1ac - islamapobia 1nc - climate pic racism pic util 1ar - all 2nr - climate pic iv 2ar - islamaphobia iv
TFA State
2
Opponent: Safiye Namver | Judge: Conklin, Jay
1ac - islamapobia 1nc - climate pic racism pic util 1ar - all 2nr - climate pic iv 2ar - islamaphobia iv
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Tournament: none | Round: Finals | Opponent: none | Judge: none hey im aarush. contact me if you have questions for any type of disclosure otherwise i get automeet 6039213120(preferably) or aarush.sathu@gmail.com
9/14/21
Antitrust DA
Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 1 | Opponent: Plano East NK | Judge: Claudia Ribera Bipartisan antitrust bills passing now but continued PC needed to pacify republicans. Perlman 9/3 Matthew; 9/3/21; “Interest Groups Back Big Tech Antitrust Bills In House,” LAW360, https://www.law360.com/competition/articles/1418789/interest-groups-back-big-tech-antitrust-bills-in-house Justin Law360 (September 3, 2021, 7:25 PM EDT) -- A contingent of public interest groups are urging leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives to advance a package of legislation aimed at reining in Big Tech companies through updates and changes to antitrust law, though free market advocates have been jeering many of the bills. A total of 58 public interest and consumer advocacy groups signed on to a letter Thursday asking House leaders to swiftly pass the package of six antitrust bills that the Judiciary Committee approved in late June after a marathon markup session. The proposals include legislation prohibiting large platform companies from acquiring competitive threats, preferencing their own services and using their control of multiple business lines to disadvantage competitors in other ways. The proposals would also impose interoperability and data portability requirements on large tech platforms, increase merger filing fees and boost enforcement by state attorneys general. Charlotte Slaiman, competition policy director for Public Knowledge, which signed on to the letter, said in a statement Thursday that the package charts a path toward putting "people back in control of the digital economy." "The broad range of groups supporting this package shows just how widespread the problem of Big Tech dominance is, and that these bills deserve a full vote in the House imminently," Slaiman said. The letter contends that America has a monopoly problem that is resulting in lower wages, reduced innovation and increased inequality, while also undermining the free press and perpetuating "racial, gender and class dominance." "Big Tech monopolies are at the center of many of these problems," the letter said. "Reining in these companies is an essential first step to reverse the damage of concentrated corporate power throughout our economy." The proposals followed a 16-month investigation by the House antitrust subcommittee into Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google that resulted in a sprawling report from Democratic members calling for a range of reform measures to rein in the dominance of the companies. While consumer advocacy groups have largely supported the measures, the tech companies themselves and other interest groups have been highly critical, including a coalition of more than 25 right-leaning groups that sent a letter to Congress ahead of the markup hearing. The letter called the bills a "Trojan horse package" aimed at cynically using conservative anger over Big Tech, particularly at perceived censorship by social media platforms, to seek bipartisan support for "European-style over-regulation." For its part, Facebook has called the proposals a "poison pill for America's tech industry at a time our economy can least afford it" and said the bills underestimate the fierce competition the U.S. companies face from abroad. Apple and Google also raised concerns about the impact the bills would have on innovation, as well as on privacy and security. And Amazon has warned about the potential consequences of the proposals for both small businesses that sell on its platform and the consumers who use it to shop. Ending Platform Monopolies Act Thursday's letter said that the Ending Platform Monopolies Act would address "the most problematic aspects of the Big Tech companies" by allowing enforcers to break-up or separate pieces of the businesses when they create conflicts of interest that give the platforms an advantage over potential competitors and business users. A fact sheet from Public Knowledge accompanying the letter said that the bill is an important tool to help the antitrust agencies "protect consumers from mammoth platforms and to ensure compliance with other parts of the package." But during the markup hearing, ranking Republican committee member Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio blasted the bill as a regulatory overreach, calling it "quite literally central planning" and arguing that it has significant ambiguities, which is bad for business. The Competitive Enterprise Institute argued in a June statement that the bill "kills the goose that lays the golden egg," and would actually result in small businesses being unable to access the large platforms, which in turn would focus on their own offerings instead. The Chamber of Progress has warned that the proposal could bar Amazon from offering its Prime services and its Amazon Basics private label products, since they would compete against other sellers on the platform. Other groups have also warned it could also force tech companies to divest popular apps, including Google's Maps and YouTube, Facebook's WhatsApp and Instagram and Apple's iMessage and FaceTime. American Innovation and Choice Online Act The American Innovation and Choice Online Act is aimed at barring the platform companies from preferencing their own products and services over those of rival businesses and from excluding or discriminating against rivals. Thursday's letter said this proposal would "promote innovation and competition" by preventing the platforms from protecting their monopolies. The right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute and others have argued that the bill could prevent Apple from pre-installing certain apps on its mobile phones, since that would advantage it over competing app developers. It could also prevent Google from integrating maps or customer reviews into search results, among other things. "At a minimum, the act would significantly disrupt these platforms' business models in ways that undermine consumer value," Daniel Lyons, a senior fellow for the group wrote in a blog post in June. Platform Competition and Opportunity Act The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act is aimed at preventing platform companies from acquiring potential or nascent competitors and its supporters argued in Thursday's letter that it would prevent the tech giants from enhancing or maintaining their market power. The bill would presumably have blocked Facebook's purchases of WhatsApp, Instagram and other services it has acquired, as well as a slew of deals by Google over the past two decades. Detractors have contended that this bill would limit investments in startups because it restricts their ability to be acquired by the larger technology firms, which they say is a key way for founders to benefit from their success. An American Enterprise Institute blog post from June argues that "opportunities for acquisition have been important drivers of innovation in tech" and also said the bill would prevent the tech companies from entering new areas of business to compete with each other. ACCESS Act The Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching, or ACCESS Act, imposes requirements for the tech companies to make user data portable and able to be used by competing services. The bill's supporters argued in Thursday's letter that this prevents the tech giants from locking users into their services, since users can take their data with them and use it on other networks. Privacy and security implications have been flagged as potential problems for the proposal, with the Competitive Enterprise Institute saying in a statement in June that it's an "anti-privacy bill" that forces companies to turn over private user information to others. The group also said the bill would try to micromanage "complex, dynamic, and highly competitive markets" that are beyond understanding for most politicians and regulators. The American Enterprise Institute has also contended that the requirements would actually make rivals even more dependent on the incumbent platforms. Filing fees and state enforcement Of the antitrust bills approved by the House Judiciary Committee, the ones with the most bipartisan support appear to be the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act and the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act, though it took a day of debate before the committee passed them. A Senate version of the filing fee bill passed that chamber in June as part of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. It would raise the fees merging parties pay when reporting large transactions, while lowering fees for smaller deals, in order to raise more resources for the antitrust agencies. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation argued in an August blog post that the legislation does not give Congress enough oversight over how the agencies will use the funds that it raises and called for the bill to include provisions requiring the money be used to hire more staff dedicated to antitrust enforcement. The Competitive Enterprise Institute also raised concerns about congressional oversight and contended that the bill would increase the cost of doing business at a time when the economy is sputtering. "U.S. consumers need innovative services and affordable products, not higher prices passed onto them by businesses avoiding new, unnecessary regulatory compliance costs," the group said in a June blog post. The state enforcement bill would prevent antitrust cases brought by state attorneys general from being transferred to a different venue by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, similar to protections afforded to federal enforcers. The bill is intended to prevent companies targeted by state-led enforcement actions from trying to move the cases to more favorable venues, and it also has an analog in the Senate. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation acknowledged in their August post that having cases included in multidistrict litigation can handicap state enforcers, but contended the changes should only apply to criminal matters and that the current version is wrong to block transfers of civil cases too. Thursday's letter from supporters of the bills said the proposals were carefully crafted to address the abusive practices of Big Tech, informed by the House antitrust subcommitee's sprawling investigation and "historic" 450-page report. "We believe that these bills will bring urgently needed change and accountability to these companies and an industry that most Americans agree is already doing great harm to our democracy," the letter said.
Aff requires negotiations that saps PC. Pooley 21 James; Former deputy director general of the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization and a member of the Center for Intellectual Property Understanding; “Drawn-Out Negotiations Over Covid IP Will Blow Back on Biden,” Barron’s; 5/26/21; https://www.barrons.com/articles/drawn-out-negotiations-over-covid-ip-will-blow-back-on-biden-51621973675 Justin The Biden administration recently announced its support for a proposal before the World Trade Organization that would suspend the intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines as guaranteed by the landmark TRIPS Agreement, a global trade pact that took effect in 1995. The decision has sparked furious debate, with supporters arguing that the decision will speed the vaccine rollout in developing countries. The reality, however, is that even if enacted, the IP waiver will have zero short-term impact—but could inflict serious, long-term harm on global economic growth. The myopic nature of the Biden administration’s announcement cannot be overstated. Even if WTO officials decide to waive IP protections at their June meeting, it’ll simply kickstart months of legal negotiations over precisely which drug formulas and technical know-how are undeserving of IP protections. And it’s unthinkable that the Biden administration, or Congress for that matter, would actually force American companies to hand over their most cutting-edge—and closely guarded—secrets. As a result, the inevitable foot-dragging will cause enormous resentment in developing countries. And that’s the real threat of the waiver—precisely because it won’t accomplish either of its short-term goals of improving vaccine access and facilitating tech transfers from rich countries to developing ones. It’ll strengthen calls for more extreme, anti-IP measures down the road. Experts overwhelmingly agree that waiving IP protections alone won’t increase vaccine production. That’s because making a shot is far more complicated than just following a recipe, and two of the most effective vaccines are based on cutting-edge discoveries using messenger RNA. As Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said on a recent earnings call, “This is a new technology. You cannot go hire people who know how to make the mRNA. Those people don’t exist. And then even if all those things were available, whoever wants to do mRNA vaccines will have to, you know, buy the machine, invent the manufacturing process, invent creation processes and ethical processes, and then they will have to go run a clinical trial, get the data, get the product approved and scale manufacturing. This doesn’t happen in six or 12 or 18 months.” Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, has echoed that sentiment and emphasized the need for immediate solutions. “Going back and forth, consuming time and lawyers in a legal argument about waivers—that is not the endgame,” he said. “People are dying around the world and we have to get vaccines into their arms in the fastest and most efficient way possible.” Those claiming the waiver poses an immediate, rather than long-term, threat to IP rights also misunderstand what the waiver will—and won’t—do. The waiver petition itself is more akin to a statement of principle than an actual legal document. In fact, it’s only a few pages long. As the Office of the United States Trade Representative has said, “Text-based negotiations at the WTO will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.” The WTO director-general predicts negotiations will last until early December. That’s a lot of wasted time and effort. The U.S. Trade Representative would be far better off spending the next six months breaking down real trade barriers and helping export our surplus vaccine doses and vaccine ingredients to countries in need.
Antitrust is key to the DIB – brink is now. Sitaraman 20 Ganesh; Vanderbilt University Law School; “The National Security Case for Breaking Up Big Tech,” Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia; 3/12/20; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3537870 brett Re-Cut Justin Concentration in the tech sector also threatens the defense industrial base due to higher costs, lower quality, less innovation, and even corruption and fraud.71 Each of these dynamics has already been a problem for America’s over-consolidated defense industrial base. As technology becomes more and more central to defense and national security, it is likely that these same dynamics will replicate themselves with big tech companies. This will become a national security threat, both directly, in terms of the quality and speed of procurement, and indirectly, by reducing innovation and functionally redirecting defense budgets from research spending to higher monopoly profits.72 Conventional economic theory suggests that monopolists have the ability to increase prices and reduce quality because consumers are captive.73 When it comes to defense spending, the Government Accountability Office commented in 2019 that “competition is the cornerstone of a sound acquisition process and a critical tool for achieving the best return on investment for taxpayers.”74 At the same time, the GAO observed that “portfolio-wide cost growth has occurred in an environment where awards are often made without full and open competition.”75 Indeed, it found that 67 percent of 183 major weapons systems contracts had no competition and almost half of contracts went to a handful of firms. Of course, consolidation also means that the Defense Department is in a symbiotic relationship with these big contractors. Some startup executives wanting to sell to the government thus see the Pentagon as “a bad customer, one that is heavily skewed in favor of larger, traditional players,” and they don’t feel like they can break into the sector.76 Standard stories about political economy and capture also suggest that these firms will have outsized power over government.77 As Frank Kendall, the former head of acquisitions at the Pentagon, has said, “With size comes power, and the department’s experience with large defense contractors is that they are not hesitant to use this power for corporate advantage.”78 In the defense context, that means monopolists retain power (and profits), even if they overcharge taxpayers and risk the safety of military personnel in the field. In an important article in The American Conservative on concentration in the defense sector, researchers Matt Stoller and Lucas Kunce argue that contractors with de facto monopoly at the heart of their business models threaten national security. They write that one such contractor, TransDigm, buys up companies that supply the government with rare but essential airline parts and then hike up the prices, effectively holding the government “hostage.”79 They also point to L3, a defense contractor that had ambitions to be a “Home Depot” for the Pentagon, as its former CEO put it. L3’s de facto monopoly over certain products, according to Stoller and Kunce, means that it continues to receive lucrative government contracts, even after admitting in 2015 that it knowingly supplied defective weapons sights to U.S. forces.80 Consolidation also threatens U.S. defense capacity. The decline of competition, according to a 2019 Pentagon report, leaves the military vulnerable to “sole source suppliers, capacity shortfalls, a lack of competition, a lack of workforce skills, and unstable demand.”81 With a limited number of producers, there is less talent and knowhow available in the country if there is a need to build capacity rapidly.82 In 2018, the Defense Department released a report on vulnerable items in the military supply chain, including numerous items in which only one or two domestic companies (and, in some cases, zero domestic companies) produced the essential goods.83 How did the United States lose so much of its industrial base? The combination of consolidation and global integration is part of the story. As Stoller and Kunce argue, companies consolidated in the 1980s and 1990s while shifting emphasis from production and RandD to Wall Street-demanded profits. Globalization then allowed them to shift production overseas at a lower cost. The result was to gut America’s domestic industrial base—and, in many cases, to shift it to China, which engaged in a decades-long strategic plan to develop its own industrial base. The result, in the words of the 2018 Defense Department report, is that “China is the single or sole supplier for a number of specialty chemicals used in munitions and missiles.” In other areas too, the risks of losing access to critical resources are real. Describing the problem of limited carbon fiber sources, the same Pentagon report notes, “a sudden and catastrophic loss of supply would disrupt DoD missile, satellite, space launch, and other defense manufacturing programs. In many cases, there are no substitutes readily available.”84 As technology becomes more integral to the future of national security, it is hard to see how big tech will not simply go the way of the big defense contractors. Corporate mottos not to “be evil” are long gone,85 and big tech companies spend millions on conventional Washington, D.C., lobbying efforts.86 Over time, as contracts move to tech behemoths, there will no longer be competitive alternatives, and the Pentagon will likely be locked into relationships with big tech companies—just as they currently are with big defense contractors.87 Some commentators suggest that robust antitrust policies are a problem because only a small number of tech companies can contract for defense projects.88 But there is another way to look at it: The goal should be to encourage competition in the tech sector so that there are multiple contractors available. As former secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff has said, defending the antitrust case against Qualcomm, “a single-source national champion creates an unacceptable risk to American security—artificially concentrating vulnerability in a single point. ... We need competition and multiple providers, not a potentially vulnerable technological monoculture.”89 The consequence of consolidation in tech is that taxpayers will likely see higher bills even as innovation slows due to reduced competition. Worse still, every taxpayer dollar that goes to monopoly profits—whether in the form of higher prices or fraud and corruption—is a dollar that is not going toward innovation for the future. A concentrated defense sector means not only less innovation due to the lack of competition in the sector; it means that funding that could have been available for innovation instead gets redirected via monopoly profits to the pockets of big tech executives and shareholders.
That solves extinction through great power war. Marks 19 Michael; Former Senior Policy Advisor to the Under Secretary for Security Assistance, Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of State; "Strengthen US Industry To Counter National Security Challenges," American Military News; 10/10/19; https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/10/strengthen-us-industry-to-counter-national-security-challenges/ Justin While U.S. defense budgets have recently been on the rise, it is likely that we will see a spending decline in the coming years as competition for non-defense federal budget dollars increases and deficits grow. The United States, therefore, must take action to ensure that we maintain our technological edge against our adversaries by empowering the private sector to provide cost-effective innovation for America’s defense. Since the end of the Second World War the U.S. has relied on qualitative superiority over its potential adversaries, especially those like the Soviet Union/Russia and China, who enjoyed comparative quantitative advantages. These qualitative advantages were vital to maintaining global stability and helped enable our nation to become the preeminent global economy, but they have been eroded over the last few decades. In 1960, the U.S. share of global research and development (RandD) spending stood at 69. U.S. defense-related RandD alone accounted for 36 of total global expenditures. Soon thereafter other nations recognized the need to increase their RandD expenditures and build their own defense industrial bases to compete with the United States. From 2000-2016, China’s share of global RandD rose from 4.9 to 25.1 while the U.S. share of global RandD dropped to 28. U.S. defense-related RandD meanwhile now makes up a mere 4 of global RandD spending. There can be no doubt that Russia and China are determined to challenge America’s qualitative advantage. From the rebirth of Russian military power under Vladimir Putin to the ever-growing Chinese military prowess across the board, their efforts show no sign of slowing down. Russia has been and continues to undergo a major modernization of its armed forces. For example, they are in the midst of a ten-year program to build hundreds of new nuclear missiles and have set a goal of modernizing 70 of the Russian Ground Force’s equipment by 2020. One of the most frightening examples of Russia’s resurgence is its development of a hypersonic missile that could be ready for combat as early as 2020. Worryingly, the US is currently unable to defend against this type of missile. To accompany these developments came the emergence in 2017 of Russia as the world’s second-largest arms producer, ready and able to support nations hostile to US interests. China, on the other hand, used to be a country that only manufactured cheap products and knockoffs, but that is no longer true. Technology development and innovation figure prominently in all of China’s national planning goals, with plans to make the country the global leader in science and innovation and the preeminent technological and manufacturing power by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese communist revolution. This, of course, has huge implications for China’s military capability. The country now has the second-largest national defense budget behind the U.S. and wants to be Asia’s preeminent military power. Beijing is developing next-generation fighter jets, ICBMs and shorter-range ballistic missiles, as well as advanced naval vessels. The People’s Liberation Army has reached a critical point of confidence and now feel they can match competitors like the United States in combat. This has implications for the security of Taiwan, Japan, other US allies in the region as well as to America itself. To make matters worse, there are a growing number of experts that see China developing asymmetric technologies, combined with conventional and nuclear systems that could create an existential threat to the U.S. pacific based assets. It is in the wake of these growing threats to our national security American industry will likely be expected to shoulder an even larger responsibility concerning investment in defense-related RandD. One of the ways we can empower companies to make these additional investments and lead next-generation defense innovation is to allow commonsense mergers between important defense and aerospace companies. Horizontal consolidation eliminates the redundancy of enormous fixed costs, leading to savings passed down to customers. Mergers can also create economies of scale and existing synergies that help the combined company realize access to larger numbers of engineers and innovators, while keeping costs low and improving the timeline for taking a product from concept to development. FA recent example of how this can work is the proposed Raytheon and United Technologies merger. The two parties project that the new combined company will employ more than 60,000 engineers, hold over 38,000 patents and invest approximately $8 billion per year in research and development. This will allow the development of new, critical technologies more quickly and efficiently than either company could on its own. Such private sector investments in innovation will be critical in the face of the growing challenges to American military dominance. America’s RandD advantage, crucial to maintaining military superiority, is increasingly at risk. As China and Russia continue to challenge America’s military dominance and pressures on the defense budget continue to mount, the federal government will likely turn more and more to contractors and commercial companies to develop next-generation defense capabilities. Strengthening U.S. industry, therefore, will be critical to countering our national security challenges.
9/18/21
Biotech DA
Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 1 | Opponent: Plano East NK | Judge: Claudia Ribera US dominance is secured in biotech now, but China’s closing the gap fast – that allows geopolitical and economic advantages Scott Moore 2020 (Director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, Moore was a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank Group, and Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the U.S.) “China’s Role In The Global Biotechnology Sector And Implications For U.S. Policy” https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/FP_20200427_china_biotechnology_moore.pdfTDI EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Even by the standards of emerging technologies, biotechnology has the potential to utterly transform geopolitics, economics, and society in the 21st century. Yet while the United States has long been the world leader in most segments of the global biotechnology sector, China is fast becoming a significant player. This brief assesses the implications of China’s changing role in biotechnology for the United States, which span national security, data security, and economic competitiveness. On current trends the United States is likely to remain the world leader in most biotechnology areas. However, the gap between China and the U.S. is narrowing in the biotechnology sector, and U.S. policymakers must boost public investment, liberalize immigration and foreign student visa policies, and enact regulatory reforms to ensure America remains competitive. At the same time, areas like vaccine development and regulation of emerging technologies like synthetic biology present rich opportunities for Sino-U.S. cooperation. INTRODUCTION Thanks to extensive government funding for biomedical research, an unparalleled ability to translate basic research into commercial products and applications, and strong intellectual property protections, the United States has been the dominant global player in developing and commercializing biotechnology for decades.1 This dominance is reflected in the fact that United States accounted for almost half of all biotechnology patents filed worldwide from 1999 to 2013.2 However, in the intervening years, and just as in the case of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, other nations, including South Korea and Singapore, have invested heavily in developing their biotechnology sectors and industries. These efforts pale, however, in comparison to those of China, and the sheer size and scale of the Chinese biotechnology industry pose a range of economic, security, and regulatory issues for American policymakers. The determination of China’s one-party state to become a leading player in biotechnology is reflected by the rapid growth in investment in the sector. Some estimates claim that collectively, China’s central, local, and provincial governments have invested over $100 billion in life sciences research and development. Regardless of the true figure, official encouragement has led to a torrid place of investment. In just the two-year period from 2015 to 2017, venture capital and private equity investment in the sector totaled some $45 billion.3 The value of commercial deals concluded in the fields of biology, medicine and medical machine technology, meanwhile increased from 25.8 billion renminbi (RMB), or $3.6 billion, in 2011 to over 75 billion RMB ($10.6 billion) in 2017.4 Annual research and development expenditures by Chinese pharmaceutical firms, the foundation of the biotechnology sector, rose from some 39 billion RMB in 2014 ($5.5 billion) to over 53 billion RMB (US$7.5 billion) by 2017. Expenditure on new product development among these firms, an important indicator of future growth potential, increased from just over 40 billion RMB ($5.6 billion) to almost 60 billion ($8.4 billion).5 By Western standards, some of these figures are still low. Swiss drugmaker Roche, the world leader in biotechnology research and development, spent some $11 billion in 2018 alone.6 As these figures suggest, the development of China’s biotechnology sector paints a nuanced picture for U.S. policymakers. On one hand, the sector’s rapid growth, and high-level commitment to continued investment, means that China will inevitably become an increasingly important player in the global biotechnology sector, with implications for national security, economic competitiveness, and regulation. An executive from In-Q-Tel, the U.S. government’s inhouse national security venture capital fund, warned Congress in a November 2019 hearing, for example, that China “intends to own the biorevolution… and they are building the infrastructure, the talent pipeline, the regulatory system, and the financial system they need to do that.”7 The CEO of European drugmaker AstraZeneca has similarly opined that “Much of China’s innovation in the last three to four years has been ‘me too,’ but now on the horizon we can see firstin-class innovation.”8 Yet on the other hand, while China’s biotechnology sector will almost certainly continue to grow in scale, sophistication, and competitiveness, there is little reason to believe on current trends that the United States will lose its edge in the sector. Indeed, the biggest risk to the global competitiveness of the U.S. biotechnology industry likely comes from the prospect of declining public investment and reduced mobility for world-class researchers and industry professionals. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis underscores both the importance of continued investment in biotechnology and the many challenges to promoting effective international cooperation on global health security. This brief first examines the key policies and actors in China’s biotechnology sector, then offers an assessment of the sector’s current capabilities and future trends, and finally further explores the implications of developments in Chinese biotechnology for U.S. policy.
The aff’s waiving of IP doesn’t solve but it does give away sensitive national security information that allows China to lead ahead in biotech Josh Rogin 4-8. (Washington Post Columnist covering National Security Issues.) “Opinion: The wrong way to fight vaccine nationalism” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-wrong-way-to-fight-vaccine-nationalism/2021/04/08/9a65e15e-98a8-11eb-962b-78c1d8228819_story.html TDI Americans will not be safe from covid-19 until the entire world is safe. That basic truth shows why vaccine nationalism is not only immoral but also counterproductive. But the simplest solutions are rarely the correct ones, and some countries are using the issue to advance their own strategic interests. The Biden administration must reject the effort by some nations to turn our shared crisis into their opportunity. As the inequities of vaccine distribution worldwide grow, a group of more than 50 developing countries led by India and South Africa is pushing the World Trade Organization to dissolve all international intellectual property protections for pandemic-related products, which would include vaccine research patents, manufacturing designs and technological know-how. The Trump administration rejected the proposal to waive the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) for the pandemic when it was introduced in October. Now, hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and dozens of Democratic lawmakers are pushing the Biden administration to support the proposal. But many warn the move would result in the United States handing over a generation of advanced research — much of it funded by the U.S. taxpayer — to our country’s greatest competitors, above all China. In Congress, there’s justified frustration with the United States’ failure to respond to China’s robust vaccine diplomacy, in which Beijing has conditioned vaccine offers to pandemic-stricken countries on their ignoring security concerns over Chinese telecom companies or abandoning diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. There’s also a lot of anger at Big Pharma among progressives for profiting from the pandemic. “We are in a race against time, and unfortunately Big Pharma is standing in the way of speedily addressing this problem,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who supports the effort to waive intellectual property protections, told me in an interview. “I think the real security issue is that while the United States balks in making sure that we help ourselves, that these adversaries will just jump right in.” Schakowsky argued that alternative measures for helping poor countries manufacture vaccines are simply not moving fast enough to save lives and that the United States has a duty to respond. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) personally conveyed her support for the waiver to President Biden, Schakowsky said. But Big Pharma is just one piece of the puzzle. Countries such as India and South Africa have been trying to weaken WTO intellectual property protections for decades. The mRNA technology that underpins the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was funded initially by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and has national security implications. Inside the Biden administration, the National Security Council has already convened several meetings on the issue. The waiver is supported by many global health officials in the White House and at the U.S. Agency for International Development, who believe the United States’ international reputation is suffering from its perceived “America First” vaccine strategy. On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai spoke with WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala about the waiver issue. USTR is convening its own interagency meetings on the issue, which many see as a move to reassert its jurisdiction over WTO matters. If and when this does get to Biden’s desk, he will also hear from national security officials who believe that waiving TRIPS would result in the forced transfer of national security-sensitive technology to China, a country that strives to dominate the biotechnology field as part of its Made in China 2025 strategy. Once countries such as China have this technology, they will apply their mercantilist industrial models to ensure their companies dominate these strategically important industries, potentially erasing thousands of U.S. jobs. “We would be delivering a competitive advantage to countries that are increasingly viewed as our adversaries, at taxpayer expense, when there are other ways of doing this,” said Mark Cohen, senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley Law School. A preferable approach would be to build more vaccine-manufacturing capacity in the United States and then give those vaccines to countries in need, said Cohen. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry would surely benefit, but that’s preferable to being dependent on other countries when the next pandemic hits. “If there’s anything that the pandemic has taught us, it’s that we need to have a robust supply chain, for ourselves and for the world generally,” Cohen said. What’s more, it’s not clear that waiving the TRIPS agreement for the pandemic would work in the first place. Bill Gates and others involved in the current vaccine distribution scheme have argued that it would not result in more vaccines, pointing out that licensing agreements are already successfully facilitating cooperation between patent-holding vaccine-makers and foreign manufacturers. Critics respond that such cooperation is still failing to meet the urgent needs in the developing world. Vaccine equity is a real problem, but waiving intellectual property rights is not the solution. If the current system is not getting shots into the arms of people in poor countries, we must fix that for their sake and ours. But the pandemic and our responses to it have geopolitical implications, whether we like it or not. That means helping the world and thinking about our strategic interests at the same time.
China will convert biotechnology gains to military advantages, undermining US primacy – specifically true in the context of vaccines Mercy A. Kuo 2017 (Executive Vice President at Pamir Consulting.) “The Great US-China Biotechnology and Artificial Intelligence Race” https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/the-great-us-china-biotechnology-and-artificial-intelligence-race/ TDI Trans-Pacific View author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Eleonore Pauwels – Director of Biology Collectives and Senior Program Associate, Science and Technology Innovation Program at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C. – is the 104th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.” Explain the motivation behind Chinese investment in U.S. genomics and artificial intelligence (AI). With large public and private investments inland and in the U.S., China plans to become the next AI-Genomics powerhouse, which indicates that these technologies will soon converge in China. China’s ambition is to lead the global market for precision medicine, which necessitates acquiring strategic technological and human capital in both genomics and AI. And the country excels at this game. A sharp blow in this U.S.-China competition happened in 2013 when BGI purchased Complete Genomics, in California, with the intent to build its own advanced genomic sequencing machines, therefore securing a technological knowhow mainly mastered by U.S. producers. There are significant economic incentives behind China’s heavy investment in the increasing convergence of AI and genomics. This golden combination will drive precision medicine to new heights by developing a more sophisticated understanding of how our genomes function, leading to precise, even personalized, cancer therapeutics and preventive diagnostics, such as liquid biopsies. By one estimate, the liquid biopsy market is expected to be worth $40 billion in 2017. Assess the implications of iCarbonX of Shenzhen’s decision to invest US$100 million in U.S.-company PatientsLikeMe relative to AI and genomic data collection. iCarbonX is a pioneer in AI software that learns to recognize useful relationships between large amounts of individuals’ biological, medical, behavioral and psychological data. Such a data-ecosystem will deliver insights into how an individual’s genome is mutating over time, and therefore critical information about this individual’s susceptibilities to rare, chronic and mental illnesses. In 2017, iCarbonX invested $100 million in PatientsLikeMe, getting a hold over data from the biggest online network of patients with rare and chronic diseases. If successful, this effort could turn into genetic gold, making iCarbonX one of the wealthiest healthcare companies in China and beyond. The risk factor is that iCarbonX is handling more than personal data, but potentially vulnerable data as the company uses a smartphone application, Meum, for customers to consult for health advice. Remember that the Chinese nascent genomics and AI industry relies on cloud computing for genomics data-storage and exchange, creating, in its wake, new vulnerabilities associated with any internet-based technology. This phenomenon has severe implications. How much consideration has been given to privacy and the evolving notion of personal data in this AI-powered health economy? And is our cyberinfrastructure ready to protect such trove of personal health data from hackers and industrial espionage? In this new race, will China and the U.S. have to constantly accelerate their rate of cyber and bio-innovation to be more resilient? Refining our models of genomics data protection will become a critical biosecurity issue. Why is Chinese access to U.S. genomic data a national security concern? Genomics and computing research is inherently dual-use, therefore a strategic advantage in a nation’s security arsenal. Using AI systems to understand how the functioning of our genomes impacts our health is of strategic importance for biodefense. This knowledge will lead to increasing developments at the forefront of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, antibiotics, and targeted treatments relying on virus-engineering and microbiome research. Applying deep learning to genomics data-sets could help geneticists learn how to use genome-editing (CRISPR) to efficiently engineer living systems, but also to treat and, even “optimize,” human health, with potential applications in military enhancements. A $15 million partnership between a U.S. company, Gingko Bioworks, and DARPA aims to genetically design new probiotics as a protection for soldiers against a variety of stomach bugs and illnesses. China could be using the same deep learning techniques on U.S. genomics data to better comprehend how to develop, patent and manufacture tailored cancer immunotherapies in high demand in the United States. Yet, what if Chinese efforts venture into understanding how to impact key genomics health determinants relevant to the U.S. population? Gaining access to increasingly large U.S. genomic data-sets gives China a knowledge advantage into leading the next steps in bio-military research. Could biomedical data be used to develop bioweapons? Explain. Personalized medicine advances mean that personalized bio-attacks are increasingly possible. The combination of AI with biomedical data and genome-editing technologies will help us predict genes most important to particular functions. Such insights will contribute to knowing how a particular disease occurs, how a newly-discovered virus has high transmissibility, but also why certain populations and individuals are more susceptible to it. Combining host susceptibility information with pathogenic targeted design, malicious actors could engineer pathogens that are tailored to overcome the immune system or the microbiome of specific populations. Maintenance of the ILO is key to reduce a host of existential threats – establishes great-power peace. Brands 18. (Hal Brands is a Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “America’s Global Order Is Worth Fighting For, Bloomberg Opinion, Politics and Policy,” August 14, 2018, Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-08-14/america-s-global-order-is-worth-fighting-for TDI The first argument is easily disposed of. Yes, the postwar world has been thoroughly imperfect, featuring nuclear arms races, genocides, widespread poverty and other scourges. But the world has always been imperfect, and by any meaningful comparison, the last seven decades have been a veritable golden age. The liberal international economic order has led to an explosion of domestic and global prosperity: According to World Bank data, both U.S. and global per capita income have increased roughly three-fold (in inflation-adjusted terms) since 1960, with U.S. gross domestic product increasing nearly six-fold. The U.S. system of alliances and forward military deployments has contributed critically to the longest period of great-power peace in modern history, and the incidence of war and conquest more broadly have dropped dramatically. The number of democracies in the world has increased from perhaps a dozen during World War II to well over 100 today; respect for basic human rights has also reached impressive levels. As a bevy of scholarship has shown, the policies that the U.S. has pursued and the international order it has built have contributed enormously and directly to these outcomes. If the liberal international order can’t be considered a smashing success, no international order could be. The second critique is also overstated. It is true that Washington, like all great powers throughout history, has been willing to bend the rules to get its way. It is hard to reconcile Cold War-era interventions in Guatemala, Chile and other countries with a professed solicitude for human rights and democracy; the Iraq War of 2003 is only one instance in which the U.S. brushed aside the concerns of international organizations such as the U.N. Security Council. Likewise, when the U.S. government determined that the Bretton Woods system of monetary relations no longer suited its interests in the 1970s, it terminated that scheme and insisted on creating a more favorable one. But again, the proper standard here is not sainthood but reality. And the U.S. has generally enlisted its power in the service of universal values such as democracy and human rights; it has, more often than not, promoted a positive-sum international system in which like-minded nations can be secure and wealthy. This goes back to the very beginning of the liberal order: Washington did not seek to hold its defeated adversaries in subjugation after World War II; it rebuilt Japan and western Germany into thriving, democratic allies that became fierce economic competitors to the U.S. The U.S. has taken this approach not simply because it wanted to do good in the world — powerful as this motivation is — but because of a hard-headed desire to do good for itself. In an interdependent global environment, American officials have long calculated, the U.S. cannot divorce its own well-being from that of the wider world. And in contrast to how other great powers — Imperial Japan, for instance, or the Soviet Union — ruled their spheres of influence, American behavior has been positively enlightened. It is this relatively benign behavior that has convinced so many countries to tolerate American leadership — and it is the emergence of a darker form of U.S. hegemony under the Trump administration that so profoundly worries them today. As for the third critique, the premise is right, but the conclusion can easily go too far. It is always dangerous to become so enraptured by past achievements that one loses sight of the need for adaptation in the future. This is particularly true today, because the strength of the liberal order is being tested from within and without, by issues ranging from unequal burden-sharing among American allies to the ambivalence of the American people themselves. There is little evidence to suggest, however, that either American power or the liberal order it supports have eroded so dramatically that Washington’s postwar project cannot be sustained. Quite the contrary — the U.S. is likely to remain the world’s strongest power for decades to come.
9/18/21
Cap K
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 1 | Opponent: Princeton JG | Judge: Michael, Joshua 1NC – Neolib K Baudrillard’s nihilistic understanding of class struggle actively ensures that we will leave the Earth a smoldering pile of ash – it’s reductionist, ignores history, is just him rambling, and misunderstands failure – don’t let the 1AR’s edgy rhetoric distract you from the fact that they justify an absurd amount of material violence. Zavarzadeh 95 Mas’ud educated in Middle Eastern, European, and American universities and teaches critical theory at Syracuse University. He has written on postmodern critical theory and is the author of Mythopoeic Reality and coeditor of Theory, Pedagogy, Politics “Post-Ality: Marxism and Postmodernism” 1995. IB Two questions can be considered under this heading: (a) Does Baudrillard present a compelling case against the project of revolutionary class struggle? (b) Does he present an acceptable alternative? (a) We have seen that Baudrillard holds that the idea of a revolution furthering the interests of the working classes is senseless today. His argument was that in the age of hyperreality the very concept of class becomes a “parody,” a “retrospective simulation.” Baudrillard does not really claim that there are no classes today, but only that class struggle is useless. He holds that there is no dialectic within the present epoch that could possibly point to socialism’s being on the historical agenda. “Once capital itself has become its own myth, or rather an interminable machine, aleatory, something like a social genetic code, it no longer leaves any room for a planned reversal; and this is its true violence” (1987, 112). Arguments for the inevitable success of socialism are surely suspect. But are arguments for the inevitability of the failure of socialism any less suspect? Baudrillard’s case for the thesis that capital “no longer leaves any room for a planned reversal” appeals to the fact that in the industrialized West the labor union apparatus has been integrated into the bourgeois order. “Strikes...are incorporated like obsolescence in objects, like crisis in production... There is no longer any strikes or work, but...a scenodrama (not to say melodrama) of production, collective dramaturgy upon the empty stage of the social” (1987,48). The wild extrapolation here is transparent. From the present relative passivity of the labor movement, Baudrillard jumps to the conclusion that all capital/wage labor confrontations in principle can never be more than the mere simulation of conflict. He completely rules out in principle any possibility of there ever being dissident movements within the labor movement that successfully unite workers with consumers, women, racially oppressed groups, environmental activists, and so on in a common struggle against capital. He completely rules out in principle the possibility of a dynamic unfolding of this struggle to the point where capital’s control of investment decisions is seriously, called into question. He makes a wild extrapolation from the fact that these things are not on the agenda today to the conclusion that in principle they cannot ever occur. To say that he fails to provide any plausible arguments for such a strong position is to put things far too mildly. For a Marxist, capitalism remains a contradictory system. Baudrillard is correct when he states that some phenomena of contemporary capitalism make struggles for social change more difficult (for instance, the proliferation of electronically transmitted images celebrating hyperconsumerism). However, he fails to see that such things are systematically connected to other sorts of phenomena that may have quite different implications, such as increasing stratification, increasing extraction of surplus-value through job speed-ups, environmental degradation, the gradual delegitimation of established political parties, and so on. By overlooking the contradictions that pervade contemporary capitalism, Baudrillard is blind to the possibility that capitalism remains vulnerable to crises and to social movements aiming at its transformation. (b) Baudrillard’s alternatives to organized struggle against capital are hyperconformism and defiance. Examples of the former range from yuppies who accumulate the latest electronic gadgets with the proper demeanor of hip irony, to the crack-dealing B-Boys whose obsession with designer labels and BMWs simulates the hypermaterialism of the very system that has destroyed their communities. Rampant hyperconformism of this sort may very well lead the system to implode, from the waste, environmental damage, and community disintegration imposed by hyperconsumerism. The only problem is that by the time this implosion occurs it may be too late for the human species to pick up the pieces. Baudrillard’s crypto-existentialist odes to defiance perhaps present a more attractive option. However, these odes romanticize defeat. They honor the memory of rebels not for the heroism exemplified in their defeats, and not for the lessons that can be learned from those defeats. It is the defeats themselves that meet with Baudrillard’s approval, the fact that the rebels were “acting out (their) own death right a way... instead of seeking political expansion and class hegemony.” This form of implosion is like a fireworks display that brilliantly illuminates the landscape when it goes off, only to dissolve at once, leaving everything immersed in darkness as before. And this form of implosion is an option for suicide. In my view, neither of Baudrillard’s proposals provides a satisfactory alternative to revolutionary Marxism, however unfashionable the latter may be today. (284) Capitalism is an a priori impact under any framework -- it’s the greatest existential threat and the biggest affront to human rights and causes value to life deprivation. Ahmed 20 (Nafeez Ahmed -- Visiting Research Fellow at the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University's Faculty of Science and Technology + M.A. in contemporary war and peace studies + DPhil (April 2009) in international relations from the School of Global Studies @ Sussex University, “Capitalism is Destroying ‘Safe Operating Space’ for Humanity, Warn Scientists”, https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-24/capitalism-is-destroying-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-warn-scientists/, 24 June 2020, EmmieeM) The COVID19 pandemic has exposed a strange anomaly in the global economy. If it doesn’t keep growing endlessly, it just breaks. Grow, or die. But there’s a deeper problem. New scientific research confirms that capitalism’s structural obsession with endless growth is destroying the very conditions for human survival on planet Earth. A landmark study in the journal Nature Communications, “Scientists’ warning on affluence” — by scientists in Australia, Switzerland and the UK — concludes that the most fundamental driver of environmental destruction is the overconsumption of the super-rich. This factor lies over and above other factors like fossil fuel consumption, industrial agriculture and deforestation: because it is overconsumption by the super-rich which is the chief driver of these other factors breaching key planetary boundaries. The paper notes that the richest 10 percent of people are responsible for up to 43 percent of destructive global environmental impacts. In contrast, the poorest 10 percent in the world are responsible just around 5 percent of these environmental impacts: The new paper is authored by Thomas Wiedmann of UNSW Sydney’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Manfred Lenzen of the University of Sydney’s School of Physics, Lorenz T. Keysser of ETH Zürich’s Department of Environmental Systems Science, and Julia K. Steinberger of Leeds University’s School of Earth and Environment. It confirms that global structural inequalities in the distribution of wealth are intimately related to an escalating environmental crisis threatening the very existence of human societies. Synthesising knowledge from across the scientific community, the paper identifies capitalism as the main cause behind “alarming trends of environmental degradation” which now pose “existential threats to natural systems, economies and societies.” The paper concludes: “It is clear that prevailing capitalist, growth-driven economic systems have not only increased affluence since World War II, but have led to enormous increases in inequality, financial instability, resource consumption and environmental pressures on vital earth support systems.” Capitalism and the pandemic Thanks to the way capitalism works, the paper shows, the super-rich are incentivised to keep getting richer — at the expense of the health of our societies and the planet overall. The research provides an important scientific context for how we can understand many earlier scientific studies revealing that industrial expansion has hugely increased the risks of new disease outbreaks. Just last April, a paper in Landscape Ecology found that deforestation driven by increased demand for consumption of agricultural commodities or beef have increased the probability of ‘zoonotic’ diseases (exotic diseases circulating amongst animals) jumping to humans. This is because industrial expansion, driven by capitalist pressures, has intensified the encroachment of human activities on wildlife and natural ecosystems. Two years ago, another study in Frontiers of Microbiology concluded presciently that accelerating deforestation due to “demographic growth” and the associated expansion of “farming, logging, and hunting”, is dangerously transforming rural environments. More bat species carrying exotic viruses have ended up next to human dwellings, the study said. This is increasing “the risk of transmission of viruses through direct contact, domestic animal infection, or contamination by urine or faeces.” It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the COVID19 pandemic thus emerged directly from these rapidly growing impacts of human activities. As the new paper in Nature Communications confirms, these impacts have accelerated in the context of the fundamental operations of industrial capitalism. Eroding the ‘safe operating space’ The result is that capitalism is causing human societies to increasingly breach key planetary boundaries, such as land-use change, biosphere integrity and climate change. Remaining within these boundaries is essential to maintain what scientists describe as a “safe operating space” for human civilization. If those key ecosystems are disrupted, that “safe operating space” will begin to erode. The global impacts of the COVID19 pandemic are yet another clear indication that this process of erosion has already begun. “The evidence is clear,” write Weidmann and his co-authors. “Long-term and concurrent human and planetary wellbeing will not be achieved in the Anthropocene if affluent overconsumption continues, spurred by economic systems that exploit nature and humans. We find that, to a large extent, the affluent lifestyles of the world’s rich determine and drive global environmental and social impact. Moreover, international trade mechanisms allow the rich world to displace its impact to the global poor.” The new scientific research thus confirms that the normal functioning of capitalism is eroding the ‘safe space’ by which human civilisation is able to survive. The structures The paper also sets out how this is happening in some detail. The super-rich basically end up driving this destructive system forward in three key ways. Firstly, they are directly responsible for “biophysical resource use… through high consumption.” Secondly, they are “members of powerful factions of the capitalist class.” Thirdly, due to that positioning, they end up “driving consumption norms across the population.” But perhaps the most important insight of the paper is not that this is purely because the super-rich are especially evil or terrible compared to the rest of the population — but because of the systemic pressures produced by capitalist structures. The authors point out that: “Growth imperatives are active at multiple levels, making the pursuit of economic growth (net investment, i.e. investment above depreciation) a necessity for different actors and leading to social and economic instability in the absence of it.” At the core of capitalism, the paper observes, is a fundamental social relationship defining the way working people are systemically marginalised from access to the productive resources of the earth, along with the mechanisms used to extract these resources and produce goods and services. This means that to survive economically in this system, certain behavioural patterns become not just normalised, but seemingly entirely rational — at least from a limited perspective that ignores wider societal and environmental consequences. In the words of the authors: “In capitalism, workers are separated from the means of production, implying that they must compete in labour markets to sell their labour power to capitalists in order to earn a living.” Meanwhile, firms which own and control these means of production “need to compete in the market, leading to a necessity to reinvest profits into more efficient production processes to minimise costs (e.g. through replacing human labour power with machines and positive returns to scale), innovation of new products and/or advertising to convince consumers to buy more.” If a firm fails to remain competitive through such behaviours, “it either goes bankrupt or is taken over by a more successful business. Under normal economic conditions, this capitalist competition is expected to lead to aggregate growth dynamics.” The irony is that, as the paper also shows, the “affluence” accumulated by the super-rich isn’t correlated with happiness or well-being. Restructure The “hegemonic” dominance of global capitalism, then, is the principal obstacle to the systemic transformation needed to reduce overconsumption. So it’s not enough to simply try to “green” current consumption through technologies like renewable energy — we need to actually reduce our environmental impacts by changing our behaviours with a focus on cutting back our use of planetary resources: “Not only can a sufficient decoupling of environmental and detrimental social impacts from economic growth not be achieved by technological innovation alone, but also the profit-driven mechanism of prevailing economic systems prevents the necessary reduction of impacts and resource utilisation per se.” The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. The paper reviews a range of “bottom-up studies” showing that dramatic reductions in our material footprint are perfectly possible while still maintaining good material living standards. In India, Brazil and South Africa, “decent living standards” can be supported “with around 90 percent less per-capita energy use than currently consumed in affluent countries.” Similar possible reductions are feasible for modern industrial economies such as Australia and the US. By becoming aware of how the wider economic system incentivises behaviour that is destructive of human societies and planetary ecosystems critical for human survival, both ordinary workers and more wealthy sectors — including the super-rich — can work toward rewriting the global economic operating system. This can be done by restructuring ownership in firms, equalising relations with workers, and intentionally reorganising the way decisions are made about investment priorities. The paper points out that citizens and communities have a crucial role to play in getting organised, upgrading efforts for public education about these key issues, and experimenting with new ways to work together in bringing about “social tipping points” — points at which social action can catalyse mass change. While a sense of doom and apathy about the prospects for such change is understandable, mounting evidence based on systems science suggests that global capitalism as we know it is in a state of protracted crisis and collapse that began some decades ago. This research strongly supports the view that as industrial civilization reaches the last stages of its systemic life-cycle, there is unprecedented and increasing opportunity for small-scale actions and efforts to have large system-wide impacts. The new paper shows that the need for joined-up action is paramount: structural racism, environmental crisis, global inequalities are not really separate crises — but different facets of human civilization’s broken relationship with nature. Yet, of course, the biggest takeaway is that those who bear most responsibility for environmental destruction — those who hold the most wealth in our societies — urgently need to wake up to how their narrow models of life are, quite literally, destroying the foundations for human survival over the coming decades. The alternative is to decentralize global trade. A pluralistic global system allows for flexible industrial development while avoiding the pitfalls of centralized neoliberalism. Alternative indicts are unfounded fearmongering. Bello 99 (Walden, Filipino academic, environmentalist, and social worker who served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.) “Why Reform of the WTO is the Wrong Agenda” Focus on Trade, No. 43, December 1999, https://www.tni.org/my/node/6851 TDI Building a More Pluralistic System of International Trade Governance If there is one thing that is clear, it is that developing country governments and international civil society must not allow their energies to be hijacked into reforming these institutions. This will only amount to administering a facelift to fundamentally flawed institutions. Indeed, today's need is not another centralized global institution, reformed or unreformed, but the deconcentration and decentralization of institutional power and the creation of a pluralistic system of institutions and organizations interacting with one another amidst broadly defined and flexible agreements and understandings. It was under such a more pluralistic global system, where hegemonic power was still far form institutionalized in a set of all encompassing and powerful multilateral organizations that the Latin American countries and many Asian countries were able to achieve a modicum of industrial development in the period from 1950-70. It was under a more pluralistic world system, under a GATT that was limited in its power, flexible, and more sympathetic to the special status of developing countries, that the East and Southeast Asian countries were able to become newly industrializing countries through activist state trade and industrial policies that departed significantly from the free-market biases enshrined in the WTO. The alternative to a powerful WTO is not a Hobbesian state of nature. It is always the powerful that have stoked this fear. The reality of international economic relations in a world marked by a multiplicity of international and regional institutions that check one another is a far cry from the propaganda image of a 'nasty' and 'brutish' world. Of course, the threat of unilateral action by the powerful is ever present in such a system, but it is one that even the powerful hesitate to take for fear of its consequences on their legitimacy as well as the reaction it would provoke in the form of opposing coalitions. In other words, what developing countries and international civil society should aim at is not to reform the WTO but, through a combination of passive and active measures, to radically reduce its power and to make it simply another international insitution coexisting with and being checked by other international organizations, agreements, and regional groupings. These would include such diverse actors and institutions as UNCTAD, multilateral environmental agreements, the International Labor Organization (ILO), evolving trde blocs such as Mercosur in Latin America, SAARC in South Asia, SADCC in Southern Africa, and ASEAN in Southeast Asia. It is in such a more fluid, less structured, more pluralistic world with multiple checks and balances that the nations and communities of the South will be able to carve out the space to develop based on their values, their rhythms, and the strategies of their choice. The role of the ballot is to investigate and reject the ways capitalism has infected society. While obviously signing the ballot won’t make neoliberalism disappear, endorsing resistance against cap in this round actually does something because we start formulating strategies that attack cap head-on. Zizek and Daly 4 (Slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London, and Glyn, Conversations with Zizek page 14-16) For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism and its obscene naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called ‘radically incorrect’ in the sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the very organizing principles of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety. For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffee, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is to say, the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears). This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose sight of the systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook Marx’s central insight that in order to create a universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the politico-discursive violence of its construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose ‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the world’s populations. In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral market place. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded ‘life-chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the ‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle. Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to confront the fact that our forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizek’s universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a ‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.
9/18/21
Climate Change PIC
Tournament: TFA State | Round: 2 | Opponent: Safiye Namver | Judge: Conklin, Jay cites broken will OS
3/10/22
Nebel T
Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 1 | Opponent: Plano East NK | Judge: Claudia Ribera Interpretation: intellectual property protections is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that member nations of the World Trade Organization reduce a subset of intellectual property protections for medicines. (ie the one and done approach) Nebel 19 Jake Nebel Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances. But, since generics tolerate exceptions, plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs) do not negate generic resolutions. Bare plurals are typically used to express generic generalizations. But there are two important things to keep in mind. First, generic generalizations are also often expressed via other means (e.g., definite singulars, indefinite singulars, and bare singulars). Second, and more importantly for present purposes, bare plurals can also be used to express existential generalizations. For example, “Birds are singing outside my window” is true just in case there are some birds singing outside my window; it doesn’t require birds in general to be singing outside my window. So, what about “colleges and universities,” “standardized tests,” and “undergraduate admissions decisions”? Are they generic or existential bare plurals? On other topics I have taken great pains to point out that their bare plurals are generic—because, well, they are. On this topic, though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced. Let’s see why. 1.1 “Colleges and Universities” “Colleges and universities” is a generic bare plural. I don’t think this claim should require any argument, when you think about it, but here are a few reasons. First, ask yourself, honestly, whether the following speech sounds good to you: “Eight colleges and universities—namely, those in the Ivy League—ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. Maybe other colleges and universities ought to consider them, but not the Ivies. Therefore, in the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” That is obviously not a valid argument: the conclusion does not follow. Anyone who sincerely believes that it is valid argument is, to be charitable, deeply confused. But the inference above would be good if “colleges and universities” in the resolution were existential. By way of contrast: “Eight birds are singing outside my window. Maybe lots of birds aren’t singing outside my window, but eight birds are. Therefore, birds are singing outside my window.” Since the bare plural “birds” in the conclusion gets an existential reading, the conclusion follows from the premise that eight birds are singing outside my window: “eight” entails “some.” If the resolution were existential with respect to “colleges and universities,” then the Ivy League argument above would be a valid inference. Since it’s not a valid inference, “colleges and universities” must be a generic bare plural. Second, “colleges and universities” fails the upward-entailment test for existential uses of bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Lima beans are on my plate.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some lima beans on my plate. One test of this is that it entails the more general sentence, “Beans are on my plate.” Now consider the sentence, “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” (To isolate “colleges and universities,” I’ve eliminated the other bare plurals in the resolution; it cannot plausibly be generic in the isolated case but existential in the resolution.) This sentence does not entail the more general statement that educational institutions ought not consider the SAT. This shows that “colleges and universities” is generic, because it fails the upward-entailment test for existential bare plurals. Third, “colleges and universities” fails the adverb of quantification test for existential bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Dogs are barking outside my window.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some dogs barking outside my window. One test of this appeals to the drastic change of meaning caused by inserting any adverb of quantification (e.g., always, sometimes, generally, often, seldom, never, ever). You cannot add any such adverb into the sentence without drastically changing its meaning. To apply this test to the resolution, let’s again isolate the bare plural subject: “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” Adding generally (“Colleges and universities generally ought not consider the SAT”) or ever (“Colleges and universities ought not ever consider the SAT”) result in comparatively minor changes of meaning. (Note that this test doesn’t require there to be no change of meaning and doesn’t have to work for every adverb of quantification.) This strongly suggests what we already know: that “colleges and universities” is generic rather than existential in the resolution. Fourth, it is extremely unlikely that the topic committee would have written the resolution with the existential interpretation of “colleges and universities” in mind. If they intended the existential interpretation, they would have added explicit existential quantifiers like “some.” No such addition would be necessary or expected for the generic interpretation since generics lack explicit quantifiers by default. The topic committee’s likely intentions are not decisive, but they strongly suggest that the generic interpretation is correct, since it’s prima facie unlikely that a committee charged with writing a sentence to be debated would be so badly mistaken about what their sentence means (which they would be if they intended the existential interpretation). The committee, moreover, does not write resolutions for the 0.1 percent of debaters who debate on the national circuit; they write resolutions, at least in large part, to be debated by the vast majority of students on the vast majority of circuits, who would take the resolution to be (pretty obviously, I’d imagine) generic with respect to “colleges and universities,” given its face-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to IP protections:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that nations ought to reduce one type of IPP does not entail that those nations ought to reduce all kinds of IPP
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Limits – there are countless affs accounting for every kind of intellectual property protections, like tertiary patents, provisional patents, and design patents – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like innovation that rely on reducing all kinds of IP for all medicines because individual types of IP don’t substantially affect the pharmaceutical industry – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs 4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez aff
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly
9/18/21
Production CP
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 4 | Opponent: Perry JA | Judge: Lucas Hunter 1NC – Production CP The United States federal government should: - substantially increase production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine, specifically providing all necessary vaccines to India and South Africa, and - cooperate with allies to achieve increased production and global distribution of the COVID-19 Vaccine.
That comparatively solves better – IP rights don’t hinder vaccine cooperation, but manufacturing capacity is the current constraint. Hans Sauer 6-17 (Deputy General Counsel, Biotechnology Industry Organization.) “Web event — Confronting Joe Biden’s proposed TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments” https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/210617-Confronting-Joe-Bidens-proposed-TRIPS-waiver.pdf?x91208andx91208 TDI But contrary to what Lori said, there are genuine real problems in the supply chain that are not caused by patents, that are simply caused by the unavailability and the constraints on existing capacity. There is in this world such a thing as maxed-out capacity that just can’t be increased on a dime. It’s not all due to intellectual property. This is true for existing vaccines as well as for vaccine raw materials. There are trade barriers. There are export restrictions that we should all be aware of and that we need to work on. And there are very real political, I think, interests in finding an explanation for how we got to this place that absolve governments around the world from their own policy decisions that they made in the past. In the United States, again, it was the declared policy of the previous administration, as well as this one, that we would vaccinate healthy college kids and go all down the line and offer a vaccine to everybody who wants it before we start sharing any with grandmothers in Burkina Faso. That was the policy. You can agree with it or disagree with it, but that was policy. We had export restrictions in place before a lot of other countries did. And that, too, contributed to unequal access of vaccines around the world. Another thing that was predictable was that politicians and governments around the world who want to be seen as proactive, on the ball, in control, for a long time were actually very indecisive, very unsure about how to address the COVID problem, which has so many dimensions. Vaccines are only one of those. But with respect to vaccines, not many governments took decisive action, put money on the table, put bets on multiple horses, before we knew whether these vaccines would work, would be approved. And it was governments in middle-income countries who now, I think, justifiably are concerned that they’re not getting fast enough access, who didn’t have the means and who didn’t have the decision-making structure to place the same bets on multiple horses, if you will, that were placed in the relatively more wealthy, global North and global West. But there is, I think, a really good and, with hindsight, predictable explanation of how we got to this place, and I think it teaches us something about how to fix the problem going forward. So why will the waiver not work? Well, first of all, with complex technology like vaccines, Lori touched on it, reverse engineering, like you would for a small molecule drug, is much more difficult if not impossible. But it depends very much more than small molecule drugs on cooperation, on voluntary transfer of technology, and on mutual assistance. We have seen as part of the pandemic response an unprecedented level of collaborations and cooperation and no indication that IP has stood in the way of the pandemic response. The waiver proponents have found zero credible examples of where IP has actually been an obstacle, where somebody has tried to block somebody else from developing a COVID vaccine or other COVID countermeasure, right? It’s not there. Second, the myth of this vast global capacity to manufacture COVID vaccines that somehow exists out there is unsubstantiated and frankly, in my opinion, untrue. But there is no such thing as vast untapped, idle capacity that could be turned around on a dime to start making COVID vaccines within weeks or even months. This capacity needs to be built; it needs to be established. And at a time when time is of the essence to beat this pandemic, starting capacity-building discussions is helpful, but it won’t be the answer to beat this pandemic. It will be the answer if we do everything right to beating the next pandemic. And if we learn any lesson of this, and then I will stop, is that the COVID waiver as well as the situation in which we find ourselves — if anything, it’s a reminder that we definitely have to take global capacity-building more seriously than we did in the past. That is true for the global North, as well as for middle-income countries — all of whom have to dedicate themselves much more determinedly to pandemic preparedness. And there’s a need to invest both in preparedness and in public health systems that hasn’t happened in the wake of past pandemic threats. This is what we will need to do. We will need to reduce export restrictions, and we will need to rededicate ourselves to preparing for the next pandemic. As far as this pandemic goes, there are 11 vaccines around the world that are already being shot into arms, only four of which come from the global North. How many more vaccines do we want? I don’t know, maybe 11 is enough if we start making more of them. But there are manufacturers around the world who know how to do this — including in China, including in India, and including in Russia. All developed their homegrown vaccines, apparently without interference by IP rights, right? So let’s make more of those. I think that’s going to be the more practical and realistic answer to solving the problem. And we need to lean on governments to stop export controls and to dedicate themselves to more global equity.
9/18/21
Round Reports
Tournament: Grapevine | Round: 4 | Opponent: Midlothian AC | Judge: Quisenberry, Jack 1 CInterp: The neg must not force me to disclose round reports if they didn’t disclose the aff open sourced 30 minutes before the round,
Violation – they do
Drop them –
1 MOSTEROUS DISCOVERY DISAD – debate students may only share a part of their identity with the debate space – ex. If they hid identifying as gay from everyone but their opponents – YOU FORCIBLY DRAG THEM OUT HIDING – parents, friends, coaches could discover their identify if they have to post it on the wiki – this is a voter for in-round violence and o/w anything else – there are REAL punishments these debaters could face 2 Disclosure kills innovation since everyone just copies what the best debaters read –innovation o/w on timeframe since it will always be used – you can wait for the next round to be fair but increasing innovation is always critical 3 Aff flex – if aff is harder than ignore their shell a 7463 time skew means aff cannot keep up w/ neg arg generation b 2 empirical studies proves judges more likely vote neg 4 In-round abuse before norm setting – a norms don’t exist since people still don’t disclose and stop reading aprioris regardless of theory b one-size-fits all justifies Trump calling all Mexicans racist – everyone is different so tailor theory evaluation to individual rounds 5 Evidence ethics – open source is the only way to verify pre-round that cards aren’t miscut or highlighted or bracketed unethically. That’s a voter – maintaining ethical ev practices is key to being good academics and we should be able to verify you didn’t cheat 6 Depth of clash – it allows debaters to have nuanced researched objections to their opponents evidence before the round at a much faster rate, which leads to higher quality ev comparison – outweighs cause thinking on your feet is NUQ but the best quality responses come from full access to a case.
9/18/21
TFW
Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 1 | Opponent: Princeton JG | Judge: Michael, Joshua T Interp and Violation: The affirmative must defend a hypothetical implementation of a post fiat policy action of states ought to eliminate nuclear arsenals: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines. They dont Resolved means a policy Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition. “Resolved”. 1964. Definition of the word “resolve,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved by the legislature;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law”. Vote neg: 1 Fairness Clash – post facto topic adjustment and debates about scholarship breed reactionary generics and allow the aff to cement their infinite prep advantage. They can specialize in 1 area of literature for 4 years which gives them a huge edge over people switching topics every 2 months – this crushes clash because all neg prep is based on the rez as a stable stasis point and they create a structural disincentive to do research – we lose 90 of negative ground while the aff still gets the perm which makes being neg impossible. 2 Predictable Limits: their model has no resolutional bound and creates the possibility for literally an infinite number of 1ACs. Not debating the topic allows someone to specialize in one area of the library for 4 years giving them a huge edge over people who switch research focus ever 2 months. Cutting negs to every possible aff wrecks small schools, which has a disparate impact on under-resourced and minority debaters. Counter-interpretations are arbitrary and don’t solve because they aren’t grounded in predictable definitions of the resolution. Vote neg for fairness – post facto topic adjustment and debates about scholarship breed reactionary generics and allow the aff to cement their infinite prep advantage. They can specialize in 1 area of literature for 4 years which gives them a huge edge over people switching topics every 2 months – this crushes fairness because all neg prep is based on the rez as a stable stasis point and they create a structural disincentive to do research – we lose 90 of negative ground while the aff still gets args like perms which makes being neg impossible. SSD is good – it forces debaters to consider a controversial issue from multiple perspectives. Non-T affs allow individuals to establish their own metrics for what they want to debate leading to ideological dogmatism. Even if they prove the topic is bad, our argument is that the process of preparing and defending proposals is an educational benefit of engaging it. Small schools disad: under-resourced are most adversely effected by a massive, unpredictable caselist which worsens structural disparities. Inclusion is an independent voter – you can’t debate if you can’t participate which is a prerequisite to accessing their benefits and ensures everyone gains from the activity. The impact is fairness which outweighs: A Debate is fundamentally a game and some level of competitive equity is necessary to sustain the activity. The only impact to a ballot is deciding who wins – we all hire coaches and pay money to come to tournaments which proves every argument they make concedes the validity of fairness. B Fairness straight turns the aff Bjerg, 11—Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School (Ole, Poker: the parody of capitalism pg 190-198) In order to understand the conceptual difference, it is important to note that when Baudrillard speaks of the law, he is not referring to law only in the strictly judicial meaning of the term. Baudrillard is rather drawing on a psychoanalytical tradition from Freud and Lacan in which the concept of law stands for any kind of social regularity, such as prohibitions, norms, values, morals, conventions, and so on, that structures the way we act and construct meaning in society. Law constitutes the social order of society. Viewed from the perspective of an individual immersed in the daily life of society, the difference between the law of society and the rule of the game is a difference between necessity and arbitrariness. The law consists not only of a series of prohibitions and norms. It carries also an account of the justification and rationality of the law. The law tells us not only what we should and should not do; it tells us also why we should or should not do this or that. The law claims to be valid and necessary regardless of the opinions held by the individual subject included in the law. The necessity of law is founded on transcendence. This may be the transcendence of a religious order, a principle of reason and rationality, or a system of tradition. In any case the law justifies itself with reference to some order beyond the immediate content of itself. Contrary to the law, the game and the rule are characterized by their arbitrariness. The rule claims no justification beyond its immediate appearance. It does not profess to represent a higher religious order or rational principle. In this way the rule is purely immanent to the game. Furthermore, the rule tells the subject engaged in the game what to do and not to do, but it does not give him them any reasons why he they should follow the rule. When asked, the rule provides no other justification for itself than the mere reference to the game itself: “Because these are the rules of the game!” Baudrillard sums up the difference between the rule and the law: “The Rule plays on an immanent sequence of arbitrary signs, while the Law is based on a transcendent sequence of necessary signs.”4 Think of the very simple game you can play when walking on the street in which you are not allowed to step on the lines between the flags of the pavement. The game is instituted by the invocation of the rule “Don’t step on the lines!” This rule is purely arbitrary. The game could be played just as well with the complete opposite rule: “You must step on a line for every single step you take!” Furthermore, the rule gives no reason that it should be followed. It has no “formal, moral or psychological structure or superstructure”5 to support its functioning. The functioning of the game is dependent on the voluntary submission to the rule by the players engaging in the game. Compare this to the traffic regulations prescribed by law: “Don’t walk in the street.” “Cross the street only at the green light.” These regulations apply unconditionally and must be obeyed by anyone regardless of whether he wants they want to or not. Traffic regulations come with a series of explicit and implicit reasons why they should be followed, for instance, that they secure the social order of the traffic situation for the safety of everyone. The transcendence of law makes the validity of law unconditional. It is not up to the individual subject of law to decide whether he wants to submit to the law or not. Conversely, the purely arbitrary character of the rule sets free the subject and leaves it up to the individual whether he they wants to participate in the game and become obliged by the rules of the game or not. In Homo Ludens Huizinga indeed proposes voluntariness and freedom as the first in his list of characteristics of play.6 “because it’s fun” Law as understood by Baudrillard not only constitutes society. In the psychoanalytic tradition that Baudrillard is drawing on, law also plays a crucial role in the very constitution of the subject. To be a subject is to be subject to law. Without law, there would be no subject. At first glance, law manifests itself as a prohibition banning our access to certain objects and acts. We may think of the law as an institution necessary in order to discipline our wild and otherwise uncontrolled desires for different forbidden things such as other people’s property (Thou shalt not steal) or transgressive sexual acts (Thou shalt not commit adultery). In this line of thinking, a society without law would be an anarchical allagainst-all with everybody satisfying her every desire at the expense of everybody else. However, working along similar lines as Baudrillard, Zizek argues that law has also the latent function of structuring our very being as subjects since the law is what institutes our desires in the first place. When the law tells us not to do this or that, it carries an underlying fantasmatic message promising that beyond the prohibition of the law lie the objects that may satisfy the desire of the subject. Inherent in the law is the fantasy of what might happen if the law was not there to prevent me from pursuing my immediate desires. As was the case with the concept of law, it is important to note that the concept of fantasy differs from its usual meaning. Here is how Zizek explains the term: Fantasy is usually conceived as a scenario that realizes the subject’s desire. This elementary definition is quite adequate, on condition that we take it literally, what the fantasy stages is not a scene in which our desire is fulfilled, fully satisfied, but on the contrary, a scene that realizes, stages, the desire as such. The fundamental point of psychoanalysis is that desire is not something given in advance, but something that has to be constructed—and it is precisely the role of fantasy to give the coordinates of the subject’s desire, to specify its object, to locate the position the subject assumes in it. It is only through fantasy that the subject is constituted as desiring: through fantasy, we learn how to desire.7 Based on this understanding, Zizek often uses the concept of fantasy in conjunction with the concept of ideology.8 Only on a very superficial level is fantasy opposed to law in the sense that we fantasize about the transgression or even the abolition of law. We might think here of consumerist fantasies of the kind where we imagine gaining access to products that we cannot afford to buy: “If only the law of property or the law of equivalences did not prevent me from having this sweater or that car I would . . .” On another level, fantasy and law work together in structuring the desire of the subject. By restraining the subject’s access to the objects of desire designated by fantasy, law prevents the subject from realizing that the qualities and possibilities for enjoyment imagined to belong to the object are in fact projections of the subject’s own fantasy. In this way, the different laws of the market restraining our access to consumer goods are the condition of possibility for the fantasmatic projections about the amount of happiness, enjoyment, and fulfillment we would attain if we had free and unlimited access to these goods. The idea of law instituting order in an otherwise anarchical world of unrestrained desire (e.g., in Hobbes) is actually a myth produced in the domain of fantasy and ideology. First, the myth gives legitimacy to law by explaining why it is necessary, but second and perhaps more importantly the myth tells us what we would really want if it were not for the law restraining us. Thus, the message of the law is split into the explicit prohibition and the fantasmatic injunction to transgress the law.9 In this way law interacts with fantasy in the domain of ideology in order to teach the subject what and how to desire. An important implication of this understanding of the relation between fantasy and law is that even in transgression, the subject does not move beyond the domain of law. A thief illegally appropriating consumer goods by transgressing the law of property does not violate the fundamental principles for the structuring of desire in the consumer society. It may in fact even be argued that his transgressive act confirms the desirability of the consumer goods. Since the thief will go to such extremities in order to attain the goods, the goods must indeed be something extraordinary. In Baudrillard’s analysis of the difference between law and rule, we find the following reflection related to transgression: Ordinarily we live within the realm of the Law, even when fantasizing its abolition. Beyond the law we see only its transgression or the lifting of a prohibition. For the discourse of law and interdiction determines the inverse discourse of transgression and liberation. However, it is not the absence of the law that is opposed to the law, but the Rule.10 Instead of transgression or absence of law, Baudrillard suggests the rule as being opposed to law. The argument is here not that by following the rule of the game, the player is violating the law of society. The point is rather the much more subtle one that by entering the sphere of the rule and the game the player moves beyond the ideological domain of the law. Law, desire, and subjectivity tie into each other in a kind of Gordian knot. In the game, where law is substituted for the rule, this knot is cut. In its explicit contingency, the rule is not supported by fantasy. The rule does not hold a promise of satisfaction; no sublime object is imagined beyond the rule. The rule claims to be nothing more than what it is. So what is the attraction of the rule and the game, if not satisfaction of a desire? Entering the game means voluntarily submitting to an arbitrary rule with no higher meaning. This act is, however, a way of delivering oneself from the law. Since transgression is already inscribed in the law even in the violation of a prohibition, we are still caught in the web of the law and its matrix of satisfaction/unsatisfaction. In the violation, we may contradict the explicit word of the law but we are still confirming its underlying principle of desire. When choosing to submit to the rules of a game, however, we step into another order not structured by the law and desire. We renounce our desire, not in an ascetic abstinence from particular objects of desire (which is by the way only an extreme sublimation of the objects of desire), but by letting ourselves be seduced into an order not promising any kind of satisfaction at all. In this way, we move beyond the law’s matrix of satisfaction/unsatisfaction. When obeying the law, our conscious rational belief in it is supported by an unacknowledged irrational belief. Yet, entering the game, we openly acknowledge the pure contingency of the rule, and so our conscious submission to it is based on no belief whatsoever. We have no illusions that the game is nothing but an illusion, and so our approach to the game is perhaps more “realistic” than our approach to the law. The game’s sole principle . . . is that by choosing the rule one is delivered from the law. Without a psychological or metaphysical foundation, the rule has no grounding in belief. One neither believes nor disbelieves a rule—one observes it. The diffuse sphere of belief, the need for credibility that encompasses the real, is dissolved in the game. Hence their immorality: to proceed without believing in it, to sanction a direct fascination with conventional signs and groundless rules.11 In the game, desire is suspended and so is desire’s eternal shadow figure, unsatisfaction, which is a necessary condition for the reproduction of desire. In the game, there is no promise and therefore no disappointment. In the order of the law, we may find enjoyment in the momentary and partial satisfaction of our desires through obtainment of different objects. The joy of the game stems not from this kind of satisfaction but exactly from the suspension of the satisfaction/unsatisfaction matrix. In order to understand the intensity of ritual forms, one must rid oneself of the idea that all happiness derives from nature, and all pleasure from the satisfaction of a desire. On the contrary, games, the sphere of play, reveal a passion for rules, a giddiness born of rules, and a force that comes from ceremony, and not desire.12 As an equivalent to the “giddiness” of which Baudrillard speaks here, we find in Huizinga’s characteristic of play the notion of “fun.” People play games because it is fun. Rather than providing a full and conclusive explanation for the engagement in games, the concept of fun seems to mark the limitation of such an explanation. “The fun of playing,” Huizinga notes, “resists all analysis, Use competing interps – topicality is question of models of debate which they should have to proactively justify and we’ll win reasonability links to our offense. Drop the debater because dropping the arg is severance which moots 7 minutes of 1nc offense No rvis—it’s your burden to be fair and T—same reason you don’t win for answering inherency or putting defense on a disad. They can’t weigh the case—lack of preround prep means their truth claims are untested which you should presume false—they’re also only winning case because we couldn’t engage with it No impact turns—exclusions are inevitable because we only have 45 minutes so it’s best to draw those exclusions along reciprocal lines to ensure a role for the negative