Some theorists holds that a certain set of minimal rules are necessary to ensure appropriate actions, while some hold that the rules are not absolute and may be violated if strict adherence to the rule would lead to much more undesirable consequences. Negative Consequentialism, which focuses on minimizing bad consequences rather than promoting good consequences. This may actually require active intervention (to prevent harm from being done), or may only require passive avoidance of bad outcomes. B. Violation: They don’t and maximizing expected well-being doesn’t cut it. Crisp, Roger, "Well-Being", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/well-being/.Massa Well-being is most commonly used in philosophy to describe what is non-instrumentally or ultimately good for a person. The question of what well-being consists in is of independent interest, but it is of great importance in moral philosophy, especially in the case of utilitarianism, according to which the only moral requirement is that well-being be maximized. Significant challenges to the very notion have been mounted, in particular by G.E. Moore and T.M. Scanlon. It has become standard to distinguish theories of well-being as either hedonist theories, desire theories, or objective list theories. According to the view known as welfarism, well-being is the only value. Also important in ethics is the question of how a person’s moral character and actions relate to their well-being. C. Standards:
Shiftiness – They can shift out of my turns based on whatever theory of the good they operate under due to the nature of a vague standard. Especially true because the warrants for their standard could justify different versions of consequentialism as coming first and I wouldn’t know until the 1ar which gives them access to multiple contingent standards. 2. Strat – I lose 6 minutes of time during the AC to generate a strategy because I don't know what turns or strategy I can go for during the 1N absent which proves CX doesn’t check since it would occur after the skew. 3. Resolvability – Makes the round irresolvable since we can’t weigh different mechanisms for the good – Benatar would probably link harder under a hedonistic conception of util – weighing ground is key since it ensures we can compare arguments that clash to access the ballot.
Voters: Vote on fairness because debate is a competitive activity so we need to objectively evaluate rounds. Drop the debater: A) we need to set norms for future rounds and punishment is key, B) we need to deter future abuse, C) time skew – time spent on theory is already lost and I couldn’t spend it on substance, so I need a route to the ballot on theory. No new 2AR weighing since I can’t respond to it and they can misconstrue the 2N. Competing interpretations over reasonability: A) reasonability is arbitrary – it invites arbitrary judge intervention since someone has to decide what’s reasonable, B) competing interps is key to setting norms for debate – that’s good since we stop future abuse. Evaluate theory after the 2N since the 1AR is 4 mins the aff can justify abuse. No RVIs: A) illogical – they shouldn’t win for being fair – it’s a litmus test to being able to engage in substance, B) substantive education – we should go back to substance after theory so we can learn more instead of spending all our time on incorrect theory, C) they’ll say reciprocity, but 1AR theory solves all their offense since they can still win on theory, d) forces you to split your 2AR so you can’t collapse and misconstrue the 2NR, which checks back the chilling effect.
1/15/22
util hospital and racial strikes case
Tournament: Ridge Debate | Round: 1 | Opponent: Newark Science LF | Judge: Keith Lo Lay NEG from Princeton Bao First an observation: according to Merriam Webster, unconditional means not conditional or limited, which means that the affirmative has to prove that any right to strike would be allowed.
Value Criterion: Maximizing expected wellbeing Extinction outweighs, prerequisite to structural violence Pummer 15 Theron, Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. “Moral Agreement on Saving the World” Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. May 18, 2015 AT There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we’re consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all agree that we should try to save the world. According to consequentialism, we should maximize the good, where this is taken to be the goodness, from an impartial perspective, of outcomes. Clearly one thing that makes an outcome good is that the people in it are doing well. There is little disagreement here. If the happiness or well-being of possible future people is just as important as that of people who already exist, and if they would have good lives, it is not hard to see how reducing existential risk is easily the most important thing in the whole world. This is for the familiar reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. There are so many possible future people that reducing existential risk is arguably the most important thing in the world, even if the well-being of these possible people were given only 0.001 as much weight as that of existing people. Even on a wholly person-affecting view – according to which there’s nothing (apart from effects on existing people) to be said in favor of creating happy people – the case for reducing existential risk is very strong. As noted in this seminal paper, this case is strengthened by the fact that there’s a good chance that many existing people will, with the aid of life-extension technology, live very long and very high quality lives. You might think what I have just argued applies to consequentialists only. There is a tendency to assume that, if an argument appeals to consequentialist considerations (the goodness of outcomes), it is irrelevant to non-consequentialists. But that is a huge mistake. Non-consequentialism is the view that there’s more that determines rightness than the goodness of consequences or outcomes; it is not the view that the latter don’t matter. Even John Rawls wrote, “All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.” Minimally plausible versions of deontology and virtue ethics must be concerned in part with promoting the good, from an impartial point of view. They’d thus imply very strong reasons to reduce existential risk, at least when this doesn’t significantly involve doing harm to others or damaging one’s character. What’s even more surprising, perhaps, is that even if our own good (or that of those near and dear to us) has much greater weight than goodness from the impartial “point of view of the universe,” indeed even if the latter is entirely morally irrelevant, we may nonetheless have very strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Even egoism, the view that each agent should maximize her own good, might imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. It will depend, among other things, on what one’s own good consists in. If well-being consisted in pleasure only, it is somewhat harder to argue that egoism would imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk – perhaps we could argue that one would maximize her expected hedonic well-being by funding life extension technology or by having herself cryogenically frozen at the time of her bodily death as well as giving money to reduce existential risk (so that there is a world for her to live in!). I am not sure, however, how strong the reasons to do this would be. But views which imply that, if I don’t care about other people, I have no or very little reason to help them are not even minimally plausible views (in addition to hedonistic egoism, I here have in mind views that imply that one has no reason to perform an act unless one actually desires to do that act). To be minimally plausible, egoism will need to be paired with a more sophisticated account of well-being. To see this, it is enough to consider, as Plato did, the possibility of a ring of invisibility – suppose that, while wearing it, Ayn could derive some pleasure by helping the poor, but instead could derive just a bit more by severely harming them. Hedonistic egoism would absurdly imply she should do the latter. To avoid this implication, egoists would need to build something like the meaningfulness of a life into well-being, in some robust way, where this would to a significant extent be a function of other-regarding concerns (see chapter 12 of this classic intro to ethics). But once these elements are included, we can (roughly, as above) argue that this sort of egoism will imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Add to all of this Samuel Scheffler’s recent intriguing arguments (quick podcast version available here) that most of what makes our lives go well would be undermined if there were no future generations of intelligent persons. On his view, my life would contain vastly less well-being if (say) a year after my death the world came to an end. So obviously if Scheffler were right I’d have very strong reason to reduce existential risk. We should also take into account moral uncertainty. What is it reasonable for one to do, when one is uncertain not (only) about the empirical facts, but also about the moral facts? I’ve just argued that there’s agreement among minimally plausible ethical views that we have strong reason to reduce existential risk – not only consequentialists, but also deontologists, virtue ethicists, and sophisticated egoists should agree. But even those (hedonistic egoists) who disagree should have a significant level of confidence that they are mistaken, and that one of the above views is correct. Even if they were 90 sure that their view is the correct one (and 10 sure that one of these other ones is correct), they would have pretty strong reason, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, to reduce existential risk. Perhaps most disturbingly still, even if we are only 1 sure that the well-being of possible future people matters, it is at least arguable that, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, reducing existential risk is the most important thing in the world. Again, this is largely for the reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. (For more on this and other related issues, see this excellent dissertation). Of course, it is uncertain whether these untold trillions would, in general, have good lives. It’s possible they’ll be miserable. It is enough for my claim that there is moral agreement in the relevant sense if, at least given certain empirical claims about what future lives would most likely be like, all minimally plausible moral views would converge on the conclusion that we should try to save the world. While there are some non-crazy views that place significantly greater moral weight on avoiding suffering than on promoting happiness, for reasons others have offered (and for independent reasons I won’t get into here unless requested to), they nonetheless seem to be fairly implausible views. And even if things did not go well for our ancestors, I am optimistic that they will overall go fantastically well for our descendants, if we allow them to. I suspect that most of us alive today – at least those of us not suffering from extreme illness or poverty – have lives that are well worth living, and that things will continue to improve. Derek Parfit, whose work has emphasized future generations as well as agreement in ethics, described our situation clearly and accurately: “We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy…. Our descendants might, I believe, make the further future very good. But that good future may also depend in part on us. If our selfish recklessness ends human history, we would be acting very wrongly.” (From Contention 1 Nurse strikes devastate hospitals Wright 10 Sarah H. Wright July 2010 "Evidence on the Effects of Nurses' Strikes" https://www.nber.org/digest/jul10/evidence-effects-nurses-strikes (Researcher at National Bureau of Economic Research) U.S. hospitals were excluded from collective bargaining laws for three decades longer than other sectors because of fears that strikes by nurses might imperil patients' health. Today, while unionization has been declining in general, it is growing rapidly in hospitals, with the number of unionized workers rising from 679,000 in 1990 to nearly one million in 2008. In Do Strikes Kill? Evidence from New York State (NBER Working Paper No. 15855), co-authors Jonathan Gruber and Samuel Kleiner carefully examine the effects of nursing strikes on patient care and outcomes. The researchers match data on nurses' strikes in New York State from 1984 to 2004 to data on hospital discharges, including information on treatment intensity, patient mortality, and hospital readmission. They conclude that nurses' strikes were costly to hospital patients: in-hospital mortality increased by 19.4 percent and hospital readmissions increased by 6.5 percent for patients admitted during a strike. Among their sample of 38,228 such patients, an estimated 138 more individuals died than would have without a strike, and 344 more patients were readmitted to the hospital than if there had been no strike. "Hospitals functioning during nurses' strikes do so at a lower quality of patient care," they write. Still, at hospitals experiencing strikes, the measures of treatment intensity -- that is, the length of hospital stay and the number of procedures performed during the patient's stay -- show no significant differences between striking and non-striking periods. Patients appear to receive the same intensity of care during union work stoppages as during normal hospital operations. Thus, the poor outcomes associated with strikes suggest that they might reduce hospital productivity. These poor health outcomes increased for both emergency and non-emergency hospital patients, even as admissions of both groups decreased by about 28 percent at hospitals with strikes. The poor health outcomes were not apparent either before or after the strike in the striking hospitals, suggesting that they are attributable to the strike itself. And, the poor health outcomes do not appear to do be due to different types of patients being admitted during strike periods, because patients admitted during a strike are very similar to those admitted during other periods. Hiring replacement workers apparently does not help: hospitals that hired replacement workers performed no better during strikes than those that did not hire substitute employees. In each case, patients with conditions that required intensive nursing were more likely to fare worse in the presence of nurses' strikes. Hospitals are the critical internal link for pandemic preparedness. Al Thobaity 20, Abdullelah, and Farhan Alshammari. "Nurses on the frontline against the COVID-19 pandemic: an Integrative review." Dubai Medical Journal 3.3 (2020): 87-92. (Associate Professor of Nursing at Taif University) The majority of infected or symptomatic people seek medical treatment in medical facilities, particularly hospitals, as a high number of cases, especially those in critical condition, will have an impact on hospitals 4. The concept of hospital resilience in disaster situations is defined as the ability to recover from the damage caused by huge disturbances quickly 2. The resilience of hospitals to pandemic cases depends on the preparedness of the institutions, and not all hospitals have the same resilience. A lower resilience will affect the sustainability of the health services. This also affects healthcare providers such as doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals 5, 6. Despite the impact on healthcare providers, excellent management of a pandemic depends on the level of preparedness of healthcare providers, including nurses. This means that if it was impossible to be ready before a crisis or disaster, responsible people will do all but the impossible to save lives. New Pandemics are deadlier and faster are coming – COVID is just the beginning Antonelli 20 Ashley Fuoco Antonelli 5-15-2020 https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/05/15/weekly-line "Weekly line: Why deadly disease outbreaks could become more common—even after Covid-19" (Associate Editor — American Health Line) While the new coronavirus pandemic suddenly took the world by storm, the truth is public health experts for years have warned that a virus similar to the new coronavirus would cause the next pandemic—and they say deadly infectious disease outbreaks could become more common. Infectious disease experts are always on the lookout for the next pandemic, and in a report published two years ago, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health predicted that the pathogen most likely to cause the next pandemic would be a virus similar to the common cold. Specifically, the researchers predicted that the pathogen at fault for the next pandemic would be: A microbe for which people have not yet developed immunities, meaning that a large portion of the human population would be susceptible to infection; Contagious during the so-called "incubation period"—the time when people are infected with a pathogen but are not yet showing symptoms of the infection or are showing only mild symptoms; and Resistant to any known prevention or treatment methods. The researchers also concluded that such a pathogen would have a "low but significant" fatality rate, meaning the pathogen wouldn't kill human hosts fast enough to inhibit its spread. As Amesh Adalja—a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who led the report—told Live Science's Rachael Rettner at the time, "It just has to make a lot of people sick" to disrupt society. The researchers said RNA viruses—which include the common cold, influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (or SARS, which is caused by a type of coronavirus)—fit that bill. And even though we had a good bit of experience dealing with common RNA viruses like the flu, Adalja at the time told Rettner that there were "a whole host of viral families that get very little attention when it comes to pandemic preparedness." Not even two years later, the new coronavirus, which causes Covid-19, emerged and quickly spread throughout the world, reaching pandemic status in just a few months. To date, officials have reported more than 4.4 million cases of Covid-19 and 302,160 deaths tied to the new coronavirus globally. In the United States, the number of reported Covid-19 cases has reached more than 1.4 million and the number of reported deaths tied to the new coronavirus has risen to nearly 86,000 in just over three months. Although public health experts had warned about the likelihood of a respiratory-borne RNA virus causing the next global pandemic, many say the world was largely unprepared to handle this type of infectious disease outbreak. And as concerning as that revelation may be on its own, perhaps even more worrisome is that public health experts predict life-threatening infectious disease outbreaks are likely to become more common—meaning we could be susceptible to another pandemic in the future. Why experts think deadly infectious disease outbreaks could become more common As the Los Angeles Times's Joshua Emerson Smith notes, infectious disease experts for more than ten years now have noted that "outbreaks of dangerous new diseases with the potential to become pandemics have been on the rise—from HIV to swine flu to SARS to Ebola." For instance, a report published in Nature in 2008 found that the number of emerging infectious disease events that occurred in the 1990s was more than three times higher than it was in the 1940s. Many experts believe the recent increase in infectious disease outbreaks is tied to human behaviors that disrupt the environment, "such as deforestation and poaching," which have led "to increased contact between highly mobile, urbanized human populations and wild animals," Emerson Smith writes. In the 2008 report, for example, researchers noted that about 60 of 355 emerging infectious disease events that occurred over a 50-year period could be largely linked to wild animals, livestock, and, to a lesser extent, pets. Now, researchers believe the new coronavirus first jumped to humans from animals at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. Along those same lines, some experts have argued that global climate change has driven an increase in infectious diseases—and could continue to do so. A federally mandated report released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 2018 warned that warmer temperatures could expand the geographic range covered by disease-carrying insects and pests, which could result in more Americans being exposed to ticks carrying Lyme disease and mosquitos carrying the dengue, West Nile, and Zika viruses. And experts now say continued warming in global temperatures, deforestation, and other environmentally disruptive behaviors have broadened that risk by bringing more people into contact with disease-carrying animals. Further, experts note that infectious diseases today are able to spread much faster and farther than they could decades ago because of increasing globalization and travel. While some have suggested the Covid-19 pandemic could stifle that trend, others argue globalization is likely to continue—meaning so could infectious diseases' far spread.
Disad Definition of unconditional Webster "Definition of UNCONDITIONAL," Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unconditional not conditional or limited : ABSOLUTE, UNQUALIFIED Labor Unions in America has a legacy of discrimination, prejudice, and racism Shamed Dogan, 11-13-2017, "Unions ignore long history of excluding minorities from jobs," STLtoday, https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/unions-ignore-long-history-of-excluding-minorities-from-jobs/article_ef58bccd-f04a-5172-8dbd-18b8ee5eb9e2.html Missouri has taken great strides forward in restoring free-market approaches to our economy. Thanks to the efforts of a Republican Legislature and governor, Missouri is open for business. We have passed right-to-work legislation and have begun to challenge the stranglehold that union bosses hold over the labor market. However, this development has not come without a fight; union organizers and bosses are angry because these changes upset the established order. While these union bosses argue that they best represent Missouri workers, they ignore their long history of excluding minority Americans from jobs and opportunities. Although labor unions have made some positive contributions, we must not forget their legacy of discrimination, prejudice and racism. For decades, unions worked to exclude black Americans from jobs. White workers felt endangered by black Americans who were willing to work longer and harder, so labor unions used legislation to force blacks out of unions, and out of the labor market. Herbert Hill, the labor director of the NAACP, wrote about this fact in 1959. In his seminal article “Labor Unions and the Negro: The Record of Discrimination,” he noted, “the Negro(African American) worker’s historical experience with organized labor has not been a happy one. ... Trade unions practice either total exclusion of the Negro, segregation (in the form of ‘Jim Crow’ locals or ‘auxiliaries’), or enforce separate, racial seniority lines which limit Negro employment to menial and unskilled classifications.” One such tool wielded against minorities was prevailing wage laws. In the 1930s, New York Congressman Robert Bacon, angry that black Americans were competing with white workers for jobs, introduced the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors on federally funded construction projects to pay the “local prevailing wage.” This policy has been implemented in many states as well, including Missouri, to force governments to only negotiate with white-dominated unions. This policy remains as a vestige of a racist past, and it harms American workers and taxpayers to this day. In addition, minimum wage laws were instituted a century ago in large part to prevent white workers from having to compete with cheaper labor from immigrants and African-Americans. Even though today’s “Fight for $15” effort to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour is supported by many minority groups with good intentions, it would likely have the unintended consequence of replacing young low-wage workers with older workers, disproportionately hurting minority youth. Unfortunately, the days of union bosses fighting to protect their own interests over the interests of minority workers are not just in the past. According to a 2016 report prepared for the AFL-CIO, “Whole sectors of workers have been ignored or neglected by the labor movement for shortsighted or xenophobic reasons. ... Those workers also tend to be largely people of color and women, further enlarging the racial and gender divide that makes up the labor movement.” And in Virginia’s recent election, unions made headlines for successfully demanding that the African-American candidate for lieutenant governor be deleted from the Democratic Party’s campaign mailers and then excluding him from the union’s sample ballot on Election Day. (The candidate, Justin Fairfax, won despite the union’s opposition.) Here in Missouri, union leaders have long clashed with African-American leaders because of a lack of inclusion on big union projects and a disparity in contributions to African-American political candidates, even when those candidates have pro-union voting records. Before her comments hoping for President Donald Trump to be assassinated thrust her into the national spotlight, state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, made headlines last year with a speech on the Senate floor that highlighted “the racism and inequality that exists in the labor movement” and in which she read numerous racist and sexist comments from union members directed to her on social media. Though the unions have formed various diversity councils and hired staffers to work on making their ranks more diverse, they still have a long way to go to produce the hoped-for results. Systems designed to be discriminatory and anti-competitive should not be the basis for our economy: Prevailing wage, arbitrary minimum wages and forced union membership are examples of policies that unfairly exclude Americans from the workplace. For Missouri to move forward, we should not allow such misguided policies to determine employer/employee relations. Bold reform is needed, and the Republican Legislature is paving the way for just that. Strikes had been used by white men as a method of denying and restricting African Americans in the workplace Dustin Waters, 6-15-2020, "Eight black transit workers got promoted. Thousands of white workers walked off the job.," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/13/liberty-bell-attack-philadelphia-transit-strike-black-workers/ World War II labor shortages had stretched the Philadelphia Transportation Co. to the limit by July 1944, and so the company decided it had no choice if the city’s buses, trolleys and subway were to keep running: It promoted eight black men to positions previously reserved for whites. The racial fallout brought the city to a tense halt. A worker insurrection slowed production of critical supplies for troops overseas and prompted an Army employee to attack one of the nation’s most prominent symbols of freedom: the Liberty Bell. The events made for a “new and different Philadelphia Story,” two National Urban League officials wrote at the time — a story with particular resonance more than 75 years later as thousands protest systemic racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody. The black transit workers’ promotions to motormen quickly triggered a mass walkout by some 4,500 of their white counterparts. For six days that August, trolleys and buses sat idle. The subway stopped. So did one of the country’s leading wartime manufacturing centers. Fearing an outbreak of violence, local officials summoned state police, forbade the sale of liquor and canceled a doubleheader between the Phillies and the Cubs. Even so, fights broke out across the city — resulting in 200 arrests and numerous injuries. Many of the men and women employed in the war effort couldn’t reach their jobs on the first full day of the walkout. The federal government’s War Department announced that the strike had “seriously affected the production of radar, heavy artillery, heavy ammunition, military trucks, bombs, and other supplies vitally needed.” Army troops seized control of Philadelphia’s transit system two days later. Hours later, a black armory worker went after the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall. “Liberty Bell? Liberty Bell? That’s a lot of bunk,” shouted Charles White as he hurled a one-pound stone paperweight at the national icon. “There is no justice.” Guards quickly arrested him, and the huge bronze bell had minor damage. But White made national headlines. His attack was both personal and patriotic, he explained after being taken into custody. “I have a brother who is in Army camp in Virginia. He has five children,” he told Common Pleas Court Judge Harry McDevitt. “And yet war workers are being kept from their jobs and stopped from turning out equipment necessary to win the war. … I want my brother and others in service to have a chance.” He was ordered to undergo a mental evaluation, but a former New York judge intervened and offered to provide a psychiatrist at his own expense to examine the defendant. “There is nothing unstable about publicly proclaiming the ideals and principles for which the nation is fighting,” Nathan Sweedler wrote in a telegram to McDevitt. White passed his psychiatric evaluation and was charged with inciting a riot, malicious mischief and “destroying a historical monument.” The next month, he was exonerated after testifying that an “uncontrollable emotional outbreak” had caused him to throw the stone at the Liberty Bell “to hear it ring again.” “In some countries you would have been shot right on the spot,” Judge Eugene Alessandroni told White. “This trial proves how far we go in our democratic process to assure everyone of equal rights under the laws.” Yet others drew a different conclusion from his protest over the transit strike, during which an estimated 4 million worker-hours of war production were lost. “Here we are cheering the liberation of the persecuted people of Europe,” newspaper columnist William Freund wrote. “Yet (White)American transport workers unauthorized by the union walked off their jobs … because a few American Negroes(African Americans) were willing to accept the position of streetcar motormen so they could live, work and fight for democracy against bigotry and racial intolerance.” Federal grand jury investigators looked into the true cause of the walkout. Months before the action, Philadelphia’s transit employees had elected the Transport Workers Union, which did not publicly oppose the promotion of black drivers, as their official representative body. The runner-up labor group allegedly used race-baiting propaganda to incite its white members. “There is a distressing story back of this tragic occurrence. It is the story of smoldering race prejudice fanned to flaming hate, the story of little men whose determination to ‘keep the Negro in his place’ overshadowed the urgent need for guns, tanks, and planes that would rid a war-torn world of Nazi race hate,” Reginald Johnson and Julius Thomas of the National Urban League wrote in the fall 1944 issue of “Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life.” “It is the story of consuming fear, fear of insecurity, the driving force behind much of what was casually referred to as American race problem,” they continued. “It is a new and different Philadelphia Story, another stirring episode in the struggle for genuine democracy and equality of opportunity in America.” Thus strike laws ought to recognize the discriminatory intent of certain strikes and ban their existence