1AC - China 1NC - Nebel T SetCol K Must have native authors 1AR - All Must defend government action 2NR - Must defend government action SetCol 2AR - Case SetCol K
Apple Valley
3
Opponent: Scarsdale BS | Judge: Austin Broussard
1AC - China 1NC - Hobbes NC Disclosure Nebel T Case 1AR - All Out Of Round Violations Bad 2NR - Disclosure Nebel T 2AR - Out Of Round Violations Bad Disclosure
Apple Valley
6
Opponent: Byram Hills AK | Judge: Jeong-Wan Choi
1AC - China 1NC - Contracts NC Spark 1AR - AFC NIBs Bad Contracts NC 2NR - Contracts AFC NIBs Bad 2AR - AFC
Glenbrooks
2
Opponent: Harvard-Westlake KD | Judge: Lena Mizrahi
1AC - China 1NC - Nebel T Cap K Dedev 1AR - All 2NR - Nebel T Cap K 2AR - Case Cap K Nebel T
Glenbrooks
3
Opponent: Dulles IC | Judge: Wyatt Hatfield
1AC - China AFC Must Have a Wiki 1NC - Truth Testing Evil Demon Flat Earth 1AR - All 2NR - All 2AR - All
Grapevine Classic
1
Opponent: Dulles RB | Judge: Andrew Torrez
1AC - Drug Prices 1NC - Cap Case 1AR - All 2NR - Cap 2AR - All
Grapevine Classic
4
Opponent: Elizabeth Elliott | Judge: Dylan Jones
1AC - Drug Prices 1NC - EU DA US PIC T Case 1AR - All 2NR - US PIC EU DA Case 2AR - Case US PIC EU DA
Greenhill
1
Opponent: Harrison JP | Judge: Javier Navarrete
1AC - Drug Prices 1NC - T-Vaccines Weheliye Case 1AR - All Non-governmental action bad 2NR - Weheliye Case 2AR - Non-governmental action bad Indexicals
Greenhill
4
Opponent: Strake Jesuit VC | Judge: Jack Quisenberry
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - Infrastructure DA LogCon E-Spec Case 1AR - All 2NR - LogCon Util 2AR - Case LogCon
Greenhill
6
Opponent: Strake Jesuit JX | Judge: David Yi
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - T-Reduce Kant Scientists CP Infrastructure DA Case 1AR - All AFC Process CPs Bad 2NR - Scientists CP AFC Process CPs Bad 2AR - AFC
Meadows
2
Opponent: Westwood AK | Judge: Kabir Dubey
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - Biotech DA Climate Patents DA Infrastructure DA Bioterror PIC Case 1AR - All 2NR - Bioterror PIC Case 2AR - Case Bioterror PIC
Meadows
4
Opponent: Millard North NL | Judge: Passa Pungchai
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - T-Reduce Single Payer CP DSB CP Biotech DA Case 1AR - All Condo 2NR - Condo Single Payer CP Biotech DA 2AR - Signle Payer CP Biotech DA
St Marks
3
Opponent: Harker AS | Judge: Jonathan Hsu
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - Penalties CP Infrastructure DA CO2 Good Pandemics Good 1AR - All 2NR - CO2 good AMR 2AR - AMR CO2 good
St Marks
Doubles
Opponent: Southlake Carroll PK | Judge: David Dosch, James Stuckert, Danielle Dosch
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - Disclosure T-Exclusivity AMR PIC Dedev Case 1AR - All 2NR - AMR PIC Case 2AR - AMR PIC
St Marks
6
Opponent: Immaculate Heart SS | Judge: Vishan Chaudhary
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - Nebel T Consult WHO Cap K Case 1AR - All 2NR - Nebel T 2AR - Case Nebel T
Valley
3
Opponent: Sharon Rowan Gray | Judge: Sam Larson
1AC - Drug Prices 1NC - Disclosure Daoism Case 1AR - All 2NR - All 2AR - All
1AC - Evergreening 1NC - A Prioris Bad AFC Bad Kant Case 1AR - All 2NR - Kant 2AR - AFC
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Entry
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0 - Contact Info
Tournament: Contact Info | Round: Finals | Opponent: You | Judge: Me Hi, I'm Miller. Feel free to ask me any questions. Email: millerlroberts@gmail.com FB: Miller Roberts Phone: 512-293-7884
9/3/21
0 - Navigation
Tournament: Navigation | Round: 1 | Opponent: You | Judge: Me 0 - Important Stuff 1 - Theory Interps 2 - K Generics 3 - Other Generics (fw, cp, etc.) SeptOct - September/October Topic NovDec - November/December Topic JanFeb - January/February Topic MarApr - March/April Topic
9/3/21
NovDec - AC - China
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 1 | Opponent: Millburn AX | Judge: Chris Castillo 1AC Apple Valley Round 3 1AC: Plan Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike. That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there are strikes every day. Factory workers, hotel employees, teachers and taxi drivers regularly withdraw their labor and demand a better deal from their employer. Strikes are often successful, and these days strike leaders hardly ever get put in prison. It may seem ironic that workers in a nominally Communist country don’t have the right to strike, and that workers are apparently willing to defy the Communist Party by going out on strike. But China effectively abandoned Communism and embraced capitalism many years ago. And in a capitalist economy, strikes are a fact of life. Chinese scholars, government officials and even some businessmen have long recognized this fact and have called for the restoration of the right to strike, which was removed from the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 1982. Deng Xiaoping feared that the economic reforms he was introducing would lead to labor unrest. Although Deng and his successors were able to quiet labor unrest and strike action for a while, the trend over the last five years or so has been clear. As the business leader Zeng Qinghong noted recently, the number of strikes is increasing every year. Mr. Zeng, who is head of the Guangzhou Automobile Co., reported that in just two months last summer, there were more than 20 strikes in the automotive industry in the Pearl River Delta alone, and that new strikes were occurring all the time. Mr. Zeng suggested in a submission to this year’s National People’s Congress, China’s annual legislature, that the right to strike should be restored because it was a basic right of workers in a market economy and a natural adjunct to the right to work. I agree with Mr. Zeng on this point and would like to take his argument one step further. The right to strike is clearly important, but the most vital and fundamental right of workers is the right to collective bargaining. After all, why do workers go out on strike? Very simply, they go on strike for higher pay and better working conditions. The strike is not an end in itself but is part of a bargaining process. And if the collective bargaining process were more effective, in many cases, workers would not need to go out on strike at all. If you talk to factory workers, most will tell you they would rather not go on strike if they can avoid it. Indeed, most only go on strike because they have no alternative. China’s workers want and need an alternative. They want a system in which they can raise their demands for higher pay and discuss those demands in peaceful, equal and constructive negotiations with management. If workers can achieve their goals through peaceful collective bargaining, in the long run there will be fewer strikes, workers will be better paid and labor relations will be vastly improved. We also have to be aware that if the right to strike is reinstated in the Constitution in isolation — without the right to collective bargaining — there would be a danger that the right of workers to go on strike might actually be eroded. Just look at the right to stage a public demonstration. Chinese citizens do have the constitutional right to demonstrate but in reality they have to apply to the police for permission, and of course very few of those applications are granted. Likewise, if workers have to apply to the authorities before they can go on strike, the right to strike will become meaningless. Moreover, the number of strikes would not be reduced because workers would continue to go out on strike regardless and labor relations will deteriorate even further. On the other hand, if the right to strike is framed in a way that can liberate workers and encourage and empower them to engage in collective bargaining, safe in the knowledge that they have a powerful weapon that can be deployed if necessary, labor relations will be enhanced and the number of strikes might actually decrease. There is a saying in China that “you should not only focus on your head when you have headache because the real reason for the headache could be your foot.” As Mr. Zeng noted, the rapidly increasing number of strikes in China has become a major headache, not only for business but for the government as well. If the government wants to reduce the number of strikes in China, it needs to take a holistic approach and address the root cause of the problem — the absence of an effective collective bargaining system in which democratically elected workers’ representatives can negotiate better pay and conditions with their employer. If such a system can be implemented in China it would obviously benefit workers but it would also benefit employers like Mr. Zeng who are concerned about high worker turnover and the loss of production through strike action. Crucially, it is also in the interest of the Chinese government to introduce collective bargaining. The authorities may be nervous about handing power to the workers but they should bear in mind that by doing so they would aid the development of more harmonious labor relations, which could lead to the Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Soft Power Adv Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen collective bargaining as the cure for the country’s severe labour problems. The logic underlying this was often unstated, but straightforward: collective bargaining was crucial for twentieth century labour movements in capitalist countries in giving workers a voice and creating a more equitable social distribution of wealth. With growing levels of labour unrest in China over the past twenty years, collective bargaining seemed like a logical next step. Hopeful reformers—both within the official unions as well as labour NGO activists and academics—envisioned rationalised, legalised bargaining between labour and capital as a central pillar in the construction of a more just workplace and society. The challenges to institutionalising a robust collective bargaining system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have always been profound. Fundamental to labour relations theory is that collective bargaining rights must be accompanied by the right to strike and freedom of association—capital has no reason to take workers seriously without labour possessing some coercive power. But independent unions have long been an anathema to the Communist Party. From the Lai Ruoyu debacle of the 1950s to the crushing of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation in 1989, the Party has made it clear time and again that independent worker organisations are forbidden. Although workers have never enjoyed the right to strike in practice, the right was formally included in the Chinese constitutions of 1975 and 1978. It was Deng Xiaoping who removed it from the constitution just as private capital began pouring into China in the early 1980s. Working Within the System Nonetheless, with no signs of articulated worker movements since 1989, many well-intentioned people thought it was worth trying to advance worker rights within the system. Especially from the mid 2000s on, academics (myself included) launched research projects, NGOs held training sessions, and foreign unions engaged with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Many assumed that the state would eventually decide that worker insurgency was exacting too high a cost, and that serious labour reforms were therefore necessary. And indeed, beginning in the late 2000s the ACFTU made collective negotiations (xieshang)—rather than the more antagonistic sounding ‘bargaining’ (tanpan)—a high priority, investing time and resources into expanding the coverage of collective contracts. At its best, collective bargaining in China has been woefully inadequate. The state and the ACFTU have been very cautious about controlling workers’ aspirations, and have insisted on the fundamental harmony of interests between labour and capital. Experiments with bargaining have been almost exclusively restricted to single enterprises, thereby preventing workers from constituting cross-workplace ties. The overwhelming majority of collective contracts are formulaic: actual bargaining rarely occurs, and enforcement is largely non-existent. The few shining examples where employers have made real compromises during collective bargaining have followed autonomously organised wildcat strikes. The best-known case is the 2010 strike from a Honda transmission plant in Guangdong province, which resulted in major wage gains as well as an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to reform the enterprise union. It is not coincidental that substantive worker-led bargaining is much more likely in Japanese or American firms, where the state must be cautious not to inflame patriotic sentiments. State-sanctioned economic nationalism is a shaky foundation for a robust collective bargaining system. The Death of Collective Bargaining under Xi Even these timid efforts have been smothered in recent years, as the central government has turned in a markedly anti-worker direction under Xi Jinping. There was a brief moment in 2010 when discussion about the right to strike emerged from hushed whispers into the public discourse. But this opening was ephemeral, and union reformers in Guangdong who had pushed gentle reforms in the mid-late 2000s were replaced with typical Party apparatchiks. The country’s pre-eminent centre for labour studies at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou was shuttered. The academic study of employment has now been left almost entirely to business schools, as the government has stymied further expansion of labour relations programs. Labour NGOs in Guangzhou were subjected to a brutal crackdown in December 2015, with the government specifically targeting those groups that had been helping workers to engage in collective negotiations to resolve strikes. And the ACFTU has seemingly given up on advancing collective negotiations altogether. The Chairman of the ACFTU Li Jianguo does not even mention the term in his speeches anymore. Under the ‘work developments’ section of the ACFTU’s website, a lonely single report on collective contracts for the entirety of 2016 is a stark indication that the union has almost totally forsaken this agenda. Collective bargaining is not dead in the sense that it will disappear from China’s labour-capital relations. It is almost certain that official unions will continue to pursue bargaining in its current vacuous, bureaucratic, and worker-exclusionary form. Collective contracts will continue to be signed, tabulated, and then hidden from view from workers. Somewhat less pessimistically, workers will continue to force management to bargain with the collective via wildcat strikes. This latter form will still be an important means by which workers can attempt to ensure their most basic rights, and these efforts are absolutely worth supporting. But collective bargaining is dead as a political aim. It is not going to be the cornerstone of twentieth century-style class compromise in China, it is not generative of worker power, and it certainly does not herald broader social transformation. To the extent that legal bargaining does develop, it will be as a mechanism for the state to deprive workers of autonomous power. What then might Chinese workers and allied intellectuals and activists aim for? At the risk of stating the obvious, the working class needs more power. The question is, how to foster proletarian power in the face of a highly competent authoritarian state that views organised workers as an existential threat? In the absence of independent organisations, the only option is an intensification of already widespread worker insurgency. The more wildcat strikes, mass direct action, and worker riots, the more the state and capital will be forced to take worker grievances seriously. Of course such forms of collective action come at great risk for workers, and many have already paid a high price. In any particular case, the risks may certainly outweigh the benefits. But in the aggregate, expansive unrest is just what the working class needs. With the institutions firmly oriented towards advancing the inter-related goals of state domination and exploitation by capital, disruption on a large scale is the only chance workers have of forcing change. Ungovernability will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name. Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu Guijun in May 2013 reportedly for participating in a peaceful labor protest. Prior to his detention, Wu was one of seven elected labor representatives involved in collective bargaining with his employer. Labor advocates have condemned Wu’s detention and expressed concern that he has been held for an extended period of time without being formally indicted. Wu’s case illustrates the challenges Chinese workers face engaging in collective bargaining to resolve workplace grievances. On May 23, 2013, public security officials in Bao’an district, Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker Wu Guijun, after he reportedly participated in a local Bao’an labor protest.1 Employed at the Diweixin manufacturing factory (“Diweixin”) in Bao’an, Wu was one of seven elected labor representatives negotiating with factory management on a resolution to a near month-long labor dispute. Workers staged a public protest after management failed to agree to collective bargaining demands, including worker compensation for a proposed factory closure. As a result of the protest, authorities detained a number of protesters, including Wu. According to his lawyer, Wu now faces possible criminal prosecution for “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order,” a crime punishable by three to seven years’ imprisonment under Article 290 of the PRC Criminal Law.2 Background on Wu’s Case In early May 2013, workers at Diweixin, a Hong Kong-owned factory, initiated a strike in response to management plans to close and relocate manufacturing operations from Shenzhen to Huizhou municipality, Guangdong.3 Seeking severance compensation in connection with the factory’s closure, workers elected Wu, along with six others, to advance their demands in collective negotiations with factory management. According to multiple reports, management repeatedly refused to cooperate with the representatives for more than two weeks of collective negotiations, reportedly offering at one point to provide workers with compensation below the legal minimum required by law.4 In an attempt to pressure local authorities to intervene in the dispute, 300 workers marched on May 23 to the Shenzhen municipal government.5 Local public security reportedly intervened in the march, detaining as many as 200 workers, including Wu. Authorities released a majority of those detained the following day and others in the succeeding weeks, but authorities continued to detain Wu, eventually placing him under criminal detention.6 Labor advocates have expressed concern that authorities have held Wu for an extended period of time without being indicted.7 In October 2013, procuratorate officials returned Wu’s case to public security officials for additional investigation.8 According to Wu’s lawyer, the Bao’an district procuratorate twice rejected indicting Wu—apparently on the charge of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order”—due to insufficient evidence.9 Reactions to Wu’s Detention Fellow workers, academics, and labor advocates have criticized Wu’s detention. On September 27, 2013, 32 Chinese and international labor organizations cosigned a petition expressing concern that the collective actions taken by Diweixin workers resulted in detentions and the potential criminal prosecution of Wu, despite protections provided under the PRC Constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly.10 Signatories stressed that “Wu and other worker leaders were alone in their struggle without receiving support from the trade union,” and called on authorities to “defend the worker’s right to strike” and release Wu. In a September 11, 2013, open letter to the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions, Wu’s coworkers called his detention a “bad precedent” that would cause “workers striking in the future to face the risk of prosecution.”11 According to the letter, such a situation would “intensify social contradictions and influence social harmony.” Workers urged the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions to fulfill its “core responsibility” to protect workers’ rights and to pressure local authorities to release Wu. Continued Challenges for Collective Bargaining Wu’s case illustrates the continued challenges Chinese workers face pursuing collective bargaining to resolve workplace grievances. The Commission’s 2013 Annual Report noted that demographic and economic shifts have provided workers with greater bargaining power in the workplace, increasing their determination to redress grievances and press for better pay and working conditions.12 While the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)—China’s sole official trade union under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party—has promoted collective contract and wage bargaining to address workers’ grievances and maintain “harmonious” labor relations, a general lack of autonomy and genuine worker representation in enterprise-level unions continues to limit ACFTU-led collective bargaining.13 According to Wan Xiangdong, a professor and deputy director of the labor research and service center at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, government and local trade union officials continue to approach labor disputes through the perspective of maintaining social stability and protecting against economic losses, which places workers at a marked disadvantage.14 Wu’s case also highlights the risk workers face by engaging in collective bargaining without trade unions. A December 7, 2012, China Labour Bulletin report, indicated that labor representatives “have suffered reprisals after taking part in collective bargaining with management,” including forced resignations, firings, and detention.15 The report notes that despite some successful cases of worker-led collective bargaining, a lack of “any clear defined legal protection” for labor representatives makes them susceptible to retaliation, necessitating “protection from both the law and a fully functioning trade union.” As a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO), China is obligated to respect, promote, and realize the principles of freedom of association and the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16 The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet the proposed Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises, now being debated by the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, could give Chinese labor the ultimate—and until now taboo—bargaining tool: an officially sanctioned right to strike. "This has been a no-go area in China for decades," says Robin Munro, deputy director at the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin. All Chinese workers belong to one union, but it wields little power. "This is the first time ever Chinese authorities have said it is O.K. to strike." The draft law could take effect by this fall in Guangdong, the industrialized coastal province where Honda (HMC) workers in June illegally and successfully struck for higher wages. The proposed law is seen by many activists and researchers as a trial balloon before a possible national rollout. The rules: If one-fifth or more of a company's staff demands collective bargaining, then management must discuss workers' grievances. Before talks begin, the union must elect local worker representatives. Until now, union reps came from management ranks. The next section of the proposed law ventures into even more radical territory. For six decades, picketing and disrupting production have been illegal and subject to harsh punishment. Under the Guangdong proposal, as long as workers first try negotiating and refrain from violence, they're allowed to strike. Though the draft could still get watered down, the fact that officials are even considering legalizing strikes signals a sea change. The party's moves are an attempt to recognize—and regulate—what is already happening. "Every month there are hundreds of strikes," says Chang Kai, a labor relations professor at Renmin University of China who advised the Honda workers. "What the government is concerned about is whether it can control these strikes or not." Formalizing workers' rights could also advance China's goal of rebalancing the economy. "There is a new emphasis on how to reduce the wage gap and get consumers to spend more," says Chang-Hee Lee, an industrial relations expert at the International Labour Organization's Beijing office. "This is not very easy to accomplish unless workers have more bargaining power." The bottom line: A proposed law being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers. Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the government. Individual households capture only around 40 percent of China’s GDP compared to around 70 percent in the United States. Inequality has soared. China’s official Gini coefficient is at 0.47 (independent analyses put the number considerably higher) compared to 0.39 in the U.S. “Chinese workers are underpaid and overtaxed, so they can’t afford to spend as much on goods and services,” said Mathew Klein of Barron’s. “The result is that Chinese businesses systematically generate a surplus of goods that gets dumped on the rest of the world, which in turn leads to some combination of deindustrialization and rising indebtedness.” Concern for the United States’ industrial capacity has led populists to rally for “decoupling.” For its part, China would also prefer to not rely on the United States for consumers and technology. In a recent speech to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Dialogues, Xi Jinping was clear that “making domestic consumption the main driver of its growth” is the priority for China. While parties on both sides have called for a distancing, the counties’ asset-holding elites have become further entwined. Promising a fairer deal with China, former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a tariff war in 2018, which reached a partial resolution with the Phase One deal on January 15, 2020. The deal dovetailed with China’s domestic efforts to remove barriers on financial services and strengthen intellectual property rights. On April 1, 2020 China removed the caps on foreign ownership of financial services, letting U.S. firms soak up more of the profits from their operations in China. The Wall Street giants were quick to respond. Within days, JP Morgan committed $1 billion to buy the other 49 percent of its joint venture in China. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley soon followed. This just added to the steady increase in U.S. investment into China over the last two decades. Additionally, $2.2 trillion worth of Chinese companies are capitalized on U.S. markets. These financial entanglements indicate that distancing can only lead to a “messy divorce,” according to Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago. “They are tied together in so many ways – trade, investment, tourism, student and academic exchanges – as well as distrustful on so many issues,” Rajan said. “Looks like a bad marriage to me, and they need to figure out how they work out their differences.” Since a total decoupling is not in the cards, could the Biden administration’s approach to the U.S.-China relationship bear fruit for workers when one considers that any worker related demand is likely to have to be balanced against the interests of the financial sector? Policy Opportunities Since the 1990s even when labor provisions were secured in trade agreements, there was little hope of enforcement. Though 14 U.S. free trade agreements have labor provisions, only seven complaints have ever been submitted and only one resolved. This, however, may be changing. “Trump’s ham-fisted, clumsy, cynical, ignorant, desire to approach trade from a different angle did allow for greater attention to issues like labor rights than anyone thought was possible,” said Trevor Sutton from the Center for American Progress. When the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a.k.a. NAFTA 2.0, was signed at the end of January, 2020 the list of people that celebrated it included Donald Trump’s brash conservative trade representative, Robert Lighthizer; AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka; and a folk singer named Ryan Harvey, who cut his teeth protesting the evils of capitalism before joining Global Trade Watch. In order to be in compliance, the Mexican Congress had to pass a new labor law. Employers in Mexico can be brought to a court chaired by the U.S. trade representative (USTR) and secretary of labor for violating their workers’ right to form a union. If the dispute is unable to be resolved bilaterally, then the United States may directly sanction the Mexican company for violating workers’ right to organize. The new NAFTA also mandates that 40-45 percent of car components be made by a worker earning at least $16 per hour, or be subject to tariffs. The USMCA will rely on activists to bring cases, something that has caused many to question its applicability in authoritarian contexts. The recent experience of Vietnam and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), however, may be more analogous to what could be possible with China. While the TPP was being negotiated, Vietnam’s manufacturing sector was experiencing a long wave of wildcat strikes. Many reformers believed the answer was to give workers a legal avenue to organize and collectively bargain. The TPP negotiations were able to provide cover for the reformers in this system and nudge the skeptics to reform Vietnam’s labor laws. Though the labor agreement fell apart when the United States pulled out of the TPP, Vietnam has recently legalized “worker representative organizations at the enterprise level,” said Joe Buckley of Vietnam Labor Update. It has also signed on to certain International Labor Organization (ILO) collective bargaining conventions that strengthen workers’ right to organize, a first for the one party “socialist” state. A Worker-First Approach to China Like Vietnam, China’s industrial sector faced a wave of strikes in the 2000s and 2010s. In China, just as in Vietnam, reformers in the country’s single party-controlled union federation began to experiment with collective bargaining, especially in the manufacturing hub of Guangdong province. Talk about instituting a “right to strike” emerged amidst a strike wave in 2010. Then came 2013. Xi Jinping took the reins of the Communist Party and set out to remake China and the crackdowns began. Labor NGOs, labor studies professors, progressive labor lawyers, and even Marxist students have been shut down, arrested or otherwise silenced. “Although China enacted a series of pro-worker laws in the late 2000s, many of these provisions are poorly implemented,” said Eli Friedman, professor at Cornell University (Disclosure: Eli Friedman is one of the author’s supervisors at the China Labor Translation Project). “As has been the case in countless other countries, China would likely experience reduced inequality and greater domestic consumption if independent trade unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.” China’s Economy is hosed and threatened by rampant Inequality gaps that devastate consumption. Bloomberg 21 1-19-2021 "China’s Wide Income Gap Undercut Spending as Growth Recovers" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-18/china-s-strong-growth-masks-unbalanced-recovery-as-incomes-lagElmer China’s successful control of Covid-19 made it the only major economy to have grown last year, but wide income inequality and still weak consumer spending reflects an unbalanced recovery. Here’s a deeper look at some of the data published alongside the gross domestic product report this week: Income Gap Official figures released on Monday which showed that the economy’s growth rate surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the last quarter also revealed that the richest 20 of Chinese had an average disposable income of more than 80,000 yuan ($12,000) last year, 10.2 times what the poorest 20 earn. The multiple in the U.S. is about 8.4 and closer to 5 in Western European countries such as Germany and France, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. By this measure, China’s inequality levels are comparable with Mexico, where the top 20 earn 10.4 times the bottom 20. President Xi Jinping has flagged the country’s unequal income distribution as a threat to its future growth, with officials considering more redistributive policies to encourage household spending. While inequality didn’t surge in China due to the pandemic, the data showed officials have made little headway in reducing it, with the income gap remaining largely stable since 2015. Weak Consumption The full-year 2020 data also showed that even though China’s suppression of the virus allowed normal economic activities to resume by the second half of the year, growth in household spending has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. China’s per-capita consumption, after adjusting for inflation, dropped 4 in 2020. That’s comparable with forecasts for U.S. personal consumption spending, which is projected to have fallen 3.8 in 2020, according to a Bloomberg survey. Retail sales declined 3.9 in 2020 from the previous year, a steeper fall than in developed economies such as the U.S., where government payments to workers stuck at home and unemployed supported spending on consumer goods. In common with other economies, China’s spending on services suffered more than spending on goods due to closures and fear of the virus, with an almost 17 drop in spending at restaurants last year. Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of a recession in China. We learned this, or should have, during the 1997 to 1998 Asian crisis. China may have had a disguised recession or near recession in 1998, but it was in a much smaller economy. Apart from that one episode there is no collective memory of recession and how to deal with it. As such, China is now psychologically unprepared to deal with the challenges of a recession. China’s coming recession will be accompanied by a large uncontrolled devaluation of the RMB as foreign exchange reserves evaporate, so it will be impossible to conceal this time. All asset prices, including housing prices, will be hit. Combine the shock of an unexpected economic setback with tensions in a one party state where a single individual has been calling the shots, and political instability could set in. While Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has not eliminated corruption, it has created many enemies who are biding their time. Minxin Pei has documented the activities of China’s powerful corruption networks. These networks, not a debilitated civil society, represent the alternative government of China. Competition between them could easily be destabilizing in a winner-take-all political environment. While our understanding of elite politics in China is poor, a recession would likely discredit the existing leadership and set off intense competition between corrupt factions for control of China. Bo Xilai, a former Chongqing party chief and Politburo member, was purged in 2012 but his son appears to still be interested in politics. While the outcome is impossible to predict, we can see the conditions in place for destabilizing events ranging from military adventurism to civil war. Alternatively, the regime could reassert its stability through increased repression, which would make China harder to deal with and would spill over into the Chinese diaspora. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has never had a real economic base. It is all about power projection (such as the Gwadar port) and would quickly be dropped by Beijing as a post-crisis China becomes focused on domestic political and economic stability. Any Chinese military adventurism is likely to be focused on Taiwan. China’s military is currently poorly equipped for an invasion of Taiwan, which has difficult geography and a substantial military, making an invasion of Taiwan unlikely to succeed. However, it is possible the Chinese leadership would miscalculate the risks, leaving it in a limited war with no clear resolution that would quickly draw in Japan and the United States. China has spent most of its history disunited, reflecting its geography. It has a number of widely dispersed economic centers. It was in outright civil war as recently as the 1960s. If competition between political factions remains unresolved, a civil war could develop, leaving China as a battleground where Russia, Japan, and the United States seek to influence the outcome. This scenario would stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power. Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the risk of war with the United States. Under President Xi Jinping, China has increased its political and economic pressure on Taiwan and built military installations on coral reefs in the South China Sea, fueling Washington’s fears that Chinese expansionism will threaten U.S. allies and influence in the region. U.S. destroyers have transited the Taiwan Strait, to loud protests from Beijing. American policymakers have wondered aloud whether they should send an aircraft carrier through the strait as well. Chinese fighter jets have intercepted U.S. aircraft in the skies above the South China Sea. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has brought long-simmering economic disputes to a rolling boil. A war between the two countries remains unlikely, but the prospect of a military confrontation—resulting, for example, from a Chinese campaign against Taiwan—no longer seems as implausible as it once did. And the odds of such a confrontation going nuclear are higher than most policymakers and analysts think. Members of China’s strategic community tend to dismiss such concerns. Likewise, U.S. studies of a potential war with China often exclude nuclear weapons from the analysis entirely, treating them as basically irrelevant to the course of a conflict. Asked about the issue in 2015, Dennis Blair, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, estimated the likelihood of a U.S.-Chinese nuclear crisis as “somewhere between nil and zero.” This assurance is misguided. If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power. China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to. As U.S. and Chinese leaders navigate a relationship fraught with mutual suspicion, they must come to grips with the fact that a conventional war could skid into a nuclear confrontation. Although this risk is not high in absolute terms, its consequences for the region and the world would be devastating. As long as the United States and China continue to pursue their current grand strategies, the risk is likely to endure. This means that leaders on both sides should dispense with the illusion that they can easily fight a limited war. They should focus instead on managing or resolving the political, economic, and military tensions that might lead to a conflict in the first place. A NEW KIND OF THREAT There are some reasons for optimism. For one, China has long stood out for its nonaggressive nuclear doctrine. After its first nuclear test, in 1964, China largely avoided the Cold War arms race, building a much smaller and simpler nuclear arsenal than its resources would have allowed. Chinese leaders have consistently characterized nuclear weapons as useful only for deterring nuclear aggression and coercion. Historically, this narrow purpose required only a handful of nuclear weapons that could ensure Chinese retaliation in the event of an attack. To this day, China maintains a “no first use” pledge, promising that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. The prospect of a nuclear conflict can also seem like a relic of the Cold War. Back then, the United States and its allies lived in fear of a Warsaw Pact offensive rapidly overrunning Europe. NATO stood ready to use nuclear weapons first to stalemate such an attack. Both Washington and Moscow also consistently worried that their nuclear forces could be taken out in a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear strike by the other side. This mutual fear increased the risk that one superpower might rush to launch in the erroneous belief that it was already under attack. Initially, the danger of unauthorized strikes also loomed large. In the 1950s, lax safety procedures for U.S. nuclear weapons stationed on NATO soil, as well as minimal civilian oversight of U.S. military commanders, raised a serious risk that nuclear escalation could have occurred without explicit orders from the U.S. president. The good news is that these Cold War worries have little bearing on U.S.-Chinese relations today. Neither country could rapidly overrun the other’s territory in a conventional war. Neither seems worried about a nuclear bolt from the blue. And civilian political control of nuclear weapons is relatively strong in both countries. What remains, in theory, is the comforting logic of mutual deterrence: in a war between two nuclear powers, neither side will launch a nuclear strike for fear that its enemy will respond in kind. The bad news is that one other trigger remains: a conventional war that threatens China’s nuclear arsenal. Conventional forces can threaten nuclear forces in ways that generate pressures to escalate—especially when ever more capable U.S. conventional forces face adversaries with relatively small and fragile nuclear arsenals, such as China. If U.S. operations endangered or damaged China’s nuclear forces, Chinese leaders might come to think that Washington had aims beyond winning the conventional war—that it might be seeking to disable or destroy China’s nuclear arsenal outright, perhaps as a prelude to regime change. In the fog of war, Beijing might reluctantly conclude that limited nuclear escalation—an initial strike small enough that it could avoid full-scale U.S. retaliation—was a viable option to defend itself. STRAIT SHOOTERS The most worrisome flash point for a U.S.-Chinese war is Taiwan. Beijing’s long-term objective of reunifying the island with mainland China is clearly in conflict with Washington’s longstanding desire to maintain the status quo in the strait. It is not difficult to imagine how this might lead to war. For example, China could decide that the political or military window for regaining control over the island was closing and launch an attack, using air and naval forces to blockade Taiwanese harbors or bombard the island. Although U.S. law does not require Washington to intervene in such a scenario, the Taiwan Relations Act states that the United States will “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” Were Washington to intervene on Taipei’s behalf, the world’s sole superpower and its rising competitor would find themselves in the first great-power war of the twenty-first century. In the course of such a war, U.S. conventional military operations would likely threaten, disable, or outright eliminate some Chinese nuclear capabilities—whether doing so was Washington’s stated objective or not. In fact, if the United States engaged in the style of warfare it has practiced over the last 30 years, this outcome would be all but guaranteed. Consider submarine warfare. China could use its conventionally armed attack submarines to blockade Taiwanese harbors or bomb the island, or to attack U.S. and allied forces in the region. If that happened, the U.S. Navy would almost certainly undertake an antisubmarine campaign, which would likely threaten China’s “boomers,” the four nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines that form its naval nuclear deterrent. China’s conventionally armed and nuclear-armed submarines share the same shore-based communications system; a U.S. attack on these transmitters would thus not only disrupt the activities of China’s attack submarine force but also cut off its boomers from contact with Beijing, leaving Chinese leaders unsure of the fate of their naval nuclear force. In addition, nuclear ballistic missile submarines depend on attack submarines for protection, just as lumbering bomber aircraft rely on nimble fighter jets. If the United States started sinking Chinese attack submarines, it would be sinking the very force that protects China’s ballistic missile submarines, leaving the latter dramatically more vulnerable. Even more dangerous, U.S. forces hunting Chinese attack submarines could inadvertently sink a Chinese boomer instead. After all, at least some Chinese attack submarines might be escorting ballistic missile submarines, especially in wartime, when China might flush its boomers from their ports and try to send them within range of the continental United States. Since correctly identifying targets remains one of the trickiest challenges of undersea warfare, a U.S. submarine crew might come within shooting range of a Chinese submarine without being sure of its type, especially in a crowded, noisy environment like the Taiwan Strait. Platitudes about caution are easy in peacetime. In wartime, when Chinese attack submarines might already have launched deadly strikes, the U.S. crew might decide to shoot first and ask questions later. Adding to China’s sense of vulnerability, the small size of its nuclear-armed submarine force means that just two such incidents would eliminate half of its sea-based deterrent. Meanwhile, any Chinese boomers that escaped this fate would likely be cut off from communication with onshore commanders, left without an escort force, and unable to return to destroyed ports. If that happened, China would essentially have no naval nuclear deterrent. The situation is similar onshore, where any U.S. military campaign would have to contend with China’s growing land-based conventional ballistic missile force. Much of this force is within range of Taiwan, ready to launch ballistic missiles against the island or at any allies coming to its aid. Once again, U.S. victory would hinge on the ability to degrade this conventional ballistic missile force. And once again, it would be virtually impossible to do so while leaving China’s nuclear ballistic missile force unscathed. Chinese conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles are often attached to the same base headquarters, meaning that they likely share transportation and supply networks, patrol routes, and other supporting infrastructure. It is also possible that they share some command-and-control networks, or that the United States would be unable to distinguish between the conventional and nuclear networks even if they were physically separate. To add to the challenge, some of China’s ballistic missiles can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead, and the two versions are virtually indistinguishable to U.S. aerial surveillance. In a war, targeting the conventional variants would likely mean destroying some nuclear ones in the process. Furthermore, sending manned aircraft to attack Chinese missile launch sites and bases would require at least partial control of the airspace over China, which in turn would require weakening Chinese air defenses. But degrading China’s coastal air defense network in order to fight a conventional war would also leave much of its nuclear force without protection. Once China was under attack, its leaders might come to fear that even intercontinental ballistic missiles located deep in the country’s interior were vulnerable. For years, observers have pointed to the U.S. military’s failed attempts to locate and destroy Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1990–91 Gulf War as evidence that mobile missiles are virtually impervious to attack. Therefore, the thinking goes, China could retain a nuclear deterrent no matter what harm U.S. forces inflicted on its coastal areas. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles are larger and less mobile than the Iraqi Scuds were, and they are harder to move without detection. The United States is also likely to have been tracking them much more closely in peacetime. As a result, China is unlikely to view a failed Scud hunt in Iraq nearly 30 years ago as reassurance that its residual nuclear force is safe today, especially during an ongoing, high-intensity conventional war. China’s vehement criticism of a U.S. regional missile defense system designed to guard against a potential North Korean attack already reflects these latent fears. Beijing’s worry is that this system could help Washington block the handful of missiles China might launch in the aftermath of a U.S. attack on its arsenal. That sort of campaign might seem much more plausible in Beijing’s eyes if a conventional war had already begun to seriously undermine other parts of China’s nuclear deterrent. It does not help that China’s real-time awareness of the state of its forces would probably be limited, since blinding the adversary is a standard part of the U.S. military playbook. Put simply, the favored U.S. strategy to ensure a conventional victory would likely endanger much of China’s nuclear arsenal in the process, at sea and on land. Whether the United States actually intended to target all of China’s nuclear weapons would be incidental. All that would matter is that Chinese leaders would consider them threatened. LESSONS FROM THE PAST At that point, the question becomes, How will China react? Will it practice restraint and uphold the “no first use” pledge once its nuclear forces appear to be under attack? Or will it use those weapons while it still can, gambling that limited escalation will either halt the U.S. campaign or intimidate Washington into backing down? Chinese writings and statements remain deliberately ambiguous on this point. It is unclear which exact set of capabilities China considers part of its core nuclear deterrent and which it considers less crucial. For example, if China already recognizes that its sea-based nuclear deterrent is relatively small and weak, then losing some of its ballistic missile submarines in a war might not prompt any radical discontinuity in its calculus. The danger lies in wartime developments that could shift China’s assumptions about U.S. intentions. If Beijing interprets the erosion of its sea- and land-based nuclear forces as a deliberate effort to destroy its nuclear deterrent, or perhaps even as a prelude to a nuclear attack, it might see limited nuclear escalation as a way to force an end to the conflict. For example, China could use nuclear weapons to instantaneously destroy the U.S. air bases that posed the biggest threat to its arsenal. It could also launch a nuclear strike with no direct military purpose—on an unpopulated area or at sea—as a way to signal that the United States had crossed a redline. If such escalation appears far-fetched, China’s history suggests otherwise. In 1969, similar dynamics brought China to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In early March of that year, Chinese troops ambushed Soviet guards amid rising tensions over a disputed border area. Less than two weeks later, the two countries were fighting an undeclared border war with heavy artillery and aircraft. The conflict quickly escalated beyond what Chinese leaders had expected, and before the end of March, Moscow was making thinly veiled nuclear threats to pressure China to back down. Chinese leaders initially dismissed these warnings, only to radically upgrade their threat assessment once they learned that the Soviets had privately discussed nuclear attack plans with other countries. Moscow never intended to follow through on its nuclear threat, archives would later reveal, but Chinese leaders believed otherwise. On three separate occasions, they were convinced that a Soviet nuclear attack was imminent. Once, when Moscow sent representatives to talks in Beijing, China suspected that the plane transporting the delegation was in fact carrying nuclear weapons. Increasingly fearful, China test-fired a thermonuclear weapon in the Lop Nur desert and put its rudimentary nuclear forces on alert—a dangerous step in itself, as it increased the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch. Only after numerous preparations for Soviet nuclear attacks that never came did Beijing finally agree to negotiations. China is a different country today than it was in the time of Mao Zedong, but the 1969 conflict offers important lessons. China started a war in which it believed nuclear weapons would be irrelevant, even though the Soviet arsenal was several orders of magnitude larger than China’s, just as the U.S. arsenal dwarfs China’s today. Once the conventional war did not go as planned, the Chinese reversed their assessment of the possibility of a nuclear attack to a degree bordering on paranoia. Most worrying, China signaled that it was actually considering using its nuclear weapons, even though it had to expect devastating retaliation. Ambiguous wartime information and worst-case thinking led it to take nuclear risks it would have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today. Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response the smoke from 'their' burning cities (incinerated by 'us') will still make 'our' country (and the rest of the world) uninhabitable, potentially inducing global famine lasting up to decades. Toon and Robock note in ‘Self Assured Destruction’, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 68/5, 2012, that: 13. “A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self assured destruction. Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs--only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenal's explosive power--as air bursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade.” 14. A conflagration involving USA/NATO forces and those of Russian federation would most likely cause the deaths of most/nearly all/all humans (and severely impact/extinguish other species) as well as destroying the delicate interwoven techno-structure on which latter-day 'civilization' has come to depend. Temperatures would drop to below those of the last ice-age for up to 30 years as a result of the lofting of up to 180 million tonnes of very black soot into the stratosphere where it would remain for decades. 15. Though human ingenuity and resilience shouldn't be underestimated, human survival itself is arguably problematic, to put it mildly, under a 2000+ warhead USA/Russian federation scenario. 16. The Joint Statement on Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences signed October 2013 by 146 governments mentioned 'Human Survival' no less than 5 times. The most recent (December 2014) one gives it a highly prominent place. Gareth Evans’ ICNND (International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) Report made it clear that it saw the threat posed by nuclear weapons use as one that at least threatens what we now call 'civilization' and that potentially threatens human survival with an immediacy that even climate change does not, though we can see the results of climate change here and now and of course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
1AC: Framework The standard is maximizing expected well-being, or hedonistic act utilitarianism. 1 Neuroscience- pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/ R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. 2 Actor spec —governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied. 3 No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
Impact calc – 1 Extinction outweighs – A Reversibility- it forecloses the alternative because we can’t improve society if we are all dead B Structural violence- death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities C Objectivity- body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical D Uncertainty- if we’re unsure about which interpretation of the world is true, we should preserve the world to keep debating about it
2 Calc indicts fail – A Ethics- it would indict everything since they use events to understand how their ethics have worked B Reciprocity- they are NIBs that create a 2:1 skew where I have to answer them to access offense while they only have to win one C Internalism- asking why we value pain and pleasure is nonsensical cuz the answer is intrinsic since we just do, which means we still prefer hedonism despite shortcomings. 1AC: Underview 1 1AR theory is legit – anything else means infinite abuse – drop the debater, competing interps, and the highest layer – 1AR are too short to make up for the time trade-off – no RVIs – 6 min 2NR means they can brute force me every time. 2 Give me 30 speaks to rectify pre-existing biases 3 Interpretation: The negative must concede the affirmative framework if it is not morally repugnant and the advocacy is topical and disclosed Violation: they didn’t Prefer- 1 Time skew- Winning the negative framework moots 6 minutes of 1AC offense – that outweighs on quantifiability and reversibility – I can’t get back time lost and it’s the only way to measure abuse 2 Topic Ed- Every debate would just be a framework debate which means we never get access to core topic lit – that outweighs on time frame – we only have 2 months
11/6/21
NovDec - AC - China v2
Tournament: Apple Valley | Round: 3 | Opponent: Scarsdale BS | Judge: Austin Broussard 1AC: Plan Plan – A just government of the People’s Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike. That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent. Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there are strikes every day. Factory workers, hotel employees, teachers and taxi drivers regularly withdraw their labor and demand a better deal from their employer. Strikes are often successful, and these days strike leaders hardly ever get put in prison. It may seem ironic that workers in a nominally Communist country don’t have the right to strike, and that workers are apparently willing to defy the Communist Party by going out on strike. But China effectively abandoned Communism and embraced capitalism many years ago. And in a capitalist economy, strikes are a fact of life. Chinese scholars, government officials and even some businessmen have long recognized this fact and have called for the restoration of the right to strike, which was removed from the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China in 1982. Deng Xiaoping feared that the economic reforms he was introducing would lead to labor unrest. Although Deng and his successors were able to quiet labor unrest and strike action for a while, the trend over the last five years or so has been clear. As the business leader Zeng Qinghong noted recently, the number of strikes is increasing every year. Mr. Zeng, who is head of the Guangzhou Automobile Co., reported that in just two months last summer, there were more than 20 strikes in the automotive industry in the Pearl River Delta alone, and that new strikes were occurring all the time. Mr. Zeng suggested in a submission to this year’s National People’s Congress, China’s annual legislature, that the right to strike should be restored because it was a basic right of workers in a market economy and a natural adjunct to the right to work. I agree with Mr. Zeng on this point and would like to take his argument one step further. The right to strike is clearly important, but the most vital and fundamental right of workers is the right to collective bargaining. After all, why do workers go out on strike? Very simply, they go on strike for higher pay and better working conditions. The strike is not an end in itself but is part of a bargaining process. And if the collective bargaining process were more effective, in many cases, workers would not need to go out on strike at all. If you talk to factory workers, most will tell you they would rather not go on strike if they can avoid it. Indeed, most only go on strike because they have no alternative. China’s workers want and need an alternative. They want a system in which they can raise their demands for higher pay and discuss those demands in peaceful, equal and constructive negotiations with management. If workers can achieve their goals through peaceful collective bargaining, in the long run there will be fewer strikes, workers will be better paid and labor relations will be vastly improved. We also have to be aware that if the right to strike is reinstated in the Constitution in isolation — without the right to collective bargaining — there would be a danger that the right of workers to go on strike might actually be eroded. Just look at the right to stage a public demonstration. Chinese citizens do have the constitutional right to demonstrate but in reality they have to apply to the police for permission, and of course very few of those applications are granted. Likewise, if workers have to apply to the authorities before they can go on strike, the right to strike will become meaningless. Moreover, the number of strikes would not be reduced because workers would continue to go out on strike regardless and labor relations will deteriorate even further. On the other hand, if the right to strike is framed in a way that can liberate workers and encourage and empower them to engage in collective bargaining, safe in the knowledge that they have a powerful weapon that can be deployed if necessary, labor relations will be enhanced and the number of strikes might actually decrease. There is a saying in China that “you should not only focus on your head when you have headache because the real reason for the headache could be your foot.” As Mr. Zeng noted, the rapidly increasing number of strikes in China has become a major headache, not only for business but for the government as well. If the government wants to reduce the number of strikes in China, it needs to take a holistic approach and address the root cause of the problem — the absence of an effective collective bargaining system in which democratically elected workers’ representatives can negotiate better pay and conditions with their employer. If such a system can be implemented in China it would obviously benefit workers but it would also benefit employers like Mr. Zeng who are concerned about high worker turnover and the loss of production through strike action. Crucially, it is also in the interest of the Chinese government to introduce collective bargaining. The authorities may be nervous about handing power to the workers but they should bear in mind that by doing so they would aid the development of more harmonious labor relations, which could lead to the Communist Party’s goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Soft Power Adv Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes. Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen collective bargaining as the cure for the country’s severe labour problems. The logic underlying this was often unstated, but straightforward: collective bargaining was crucial for twentieth century labour movements in capitalist countries in giving workers a voice and creating a more equitable social distribution of wealth. With growing levels of labour unrest in China over the past twenty years, collective bargaining seemed like a logical next step. Hopeful reformers—both within the official unions as well as labour NGO activists and academics—envisioned rationalised, legalised bargaining between labour and capital as a central pillar in the construction of a more just workplace and society. The challenges to institutionalising a robust collective bargaining system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have always been profound. Fundamental to labour relations theory is that collective bargaining rights must be accompanied by the right to strike and freedom of association—capital has no reason to take workers seriously without labour possessing some coercive power. But independent unions have long been an anathema to the Communist Party. From the Lai Ruoyu debacle of the 1950s to the crushing of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation in 1989, the Party has made it clear time and again that independent worker organisations are forbidden. Although workers have never enjoyed the right to strike in practice, the right was formally included in the Chinese constitutions of 1975 and 1978. It was Deng Xiaoping who removed it from the constitution just as private capital began pouring into China in the early 1980s. Working Within the System Nonetheless, with no signs of articulated worker movements since 1989, many well-intentioned people thought it was worth trying to advance worker rights within the system. Especially from the mid 2000s on, academics (myself included) launched research projects, NGOs held training sessions, and foreign unions engaged with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Many assumed that the state would eventually decide that worker insurgency was exacting too high a cost, and that serious labour reforms were therefore necessary. And indeed, beginning in the late 2000s the ACFTU made collective negotiations (xieshang)—rather than the more antagonistic sounding ‘bargaining’ (tanpan)—a high priority, investing time and resources into expanding the coverage of collective contracts. At its best, collective bargaining in China has been woefully inadequate. The state and the ACFTU have been very cautious about controlling workers’ aspirations, and have insisted on the fundamental harmony of interests between labour and capital. Experiments with bargaining have been almost exclusively restricted to single enterprises, thereby preventing workers from constituting cross-workplace ties. The overwhelming majority of collective contracts are formulaic: actual bargaining rarely occurs, and enforcement is largely non-existent. The few shining examples where employers have made real compromises during collective bargaining have followed autonomously organised wildcat strikes. The best-known case is the 2010 strike from a Honda transmission plant in Guangdong province, which resulted in major wage gains as well as an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to reform the enterprise union. It is not coincidental that substantive worker-led bargaining is much more likely in Japanese or American firms, where the state must be cautious not to inflame patriotic sentiments. State-sanctioned economic nationalism is a shaky foundation for a robust collective bargaining system. The Death of Collective Bargaining under Xi Even these timid efforts have been smothered in recent years, as the central government has turned in a markedly anti-worker direction under Xi Jinping. There was a brief moment in 2010 when discussion about the right to strike emerged from hushed whispers into the public discourse. But this opening was ephemeral, and union reformers in Guangdong who had pushed gentle reforms in the mid-late 2000s were replaced with typical Party apparatchiks. The country’s pre-eminent centre for labour studies at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou was shuttered. The academic study of employment has now been left almost entirely to business schools, as the government has stymied further expansion of labour relations programs. Labour NGOs in Guangzhou were subjected to a brutal crackdown in December 2015, with the government specifically targeting those groups that had been helping workers to engage in collective negotiations to resolve strikes. And the ACFTU has seemingly given up on advancing collective negotiations altogether. The Chairman of the ACFTU Li Jianguo does not even mention the term in his speeches anymore. Under the ‘work developments’ section of the ACFTU’s website, a lonely single report on collective contracts for the entirety of 2016 is a stark indication that the union has almost totally forsaken this agenda. Collective bargaining is not dead in the sense that it will disappear from China’s labour-capital relations. It is almost certain that official unions will continue to pursue bargaining in its current vacuous, bureaucratic, and worker-exclusionary form. Collective contracts will continue to be signed, tabulated, and then hidden from view from workers. Somewhat less pessimistically, workers will continue to force management to bargain with the collective via wildcat strikes. This latter form will still be an important means by which workers can attempt to ensure their most basic rights, and these efforts are absolutely worth supporting. But collective bargaining is dead as a political aim. It is not going to be the cornerstone of twentieth century-style class compromise in China, it is not generative of worker power, and it certainly does not herald broader social transformation. To the extent that legal bargaining does develop, it will be as a mechanism for the state to deprive workers of autonomous power. What then might Chinese workers and allied intellectuals and activists aim for? At the risk of stating the obvious, the working class needs more power. The question is, how to foster proletarian power in the face of a highly competent authoritarian state that views organised workers as an existential threat? In the absence of independent organisations, the only option is an intensification of already widespread worker insurgency. The more wildcat strikes, mass direct action, and worker riots, the more the state and capital will be forced to take worker grievances seriously. Of course such forms of collective action come at great risk for workers, and many have already paid a high price. In any particular case, the risks may certainly outweigh the benefits. But in the aggregate, expansive unrest is just what the working class needs. With the institutions firmly oriented towards advancing the inter-related goals of state domination and exploitation by capital, disruption on a large scale is the only chance workers have of forcing change. Ungovernability will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name. Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists. Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu Guijun in May 2013 reportedly for participating in a peaceful labor protest. Prior to his detention, Wu was one of seven elected labor representatives involved in collective bargaining with his employer. Labor advocates have condemned Wu’s detention and expressed concern that he has been held for an extended period of time without being formally indicted. Wu’s case illustrates the challenges Chinese workers face engaging in collective bargaining to resolve workplace grievances. On May 23, 2013, public security officials in Bao’an district, Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker Wu Guijun, after he reportedly participated in a local Bao’an labor protest.1 Employed at the Diweixin manufacturing factory (“Diweixin”) in Bao’an, Wu was one of seven elected labor representatives negotiating with factory management on a resolution to a near month-long labor dispute. Workers staged a public protest after management failed to agree to collective bargaining demands, including worker compensation for a proposed factory closure. As a result of the protest, authorities detained a number of protesters, including Wu. According to his lawyer, Wu now faces possible criminal prosecution for “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order,” a crime punishable by three to seven years’ imprisonment under Article 290 of the PRC Criminal Law.2 Background on Wu’s Case In early May 2013, workers at Diweixin, a Hong Kong-owned factory, initiated a strike in response to management plans to close and relocate manufacturing operations from Shenzhen to Huizhou municipality, Guangdong.3 Seeking severance compensation in connection with the factory’s closure, workers elected Wu, along with six others, to advance their demands in collective negotiations with factory management. According to multiple reports, management repeatedly refused to cooperate with the representatives for more than two weeks of collective negotiations, reportedly offering at one point to provide workers with compensation below the legal minimum required by law.4 In an attempt to pressure local authorities to intervene in the dispute, 300 workers marched on May 23 to the Shenzhen municipal government.5 Local public security reportedly intervened in the march, detaining as many as 200 workers, including Wu. Authorities released a majority of those detained the following day and others in the succeeding weeks, but authorities continued to detain Wu, eventually placing him under criminal detention.6 Labor advocates have expressed concern that authorities have held Wu for an extended period of time without being indicted.7 In October 2013, procuratorate officials returned Wu’s case to public security officials for additional investigation.8 According to Wu’s lawyer, the Bao’an district procuratorate twice rejected indicting Wu—apparently on the charge of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order”—due to insufficient evidence.9 Reactions to Wu’s Detention Fellow workers, academics, and labor advocates have criticized Wu’s detention. On September 27, 2013, 32 Chinese and international labor organizations cosigned a petition expressing concern that the collective actions taken by Diweixin workers resulted in detentions and the potential criminal prosecution of Wu, despite protections provided under the PRC Constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly.10 Signatories stressed that “Wu and other worker leaders were alone in their struggle without receiving support from the trade union,” and called on authorities to “defend the worker’s right to strike” and release Wu. In a September 11, 2013, open letter to the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions, Wu’s coworkers called his detention a “bad precedent” that would cause “workers striking in the future to face the risk of prosecution.”11 According to the letter, such a situation would “intensify social contradictions and influence social harmony.” Workers urged the Shenzhen Federation of Trade Unions to fulfill its “core responsibility” to protect workers’ rights and to pressure local authorities to release Wu. Continued Challenges for Collective Bargaining Wu’s case illustrates the continued challenges Chinese workers face pursuing collective bargaining to resolve workplace grievances. The Commission’s 2013 Annual Report noted that demographic and economic shifts have provided workers with greater bargaining power in the workplace, increasing their determination to redress grievances and press for better pay and working conditions.12 While the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)—China’s sole official trade union under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party—has promoted collective contract and wage bargaining to address workers’ grievances and maintain “harmonious” labor relations, a general lack of autonomy and genuine worker representation in enterprise-level unions continues to limit ACFTU-led collective bargaining.13 According to Wan Xiangdong, a professor and deputy director of the labor research and service center at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, government and local trade union officials continue to approach labor disputes through the perspective of maintaining social stability and protecting against economic losses, which places workers at a marked disadvantage.14 Wu’s case also highlights the risk workers face by engaging in collective bargaining without trade unions. A December 7, 2012, China Labour Bulletin report, indicated that labor representatives “have suffered reprisals after taking part in collective bargaining with management,” including forced resignations, firings, and detention.15 The report notes that despite some successful cases of worker-led collective bargaining, a lack of “any clear defined legal protection” for labor representatives makes them susceptible to retaliation, necessitating “protection from both the law and a fully functioning trade union.” As a member of the International Labor Organization (ILO), China is obligated to respect, promote, and realize the principles of freedom of association and the “effective recognition” of the right to collective bargaining.16 The Right to Strike re-balances China’s Economy. Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet the proposed Regulations on the Democratic Management of Enterprises, now being debated by the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, could give Chinese labor the ultimate—and until now taboo—bargaining tool: an officially sanctioned right to strike. "This has been a no-go area in China for decades," says Robin Munro, deputy director at the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin. All Chinese workers belong to one union, but it wields little power. "This is the first time ever Chinese authorities have said it is O.K. to strike." The draft law could take effect by this fall in Guangdong, the industrialized coastal province where Honda (HMC) workers in June illegally and successfully struck for higher wages. The proposed law is seen by many activists and researchers as a trial balloon before a possible national rollout. The rules: If one-fifth or more of a company's staff demands collective bargaining, then management must discuss workers' grievances. Before talks begin, the union must elect local worker representatives. Until now, union reps came from management ranks. The next section of the proposed law ventures into even more radical territory. For six decades, picketing and disrupting production have been illegal and subject to harsh punishment. Under the Guangdong proposal, as long as workers first try negotiating and refrain from violence, they're allowed to strike. Though the draft could still get watered down, the fact that officials are even considering legalizing strikes signals a sea change. The party's moves are an attempt to recognize—and regulate—what is already happening. "Every month there are hundreds of strikes," says Chang Kai, a labor relations professor at Renmin University of China who advised the Honda workers. "What the government is concerned about is whether it can control these strikes or not." Formalizing workers' rights could also advance China's goal of rebalancing the economy. "There is a new emphasis on how to reduce the wage gap and get consumers to spend more," says Chang-Hee Lee, an industrial relations expert at the International Labour Organization's Beijing office. "This is not very easy to accomplish unless workers have more bargaining power." The bottom line: A proposed law being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers. Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth. Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master’s degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the government. Individual households capture only around 40 percent of China’s GDP compared to around 70 percent in the United States. Inequality has soared. China’s official Gini coefficient is at 0.47 (independent analyses put the number considerably higher) compared to 0.39 in the U.S. “Chinese workers are underpaid and overtaxed, so they can’t afford to spend as much on goods and services,” said Mathew Klein of Barron’s. “The result is that Chinese businesses systematically generate a surplus of goods that gets dumped on the rest of the world, which in turn leads to some combination of deindustrialization and rising indebtedness.” Concern for the United States’ industrial capacity has led populists to rally for “decoupling.” For its part, China would also prefer to not rely on the United States for consumers and technology. In a recent speech to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Dialogues, Xi Jinping was clear that “making domestic consumption the main driver of its growth” is the priority for China. While parties on both sides have called for a distancing, the counties’ asset-holding elites have become further entwined. Promising a fairer deal with China, former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a tariff war in 2018, which reached a partial resolution with the Phase One deal on January 15, 2020. The deal dovetailed with China’s domestic efforts to remove barriers on financial services and strengthen intellectual property rights. On April 1, 2020 China removed the caps on foreign ownership of financial services, letting U.S. firms soak up more of the profits from their operations in China. The Wall Street giants were quick to respond. Within days, JP Morgan committed $1 billion to buy the other 49 percent of its joint venture in China. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley soon followed. This just added to the steady increase in U.S. investment into China over the last two decades. Additionally, $2.2 trillion worth of Chinese companies are capitalized on U.S. markets. These financial entanglements indicate that distancing can only lead to a “messy divorce,” according to Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago. “They are tied together in so many ways – trade, investment, tourism, student and academic exchanges – as well as distrustful on so many issues,” Rajan said. “Looks like a bad marriage to me, and they need to figure out how they work out their differences.” Since a total decoupling is not in the cards, could the Biden administration’s approach to the U.S.-China relationship bear fruit for workers when one considers that any worker related demand is likely to have to be balanced against the interests of the financial sector? Policy Opportunities Since the 1990s even when labor provisions were secured in trade agreements, there was little hope of enforcement. Though 14 U.S. free trade agreements have labor provisions, only seven complaints have ever been submitted and only one resolved. This, however, may be changing. “Trump’s ham-fisted, clumsy, cynical, ignorant, desire to approach trade from a different angle did allow for greater attention to issues like labor rights than anyone thought was possible,” said Trevor Sutton from the Center for American Progress. When the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a.k.a. NAFTA 2.0, was signed at the end of January, 2020 the list of people that celebrated it included Donald Trump’s brash conservative trade representative, Robert Lighthizer; AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka; and a folk singer named Ryan Harvey, who cut his teeth protesting the evils of capitalism before joining Global Trade Watch. In order to be in compliance, the Mexican Congress had to pass a new labor law. Employers in Mexico can be brought to a court chaired by the U.S. trade representative (USTR) and secretary of labor for violating their workers’ right to form a union. If the dispute is unable to be resolved bilaterally, then the United States may directly sanction the Mexican company for violating workers’ right to organize. The new NAFTA also mandates that 40-45 percent of car components be made by a worker earning at least $16 per hour, or be subject to tariffs. The USMCA will rely on activists to bring cases, something that has caused many to question its applicability in authoritarian contexts. The recent experience of Vietnam and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), however, may be more analogous to what could be possible with China. While the TPP was being negotiated, Vietnam’s manufacturing sector was experiencing a long wave of wildcat strikes. Many reformers believed the answer was to give workers a legal avenue to organize and collectively bargain. The TPP negotiations were able to provide cover for the reformers in this system and nudge the skeptics to reform Vietnam’s labor laws. Though the labor agreement fell apart when the United States pulled out of the TPP, Vietnam has recently legalized “worker representative organizations at the enterprise level,” said Joe Buckley of Vietnam Labor Update. It has also signed on to certain International Labor Organization (ILO) collective bargaining conventions that strengthen workers’ right to organize, a first for the one party “socialist” state. A Worker-First Approach to China Like Vietnam, China’s industrial sector faced a wave of strikes in the 2000s and 2010s. In China, just as in Vietnam, reformers in the country’s single party-controlled union federation began to experiment with collective bargaining, especially in the manufacturing hub of Guangdong province. Talk about instituting a “right to strike” emerged amidst a strike wave in 2010. Then came 2013. Xi Jinping took the reins of the Communist Party and set out to remake China and the crackdowns began. Labor NGOs, labor studies professors, progressive labor lawyers, and even Marxist students have been shut down, arrested or otherwise silenced. “Although China enacted a series of pro-worker laws in the late 2000s, many of these provisions are poorly implemented,” said Eli Friedman, professor at Cornell University (Disclosure: Eli Friedman is one of the author’s supervisors at the China Labor Translation Project). “As has been the case in countless other countries, China would likely experience reduced inequality and greater domestic consumption if independent trade unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims.” China’s Economy is hosed and threatened by rampant Inequality gaps that devastate consumption. Bloomberg 21 1-19-2021 "China’s Wide Income Gap Undercut Spending as Growth Recovers" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-18/china-s-strong-growth-masks-unbalanced-recovery-as-incomes-lagElmer China’s successful control of Covid-19 made it the only major economy to have grown last year, but wide income inequality and still weak consumer spending reflects an unbalanced recovery. Here’s a deeper look at some of the data published alongside the gross domestic product report this week: Income Gap Official figures released on Monday which showed that the economy’s growth rate surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the last quarter also revealed that the richest 20 of Chinese had an average disposable income of more than 80,000 yuan ($12,000) last year, 10.2 times what the poorest 20 earn. The multiple in the U.S. is about 8.4 and closer to 5 in Western European countries such as Germany and France, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. By this measure, China’s inequality levels are comparable with Mexico, where the top 20 earn 10.4 times the bottom 20. President Xi Jinping has flagged the country’s unequal income distribution as a threat to its future growth, with officials considering more redistributive policies to encourage household spending. While inequality didn’t surge in China due to the pandemic, the data showed officials have made little headway in reducing it, with the income gap remaining largely stable since 2015. Weak Consumption The full-year 2020 data also showed that even though China’s suppression of the virus allowed normal economic activities to resume by the second half of the year, growth in household spending has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. China’s per-capita consumption, after adjusting for inflation, dropped 4 in 2020. That’s comparable with forecasts for U.S. personal consumption spending, which is projected to have fallen 3.8 in 2020, according to a Bloomberg survey. Retail sales declined 3.9 in 2020 from the previous year, a steeper fall than in developed economies such as the U.S., where government payments to workers stuck at home and unemployed supported spending on consumer goods. In common with other economies, China’s spending on services suffered more than spending on goods due to closures and fear of the virus, with an almost 17 drop in spending at restaurants last year. Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan. Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 “China’s Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection” https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of a recession in China. We learned this, or should have, during the 1997 to 1998 Asian crisis. China may have had a disguised recession or near recession in 1998, but it was in a much smaller economy. Apart from that one episode there is no collective memory of recession and how to deal with it. As such, China is now psychologically unprepared to deal with the challenges of a recession. China’s coming recession will be accompanied by a large uncontrolled devaluation of the RMB as foreign exchange reserves evaporate, so it will be impossible to conceal this time. All asset prices, including housing prices, will be hit. Combine the shock of an unexpected economic setback with tensions in a one party state where a single individual has been calling the shots, and political instability could set in. While Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has not eliminated corruption, it has created many enemies who are biding their time. Minxin Pei has documented the activities of China’s powerful corruption networks. These networks, not a debilitated civil society, represent the alternative government of China. Competition between them could easily be destabilizing in a winner-take-all political environment. While our understanding of elite politics in China is poor, a recession would likely discredit the existing leadership and set off intense competition between corrupt factions for control of China. Bo Xilai, a former Chongqing party chief and Politburo member, was purged in 2012 but his son appears to still be interested in politics. While the outcome is impossible to predict, we can see the conditions in place for destabilizing events ranging from military adventurism to civil war. Alternatively, the regime could reassert its stability through increased repression, which would make China harder to deal with and would spill over into the Chinese diaspora. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has never had a real economic base. It is all about power projection (such as the Gwadar port) and would quickly be dropped by Beijing as a post-crisis China becomes focused on domestic political and economic stability. Any Chinese military adventurism is likely to be focused on Taiwan. China’s military is currently poorly equipped for an invasion of Taiwan, which has difficult geography and a substantial military, making an invasion of Taiwan unlikely to succeed. However, it is possible the Chinese leadership would miscalculate the risks, leaving it in a limited war with no clear resolution that would quickly draw in Japan and the United States. China has spent most of its history disunited, reflecting its geography. It has a number of widely dispersed economic centers. It was in outright civil war as recently as the 1960s. If competition between political factions remains unresolved, a civil war could develop, leaving China as a battleground where Russia, Japan, and the United States seek to influence the outcome. This scenario would stall or even end China’s rise as a global military and political power. Taiwan goes Nuclear. Talmadge 18 Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, “Beijing’s Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control,” accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018re-cut by Elmer As China’s power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the risk of war with the United States. Under President Xi Jinping, China has increased its political and economic pressure on Taiwan and built military installations on coral reefs in the South China Sea, fueling Washington’s fears that Chinese expansionism will threaten U.S. allies and influence in the region. U.S. destroyers have transited the Taiwan Strait, to loud protests from Beijing. American policymakers have wondered aloud whether they should send an aircraft carrier through the strait as well. Chinese fighter jets have intercepted U.S. aircraft in the skies above the South China Sea. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has brought long-simmering economic disputes to a rolling boil. A war between the two countries remains unlikely, but the prospect of a military confrontation—resulting, for example, from a Chinese campaign against Taiwan—no longer seems as implausible as it once did. And the odds of such a confrontation going nuclear are higher than most policymakers and analysts think. Members of China’s strategic community tend to dismiss such concerns. Likewise, U.S. studies of a potential war with China often exclude nuclear weapons from the analysis entirely, treating them as basically irrelevant to the course of a conflict. Asked about the issue in 2015, Dennis Blair, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, estimated the likelihood of a U.S.-Chinese nuclear crisis as “somewhere between nil and zero.” This assurance is misguided. If deployed against China, the Pentagon’s preferred style of conventional warfare would be a potential recipe for nuclear escalation. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States’ signature approach to war has been simple: punch deep into enemy territory in order to rapidly knock out the opponent’s key military assets at minimal cost. But the Pentagon developed this formula in wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Serbia, none of which was a nuclear power. China, by contrast, not only has nuclear weapons; it has also intermingled them with its conventional military forces, making it difficult to attack one without attacking the other. This means that a major U.S. military campaign targeting China’s conventional forces would likely also threaten its nuclear arsenal. Faced with such a threat, Chinese leaders could decide to use their nuclear weapons while they were still able to. As U.S. and Chinese leaders navigate a relationship fraught with mutual suspicion, they must come to grips with the fact that a conventional war could skid into a nuclear confrontation. Although this risk is not high in absolute terms, its consequences for the region and the world would be devastating. As long as the United States and China continue to pursue their current grand strategies, the risk is likely to endure. This means that leaders on both sides should dispense with the illusion that they can easily fight a limited war. They should focus instead on managing or resolving the political, economic, and military tensions that might lead to a conflict in the first place. A NEW KIND OF THREAT There are some reasons for optimism. For one, China has long stood out for its nonaggressive nuclear doctrine. After its first nuclear test, in 1964, China largely avoided the Cold War arms race, building a much smaller and simpler nuclear arsenal than its resources would have allowed. Chinese leaders have consistently characterized nuclear weapons as useful only for deterring nuclear aggression and coercion. Historically, this narrow purpose required only a handful of nuclear weapons that could ensure Chinese retaliation in the event of an attack. To this day, China maintains a “no first use” pledge, promising that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. The prospect of a nuclear conflict can also seem like a relic of the Cold War. Back then, the United States and its allies lived in fear of a Warsaw Pact offensive rapidly overrunning Europe. NATO stood ready to use nuclear weapons first to stalemate such an attack. Both Washington and Moscow also consistently worried that their nuclear forces could be taken out in a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear strike by the other side. This mutual fear increased the risk that one superpower might rush to launch in the erroneous belief that it was already under attack. Initially, the danger of unauthorized strikes also loomed large. In the 1950s, lax safety procedures for U.S. nuclear weapons stationed on NATO soil, as well as minimal civilian oversight of U.S. military commanders, raised a serious risk that nuclear escalation could have occurred without explicit orders from the U.S. president. The good news is that these Cold War worries have little bearing on U.S.-Chinese relations today. Neither country could rapidly overrun the other’s territory in a conventional war. Neither seems worried about a nuclear bolt from the blue. And civilian political control of nuclear weapons is relatively strong in both countries. What remains, in theory, is the comforting logic of mutual deterrence: in a war between two nuclear powers, neither side will launch a nuclear strike for fear that its enemy will respond in kind. The bad news is that one other trigger remains: a conventional war that threatens China’s nuclear arsenal. Conventional forces can threaten nuclear forces in ways that generate pressures to escalate—especially when ever more capable U.S. conventional forces face adversaries with relatively small and fragile nuclear arsenals, such as China. If U.S. operations endangered or damaged China’s nuclear forces, Chinese leaders might come to think that Washington had aims beyond winning the conventional war—that it might be seeking to disable or destroy China’s nuclear arsenal outright, perhaps as a prelude to regime change. In the fog of war, Beijing might reluctantly conclude that limited nuclear escalation—an initial strike small enough that it could avoid full-scale U.S. retaliation—was a viable option to defend itself. STRAIT SHOOTERS The most worrisome flash point for a U.S.-Chinese war is Taiwan. Beijing’s long-term objective of reunifying the island with mainland China is clearly in conflict with Washington’s longstanding desire to maintain the status quo in the strait. It is not difficult to imagine how this might lead to war. For example, China could decide that the political or military window for regaining control over the island was closing and launch an attack, using air and naval forces to blockade Taiwanese harbors or bombard the island. Although U.S. law does not require Washington to intervene in such a scenario, the Taiwan Relations Act states that the United States will “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.” Were Washington to intervene on Taipei’s behalf, the world’s sole superpower and its rising competitor would find themselves in the first great-power war of the twenty-first century. In the course of such a war, U.S. conventional military operations would likely threaten, disable, or outright eliminate some Chinese nuclear capabilities—whether doing so was Washington’s stated objective or not. In fact, if the United States engaged in the style of warfare it has practiced over the last 30 years, this outcome would be all but guaranteed. Consider submarine warfare. China could use its conventionally armed attack submarines to blockade Taiwanese harbors or bomb the island, or to attack U.S. and allied forces in the region. If that happened, the U.S. Navy would almost certainly undertake an antisubmarine campaign, which would likely threaten China’s “boomers,” the four nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines that form its naval nuclear deterrent. China’s conventionally armed and nuclear-armed submarines share the same shore-based communications system; a U.S. attack on these transmitters would thus not only disrupt the activities of China’s attack submarine force but also cut off its boomers from contact with Beijing, leaving Chinese leaders unsure of the fate of their naval nuclear force. In addition, nuclear ballistic missile submarines depend on attack submarines for protection, just as lumbering bomber aircraft rely on nimble fighter jets. If the United States started sinking Chinese attack submarines, it would be sinking the very force that protects China’s ballistic missile submarines, leaving the latter dramatically more vulnerable. Even more dangerous, U.S. forces hunting Chinese attack submarines could inadvertently sink a Chinese boomer instead. After all, at least some Chinese attack submarines might be escorting ballistic missile submarines, especially in wartime, when China might flush its boomers from their ports and try to send them within range of the continental United States. Since correctly identifying targets remains one of the trickiest challenges of undersea warfare, a U.S. submarine crew might come within shooting range of a Chinese submarine without being sure of its type, especially in a crowded, noisy environment like the Taiwan Strait. Platitudes about caution are easy in peacetime. In wartime, when Chinese attack submarines might already have launched deadly strikes, the U.S. crew might decide to shoot first and ask questions later. Adding to China’s sense of vulnerability, the small size of its nuclear-armed submarine force means that just two such incidents would eliminate half of its sea-based deterrent. Meanwhile, any Chinese boomers that escaped this fate would likely be cut off from communication with onshore commanders, left without an escort force, and unable to return to destroyed ports. If that happened, China would essentially have no naval nuclear deterrent. The situation is similar onshore, where any U.S. military campaign would have to contend with China’s growing land-based conventional ballistic missile force. Much of this force is within range of Taiwan, ready to launch ballistic missiles against the island or at any allies coming to its aid. Once again, U.S. victory would hinge on the ability to degrade this conventional ballistic missile force. And once again, it would be virtually impossible to do so while leaving China’s nuclear ballistic missile force unscathed. Chinese conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles are often attached to the same base headquarters, meaning that they likely share transportation and supply networks, patrol routes, and other supporting infrastructure. It is also possible that they share some command-and-control networks, or that the United States would be unable to distinguish between the conventional and nuclear networks even if they were physically separate. To add to the challenge, some of China’s ballistic missiles can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead, and the two versions are virtually indistinguishable to U.S. aerial surveillance. In a war, targeting the conventional variants would likely mean destroying some nuclear ones in the process. Furthermore, sending manned aircraft to attack Chinese missile launch sites and bases would require at least partial control of the airspace over China, which in turn would require weakening Chinese air defenses. But degrading China’s coastal air defense network in order to fight a conventional war would also leave much of its nuclear force without protection. Once China was under attack, its leaders might come to fear that even intercontinental ballistic missiles located deep in the country’s interior were vulnerable. For years, observers have pointed to the U.S. military’s failed attempts to locate and destroy Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1990–91 Gulf War as evidence that mobile missiles are virtually impervious to attack. Therefore, the thinking goes, China could retain a nuclear deterrent no matter what harm U.S. forces inflicted on its coastal areas. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles are larger and less mobile than the Iraqi Scuds were, and they are harder to move without detection. The United States is also likely to have been tracking them much more closely in peacetime. As a result, China is unlikely to view a failed Scud hunt in Iraq nearly 30 years ago as reassurance that its residual nuclear force is safe today, especially during an ongoing, high-intensity conventional war. China’s vehement criticism of a U.S. regional missile defense system designed to guard against a potential North Korean attack already reflects these latent fears. Beijing’s worry is that this system could help Washington block the handful of missiles China might launch in the aftermath of a U.S. attack on its arsenal. That sort of campaign might seem much more plausible in Beijing’s eyes if a conventional war had already begun to seriously undermine other parts of China’s nuclear deterrent. It does not help that China’s real-time awareness of the state of its forces would probably be limited, since blinding the adversary is a standard part of the U.S. military playbook. Put simply, the favored U.S. strategy to ensure a conventional victory would likely endanger much of China’s nuclear arsenal in the process, at sea and on land. Whether the United States actually intended to target all of China’s nuclear weapons would be incidental. All that would matter is that Chinese leaders would consider them threatened. LESSONS FROM THE PAST At that point, the question becomes, How will China react? Will it practice restraint and uphold the “no first use” pledge once its nuclear forces appear to be under attack? Or will it use those weapons while it still can, gambling that limited escalation will either halt the U.S. campaign or intimidate Washington into backing down? Chinese writings and statements remain deliberately ambiguous on this point. It is unclear which exact set of capabilities China considers part of its core nuclear deterrent and which it considers less crucial. For example, if China already recognizes that its sea-based nuclear deterrent is relatively small and weak, then losing some of its ballistic missile submarines in a war might not prompt any radical discontinuity in its calculus. The danger lies in wartime developments that could shift China’s assumptions about U.S. intentions. If Beijing interprets the erosion of its sea- and land-based nuclear forces as a deliberate effort to destroy its nuclear deterrent, or perhaps even as a prelude to a nuclear attack, it might see limited nuclear escalation as a way to force an end to the conflict. For example, China could use nuclear weapons to instantaneously destroy the U.S. air bases that posed the biggest threat to its arsenal. It could also launch a nuclear strike with no direct military purpose—on an unpopulated area or at sea—as a way to signal that the United States had crossed a redline. If such escalation appears far-fetched, China’s history suggests otherwise. In 1969, similar dynamics brought China to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In early March of that year, Chinese troops ambushed Soviet guards amid rising tensions over a disputed border area. Less than two weeks later, the two countries were fighting an undeclared border war with heavy artillery and aircraft. The conflict quickly escalated beyond what Chinese leaders had expected, and before the end of March, Moscow was making thinly veiled nuclear threats to pressure China to back down. Chinese leaders initially dismissed these warnings, only to radically upgrade their threat assessment once they learned that the Soviets had privately discussed nuclear attack plans with other countries. Moscow never intended to follow through on its nuclear threat, archives would later reveal, but Chinese leaders believed otherwise. On three separate occasions, they were convinced that a Soviet nuclear attack was imminent. Once, when Moscow sent representatives to talks in Beijing, China suspected that the plane transporting the delegation was in fact carrying nuclear weapons. Increasingly fearful, China test-fired a thermonuclear weapon in the Lop Nur desert and put its rudimentary nuclear forces on alert—a dangerous step in itself, as it increased the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch. Only after numerous preparations for Soviet nuclear attacks that never came did Beijing finally agree to negotiations. China is a different country today than it was in the time of Mao Zedong, but the 1969 conflict offers important lessons. China started a war in which it believed nuclear weapons would be irrelevant, even though the Soviet arsenal was several orders of magnitude larger than China’s, just as the U.S. arsenal dwarfs China’s today. Once the conventional war did not go as planned, the Chinese reversed their assessment of the possibility of a nuclear attack to a degree bordering on paranoia. Most worrying, China signaled that it was actually considering using its nuclear weapons, even though it had to expect devastating retaliation. Ambiguous wartime information and worst-case thinking led it to take nuclear risks it would have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today. Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks - Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock’s 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans’ International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response the smoke from 'their' burning cities (incinerated by 'us') will still make 'our' country (and the rest of the world) uninhabitable, potentially inducing global famine lasting up to decades. Toon and Robock note in ‘Self Assured Destruction’, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 68/5, 2012, that: 13. “A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self assured destruction. Even a 'small' nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombs--only about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenal's explosive power--as air bursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threatening the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth's surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade.” 14. A conflagration involving USA/NATO forces and those of Russian federation would most likely cause the deaths of most/nearly all/all humans (and severely impact/extinguish other species) as well as destroying the delicate interwoven techno-structure on which latter-day 'civilization' has come to depend. Temperatures would drop to below those of the last ice-age for up to 30 years as a result of the lofting of up to 180 million tonnes of very black soot into the stratosphere where it would remain for decades. 15. Though human ingenuity and resilience shouldn't be underestimated, human survival itself is arguably problematic, to put it mildly, under a 2000+ warhead USA/Russian federation scenario. 16. The Joint Statement on Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences signed October 2013 by 146 governments mentioned 'Human Survival' no less than 5 times. The most recent (December 2014) one gives it a highly prominent place. Gareth Evans’ ICNND (International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament) Report made it clear that it saw the threat posed by nuclear weapons use as one that at least threatens what we now call 'civilization' and that potentially threatens human survival with an immediacy that even climate change does not, though we can see the results of climate change here and now and of course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
1AC: Framework The standard is maximizing expected well-being, or hedonistic act utilitarianism. 1 Neuroscience- pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/ R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. 2 Actor spec —governments must use util because they don’t have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied. 3 No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
Impact calc – 1 Extinction outweighs – A Reversibility- it forecloses the alternative because we can’t improve society if we are all dead B Structural violence- death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities C Objectivity- body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical D Uncertainty- if we’re unsure about which interpretation of the world is true, we should preserve the world to keep debating about it
2 Calc indicts fail – A Ethics- it would indict everything since they use events to understand how their ethics have worked B Reciprocity- they are NIBs that create a 2:1 skew where I have to answer them to access offense while they only have to win one C Internalism- asking why we value pain and pleasure is nonsensical cuz the answer is intrinsic since we just do, which means we still prefer hedonism despite shortcomings. 1AC: Underview 1 1AR theory is legit – anything else means infinite abuse – drop the debater, competing interps, and the highest layer – 1AR are too short to make up for the time trade-off – no RVIs – 6 min 2NR means they can brute force me every time. 2 Give me 30 speaks to rectify pre-existing biases 3 Interpretation: The negative must concede the affirmative framework if it is not morally repugnant and the advocacy is topical and disclosed Violation: they didn’t Prefer- 1 Time skew- Winning the negative framework moots 6 minutes of 1AC offense – that outweighs on quantifiability and reversibility – I can’t get back time lost and it’s the only way to measure abuse 2 Topic Ed- Every debate would just be a framework debate which means we never get access to core topic lit – that outweighs on time frame – we only have 2 months
Plan – A just government of the People's Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent.
Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG~~#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there AND Communist Party's goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Soft Power Adv
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes.
Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen AND will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists.
Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu AND the "effective recognition" of the right to collective bargaining.~16~
The Right to Strike re-balances China's Economy.
Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet AND being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth.
Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master's degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the AND unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims."
China's Economy is hosed and threatened by rampant Inequality gaps that devastate consumption.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan.
Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 "China's Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection" https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of AND stall or even end China's rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear.
Talmadge 18 ~Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, "Beijing's Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control," accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018~re-cut by Elmer As China's power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the AND have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks
Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock's 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans' International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response AND course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
Chinese Economic Strength increases Economic Diplomacy Efforts, specifically OBOR, AND decreases need for Military Expansion.
Cai 18, Kevin G. "The one belt one road and the Asian infrastructure investment bank: Beijing's new strategy of geoeconomics and geopolitics." Journal of Contemporary China 27.114 (2018): 831-847. (Associate Professor at Renison University College, University of Waterloo, Canada)Elmer Fourthly, the OBOR and the AIIB were launched by Beijing as a diplomatic and AND broader sense, the initiatives could help further strengthen Beijing's third world diplomacy.
Solves Central Asian and South Asia War.
Muhammad et Al 19, Imraz, Arif Khan, and Saif ul Islam. "China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Peace, Prosperity and Conflict Resolution in the Region." (Lecturer, Department of Political Science, University of Buner)Elmer In the twenty first century, the geostrategic importance of South Asia is rising because AND peace and stability in the region and secure the CPEC from insecurity.15
South Asia War goes Nuclear and causes Extinction.
Menon 19 Prakash Menon, The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race, Nov 15, 2019, ~PhD from Madras University for his thesis "Limited War and Nuclear Deterrence in the Indo-Pak context"~ https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/the-nuclear-cloud-hanging-over-the-human-race/cid/1719608~~# SM The nuclear cloud hanging over the human race Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear AND for its incredibility and the utter stupidity of the use of nuclear weapons.
1AC: Framework
The standard is maximizing expected well-being, or hedonistic act utilitarianism.
1~ Neuroscience- pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses.
Blum et al. 18 ~Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, "Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies", U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/~~ R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines AND these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS.
2~ Actor spec —governments must use util because they don't have intentions and are constantly dealing with tradeoffs—outweighs since different agents have different obligations—takes out calc indicts since they are empirically denied.
3~ No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
4~ Death is bad and outweighs – a~ agents can't act if they fear for their bodily security which constrains every ethical theory, b~ it destroys the subject itself – kills any ability to achieve value in ethics since life is a prerequisite which means it's a side constraint since we can't reach the end goal of ethics without life
Impact calc –
1~ Extinction outweighs –
A~ Reversibility- it forecloses the alternative because we can't improve society if we are all dead
B~ Structural violence- death causes suffering because people can't get access to resources and basic necessities
C~ Objectivity- body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical
D~ Uncertainty- if we're unsure about which interpretation of the world is true, we should preserve the world to keep debating about it
1AC: Underview
1~ 1AR theory is legit – anything else means infinite abuse – drop the debater, competing interps, and the highest layer – 1AR are too short to make up for the time trade-off – no RVIs – 6 min 2NR means they can brute force me every time.
Plan – A just government of the People's Republic of China ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike.
That solves worker liberation, labor reforms, and re-establishes credible Collective Bargaining in China – establishing legal protection for Labor Unions reduces overall labor-related discontent.
Dongfang 11 Han Dongfang 4-6-2011 "Liberate China's Workers" https://archive.md/7RvDG~~#selection-307.0-316.0 (director of China Labour Bulletin, a nongovernmental organization that defends the rights of workers in China.)Elmer HONG KONG — There is no legal right to strike in China, but there AND Communist Party's goal of creating a more prosperous, stable and harmonious society.
1AC: Taiwan Adv
Lack of Chinese Right to Strike devastates Collective Bargaining – undermines any legal leverage for Strikes.
Friedman 17 Eli Friedman 4-20-2017 "Collective Bargaining in China is Dead: The Situation is Excellent" https://www.chinoiresie.info/collective-bargaining-in-china-is-dead-the-situation-is-excellent/ (Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labour at Cornell University)Elmer For many years reform-oriented labour activists and scholars working in China have seen AND will be the necessary prelude to any institutional reform worthy of the name.
Any credible union power is under-cut by detentions of labor activists.
Merkley and McGovern 13 Jeff Merkley and James McGovern 12-20-2013 "Detention of Labor Representative Highlights Challenges for Collective Bargaining in China" https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/detention-of-labor-representative-highlights-challenges-for (Representative and Co-Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China)Elmer Authorities in Shenzhen city, Guangdong province, detained migrant worker and labor representative Wu AND the "effective recognition" of the right to collective bargaining.~16~
The Right to Strike re-balances China's Economy.
Roberts 10 Dexter Roberts 8-5-2010 "Is the Right to Strike Coming to China" https://archive.md/hjNI7 (Editor at Bloomberg)Elmer The name gives no hint of the revolutionary changes afoot for mainland workers. Yet AND being debated in Guangdong could greatly strengthen the bargaining power of Chinese workers.
Enhanced Unions and Labor Reforms key to sustained Chinese Economic Growth.
Haack 21 Michael Haack 2-13-2021 "Could Biden Make US-China Trade Better for Workers?" https://thediplomat.com/2021/02/could-biden-make-us-china-trade-better-for-workers/ (Michael Haack currently a contractor with the China Labor Translation Project, a project of the Chinese Progressive Association. He previously worked with industrial workers in southern China. Michael holds master's degrees from SOAS, University of London and American University)Elmer Meanwhile, even as China grows, its wealth remains largely with companies and the AND unions were allowed to flourish — thus advancing their own stated policy aims."
China's Economy is hosed and threatened by rampant Inequality gaps that devastate consumption.
Chinese Economic Decline leads to all-out War – specifically over Taiwan.
Joske 18 Stephen Joske 10-23-2018 "China's Coming Financial Crisis And The National Security Connection" https://warontherocks.com/2018/10/chinas-coming-financial-crisis-and-the-national-security-connection/ (senior adviser to the Australian Treasurer during the 1997–98 Asian crisis)re-cut by Elmer The biggest national security issues, however, arise from the unpredictable political impact of AND stall or even end China's rise as a global military and political power.
Taiwan goes Nuclear.
Talmadge 18 ~Caitlin, Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, "Beijing's Nuclear Option: Why a U.S.-China War Could Spiral Out of Control," accessible online at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/beijings-nuclear-option, published Nov/Dec 2018~re-cut by Elmer As China's power has grown in recent years, so, too, has the AND have considered unthinkable only months earlier. This pattern could unfold again today.
Nuke war causes extinction AND outweighs other existential risks
Checked PND 16. internally citing Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council of Foreign Relations and former national security adviser to President Carter, Toon and Robock's 2012 study on nuclear winter in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Gareth Evans' International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament Report, Congressional EMP studies, studies on nuclear winter by Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Martin Hellman of Stanford University, and U.S. and Russian former Defense Secretaries and former heads of nuclear missile forces, brief submitted to the United Nations General Assembly, Open-Ended Working Group on nuclear risks. A/AC.286/NGO/13. 05-03-2016. http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/images/documents/Disarmament-fora/OEWG/2016/Documents/NGO13.pdfRe-cut by Elmer Consequences human survival 12. Even if the 'other' side does NOT launch in response AND course the immediate post-nuclear results for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well.
11/20/21
SeptOct - AC - Drug Prices
Tournament: Grapevine Classic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Dulles RB | Judge: Andrew Torrez 1AC: Drug Prices Contention 1 is Drug Prices Evergreening keeps Drug Prices high. Amin 18 Tahir Amin 6-27-2018 "The problem with high drug prices isn't 'foreign freeloading,' it's the patent system" High drug prices caused by US patent system, not 'foreign freeloaders' (cnbc.com) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/25/high-drug-prices-caused-by-us-patent-system.html (co-founder of nonprofit I-MAK.org)Elmer 'Evergreening' Instead of going to new medicines, the study finds that 74 percent of new patents during the decade went to drugs that already existed. It found that 80 percent of the nearly 100 best-selling drugs extended their exclusivity protections at least once, and 50 percent extended their patents more than once—with the effect of prolonging the time before generics could reach the market as drug prices continued to rise. The strategy is called “evergreening”: drug makers add on new patents to prolong a drug’s exclusivity, even when the additions aren’t fundamentally new, non-obvious, and useful as the law requires. One of the most expensive cancer drugs on the market, Revlimid®, is a case in point: priced at over $125,000 per year of treatment, Celgene has sought 105 patents on Revlimid®, many of which have been granted, extending its monopoly until the end of 2036. That gives the Revlimid® patent portfolio a lifespan of 40 years, which is being used to block or deter generic competitors from entering the market. But a recent I-MAK analysis finds that several of Celgene’s patents are mere add-ons—not fundamentally new to deserve a patent. And because of the thicket of patents around Revlimid®, payers are projected to spend $45 billion in excess costs on that drug alone as compared to what they could be paying if generic competitors were to enter when the first patent expires in 2019. Meanwhile, Celgene is also among the pharmaceuticals that have been recently scolded by the FDA for refusing to share samples with generic makers so they can test their own products against the brands in order to attain FDA approval. In the absence of genuine competition in the U.S. prescription drug market, monopolies are yielding reckless pricing schemes and prohibitively expensive drugs for Americans (and people around the world) who need them. In 2015, for example, U.S. Senators Wyden and Grassley found after an 18-month bipartisan investigation that the notorious $84,000 price tag for the hepatitis C drug made by Gilead was based on “a pricing and marketing strategy designed to maximize revenue with little concern for access or affordability.” Gilead’s subsequent hepatitis C drug Harvoni® was introduced to the market at a still higher cost of $94,500. Who benefits when drugs are priced so high? Not the 85 percent of Americans with hepatitis C who are still not able to afford treatment. High Drug Prices forces patients to go underground for drugs. - AT Medicare CP – won’t cover Drugs – CP can’t fiat coverage Bryant 11 Clifton Bryant 2011 “The Routledge Handbook of Deviant Behaviour” (former professor of sociology at VA Tech)Elmer Now, the field of medicine is able to achieve seemingly miraculous results, through organ transplantation, reviving patients who have been "clinically" dead, and curing supposedly "incurable diseases." Medical miracles are not cheap, however, and the costs of medical care and drugs have risen (and continue to rise) at a near-astronomical rate. Consequently, neither private medical insurance plans nor Medicare will now cover certain procedures, treatments, and medicines. In the future, with continuing reform of the US healthcare system, even fewer procedures, treatments, and medications might will be covered. Certainly, some medical treatment will be "rationed," and particular categories of people (such as the elderly) may be systematically denied the coverage they need. As a result of all this, medical- and health-related crime and deviance will inevitably rise. Medical insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid fraud, which is already prevalent today, will increase exponentially. Smugglers will "bootleg" ever more pharmaceuticals into the US, and a large, thriving, nationwide black market will develop for those who cannot afford to buy uncovered medications. More medicines and diagnostic equipment will be stolen, and back- street medical procedures using such stolen equipment may well be offered for cash with no questions asked. Armed robberies of valuable pharmaceuticals from drug stores and super- markets will increase, too. Bribery to obtain insurance-uncovered or rationed medical care (or, indeed, any kind of medical care where demand exceeds supply) will likely mushroom. This is actually common in some countries around the world. Counterfeiting expensive pharmaceuticals will be prevalent, and medical frauds of all kinds will be very widespread. Many of these frauds will be directed at the elderly population as it continues to increase in size. The elderly will be particularly vulnerable because they are most likely to be denied coverage for certain medical procedures or treatments. For instance, private health insurance and Medicare will both refuse to cover a woman in her mid-80s for potentially life-saving heart-bypass surgery. As a result, she will be a prime candidate for victimization by medical fraud that offers her affordable, but bogus, treatment. There is already a thriving international black market in human organs (Schepper-Hughes 2009). Kidneys are obtained from poor individuals in impoverished countries for relatively modest sums of money. This cash allows the donors to purchase luxuries, such as a small automobile, educate their children, or simply sustain their families for a few months. The organs are sometimes transferred quickly to a hospital in the donor's own country for transplant surgery. But on other occasions they are transported to the US or another Western country. In the US, obtaining an organ for transplantation in this fashion is illegal. Nevertheless, the practice will undoubtedly increase greatly in the future. Where medical care and medicines become exorbitantly expensive, cheaper ways to obtain them, even when these are illicit, will be sought. Where there are shortages of medical care or medicines, perhaps because of rationing, other means of obtaining them, even if deviant, will surely be employed. As the cost and the difficulty of obtaining medical care and medicines increase, the implications for increased crime and deviance become almost limitless. That kills Millions. Greenberger 20 Phyllis E. Greenberger 12-3-2020 "Counterfeit Medicines Kill People" https://www.healthywomen.org/health-care-policy/counterfeit-medicines-kill-people/who-suffers-because-of-counterfeit-drugs (HealthWomen’s Senior Vice President of Science and Health Policy)Elmer Over 1 million people die each year from fake drugs. COVID-19 Have you ever had a hard time getting a prescription filled? Or maybe you've had to wrestle with your insurance provider to get them to pay for a medication vital for your health? Worse, maybe you're one of the 27.5 million uninsured Americans who find it difficult to get health care, let alone obtain the prescription drugs you may need. If you've had any of these experiences, then perhaps you've turned to the internet to buy medications that would require a prescription. While legal online pharmacies do exist, many online pharmacies are fraudulent, selling counterfeit medications, and millions of people have fallen victim to these scammers. Make no mistake: Counterfeit medicine is not real. The active ingredients that help you stay healthy may be missing or diluted to levels that are no longer potent. This can be dangerous and even life-threatening, as people rely on their medications to keep them well, and sometimes even alive. Many counterfeit medicines aren't even drugs at all, but rather snake oil cures that make people sick — they may even contain dangerous ingredients such as heavy metals, highway paint or even rat poison. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that over 1 million people die each year from these substandard drugs. It's estimated that more than 10 of all pharmaceuticals in the global supply chain are counterfeit in normal times, and during COVID-19, the increased use of telehealth and the appearance of fraudulent doctors has led to a surge in drug fraud. In October of this year, Peter Pitts, president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a nonpartisan research organization, said pharmaceutical fakery was a "spreading cancer." Counterfeiting is a major problem that requires the federal government to step up to slow — and eventually prevent — its spread. It's also vital that consumers know exactly what's at stake when taking these fake drugs. Who suffers because of counterfeit drugs? Expensive prescription medications and generic drugs in nearly every therapeutic class may be counterfeited. Out of $4.3 billion worth of counterfeit medications seized between 2014 and 2016, 35 were marked as antibiotics. Some of the other most common culprits in counterfeit medicine are used to "treat" HIV/AIDS, erectile dysfunction and weight loss. No matter what condition or disease the counterfeit medication is intending to treat, the outcome can be disastrous. Counterfeit medications exacerbate other existing health crises. The United States, for example, is in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is killing 130 people per day. As of 2018, counterfeit drugs containing illegally imported fentanyl (a powerful opioid) had contributed to this tragedy by causing deaths in 26 states. The U.S. Department of Justice found that, in at least one case, these counterfeit drugs had been sold through a fraudulent online pharmacy. Counterfeit Drugs cause Anti-Biotic Resistance. Jahnke 19 Art Jahnke 1-14-2019 "How Bad Drugs Turn Treatable Diseases Deadly" https://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/how-bad-drugs-turn-treatable-diseases-deadly/ (Senior editor Art Jahnke began his career at the Real Paper, a Boston area alternative weekly. He has worked as a writer and editor at Boston Magazine, web editorial director at CXO Media, and executive editor in Marketing and Communications at Boston University, where his work was honored with many awards. Art has served on the editorial board of the Boston Review and has taught at Harvard University summer school and Emerson College.)Elmer Four decades later as a Boston University professor of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering, Zaman was reminded of the dangers of low-quality drugs in his native country when he learned that more than 200 people in the city of Lahore died after being treated with an adulterated version of a hypertension drug. That event, in 2012, altered the course of Zaman’s research. Now, he focuses on the global problem of “substandard drugs,” poorly made medicines containing ingredients that are either ineffective or toxic. His most recent discovery has startling implications for our understanding of drug resistance: a low-quality version of rifampin, a broad spectrum antibiotic typically used as the first line of defense to treat tuberculosis, can greatly contribute to the development of drug-resistant infections. The findings, published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, are particularly pressing because drug-resistant TB is an increasing problem worldwide. Of the 10 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2016, about 600,000 were rifampin resistant, requiring second-line treatments which come with increased toxicity. “There had not been a definitive study showing that lack of antibiotic quality leads to resistance,” says Zaman, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health. “Now we are sure that it does, and it does with TB, a global problem that has become stubbornly hard to resolve.” “We had always thought of this a scientific issue, but now it is also an ethical issue.”Muhammad Zaman Zaman says substandard drugs, as well as drugs that are deliberate counterfeits, are all too common in developing nations. A recent survey by the World Health Organization found that in low- and middle-income countries, one in ten medicines is substandard or falsified. One contributing factor could be that government enforcement of safe manufacturing practices is feeble or nonexistent. In Pakistan, for example, a country of nearly 200 million people, only a handful of federal inspectors monitor the quality of drug manufacturing. Extinction - generic defense doesn’t apply. Srivatsa 17 Kadiyali Srivatsa 1-12-2017 “Superbug Pandemics and How to Prevent Them” https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/12/superbug-pandemics-and-how-to-prevent-them/ (doctor, inventor, and publisher. He worked in acute and intensive pediatric care in British hospitals)Elmer It is by now no secret that the human species is locked in a race of its own making with “superbugs.” Indeed, if popular science fiction is a measure of awareness, the theme has pervaded English-language literature from Michael Crichton’s 1969 Andromeda Strain all the way to Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 Station Eleven and beyond. By a combination of massive inadvertence and what can only be called stupidity, we must now invent new and effective antibiotics faster than deadly bacteria evolve—and regrettably, they are rapidly doing so with our help. I do not exclude the possibility that bad actors might deliberately engineer deadly superbugs.1 But even if that does not happen, humanity faces an existential threat largely of its own making in the absence of malign intentions. As threats go, this one is entirely predictable. The concept of a “black swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s term for low-probability but high-impact events, has become widely known in recent years. Taleb did not invent the concept; he only gave it a catchy name to help mainly business executives who know little of statistics or probability. Many have embraced the “black swan” label the way children embrace holiday gifts, which are often bobbles of little value, except to them. But the threat of inadvertent pandemics is not a “black swan” because its probability is not low. If one likes catchy labels, it better fits the term “gray rhino,” which, explains Michele Wucker, is a high-probability, high-impact event that people manage to ignore anyway for a raft of social-psychological reasons.2 A pandemic is a quintessential gray rhino, for it is no longer a matter of if but of when it will challenge us—and of how prepared we are to deal with it when it happens. We have certainly been warned. The curse we have created was understood as a possibility from the very outset, when seventy years ago Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, predicted antibiotic resistance. When interviewed for a 2015 article, “The Most Predictable Disaster in the History of the Human Race, ” Bill Gates pointed out that one of the costliest disasters of the 20th century, worse even than World War I, was the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19. As the author of the article, Ezra Klein, put it: “No one can say we weren’t warned. And warned. And warned. A pandemic disease is the most predictable catastrophe in the history of the human race, if only because it has happened to the human race so many, many times before.”3 Even with effective new medicines, if we can devise them, we must contain outbreaks of bacterial disease fast, lest they get out of control. In other words, we have a social-organizational challenge before us as well as a strictly medical one. That means getting sufficient amounts of medicine into the right hands and in the right places, but it also means educating people and enabling them to communicate with each other to prevent any outbreak from spreading widely. Responsible governments and cooperative organizations have options in that regard, but even individuals can contribute something. To that end, as a medical doctor I have created a computer app that promises to be useful in that regard—of which more in a moment. But first let us review the situation, for while it has become well known to many people, there is a general resistance to acknowledging the severity and imminence of the danger. What Are the Problems? Bacteria are among the oldest living things on the planet. They are masters of survival and can be found everywhere. Billions of them live on and in every one of us, many of them helping our bodies to run smoothly and stay healthy. Most bacteria that are not helpful to us are at least harmless, but some are not. They invade our cells, spread quickly, and cause havoc that we refer to generically as disease. Millions of people used to die every year as a result of bacterial infections, until we developed antibiotics. These wonder drugs revolutionized medicine, but one can have too much of a good thing. Doctors have used antibiotics recklessly, prescribing them for just about everything, and in the process helped to create strains of bacteria that are resistant to the medicines we have. We even give antibiotics to cattle that are not sick and use them to fatten chickens. Companies large and small still mindlessly market antimicrobial products for hands and home, claiming that they kill bacteria and viruses. They do more harm than good because the low concentrations of antimicrobials that these products contain tend to kill friendly bacteria (not viruses at all), and so clear the way for the mass multiplication of surviving unfriendly bacteria. Perhaps even worse, hospitals have deployed antimicrobial products on an industrial scale for a long time now, the result being a sharp rise in iatrogenic bacterial illnesses. Overuse of antibiotics and commercial products containing them has helped superbugs to evolve. We now increasingly face microorganisms that cannot be killed by antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, or any other chemical weapon we throw at them. Pandemics are the major risk we run as a result, but it is not the only one. Overuse of antibiotics by doctors, homemakers, and hospital managers could mean that, in the not-too-distant future, something as simple as a minor cut could again become life-threatening if it becomes infected. Few non-medical professionals are aware that antibiotics are the foundation on which nearly all of modern medicine rests. Cancer therapy, organ transplants, surgeries minor and major, and even childbirth all rely on antibiotics to prevent infections. If infections become untreatable we stand to lose most of the medical advances we have made over the past fifty years. And the problem is already here. In the summer of 2011, a 43-year-old woman with complications from a lung transplant was transferred from a New York City hospital to the Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland. She had a highly resistant superbug known as Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC). The patient was treated and eventually discharged after doctors concluded that they had contained the infection. A few weeks later, a 34-year-old man with a tumor and no known link to the woman contracted KPC while at the hospital. During the course of the next few months, several more NIH patients presented with KPC. Doctors attacked the outbreak with combinations of antibiotics, including a supposedly powerful experimental drug. A separate intensive care unit for KPC patients was set up and robots disinfected empty rooms, but the infection still spread beyond the intensive care area. Several patients died and then suddenly all was silent on the KPC front, with doctors convinced they had seen the last of the dangerous bacterium. They couldn’t have been more mistaken. A year later, a young man with complications from a bone marrow transplant arrived at NIH. He became infected with KPC and died. This superbug is now present in hospitals in most, if not all U.S. states. This is not good. This past year an outbreak of CRE (carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae) linked to contaminated medical equipment infected 11 patients and killed two in Los Angeles area hospitals. This family of bacteria has evolved resistance to all antibiotics, including the powerful carbapenem antibiotics that are often used as a last resort against serious infections. They are now so resilient that it is virtually impossible to remove them from medical tools such as catheters and breathing tubes placed into the body, even after cleaning. Then we have gonorrhea, chlamydia, and other sexually transmitted diseases that we cannot treat and that are spreading all over the world. Anyone who has sex can catch these infections, and because most people may not exhibit any symptoms they spread infections without anyone knowing about it. Sexually transmitted diseases used to be treatable with antibiotics, but in recent years we have witnessed the rise of multi-drug resistant STDs. Untreated gonorrhea can lead to infertility in men and women and blindness and other congenital defect in babies. As is well known, too, we have witnessed many cases of drug-resistant pneumonia. These problems have arisen in part because of simple mistakes healthcare professionals repeatedly make. Let me explain. Neither superbugs nor common bacterial infections produce any special symptoms indicative of their cause. Rashes, fevers, sneezing, runny noses, ear pain, diarrhea, vomiting, coughing, fatigue, and weakness are signs of common and minor illnesses as well as uncommonly deadly ones. Therefore, the major problem for clinicians is to identify a common symptom that may potentially be an early sign of a major infection that could result in an epidemic. We know that dangerous infections in any given geographical area do not start at the same time. They start with one victim and gradually spread. But that victim is only one among hundreds of patients a doctor will typically see, so many doctors will miss patients presenting with infections that are serious. They will probably identify diseases that kill fast, but slow-spreading infections such as skin infections that can lead to septicemia are rarely diagnosed early. In addition, I have seen doctors treating eczema with antibiotic cream, even though they know that bacteria are resistant to the majority of these drugs. This sort of action encourages simple infections to spread locally, because patients are therefore not instructed to take other, more useful precautions. On top of that, some people are frivolous about infections and assume doctors are exaggerating the threat. And some people are selfish. Once I was called to see a passenger during a flight who had symptoms consistent with infection. He boarded the plane with these symptoms, but began to feel much worse during the flight. I was scared, knowing how infections such as Ebola can spread. This made me think about a way to screen passengers before they board a flight. Airlines could refund a traveler’s ticket, or issue a replacement, in case of sickness—which is not the policy now. We currently have no method to block infectious travelers from boarding flights, and there are no changes in the incentive system to enable conscientious passengers to avoid losing their money if they responsibly miss a flight because of illness. Speaking of selfishness, I once saw a mother drop her daughter off at school with a serious bout of impetigo on her face. When I asked her why she had brought her daughter to school with a contagious infection, she said she could not spare the time to keep her at home or take her to the doctor. By allowing this child to contact other children, a simple infection can become a major threat. Fortunately, I could see the rash on the girl’s face, but other kids in schools may have rashes we cannot see. Incorrect diagnosis of skin problems and mistaken use of antibiotics to treat them is common all over the world, and so we are continually creating superbugs in our communities. Similarly, chest infections, sore throats, and illnesses diagnosed as colds that unnecessarily treated with antibiotics are also a major threat. By prescribing antibiotics for viral infections, we are not only helping bacteria develop resistance, but we are also polluting the environment when these drugs are passed in urine and feces. All of this helps resistant bacteria to spread in the community and become an epidemic. Ebola is very difficult to transmit because people who are contagious have visible and unusual symptoms. However, the emerging infections and pandemics of the future may not have visible symptoms, and they could break out in highly populous countries such as India and China that send thousands of travelers all over the world every day. When a person is infected with a contagious disease, he or she can expect to pass the illness on to an average of two people. This is called the “reproduction number.” Two is not that high a number as these things go; some diseases have far greater rates of infection. The SARS virus had a reproduction number of four. Measles has a reproduction number of 18. One person traveling as an airplane passenger and carrying an infection similar to Ebola can infect three to five people sitting nearby, ten if he or she walks to the toilet. The study that highlighted this was published in a medical journal a few years ago, but the airline industry has not implemented any changes or introduced screening to prevent the spread of infections by air travel passengers, a major vehicle for the rapid spread of disease. It is scary to think that nobody knows what will happen when the world faces a lethal disease we’re not used to, perhaps with a reproduction number of five or eight or even ten. What if it starts in a megacity? What if, unlike Ebola, it’s contagious before patients show obvious symptoms? Past experience isn’t comforting. In 2009, H1N1 flu spread around the world before we even knew it existed. The Questions Remains Why do seemingly intelligent people repeatedly do such collectively stupid things? How did we allow this to happen? The answer is disarmingly simple. It is because people are incentivized to prioritize short-term benefits over long-term considerations. It is what social scientists have called a “logic of collective action” problem. Everyone has his or her specialized niche interest: doctors their patients’ approval, business and airline executives their shareholders’ earnings, hospitals their reputations for best-practice hygienics, homemakers their obligation to keep their own families from illness. But no one owns the longer-term consequences for hundreds of millions of people who are irrelevant to satisfying these short-term concerns. Here is an example. At a recent Superbug Super Drug conference in London that I attended, scientists, health agencies, and pharmaceutical companies were vastly more concerned with investing millions of dollars in efforts to invent another antibiotic, claiming that this has to be the way forward. Money was the most pressing issue because, as everyone at the conference knew, for many years pharmaceutical companies have been pulling back from antibiotics research because they can’t see a profit in it. Development costs run into billions of dollars, yet there is no guarantee that any new drug will successfully fight infections. At the same conference Dr. Lloyd Czaplewski spoke about alternatives to antibiotics, in case we cannot come up with new ones fast enough to outrun superbug evolution. But he omitted mention of preventive strategies that use the internet or communication software to help reduce the spread of infections among families, communities, and countries. It is madness that we don’t have a concrete second-best alternative to new antibiotics, because we need them and we need them quickly. Of course, this is why we have governments, which have been known occasionally in the past as commonwealths. Governments are supposed to look out for the wider, common interests of society that niche-interested professionals take no responsibility for, and that includes public health. It is why nearly every nation’s government has an official who is analogous to the U.S. Surgeon General, and nearly every one has a public health service of some kind. Alas, national governments do not always function as they should. Several years ago physician and former Republican Senator Bill Frist submitted a proposal to the Senate for a U.S. Medical Expeditionary Corps. This would have been a specialized organization that could coordinate and execute rapid responses to global health emergencies such as Ebola. Nothing came of it, because Dr. Frist’s fellow politicians were either too shortsighted or too dimwitted to understand why it was a good idea. Or perhaps they simply realized that they could not benefit politically from supporting it. Plenty of mistakes continue to be made. In 2015, a particularly infectious form of bird flu ripped through 14 U.S. states, leading farmers to preventively slaughter nearly 40 million birds. The result of such callous and unnecessary acts is that, instead of exhausting themselves in the host population of birds, the viruses quickly find alternative hosts in which to survive, and could therefore easily mutate into a form that can infect humans. Earlier, during the 1980s, AIDS garnered more public attention because a handful of rich and famous people were infected, and because the campaign to eradicate it dovetailed with and boosted the political campaign on behalf of homosexual rights. Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospitals, by far the bigger threat at the time, was virtually ignored. Some doctors knew that MRSA would bring us to our knees and kill millions of people worldwide, but pharmaceutical companies and device and equipment manufacturers ignored these doctors and the thousands of patients dying in hospitals as a result of MRSA. They prioritized the wrong thing, and government did not correct the error. And that is partly how antibiotic-resistant infection went from an obscure hospital problem to an incipient global pandemic. Politics well outside the United States plays several other roles in the budding problem that we are confronting. Countries often will not admit they have a problem and request help because of the possible financial implications in terms of investment and travel. Guinea did not declare the Ebola epidemic early on and Chinese leaders, worried about trade and tourism, lied for months in 2002 about the presence of the SARS virus. In 2004, when avian influenza first surfaced in Thailand, officials there displayed a similar reluctance to release information. Hospitals in some countries, including India, are managed and often owned by doctors. They refuse to share information about existing infections and often categorically deny they have a problem. Reporting infections to public health authorities is not mandatory, and so hospitals that fail to say anything are not penalized. Even now, the WHO and the CDC do not have accurate and up-to-date information about the spread of E. coli or other infections, and part of the reason is that for-profit hospitals are reluctant to do anything to diminish their bottom line. Syria and Yemen are among those countries that are so weak and fragmented that they cannot effectively coordinate public healthcare. But their governments are also hostile to external organizations that offer relief. Part of the reason is xenophobia, but part is that this makes the government look bad. Relatedly, most poor-nation governments do not trust the efficacy of international institutions, and think that cooperating with them amounts to a re-importation of imperialism. They would rather their own people suffer and die than ask for needed help. That brings us to the level of international public health governance. Alas, sometimes poor-country governments estimate the efficacy of international institutions accurately. The WHO’s Ebola response in 2014-15 was a disaster. The organization was slow to declare a public health emergency even after public warnings from Médecins Sans Frontières, some of whose doctors had already died on the front line. The outbreak killed more than 28,000 people, far more than would have been the case had it been quickly identified. This isn’t just an issue of bureaucratic incompetence. The WHO is under-resourced for the problems it is meant to solve. Funding comes from voluntary donations, and there is no mechanism by which it can quickly scale up its efforts during an emergency. The result is that its response to the next major disease outbreak is likely to be as inadequate as were its responses to Ebola, H1N1, and SARS. Stakeholders admit that we need another mechanism, and most experts agree that the world needs some kind of emergency response team for dangerous diseases. But no one knows how to set one up amid the dysfunctional global governance structures that presently exist. Maybe they should turn to Bill Frist, whose basic concept was sound; if the U.S. government will not act, perhaps some other governments will, and use the UN system to do so. But as things stand, we lack a health equivalent of the military reserve. Neither government leaders nor doctors can mobilize a team of experts to contain infections. People who want to volunteer, whether for government or NGO efforts, are not paid and the rules, if any, are sketchy about what we do with them when they return from a mission. Are employers going to take them back? What are the quarantine rules? It is all completely ad hoc, meaning that humanity lacks the tools it needs to protect itself. And note, by the way, the contrast between how governments prepare for facing pandemics and how they prepare for making war. War is not more deadly to the human race than pandemics, but national defense against armed aggression is much better planned for than defense against threats to public health. There is a wealth of rules regarding it, too. Human beings study and plan for war, which kills people both deliberately and accidentally, but they do not invest comparable effort planning for pandemics, which are liable to kill orders of magnitude more people. To the mind of a medical doctor, this is strange. Creating Conditions for Infections to Spread Superbug infections spread for several interlocking reasons. Some are medical-epidemiological. Most of the infections of the past thirty years have started in one place and in one family. As already noted, they spread because many infectious diseases are highly contagious before the onset of symptoms, and because it is difficult to prevent patients who know they are sick from going to hospitals, work, and school, or from traveling further afield. But again, one reason for the problem is political, not medical. Many governments have no strategies in place to prevent pandemics because they are unwilling to tell their people how infections spread. They don’t want to worry people with such talk; it will make them, they fear, unpopular. So governments may have mountains of bureaucracy with great heaps of rules and regulations concerning public health, but they are generally unwilling to trust their own citizens to use common sense on their own behalf. This, too, seems very strange. Until now, no one has come forward to help us develop strategies to educate people how to identify and prevent the spread of infection to their families and communities. The majority of stakeholders have also been oblivious to the use of new technologies to help reduce the spread of these infections. There are some exceptions. In a fun blog post called Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, the CDC uses the threat of a zombie outbreak as a metaphor to encourage people to prepare for emergencies, including pandemics. It is well meaning and insightful, yet when my colleagues and I try to discuss ways of scaling up the CDC’s example with doctors and nurses, they shut down. Nobody plans for an actual crisis partly because it is too scary and hence paralyzing to think about. But it is also because it is not most health professionals’ job; it is not what they are trained and paid to do. It is always someone else’s job, except that it has turned out to be nobody’s job. Worse, the situation is not static. While we sit paralyzed, superbugs are evolving. Epidemiological models now predict how an algorithmic process of disease spread will move through the modern world. All urban centers around the entire globe can become infected within sixty days because we move around and cross borders much more than our ancestors did, thanks to air travel. A new pandemic could start crossing borders before we even know it exists. A flu-like disease could kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.3 High Drug Prices pushes people into poverty – our internal is causal. Hoban 10 Rose Hoban 9-13-2010 "High Cost of Medicine Pushes More People into Poverty" https://www.voanews.com/science-health/high-cost-medicine-pushes-more-people-poverty (spent more than six years as the health reporter for North Carolina Public Radio – WUNC, where she covered health care, state health policy, science and research with a focus on public health issues. She left to start North Carolina Health News after watching many of her professional peers leave or be laid off of their jobs, leaving NC with few people to cover this complicated and important topic. ALSO cites Laurens Niens who is a Health Researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam)Elmer Health economist Laurens Niëns found that drugs needed to treat chronic diseases could be considered unaffordable for many people in poor countries. Medicines can be expensive and often make up a large portion of any family's health care budget. And the burden can be even greater for people in poor countries, where the cost of vital medicines can push them into poverty. The problem is growing as more people around the world are diagnosed with chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Being diagnosed with a chronic disease usually compells patients to seek treatment for a prolonged period of time. That increases the eventual price tag for health, says health economist Laurens Niëns at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Niëns examined medication pricing data from the World Health Organization and also looked at data from the World Bank on household income in many countries. Using the data, he calculated how much people need to spend on necessities such as food, housing, education and medicines. "The medicines we looked at are medicines for patients who suffer from asthma, diabetes, hypertension and we looked at an adult respiratory infection," Niëns says. "Three conditions are for chronic diseases, which basically means that people need to procure those medicines each and every day." Niëns focused on the cost of medicine for those conditions. He found the essential drugs could be considered unaffordable for many people in poor countries - so much so that their cost often pushes people into abject poverty. "The proportion of the population that is living below the poverty line, plus the people that are being pushed below the poverty line, can reach up to 80 percent in some countries for some medicines," Niëns says. He points out that generic medicines - which are more affordable than brand-name medications - are often not available in the marketplace. And, according to Niëns, poor government policies can drive up the cost of medications. "For instance, a lot of governments actually tax medicines when they come into the country," he says. "They have no standard for the markups on medicines through the distribution chain. So often, governments think they pay a good price for the medicines when they procure them from the producer. However, before such a medicine reaches a patient, markups are sometimes up to 1,000 percent." This is a form of pharmaceutical capitalism – exploiting marginalized groups in the third world. Lift Mode 17 3-10-2017 "Pharmaceutical Colonialism” https://medium.com/@liftmode/pharmaceutical-colonialism-3-ways-that-western-medicine-takes-from-indigenous-communities-3a9339b4f24f (We at Liftmode.com are a team of professionals from a variety of backgrounds, dedicated to the mission of providing the highest quality and highest purity nutritional health supplements on the market. We look specifically for the latest and most promising research in the fields of cognition enhancement, neuroscience and alternative health supplements, and develop commercial strategies to bring these technologies to the marketplace.)Elmer 3. Cost of medicine as a form of debt One of the biggest methods of extracting money from rural and indigenous communities is through increased costs of medication. Pharmaceutical colonialism often uses the premise of providing cheap medication for the world’s neediest to acquire local knowledge and natural resources. This premise is pushed into society through advertising campaigns and processes like lobbying. However, those who benefit most are often the shareholders, and not the people who need help. An example was the 2009 Reuters report which found that nearly a million people were dying from malaria dying every year due to overly expensive medication. According to the report, Artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) can cost up to 65 times the daily minimum wage in countries that are most affected by malaria. These high prices come after the government subsidies which push them down as low as possible.19 Another famous and recent example was the businessman Martin Shkreli, who pushed the cost of an AIDS drug up from $13.50 to over $700 per pill. This created an outrage on social media and it highlighted the underlying mindset behind most pharmaceutical companies — profit above all. An interesting and disturbing source of information about this is the film Fire in the Blood, which documents how western pharmaceutical companies blocked the sale of cheap antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients in Sub-Saharan Africa.20 “There is indeed a sense in which all modern medicine is engaged in a colonizing process… It can be seen in the increasing professionalization of medicine and the exclusion of ‘folk’ practitioners, in the close and often symbiotic relationship between medicine and the modern state, in the far-reaching claims made by medical science for its ability to prevent, control, and even eradicate human diseases.”21 — D Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 1993 Pharmaceutical companies have been responsible for saving millions of lives due to their advances in medicine. However, the number of lives that have been lost due to the lack of affordability of medicine and the lack of equity and sharing of profits is estimated to be extremely high. Western capitalism has the potential to act as a new form of colonialism, and the modern medical method is one great way to extend the branches of capitalism into developing countries. The slums in Brazil highlight the blatant inequality between nations and people. The Alternative to the Aff isn’t no medicine but exploitive medicine – the Plan’s orientation is a sequencing strategy to resistance. Ahmed 20 A Kavum Ahmed 6-24-2020 "Decolonizing the vaccine" https://africasacountry.com/2020/06/decolonizing-the-vaccine (A. Kayum Ahmed is Division Director for Access and Accountability at the Open Society Public Health Program in New York and teaches at Columbia University Law School.)Duong+Elmer Reflecting on a potential COVID-19 vaccine trial during a television interview in April, a French doctor stated, “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” These remarks reflect a colonial view of Africa, reinforcing the idea that Africans are non-humans whose black bodies can be experimented on. This colonial perspective is also clearly articulated in the alliance between France, The Netherlands, Germany and Italy to negotiate priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine for themselves and the rest of Europe. In the Dutch government’s announcement of the European vaccine coalition, they indicate that, “… the alliance is also working to make a portion of vaccines available to low-income countries, including in Africa.” In the collective imagination of these European nations, Africa is portrayed as a site of redemption—a place where you can absolve yourself from the sins of “vaccine sovereignty,” by offering a “portion of the vaccines” to the continent. Vaccine sovereignty reflects how European and American governments use public funding, supported by the pharmaceutical industry and research universities, to obtain priority access to potential COVID-19 vaccines. The concept symbolizes the COVID-19 vaccine (when it eventually becomes available) as an instrument of power deployed to exercise control over who will live and who must die. In order to counter vaccine sovereignty, we must decolonize the vaccine. Africans have a particular role to play in leading this decolonization process as subjects of colonialism and as objects of domination through coloniality. Colonialism, as an expansion of territorial dominance, and coloniality, as the continued expression of Western imperialism after colonization, play out in the vaccine development space, most notably on the African continent. So what does decolonizing the vaccine look like? And how do we decolonize something that does not yet exist? For Frantz Fanon, “Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder.” Acknowledging that the COVID-19 vaccine has been weaponized as an instrument of power by wealthy nations, decolonization requires a Fanonian program of radical re-ordering. In the context of vaccine sovereignty, this re-ordering necessitates the dismantling of the profit-driven biomedical system. This program starts with de-linking from Euro-American constructions of knowledge and power that reinforce vaccine sovereignty through the profit-driven biomedical system. Advocacy campaigns such as the “People’s Vaccine”, which calls for guaranteed free access to COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to everyone, everywhere, are a good start. Other mechanisms, such as the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool, similarly supports universal access to COVID-19 health technologies as global public goods. Since less than 1 of vaccines consumed in Africa are manufactured on the continent, regional efforts to develop vaccine manufacturing capacity such as those led by the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the Alliance of African Research Universities, must be supported. These efforts collectively advance delinking and move us closer toward the re-ordering of systems of power. The opportunity for disorder is paradoxically enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has permitted moments of existential reflection in the midst of the crisis. A few months ago, a press release announcing the distribution of “a portion of the vaccines” to Africans, may have been lauded as European benevolence. But in the context of a pandemic that is more likely to kill black people, Africa’s reliance on Europe for vaccine handouts is untenable, necessitating a re-examination of the systems of power that hold this colonial relationship in place. The Black African body appears to be good enough to be experimented on, but not worthy of receiving simultaneous access to the COVID-19 vaccine as Europeans. Consequently, Africans continue to feel the effects of colonialism and white supremacy, and understand the pernicious nature of European altruism. By reinforcing the current system of vaccine research, development and manufacturing, it has become apparent that European governments want to retain their colonial power over life and death in Africa through the COVID-19 vaccine. Resistance to this colonial power requires the decolonization of the vaccine. 1AC: Plan Plan – The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines by implementing a one-and-done approach for patent protection. Contention 2 is Solvency The Plan solves Evergreening. Feldman 3 Robin Feldman 2-11-2019 "‘One-and-done’ for new drugs could cut patent thickets and boost generic competition" https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/11/drug-patent-protection-one-done/ (Arthur J. Goldberg Distinguished Professor of Law, Albert Abramson ’54 Distinguished Professor of Law Chair, and Director of the Center for Innovation)SidK + Elmer I believe that one period of protection should be enough. We should make the legal changes necessary to prevent companies from building patent walls and piling up mountains of rights. This could be accomplished by a “one-and-done” approach for patent protection. Under it, a drug would receive just one period of exclusivity, and no more. The choice of which “one” could be left entirely in the hands of the pharmaceutical company, with the election made when the FDA approves the drug. Perhaps development of the drug went swiftly and smoothly, so the remaining life of one of the drug’s patents is of greatest value. Perhaps development languished, so designation as an orphan drug or some other benefit would bring greater reward. The choice would be up to the company itself, based on its own calculation of the maximum benefit. The result, however, is that a pharmaceutical company chooses whether its period of exclusivity would be a patent, an orphan drug designation, a period of data exclusivity (in which no generic is allowed to use the original drug’s safety and effectiveness data), or something else — but not all of the above and more. Consider Suboxone, a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone for treating opioid addiction. The drug’s maker has extended its protection cliff eight times, including obtaining an orphan drug designation, which is intended for drugs that serve only a small number of patients. The drug’s first period of exclusivity ended in 2005, but with the additions its protection now lasts until 2024. That makes almost two additional decades in which the public has borne the burden of monopoly pricing, and access to the medicine may have been constrained. Implementing a one-and-done approach in conjunction with FDA approval underscores the fact that these problems and solutions are designed for pharmaceuticals, not for all types of technologies. That way, one-and-done could be implemented through legislative changes to the FDA’s drug approval system, and would apply to patents granted going forward. One-and-done would apply to both patents and exclusivities. A more limited approach, a baby step if you will, would be to invigorate the existing patent obviousness doctrine as a way to cut back on patent tinkering. Obviousness, one of the five standards for patent eligibility, says that inventions that are obvious to an expert or the general public can’t be patented. Either by congressional clarification or judicial interpretation, many pile-on patents could be eliminated with a ruling that the core concept of the additional patent is nothing more than the original formulation. Anything else is merely an obvious adaptation of the core invention, modified with existing technology. As such, the patent would fail for being perfectly obvious. Even without congressional action, a more vigorous and robust application of the existing obviousness doctrine could significantly improve the problem of piled-up patents and patent walls. Pharmaceutical companies have become adept at maneuvering through the system of patent and non-patent rights to create mountains of rights that can be applied, one after another. This behavior lets drug companies keep competitors out of the market and beat them back when they get there. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Pharmaceutical companies are profit-making entities, after all, that face pressure from their shareholders to produce ever-better results. If we want to change the system, we must change the incentives driving the system. And right now, the incentives for creating patent walls are just too great. 1AC: FW The standard is maximizing expected well-being, or hedonistic act utilitarianism. 1 Neuroscience- pleasure and pain are intrinsic value and disvalue – everything else regresses. Blum et al. 18 Kenneth Blum, 1Department of Psychiatry, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Dayton VA Medical Center, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA 2Department of Psychiatry, McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA 5Department of Precision Medicine, Geneus Health LLC, San Antonio, TX, USA 6Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Nupathways Inc., Innsbrook, MO, USA 7Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA 8Division of Neuroscience-Based Addiction Therapy, The Shores Treatment and Recovery Center, Port Saint Lucie, FL, USA 9Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary 10Division of Addiction Research, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC. North Kingston, RI, USA 11Victory Nutrition International, Lederach, PA., USA 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA, Marjorie Gondré-Lewis, 12National Human Genome Center at Howard University, Washington, DC., USA 13Departments of Anatomy and Psychiatry, Howard University College of Medicine, Washington, DC US, Bruce Steinberg, 4Division of Applied Clinical Research and Education, Dominion Diagnostics, LLC, North Kingstown, RI, USA, Igor Elman, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, David Baron, 3Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck Medicine University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Edward J Modestino, 14Department of Psychology, Curry College, Milton, MA, USA, Rajendra D Badgaiyan, 15Department Psychiatry, Cooper University School of Medicine, Camden, NJ, USA, Mark S Gold 16Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA, “Our evolved unique pleasure circuit makes humans different from apes: Reconsideration of data derived from animal studies”, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 28 February 2018, accessed: 19 August 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6446569/ R.S. Pleasure is not only one of the three primary reward functions but it also defines reward. As homeostasis explains the functions of only a limited number of rewards, the principal reason why particular stimuli, objects, events, situations, and activities are rewarding may be due to pleasure. This applies first of all to sex and to the primary homeostatic rewards of food and liquid and extends to money, taste, beauty, social encounters and nonmaterial, internally set, and intrinsic rewards. Pleasure, as the primary effect of rewards, drives the prime reward functions of learning, approach behavior, and decision making and provides the basis for hedonic theories of reward function. We are attracted by most rewards and exert intense efforts to obtain them, just because they are enjoyable 10. Pleasure is a passive reaction that derives from the experience or prediction of reward and may lead to a long-lasting state of happiness. The word happiness is difficult to define. In fact, just obtaining physical pleasure may not be enough. One key to happiness involves a network of good friends. However, it is not obvious how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to an ice cream cone, or to your team winning a sporting event. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure 14. Pleasure as a hallmark of reward is sufficient for defining a reward, but it may not be necessary. A reward may generate positive learning and approach behavior simply because it contains substances that are essential for body function. When we are hungry, we may eat bad and unpleasant meals. A monkey who receives hundreds of small drops of water every morning in the laboratory is unlikely to feel a rush of pleasure every time it gets the 0.1 ml. Nevertheless, with these precautions in mind, we may define any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to produce pleasure as a reward. In the context of reward deficiency or for disorders of addiction, homeostasis pursues pharmacological treatments: drugs to treat drug addiction, obesity, and other compulsive behaviors. The theory of allostasis suggests broader approaches - such as re-expanding the range of possible pleasures and providing opportunities to expend effort in their pursuit. 15. It is noteworthy, the first animal studies eliciting approach behavior by electrical brain stimulation interpreted their findings as a discovery of the brain’s pleasure centers 16 which were later partly associated with midbrain dopamine neurons 17–19 despite the notorious difficulties of identifying emotions in animals. Evolutionary theories of pleasure: The love connection BO Charles Darwin and other biological scientists that have examined the biological evolution and its basic principles found various mechanisms that steer behavior and biological development. Besides their theory on natural selection, it was particularly the sexual selection process that gained significance in the latter context over the last century, especially when it comes to the question of what makes us “what we are,” i.e., human. However, the capacity to sexually select and evolve is not at all a human accomplishment alone or a sign of our uniqueness; yet, we humans, as it seems, are ingenious in fooling ourselves and others–when we are in love or desperately search for it. It is well established that modern biological theory conjectures that organisms are the result of evolutionary competition. In fact, Richard Dawkins stresses gene survival and propagation as the basic mechanism of life 20. Only genes that lead to the fittest phenotype will make it. It is noteworthy that the phenotype is selected based on behavior that maximizes gene propagation. To do so, the phenotype must survive and generate offspring, and be better at it than its competitors. Thus, the ultimate, distal function of rewards is to increase evolutionary fitness by ensuring the survival of the organism and reproduction. It is agreed that learning, approach, economic decisions, and positive emotions are the proximal functions through which phenotypes obtain other necessary nutrients for survival, mating, and care for offspring. Behavioral reward functions have evolved to help individuals to survive and propagate their genes. Apparently, people need to live well and long enough to reproduce. Most would agree that homo-sapiens do so by ingesting the substances that make their bodies function properly. For this reason, foods and drinks are rewards. Additional rewards, including those used for economic exchanges, ensure sufficient palatable food and drink supply. Mating and gene propagation is supported by powerful sexual attraction. Additional properties, like body form, augment the chance to mate and nourish and defend offspring and are therefore also rewards. Care for offspring until they can reproduce themselves helps gene propagation and is rewarding; otherwise, many believe mating is useless. According to David E Comings, as any small edge will ultimately result in evolutionary advantage 21, additional reward mechanisms like novelty seeking and exploration widen the spectrum of available rewards and thus enhance the chance for survival, reproduction, and ultimate gene propagation. These functions may help us to obtain the benefits of distant rewards that are determined by our own interests and not immediately available in the environment. Thus the distal reward function in gene propagation and evolutionary fitness defines the proximal reward functions that we see in everyday behavior. That is why foods, drinks, mates, and offspring are rewarding. There have been theories linking pleasure as a required component of health benefits salutogenesis, (salugenesis). In essence, under these terms, pleasure is described as a state or feeling of happiness and satisfaction resulting from an experience that one enjoys. Regarding pleasure, it is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, it promotes positive feelings (like mindfulness) and even better cognition, possibly through the release of dopamine 22. But on the other hand, pleasure simultaneously encourages addiction and other negative behaviors, i.e., motivational toxicity. It is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on reward circuitry or limbic activity. It is important to realize that through the “Brain Reward Cascade” (BRC) endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms may play a role 23. While natural rewards are essential for survival and appetitive motivation leading to beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction, crucial social interactions seem to further facilitate the positive effects exerted by pleasurable experiences. Indeed, experimentation with addictive drugs is capable of directly acting on reward pathways and causing deterioration of these systems promoting hypodopaminergia 24. Most would agree that pleasurable activities can stimulate personal growth and may help to induce healthy behavioral changes, including stress management 25. The work of Esch and Stefano 26 concerning the link between compassion and love implicate the brain reward system, and pleasure induction suggests that social contact in general, i.e., love, attachment, and compassion, can be highly effective in stress reduction, survival, and overall health. Understanding the role of neurotransmission and pleasurable states both positive and negative have been adequately studied over many decades 26–37, but comparative anatomical and neurobiological function between animals and homo sapiens appear to be required and seem to be in an infancy stage. Finding happiness is different between apes and humans As stated earlier in this expert opinion one key to happiness involves a network of good friends 38. However, it is not entirely clear exactly how the higher forms of satisfaction and pleasure are related to a sugar rush, winning a sports event or even sky diving, all of which augment dopamine release at the reward brain site. Recent multidisciplinary research, using both humans and detailed invasive brain analysis of animals has discovered some critical ways that the brain processes pleasure. Remarkably, there are pathways for ordinary liking and pleasure, which are limited in scope as described above in this commentary. However, there are many brain regions, often termed hot and cold spots, that significantly modulate (increase or decrease) our pleasure or even produce the opposite of pleasure— that is disgust and fear 39. One specific region of the nucleus accumbens is organized like a computer keyboard, with particular stimulus triggers in rows— producing an increase and decrease of pleasure and disgust. Moreover, the cortex has unique roles in the cognitive evaluation of our feelings of pleasure 40. Importantly, the interplay of these multiple triggers and the higher brain centers in the prefrontal cortex are very intricate and are just being uncovered. Desire and reward centers It is surprising that many different sources of pleasure activate the same circuits between the mesocorticolimbic regions (Figure 1). Reward and desire are two aspects pleasure induction and have a very widespread, large circuit. Some part of this circuit distinguishes between desire and dread. The so-called pleasure circuitry called “REWARD” involves a well-known dopamine pathway in the mesolimbic system that can influence both pleasure and motivation. In simplest terms, the well-established mesolimbic system is a dopamine circuit for reward. It starts in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain and travels to the nucleus accumbens (Figure 2). It is the cornerstone target to all addictions. The VTA is encompassed with neurons using glutamate, GABA, and dopamine. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is located within the ventral striatum and is divided into two sub-regions—the motor and limbic regions associated with its core and shell, respectively. The NAc has spiny neurons that receive dopamine from the VTA and glutamate (a dopamine driver) from the hippocampus, amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, the NAc projects GABA signals to an area termed the ventral pallidum (VP). The region is a relay station in the limbic loop of the basal ganglia, critical for motivation, behavior, emotions and the “Feel Good” response. This defined system of the brain is involved in all addictions –substance, and non –substance related. In 1995, our laboratory coined the term “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” (RDS) to describe genetic and epigenetic induced hypodopaminergia in the “Brain Reward Cascade” that contribute to addiction and compulsive behaviors 3,6,41. Furthermore, ordinary “liking” of something, or pure pleasure, is represented by small regions mainly in the limbic system (old reptilian part of the brain). These may be part of larger neural circuits. In Latin, hedus is the term for “sweet”; and in Greek, hodone is the term for “pleasure.” Thus, the word Hedonic is now referring to various subcomponents of pleasure: some associated with purely sensory and others with more complex emotions involving morals, aesthetics, and social interactions. The capacity to have pleasure is part of being healthy and may even extend life, especially if linked to optimism as a dopaminergic response 42. Psychiatric illness often includes symptoms of an abnormal inability to experience pleasure, referred to as anhedonia. A negative feeling state is called dysphoria, which can consist of many emotions such as pain, depression, anxiety, fear, and disgust. Previously many scientists used animal research to uncover the complex mechanisms of pleasure, liking, motivation and even emotions like panic and fear, as discussed above 43. However, as a significant amount of related research about the specific brain regions of pleasure/reward circuitry has been derived from invasive studies of animals, these cannot be directly compared with subjective states experienced by humans. In an attempt to resolve the controversy regarding the causal contributions of mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward, we have previously evaluated the three-main competing explanatory categories: “liking,” “learning,” and “wanting” 3. That is, dopamine may mediate (a) liking: the hedonic impact of reward, (b) learning: learned predictions about rewarding effects, or (c) wanting: the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli 44. We have evaluated these hypotheses, especially as they relate to the RDS, and we find that the incentive salience or “wanting” hypothesis of dopaminergic functioning is supported by a majority of the scientific evidence. Various neuroimaging studies have shown that anticipated behaviors such as sex and gaming, delicious foods and drugs of abuse all affect brain regions associated with reward networks, and may not be unidirectional. Drugs of abuse enhance dopamine signaling which sensitizes mesolimbic brain mechanisms that apparently evolved explicitly to attribute incentive salience to various rewards 45. Addictive substances are voluntarily self-administered, and they enhance (directly or indirectly) dopaminergic synaptic function in the NAc. This activation of the brain reward networks (producing the ecstatic “high” that users seek). Although these circuits were initially thought to encode a set point of hedonic tone, it is now being considered to be far more complicated in function, also encoding attention, reward expectancy, disconfirmation of reward expectancy, and incentive motivation 46. The argument about addiction as a disease may be confused with a predisposition to substance and nonsubstance rewards relative to the extreme effect of drugs of abuse on brain neurochemistry. The former sets up an individual to be at high risk through both genetic polymorphisms in reward genes as well as harmful epigenetic insult. Some Psychologists, even with all the data, still infer that addiction is not a disease 47. Elevated stress levels, together with polymorphisms (genetic variations) of various dopaminergic genes and the genes related to other neurotransmitters (and their genetic variants), and may have an additive effect on vulnerability to various addictions 48. In this regard, Vanyukov, et al. 48 suggested based on review that whereas the gateway hypothesis does not specify mechanistic connections between “stages,” and does not extend to the risks for addictions the concept of common liability to addictions may be more parsimonious. The latter theory is grounded in genetic theory and supported by data identifying common sources of variation in the risk for specific addictions (e.g., RDS). This commonality has identifiable neurobiological substrate and plausible evolutionary explanations. Over many years the controversy of dopamine involvement in especially “pleasure” has led to confusion concerning separating motivation from actual pleasure (wanting versus liking) 49. We take the position that animal studies cannot provide real clinical information as described by self-reports in humans. As mentioned earlier and in the abstract, on November 23rd, 2017, evidence for our concerns was discovered 50 In essence, although nonhuman primate brains are similar to our own, the disparity between other primates and those of human cognitive abilities tells us that surface similarity is not the whole story. Sousa et al. 50 small case found various differentially expressed genes, to associate with pleasure related systems. Furthermore, the dopaminergic interneurons located in the human neocortex were absent from the neocortex of nonhuman African apes. Such differences in neuronal transcriptional programs may underlie a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders. In simpler terms, the system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a significant role in pleasure and rewards. The senior author, Dr. Nenad Sestan from Yale, stated: “Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees.” This may explain why the behavior of humans is so unique from that of non-human primates, even though our brains are so surprisingly similar, Sestan said: “It might also shed light on why people are vulnerable to mental disorders such as autism (possibly even addiction).” Remarkably, this research finding emerged from an extensive, multicenter collaboration to compare the brains across several species. These researchers examined 247 specimens of neural tissue from six humans, five chimpanzees, and five macaque monkeys. Moreover, these investigators analyzed which genes were turned on or off in 16 regions of the brain. While the differences among species were subtle, there was a remarkable contrast in the neocortices, specifically in an area of the brain that is much more developed in humans than in chimpanzees. In fact, these researchers found that a gene called tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) for the enzyme, responsible for the production of dopamine, was expressed in the neocortex of humans, but not chimpanzees. As discussed earlier, dopamine is best known for its essential role within the brain’s reward system; the very system that responds to everything from sex, to gambling, to food, and to addictive drugs. However, dopamine also assists in regulating emotional responses, memory, and movement. Notably, abnormal dopamine levels have been linked to disorders including Parkinson’s, schizophrenia and spectrum disorders such as autism and addiction or RDS. Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, pointed out that one alluring possibility is that the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a substantial role in humans’ ability to pursue various rewards that are perhaps months or even years away in the future. This same idea has been suggested by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Sapolsky cited evidence that dopamine levels rise dramatically in humans when we anticipate potential rewards that are uncertain and even far off in our futures, such as retirement or even the possible alterlife. This may explain what often motivates people to work for things that have no apparent short-term benefit 51. In similar work, Volkow and Bale 52 proposed a model in which dopamine can favor NOW processes through phasic signaling in reward circuits or LATER processes through tonic signaling in control circuits. Specifically, they suggest that through its modulation of the orbitofrontal cortex, which processes salience attribution, dopamine also enables shilting from NOW to LATER, while its modulation of the insula, which processes interoceptive information, influences the probability of selecting NOW versus LATER actions based on an individual’s physiological state. This hypothesis further supports the concept that disruptions along these circuits contribute to diverse pathologies, including obesity and addiction or RDS. 2 No intent-foresight distinction – if I foresee a consequence, then it becomes part of my deliberation since its intrinsic to my action
Impact calc – extinction outweighs A Reversibility- it forecloses the alternative because we can’t improve society if we are all dead B Structural violence- death causes suffering because people can’t get access to resources and basic necessities C Objectivity- body count is the most objective way to calculate impacts because comparing suffering is unethical D Uncertainty- if we’re unsure about which interpretation of the world is true, we should preserve the world to keep debating about it