Axiology

Dignity Bad
 Relative, Fungible, And Harmful
Dignity is a terrible value. 3 warrants.
Pinker, 08 (Pinker, Steven. "The stupidity of dignity." The new republic 28.05.2008 (2008).
http://claradoc.gpa.free.fr/doc/73.pdf)
So, despite the best efforts of the contributors, the concept of dignity remains a mess . The reason, I think, is that dignity has three
features that undermine any possibility of using it as a foundation for bioethics. First, dignity is relative. One doesn't have to
be a scientific or moral relativist to notice that ascriptions of dignity vary radically with the time,
place, and beholder. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. We
chuckle at the photographs of Victorians in starched collars and wool suits hiking in the woods on a
sweltering day, or at the Brahmins and patriarchs of countless societies who consider it beneath
their dignity to pick up a dish or play with a child. Thorstein Veblen wrote of a French king who
considered it beneath his dignity to move his throne back from the fireplace, and one night roasted
to death when his attendant failed to show up. Kass finds other people licking an ice -cream cone to be shamefully
undignified; I have no problem with it. Second, dignity is fungible. The Council and Vatican treat dignity as a sacred value, never to
be compromised. In fact, every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in
life. Getting out of a small car is undignified. Having sex is undignified. Doffing your belt and
spread- eagling to allow a security guard to slide a wand up your crotch is undignified. Most
pointedly, modern medicine is a gantlet of indignities. Most readers of this article have undergone a
pelvic or rectal examination, and many have had the pleasure of a colonoscopy as well. We repeatedly
vote with our feet (and other body parts) that dignity is a trivial value, well worth trading off for life, health, and
safety. Third, dignity can be harmful. In her comments on the Dignity volume, Jean Bethke Elshtain rhetorically asked, "Has
anything good ever come from denying or constricting human dignity?" The answer is an emphatic "yes." Every sashed and be-
medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through
ostentatious displays of dignity. Political and religious repressions are often rationalized as a
defense of the dignity of a state, leader, or creed: Just think of the Salman Rushdie fatwa, the
Danish cartoon riots, or the British schoolteacher in Sudan who faced flogging and a lynch mob
because her class named a teddy bear Mohammed. Indeed, totalitarianism is often the imposition of
a leader's conception of dignity on a population, such as the identical uniforms in Maoist China or the burqas of the
Taliban.
 Not Sacrosanct
Its morally wrong and academically irresponsible to say that human dignity is
sacrosanct.
Caulfield, 06 ((Caulfield, Timothy, and Roger Brownsword. "Human dignity: a guide to policy making
in the biotechnology era?." Nature Reviews Genetics 7.1 (2006): 72-76.
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v7/n1/abs/nrg1744.html))
This article explores the ways in which human dignity is used in debates about controversial biotechnologies, including biobanks, human gene
patents, stem cell research and human cloning. Increasingly, human dignity is used as a form of general condemnation
and as blanket justification for regulatory restraint. However, this use of human dignity marks a
significant departure from the traditional, human-rights informed view of human dignity that has
dominated bioethics debates for decades. In addition, on its own, it stands as dubious justification for
policies that are aimed at constraining controversial [issues] biotechnologies.
Dignity Good
 Telos Of Ethics
Human dignity is essential. The purpose of morality is to respect it.
Yue-Hong, 12 (Yue-hong, HAN (Faculty of Social Sciences, Kunming University of Science and
Technology, Kunming 650500,Yunnan,China) "Is the Concept of Dignity Useless to Life Ethics?."
(2012): 003. http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-KMLS201206003.htm)
Whether the concept of "human dignity" is useful or useless in the study of life ethics has become a main argument in the international academia
of life ethics currently. This paper argues against the opinion that "Dignity is a useless concept in the study of life ethics". The paper holds that
the concept of "dignity" cannot be viewed as an equivalent of "respect" because it has much
broader and more profound surplus connotations than the latter. In the second place, the concept of
"human dignity" in the study of life ethics is not merely being useful, but being of "great use" because it denotes the
very basic values of life ethics and the connotation of "human dignity of life" serves as one of its
core values. Therefore, maintaining the dignity of life is the key purpose and mission of life ethics.
Thirdly, the concept of "dignity" in practical ethics studies needs to be transmitted and transformed,
in which life values are transmitted and transformed into the cardinal ethic principle and other
basic principles and, in turn, into moral rights and legal rights.
 Central To Morality
Human dignity is central to human rights and morality itself.
HDT, ND (Human Dignity Trust: The Human Dignity Trust Works For the Global Decriminalisation of
Sexual Identity. Why Human Dignity http://www.humandignitytrust.org/pages/OUR%20WORK/Why
%20Human%20Dignity)
Human Dignity is The Basis of Fundamental Human Rights Human dignity [it] is inviolable and it
must be respected and protected. The dignity of the human person is not only a fundamental right
in itself, but constitutes the basis of fundamental rights in international law. The 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights enshrined this principle in its preamble: recognition of the inherent
dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation
of freedom, justice and peace in the world. For this reason the dignity of the human person is part of the substance of any
right protected by international human rights law. It must, therefore, be respected, even where a right is restricted. Human Dignity is at the Heart
of Human Identity Human dignity goes to the heart of human identity , including a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered
and intersex identity, hence the name of the trust. Without
dignity none of the protections of the various legal
human rights mechanisms can have real meaning, which is why the concept has held, and continues
to hold, a central place in the international human rights framework. Criminalising private and consensual
sexual activity also violates the right to respect for private life, and may amount to inhuman and degrading treatment. The criminalisation of some
peoples private consensual sexual activity has been held to be arbitrary, as well as discriminatory and in breach of equality principles.
Additionally, wider notions of economic and social rights such as the right to the highest attainable standard of health can be violated by the
criminalisation of private and consensual sexual activity.
Eudaimonism Bad
 Telos Is FitnessNot The Good Life
Eudaimonism doesnt make sense. Ones telos isnt some contrived conception of
the good life but rather evolutionary fitness.
Wilkinson, 10 (Will Wilkinson, Will Wilkinson is an American writer. Until August 2010, he was a
research fellow at the Cato Institute where he worked on a variety of issues including Social Security
privatization and, most notably, the policy implications of happiness research. Eudaimonism Is False
http://bigthink.com/the-moral-sciences-club/eudaimonism-is-false)
My trouble is that it is hard to make sense of eudaimonia within a Darwinian worldview , and that there is no
good argument to the effect that eudaimonia, whatever it is, ought to be the aim of action. You are not an
instance of a natural kind. You are a member of a genetic line. You have no essence. If you can be
said to have a natural telos, it is to maximize inclusive fitness. But that is not only not in any sense a
rationally mandatory aim, it's a completely stupid aim. Making copies of your genome is, in an
important sense, what you are for. But it has next to nothing to do with what you ought to try to do
with yourself.
Eudaimonism Good
 Telos Of Humanity
The purpose of life and morality are to live rationally, virtuously, and in a way that
progresses toward human perfection.
Thomas, 14 (Thomas, Alexander. "The Problem of Eudaimonia and
Virtue."https://www.oxfordphilsoc.org/Documents/Chadwick/2014_B.pdf)
In order to understand eudaimonia in the context of Aristotles work, we must first understand his science as it relates to his account of virtue
and happiness. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that all species have a specific, and unique [telos] to that
species, end in life. For Aristotle, end (telos) means the purpose and goal of life. For the human
species then, it is the direction in which life is lived that is the point of being human. Just as for
instance a trees or a horses life existence is predicated on being the best tree and the best horse, so
mans teleological end is the perfection of his rational activity (with rational activity seen as
Aristotles species differentiation between men and animals). Aristotle, following Socrates/Plato,
maintains that mans end is rational activity directed towards human perfection, that is, to the
good. Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has
rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. (NE, Book 1, Ch 1) If, then, there is some end of the things
we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose
everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty
and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. (NE, Book 1, Ch 2) For Aristotle, since human beings
are the only species that have rationality, the good of a human being must have something to do
with being human; and as we have said, what sets humanity apart from other species is their use of
reason. [towards human perfection] So, if we reason well, we live well; thus reasoning well over the course of a life is what
happiness consists of and the good perfected is in essence full happiness. And doing anything well (and in this case, living a happy life)
requires arte (excellence, or in Aristotles case virtues which are excellences), and therefore living well as the end goal requires the cultivation
of virtue (excellence) in the practice of rational activity. (Kraut) Let us resume our inquiry and state, in view of the fact that all knowledge and
every pursuit aims at some good, and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. Verbally there is very general agreement; for both the
general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy (NE, Book
1, Ch 4) So for Aristotle, living well towards the end goal of happiness (eudaimonia) consists in our
practice of virtuous activity. But in order to achieve this happiness we must not just act virtuously,
but in addition we must act with the intent of being virtuous, and in addition we must actually be
virtuous in ourselves. In other words, a person intending to act virtuously but not virtuous himself, cannot achieve the end goal of
happiness. Thus if any one of these three aspects of a virtuous life are missing we are unable to have true happiness.
 Wellbeing Ultimate Value/End
Wellbeing is the only intelligible value. It is necessarily the implicit or explicit end of
any moral theory.
Harris, 10 (Sam Harris; CEO Project Reason; PHD UCLA Neuroscience; BA Stanford Philosophy).
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.)
Now that we have consciousness on the table, my further claim is that the concept of well-being captures all that we can
intelligibly value. And moralitywhatever peoples associations with this term happen to be
really relates to the intentions and behaviors that affect the well-being of conscious creatures. On this
point, religious conceptions of moral law are often put forward as counterexamples: for when asked why it is important to follow Gods law,
many people will cannily say, for its own sake. Of course, it is possible to say this, but this seems neither an honest nor a coherent claim. What
if a more powerful God would punish us for eternity for following Yahwehs law? Would it then make sense to follow Yahwehs law for its own
sake? The inescapable fact is that religious people are as eager to find happiness and to avoid misery as anyone else: many of them just happen
to believe that the most important changes in conscious experience occur after death (i.e., in heaven or in hell). And while Judaism is sometimes
held up as an exceptionbecause it tends not to focus on the afterlifethe Hebrew Bible makes it absolutely clear that Jews should follow
Yahwehs law out of concern for the negative consequences of not following it. People who do not believe in God or an afterlife, and yet still
think it important to subscribe to a religious tradition, only believe this because living this way [it] seems to make some positive contribution to
their well-being or to the well-being of others. 9 Religious notions of morality, therefore, are not exceptions to our common concern for well-
being. And all other philosophical efforts to describe morality in terms of duty, fairness, justice, or
some other principle that is not explicitly tied to the wellbeing of conscious creatures, draw upon
some conception of well-being in the end.
Hedonism Bad
 3 Warrants
Hedonism is a terrible value. 3 warrants.
Brax, 07 (Brax, David. David Brax, Department of Philosophy, Lund University
"Hedonic Naturalism."http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30943840/Hedonic-
naturalism.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1441780578&Signature=G4JJuL
%2FTASLarPZu26ABtQ%2FYs2c%3D&response-content-disposition=inline)
One of the reasons [first] hedonism was abandoned was the fail[s]ure to deliver a method to account
for relevant outcomes for consequentialist theories of rightness. Never an actual argument in favour
of hedonism, it was held as a clear advantage that it could make moral counting possible. When the
so-called introspectionist program, the idea that you could measure your [there is no objective
way to measure] level of wellbeing by pure self-awareness, failed, this advantage was lost. On the other
hand, the argument has been made that hedonists need not cater to utilitarianism, and that its plausibility both predates it and would outlive its
decline7. A second blow to the hedonist cause came with Moores attack on Mill. Even if pleasure were the only thing truly
desired, i.e. if classical psychological hedonism were true, this would not establish the truth of
hedonism about the good. While equating desired with desirable is surely a mistake, it was not a mistake
that Mill committed8. While no proof, and no conceptual entailment exist between mere psychological facts
about desire and desirability, the only evidence of desirability is still the existence and persistence of
desire for that object. Third: other things than pleasure turn up in evaluative introspection. Intuitionists like Ross and Moore
managed to convince that the things we value for their own sake are not all reducible to the pleasure they bring. In other words: even granted that
psychological hedonism would yield some evidence for evaluative hedonism, appeal to intrinsic desires, even informed ones, does not bear it out:
psychological hedonism is demonstrably false. That is, even if psychological principles were relevant to the question
of what is good, this particular link between psychology and ethics does not support hedonism.
Even such reductionist views as evolutionary accounts of morality typically argues that whats good
for us is what is important to our survival, and pleasure, while usually a good guide in that respect,
is simply not the only thing on that list. The hedonist, then, needs to either abandon its psychological basis, or find a new one.
Hedonists are in something of an uphill struggle.
 Experience Machine
Imagine that neuroscientists developed a machine that could stimulate a person to
experience maximum-happiness. Hedonism would mandate that a person should
hood up to the machine for life and live in an artificial world of pleasure because all
that matters is happiness. But of course, there is more to morality than dopamine
and serotonin. Its asinine to suggest that artificial pleasure is greater than real
world experience and other types of good in life.
Hedonism Good
 Wellbeing Ultimate Value/End
Wellbeing is the only intelligible value. It is necessarily the implicit or explicit end of
any moral theory.
Harris, 10 (Sam Harris; CEO Project Reason; PHD UCLA Neuroscience; BA Stanford Philosophy).
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values.)
Now that we have consciousness on the table, my further claim is that the concept of well-being captures all that we can
intelligibly value. And moralitywhatever peoples associations with this term happen to be
really relates to the intentions and behaviors that affect the well-being of conscious creatures. On this
point, religious conceptions of moral law are often put forward as counterexamples: for when asked why it is important to follow Gods law,
many people will cannily say, for its own sake. Of course, it is possible to say this, but this seems neither an honest nor a coherent claim. What
if a more powerful God would punish us for eternity for following Yahwehs law? Would it then make sense to follow Yahwehs law for its own
sake? The inescapable fact is that religious people are as eager to find happiness and to avoid misery as anyone else: many of them just happen
to believe that the most important changes in conscious experience occur after death (i.e., in heaven or in hell). And while Judaism is sometimes
held up as an exceptionbecause it tends not to focus on the afterlifethe Hebrew Bible makes it absolutely clear that Jews should follow
Yahwehs law out of concern for the negative consequences of not following it. People who do not believe in God or an afterlife, and yet still
think it important to subscribe to a religious tradition, only believe this because living this way [it] seems to make some positive contribution to
their well-being or to the well-being of others. 9 Religious notions of morality, therefore, are not exceptions to our common concern for well-
being. And all other philosophical efforts to describe morality in terms of duty, fairness, justice, or
some other principle that is not explicitly tied to the wellbeing of conscious creatures, draw upon
some conception of well-being in the end.
 Ultimate Value/End
Pleasure and absence of pain are the ultimate moral ends.
Mill, 1863 (John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861 http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm)
According to the Greatest Happiness Principle, as above explained, the
ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake
of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other
people), is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments,
both in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality, and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being the preference felt
by those who in their opportunities of experience, to which must be added their habits of self-consciousness and self-observation, are best
furnished with the means of comparison. This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard
of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has
been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to
the whole sentient creation. (Mill)
 Naturalism Good
Any account of ethics fails unless it uses fundamental aspects of nature to explain
morality.
Reader, 2K (Soran Reader, Department of Philosophy, Durham University. New Directions in Ethics:
Naturalisms, Reasons and Virtue December 2000. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice pp. 347-348 PC)
What is the alternative? To understand ethics in its own terms. This deprives us of explanatory naturalism.
We can't without error expect to understand ethics in any terms but ethical. This has seemed to
many philosophers to be unduly restrictive, and to threaten relativism.8 But in fact it does not lead to these
difficulties - or, more accurately, it doesn't exacerbate them. The problem of displaying the rationality of ethics in a
compelling way is real. But it is also general. It is the same as the problem of displaying the rationality of
all the other things we do - playing games, conducting scientific enquiry, writing philosophy papers. We might be able to make
connections between activities using an analogy with another game, say, to illuminate the game of chess for someone. But all we will
ever be able to lay our hands on in the activity of explaining, is more of the same: parts of our life.
The idea of our being able to use 'the world as it is in itself to explain any of our activities is
practically contradictory. And the idea that rationality - supernature, rather than first nature - can
be used to explain ethics in this way, involves a similar error. The way we think acquire beliefs,
deliberate, justify ourselves is also part of our life. It is as 'fundamental' in that life as ethics is, but no more so - no more
knowable 'in itself, as Aristotle, in the grip of a similar error to our own, would have put it, than it is 'to us', here and now, living as we live. So
explanatory accounts of ethics, whether they invoke first-nature or super natural reason, are
mistaken. Explicatory naturalism is as far as we can go. And as far as we need to go.
 Outweighs life
People matter more than their lives.
Singer, 95 (Peter Singer, Bioethics, vol. 9, no. 3, 4, 1995. Reprinted in Writings on an Ethical Life,
p. 176.)
If it is life with consciousness, rather than life itself, that we value, then brining medical practice
into line with the definition of death does not seem a good idea. It would be better to bring the
definition of brain death into line with current medical practice.Which functions of the brain will
we take as marking the difference between life and death and why? The most plausible answer is
that the brain functions that really matter are those related to consciousness. On this view, what we
really care about and ought to care about is the person rather than the body.
 AT Experience Machine
The experience machine thought experiment doesnt refute hedonism. The hasty
conclusion reached fails to take into account implicit hedonistic considerations of
our intuitions about value.
Hewitt, 10 (Hewitt, Sharon. "What do our intuitions about the experience machine really tell us about
hedonism?." Philosophical studies 151.3 (2010): 331-349.http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-
009-9440-4)
Robert Nozicks experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of
hedonism. I argue that [but] the conclusions we draw from [it] Nozicks thought experiment ought to be
informed by considerations concerning the operation of our intuitions about value. First , I argue that, in
order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative reaction to the
experience machine, we must not merely stipulate their irrelevance (since our intuitions are not always responsive
to stipulation) but fill in the concrete details that would make them irrelevant. If we do this, we may see our
feelings about the experience machine becoming less negative. Second, I argue that, even if our feelings
about the experience machine do not perfectly track hedonistic reasons, there are various reasons to
doubt the reliability of our anti-hedonistic intuitions. And finally, I argue that, since in the actual world
seeing certain things besides pleasure as ends in themselves may best serve hedonistic ends,
hedonism may justify our taking these other things to be intrinsically valuable, thus again making
the existence of our seemingly anti-hedonistic intuitions far from straightforward evidence for the
falsity of hedonism.
Justice Bad
 Vague And Subjective
Justice as a concept is subjective and vague. There are tons of different conceptions
of what justice means, what is just, and why. Its not a good value because first, its
vagueness turns it into a moving target that I cant effectively argue against, and
second the lack of specificity makes it impossible for you to use justice as a fair and
objective standard to evaluate the round.
 Giving Each Their Due Vague
Justice as giving each their due is exceptionally vague. There are tons of different
conceptions as to what a person is due and why. Its not a good value because first,
its vagueness turns it into a moving target that I cant effectively argue against, and
second the lack of specificity makes it impossible for you to use it as a fair and
objective standard to evaluate the round.
 Fairness Vague
Justice as fairness is exceptionally vague. There are tons of different conceptions as
to what is fair and why. Heuristic Egalitarianism? Equal opportunity? Equal
welfare? Equal rights? Equal consideration? Its not a good value because first, its
vagueness turns it into a moving target that I cant effectively argue against, and
second the lack of specificity makes it impossible for you to use it as a fair and
objective standard to evaluate the round.
Justice Good
 Giving Each Their Due
Justice means giving each their due.
Claire and Velasquez, 90 (Andre, Claire, and Manuel Velasquez. "Justice and fairness." Issues in
Ethics3.2 (1990). http://michiganstudentcaucus.org/sites/default/files/Justice%20and%20Fairness
%20(Andre%20%26%20Velazquez).pdf)
To Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Ellison, receiving compensation for the debilitating effects of brown lung similar to that given to other diseases was a
simple matter of justice. In making their case, their arguments reflected a long tradition in Western civilization. In fact, no idea in Western
civilization has been more consistently linked to ethics and morality than the idea of justice. From the
Republic, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, to A Theory of Justice, written by the contemporary Harvard philosopher John Rawls,
every major work on ethics has held that justice is part of the central core of morality. Justice
means giving each person what he or she deserves, or, in more traditional terms, giving each person
his or her due. The Nortons and Ellisons of this world, for example, are asking for what they feel they deserve; they are demanding that
they be treated with justice and fairness. When people differ over what they believe should be given, or when decisions have to be made about
how benefits and burdens should be distributed among a group of people, questions of justice or fairness inevitably arise. In fact, most ethicists
today hold the view that there would be no point of talking about justice or fairness if it were not for the conflicts of interest that are created when
goods and services are scarce and people differ over who should get what. When such conflicts arise in our society, we need principles of justice
that we can all accept as reasonable and fair standards for determining what people deserve.
Life Bad
 Life Not First
Life is important, but not the most important. Other considerations come before
bodily integrity.
Schroeder, 86 (Prof. Law, Duke, 86 (Christopher H. Schroeder, Prof. Law, Duke,1986, Rights Against
Risks, 86 Colum. L. Rev. 495))
Actually, expanding the idea of preservation to include bodily integrity on the basis of quality of life considerations has already pointed the way
to a more realistic statement of those individual characteristics worth protecting. The same considerations of quality of life counsel recognizing
some freedom of action and initiative within the definition of the morally relevant aspects of the individual. Doing so is consistent with a long
political and philosophical heritage. 90 Deeply ingrained in practically all theories of the rights tradition is the vision of a person as capable of
forming and entitled to pursue some individual life plan. 91 Given this vision, placing survival or bodily integrity absolutely
above all other ends would be tantamount to saying that the life plan that one ought to adopt is that
of prolonging life at all costs. That idea is unacceptably authoritarian and regimented. It would be
extremely anomalous for a theory supposedly centered on the autonomy of the individual to result in a conception of justice that constrained all
individuals to a monolithic result. Individual human beings want more from their lives than simple [*520] bodily
integrity, and the conception of an individual, of what defines and constitutes a person, as so limited is peculiarly impoverished. Individuals
are capable of formulating and pursuing life plans, of forming bonds of love, commitment, and friendship on which they subsequently act, of
conceiving images of self- and community-improvement. Some of these may directly advance interests in human survival, as when dedicated
doctors and scientists pursue solutions to cancer or develop chemical pesticides with a view to assisting agricultural self-sufficiency in developing
countries. Some may dramatically advance the "quality of life," rather than survival itself, as when Guttenberg's press made literature more
widely available or when Henry Ford pioneered the mass production of the automobile. However, even individual initiatives of much less
demonstrable impact on the lives of others constitute a vital element that makes human life distinctively human. A just society ought to
understand and value this element both in the concrete results it sometimes produces and in the freedom and integrity that are acknowledged
when individual liberty to conceive and act upon initiative is respected.
 Quality Of Life Alternative
Life is important, but theres more to morality than being alive. Dont get caught up
in the means and forget the end. Its bad to just focus on maximizing life while
ignoring everything else. Focus on quality of life instead.
Life Good
 Life Oughtweighs And Prerequisite
Life is the ultimate moral value because it both outweighs and is a prerequisite to all
other values.
Uyl and Rasmussen, 81 (Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Prof.s Philosophy Bellarmine
and St. Johns, 1981, Reading Nozick, p. 244-245)
Why should this be the standard for moral evaluation? Why must this be the ultimate moral value? Why not "death" or "the greatest happiness for
the greatest number"? Man's life must be the standard for judging moral value because this is the end toward
which all goal-directed action (in this case purposive action) is directed, and we have already shown
why goal-directed behavior depends on life. Indeed, one cannot make a choice without implicitly
choosing life as the end.
 Telos Of Life
Life has intrinsic value. Living is the telos of organic life. Allowing death and
suffering must be ethically rejected.
Schwartz and Wiggins, 10 (Michael A Schwartz and Osborne P Wiggins Department of Psychiatry,
University of Hawaii and Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Philosophy, Ethics, and
Humanities in Medicine, Psychosomatic medicine and the philosophy of life, http://www.peh-
med.com/content/5/1/2)
As we have said, the metabolic activity of the organism is geared toward sustaining the existence of the organism. This being geared toward the
sustaining of its own being shows that the metabolism of the organism is "for the sake of" its own continuation
in being. The being that the activity is geared toward preserving is the organism's future being. The metabolic
functioning is for the sake of bridging the temporal gap that separates the organism in the present from its own existence in the future. In slightly
different terms, metabolic activity serves the temporal enduring of the organism . Hence it is temporal duration that
poses the main threat to the organism's contingent existence: the
question of whether the organism will endure from
moment to moment always remains an unanswered question until the future becomes the present
and the organism still lives. And the threat can be defeated only if the activity of metabolism is
sustained. Life is thus teleological: the present activity of the living being aims at its own future
being [8,9]. If we can speak of the metabolic activity of the organism as occurring "for the sake of"
the organism's future being, this means that at some fundamental level the organism posits its own
continuation in reality as a "good." In other words, the organism posits its own existence as having a
positive value. Value is thus built into the reality of organic life : it is organic life itself that places value there. It is
not human beings and certainly not human agency that introduces value into an otherwise value-free universe.
Living beings themselves, by striving to preserve themselves, already signal that, at least for the being involved, its
own life is a good [10-12]. We can see, then, that the values that motivate medical practice are grounded in organic life itself. While only
human beings can develop and practice medical treatment, it is not human beings who introduce into the world the values that call for and justify
that treatment. Living beings themselves posit the goodness of an activity that prevents death and
alleviates suffering. If for the organism its own continuation is good, then its death would be bad.
Hence the moral need to combat death issues from the organism's own internal striving . And
therefore the need to treat and hopefully cure the ill organism so that it does not die - at least not before its naturally
allotted time - is based on a value that the organism itself posits. The same would be true for suffering
and pain, at least for those organism's that can feel. Felt suffering and pain are posited by the organism feeling
them as bad. Hence the moral need to relieve and even eradicate pain through medical treatment arises at
the most basic levels of life, even if only human beings can recognize this value as a moral
requirement and develop the medical techniques to respond to it [11,13].
Morality Bad
 Vague And Subjective
Morality as a concept is subjective and vague. There are tons of different
conceptions of what morality means, what things are moral, and why. Its not a good
value because first, its vagueness turns it into a moving target that I cant effectively
argue against, and second the lack of specificity makes it impossible for you to use
morality as a fair and objective standard to evaluate the round.
Morality Good
 Right And Wrong Definition
Morality means rightness or goodness.
TFD, 15 (The Free Dictionary, morality definition, accessed 17/9/15,
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/morality)
Morality: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct: questioned the morality of
my actions. 2. A system or collection of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality. 3. Virtuous conduct:
commended his morality. 4. A rule or lesson in moral conduct: sermons noted for their moralities.
 Rational Code Of Conduct Definition
Morality refers to a rational code of conduct.
SEP, 11 (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Definition of Morality Mar 14, 2011,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/)
The term morality can be used either descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward
by a society or, some other group, such as a religion, or accepted by an individual for her own behavior or normatively to
refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational
persons.
Moral Status
Degrees
 Humanity
Nonhumans dont have rights. They lack the mental capacity to meet key criteria
for moral worth. The meta-ethical theories of 6 prominent philosophers back me up.
Regardless, just because they dont have rights, doesnt mean that they have no
value. We can still treat them humanely without treating them as equals.
Cohen, 86 (Professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, New England Journal of Medicine
(Carl, The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research 314:865-869,
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/cohen.pdf)//dodo)
A right, properly understood, is a claim, or potential claim, that one party may exercise against another. The target against whom such a claim
may be registered can be a single person, a group, a community, or (perhaps) all humankind. The content of rights claims also varies greatly:
repayment of loans, nondiscrimination by employers, noninterference by the state, and so on. To comprehend any genuine right fully, therefore,
we must know who holds the right, against whom it is held, and to what it is a right. Alternative sources of rights add complexity Some rights are
grounded in constitution and law (e.g., the right of an accused to trial by jury); some rights are moral but give no legal claims (e.g., my right to
your keeping the promise you gave me); and some rights (e.g., against theft or assault) are rooted both in morals and in law. The differing targets,
contents, and sources of rights, and their inevitable conflict, together weave a tangled web. Notwithstanding all such complications, this much is
clear about rights in general: they are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of moral agents. Rights arise, and can be
intelligibly defended, only among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one another. Whatever else rights may be, therefore,
they are necessarily human; their possessors are persons, human beings. The attributes of human beings from which this
moral capability arises have been described variously by philosophers, both ancient and modem: the inner
consciousness of a free will (Saint Augustine); the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character of moral law (Saint Thomas);
the self-conscious participation of human beings in an objective ethical order (Hegel); human membership in
an organic moral community (Bradley); the development of the human self through the consciousness of other moral selves
(Mead); and the underivative, intuitive cognition of the rightness of an action (Prichard). Most
influential has been Immanuel Kant's emphasis on the universal human possession of a uniquely moral
will and the autonomy its use entails. Humans confront choices that are purely moral; humans--but certainly not
dogs or mice-- lay down moral laws, for others and for themselves. Human beings are self-legislative, morally autonomous. Animals (that is,
nonhuman animals, the ordinary sense of that word) lack this capacity for free moral judgment. They are not beings of a kind capable of
exercising or responding to moral claims. Animals therefore have no rights, and they can have none. This is the core of the
argument about the alleged rights of animals. The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty, governing all including
themselves. In applying such rules, the holders of rights must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just.
Only in a community of beings capable of self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked. Humans have such
moral capacities. They are in this sense self-legislative, are members of communities governed by moral rules, and do possess rights. Animals
do not have such moral capacities. They are not morally self-legislative, cannot possibly be members of a truly moral community,
and therefore cannot possess rights. In conducting research on animal subjects, therefore, we do not violate their rights, because they have none to
violate. To animate life, even in its simplest forms, we give a certain natural reverence. But the possession of rights presupposes
a moral status not attained by the vast majority of living things . We must not infer, therefore, that a live being has,
simply in being alive, a "right" to its life. The assertion that all animals, only because they are alive and have interests, also possess the "right to
life" is an abuse of that phrase, and wholly without warrant. It does not follow from this, however, that we are morally free
to do anything we please to animals. Certainly not. In our dealings with animals, as in our dealings with other human beings, we
have obligations that do not arise from claims against us based on rights. Rights entail obligations, but many of
the things one ought to do are in no way tied to another's entitlement. Rights and obligations are not reciprocals of one another, and it is a serious
mistake to suppose that they are. Illustrations are helpful. Obligations may arise from internal commitments made: physicians have obligations to
their patients not grounded merely in their patients' rights. Teachers have such obligations to their students, shepherds to their dogs, and cowboys
to their horses. Obligations may arise from differences of status: adults owe special care when playing with young children, and children owe
special care when playing with young pets. Obligations may arise from special relationships: the payment of my son's college tuition is something
to which he may have no right, although it may be my obligation to bear the burden if I reasonably can; my dog has no right to daily exercise and
veterinary care, but I do have the obligation to provide these things for her. Obligations may arise from particular acts or circumstances: one may
be obliged to another for a special kindness done, or obliged to put an animal out of its misery in view of its condition--although neither the
human benefactor nor the dying animal may have had a claim of right. Plainly, the grounds of our obligations to humans and to animals are
manifold and cannot be formulated simply. Some hold that there is a general obligation to do no gratuitous harm to sentient creatures (the
principle of nonmaleficence); some hold that there is a general obligation to do good to sentient creatures when that is reasonably within one's
power (the principle of beneficence). In our dealings with animals, few will deny that we are at least obliged to act humanely--that is, to treat
them with the decency and concern that we owe, as sensitive human beings, to other sentient creatures. To treat animals humanely,
however, is not to treat them as humans or as the holders of rights.
Agency
Rationality
 Capacity To Suffer
If an animal lacks the capacity to suffer, it has no moral worth.
Cottee, 10 (Department of Animal and Poultry Science, University of Guelph, Are fish the victims of
speciesism? A discussion about fear, pain and animal consciousness, Fish Physiol Biochem (2012) 38:5,
13 January 2010)
Since subjective experiences are not available for direct investigation, sentience, or the capacity to
feel, is deduced from indirect evidence, mainly behavioural evidence (Duncan 1996, 2004). As aforemen- tioned,
in the absence of the capacity to feel, welfare is a non-issue. If [an animal] fish cannot suffer, then
they can be treated like [plants] tomatoes. We may try to avoid damaging them, but only because
[of] their instrumental value would be reduced.
 Sentience
Moral worth is predicated off of sentience.
Singer, 12 (Peter. "All animals are equal." Ethical Theory: An Anthology 13 (2012): 361.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf)
If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into
consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its
suffering be counted equally with the like sufferingin so far as rough comparisons can be madeof any other being. If a
being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be
taken into account. This is why the limit of sentience (using the term as a convenient, if not strictly accurate, shorthand for
the capacity to suffer or experience enjoyment or happiness) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the
interests of others. To mark this boundary by some characteristic like [species] intelligence or
rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary way. Why not choose some other characteristic, like
skin color?
 Equal Consideration Doesnt Mean Equal Treatment
Equality means equal consideration, not necessarily equal treatment.
Singer, 75 (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation. Reprinted in Writings on an Ethical Life, pp 29)
The extension of the basic principle of equality from one group to another does not imply that we
must treat both groups in exactly the same way or grant exactly the same rights to both groups.
Whether we should do so will depend on the nature of the members of the two groups. The basic principle
of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. Equal
consideration for different beings may lead to different treatment and different rights.
 Fishes Cant Suffer
Fishes cant suffer.
Rose et al, 14 (Department of Zoology and Physiology and Neuroscience Program, University of
Wyoming) J D Rose, R Arlinghaus, S J Cooke, B K Diggles, W Sawynok, E D Stevens & C D L Wynne,
Can fish really feel pain?, FISH and FISHERIES, 2014, 15, 97133)
A source of confusion in the literature advocating fish pain is the claim for a capacity for con- scious emotional feelings in fishes. The
contemporary neurobiological literature has shown that there is a dichotomy of unconscious
emotional responses and conscious feelings that is comparable to the nociceptionpain dichotomy.
Fishes are neurologically equipped for unconscious nociception and emotional responses, but not
conscious pain and feelings. In view of the necessity of consciousness as a precondition for pain experience claims have also been
made for the existence of consciousness in fishes . Our assessment of these claims leads us to conclude that neither their
rationale nor their supporting evidence is compelling, much less neurologically feasible . The arguments we have
presented support function and nature-based welfare standards that are predicated on objective indicators of fish well-being rather than a feelings-
based standard that is highly speculative and scientifically unsubstantiated.
 Fishes Cant Suffer
Fishes have no moral worth. They cant suffer or feel pain.
Rose, 07 (Department of Zoology and Physiology and Neuroscience Program, University of Wyoming;
James D., Anthropomorphism and mental welfare of fishes, DISEASES OF AQUATIC ORGANISMS
Dis Aquat Org, Vol. 75: 139154, 2007)
The evidence presented in the preceding 3 sections supports the argument that fishes are incapable of conscious pain or
feelings. However, conditions that are noxious, if sufficiently intense or sustained, are likely to cause
disturbed homeostasis, which could be expressed through disrupted [their] behavior as well as
pathological endocrine, autonomic, or immunological regulation. These disturbances would be [is]
mediated through unconscious processes in the brain. However, the need to avoid or reduce exposure of fishes to con-
ditions that provoke these homeostatic disturbances is not necessarily different from the need that would prevail if fishes experienced pain and
feelings. Thus, generally speaking, the same consideration should be given to the vulnerabilities and reactivity of fishes regardless of whether
they are assumed to have con- scious awareness. This has been the position expressed in the Guidelines for the Use of Fishes in Research put
forth by the American Fisheries Society (Nickum et al. 2004). This issue will be revisited below. There are some situations, of course, where there
are very differing practical implications of con- cluding that fishes are incapable, as opposed to capa- ble, of conscious pain or feelings. The issue
of humane slaughter in commercial fishing is one such case. Here, since the fish will be killed, the unconscious, relatively short-term disruption
of homeostasis is not so much of an issue, whereas pain and conscious suffering of fish held and being killed could be a significant welfare matter
(van de Vis et al. 2003). According to the evidence presented here and earlier (Rose 2002), however, any policies or socio-political
agendas predicated specifically on the assumption that fishes are capable of conscious suffering
would be unfounded, even though I would argue that a case still exists for respectful handling, including slaughter, of such fish
Understanding the mental experiences of another human is relatively difficult, but understanding the possible experiences of organisms in a taxon
as diverse and evolutionally distant from us as fishes is much more difficult. Even so, humans are strongly inclined to
anthropomorphically generalize our feelings to other organisms, but humanized interpretations of
animal cognition and behavior are commonly wrong as well as misleading. The natural lifestyle of fishes is typically harsh
by human standards, with extreme environments and perpetual predation, yet thousands of fish species are adapted to these lifestyles.
Nonetheless, mental suffering, including experiences like pain, fear, and boredom, has been proposed by some as a wel- fare domain for fishes.
Studies purporting to show pain or fear in fishes have been flawed by invalid definitions of these
states and a failure to distinguish unconscious from conscious behaviors. Anthropomorphic thinking about fishes
would predict that they should behave as though they were conscious and had human-like awareness of fear and pain. However, evidence
from natural history, angling, and other sources shows that fishes frequently do not respond to
presumably noxious stimuli in ways that would be expected if they had human-like consciousness or
sensibilities. Furthermore, substantial contemporary research shows that we must distinguish unconscious nociception from conscious pain
and unconscious emo- tions from conscious feelings. Fishes should be viewed as having nociceptive and emotional responses to nox- ious or
provocative stimuli, although the character of these emotional responses would likely differ from that of humans. In addition, without
having the necessary cerebral cortical development (or alternative system), it is extremely improbable that
fishes could consciously experience pain or feelings. However, while they may be responsive to noxious stimuli in
different ways than humans might expect, reactivity to injurious or provocative stimuli constitutes an important welfare concern for fishes.
Stimuli and conditions detrimental to fishes are well documented through objectively val- idated indices like physiological stress or disturbed
reproduction or maladaptive behavior. This is the evi- dence that should guide welfare considerations. Gen- erally, the consideration given to the
vulnerabilities and reactivity of fishes should not depend on whether fishes are assumed to have conscious awareness. How- ever, policy
decisions driven by anthropomorphic mentalistic views of fishes are likely to promote misunderstanding and be detrimental to fishes and humans
alike.
 AT Reaction To Stimulus
Reaction to stimulus isnt the same as suffering.
Rose, 07 (Department of Zoology and Physiology and Neuroscience Program, University of Wyoming;
James D., Anthropomorphism and mental welfare of fishes, DISEASES OF AQUATIC ORGANISMS
Dis Aquat Org, Vol. 75: 139154, 2007)
NOCICEPTION IS NOT PAIN AND EMOTIONS ARE NOT FEELINGS Protective reactions to noxious stimuli are a
universal characteristic of animal life. These reactions occur in the simplest life forms like amoebas,
which have no nervous system but will move away from potentially injurious chemical or
mechanical stimuli. Many invertebrates, like starfish, have no brain, only sensory receptors
connected through a nerve ring to contractile cells that cause movements in response to noxious
stimuli. Thus, protective reactions do not require a complex nervous system and occur in animals
that are incapable of conscious awareness. Even exceedingly complex protective reactions, like immune responses, can occur
wholly unconsciously. One of the most important advances in the scientific study of pain (Rose 2002) is the realization that pain is a
purely conscious experience and separate from behavioral and physiological reactions to injury .
According to the Society for the Scientific Study of Pain (Price 1999, Rose 2002), pain has a sensory-perceptual aspect and an emotional-feeling
aspect. The perceptual part tells us that we have been injured, like the first sensation when you hit your thumb with a ham- mer. The emotional-
feeling part is separate, as the suffering that follows after we first become aware of hitting our thumb. In contrast to pain, nociception is
the non-conscious processing of noxious stimuli. Injury-detecting sensory receptors are called nociceptors, not pain
receptors, because pain is a conscious experience due to processing by higher-order cortical regions in our brain and is not simply due to
nociceptor activation (Rose 2002). Accordingly, pain is not an invariable result of nociceptor activation. Nociception includes behavioral and
physiological responses that range from simple limb withdrawal reflexes to more complex behaviors like vocalizing, grimacing, and avoiding the
noxious stimulus. Thus, given these com- plex behaviors, it is incorrect to define pain as being any response more
than a simple reflex, as Sneddon et al. (2003a) and Sneddon (2003) have done in recent studies of rainbow trout. In addition, part of
an organ- isms defense against nociceptive stimuli is an ability to learn to avoid situations where nociceptive stimuli have occurred. However, as
explained above, this kind of learning is non-conscious procedural learning, which is why it is present even in primitive invertebrates. Therefore,
evidence of an earthworm or a fish learning to avoid nociceptive stimuli is not evidence [of] that they experience
pain.
 AT Benefit Of The Doubt
Dont buy the benefit of the doubt argument.
Rose et al, 14 (Department of Zoology and Physiology and Neuroscience Program, University of
Wyoming) J D Rose, R Arlinghaus, S J Cooke, B K Diggles, W Sawynok, E D Stevens & C D L Wynne,
Can fish really feel pain?, FISH and FISHERIES, 2014, 15, 97133)
Increasing regulation of human conduct toward fishes, particularly in Europe (see Berg and Rosch 1998; Arlinghaus et al. 2007b, 2009, 2012;
Ash- ley 2007; Meinelt et al. 2008; Arlinghaus and Schwab 2011), has been implemented to reduce alleged fish pain and suffering, but the
analysis we have presented here shows that such regulations have been implemented without valid scientific jus- tification. Predicating
welfare policy on unsubstantiated and likely mistaken concerns about fish pain and suffering has the
potential to undermine the scientific basis of fish welfare, an argument that Dawkins (2012) has recently raised
concerning the credibility of welfare research more broadly. A justification for restrictive welfare policies is exemplified by the benefit of
the doubt dogma. This brand of logic peculiar to welfare biology is, in effect, an admission that the fish pain issue is not
resolved (hence the doubt), but the consequence is to mandate policy as if the matter actually was resolved in
favor of fish pain interpretations. This is a social political maneuver that effectively exempts valid science from
policy. The benefit of the doubt dogma is not benign nor does it best protect fish welfare (Arlinghaus et al. 2009).
Nihilism Bad
 No Offense
They have no offense against me. Nihilism itself states that nothing is good or bad,
so if they are right, they preclude any reason you have to vote for them.
 Theres A Chance
Next, extend my ethical framework. Even if there is the smallest possibility that my
moral claims are valid-objectively, subjectively, or even naturalistically (which they
cannot disprove), you have every reason to vote for me and I always win on impact
calculus.
Nihilism Good
 True
Nihilism is valid. Ethics cannot be objectively proven in a logical way.
Smart, 67 (J.J.C. Smart, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 4, 1967, p. 209.)
A system of normative ethics cannot be proved intellectually. Any such 'proof' of utilitarianism as was
attempted by Bentham or Mill can be shown to be fallacious. ... Sidgwick and Moore were clearer on this point and saw that
ethical principles cannot be deduced from anything else. ... We may nevertheless recommend such a system.
 Morality Begs The Question
Any claim to an objective theory of morality is question begging.
MacIntyre, 84 (Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue 1984 Notre Dame Press)
The most influential account of moral reasoning that emerged in response to this critique of emotivism was one according to which an agent can
only justify a particular judgment by referring to some universal rule from which it may be logically derived, and can only justify that rule in turn
by deriving it from some more general rule or principle; but on this view Since every chain of reasoning must be finite , such
a process of justificatory reasoning must always terminate with the assertion of some rule or
principle for which no further reason can be given. Thus a complete justification of a decision would consist of a
complete account of its effects together with a complete account of the principles which it observed, and the effect of observing those principles.
If I the enquirer still goes on asking But why should I live like that? then there is no further answer to give him, because we have already, ex
hypothesis, we have already said everything that could be included in the further answer. (Hare 1952, p. 69). The terminus of
justification is thus always, on this view, a not further to be justified choice, a choice unguided by criteria. Each
individual implicitly or explicitly has to adopt his or her own first principles on the basis of such a
choice. The utterance of any universal principle is in the end an expression of the preferences of an individual will and for that will its
principles have and can have only such authority as it chooses to confer upon them by adopting them.
 Freddy Mercury
Nothing really matters.
Mercury, 75 (Freddy Mercury, Queen songwriter and singer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ, 1975)
Nothing really matters. Anyone can see. Nothing really matters. Nothing really matters to me.
Mechanisms/Criteria
Autonomy Bad
 Libertarianism Utopian
Libertarianisms principles of just acquisition and just transfer are utopian. They
utterly fail to make provisions for luck and the unfairness of nature, thus inevitably
some people are arbitrarily advantaged over others.
 AT Redistribution Bad
Redistribution doesnt undermine human dignity as long as it is used to promote
fairness and welfare.
Kymlicka, 90 (Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto CONTEMPORARY
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p. 122-3.)
Finally, Nozick [libertarians] might argue that welfare redistribution denies people's dignity , and this
dignity is crucial to treating people as equals (e.g. Nozick 1974: 334). Indeed Nozick often writes as if the idea that other people have claims on
the fruits of my talents is an assault on my dignity. But this is implausible. One problem is that, Nozick [they] often ties
dignity to self-determination, so that it will be liberal regimes, not libertarian ones, which best promote each person's dignity. In
any event, dignity is predicated on, or a byproduct of, other moral beliefs. We only feel something to
be an attack on our dignity if we are already convinced that it is wrong. Redistribution will feel like
an assault on dignity only if we believe it is morally wrong. If we believe instead that redistribution
is a required part of treating people as equals, then it will serve to promote , rather than attack,
people's sense of equal dignity.
 Anarcho-Capitalism Bad
Anarcho-Capitalism would give rise to unprecedentedly detrimental regimes of
domination and oppression.
Chomsky, ND (Noam Chomsky, philosopher, CHOMSKY ON ANARCHO-CAPITALISM,2004, p. P.
http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/chomsky-on-ac.txt.)
Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to
forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn't the slightest
possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society
that made this colossal error. The idea of "free contract" between the potentate and [their] his
starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the
consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.
 AT Coercion Slippery Slope
Dont believe their slippery slope arguments. Acts of coercion must be evaluated on
a case by case basis-not rejected entirely.
Stein, 98 (Herbert, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was on the board of
contributors of The Wall Street Journal. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under
President Nixon and President Ford. In the 1970s, he was a professor of economics at the University of
Virginia, What I think: Essays on Economics, Politics, and Life. 1998 P. 7)
Today's concern is mainly about coercion by the state. We have many government regulations today, mainly related to health and the
environment, that we did not have fifty years ago. We have fewer regulations about international trade, agriculture, transportation, and banking
than we did then. I don't know whether there is more regulation now than there was. More important, it is essential to have some feeling about the
coerciveness of government coercion. It is one thing to be prevented from producing an automobile that emits
more than a specified amount of carbon dioxide by a regulation enacted pursuant to a democratic legislative
process, applied objectively and subject to judicial review. It is quite a different thing to be thrown into the
Lubyanka prison and shot for malting a critical remark about the dictator. I agree that much of current government
regulation is unnecessary and inefficient. I admire the people who diligently analyze all regulation and point out the follies that they find. They
are engaged in the constant tidying up needed for a good society, but they are not carrying on a revolution
 Autonomy Promotion Counterproductive
Turn: radical promotion of autonomy is self-defeating. It risks backlash and
undermines the integrity of the institutions that it relies on.
Gaylin and Jennings, 96 (William, psychoanalytic medicine professor at Columbia, president of
Hastings Center and Bruce, director of Center for Humans and Nature, The Perversion of Autonomy: the
proper uses of coercion and constraints in a liberal society. Pages 5-6. New York, NY, The Free Press,
1996))
The dark side of the culture of autonomy is becoming increasingly apparent: something akin to decadence is
setting in. Individualism, privacy, and rights claims are sometimes so overblown that they become
caricatures of themselves. The individualistic philosophy that has been the backbone of political liberalism and that
protects the person from the power of the state has become hyperextended into a kind of social liberalism that sees power, and nothing
but power, everywhere, and that casts the same acids of suspicion ; mistrust on the family and civil
associations that political liberals have traditionally reserved for the government. Extending the claims of autonomy as America has been
doing recently is dangerous for two reasons. First, it invites a politically; socially reactionary backlash that could
threaten civil liberties across the board, and not just the exaggerated ones. Equally dangerous, more
subtle and insidious, is the possibility that it will come to undermine the very social and psychic
infrastructure upon which social order, and hence the conditions for autonomy itself, rests . The social
infrastructure to which we refer consists primarily of the family and the various civic institutions through which individuals live as parents,
friends, and neighbors; as church, synagogue, or mosque members; as volunteers, professionals, and citizens. The psychic infrastructure
endangered by the culture of autonomy is those processes of childrearing, socialization, and moral development that create the motivational basis
for responsible conduct in the social emotions of shame, guilt, pride, and conscience. Maintaining these foundations of social order requires
respect for authority as well as respect for freedom; it requires institutional power and restraint as well as self-expression and independence.
 Extinction
The world is on track for disastrous environmental degradation. Authoritarianism
and constraints on freedom are the only ways to avoid extinction.
Leeson, 79 (Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Former Professor of
Political Science at Willamette University, Former Judicial Fellow for the U.S. Supreme Court and Justice
for the Oregon State Supreme Court (Susan, Philosophical Implications of the Ecological Crisis: The
Authoritarian Challenge to Liberalism Polity Vol. 11, No. 3, pg. 303-318, jstor))
Essays on the ecological crisis usually stress the point that resources are finite. The conditions that
make life possible are being threatened by overpopulation and by industrial processes which
deplete resources and pollute air and water. Typically, the crisis is considered the result of in-
creasing shortages in the physical [degrade the] environment. However, a more complete
understanding of the ecological crisis requires an examination of human nature, especially as it has been
reflected in and shaped by modern political thought since the Renaissance. Modern political thought, in a departure from classical modes of
reasoning, emphasized secularism, materialism, individualism, and individual rights-the cornerstones of the political ideology of liberalism and
the foundation of the American political system. The resulting view of man's relations to his fellow man and to the physical environment makes
solutions to the ecological crisis particularly difficult in the United States because, contrary to the liberal ideology and political institutions so
long enjoyed here, solutions will require constraints on individual and group behavior. The radical departure of
modern political philosophy from the classical tradition becomes apparent on recalling Plato's Republic, in which Socrates and the interlocutors
sought to discover the meaning of justice as it appeared in the soul and in the city. Their dialetical search for a just "City in Speech"-a
hypothetical city-led them first to the simple city which provided for man's basic needs. It was well ordered but assured adequate provisions for
only the necessities of life. Though Socrates called it the city healthy, Glaucon called it a "city of pigs," for it failed to satisfy man's desire for
those comforts and conveniences which go far beyond life's necessities. This point forced the interlocutors to continue the search for the City in
Speech, examining not only the requirements of justice but the nature of human desires and the source of proper limits for the soul and the city.'
Creation of the just City in Speech reflected the ancient understanding that human beings must control their desires, and the
discovery and implementation of proper controls, said Socrates, required rule by philosophers. In order for the City in Speech to come into being,
philosophers would have to become kings or vice versa. But since chances of wisdom coinciding with consent were
slight, Socrates completed the dialogue by showing how the City in Speech could degenerate because of the triumph of governing principles other
than wisdom. The City in Speech was left to stand only as a standard by which to evaluate actual political communities. Its creation in the
dialogue, however, exposed enduring political problems, among them how to control human desires for material comforts and conveniences. The
classical tradition assumed that part of the art of governing was the control of such desires.2 In many ways modern political philosophy stood this
classical tradition on its head by emphasizing popular consent rather than philosophic wisdom as a major goal of politics. Individual rights and
liberties became the source of limits on governmental authority. Government came to be understood as originating from a contract agreed to by
autonomous individuals. And the pursuit of happiness became largely a pursuit of material goods for which
there were no natural limits. This modern political philosophy has nurtured the liberal tradition in
America. One of the major accomplishments of the Founders was creation of a political system that
legitimized the pursuit of material comforts, that thinkers in the classical tradition had sought to
harness. However, the success of the Founders' experiment in liberal government depended on the
infinite availability of the natural resources necessary for such pursuits. Contemporary discovery of the earth's
"carrying capacity," or lim- its to nature's "commons," appears to jeopardize the continued success of the American experiment. If American
[popular] political ideology and institutions have been successful in encouraging pursuit of
happiness through material acquisition, they appear incapable of imposing the limits which are
required to forestall ecological disaster. This incapability, in turn, leads to arguments that popular government must
give way to authoritarianism. But if authoritarianism is the response to the inability of popular government to impose the limits
required to avoid ecological disaster, such a response merely reflects the crisis to which modern political philosophy and liberalism have led; it is
not itself a solution. There is no assurance that authoritarianism is any more capable of proper limits than is popular government. Perhaps the best
illumination of the dilemma posed by the ecological crisis is a review of the philosophy of John Locke, whose thought profoundly influenced the
Founders of the American republic.
Autonomy Good
 Libertarianism Definition
Libertarianism has 3 parts.
Nozick, 74 (Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974, p. 151.)
If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings. 1.
A person
who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that
holding. 2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer,
from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding. 3. No one is entitled to a holding
except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2. The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a
distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.
 Autonomy A Necessary Ethical Starting Point
Respecting autonomy is the only possible starting point for a system of ethics that is
humane, logical, and consistent with human nature.
Boaz, 97 (David, (Executive vice president, Cato Institute). Libertarianism: A Primer. Simon &
Schuster. pp 61-62. 1997.)
Any theory of rights has to begin somewhere. Most libertarian philosophers would begin the argument earlier than Jefferson did. Humans, unlike
animals, come into the world without an instinctive knowledge of what their needs are and how to fulfill them. As Aristotle said, man is a
reasoning and deliberating animal; humans use the power of reason to understand their own needs, the world around them, and how to use the
world to satisfy their needs. So they need a social system that allows them to use their reason, to act in the world, and to cooperate with others to
achieve purposes that no one individual could accomplish. Every person is a unique individual. Humans are social
animalswe like interacting with others, and we profit from it but we think and act individually.
Each individual owns himself or herself. What other possibilities besides selfownership are there?
Someone a king or a master race could own others. Plato and Aristotle did argue that there were different kinds of
humans, some more competent than others and thus endowed with the right and responsibility to rule, just as adults guide children. Some
forms of socialism and collectivism areexplicitly or implicitly-based on the notion that many
people are not competent to make decisions about their own lives, so that the more talented should
make decisions for them. But that would mean there were no universal human rights , only rights
that some have and others do not, denying the essential humanity of those who are deemed to be
owned. Everyone owns everyone, a fully-fledged communist system. In such a system, before anyone could take an action, he would need to
get permission from everyone else. But how could each other person grant permission without consulting everyone else? Youd have an infinite
regress, making any action at all logically impossible. ln practice, since such mutual ownership is impossible, this system would break down into
the previous one: some- one, or some group, would own everyone else. That is what happened in the communist states: the party became a
dictato- rial ruling elite. Thus, either communism or aristocratic rule would divide the world into factions or classes. The only possibility
that is humane, logical, and suited to the nature of human beings is self-ownership. Obviously, this
discussion has only scratched the surface of the question of self-ownership; in any event, I rather like Jeffersons simple declaration: Natural
rights are self-evident.
 Autonomy A Necessary Ethical Starting Point
Autonomy is a pre-requisite for people to pursue other desires and goals. Without
autonomy, one cannot have the freedom of individual choice to try to obtain other
desirable aspects of life. Moreover, regardless of what ethical principle is the best,
people must be able to rationally to choose that principle to obey it, which requires
an expression of autonomy. This makes autonomy a prerequisite to any other moral
principle as well.
 Autonomy A Prerequisite To Morality (Virtue Ethics)
Coercion must be rejected in every instance.
Mann, 2k (Frederick Mann, Why YOU MUST RECOGNIZE AND UNDERSTAND COERCION,
2000, p. http://quebecoislibre.org/000610-11.htm)
In Six Myths About Libertarianism, Murray N. Rothbard writes: "If a person is forced by violence or the threat thereof to perform a certain
action, then it can no longer be a moral choice on his part. The morality of an action can stem only from its being
freely adopted; an action can scarcely be called moral if someone is compelled to perform it at gunpoint.
Compelling moral actions or outlawing immoral actions, therefore, cannot be said to foster the spread of morality or
virtue. On the contrary, coercion atrophies morality for it takes away from the individual the freedom to
be either moral or immoral, and therefore forcibly deprives people of the chance to be moral.
Paradoxically, then, a compulsory morality robs us of the very opportunity to be moral.
 Autonomy Key To Justice
Respect for autonomy is key to social and political justice.
Christman, ND (John Christman:professor of political philosophy at Pennsylvania State University)
The conception of the autonomous person plays a variety of roles in various constructions of liberal political theory.
Principally, it serves as the model of the person whose perspective is used to formulate and justify
political principles, as in social contract models of principles of justice Also (and correspondingly) it serves as the model of the citizen
[and] whose basic interests are reflected in those principles, such as in [through] the claim that basic
liberties, opportunities, and other primary goods are fundamental to flourishing lives no matter what moral
commitments, life plans, or other particulars of the person might obtain. Moreover, autonomy is ascribed to persons (or
projected as an ideal) in order to delineate and critique oppressive social conditions, liberation from which is
considered a fundamental goal of justice. Thus, any coercive violation of autonomy fails to respect the basic moral status of
persons both as human beings and as members of political society. Second, coercive use of state power is procedurally unjust since it necessarily
exceeds the powers freely granted to the state by its citizens. Since states are artificial entities created by the people, they dont possess natural
rights or powers. Instead, they have only those rights consensually granted to them by their citizens. Professor John Simmons of the University of
Virginia explains: All political authority is artificial...Governments have the right to limit our liberty... only insofar
as they have been granted these rights by us. We, however, possess these rights naturally.
Governmental rights, are simply composed of the natural rights of those who becomes citizens,
transferred to the government by some voluntary undertaking. Thus, since coercion is by definition involuntary, it
violates the natural rights of citizens, failing to give them their due.
 Autonomy Good
Autonomy is necessary for ones self respect, dignity, and quality of life.
Donnelly, 14 (Mary Donnelly, pf of medical law @ University College Cork, "Healthcare Decision-
Making and the Law" Cambridge Law, Medicine and Ethics series, November 2014)
Respect for the principle of individual autonomy remains central to modern liberal theorists . Ronald
Dworkin echoes Mill in his defence of individual autonomy. In Lifes Dominion , Dworkin argues that: Recognizing an individual
right of autonomy makes self-creation possible. It allows each of us to be responsible for shaping
our lives . . . rather than be led along them, so that each of us can be, to the extent a scheme of
rights can make this possible, what we have made of ourselves. 65 For Ronald Dworkin, however, autonomy
also has an intrinsic value. Th us, he argues, that [f]reedom is the cardinal, absolute requirement of self-
respect: no one treats his life as having any intrinsic, objective importance unless he insists on
[they] leading that life [themselves] himself, not being ushered along it by others, not matter how
much he loves or respects or fears them . 66 As Alexander McCall Smith describes it, even if the non-autonomous
individual avoids signifi cant suff ering in her life, it is commonly perceived that [t]he moral
texture of such a life is drab . 67 In the healthcare context, this recognition means that, in Dworkins
words, [w]e allow someone to choose death over radical amputation or a blood transfusion, if that is
his informed wish, because we acknowledge his right to a life structured by his own values . 68
 Coercion Slippery Slope
Coercion snowballs. Every increase in the states power makes more increases easier
to justify.
Browne, 95 (Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of Public Policy for the
DownsizeDC.org, 95 (Harry Browne, Former Libertarian Party candidate for President and Director of
Public Policy for the DownsizeDC.org, 1995, Why Government Doesn't Work, p.65-66))
Each increase in coercion is easier to justify. If its right to force banks to report your finances to the government, then its
right to force you to justify the cash in your pocket at the airport. If its right to take property from the rich and give it to the poor, then its right to
take your property for the salt marsh harvest mouse. As each government program fails, it becomes necessary to move another step closer to
complete control over our lives. As one thing leads to another as coercion leads to more coercion what can we look
forward to? Will it become necessary to force you to justify everything you do to any government
agent who thinks you might be a threat to society? Will it become necessary to force your children to report your
personal habits to their teachers or the police? Will it become necessary to force your neighbors to monitor your activities? Will it become
necessary to force you to attend a reeducation program to learn how to be more sensitive, or how not to discriminate, or how to avoid being lured
into taking drugs, or how to recognize suspicious behavior? Will it become necessary to prohibit some of your favorite foods and ban other
pleasures, so you dont fall ill or have an accident putting a burden on Americas health-care system? Some of these things such as getting
children to snitch on their parents or ordering people into reeducation programs are already happening in America. The others have been
proposed and are being considered seriously. History has shown that each was an important step in the evolution of the worlds worst tyrannies.
We move step by step further along the road to oppression because each step seems like such a
small one. And because were told that each step will give us something alluring in return less crime,
cheaper health care, safety from terrorists, an end to discrimination even if none of the previous steps delivered on its
promise. And because the people who promote these steps are well-meaning reformers who would
use force only to build a better world.
 Argumentation Ethics True
Argumentation ethics is true. Because we are engaging in a civil debate, its logically
inconsistent to argue any non-libertarian philosophy, because debate is inherently a
conflict free way of interacting where we must respect a person and their actions in
order to debate.
Kinsella, 11 (Stephan Kinsella, Friday, May 27, 2011, Argumentation Ethics and Liberty: A Concise
Guide)
In essence, Hoppe's view is that argumentation, or discourse, is
by its nature a conflict-free way of interacting,
which requires individual control of scarce resources. In genuine discourse, the
parties try to persuade each other by the
force of their argument, not by actual force: Argumentation is a conflict-free way of interacting.
Not in the sense that there is always agreement on the things said, but in the sense that as long as
argumentation is in progress it is always possible to agree at least on the fact that there is
disagreement about the validity of what has been said. And this is to say nothing else than that a
mutual recognition of each person's exclusive control over [their] his own body must be presupposed
as long as there is argumentation (note again, that it is impossible to deny this and claim this denial to be true without implicitly
having to admit its truth). (TSC, p. 158) Thus, self-ownership is presupposed by argumentation. Hoppe then
shows that argumentation also presupposes the right to own homesteaded scarce resources as well.
The basic idea here is that the body is "the prototype of a scarce good for the use of which property rights,
i.e., rights of exclusive ownership, somehow have to be established, in order to avoid clashes" (TSC, p.
19). As Hoppe explains, The compatibility of this principle with that of nonaggression can be
demonstrated by means of an argumentum a contrario. First, it should be noted that if no one had the right to acquire
and control anything except his own body then we would all cease to exist and the problem of the justification of normative statements
simply would not exist. The existence of this problem is only possible because we are alive, and our existence is due to the fact that we do not,
indeed cannot, accept a norm outlawing property in other scarce goods next and in addition to that of one's physical body. Hence, the right
to acquire such goods must be assumed to exist.
 Censoring Speech Bad
Censoring free speech is damaging to society.
Mill, 1859 (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859 http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/three.html)
We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion,
and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. First, if any opinion is
compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to
assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion [may] be an error, it may, and very
commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the
whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if
the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is,
vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of
a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the
meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma
becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt
conviction, from reason or personal experience.
Calculation Bad
 Impossible And Immoral
Calculation is both impossible and immoral.
Velasquez et al, 14 (Developed by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and
Michael J. Meyer, Santa Clara University, Calculating Consequences: The Utilitarian Approach to Ethics,
8/14, http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/calculating.html)
While utilitarianism is currently a very popular ethical theory, there are some difficulties in relying on it as a sole method for moral decision-
making. First, the utilitarian calculation requires that we assign values to the benefits and harms resulting
from our actions and compare them with the benefits and harms that might result from other
actions. But it's often difficult, if not impossible, to measure and compare the values of certain benefits and costs. How do we go
about assigning a value to life or to art? And how do we go about comparing the value of
[happiness] money with, for example, the value of life, the value of time, or the value of human
dignity? Moreover, can we ever be really certain about all of the consequences of our actions? Our
ability to measure and to predict the benefits and harms resulting from a course of action or a moral rule is dubious, to say the least. Perhaps
the greatest difficulty with utilitarianism is that it fails to take into account considerations of justice. We can imagine
instances where a certain course of action would produce great benefits for society, but they would be
clearly unjust. [Calculation doesnt consider individual rights. If we only calculated it would be
right for an innocent person to be torn apart by lions in the Roman colosseum if enough people
enjoyed it enough] During the apartheid regime in South Africa in the last century, South African whites, for example, sometimes
claimed that all South Africansincluding blackswere better off under white rule. These whites claimed that in those African nations that have
traded a whites-only government for a black or mixed one, social conditions have rapidly deteriorated. Civil wars, economic decline, famine, and
unrest, they predicted, will be the result of allowing the black majority of South Africa to run the government. If such a prediction were trueand
the end of apartheid has shown that the prediction was falsethen the white government of South Africa would have been morally justified by
utilitarianism, in spite of its injustice.
Calculation Good
 Calculation Necessary
Calculation is necessary. Every action requires it, and refusing to engage in
calculation means allowing atrocities to occur.
Campbell, 98 (Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle, 1998 David, National
Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, p. 186-188)
That undecidability resides within the decision, Derrida argues, "that justice exceeds law and calculation, that the unpresentable
exceeds the determinable cannot and should not serve as alibi for staying out of judicio-political battles,
within an institution or a state, or between institutions or states and others."109 Indeed, "incalculable justice requires us to
calculate." From where do these insistences come? What is behind, what is animating, these imperatives? It is both the character of infinite
justice as a heteronomic relationship to the other, a relationship that because of its undecidability multiplies responsibility, and the fact that "left
to itself, the incalculable and giving (donatrice) idea of justice is always very close to the bad, even to the worst, for it can always be
reappropriated by the most perverse calculation." 170 The necessity of calculating the incalculable thus responds to a duty, a
duty that inhabits the instant of madness and compels the decision to avoid "the bad," the "perverse calculation," even "the
worst." This is the duty that also dwells with deconstructive thought and makes it the starting point, the "at least necessary condition," for the
organization of resistance to totalitarianism in all its forms. And it is a duty that responds to practical political concerns when we recognize that
Derrida names the bad, the perverse, and the worst as those violences "we recognize all too well without yet having thought them through, the
crimes of xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, religious or nationalist fanaticism." Furthermore, the duty within the decision, the obligation that
recognizes the necessity of negotiating the possibilities provided by the impossibilities of justice, is not content with simply avoiding, containing,
combating, or negating the worst-violence-though it could certainly begin with those strategies. Instead, this responsibility, which is the
responsibility of responsibility, commissions a "utopian" strategy. Not, a strategy that is beyond all bounds of possibility so as to be considered
"unrealistic," but one which in respecting the necessity of calculation takes the possibility summoned by the calculation as far as possible, "must
take it as far as possible, beyond the place we find ourselves and beyond the already identifiable zones of morality or politics or law, beyond the
distinction between national and international, public and private, and so on.""' As Derrida declares, "The condition of possibility of this thing
called responsibility is a certain experience and experiment of the possibility of the impossible: the testing of the aporia from which one may
invent the only possible invention, the impossible invention.""' This leads Derrida to enunciate a proposition that many, not the least of whom are
his Habermasian critics, could hardly have expected: "Nothing seems to me less outdated than the classical emancipatory ideal. We cannot
attempt to disqualify it today, whether crudely or with sophistication, at least not without treating it too lightly and forming the worst
complicities."14
 AT Calculation Immoral
Regardless of our intuitions and feelings about calculation, multiplying probability
by magnitude is the only moral option.
Yudkowsky, 08 (Full-time Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and
Cofounder (Eliezer, January 22nd 2008, Circular Altruism))
Suppose that a disease, or a monster, or a war, or something, is killing people. And suppose you only
have enough resources to implement one of the following two options: 1. Save 400 lives, with
certainty. 2. Save 500 lives, with 90% probability; save no lives, 10% probability. Most people
choose option 1. Which, I think, is foolish; because if you multiply 500 lives by 90% probability, you
get an expected value of 450 lives, which exceeds the 400-life value of option 1. (Lives saved don't diminish in
marginal utility, so this is an appropriate calculation.) "What!" you cry, incensed. "How can you gamble with human
lives? How can you think about numbers when so much is at stake? What if that 10% probability strikes, and everyone dies? So
much for your damned logic! You're following your rationality off a cliff!" Ah, but here's the
interesting thing. If you present the options this way: 1. 100 people die, with certainty. 2. 90%
chance no one dies; 10% chance 500 people die. Then a majority choose option 2. Even though it's
the same gamble. You see, just as a certainty of saving 400 lives seems to feel so much more
comfortable than an unsure gain, so too, a certain loss feels worse than an uncertain one. You can
grandstand on the second description too: "How can you condemn 100 people to certain death
when there's such a good chance you can save them? We'll all share the risk! Even if it was only a
75% chance of saving everyone, it would still be worth it - so long as there's a chance - everyone
makes it, or no one does!" You know what? This isn't about your feelings. A human life, with all its
joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain's
feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-
blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake.
Just shut up and multiply. Previously on Overcoming Bias, I asked: what was the least bad, bad thing that could happen, and suggested that it was
getting a dust speck in your eye that irritated you for a fraction of a second, barely long enough to notice, before it got blinked away. And conversely, a very bad thing
to happen, if not the worst thing, would be getting tortured for 50 years. Now,would you rather that a googolplex people got dust
specks in their eyes, or that one person was tortured for 50 years? I originally asked this question
with a vastly larger number - an incomprehensible mathematical magnitude - but a googolplex
works fine for this illustration. Most people chose the dust specks over the torture. Many were
proud of this choice, and indignant that anyone should choose otherwise: "How dare you condone
torture!" This matches research showing that there are "sacred values", like human lives, and
"unsacred values", like money. When you try to trade off a sacred value against an unsacred value,
subjects express great indignation (sometimes they want to punish the person who made the suggestion). My favorite anecdote along these lines
- though my books are packed at the moment, so no citation for now - comes from a team of researchers who evaluated the
effectiveness of a certain project, calculating the cost per life saved, and recommended to the
government that the project be implemented because it was cost-effective. The governmental
agency rejected the report because, they said, you couldn't put a dollar value on human life. After
rejecting the report, the agency decided not to implement the measure. Trading off a sacred value (like refraining from
torture) against an unsacred value (like dust specks) feels really awful. To merely multiply utilities would be too cold-blooded - it
would be following rationality off a cliff... But let me ask you this. Suppose you had to choose
between one person being tortured for 50 years, and a googol people being tortured for 49 years,
364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. You would choose one person being tortured for 50
years, I do presume; otherwise I give up on you. And similarly, if you had to choose between a
googol people tortured for 49.9999999 years, and a googol-squared people being tortured for
49.9999998 years, you would pick the former. A googolplex is ten to the googolth power. That's a googol/100 factors of a googol. So we
can keep doing this, gradually - very gradually - diminishing the degree of discomfort, and multiplying by a factor of a googol each time, until we choose between a
googolplex people getting a dust speck in their eye, and a googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks in their eye. If
you find your
preferences are circular here, that makes rather a mockery of moral grandstanding. If you drive from San
Jose to San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose, over and over again, you may have fun driving, but you aren't going anywhere. Maybe
you think it a
great display of virtue to choose for a googolplex people to get dust specks rather than one person
being tortured. But if you would also trade a googolplex people getting one dust speck for a
googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks et cetera, you sure aren't helping anyone. Circular
preferences may work for feeling noble, but not for feeding the hungry or healing the sick. Altruism isn't
the warm fuzzy feeling you get from being altruistic. If you're doing it for the spiritual benefit, that is nothing but selfishness. The primary thing is to help others,
whatever the means. So shut up and multiply!
Coherentism Bad
 Bad For Judging
Dont judge using Coherentism.
Just because something seems good doesnt mean that it is good or has been argued
well.
Coherentism is subjective. Everyone views morality differently and using it in
debate creates confusion and necessitates intervention.
 Coherentism Inconsistent And Subjective
Determining morality by intuition is inconsistent, and subjective. A rational
approach to ethics is better.
Green, 02 (Joshua David; Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard University.
November 2002 "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do
About It", pg 288)
I maintain, once again, that this sort of moral theorizing fails because our intuitions do not reflect a coherent set of moral
truths and were not designed by natural selection or anything else to behave as if they were. And note
that this is the case for a single persons intuitions. Troubles only multiply when one must reconcile the conflicting
intuitions of many different people. Thus, while antirealism does not rule out the possibility of
reinventing normative ethics as an attempt to organize our moral intuitions and values, its not
likely to work. If you want to make sense of your moral sense, turn to biology, psychology, and
sociologynot normative ethics.
 Warrant/Content Distinction
Coherentism makes no distinction between warrant and content. Just because we
are content with something doesnt mean that we have provided a rational reason
for it.
 Begging The Question
Coherentism begs the question. If theres a rational reason to adopt Coherentism,
then that defeats Coherentism. If theres a coherentist justification for Coherentism,
then that is circular argumentation.
 Coherentism Not Coherent
Turn: to most people its not coherent to justify anything that seems right in an a
priori way. Most people arent coherentists and think that morality demands
rational deliberation.
 People Dont Agree
Coherentism isnt objective or even valuable because different peoples ideas of
coherent ethics are very different.
Coherentism Good
 Coherentism Good
What is morally right must be what is coherent.
Ryan, 2k (Ryan, James A. "Coherentist Naturalism in Ethics." Journal of Philosophical Research 25
(2000): 471-487. https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?
openform&fp=jpr&id=jpr_2000_0025_0471_0487)
After briefly arguing that neither (Kantian or utilitarian) rule-based ethics nor virtue ethics offers promise as a moral theory, I state that argument
by analogy (i.e., deliberation within coherence constraints) is a satisfactory form of moral deliberation. I show that
what is right must be whatever corresponds to the largest and most coherent set of a societys moral
values. Since we would not know how to interpret the claim that what is right might be repugnant to all our shared moral values, I argue that a
definitional naturalist position passes Moores open question test. X is right just means performing X satisfies the
largest and most coherent set of our altruistic and self-interested desires. On this view, moral properties are real relational
properties. I raise and respond to several objections.
 We Need A Starting Point
Coherentism is good. Things should be evaluated by how they relate to our moral
intuitions. We need to start from somewhere.
Hooker, 14 (Brad Hooker, Rule Consequentialism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring
2011 Edition). URL <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/consequentialism-rule/>. AS
6/15/14)
We should evaluate rival moral theories in terms of their ability to cohere with the convictions in which
we have the most confidence [in] after due reflection. How a moral view would look from the
perspective of evaluative beliefs in which we have little or no confidence could not matter as much
to us as whether the moral view is [has to be] consistent with the moral beliefs in which we have the most
confidence after due reflection. As Frank Jackson (1998: 135) writes, [W]e must start from [normative morality]
somewhere in current folk morality, otherwise we start from somewhere unintuitive, and that can hardly be a good place to
start. If we are to start somewhere intuitive as opposed to unintuitive, we shall have to start with
beliefs that come with independent credibility, by which I mean beliefs that seem correct even before we consider how they
fit with our other beliefs. W. D. Ross focused on what he called self-evident propositions. A self-evident proposition is evident
without any need of proof, or of evidence beyond itself Ross's terminology, it is part of the definition of self-evidence
that self-evident propositions must be true, though we could be mistaken about which propositions have self-evidence (Audi 1996: 1078, 131). I
believe clarity is served by talking instead in terms of independent credibility. Like a self-evident
proposition, an independently credible one is evident without any need of proof, or of evidence
beyond itself . Unlike a self-evident proposition, an independently credible one might turn out to be mistaken (Timmons 1999: 232). A
belief can seem correct to us independently of how (or whether) it fits with our other beliefs, and yet
this belief may not be compelling on first look (Ross, 1930: 29; Audi 1996: 11213). We may have to think very carefully before we start
thinking that a belief is independently credible. Furthermore, independently credible beliefs need not be certain, or beyond all challenge or
revision (Ewing 1947: ch. 8; 1951: 5863; Audi 1996: 1078, 131; Scanlon 1998: 70). Of course, moral beliefs can draw
support from their relation to other moral beliefs. For example, if two different moral beliefs are
each non-inferentially credible, and one explains the other, this adds to the credibility of both these
beliefs.16 For example, one initially credible belief is that behaving in some way is wrong if the consequences would be bad if everyone felt
free to behave[d] in that way. Another is that being a free rider on the sacrifices (or contributions or restraint) of others is wrong. The first belief
seems to explain the second, and this lends further credibility to each of these beliefs. In short, we search for a coherent set of moral beliefs and
are willing to make many revisions so as to reach coherence. But we should start with moral beliefs that are attractive
in their own right, that is, independently of how they mesh with our other moral beliefs
Communitarianism Bad
 Individual Rights First
Turn: a focus on individual rights over the rights of the community is best for both
individuals and the collective community.
Buchanan, 89 (Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism, Allen E. Buchanan [James B.
Duke Professor -Political Philosophy, Philosophy of International Law, Social Moral Epistemology,
Bioethics], Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Jul., 1989), pp. 852-882, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381237, JSTOR)
My hypothesis is that communitarians have been blind to the value that individual rights have for
community because they have wrongly assumed that the primary if not the only justification for them rests
exclusively upon an ideal of individual autonomy or of individual well-being in which participation in
community is not conceived of as being an important ingredient in the individual's good. Consider the
rights to freedom of association, expression, and religion which the liberal champions. Historically these rights have provided a
strong bulwark against attempts to destroy or dominate various communities within nation-states. 8
They allow individuals to partake of the alleged essential human good of community by protecting
existing communities from interference from without and by giving individuals the freedom to unite with like-minded
others to create new communities. This "communitarian" argument for the liberal political thesis can
in fact be strengthened. At least in our century, the greatest single threat to communities probably
has been totalitarianism. As the name implies, the totalitarian state recognizes no limits on its
authority, seeking to control every aspect of its citizens' lives. It cannot tolerate genuine
communities within its boundaries because they would limit the individual's dependence upon and
allegiance to the state. And it is a matter of historical record that totalitarian regimes have employed the most ruthless measures to
undermine traditional communities-the family and the church in particular-in the name of achieving an all-inclusive political community. The
liberal political thesis, in contrast, is a direct and explicit rejection of the totalitarian state. So to the
extent that the totalitarian state is a threat to communities, we should regard the priority on
individual civil and political rights usually associated with liberalism as the protector of community,
even if the liberal political thesis is itself silent as to the importance of community in the good life.
 Moral Deviance Doesnt Cause Societal Disintegration
Moral deviance will not cause society to collapse.
Hart, 63 (H.L.A. Hart, philosopher, Law, Liberty and Morality, Stanford University Press, 1963, p. 50.)
It is not at all clear that for him the statement that immorality jeopardizes or weakens society is a statement of
empirical fact. It seems sometimes to be an a priori assumption, and sometimes a necessary truth and a very odd
one. The most important indication that this is so is that, apart from one vague reference to "history" showing that "the loosening of moral
bonds is often the first stage of disintegration," no evidence is produced to show that deviation from accepted sexual morality, even by adults in
private, is something which, like treason, threatens the existence of society. No reputable historian has maintained this
thesis, and there is indeed much evidence against it.
 Communitarianism Abuses Individuals
Communitarianism allows for unjust hierarchies and the abuse of individuals.
Buchanan, 89 (Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism, Allen E. Buchanan [James B.
Duke Professor -Political Philosophy, Philosophy of International Law, Social Moral Epistemology,
Bioethics], Ethics, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Jul., 1989), pp. 852-882, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381237, JSTOR)
Third, to the extent that the exercise of a group right entails a political structure within the group (leaders or representatives, or other official
bodies), group rights encourage hierarchy and create the possibility of opposition between the interests of
those who control the exercise of the right and the interests of other members of the group. Thus, those
who control the exercise of the right may find it in their interest not to exercise the right in ways that
would be beneficial to some or all other members of the group. Moreover, those who control the group's rights may
use this special power for ends quite unrelated to the considerations that make the rights valuable. Individual rights, in contrast, do
not require this sort of hierarchy and do not encourage the abuses that it can bring. A fourth
related point is that individual rights are inherently anti- paternalistic in a way that group rights
are not. With a group right, some one person or subset of the group has the ultimate say as to whether to exercise the right.'5 In contrast, an
individual right-holder can decide whether or not to exercise his right. Even if others decide on the basis of a sincere commitment to doing what
is best for the individual subgroup, it is still they, not he, who are in control. Unless the radical communitarian can show that group rights provide
such superior protections for community as to outweigh the cumulative force of these advantages of individual rights, he will not make good the
charge that the cautious communitarian argument is infected by an individualistic bias.
 Law Shouldnt Interfere With Private Morality
Law should not interfere with private morality.
WR, 63 (The Wolfenden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution,
Steign and Day, 1963, para. 61.)
Unless a deliberate attempt is to be made by society, acting through the agency of the law, to equate
the sphere of crime with that of sin, there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality
which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law's business. To say this is not to condone or encourage private
immorality. On the contrary, to emphasize the personal the personal and private responsibility of the individual
for [their] his own actions, and that is a responsibility which a mature agent can properly be expected to carry for himself without the
threat of punishment from the law.
Communitarianism Good
 Definition
Communitarianism is defined as follows.
Etzioni, 93 (Amitai The Spirit of Community 1993, p. 255)
Communitarians do not exalt the group as such, nor do they hold that any set of group values is ipso facto good
merely because such values originate in a community. Indeed, some communities (say, neo-Nazis)
may foster reprehensible values. Moreover, communities that glorify their own members by
vilifying those who do not belong are at best imperfect. Communitarians recognizeindeed, insistthat
communal values must be judged by external and overriding criteria, based on shared human
experience. A responsive community is one whose moral standards reflect the basic human needs of all its members. To the extent that these
needs compete with one another, the communitys standards reflect the relative priority accorded by members
to some needs over others. Although individuals differ in their needs, human nature is not totally malleable. Although individuals are
deeply influenced by their communities, they have a capacity for independent judgement. For a community to be truly
responsivenot only to an elite group, a minority, or even the majority, but to all its members and
all their basic human needsit will have to develop moral values which meet the following criteria:
they must be nondiscriminatory and applied equally to all members; they must be generalizable,
justified in terms that are accessible and understandable: e.g., instead of claims based upon
individual or group desires, citizens would draw on a common definition of justice; and they must
incorporate the full range of legitimate needs and values rather than focusing on any one category ,
be it individualism, autonomy, interpersonal caring, or social justice.
 Society Over Individuals
Rights are not absolute. Social considerations matter more than individual
considerations.
Etzioni, 93 (Amitai, The Spirit of Community, 1993, p. 7.)
Even if lawyers and judges realize among themselves that individual
rights are limited by the rights of others and the
needs of the community, as the language of rights penetrates into everyday discourse, the discourse
becomes impoverished and confrontational. It is one thing to claim that you and I have different interests and see if we can work
out a compromise; or, better yet, that we both recognize the merit or virtue of a common cause, say, a cleaner environment. The moment,
however, that I claim a right to the same piece of land or property or public space as you, we start to view one another like the Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland or the Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. A return to a language of social virtues,
interests, and, above all, social responsibilities, will reduce contentiousness and enhance social
cooperation. People treat rights-based arguments, unlike many others, as trump cards that
neutralize all other positions. Cass R. Sunstein, professor of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, put it well when he pointed
out that rights can be conclusions masquerading as reasons. For example, he writes, those who
defend even the most extreme kinds of what he labels violent pornography state that it is a form of
free speech, period. Sunstein suggests that perhaps a person is entitled to this particularly abusive form of speech. But, he argues, an
individuals entitlement should be established in detailed argumentation that would weigh the right
at issue against the rights of those who are hurt by the given act, rather than simply asserting that it
is a right, as if its evocation closed off all debate.
 Moral Solidarity Necessary
Societies need to have moral solidarity, or they will disintegrate
Devlin, 64 (Sir Patrick Devlin, Lord of Appeal (England), The Enforcement of Morals, Oxford
University Press, 1964, p. 10.)
Society means a community of ideas; without shared ideas on politics, morals, and ethics no society can exist.
Each one of use has ideas about what is good and what is evil; they cannot be kept private from the society in which we live. If men and
women try to create a society in which there is no fundamental agreement about good and evil they
will fail; if, having based it on common agreement, the agreement goes, the society will disintegrate. For society is not
something that is kept together physically; it is held by the invisible bonds of common thought. If
the bonds were too far relaxed the members would drift apart. A common morality is part of the
bondage. The bondage is part of the price of society; and mankind, which needs society, must pay its price.
 Social Solidarity Minimizes Need For Law Enforcement
Social solidarity minimizes the need for coercive and violent enforcement of laws.
Etzoni, 93 (Etzioni, Amitai The Spirit of Community 1993, p. 44.)
The best way to minimize the role of the state, especially its policing role, is to enhance the
community and its moral voice. If most of us, most of the time, observed the speed limit, especially
near schools and where children play, there would be much less need for police. If we basically paid
our share of the taxes due, there would be less need for IRS agents and auditors. If divorced fathers
paid agreed-upon amounts of child support, there would be no need for the state to go after them.
There are always some who violate what is right, and hence the state is unlikely to wither away, at least until very far-reaching and fundamental
changes occur in human nature. However, such limited use of the state, for a handful of miscreants, is not the issue. What we must try to
avoid is relying on the state to maintain social order, which can be achieved more humanely and at
less cost by the voluntary observance of those values we all hold dear, such as driving without
endangering others and paying our share of the communities burdens. In short, the more people
generally agree with one another about what is to be done and encourage one another to live up to
these agreements, the smaller the role that coercive authority will play and the more civil the
community.
Consequentialism Bad
 Consequentialism Justifies Evil
Consequentialism can be used to justify any evil.
Church, 91 (Russell T. Church, Middle Tennessee State University and Charles Wilbanks, University
of South Carolina, Values And Poucies In Controversy, 1991, p. 216)
evil which follows from
Fourth, the ends-means rationale allows the evil advocate to do what she will. Karl Wallace writes: The worst
an indifference to means is that we make easy the intent of the dishonest, insincere speaker. If the ends become the test of
acceptable practices, then all practices are good as long as they can be rhetorically linked to some
good end. As indicated above, this is easy to do and almost impossible to verify.
 Predictions Impossible
Evaluating morality through consequentialism is impossible. We cant determine
and consider with any amount of certainty all of the extended consequences of an
action. Thats especially true in debate, where debaters have the tendency to
exaggerate and their impacts resulting in flawed evaluation of consequences.
 Calculation Impossible
Consequentialist evaluation is impossible. Moral goods are necessarily neither
measurable nor commensurable.
Grisez, 78 (Against Consequentialism Germain Grisez The American Journal of Jurisprudence Volume
23 (1978): 21-72 http://www.twotlj.org/against-consequentialism.pdf)
My thesis is that consequentialism is rationally unacceptable because the phrase "greater good" as it is
used in any consequentialist theory necessarily lacks reference. I do not reject consequentialism merely
because I think it dangerous; I reject it because I think it [is] dangerous nonsense"nonsense" in the sense that
inasmuch as expressions essential to the articulation of consequentialism necessarily lack reference, the
theory is meaningless. To speak of the "greater good" as consequentialists do is to imply that goods
are measurable and commensurable. But goods cannot be measured unless there is a n available
standard applicable to them as goods, and they cannot be commensurable unless all of them are
called "good" in one and the same sense, and one and the same measure can be applied to all of them.
I deny that "good" said of the alternatives to be judged morally can have a single sense and in this sense signify anything which can be measured
by a common standard.
 Consequentialism Is Axiologically Arbitrary
Consequentialism isnt a complete moral theory. It states that ends justify means,
but it doesnt make any provisions as to what makes an end good or not.
Consequentialism Good
 Rule Consequentialism Good
By constructing general rules, rule consequentialism accounts for the natural
imperfection of an agent and prevents an agent from engaging in constant
calculations of the effects of actionsall while providing the best system of
maximizing welfare in a way that no other moral theory can.
Rule consequentialism is the most pragmatic moral theory and its good for society.
Hooker, 08 (Hooker, Brad. "Rule consequentialism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008):
113-136.
http://www.upscsuccess.com/sites/default/files/documents/Ethical_Theory_An_Anthology_@nadal.pdf#p
age=446)
One argument for rule-consequentialism is that general internalization of rule-consequentialism would actually
maximize the impartial good. The idea is that from a purely consequentialist point of view rule-
consequentialism seems [is] better than act-consequentialism and all other theories. Many act-consequentialists
reply by invoking their distinction between their criterion of rightness and the decision procedure for day-to-day moral decisions. They admit act-
consequentialism is not a good procedure for agents to use when deciding what to do. But they think this does not invalidate act-
consequentialisms criterion of rightness. They would add that, even if rule-consequentialism is an optimal decision procedure, this would not
entail that rule-consequentialism correctly identifies what makes right acts right and wrong acts wrong. Let us turn, then, to arguments for rule
consequentialism other than the one that internalizing rule-consequentialism would maximize the good. Consider the moral code whose
acceptance by society would be best, i.e., would maximize net good, impartially calculated. Shouldnt we try to follow that code? Isnt the code
best for general adoption by the group of which we are members the one we should try to follow? These general thoughts about morality seem
intuitively attractive and broadly rule-consequentialist. And consider the related question What if everyone felt free to do what youre doing?
This question may in the end prove to be an inadequate test of moral rightness. But there is no denying its initial appeal. And there is no
denying that rule-consequentialism is an (at least initially) appealing interpretation of the test. Rule-consequentialism
thus taps into and develops familiar and intuitively plausible ideas about morality. Morality is to be
understood as a social code, a collective enterprise, something people are to pursue together. And
the elements of this code are to be evaluated in terms of both fairness and the overall effects on the
well-being of individuals, impartially considered.
 Rule Consequentialism Politics Good
The best way for policymakers to maximize good is by using rule consequentialism.
Goodin, 90 (Robert Goodin, fellow Philosophy, Australian National Defense U, 1990, The Utilitarian
Response, p. 148)
My main argument, though, is that at the level of social policy the problem usually does not even arise. When promulgating policies, public
officials must respond to typical conditions and common circumstances. Policies, by their nature, cannot be case- by-case
affairs. In choosing general rules to govern a wide range of circumstances, it is extraordinarily
unlikely that the greatest happiness can ever be realized by systematically violating people s rights.
Liberties or integrity or even, come to that, by systematically contravening the Ten Commandments. The rules that
maximize utility over the long haul and over the broad range of applications are also rules that
broadly conform to deontologists demands.
 Rule Consequentialism Collapses Into Act Consequentialism
Double bind: the consequentialist nature of rule consequentialism mandates that
exceptions or qualifications be built into rules so as to produce the best outcome, but
those exceptions all but betray the rule, so RC either results in rule worship or it
collapses into act consequentialism.
 Rule Consequentialism Fails With Specific Situations
Rule consequentialism fails to take into account special circumstanceswhich can
be disastrous. By constructing inviolable rules, an actor may make a choice that
would lead to disastrous consequences that could otherwise be easily averted.
 Perm: Well Meaning Consequentialism
Perm: be a consequentialist with good intentions. Kant himself says that the only
thing that is intrinsically valuable is a good intent anyway.
Kant, 1785 (Kant, Immanuel, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Black,
Professor of Philosophy, University of Rochester, 1959, pg 10)
The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its adequacy to
achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself. And, regarded for
itself, it is to be esteemed incomparably higher than anything which could be brought about by it in
favor of any inclination or even of the sum total of all inclinations. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither diminish
nor augment this worth. Its usefulness would be only its setting, as it were, so as to enable us to handle it more conveniently in commerce or to
attract the attention of those who are not yet connoisseurs, but not to recommend it to those who are experts or to determine its worth.
 Perm: Kantian Consequentialism
Perm: be a Kantian consequentialist. The fundamentals of Kants moral theory
arent mutually exclusive with consequentialism.
Cummiskey, 90 (Cummiskey, David. "Kantian consequentialism." Ethics (1990): 586-615.)
Kant's claims about the relationship between rationality and morality are extremely important and quite controversial, but these claims do not
affect the thesis I will defend. The mere fact that Kant rejects foundational consequentialism does not imply
that he rejects or is entitled to reject normative consequentialism. Indeed, even if Kant's arguments
against foundational consequentialism are sound, Kant's normative theory could still have a
consequentialist structure. In principle, one can be a Kantian about important foundational questions
and still defend a consequentialist normative theory.
 Consequentialism Inevitable
Deontological frameworks fail. Consequentialism is pragmatically and
psychologically inevitable.
Green, 02 (Asst Prof Department of Psychology Harvard University Joshua, November 2002, 314)
Some people who talk of balancing rights may think there is an algorithm for deciding which rights take priority over which. If thats what we
mean by 302 balancing rights, then we are wise to shun this sort of talk. Attempting to solve moral problems using a
complex deontological algorithm is dogmatism at its most esoteric, but dogmatism all the same.
However, its likely that when some people talk about balancing competing rights and obligations
they are already thinking like consequentialists in spite of their use of deontological language. Once
again, what deontological language does best is express the thoughts of people struck by strong,
emotional moral intuitions: It doesnt matter that you can save five people by pushing him to his death. To do this would be a
violation of his rights!19 That is why angry protesters say things like, Animals Have Rights, Too! rather
than, Animal Testing: The Harms Outweigh the Benefits! Once again, rights talk captures the apparent clarity of the
issue and absoluteness of the answer. But sometimes rights talk persists long after the sense of clarity and absoluteness has faded. One thinks, for
example, of the thousands of children whose lives are saved by drugs that were tested on animals and the rights of those children. One
finds oneself balancing the rights on both sides by asking how many rabbit lives one is willing to
sacrifice in order to save one human life, and so on, and at the end of the day ones underlying
thought is as thoroughly consequentialist as can be, despite the deontological gloss. And whats
wrong with that? Nothing, except for the fact that the deontological gloss adds nothing and furthers
the myth that there really are rights, etc. Best to drop it. When deontological talk gets
sophisticated, the thought it represents is either dogmatic in an esoteric sort of way or covertly
consequentialist.
 Telos Of Morality
Given that the purpose of morality is to promote good and prevent evil, we must
look at the consequences.
Scheffler, 88 (Samuel Scheffler, Consequentialism and its Critics (Oxford, 1988), p. 1.)
On the face of it, the idea, which lies at the heart of consequentialism, seems hard to resist. For given only the innocent-sounding
assumption that good is morally preferable to evil, it seems to embody the principle that we should
maximize the desirable and minimize the undesirable, and that principle seems to be one of the main elements of our
conception of practical rationality. Anyone who resists consequentialism seems committed to the claim that
morality tells us to do less good than we are in a position to do, and to prevent less evil than we are
in the position to prevent. And this does not sound nearly as plausible.
 Utility Outweighs
Consequentialism is the only ethical choice. Utility outweighs.
Cummisky, 96 (David, professor of philosophy at Bates, Kantian Consequentialism, p. 131)
Finally, even if one grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one-because dignity cannot be added
and summed in this way-this point still does not justify deontological constraints. On the extreme interpretation, Why would not killing
one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons? If I am concerned with the priceless
dignity of each, it would seem that I may still save two; it is just that my reason cannot be that the two compensate for the loss of one.
Consider Hill's example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statues only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving
two makes up for the loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not
destroyed. Indeed, even if dignity cannot be simply summed up, how is the extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea
that I should save as many priceless objects as possible? Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus compensate for the loss of the one, each
is priceless; thus, I have good reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the extreme interpretation
justifies the killing/letting-die distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the
better.
 Utility Outweighs
Consequentialist obligation outweighs. It is more important to ensure that our
actions have the best consequences for the world than to preserve our conscience by
refusing to participate in immoral means.
Nye, 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear Ethics pg. 18-19)
The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case.34 Imagine that you are
visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square where an army captain is about to order his men to shoot
two peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told someone in this village
shot at the captain's men last night. When you object to the killing of possibly innocent people, you are told that civil wars
do not permit moral niceties. Just to prove the point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands you a rifle and tells
you that if you will shoot one peasant, he will free the other. Otherwise both die. He warns you not to try any tricks
because his men have their guns trained on you. Will you shoot one person with the consequences of saving one, or
will you allow both to die but preserve your moral integrity by refusing to play [the] his dirty
game? The point of the story is to show the value and limits of both traditions. Integrity is clearly
an important value, and many of us would refuse to shoot. But at what point does the principle of
not taking an innocent life collapse before the consequentialist burden? Would it matter if there
were twenty or 1,000 peasants to be saved? What if killing or torturing one innocent person could save
a city of 10 million persons from a terrorists' nuclear device? At some point does not integrity become the ultimate egoism of
fastidious self-righteousness in which the purity of the self is more important than the lives of countless others? Is it not better to
follow a consequentialist approach, admit remorse or regret over the immoral means, but justify
the action by the consequences? Do absolutist approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a world of nuclear weapons?
"Do what is right though the world should perish" was a difficult principle even when Kant expounded it in the eighteenth century, and there is
some evidence that he did not mean it to be taken literally even then. Now that it [extinction] may be literally possible in
the nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be self-contradictory.35 Absolutist ethics bear a heavier burden of proof
in the nuclear age than ever before.
 AT Utility Doesnt Outweigh
It is irrational, inconsistent, and evasive to argue that it is wrong to sacrifice one
person to save many others.
Nielsen, 93 (Kai Nielsen is a Philosophy Professor at University of Calgary Absolutism and It
Consequentialist CriticsEdited by Joram Haber, p. 170-2)
Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still more monstrous. The
consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with
certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One could even
usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's. Consequentialism of the kind I have been
arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect
that intuition, not theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable
to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even
a great many of our considered moral convictions that would be another matter indeed Anticonsequentialists often point to the
inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the innocent but cannot the compliment be
returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow
even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not
intend the death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such
forbearing to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what
in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity he allows when he has the power to
prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep his 'moral purity' and [to] avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral
failure and what Kierkegaard called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not
make it right.
 Extinction
Consequentialism is essential to avoid atrocities and extinction.
Norton, 96 (Bryan Norton, Professor of Philosophy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author
of Environmental Pragmatism, published 1996 Edited by Light and Katz, pg. 106)
Thus ends my explanation of, and please for, a practical environmental ethic that seeks to integrate pluralistic principles across multiple
levels/dynamics. Rather than reducing pluralistic principles by relating them to an underlying value theory that recognizes only economic
preferences or inherent value as the ontological stuff that unifies all moral judgments. I have sought integration of multiple values on three
irreducible scales of human concern and valuation, choosing pluralism over monism, and attempting to integrate values within an ecologically
informed, multi-scalar model of the human habitat. I believe that the non-ontological, pluralistic approach to values can better express the
inductively based values and management approach of Leopolds land ethic, which can be seen as a precursor to the tradition of adaptive
management. And, if the problem of environmentalism is the need to support rationally the goals of environmental protection the problem
Callicott misconceived as the need for a realist moral ontology to establish the objectivity of environmental goals then I endorse the broadly
Darwinian approach to both epistemology and morals proposed by the American pragmatists. The environmental community is the community of
inquirers; it is the community of inquirers that, for better or worse, must struggle, immediately as individuals and indefinitely as a community,
both to survive and to know. In this struggle useful knowledge will be information about how to survive in a rapidly evolving culture and habitat.
It is in this sense that human actors are a part of multi-layered nature; our actions have impacts on multiple dynamics and multiple scales. We
humans willunderstand our moral responsibilities only if we understand the consequences of our
action as they unfold on multiple scales; and the human community will only survive to further evolve and
adapt if we learn to achieve individual welfare and justice in the present in ways that are less disruptive of
the processes, evolving on larger spatio-temporal scales, essential to human and ecological communities.
 Existential Risks Outweigh
Survival is a prerequisite to any morality.
Nye, 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Affairs; Nuclear Ethics pg. 45-46)
Is there any end that could justify a nuclear war that threatens the survival of the species ? Is not all-out
nuclear war just as self contradictory in the real world as pacifism is accused of being? Some people argue that "we are
required to undergo gross injustice that will break many souls sooner than ourselves be the authors
of mass murder."73 Still others say that "when a person makes survival the highest value, he has declared that there is nothing he will not
betray. But for a civilization to sacrifice itself makes no sense since there are not survivors to give
meaning to the sacrificial [sic] act. In that case, survival may be worth betrayal." Is it possible to
avoid the "moral calamity of a policy like unilateral disarmament that forces us to choose between
being dead or red (while increasing the chances of both)"?74 How one judges the issue of ends can be affected by how
one poses the questions. If one asks "what is worth a billion lives (or the survival of the species)," it is natural to resist contemplating
a positive answer. But suppose one asks, "is it possible to imagine any threat to our civilization and values that
would justify raising the threat to a billion lives from one in ten thousand to one in a thousand for a
specific period?" Then there are several plausible answers, including a democratic way of life and cherished freedoms that give meaning to
life beyond mere survival. When we pursue several values simultaneously, we face the fact that they often
conflict and that we face difficult tradeoffs. If we make one value absolute in priority, we are likely
to get that value and little else. [but] Survival is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of other
values, but that does not make it sufficient. Logical priority does not make it an absolute value. Few people act as though
survival were an absolute value in their personal lives, or they would never enter an automobile. We can give survival of the
species a very high priority without giving it the paralyzing status of an absolute value. Some
degree of risk is unavoidable if individuals or societies are to avoid paralysis and enhance the
quality of life beyond mere survival. The degree of that risk is a justifiable topic of both prudential
and moral reasoning.
 Ends Over Means
We should evaluate our actions based on the consequences that stem from them, and
not suggest that certain ways of achieving things are fundamentally wrong.
Fetishizing method kills effective problem-solving.
Wendt, 02 (Handbook of IR, p. 68, http://www.rochelleterman.com/ir/sites/default/files/Fearon%2Band
%2BWendt%252C%2BChapter%2B3.pdf)
It should be stressed that in advocating a pragmatic view we are not endorsing method-driven social science. Too
much research in international relations chooses problems or things to be explained with a view to whether the
analysis will provide support for one or another methodological ism . But the point of IR scholarship
should be to answer questions about international politics that are of great normative concern, not to
validate methods. Methods are means, not ends in themselves. As a matter of personal scholarly choice it may be
reasonable to stick with one method and see how far it takes us. But since we do not know how far that is, if the goal of the discipline
is insight into world politics then it makes little sense to rule out one or the other approach on a
priori grounds. In that case a method indeed becomes a tacit ontology, which may lead to neglect of
whatever problems it is poorly suited to address. Being conscious about these choices is why it is important to distinguish
between the ontological, empirical and pragmatic levels of the rationalist-constructivist debate. We favor the pragmatic approach on heuristic
grounds, but we certainly believe a conversation should continue on all three levels.
 Consequentialism Necessary For Policy
Even if deontology is a sufficient ethical system for individuals, it is insufficient for
governments. Policymakers need to weigh consequences.
IPP, 97 (Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June, 1997 A Forum on the Role of Environmental
Ethics http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf)
At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for
public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas
in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create
a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or
actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means
implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to
believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of
policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail
utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms
of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement
officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their
attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to
environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse
outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.)
Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed
by Richard Flathman, the number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad
categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to
be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to
institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the
public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical
duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the
public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing
problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good
intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient, though perhaps at times a necessary,
basis for public policy in a democracy.
 Consequentialism Best For Debate
Consequentialism is best for debate. Strict cost-benefit analysis allows debaters and
judges to objectively and fairly evaluate arguments.
 Pragmatism Good (AT MoralityNot Practicality)
Practicality, solvency, and real world applicability matter and are a prerequisite to
morality. Dont let them shirk their burden of proof by dismissing them. Its bad for
debate.
Resolved in the resolution indicates a definite course of action. They arent even
topical.
TFD, 15 (The Free Dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/resolve)
INTRANSITIVE VERB:1. To reach a decision or make a determination: resolve on a course of action.

Moral obligation implies ability. An agent ought to or should do something only if

they have the ability and opportunity to.
Vranas, 07 (Peter B. M. (2007). I Ought, Therefore I Can. Philosophical Studies 136 (2):167 - 216.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11098-007-9071-6)
I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent
at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability
and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises:
(1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential
actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the bulk of the paper I address six
objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based
on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the
Principle of Alternate Possibilities.

Clash
If we dismiss a real world approach to the resolution, our evidence and arguments from real world
authors and empirics wont even apply to the debate.

Fairness
Dismissing any real world arguments is the same as arguing their side of the resolution in a utopian
world. That kills any and all of my ground and they always win.

Education
Their interpretation uniquely harms education by preventing us from learning about the resolution
and its implications in the real world. That kills substantive debate, educational debate, and is a
waste of all of our time.

Ethics
We have an ethical obligation to discuss and learn about real world problems and solutions that
pertain to real world people who matter in real ways.

Dont let them dismiss practicality, solvency, and pragmatism so that they can shirk
their burden of real world proof and have an easy debate. Thats an independent
voter for fairness, education, and ethics.
 Predictions Good
Turn: their rejection of predictions is self-defeating. Their argument is itself a tacit
prediction that predictions are bad.
Even if we cant be 100% certain, we can still make effective guesses. We are
obligated to do our best to prevent bad things from happening.
Kurasawa, 04 (Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Fuyuki, Constellations Volume 11,
No 4, 2004).
A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even
harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If,
contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra
scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at
our feet. The future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what
may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to
emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it
conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about
the latters total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with
absolute certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on
the horizon and to prepare for crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle
of fallibility into the work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs
of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this
paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the self-limiting
character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present
generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason,
nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped
by decisions in the present including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our
successors. Combining a sense of analytical contingency toward the future and ethical responsibility for
it, the idea of early warning is making its way into preventive action on the global stage.

Perm: acknowledge that predictions are not perfectly accurate, but be open to and
consider possibilities that have been proven likely. Its key to pragmatic action and
adapting to change.
Whitt, 09 (Richard, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel at Google, Adaptive Policymaking:
Evolving and Applying Emergent Solutions for U.S. Communications Policy, Federal Communications
Law Journal, vol. 61, issue 3, Questia)
Emergence Economics tells us that prognostication and planning [is] are difficult, if not impossible, to get right. The
inevitable personal limitations of information, perception, and cognition, coupled with a dynamic and unpredictable environment, makes failure
far more common than success. Attempting long-range planning can also clash with the adaptive principle of making contextual, evidence-based
decisions. Still, appreciating this reality should not lead to decisional paralysis. Those making public
policy must do what they can to peer into the fog and discern some patterns that can help shape analysis.
There are a number of possible ways to project into the present and future, using a mix of reason and imagination, to solve problems. I will
briefly touch on three that are based more on policy option scenarios rather than outfight predictions. Peter Schwartz has devised what he calls
"the art of the long view," which is premised on developing and using scenarios to help cabin uncertainty and improve decision making. (332)
This multi-stage process involves (1) identifying a focal decision, (2) listing the key factors influencing the success or failure of that decision, (3)
listing the driving forces (social, economic, political, environmental, and technological) that influence the key factors, (4) ranking the key factors
and driving forces based on relative importance and degree of uncertainty, (5) selecting the potential scenarios along a matrix, (6) fleshing out the
scenarios, (7) assessing the implications, and (8) selecting leading indicators and signposts. (333) An important takeaway here is that the use
of scenarios can help identify the various environmental forces that can affect implementation of a policy
decision, reducing to some degree the uncertainty that otherwise surrounds that process. Closer to the near-
term, Richard Ogle talks about utilizing "the idea-spaces of the extended mind," which he identifies as including qualities like imagination,
intuition, and insight. (334) As Ogle sees it, reason proceeds cautiously and looks backward, while the imagination and its allied capacities look
more boldly forward. (335) More specifically, the Cartesian model of thinking is based on continuity, because logical and probabilistic reasoning
cannot abide gaps. (336) By contrast, creative breakthroughs typically involve leaps into the unknown. (337) Because the imagination is the
mind's supreme faculty for dealing with the future, and it reaches places where reason cannot go, Ogle suggests ways to harness the imagination
to improve one's decision-making abilities. (338) As Ogle quotes Einstein, "Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you
everywhere." (339) Finally, Thomas Homer-Dixon argues for the necessity to develop a "prospective mind ... comfortable with constant change,
radical surprise, and even breakdown." (340) He sees each of these as inevitable features of our world, requiring us constantly to anticipate a wide
variety of futures. "We need to exercise our imaginations so that we can challenge the unchallengeable and conceive the inconceivable." (341) He
also argues: "Precise prediction is impossible because our complex and nonlinear world is full of unknown unknowns--things we do not know
that we do not know." (342) But a mind open to numerous possibilities is better equipped to anticipate and deal
with change than a mind closed off to such possibilities.
 Superogativity Doesnt Exist
While intuitively appealing, its wrong to assume that there is a limit to moral
obligation.
Kagan, 84 (Kagan, Shelly. "Does consequentialism demand too much? Recent work on the limits of
obligation." Philosophy & Public Affairs (1984): 239-254. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265413?
seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)
Consequentialism claims that an act is morally permissible if and only if it has better consequences
than those of any available alternative act. This means that agents are morally required to make
their largest possible contribution to the overall goodno matter what the sacrifice to them-selves
might involve (remembering only that their own well-being counts too). There is no limit to the sacrifices that morality can require; and agents
are never permitted to favor their own interests at the expense of the greater good. Our ordinary moral intuitions rebel at this picture. We want
to claim that there is a limit to what morality can require of us. Some sacrifices for the sake of others are
meritorious, but not required; they are super-erogatory. Common morality grants the agent some room to pursue his
own projects, even though other actions might have better consequences: we are permitted to
promote the good, but we are not required to do so. The objection that consequentialism demands
too much is accepted uncritically by almost all of us; most moral philosophers introduce per-mission to perform
nonoptimal acts without even a word in its defense. But the mere fact that our intuitions support some moral
feature hardly constitutes in itself adequate philosophical justification. If we are to go beyond mere intuition
mongering, we must search for deeper founda-tions. We must display the reasons for limiting the requirement to pursue the good.

We are obligated to prevent bad things from happening if it is within our power.
Singer, 71 (Peter Singer, 1971. Famine, Affluence, And Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 1,
no. 1 (Spring 1972), pp. 229-243 [revised edition])
My next point is this: if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby
sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it. By "without
sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance" I mean without causing anything else
comparably bad to happen, or doing something that is wrong in itself, or failing to promote some
moral good, comparable in significance to the bad thing that we can prevent. This principle seems almost as
uncontroversial as the last one. It requires us only to prevent what is bad, and to promote what is good, and it requires this of us only when we can
do it without sacrificing anything that is, from the moral point of view, comparably important. I could even, as far as the application of my
argument to the Bengal emergency is concerned, qualify the point so as to make it: if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from
happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it. An application of this principle would be as
follows: if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull
the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of
the child would presumably be a very bad thing.
 AT Calculation
Consequentialism need not be calculative.
Ord, 05 (Toby, Thesis Paper for Oxford in Philosophy, http://tinyurl.com/2c5456q)JFS
Consequentialism is often charged with being self-defeating, for if a person attempts to apply it, she
may quite predictably produce worse outcomes than if she applied some other moral theory. Many consequentialists have replied
that this criticism rests on a false assumption, confusing consequentialisms criterion of the rightness of an act with its position on decision
procedures. Consequentialism, on this view, does not dictate that we should be always calculating which of the
available acts leads to the most good, but
instead advises us to decide what to do in whichever manner it is that
will lead to the best outcome. Whilst it is typically afforded only a small note in any text on consequentialism, this reply has
deep implications for the practical application of consequentialism, perhaps entailing that a
consequentialist should eschew calculation altogether.
 AT Utilitarianism
Consequentialism is not utilitarianism. Consequentialism states that ends justify
means. Utilitarianism states that justice is maximization of hedonistic utility over
society. Utilitarianism is a small section of the broad category of consequentialism
and I do not need to defend it.
 AT Actors
Consequentialism is only about judging actionsnot actors. Consequentialists can
maintain that you judge an actor by their virtue, but an action by its consequences.
Actors who are mistaken about consequences are not to blame for them.
Smart and Williams, 73 (J.J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Emeritus Professor at the University of
Adelaide and Knightsbridge Professor Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, respectively. Utilitarianism: For
and Against, 1973, p. 86.)
It is perfectly possible for an agent to be ignorant or mistaken, and non-culpably ignorant or
mistaken, about what is the right action in the circumstances. Thus the assessment by others of
whether the agent did, in this sense, do the right thing, is not bounded by the agent's state of
knowledge at the time, and the claim that [they] he did the wrong thing is compatible with
recognizing that [they] he did as well as anyone in [their] his state of knowledge could have done.
Constitutivism Bad
 2 Objections
Constitutivism is flawed. First its impossible to derive the norms of morality from
the constitutive features of agency. Judging actions solely by their constitutive ends
doesnt validly reflect the essence of the action as having potentially more morally
relevant attributes than simply ones that are pertinent to constitutive ends.
Assuming otherwise is completely arbitrary and question begging. Second,
agentship is optional. Constitutivism cant apply universally to all actions and
actors. One can participate in something that they are apathetic to the constitutive
ends of. To claim otherwise is to construct a completely meaningless question
begging definition stating that an action isnt really an action unless it accomplishes
a certain goal.
Constitutivism Good
 Overcomes Subjectivity And Absolutism
Constitutivism is a theory of ethics that states that the moral principles governing
action are based off of what it means to be an agent. It is superior to other moral
theories because it overcomes subjectivity and absolutism.
Katsafanas, 11 (Paul Katsafanas. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXXXIII No. 3,
November 2011, Deriving Ethics from Action: A Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism. Boston
University.)
So whats special about constitutive aims? The constitutive aims standard of success differs from these other
standards in that it is intrinsic to the activity in question. You can play a chess game without aiming to enjoy it, and a
chess game is not necessarily defective if not enjoyed. But you cant play a chess game without aiming to achieve
checkmate, so a chess game is necessarily defective if it does not achieve checkmate. Thus, the interesting feature
of constitutive aims is that they generate intrinsic standards of success. Put differently, they generate non-optional
standards of success. So the important point about constitutive aims is just this: if action has a constitutive aim, then that aim will be
present in every instance of action. Thus, it will give us a non-optional standard of assessment for action, a standard that applies merely in virtue
of the fact that something is an action.15 Constitutivism therefore has several powerful advantages over other
methods of justifying normative claims. Constitutivism generates nonoptional normative
conclusions by relying on a very spare claim about the connection between aims and standards of
assessment (Success). It has the benefits of externalism, namely the capacity to generate non-optional norms; but it avoids the disadvantages
of externalism, namely the problems of practicality and queerness.
 Overcomes Subjectivity And Absolutism
Constitutivism is a theory of ethics that states that the moral principles governing
action are based off of what it means to be an agent. It is superior to other moral
theories because it overcomes subjectivity and absolutism.
Katsafanas, 13 (Katsafanas, Paul. "Constitutivism about practical reasons."
(2013).http://people.bu.edu/pkatsa/constitutivism.pdf)
A focal point in recent work on practical reason is the idea that we might ground normative claims in facts about the nature of agency.
According to constitutivism, certain normative claims apply to us merely in virtue of the fact that
we are agents. Proponents of this view argue that there are features of action that both constitute
events as actions and yield normative standards of assessment for action. For example, David Velleman
has argued that all actions share the common, higher-order aim of self-understanding. The presence of this aim
both distinguishes genuine actions from mere events and yields a standard of assessment for action: we have reason to perform those actions that
yield selfunderstanding. The attractions of constitutivism are considerable. By anchoring normativity in
necessary features of agency, constitutivism provides a way of justifying universal normative claims
without positing irreducible normative truths or grounding norms merely in subjective, variable
elements of human psychology. Constitutivists therefore hope to sidestep a series of traditional
objections to ethical theories. In addition, constitutivism provides a relatively straightforward
explanation of why and how normative claims have their grip on usFor now, lets put these complications aside
and consider how these points about chess might generalize. Constitutivists about action hope to show that action itself has a constitutive aim. If
action had a constitutive aim, we could apply the Success principle to show that there is a standard
of success pertaining to all actions, regardless of the particular goals that the agent pursues or the
contingent motives that the agent has. The reasons generated by this standard would be universal:
they would apply to all agents, regardless of the contingencies of the agents beliefs, desires, and goals.3 So,
surprisingly enough, if action has a constitutive aim, and we accept some variant of Success, we can show that there are universal reasons.
Contractualism Bad
 Social Contract Theory Bad
The social contract is just a hypothetical construct intended to explain the origins of
the state. Treating it as a literal description of how states work or gain legitimacy is
absurd, since no such contract actually exists, and if it did, its not clear, and
agreement to it isnt free or deliberate. The fact that people disobey the contract is
proof that not everyone consents to itand social contract theory itself assumes that
each individual has natural rights that cant be taken away by a sovereign. At that
point, social contract theory shouldnt be used to justify state power, and it certainly
shouldnt be used to justify bad laws.
 Social Contract Theory Bad
Social contract theory isnt valid. Truly free agreements with individuals and a
sovereign are impossible.
Solomon, 90 (Robert C. Solomon, A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the Social
Contract, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1990, p. 60)
It is easy to see the appeal of [social contract] theory, but it is also easy to see what nonsense it is
and how false a portrait of our nature. We are not and never have been naturally independent , and
society has always been based, first of all, on the natural affections and affiliations in which we find
ourselves with others. The idea that we could exist or have ever existed as purely autonomous
creatures is at best an inspiring intellectual fraud.
 Contractualism Leads To Evil
Imagine that a lifeguard promised to save their friend if they were in danger. Later,
this lifeguard sees 5 people on one rock and their friend on another rockall of
whom will soon drown in the rapidly incoming tide. The lifeguard only has the time
to take their a boat to one rock where they can save all of the people stranded on it,
however, whoever is on the other rock will drown. Contractualism states that
because of the promise, it would be morally required for the lifeguard to save their
friend and allow the 5 people to die unnecessarily.
 Contractualism Ignores Future Generations
Contractualism doesnt allow obligation to future generations to be considered
because they cant be a party in a contract or the subject of a promise.
Ashford, 07 (Contractualism. Elizabeth Ashford, Tim Mulgan. [Elizabeth is lecturer in Moral
Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. Tim is a Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the
University of St. Andrews.] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Aug 30, 2007.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/#ConCirRed.)
Another problem facing any social contract theory concerns our obligations to future people. It is
hard to see how we can have any obligations to such people, as they cannot be parties to our
contract. This is principally because of the absence of any possibility of mutually advantageous
interaction between distant generations. [Yet] The quality of life of future generations depends to a
very large extent on the decisions of the present generation. By contrast, our quality of life is not
affected at all by their decisions. We can do a great deal to (or for) posterity but posterity cannot do
anything to (or for) us. This power imbalance is often characterized in terms of the absence of Hume's circumstances of justice. (The
phrase is borrowed from Rawls 1971, pp. 126-130.)For Contractarians, for whom morality is an agreement for mutual advantage, it follows that
we have no obligations to future people with whom we cannot interact.
Contractualism Good
 Social Contract Definition
Governmental authority and responsibility are derived from a social contract
between citizens and the government that is mutually agreed to.
Simmons, 91 (A. John Simmons, Locke and the Right to Punish, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol.
20, No. 4 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 311-349)
Locke and other philosophers in the natural rights tradition have normally wanted to claim that all political authority (or power) is
artificial. Governments have rights to limit our liberty , for instance, only insofar as they have been
granted those rights by us; we, however, possess these rights naturally (or, rather, are born to a basic set of moral rights).
Governmental rights, then, are simply composed of the natural rights of those who become citizens,
transferred to government by some voluntary undertaking (e.g. contract, consent, or the granting
of a trust). This transfer of rights may go unobserved by some (as when consent is tacit only), but
it must take place if government is to have any de jure power. However beneficial and fair the practices
and policies a government enforces, it has no right or authority to enforce them against an uncommitted
independent.
 Social Contract Obligation
People are obligated to obey social contracts. First, they tacitly consent to the
contract by taking advantage of the benefits that the government secures for them.
Second, the existence of the state itself is dependent on people obeying its laws.
 Voluntary Agreements Are Morally Binding
Obligations are derived from voluntary agreements.
Kavka, 86 (Gregory S. Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory, 1986, 306)
To summarize all this, we may say that an obligation is created by the voluntary act of laying down a right, which
may take the form of a free gift or a contract, some of the latter of which are covenants. A person
has due to [them] him what another is under an obligation to provide him, [them] and injustice is done
when an obligation is not fulfilled, and never otherwise. The main idea that filters through this set
of definitions is that the moral relations among people described by such terms as obligation,
due, free gift, contract, covenant, justice, and injustice are created by those peoples
actions. As Hobbes puts it, There is no obligation on any man, which ariseth not from some act of his own. Thus Hobbes adopts a purely
voluntarist account of moral obligation and justice- ones moral obligations and duties of justice are limited to those things to which one has, in
some sense, agreed or consented. This idea will seem less outrageous when we come to see that the relevant sort of agreement may be purely
hypothetical and that duties of justice and moral obligations are not the only kinds of moral requirements that constrain our behavior.
 Promises Are Morally Binding
The voluntary nature of promises make them morally binding.
Hart, ND (H. L. A Hart (Legal Philosopher). Are There Any Natural Rights.
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic97122.files/Hart.pdf)
By promising to do or not to do
The most obvious cases of special rights are those that arise from promises.
something, we voluntarily incur obligations and create or confer rights on those to whom we
promise; we alter the existing moral independence of the parties' freedom of choice in relation to
some action and create a new moral relationship between them, so that it becomes morally legitimate for
the person to whom the promise is given to determine how the promisor shall act. The promisee has a
temporary authority or sovereignty in relation to some specific matter over the other's will which
we express by saying that the promisor is under an obligation to the promisee to do what [they
have] he has promised. To some philosophers the notion that moral phenomena-rights and duties or obligations-
can be brought into existence by the voluntary action of individuals has appeared utterly mysterious; but this I think
has been so because they have not clearly seen how special the moral notions of a right and an obligation are, nor
how peculiarly they are connected with the distribution of freedom of choice; it would indeed be mysterious if we
could make actions morally good or bad by voluntary choice. The simplest case of promising illustrates two points
the right and obligation arise not because the promised action has
characteristic of all special rights: (1)
itself any particular moral quality, but just because of the voluntary transaction between the
parties; (2) the identity of the parties concerned is vital - only this person (the promisee) has the moral
justification for determining how the promisor shall act. It is his right; only in relation to him is the promisor's
freedom of choice diminished, so that if he chooses to release the promisor no one else can complain.
Deontology Bad
 Nonconsequentialism Evil
Turn: deontological moral absolutism and motivistic appeals to purity are
ineffective, elitist, and justify complacence before atrocities. Prefer
consequentialism.
Isaac, 02 (Jeffrey C. Isaac, professor of political science at Indiana-Bloomington, director of the Center
for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale, Spring 2002, Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss.
2, Ends, Means, and Politics, p. Proquest)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with
moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting
a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of ones
intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to
make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such
tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean
conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not
simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the
standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically
repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as
much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than
the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with good may engender
impotence, it is often the pursuit of good that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth
century: it is not enough that ones goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of
pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this
judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political
effectiveness.
 Deontology Leads To Evil
Deontology not only permits, but morally requires actors in certain situations to
allow easily preventable atrocities to occur. For example, deontology maintains that
it is always wrong to lie because if that maxim were universalized, then the world
would be full of confusing lies, so under deontology it would be morally wrong for a
person to lie to Nazi police about the location of hidden Jewish refugees. Instead,
deontology mandates that this person should tell the truth-even though doing so
would result in the deaths of innocent people.
 Deontological Obligation Based On Subjective Language
Deontology is based on flawed interpretations of language that dont reflect reality.
Ratner, 84 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758-9, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law Journal. The
Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)
Disregarding the significance of evolutionary survival, nonutilitarian intuitionists deny that utilitarianism provides a "moral" basis for choice
between competing need/want fulfillments. They seek instead to identify the intuitive "preexisting rights that must, they insist, underlie such
choice.' But they disclose no source of the rights, which are, in fact, derived from the search for increased per capita need/want fulfillment.
Although frequently accorded a transcendental immutability, rights identify the resource and behavior allocations that are perceived by the
community as enhancing such fulfillment. Indeed, revelation of various a priori rights or moral standards is often accompanied by disparagement
of other such rights or standards as crypto-ntilitarian. A priori rights divorced from need /want fulfillment depend on
the magic power of language.When not determined by social consequences, the morality of behavior tends to be
resolved by definition of the words used to characterize the behavior. Necessarily ambiguous
generalizations, evolved to describe and correlate heterogeneous events, acquire a controlling
normative role. Definition, of course, reflects human experience. But the equivocal significance of that
experience may be [is] replaced with the illusory security of fixed meaning. Ethical connotations are
then drawn not from the underlying empirical lessons that provide a context for meaning, but from
inflexible linguistic "principles and their emotional overtones. Derivation of meaning from the social purposes that
engender the terminology leads to a utilitarian appraisal of need] want fulfillment. The preexisting rights of nonutilitarian morality are usually
identified as components of "liberty," "equality, and autonomy,"' labels that suggest a concern with individual need/want fulfillment and its
social constraints. Liberty is perceived as freedom for behavior that improves the quality of existence, such as speech, religion, and other "civil
rights activity; equality as rejection of disparate individual worth and "discriminatory" treatment; autonomy as the individual choice implied by
liberty and equality.
 Deontology Oversimplified
Deontologys simplicity is intuitively appealing, but it severely impairs rational
decision making.
Green, 02 (Joshua David; Assistant Professor Department of Psychology Harvard University.
November 2002 "The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality And What To Do
About It", pg 310)
Moral realists, and those anti-realists who would emulate them, have the option of dogmatism, of blindly acting by moral norms that one takes to
be authoritative. Revisionists, in contrast, have no choice but to acknowledge that all moral judgment is an imprecise process of weighing values.
The nature of moral action requires the drawing of lines: One either jumps in and saves the drowning child, or one does not. One either votes to
allow abortion or one does not. Of course, one will sometimes make compromises by adopting middle-ofthe- road courses of action, but, at some
level, all action is discrete. To any particular course of action one must say either yes or no. Thus, while the inputs to moral judgment are
fuzzy, fluid, and continuous considerations, the practical outputs of moral judgment are discrete actions. Deontology is intuitively
appealing because it offers answers as clear and forceful as our intuitions, drawing theoretical lines
that translate into practical lines, the kinds of lines that we, like it or not, are forced to draw by the
nature of action. But, contrary to appearances, nature contains no true moral lines. We begin with
only a mush of 298 morally relevant considerations, things we care about, and any lines that get
drawn must be drawn by us. Therefore, any attempt to settle a moral question with deontological
appeals to rights, obligations, etc. always begs the question. Such appeals are merely attempts to settle moral issues by
insisting that they have, in effect, already been settled by Mother Moral Nature and the lines she has drawn.
 Persons As Ends Contradiction
Turn: Kantian deontology is contradictory. Kants claim that rational beings are
ends in themselves justifies a hypothetical imperative of protecting rational lives, not
a categorical imperative of refusing to kill regardless of consequences.
Cummiskey, 90 (Cummiskey, David. "Kantian consequentialism." Ethics (1990): 586-615.)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for
some abstract social entity. It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some
elusive overall social good. Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the
inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Robert Nozick, for example, argues that to use a
person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate
person, that his is the only life he has. But why is this not equally true of all those whom we do not
save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, we
fail to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one
life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian
agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational being choose? We have a duty to
promote the conditions necessary for the existence of rational beings, but both choosing to act and
choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since the basis of Kants principle is rational
nature exists as an endinitself, the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting,
insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for rational beings. [How can a concern for the value of
rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice rational beings even when this would prevent other
more extensive losses of rational beings?] If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I
do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons
may have dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value that transcends any market value, but,
as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental equality, which dictates that some must
sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end initself thus does not support
the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses
on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration dictates that one may sacrifice
some to save many.
 Persons As Ends Contradiction
Turn: my impacts outweigh. Rational existence is a prerequisite to deontology.
Given the equal value of all lives, deontological theory justifies a hypothetical
imperative of protecting rational lives, not a categorical imperative of refusing to
kill regardless of consequences.
Cummiskey, 90 (Cummiskey, David. "Kantian consequentialism." Ethics (1990): 586-615.)
In such a situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional
value of rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for the
existence of rational beings, but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a
rational being. [How can a concern for the value of rational beings lead to a refusal to sacrifice
rational beings even when this would prevent other more extensive losses of rational beings?] Since
the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an end-in-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable
solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for
rational beings. If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them
arbitrarily and I do not deny [their] the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have
"dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436),
but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental equality which dictates that some must
sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never
force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then
equal consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many.
 Universal Maxim Turn
Turn: I better uphold the universal maxim principle. If you universalize the action
Im advocating, taking intention and results into account, rather than just
superficially universalizing the act, its good.
 Universal Maxim Non-Sequitur
The Universal Maxim principle is absurd. It states that one ought to act in a way
that would be good if the act were universalized. This is similar to consequentialism,
but a form of consequentialism where the consequences of an action are not
evaluated in the real world, but rather in a hypothetical world where everyone acted
in the same way as the moral actor in question. Its not justified, nor rational to use
a hypothetical justification for real world action in the way that deontology does.
 Conservative Bias
Deontology is a flawed moral system because it relies on the flawed assumption of a
just initial distribution. Only consequentialism creates outcomes that can escape this
conservative bias.
Chappell, 06 (Richard Chappell; Philosophy Department Princeton University. The Conservatism of
Deontology. April 8, 2006. Philosophy, et cetera. http://www.philosophyetc.net/2006/04/conservatism-
of-deontology.html)
Opponents of consequentialism seem implicitly committed to the idea that the status quo is a
morally privileged state of affairs. They abhor the idea of "utilitarian sacrifice", i.e. harming one
person to help another more. But why? (It's not a failure to treat people as ends in themselves.) The
resulting state of affairs is a better one. If deciding from a neutral position or "God's eye view" whether to actualize the former or the latter state
of affairs, we should (ceteris paribus) prefer the latter. Why should things suddenly change merely because we're in
the world, with the former state as the status quo? (I argue here that such a shift in context should make no difference.)
People simply assume that the status quo involves a just distribution. (Witness the absurd cries that redistributive
taxation is "theft".) But this is often not the case. It is sheer luck what circumstances one is born into, and
even later in life we never manage to wrest full control back from the whimsies of fortune. So it will
often happen that someone is better off than another without especially deserving this to be so. So
why not benefit another at a lesser cost to him? He has no special entitlement to the extra welfare fortune has granted him.
It's good that a person be well-off, of course. We certainly wouldn't want to harm him unnecessarily. But it is even better for someone to receive a
greater benefit. We shouldn't refrain from shifting to a better state of affairs merely due to a prejudice in favour of the existing distribution. Of
course, it's easy to see why traditional elites would want to promote a "morality" which favours
their entrenched interests and the status-quo. It's less clear why we should support such a bias.
Such concerns are bolstered once we recognize how hollow the so-called [act/omission] "doing/allowing
distinction" is. There isn't any significant difference between harming someone to benefit another,
and deliberately refraining from preventing such a harm. To prefer passivity is again to idolize "the
natural way of things", what's historically "given", the world as it is rather than as it could be. It is,
that is, to exhibit an unthinking deference to the status quo. Conservatism at its worst. Finally, those of a more egalitarian bent might balk at the
idea of imposing significant harms on one person in order to provide a vast number of individually smaller (but larger in aggregate) benefits to
others. But if we are to be unbiased about this, we must consider the situation from a neutral perspective, i.e. without privileging the arbitrary
historical distribution. So consider the situation in reverse: would you recommend imposing vastly many small harms in order to greatly benefit
one person? If not, then the initial judgment rests on a conservative bias.
 Act/Omission Distinction Impossible
The act/omission distinction requires a line between killing and letting die, but it is
impossible to draw this line because there is a continuum of different cases rather
than two distinct categories. For example, it is unclear where the case of refusing to
brake for pedestrians falls. Killing should instead be thought of not as its own type
of action, but as a relation to an outcome. Thus, deontological ethics fail, and
obligation should be predicated off of consequences instead of acts.
 Act/Omission Distinction Illogical
The act/omission distinction fails since omissions are intentional choices not to act.
Thus, deontological ethics fail, and obligation should be predicated off of
consequences instead of acts.
JME, 84 (Journal of Medical Ethics (no author available; defer to warrants). Acts and Omissions:
Killing and Letting Die Journal of Medical Ethics, 1984, volume 2, issue 59-60.)
One common argument in support of the doctrine is that in letting a patient die a doctor [one] does
not do anything to cause the patient's death It is the disease process which causes the patient's death it is nature taking its
course(6). There are at least two problems with this line of argument. The first concerns the nature of action.
While it may be arguable that if a person does not move [they are not being active, but] he is not acting in
the sense of being active (and even that claim is dubious), a person who intentionally takes no action [is] may
nonetheless be acting, in the morally important sense of human agency. The action he takes in that sense of action,
and under one description, is intentionally to allow his patient to die. The fact that [they] he did so by avoiding certain
physical actions is not in itself morally exonerating there are countless situations in which it is
clearly morally reprehensible to take no action with the intention of allowing another person to die,
particularly so if that person is one's patient. Similarly the argument that one is allowing nature to take its course is of no moral weight, for there
are countless circumstances in which allowing nature to take its course is morally reprehensible (allowing the diabetic to die of coma in the
casualty department is allowing nature to take its course - but, of course, the doctor's job in these and many other circumstances is precisely to
stop nature taking its course).
 Negative Duty Conflict Paradox
Deontology only says that we are obligated to not act in certain ways, but negative
duties can conflict with each other. For example, one persons obligation not to
speed can conflict with their obligation not to be late to a meeting. Deontology
doesnt present a way to weigh competing obligations and is thus inevitably leads to
paradox.
 Kant Doesnt Properly Argue Deontology
Deontology is deficient. Kant failed to properly justify his own moral theory, and
instead used authoritative argumentation and appeals to intuition.
Cummiskey, 90 (Cummiskey, David. "Kantian consequentialism." Ethics (1990): 586-615.)
I do not deny that these deontological intuitions have their appeal. Surely, however, when neo-
Kantians appeal to Kant, in arguments against normative consequentialism, they do so in the belief
that Kant has provided some normative justification for specific deontological intuitions. They
appeal to the force of Kant's arguments, [and] not just the authority of Kant's intuitions. Whether those
intuitions are supported by explicit or even implicit argument of truly justificatory force is, thus, a crucial issue. Just as one cannot assume that
utilitarianism generates a practically undefeasible right to liberty simply because Mill argues that it does, one cannot take it for granted that Kant's
theory generates agent-centered constraints. Indeed, in Kant's case there is a significant gap between Kant's basic
normative theory and his endorsement of commonsense deontological morality. We shall see that Kant's
normative theory does not provide the material to fill this gap.
 Kant Sucks: Lying/Suicide/Punishment/Sex/Racism/Sexism
Kants moral philosophy is seriously messed up.
Wood, 99 (Allen W. Kant's ethical thought. Cambridge University Press,
1999.http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/98032168.pdf)
For the same reason, however. Kant's ethical thought is also a focus of controversy, often an object of strong aversion.
Many regard it as a metaphysical system of mindless rule-following, grounded on an ineffable
moral command. For them, to be a "Kantian" about any ethical is-sue is to be irrationally inflexible about it and irresponsibly heedless of
the consequences of one's actions. The detractors find support for their views in some of Kant's moral opinions about particular topics.
Some of which seem to them excessively strict to the point of inhumanity. Kant infamously maintains that
it is wrong to lie even to a would-be murderer in order to protect [the] his intended victim (MS 6:429-
431: Ak 8:425-430). He maintains that suicide violates a strict duty to oneself because "to annihilate the
subject of morality in one's own person is to root out the existence of morality it-self from the
world, as far as one can (MS 6:423). For the crime of murder Kant thinks the punishment of death
is so strictly required that "even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its
members the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that blood
guilt does not cling to the people" (MS 6:333). Kant's views about sex are repugnant to nearly everyone
today (just as they were too many in his own time). He thinks sexual intercourse is "a degradation
of humanity" because it is an act in which "people make themselves into an object of enjoyment,
and hence into a thing" (VE 27: 346). He regards sex as permissible only within marriage, [as] and
even there it is in itself "a merely animal union" (MS 6:425). "Unnatural" sexual practices, such as
masturbation. "Are still viler than suicide" and turn a human being into "a loathesome object," lower than a beast (VE 27:
347, MS 6:425). "Paederasty" (like rape) should be punished with castration, while "bestiality" deserves permanent expulsion from human society
(MS 6:363).2 Nor can any enlightened person today approve Kant's opinions about race and gender.
Kant distinguishes four races: (1) White, (2) "Yellow Indian." (3) Negro, and (4) "copper-red
American." He ranks the characteristics of these respective races in descending order as regards
their inborn talent for perfecting human nature and conjectures that hence-forth human progress is
to be expected solely from the white race (VPG 9:316, VA 25:1187-1188: cf. BM 8:93-94).3 Kant thinks that although
women are rational beings. They are not suited by temperament or intellectual endowment to be treated as
full adults in the public sphere.4
 Kant Racist/Sexist
Kant was a racist and sexist.
Wood, 99 (Allen W. Kant's ethical thought. Cambridge University Press,
1999.http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/98032168.pdf)
For the same reason, however. Kant's ethical thought is also a focus of controversy, often an object of strong aversion.
Many regard it as a metaphysical system of mindless rule-following, grounded on an ineffable
moral command. For them, to be a "Kantian" about any ethical is-sue is to be irrationally inflexible about it and irresponsibly heedless of
the consequences of one's actions. The detractors find support for their views in some of Kant's moral opinions about particular topics.
Some of which seem to them excessively strict to the point of inhumanity. Kant infamously maintains that
it is wrong to lie even to a would-be murderer in order to protect [the] his intended victim (MS 6:429-
431: Ak 8:425-430). He maintains that suicide violates a strict duty to oneself because "to annihilate the
subject of morality in one's own person is to root out the existence of morality it-self from the
world, as far as one can (MS 6:423). For the crime of murder Kant thinks the punishment of death
is so strictly required that "even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its
members the last murderer remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that blood
guilt does not cling to the people" (MS 6:333). Kant's views about sex are repugnant to nearly everyone
today (just as they were too many in his own time). He thinks sexual intercourse is "a degradation
of humanity" because it is an act in which "people make themselves into an object of enjoyment,
and hence into a thing" (VE 27: 346). He regards sex as permissible only within marriage, [as] and
even there it is in itself "a merely animal union" (MS 6:425). "Unnatural" sexual practices, such as
masturbation. "Are still viler than suicide" and turn a human being into "a loathesome object," lower than a beast (VE 27:
347, MS 6:425). "Paederasty" (like rape) should be punished with castration, while "bestiality" deserves permanent expulsion from human society
(MS 6:363).2 Nor can any enlightened person [can] today approve Kant's opinions about race and
gender. Kant distinguishes four races: (1) White, (2) "Yellow Indian." (3) Negro, and (4) "copper-
red American." He ranks the characteristics of these respective races in descending order as
regards their inborn talent for perfecting human nature and conjectures that hence-forth human
progress is to be expected solely from the white race (VPG 9:316, VA 25:1187-1188: cf. BM 8:93-94).3 Kant thinks
that although women are rational beings. They are not suited by temperament or intellectual endowment to be
treated as full adults in the public sphere.4
Deontology Good
 Deontology Inevitable
Deontology is psychologically inevitable.
Moreh, 92 (Economic Analysis, Common-Sense Morality and Utilitarianism Author(s): J. Moreh
Source: Erkenntnis (1975-), Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jul., 1992), pp. 115-143 Published by: Springer Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20012427 Accessed: 22/07/2009 13:24)
Common-sense morality is grounded in the consciousness of ordinary human beings and the
stringency of moral rules is a device based on psychological grounds meant to prevent the erosion of
moral rules. In other words, the tendency for self-deception in order to reduce cognitive dissonance gives
rise to high information costs and causes Conscience to set up a fence around moral rules. By contrast,
Utilitarianism has been thought out by moral philosophers as an ethical system which people are advised to adopt. Because of the intellectual
character of Utilitarianism, it has evolved no processes for hedging around its rules. One therefore understands Harsanyi (1985, p. 49) when he
describes utilitarian rules as 'conditional imperatives', that is, people should fol? low them because in this way they will maximize expected social
utility. Of course, he expects all rational people to have an interest in promot? ing the common good and therefore to be utilitarians. (By contrast,
many people regard moral rules as unconditionally binding or 'categori cal imperatives').
 Categorical Imperative Objective
Moral law must be objective and impartial, so actions ought to be dictated by a
categorical imperative.
Paton, 67 (H. J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative, 1967, pg 135)
Kants insistence on the duty to act for the sake of universal law as such is repugnant to many people; but when we remember that he is here
concerned only with the form of moral obligation, we shall see that a great deal of what he says is common to most, if not all, moral philosophy
which does not regard duty as purely subjective or as a matter of self-interest. He is assuming, as we all must, that there are, or at least
may be, other rational agents besides ourselves, and he is saying that the principle or moral action
must be the same for every rational agent. No rational agent is entitled to make arbitrary
exceptions to moral law in favor of himself or even in favor of his friends. To say that the ultimate
moral law must be universal is to say that every particular moral law must be objective and
impersonal, that it cannot be determined merely by my desires, and that it must be impartial as between one person and another. In
this there is surely nothing to cavil at, even if we believe that we have a direct intuition of an unanalysable quality of goodness (or obligation) and
a direct intuition of the kinds of action in which such an unanalysable quality is necessarily manifested.
 Persons Are Ends
People must be treated as their own ends-not means to another end.
Johnson, 08 (Robert Johnson; Professor and Chair; University of Missouri Philosophy School; Ph.D.;
University of North Carolina); http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/kant-moral/; accessed,
3/4/2014)
Most philosophers who find Kant's views attractive find them so because of the Humanity formulation of the CI. This formulation states that we
should never act in such a way that we treat Humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but
always as an end in itself. This is often seen as introducing the idea of respect for persons, for
whatever it is that is essential to our Humanity. Kant was clearly right that this and the other formulations bring the CI
closer to intuition than the Universal Law formula. Intuitively, [it is wrong to treat] there seems something wrong
with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. But this very intuitiveness can also
invite misunderstandings. First, the Humanity formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends. Clearly this would be an absurd
demand, since we do this all the time. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our
goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that
have been developed through the exercise of the wills of many people. What the Humanity formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of
Humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends. Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use
one but not the other as a means of transportation. Unlike a horse, the taxi driver's Humanity must at the same time be treated as an end in itself.
Second, it is not human beings per se but the Humanity in human beings that we must treat as an end in itself. Our Humanity is that collection
of features that make us distinctively human, and these include capacities to engage in self-directed rational behavior and to adopt and pursue our
own ends, and any other capacities necessarily connected with these. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational
capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means when we behave in a way that he could, when
exercising his rational capacities, consent to for instance, by paying an agreed on price.
 Promoting Deontology Good
Deontological conceptions of ethics should be promoted. Greater adherence to
universal maxims makes the world closer moral perfection.
 AT Ignores Consequences
Deontology doesnt ignore consequences. Kants theory shows that our duties to
promote good consequences manifest themselves in objective laws.
Donaldson, 95 (Thomas Donaldson is Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and
International Affairs,International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154)
When discussing nuclear deterrence or intervention it is common to exaggerate the nonconsequential nature of Kantianism. It is a false but
all-too common myth that Kant believed that consequences were irrelevant to the evaluation of
moral action. In his practical writings Kant explicitly states that each of us has a duty to maximize
the happiness of other individuals, a statement that echoes Mills famous principle of utility. But
Kants duty to promote beneficial consequences is understood to be derived from an even higher order principle,
namely, the categorical imperative that requires all of us to act in a way that respects the intrinsic
value of other rational beings. Kant does not dismiss consequences. He simply wants them in their
proper place.
Egalitarianism Bad
 Not Everyone Is Equal
Not everyone is equal.
Singer, 12 (Peter. "All animals are equal." Ethical Theory: An Anthology 13 (2012): 361.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/phil1200,Spr07/singer.pdf)
When we say that all human beings, whatever their race, creed, or sex, are equal, what is it that we
are asserting? Those who wish to defend a hierarchical, inegalitarian society have often pointed out that by whatever test we
choose, it simply is not true that all humans are equal. Like it or not, we must face the fact that
humans come in different shapes and sizes; they come with differing moral capacities, differing
intellectual abilities, differing amounts of benevolent feeling and sensitivity to the needs of others,
differing abilities to communicate effectively, and differing capacities to experience pleasure and
pain. In short, if the demand for equality were based on the actual equality of all human beings, we would have to stop demanding equality. It
would be an unjustifiable demand.
 Heuristic Egalitarianism Bad
Heuristic Egalitarianism violates the rights and dignity of the advantaged and hurts
society as a whole.
Narveson, 97 (Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial,
Counterproductive and Baseless Blackwell)
Egalitarianism forces persons who exceed the average, in the respect deemed by the theorist to be relevant, to
surrender, insofar as possible, the amount [what] by which they exceed [those below them] that
average to persons below it. On the face of it, therefore, egalitarianism is incompatible with common good,
in empowering some people over others: roughly, the unproductive over the productive. The formers
interests are held to merit the imposition of force over others, whereas the interests of the productive do not. Yet producers, as such, merely
produce; they dont use force against others. Thus egalitarianism apparent denies the central rule of rational human
association. What could be thought to justify this bias in favour of the unproductive , the needy, the sick,
against the productive the healthy, the ingenious, the energetic? What are the latter supposed to have done to the
former to have merited the egalitarians impositions? The answer cant be, Oh, nothing theyre
just unlucky! or We dont like people like that! A rational social theory must appeal to common
values. By definition, those have not been respected when a measure is forced upon certain people
against their own values.
 Laisses Faire Economics Good
Laisses Fair economics benefit society as a whole-especially the poor.
Narveson, 97 (Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial,
Counterproductive and Baseless Blackwell)
In short, successful investment enhances the lot of others in society . When people are employed, this
enhances their real incomes, more than any other opportunities they may have had. And when they spend their money, it is because
they judge that expenditure to contribute maximally to their well-being. Thus, if we wrest the gains from investment or well-
paid work from the investors and workers in question, we take from the productive and transfer to
the unproductive. This takes money that would have produced more and ensures that it will be used
in less productive ways. A large society that undertakes this kind of activity [makes wise social
investments] extensively decrees poverty for itself , in comparison with what it could have done instead in a freed-up
market. And it is the poor, above all, who benefit, relatively speaking, from commercial activity activity that, if
unimpeded, continually drives down prices, continually finds new employment for available labour, and
continually reallocates resources in the way that does most good for most people , as indicated by the actual
choices and preferences of those people.11
Original Position Bad
 Original Position Yields Utilitarianism
Rawls draws the wrong conclusion. His theory justifies utilitarianism, not
egalitarianism. Truly rational and self-interested agents behind a veil of ignorance
would take gambles, using magnitude and probability to objectively calculate what
gave them the best chances of having the most favorable outcome for themselves. So,
they would aim to maximize the aggregative welfare in society, as that is what
maximizes their chances of the greatest welfare.
 Sufficientarianism Alternative
Egalitarianism is flawed. Distributive justice isnt concerned with how much people
have relative to others, but with whether or not people have what they need. Prefer
sufficientarianism to egalitarianism. It upholds distributive justice, and as a net
benefit, is better for society as a whole.
Page, 07 (Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal
of Global Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.)
In contrast to egalitarians and prioritarians, some theorists, such as Harry Frankfurt, hold that benefits
and burdens should be
distributed in line with the doctrine of sufficiency. This states that as many people as possible should
have enough (of the currency of justice adopted) to pursue [their aims] the aims and aspirations they care
about over a whole life; and that this aim has lexical priority over other ideals of justice (Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2143;
1997, pp. 314). Attaining what we really care about, for Frankfurt, requires a certain level of well-being, but
once this level is reached there is no further relationship between how well-off a person is and
whether they [achieve what they care about] discover and fulfil what it is that they really care
about. Frankfurt holds that, above the level of sufficiency, it is neither reasonable to seek a higher standard
of living nor expect, as a matter of justice, any additional allocation of some currency of justice to further improve
their prospects. It is important to add that having enough is not the same as living a tolerable life in the sense that one does not regret ones
existence. Rather it means a person leads a life that contains no substantial dissatisfaction. According to Frankfurt, the flaw in intrinsic
egalitarianism lies in supposing that it is morally important whether one person has less than
another regardless of how much either of them has (Frankfurt 1987, p. 34). What matters, Frankfurt argues, is
not that everyone should have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough
it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others (Frankfurt 1987, p. 21; original
emphasis). This does not mean, however, that egalitarian and prioritarian concerns will always
frustrate sufficiency since each and every person should be helped to the threshold of sufficiency if
possible, and those who can be helped to lead a decent life are often among the worst off in a
population. But the aim of reducing inequality, or of improving the position of the worst off, has no
intrinsic value for sufficientarians.
Egalitarianism Good
 Equality Fundamental To Morality
Equality and non-discrimination are fundamentally necessary to uphold and respect
human rights. Discrimination and inequality should be adamantly opposed in every
way. Thats a d-rule.
Makkonen, 02 (Makkonen, Timo. Institute For Human Rights bo Akademi University "Multiple,
compound and intersectional discrimination: Bringing the experiences of the most marginalized to the
fore." Institute for Human Rights. bo Akademi University. Earlier research on the intersection of
grounds is by Shoben, W. Elaine.(1980)Compound Discrimination: The interaction of Race and Sex in
Employment Discrimination NYUL Rev (2002): 793-835.
http://cilvektiesibas.org.lv/site/attachments/01/02/2012/timo.pdf)
Equality and its concomitant principle of non-discrimination are so constitutive to our modern
societies that we do not always even recognize their elementary role anymore. Democracy, for example,
recognizes the equal worth and equal rights of all persons, for instance through adherence to the one person, one vote -rule. Equality is
also the cornerstone of human rights: all human rights belong to all human beings, without
discrimination of any kind, and thus the concept of equality is implicitly embedded in the concept of
human rights itself. The prohibition of discrimination is also a crucial aspect of all legal systems as
the prohibition seeks to eliminate arbitrariness in judicial and administrative decision making, thus
enhancing the predictability and the fair functioning of these systems. The right of all persons to
equality before the law and protection against discrimination constitutes a universal human right
recognized in some way in most human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR). These human rights instruments either focus on several grounds of
discrimination, such as sex, ethnic or racial origin, disability and so on , or then on one of them specifically. The
underlying idea, though largely unarticulated, has been that people are, or can be, discriminated against mainly on the grounds of one factor at a
time, and that these grounds can be treated separately in legal instruments as well as in political action.
 Rawls Principles
Justice requires that all members of society are free and equal. Society ought to be
structured to the advantage of all.
Rawls, 58 (John Rawls, Justice as Fairness, Philosophical Review, 67, 1958, p.165.)
The conception of justice which I want to develop may be stated in the form of two principles as
follows: first, each person participating in a practice, or affected by it, has an equal right to the most
extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all; and second, inequalities are arbitrary unless
it is reasonable to expect that they will work out for everyones advantage, and provided the
positions and offices to which they attach, or from which they may be gained, are open to all. These principles
express justice as a complex of three ideas: liberty, equality, and reward for services contributing to
the common good.
 Original Position
If people were able to see society from an original position, unaware of ones self and
unaffected by biases, people ought to agree that peoples social or natural
circumstances shouldnt unfairly advantage or disadvantage them.
Rawls, 71 (John Rawls, Harvard Universty, a Theory of Justice, 1971)
One should not be misled, then, by the somewhat unusual conditions which characterize the
original position. The idea here is simply to make vivid to ourselves the restrictions that it seems
reasonable to impose on arguments for principles of justice, and therefore on these principles
themselves. Thus it seems reasonable and generally acceptable that no one should be advantaged or
disadvantaged by natural fortune or social circumstances in the choice of principles. It also seems widely
agreed that it should be impossible to tailor principles to the circumstances of ones own case. We
should insure Further that particular inclinations and aspirations, and persons conceptions of their
good do not affect the principles adopted. The aim is to rule out those principles that it would be rational to propose for
acceptance, however little the chance of success, only if one knew certain things that are irrelevant [to] from the standpoint of justice. For
example, if a man knew that he was wealthy, [they would not] might nd it rational to advance the principle that various taxes for welfare
measures be counted unjust; if he knew that he was poor, [they] would most likely propose the contrary principle. To represent the desired
restrictions one imagines a situation in which everyone is deprived of this sort of information. One excludes the knowledge of those contingencies
that set men at odds and allow them to be guided by their prejudice.
 Veil Of Ignorance
Imagine that all people in a society were made unaware of their social and natural
circumstances. If these people were to meet and decide how their society should be
structured, they would agree that society should be organized to the advantage of all
where nobody is unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged due to circumstances beyond
their control, where social hierarchies are organized to the benefit of the least
advantaged, and were everybody has equal liberty and opportunity.
Egoism Bad
Egoism Good
 Individuals Should Be Self-Interested
It is immoral and impractical to require individuals to act against their own self-
interest.
Peikoff, 93 (Leonard Peikoff, teacher of philosophy at New York University, Objectivism: The
Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 1993)
Real life, however, remains a fact. It continues to demand a specific course of action of rational, selfish action
which the duty advocates not only ignore but seek to countermand. The result is a moral code that is
worse than useless, a code that dooms [us] man to an unendurable dichotomy: virtue versus pleasure,
ones character versus ones welfare, the moral versus the practical, ethics versus survival. It would be
difficult to imagine a greater assault than this on mans life, or a greater negation of morality.
Existentialism Bad
Existentialism Good
Individualism Bad
Individualism Good
 Individuals Over Society
Individuals come before society.
Rawls, 71 (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 3-4.)
Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole
cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a
greater good enjoyed by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of
advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal liberty are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not
subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.
Moral Realism Bad
 Dogmatism
Cultural relativism helps us keep open minds and think freely independent of
indoctrination and dogmatism.
Rachels, 2k (James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000)
The second lesson has to do with keeping an open mind. In
the course of growing up, each of us has acquired some strong
learned to think of some types of conduct as acceptable, and others we have learned as simply
feelings: we have
unacceptable. Occasionally, we may find those feelings challenged. We may encounter someone who
claims [we] that our feelings are mistaken. For example, we may have been taught that homosexuality is
immoral, and we may feel quite uncomfortable around ay people and see them as alien and
different. Now someone suggests that this may be a mere prejudice; that there is nothing evil
about homosexuality; that gay people are just people, like anyone else, who happen, through no
choice of their own, to be attracted to others of the same sex. But because we feel so strongly about
the matter, we may find it hard to take seriously. Even after we listen to the arguments, we may still
have the unshakable feeling that homosexuals must, somehow, be an unsavory lot. Cultural
Relativism, by stressing that our moral views can reflect the prejudices of society, provides an
antidote for this kind of dogmatism.
Moral Realism Good
 Naturalism
Any account of ethics fails unless it uses fundamental aspects of nature to explain
morality.
Reader, 2K (Soran Reader, Department of Philosophy, Durham University. New Directions in Ethics:
Naturalisms, Reasons and Virtue December 2000. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice pp. 347-348 PC)
What is the alternative? To understand ethics in its own terms. This deprives us of explanatory naturalism.
We can't without error expect to understand ethics in any terms but ethical. This has seemed to
many philosophers to be unduly restrictive, and to threaten relativism.8 But in fact it does not lead to these
difficulties - or, more accurately, it doesn't exacerbate them. The problem of displaying the rationality of ethics in a
compelling way is real. But it is also general. It is the same as the problem of displaying the rationality of
all the other things we do - playing games, conducting scientific enquiry, writing philosophy papers. We might be able to make
connections between activities using an analogy with another game, say, to illuminate the game of chess for someone. But all we will
ever be able to lay our hands on in the activity of explaining, is more of the same: parts of our life.
The idea of our being able to use 'the world as it is in itself to explain any of our activities is
practically contradictory. And the idea that rationality - supernature, rather than first nature - can
be used to explain ethics in this way, involves a similar error. The way we think acquire beliefs,
deliberate, justify ourselves is also part of our life. It is as 'fundamental' in that life as ethics is, but no more so - no more
knowable 'in itself, as Aristotle, in the grip of a similar error to our own, would have put it, than it is 'to us', here and now, living as we live. So
explanatory accounts of ethics, whether they invoke first-nature or super natural reason, are
mistaken. Explicatory naturalism is as far as we can go. And as far as we need to go.

Naturalism proves realism. Certain things are inherently good, because they are
necessary given human nature. For example, life, wellbeing, happiness, and what
promotes those values are universally desirable.
 Perm: Use Our Culture
The moral relativism argument fails to refute my case. Relativism says that morality
is different for different cultures. Its a gross misunderstanding of the theory to say
that it means that we have to accept anything a culture supports as moral. Perm.
Adopt relativism, but recognize that it doesnt affect the morality of our culture,
which you can use to evaluate this debate. Our culture, says that ____ is wrong, and
relativism says that that is legitimate for us as members of our culture, so your
decision can reflect that.
Moral Relativism Bad
 4 Warrants
Moral cultural relativism is bad. 4 warrants.
Park, 11 (Seungbae. "Defence of cultural relativism." Cultura 8.1 (2011): 159-170.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/plg/cultura/2011/00000008/00000001/art00010)
I attempt to rebut the following standard objections against cultural [1] relativism: 1. It is self-defeating for a cultural
relativist to take the principle of tolerance as absolute; 2. There are universal moral rules, contrary to what cultural
relativism claims; 3. If cultural relativism were true, Hitlers genocidal actions would be right, [3] social reformers
would be wrong to go against their own culture, moral progress would be impossible, and an
atrocious crime could be made moral by forming a culture which approves of it; 4. Cultural
relativism is silent about how large a group must be in order to be a culture, and which culture we
should follow when we belong to two cultures with conflicting moralities.
 Relativism Justifies Anything
Moral relativism makes all sorts of atrocities immune to criticism no matter how
widely they are viewed as wrong.
Rachels, 2k (James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000)
We could no longer say that the customs of other societies are morally inferior to our own. This, of course, is one of the main points stressed by
Cultural Relativism. We would have to stop condemning other societies merely because they are
different. So long as we concentrate on certain examples, such as the funerary practices of the
Greeks and Callatians, this may seem to be a sophisticated, enlightened attitude. However, we
would also be stopped from criticizing other, less benign practices. Suppose a society waged war on
its neighbors for the purpose of taking slaves. Or suppose a society was violently anti-Semitic and
its leaders set out to destroy the Jews. Cultural Relativism would preclude us from saying that a
society tolerant of Jews is better than the anti-Semitic society, for that would imply some sort of
transcultural standard of comparison. The failure to condemn these practices does not seem
enlightened; on the contrary, slavery and anti-Semitism seem wrong wherever they occur.
Nevertheless if we took Cultural Relativism seriously, we would have to admit that these social
practices are also immune from criticism.
 Social Progress
Cultural relativism calls moral progress into doubt.
Rachels, 2k (James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000)
The idea of moral progress is called into doubt. Usually,
we think that at least some changes in our society have
been for the better. Consider this example: Throughout most of Western history the place of women in society was very narrowly
circumscribed. They could not own property; they could not vote or hold political office; with a few exceptions, they were not permitted to have
paying jobs; and generally they were under the almost absolute control of their husbands. Recently much of this has changed, and most people
think of it as progress. If Cultural Relativism is correct, can we legitimately think of this as progress?
Progress means replacing a way of doing things with a better way. But by what standard do we
judge the new ways better? If the old ways were in accordance with the social standards of their
time, then Cultural Relativism would say it is a mistake to judge them by the standards of a
different time. Eighteenth-century society was, in effect, a different society from the one we have now. To say that we have
made progress implies a judgment that present day society is better, and that is just the sort of
transcultural judgment that, according to Cultural Relativism, is impermissible.
 Criticizing Own Society
Cultural relativism doesnt only prevent us from criticizing other cultures, it
prevents us from making moral progress in our own culture.
Rachels, 2k (James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000)
We could decide whether actions are right or wrong just by consulting the standards of our society. Cultural
Relativism suggests a
simple test for determining what is right and what is wrong: all one has to do is ask whether the
action is in accordance with the code of ones society. Suppose a resident of South Africa is
wondering whether his countrys policy of apartheid rigid racial segregation is morally correct.
All he has to do is ask whether this policy conforms to his societys moral code. If it does, there is
nothing to worry about, at least from a moral point of view. The implication of Cultural Relativism
is disturbing because few of us think that our societys code is perfect we can think of ways it
might be improved. Yet Cultural Relativism would not only forbid us from criticizing the codes of
other societies; it would stop us from criticizing our own culture just as much as for others.
Moral Relativism Good
 True
Concepts of objective morality are invalid and irresolvable. Morality is by nature
relative and subjective.
Miller, 99 (Miller, D. Principles of social justice. (1999) Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
http://books.google.com/books?
id=y2wMzJtEZ_8C&pg=PA42&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false)
This impatience has been mirrored to a considerable degree by social scientists engaged in the empirical study of
justice. Even though they are often aware of the leading philosophical theories of justice, they are
likely to regard disputes between the protagonists of such theories as irresolvable. This is a legacy of the
positivist view that empirical and normative questions are radically distinct, and moreover that the answers we give to the latter depend in the end
on personal value-commitments that are beyond the scope of rational justification. In order to avoid getting drawn into this
quagmire, empirical social scientists attempt to bracket off the question what justice really is, and
see them-selves as investigating "justice beliefs" or "justice behavior" without theoretical
presuppositions. In his Introduction to a major survey of social psychological studies of distributive justice, Kjell Tornblom writes, "An
attempt will not be made here to define the concept of justice. This would appear to be a 'hopeless and pompous
task' . . . is 'beyond the capacity of any scientific analysis' and 'is not the business of psychological
studies of justice phenomena' anyway. Past research has convincingly shown that the notion of
justice seems to mean different things to different people and in different circumstances." Here, then,
subjectivism about justice is combined with an implicit view about the kinds of questions that can and cannot be answered scientifically to create
a sharp division between the social scientist who studies justice empirically and the political philosopher who tries to define the concept or to
promulgate nonnative principles of justice.
 True
Different cultures have different moral codes.
Rachels, 2k (James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000)
To many thinkers, this observation Different
cultures have different moral codes has seemed to be the key
to the understanding of morality. The idea of universal truth in ethics, they say is a myth. The customs
of different societies are all that exist. These customs cannot be said to be correct or incorrect,
for that implies we have an independent standard of right and wrong by which they may be judged.
But there is no such independent standard; every standard is culture-bound.
 True And Imposition DA
Morality is by nature subjective. Imposing a concept of a common or objective good
is both wrong and dangerous.
Andre and Velasquez, 92 (Claire Andre and Manuel Velasquez, The Common Good, Issues in
Ethics, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), online,
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/common.html)
First, according to some philosophers, the very idea of a common good is inconsistent with a pluralistic society
like ours. Different people have different ideas about what is worthwhile or what constitutes the good life for
human beings, differences that have increased during the last few decades as the voices of more and more previously silenced groups, such as
women and minorities have been heard. Given these differences, some people urge, it will be impossible for us to agree on what particular kind of
social systems, institutions, and environment we will all pitch in to support. And even if we agree upon what we all valued, we would certainly
disagree about the relative values things have for us. While a may agree, for example, that an affordable health system a healthy educational
system, and a clean environment are all parts of the common good, some will say the, more should be invested in health than in education, while
others will favor directing resources to the environment over both health and education. Such disagreements are bound to undercut our ability to
evoke a sustained and widespread commitment to the common good. In the face of such pluralism, efforts to bring about the
common good can only lead to adopting or promoting the views of some, while excluding others,
violating the principle of treating people equally. Moreover, such efforts would force everyone to
support some specific notion of the common good, violating the freedom of those who do not share in
that goal, and inevitably leading to paternalism (imposing one group's preference on others),
tyranny, and oppression.
Motivism Bad
 Justifies Anything
Motivism can be used to justify any action, no matter how horrible.
Porter, 96 (Jean, U of Notre Dame, "'Direct' and 'indirect' in Grisez's moral theory," Theological
Studies, Dec., 57(4), ProQuest)
Descriptions of actions adequate for moral evaluation must say or imply how the agent's will bears on relevant goods."(48) Following this line of
analysis, Grisez could admit that there are indefinitely many correct descriptions for every act, and yet still hold that only one of these is morally
relevant, namely, that which describes the act in terms of what the agent does in fact intend. Yet this argument does not resolve the difficulty. If
one accepts the Thomistic principle that every action is directed knowingly towards the attainment of some good (as Grisez does), then it follows
that every action can be described in terms of some good which the agent is voluntarily seeking. Why
should the agent not describe his intention in terms of that good, relegating the harms which he brings
about to [are] foreseen but not chosen aspects of the act? This brings us to the position which Anscombe described as
"bosh," namely, that the agent can determine his intention simply by focusing on the good at which he aims. ***Edited for gendered language
 Virtue Not Intrinsically Valuable
Motivism is foundationally exclusive and cannot constitute a complete and valid
moral theory. Good and rational intent is only instrumentally valuable, and its value
is proportional to the good which it confers-which is intrinsically valuable.
Cummiskey, 90 (Cummiskey, David. "Kantian consequentialism." Ethics (1990): 586-615.)
Although I will not argue the point, it would seem that one can accept Korsgaard's basic interpretation of Kant's theory of the good but still not
endorse the lexical priority thesis.23 Korsgaard's reconstruction of Kant's argument is a transcendental argument which starts with the internal
perspective of a valuing agent. If an agent begins with the assumption that the pursuit of happiness is
rational, then the agent must also place a special kind of value on rational nature itself. However,
even if one grants that one must believe that rational nature has value if it is to confer value, one
need not believe that it is lexically more valuable than the value it confers. As the unconditioned
condition of all value, one must think of rational nature as having only as much value as it confers.
Indeed, it would seem that rational nature only has value proportional to the value it confers. Despite
these questions about the specifics of Kant's theory of value, I will assume that a Kantian theory of value involves some priority of the
unconditionally valuable, rational nature, over the conditionally valuable, happiness.
Motivism Good
Motivism True
 Motive Matters
Motive matters. An acts consequences dont matter in determining the morality of
the action. Intent is what matters. For example it is immoral for someone to refrain
from killing just because they will be sent to jail if they do. The only moral reason to
refrain from killing is because it is wrong.
 Motivism Promotes Virtue
Morality should be determined by a virtue paradigm. It better assesses and
encourages right action with no drawbacks.
Gryz, 11 (Jarek Gryz: Prof in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York
University. On the Relationship Between the Aretaic and the Deontic. Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice (2011) 14:493501. Springer.)
The way we use words good/bad and right/wrong seems to support the above claims. Goodness and badness come in
degrees, hence we have words like better and worse; we lack similar terms for deontically
evaluated actions. The availability of degree terms in the former case seems to indicate the presence of many criteria used in evaluation;
an all-or- nothing choice, implied by the use of right or wrong, suggests focusing on only one quantum quality.12 But fine-grainedness is not
only a property of particular aretaic terms, the entire aretaic vocabulary is infinitely richer and allows us to draw much finer distinctions in act-
evaluations than the deontic vocabulary. For example, by saying that something is praiseworthy [obligatory] we
imply that it [is necessary, but] deserves approval or favor: we assess it higher when we say that it is
admirable, since then it should be also respected and honored. The [imperative] meaning of the
word praiseworthy can be quite well conveyed by saying, that it is something that ought to be
done, or that it is the right (in Rosss understanding of right) thing to do: yet expressing the word admirable in
deontic [imperative] vocabulary seems just impossible. From what has been said so far one can derive an encouraging
conclusion for the advocates of attractive ethics. Sheer richness and fine-grainedness of aretaic vocabulary seems to be a good reason for
believing that all that can be said in deontic terms can be equally well expressed in aretaic terms. This is not to say, however, that we can produce
a translation manual which would provide us with a general method of expressing deontic notions in terms of aretaic ones for all possible cases.
In particular, it does not seem possible, as we hope to have shown, to substitute good for right or deplorable for wrong. The relation
between the aretaic and the deontic seems to be somewhat similar to the relation between the physical and the mental in the mind-body problem.
We can claim that deontic is supervenient on the aretaic without committing ourselves to the idea of complete definitional reduction. In other
words, we may allow for token identity (each particular action can have an aretaic description that perfectly
matches the deontic one) and deny the possibility of type identity (that there is aretaic sentence true of all and only the actions having
some deontic property). If this analogy is correct then the idea of definitional reduction of the deontic to the aretaic, and in particular, Stockers
identification of rightness and goodness, is doomed. But we can still pursue a more modest goal. If our task is just to substitute every particular
deontic evaluation with an aretaic one, there are no logical reasons that would make it impossible (it would not work, of course, in the opposite
direction). From that perspective, attractive ethical theories seem to be much better off than the
imperative ones.
Pareto/Hicks
Punishment Bad
 Retaliation Bad
It is immoral to meet injustice with injustice.
Allen, 80 (R. E. Allen, Department of Philosophy and Classics, Northwestern University, Socrates and
Legal Obligation, pg 76, 1980)
One must never do injustice the must here, as in English, is equivalent to an ought. Since
one must never do injustice, one
must never return injustice for injustice, because to return injustice for injustice is to do injustice.
Put as a piece of elementary moral mathematics, two wrongs dont make a right. But if one must
never return injustice for injustice, one must never work injury or do evil to anyone in return for having
suffered it, since there is no difference between doing evil to men and doing injustice. The proposition
that one must not return evil for evil is present, in the most emphatic terms, as a paradox which the
Many will never accept (49c). One may well ask where the paradox lies.
 CorrectiveNot Retributive
Punishment must be correctivenot retributive.
Allen, 80 (R. E. Allen, Department of Philosophy and Classics, Northwestern University, Socrates and
Legal Obligation, pg 79, 1980)
The aim of just punishment is to make bad [people] men better, to increase the measure of their
human excellence, and thereby the measure of their happiness or well-being. Therefore, as it is better to suffer
injustice than to do it, so it is also true that the unjust man, if he knew what is in his own interest, as he does not, would seek punishment for
himself because of its medicinal value, for its effect of purifying the soul from the disease of wickedness. Punishment is imposed,
when it is imposed rightly, not simply because of past wrongdoing, but for the sake of the soul of the
wrongdoer or [others] if he is beyond cure, for the sake of himself and his fellows. This theory is
distinct from the retributive theory in that it does not place positive as distinct form the instrumental value on
human suffering as such, and does not measure the wickedness of an agent by the wickedness of [the] his
act.
 Punishment Good
Retributive restorative justice
 This
Statistically, empirically strong enforcement lowers crime
rates.
Nadelmann, Ethan. "Has The War On Drugs Reduced Crime?. May 10, 2008. Web. October 16,
2015. <http://www.thirteen.org/closetohome/viewpoints/html/crime.html>.
Strong drug enforcement in the United States is correlated with dramatic reductions in crime,
drug use, and drug addiction rates. Historically, permissive enforcement policies brought record
murder and crime rates, peak drug use levels, and increased the addict population. Drug arrest
rates are not an accurate measure of how tough the nation is on drugs. There are three times as
many alcohol related arrests than drug arrests - is alcohol policy three times tougher than drug
policy? If we legalize drugs, we may triple the number of drug arrests. To measure drug
enforcement strength one must examine what happens to those arrested. A good method is to
track the number of persons incarcerated for every thousand drug arrests. Periods of weak and
strong drug policy can then be compared.
Rights Bad
 Rights Arent Absolute
Just because a right is violated, doesnt mean that something is immoral. Rights can
and must be violated when they trade off with other, more important rights.
Etzioni, 93 (Amitai, The Spirit of Community, 1993, p. 7.)
Even if lawyers and judges realize among themselves that individual
rights are limited by the rights of others and the
needs of the community, as the language of rights penetrates into everyday discourse, the discourse
becomes impoverished and confrontational. It is one thing to claim that you and I have different interests and see if we can work
out a compromise; or, better yet, that we both recognize the merit or virtue of a common cause, say, a cleaner environment. The moment,
however, that I claim a right to the same piece of land or property or public space as you, we start to view one another like the Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland or the Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East. A return to a language of social virtues,
interests, and, above all, social responsibilities, will reduce contentiousness and enhance social
cooperation. People treat rights-based arguments, unlike many others, as trump cards that
neutralize all other positions. Cass R. Sunstein, professor of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, put it well when he pointed
out that rights can be conclusions masquerading as reasons. For example, he writes, those who
defend even the most extreme kinds of what he labels violent pornography state that it is a form of
free speech, period. Sunstein suggests that perhaps a person is entitled to this particularly abusive form of speech. But, he argues, an
individuals entitlement should be established in detailed argumentation that would weigh the right at issue against
the rights of those who are hurt by the given act, rather than simply asserting that it is a right, as if
its evocation closed off all debate.
 Rights Are Not Absolute
Making absolute rights claims is morally, politically, and socially harmful.
Glendon, 93 (Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse, 1993.)
In the first place, no
one can be absolutist for all our constitutionally guaranteed rights, because taking any one of
them as far as they can go soon brings it into conflict with others. Secondly, the rhetoric of
absoluteness increases the sort of conflict and inhibits the sort of dialogue that is increasingly necessary in
a pluralistic society. In the common enterprise of ordering our lives together, much depends on
communication, reason-giving, and mutual understanding. Even the legal profession is beginning to question the
utility and legitimacy of the traditional strategic opposition of extreme positions by lawyers. Lawyers, as well as clients, are reckoning the social
costs of our unique brand of adversary litigation. How ironic it would be if, after the American legal profession had become more sophisticated
about alternative methods of dispure resolution, the old hardball litigators talk lingered on in the rest of society, making it more difficult than
necessary to deal with the friction inherent in everyday living. [Third,] Claims of absoluteness have the further ill effect that they
tend to downgrade
rights into the mere expression of unbounded desires and wants. Excessively
strong formulations express our most infantile instincts rather than our potential to be reasonable
men and women.
Property Rights Bad
Rights Good
 Come First; Uphold Dignity
Rights must come first to respect human dignity.
Kateb, 92 (George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p. 5)
At the same time, there are other theories that seem to affirm human dignity yet give rights only a lesser or probationary or instrumental role.
Examples are utilitarianism, recent communitarianism, recent republicanism, and radical egalitarianism. The first and last 1 will return to shortly;
my response to the others appears here and there in this volume. (All I wish to say now is that unless rights come first they are
not rights. They will tend to be sacrificed to some purpose deemed higher than the equal dignity of
every individual. There will be little if any concept of the integrity or inviolability of each
individual. The group or the majority or the good or the sacred or the vague future will be preferred. The beneficiaries will be victimized
along with the victims because no one is being treated as a person who is irreplaceable and beyond value. To make rights anything
but primary, even though in the name of human dignity, is to injure human dignity.
 Rights Uphold Dignity
Rights outweigh all. They are critical to human dignity.
Kateb, 92 (George Kateb, Professor of Politics, Princeton, THE INNER OCEAN, 1992, p. 5)
Why make so much of individual personal and political rights? The answer, as I have said, is that respect
for rights is the best way
of honoring human dignity. Why make so much of human dignity? I do not find much to say. I am not even sure that much should be
said. Suppose we carry on at length about why governments should treat people in certain ways (by actions and abstentions), and in these ways
unconditionally and as a matter of course, and should do so because people deserve and are entitled to such treatment, rather than because
governments may find it prudent to treat people in these ways in the spirit of extending revocable privileges. I am afraid that we may jeopardize
human dignity by laboring to defend it. What sort of attack would merit an answer? Is a long and elaborate theory needed to establish the point
that people should not be treated by the state as if they were masses, or obstacles or instruments to higher purposes, or subjects for experiments,
or pieces in a game, or wayward children in need of protection against themselves, or patients in need of perpetual care, or beasts in need of the
stick? With what right does anyone maintain that people may be regarded or used in these nonhuman
or subhuman ways? With what truth? Unabused and undegraded, people have always shown that they deserve better. They
deserve guaranteed rights. When their rights are respected, all that their dignity, their human
status, requires is achieved. People are enabled to lead lives that are free, modest, and decentprovided, of course, socioeconomic
circumstances are not hopeless. To tie dignity to rights is therefore to say that governments have the absolute duty to treat people (by actions and
abstentions) in certain ways, and in certain ways only. The state's characteristic domination and insolence are [is] to be curbed
for the sake of rights. Public and formal respect for rights registers and strengthens awareness of three constitutive facts of being
human: every person is a creature capable of feeling pain, and is a free agent capable of having a free
being, of living a life that is one's own and not somebody else's idea of how a life should be lived,
and is a moral agent capable of acknowledging that what one claims for oneself as a right one can
claim only as an equal to everyone else (and relatedly that what one wants done to oneself one should do to others). Respect
for rights recognizes these capacities and thus honors human dignity.
 Rights Uphold Dignity And Autonomy
Rights are necessary to preserve autonomy and respect an individuals dignity.
Hayek, 88 (F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, 1988.)
Freedom requires that the individual be [freely] allowed to pursue [their] his own ends: one who is free is
in peacetime no longer bound by the common concrete ends of his community. Such freedom of individual decision is made
possible by delimiting distinct individual rights (the rights of property, for example) and
designating domains within which each can dispose over means known to him for his own ends. That
is, a recognizable free sphere is determined for each person. This is all-important. For to have something of one's own, however little, is also the
foundation on which a distinctive personality can be formed and a distinctive environment created within which particular individual aims can be
pursued.
 Property Rights Key To All Rights
Property rights are key to all rights.
Hospers, 74 (John Hospers, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, The
Libertarian Alternative, Tibor Machan, ed., 1974, p. 8.)
Depriving people of property is depriving them of the means by which they live-the freedom of the
individual citizen to do what he wishes with [their] his own life and to plan for the future. Indeed,
only if property rights are respected is there any point to planning for the future and working to
achieve one's goals. Property rights are what makes long-range planning possible - the kind of
planning which is a distinctively human endeavor, as opposed to the day-by-day activity of the lion who hunts, who
depends on the supply of game tomorrow but has no real insurance against starvation in a day or a week. Without the right to
property, the right to life itself amounts to little: how can you sustain your life if you cannot plan
ahead? and how can you plan ahead if the fruits of your labor can at any moment be confiscated by
government?
 Property Rights Lead To Social Benefits
Property rights lead to substantial social benefits.
Nozick, 74 (Robert Nozick (political philosopher, professor Harvard), Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic
Books, 1974, pp. 32-33, 174-178)
Here enter the various familiar social considerations favoring private property: [First,] it increases the social
product by putting means of production in the hands of those who can use them most efficiently
(profitably). [Second, innovation] Experimentation is encouraged, because with separate persons
controlling resources, there is no one person or small group whom someone with a new idea must
convince to try it out; private property enables people to decide on the pattern and types of risks they wish to bear, leading to specialized
types of risk bearing; [Third,] private property protects future persons by leading some to hold back
resources from current consumption for future markets; [Fourth,] it provides alternate sources of
employment for unpopular persons who don't have to convince any one person or small group to
hire them, and so on.
Teleology Bad
Teleology Good
 Obligation Stems From Essence
Ought refers to the telos or natural purpose of the resolutional agent. Obligation
stems from nature and essence.
Stilley, 10 (Stilley, Shalina, "Natural Law Theory and the "Is"--"Ought" Problem: A Critique of Four
Solutions" (2010). Dissertations (2009 -). Paper 57.
http://epublications.marquette.edu/dissertations_mu/57)
A third solution attempts to show that if we return to an Aristotelian, teleological, and functional understanding
of human nature, the problem disappears. 60 The claim is that once we come to understand the function
of the human person, the Ought emerges. Analogously, if we grasp the notion of a watch as
something which has the function of keeping time accurately, we can conclude that a watch which
does not keep time properly is a bad watch and one which does is a good watch. In other words,
once we grasp what the function of a watch is, it becomes clear that a watch ought to keep time
accurately. Likewise, if we grasp the notion of a farmer as someone who has the function of producing crops, we can conclude that a farmer
who does not produce crops is a bad farmer and one who does is a good farmer. Once we grasp the function of a farmer, it becomes clear that a
farmer ought to produce crops.61 It would seem, then, that if we can acquire an understanding of the function of the
human person, the Ought would at once surface or-- to put it differently-- it would seem that since natural law
theory incorporates a functional view of human nature, the IOP may not apply to it.
Utilitarianism Bad
Make Sure To Go Over The SEP Page Again
Act
Rule
 Utilitarianism Justifies Evil
Utilitarianism can be and has been used to justify incalculably evil acts.
Anderson, 04 (Kerby Anderson is the National Director of Probe Ministries International, , Probe
Ministries Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number http://www.probe.org/theology-
and-philosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatest-number.html)
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any worthwhile
end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost . But we all know that the end does not
justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the end was to purify the
human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a
communist utopia. The end never justifies the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular
act cannot be judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some objective and consistent
standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if the goal is the greatest
good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century could justify slavery on the basis
that it provided a good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor
even though the lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the consequences. If morality is
based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in order to accurately predict the
consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at the future, and often these educated
guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that consequences themselves must be
judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results. Utilitarianism
provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results because results are the mechanism
used to judge the action itself.
 Utilitarianism Justifies Evil
Utilitarian thought can justify genocide. A utilitarian only cares about the numbers
and would justify exterminating a minority of people if it makes a large enough
majority of people happy enough.
 Utilitarianism Undermines Distributive Justice
Utilitarianism is oppressive. It disregards respect for the individual and perpetuates
social inequalities.
Freeman, 94 (Avalon Prof in the Humanities @ U of Penn, Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University
of North Carolina Samuel, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463)
The inclusion of all sentient beings in the calculation of interests severely undermines the force of
any claim that utilitarianism is an "egalitarian" doctrine, based in some notion of equal concern
and respect for persons. But let us assume Kymlicka can restore his thesis by insisting that it concerns, not utilitarianism as a general moral doctrine,
but as a more limited thesis about political morality. (Here I pass over the fact that none of the utilitarians he relies on to support his egalitarian interpretation construe
the doctrine as purely political. The drift of modern utilitarian theory is just the other way: utilitarianism is not seen as a political
doctrine, to be appealed to by legislators and citizens, but a nonpublic criterion of right that is
indirectly applied [by whom is a separate issue] to assess the nonutilitarian public political conception of
justice.) Still, let us assume it is as a doctrine of political morality that utilitarianism treats persons, and only persons, as equals. Even in this form it
cannot be that maximizing utility is "not a goal" but a "by-product," "entirely derived from the
prior requirement to treat people with equal consideration" (CPP, p. 31) Kymlicka says, "If utilitarianism is best seen as an
egalitarian doctrine, then there is no independent commitment to the idea of maximizing welfare" (CPP, p. 35, emphases added). But how can this be? (i) What is there
about the formal principle of equal consideration (or for that matter occupying a universal point of view) which would imply that we maximize the aggregate of
individuals' welfare? Why not assume, for example, that equal consideration requires maximizing the division of welfare (strict equality, or however equal division is
to be construed); or, at least maximize the multiple (which would result in more equitable distributions than the aggregate)? Or, why not suppose equal consideration
requires equal proportionate satisfaction of each person's interests (by for example, determining our resources and then satisfying some set percentage of each person's
desires) . Or finally we might rely on some Paretian principle: equal consideration means adopting measures making no one worse off. For reasons I shall soon
discuss, each of these rules is a better explication of equal consideration of each person's interests than is the utilitarian aggregative method,
which in effect collapses distinctions among persons. (2) Moreover, rather than construing individuals' "interests" as their actual (or rational)
desires, and then putting them all on a par and measuring according to intensity, why not construe their interests lexically, in terms of a hierarchy of wants, where
certain interests are, to use Scanlon's terms, more "urgent" than others, insofar as they are more basic needs? Equal consideration would then rule out satisfying less
urgent interests of the majority of people until all means have been taken to satisfy everyone's more basic needs. (3) Finally, what is there about equal consideration,
by itself, that requires maximizing anything? Why does it not require, as in David Gauthier's view, optimizing constraints on individual utility maximization? Or why
does it not require sharing a distribution? The point is just that, to
say we ought to give equal consideration to everyone's
interests does not, by itself, imply much of anything about how we ought to proceed or what we ought to do. It is a
purely formal principle, which requires certain added, independent assumptions, to yield any substantive conclusions. That (i) utilitarian
procedures maximize is not a "by-product" of equal consideration. It stems from a particular conception of rationality
that is explicitly incorporated into the procedure. That (2) individuals' interests are construed in terms of their (rational)
desires or preferences, all of which are put on a par, stems from a conception of individual welfare
or the human good: a person's good is defined subjectively , as what he wants or would want after due reflection.
 Utilitarianism Undermines Distributive Justice
Utilitarianism undermines distributive justice and leads to gross inequalities.
Liu 2k (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of Pennsylvania, writes 2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis:
theories, methods and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
However, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Its quantifications techniques are far from being simple,
straightforward, and objective. Indeed, they are often too complicated to be practical. They are also
to flexible and subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack compassion. More
importantly, they fail to deal the issue of equity and distributive justice . Seemingly, you cannot get fairer than
this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person is counted as one and only one. IN other words,
people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism in
concerted only the aggregate effect, no matter how the aggregate is distributed. For almost all
policies, there is an uneven distribution of benefits and costs. Some people win, while others lose. The
Pareto optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto optimal if nobody loses and at least one person gains.
 Utilitarianism Undermines Individual Consideration
Utilitarianism imposes obligations to society which undermines individual
consideration and destroys morality.
Freeman, 94 (Avalon Prof in the Humanities @ U of Penn, Ph.D. Harvard University, J.D. University
of North Carolina Samuel, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn, pp. 313-349,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265463)
Kymlicka distinguishes two interpretations of utilitarianism: teleological and egalitarian. According to Rawls's teleological
interpretation, the "fundamental goal" (LCC, p. 33) of utilitarianism is not persons, but the
goodness of states of affairs. Duty is defined by what best brings about these states of affairs. " [M] aximizing the good is primary,
and we count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty isn't to treat people as equals, but to bring about valuable
states of affairs" (LCC, p. 27). It is difficult to see, Kymlicka says, how this reading of utilitarianism can be
viewed as a moral theory. Morality, in our everyday view at least, is a matter of interpersonal
obligations-the obligations we owe to each other. But to whom do we owe the duty of maximizing
utility? Surely not to the impersonal ideal spectator . . . for he doesn't exist. Nor to the maximally valuable state of affairs
itself, for states of affairs don't have moral claims." (LCC, p. 28-29) Kymlicka says, "This form of utilitarianism does not merit serious
consideration as a political morality" (LCC, p. 29). Suppose we see utilitarianism differently, as a theory whose "fundamental principle" is "to
treat people as equals" (LCC, p. 29). On this egalitarian reading, utilitarianism is a procedure for aggregating individual interests and desires, a
procedure for making social choices, specifying which trade-offs are acceptable. It's a moral theory which purports to treat people as equals, with
equal concern and respect. It does so by counting everyone for one, and no one for more than one. (LCC, p. 25)
 Utilitarianism Undermines Individuals And Rights
Utilitarianism diminishes the moral relevance of the individual and justifies
undermining human rights.
Heinze, 99 (Eric, assistant prof. of polisci @ University of Oklahoma, Human Rights & Human
Welfare, Waging War for Human Rights: Towards a Moral-Legal Theory of Humanitarian Intervention,
http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2003/heinze-2003.pdf, p. 5)
By itself, this utilitarianism of rights test has serious problems when employed as a threshold level of human suffering that triggers a
humanitarian intervention. This is because it suggests that aggregate human suffering is the only moral concern
that should be addressed (Montaldi 1985: 135). If we are to accept the general presumption against war as enshrined in Article 2 of
the UN Charter, we do so because of wars inherent destructiveness and its detrimental effect on international security. The use of force, including
humanitarian intervention, will always result in at least some loss of life. The principle of utility ameliorates this effect of intervention, but once
an intervention is employed to halt such widespread suffering, a pure utilitarian ethos would sanction the pursuit of this primary end (achieving
the military and/or humanitarian objective) without exception, so long as fewer people are killed than are rescued in an intervention. Not only
does this reduce the moral relevance of the individual, it opens up the door for aggression disguised
as humanitarian intervention, as long as there are individuals who are suffering and dying within a stateeven if their suffering is
entirely accidental. Taken as part and parcel of the utilitarian framework, therefore, military intervention must only be sanctioned when it is in
response to violations that are intentionally perpetrated Thus, as Fernando Tesn eloquently explains in his chapter, The Liberal Case for
Humanitarian Intervention, the best case for humanitarian intervention contains a deontological element
that is, a principled concern for the respectful treatment of individuals (not intentionally or maliciously mistreating them)as well as a
consequentialist onethe utilitarian requirement that interventions cause more good than harm (Holzgrefe and Keohane: 114). Consider
NATOs intervention in Kosovo, where a significant number of Serbian civilians were killed by
NATO bombs in the process of coercing the Milosevic regime to stop its ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. Regardless of whether
more lives were saved than lost, in accidentally killing noncombatants, NATO was in essence accepting
the notion that human rights are not absolute. This is despite the fact that such killing was done in
order to save the lives of other innocent civilians.
Utility Monster?
Utilitarianism Good
 Definition
Utilitarianism is defined as follows.
Mill, 1863 (John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, (Hackett Publishing) orig. 1861, this ed. 1979, p. 7.)
"The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that
actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce
the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by
unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure."
Act
 Rule Utilitarianism Allows Exceptions
Rule Utilitarianism is compatible with moral maxims of action. However, unlike
moral absolutism, Rule Utilitarianism has the advantage of allowing exceptions to
moral rules of thumb when necessary.
Brandt, 59 Richard B. Brandt, University of Michigan, Ethical Theory, 1959, p. 384.
"Does the utilitarian formula leave[s] any place for moral maxims like 'Keep your promises' and
'Always tell the truth?' Yes, these maxims can be regarded as directives that for the most part point
out what is a person's duty. They are rules of thumb. They are properly taught to children and used
by everybody as a rough timesaving guide for ordinary decisions. Moreover, since we are all prone
to rationalizing in our own favor, they are apt to be a better guide to our duty in complex cases than
is our on-the-spot reflection. However, we are not to be enslaved to them. When there is good
ground for thinking the maximum net expectable utility will be produced by an act that violates
them, then we should depart from them. Such a rule is to be disregarded without hesitation, when it
clearly conflicts with the general welfare."
 Rule Utilitarianism Compatible With Rights
Rule Utilitarianism is compatible with a rights framework.
Bowie, 86 (Norman E. Bowie and Robert L. Simon, University of Delaware and Hamilton College,
respectively, The Individual and the Political Order, 2nd Ed., 1986, p. 37.)
"The task of the moral philosopher on the rule utilitarian account is to formulate those rules which pass the utilitarian test. If
Mill is
interpreted as a rule utilitarian, individual rights can be construed as rules that protect individuals.
These rights, however, are grounded on utilitarian considerations. Individual rights should be
recognized only if by recognition of such rights the happiness of the greatest good for the greatest
number can be secured."
 Utilitarianism Inevitable
Utilitarianism is psychologically inevitable. It has always and will always permeate
human thought.
Allison, 90 (Allison, Professor of Political Philosophy at University of Warwick, 1990 (Lincoln, The
Utilitarianism Response)
And yet if an idea can be compared to a castle, though we find a breached wall, damaged foundation and a weapons spiked where not actually
destroyed, there still remains a keep, some thing central and defensible, with in utilitarianism. As Raymond
Frey puts it, utilitarianism
has never ceased to occupy a central place in moral theorizing ... [and] has
come to have a significant impact upon the moral thinking of many laymen. The simple core of the doctrine
lies in the ideas that actions should be judged by their consequences and that the best actions are those which make people, as-a whole, better off
than do the alternatives. What utilitarianism always excludes therefore, is any idea-about the Tightness or wrongness of actions which is not
explicable in terms of the consequences of those actions. The wide acceptance of utilitarianism in this broad sense
may well be residual for many people. Without a serious God (one, this is, prepared to reveal Truth and instruction) or a
convincing deduction of ethical prescription from pure reason, we are likely to turn towards Bentham and to judge actions on
their consequences for people's well-being.
Utilitarianism Good
 Utilitarianism Necessary For Policy
Even if deontology is a sufficient ethical system for individuals, it is insufficient for
governments. Policymakers need to use utilitarianism.
Goodin, 95 (Robert E., Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy, Google Books)
My concern in this book, true to the thrust of this introduction, is with utilitarianism as a public philosophy. My main concern is with the ways in
which utilitarianism can be a good guide to public policies without necessarily being a good guide to
private conduct. Nonetheless, in adducing many of its most important implication for public policy it is important to see at leas in broad
outline how it would set about shaping private conduct. Utilitarians, and consequentialists more generally, are
outcome-oriented. In sharp contrast to Ten Commandment-style deontological approaches, which specify certain
actions to be done as a matter of duty, utilitarian theories assign people responsibility for producing
certain results, leaving the individuals concerned broad discretion about how to achieve those results.
The same basic difference in the two theories' approaches to assigning moral jobs reappears across all levels of moral agency, from private
agency, from private individuals to collective (especially state) actors. The distinctively utilitarian approach, thus conceived, to international
protection of the ozone layer is to assign states responsibility for producing certain effects, leaving them broad discretion in how they accomplish
it (Chapter 18). The distinctively utilitarian approach, thus conceived, to the ethical defense of nationalism is couched in terms of delimiting state
boundaries in such a way as to assign particular organization (Chapter 16). And, at a more domestic level of analysis, the distinctively utilitarian
approach to the allocation of legal liabilities is to assign them to whomsoever can best discharge them (Chapters 5 through 7). The great
advantage of utilitarianism as a guide to public conduct is that it [is] avoids gratuitous sacrifices, it
ensures we are able to ensure in the uncertain world of public policy-making that politics are
sensitive to people's interests or desires or preferences. The great failing of more deontological
theories, applied to those realism, is that they fixate upon duties done for the sake of duty rather
than for the sake of any good that is done by doing one's duty. Perhaps it is permissible (perhaps it
is even proper) for private individuals in the course of their personal affairs to fetishize duties done
for their own sake. It would be a mistake for public officials to do likewise, not least because it is
impossible. The fixation of motives makes absolutely no sense in the public realm, and might make precious
little sense in the private one even, as Chapter 3 shows. The reason public action is required at all arises form the inability of uncoordinated
individual action to achieve certain orally desirable ends. Individuals are rightly excused from pursuing those ends. The inability is real; the
excuses, perfectly valid. But libertarians are right in their diagnosis, wrong in their prescription. That is the message of Chapter 2. The same thing
that makes those excuses valid at the individual level the same thing that relives individuals of responsibility - makes it morally incumber upon
individuals to organize themselves into collective units that are capable of acting where they as isolated individuals are not. When they organize
themselves into these collective units, those collective deliberations inevitably take place under very different forms. Individuals are morally
required to operate in that collective manner, in certain crucial respects. But they are practically circumscribed in how they can operate, in their
collective mode. and those special constraints characterizing the public sphere of decision-making give rise to the special circumstances that
make utilitarianism peculiarly apt for public policy-making, in ways set out more fully in Chapter 4. Government house utilitarianism thus
understood is, I would argue, a uniquely defensible public philosophy
 AT Argument By Intuition
Arguing against Utilitarianism with contrived, extreme examples and with appeals
to intuition saying that util simply seems wrong is an invalid way to argue against it.
It completely ignores the philosophical foundations of utilitarian theory and is bad
for education in debate.
Hare, 90 (R.M. Hare, philosopher, Utilitarianism and Its Critics, ed. Jonathan Glover, 1990, p. 231-
232.)
The most common trick of the opponents of utilitarianism is to take examples of such thinking,
usually addressed to fantastic cases, and confront them with what the ordinary [person] man would
think. It makes the utilitarian look like a moral monster. The anti-utilitarians have usually confined
their own thought about moral reasoning (with fairly infrequent lapses which often go unnoticed) to what I am calling level 1, the
level of everyday moral thinking on ordinary, often stressful, occasions in which information is
sparse. So they find it natural to take the side of the ordinary [person] man in a supposed fight with
the utilitarian whose views lead [them] him to say, if put at the disconcertingly unfamiliar standpoint of the archangel
Gabriel, such extraordinary things about these carefully contrived examples. To argue in this way is
entirely to neglect the importance for moral philosophy of a study of moral education.
Government/Society
Aristocracy
Authoritarianism Bad
Authoritarianism Good
 Inevitable
No uniqueness. Democracy is unsustainable and authoritarianism is inevitable.
Leeson, 79 (Adjunct Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Former Professor of
Political Science at Willamette University, Former Judicial Fellow for the U.S. Supreme Court and Justice
for the Oregon State Supreme Court [Susan, Philosophical Implications of the Ecological Crisis: The
Authoritarian Challenge to Liberalism Polity Vol. 11, No. 3, pg. 303-318, jstor)
Ironically, those who now foresee and advocate authoritarianism as the only workable response to
ecological problems anticipate the demise of the liberal experiment in much the same way Socrates
anticipated the demise of democracy in Book vIII of the Republic. Socrates argued that democracy
inevitably leads to tyranny because of the refusal of the many to accept proper limits. The absence
of limits leads to chaos, which in turn gives way to tyranny because any order is better than no
order. The democratic man, unable to distinguish right from wrong, proper from improper,
eventually accepts tyranny in preference to the chaos which makes life unlivable. Hardin,
Heilbroner, and Ophuls suggest that modern [society] man is, or soon will be, in a similar situation
with respect to the ecological crisis. Despite the hopes of "technological optimists" the carrying
capacity of the earth is bound to be exceeded unless rigid limits are imposed. Faced with chaos and
extinction, modern [society] man will find authoritarianism the only alternative.
 AT State Power Bad
Violations of liberty dont justify rejecting welfare.
Nagel, 81 (Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy, New York University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p. 193.)
Naturally any opposition to the power of governments will meet with a certain sympathy from observers
of the contemporary scene, and Nozick emphasizes the connection between his view and the fight against
legal regulation of sexual behavior, drug use, and individual life styles. It is easy to develop an aversion
to state power by looking at how actual states wield it. Their activities often include murder,
torture, political imprisonment, censorship, conscription for aggressive war, and overthrowing the
governments of other countries-not to mention tapping the phones, reading the mail, or regulating
the sexual behavior of their own citizens. [but] The objection to these abuses, however, is not that
state power exists, but that it is used to do evil rather than good. Opposition to these evils cannot be
translated into an outright rejection to welfare, public education, or the graduated income tax.
Big Government Bad
Bid Government Good
Centralization Bad
 Empowerment, Democracy, Peace, Development, Poverty
Decentralization promotes individual empowerment, peace, democracy,
development, and poverty reduction.
Kauzya, 05 (The Chief in the Division for Public Administration and Development Management,
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (John Mary, Decentralization: Prospects for
Peace, Democracy, and Development, September 2005,
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021510.pdf, K. Ward))
As part of the efforts to promote the participation of the people in the decision-making processes as well as
the development activities, the policy of devolution of power and authority to sub-national
governments (generally referred to as decentralization) is increasingly adopted and applied in many
countries as one of the tenets of good governance. This is based on the premise that decentralized
governance provides a structural arrangement and a level playing field for stakeholders and
players to promote peace, democracy, and development. Many countries are promoting
decentralized governance as a measure for democratization, people empowerment and poverty
reduction. However, the efforts in this regard are not moving at the same pace, with the same political conviction, using equally competent
capacities, and with the same success. Some countries have gone beyond political hesitation and put in place policies of decentralization but they
lack the requisite capacities for the implementation. Others are still politically hesitant, not sure of the role of decentralized governance in
democratization, people empowerment, and poverty reduction.
 Individual Action
Centralization prevents social movements by preventing individual action. The
result is disastrous.
Papworth, 01 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Peace Through
Social Empowerment, "Primary Causes,"
http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/academicinn/jp14.html)
It is simply this; that our primary problem is not war, or the environment, or population pressures, nor the
squandering of the planet's finite resources, nor the alienation from life of many millions of people; THE
PRIMARY PROBLEM IS THAT OF SIZE, size developed on such a scale as to disempower people and
which makes their moral judgements irrelevant to the passage of events. If we ignore that and simply focus our
energies on particular abuses then, however commendable our objectives and our efforts, we are
dealing with the effects of the abuses of power and ignoring their causes. It was Einstein who remarked 'You
cannot solve a problem with the mindframe that has created it'. In saying as much he was pointing to the core of our problem; a 19th century
mindframe which accepts, without question or challenge, giant centralised states and economic entrepreneurship
global in its scope, which together have created a doomsday scenario for the human race. No body can be healthier than
the cells of which it is comprised. If the cells of small-scale community life are debilitated or non-existent in the
body politic then what we are confronted with is a form of social and political leukaemia, a destroyed immune system which cannot
prevent multitudinous forms of life-threatening malignancy, such as monster global wars, from
flourishing. We are not going to solve the problems of the 21st century with the mind-frame of the
19th. Social empowerment, involving the deliberate creation of an organic, multi-cellular structure
and process of our political and economic institutions, is today the only realistic path to enduring
peace and to any genuine social progress.
 Democracy
Centralization destroys democracy. Decentralization promotes it.
Papworth, 02 (John, Senior Editor @ Ecologist + Founder of Fourth World Review, Cut the Cackle,"
Fourth World Review, http://www.williamfranklin.com/4thworld/adobe/fwr118.pdf)
The centralization of power kills democracy, by concentrating decision making beyond the reach of
the average citizen. of the franchise, but again what is evident is an increasing decline of citizen influence or
capacity to control as giant political parties, subject to their own highly centralized bureaucracies,
ordain their workings and their general policy direction. What emerges from this process is not one
in which the citizen is able to express preferences which party or government then seeks to effect,
rather it is a matter of policy decisions by powerful centralized bodies to which the citizen has no
effective response except to assent. It is a process which gives enormous powers of patronage to
party leaders and even more to heads of government and it is one quite incompatible with the spirit
and practice of the democratic ethos. Such patronage is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who deploy it to secure
subservience to their wishes rather than concurrence with the wishes of the citizen.
Centralization Good
 Neoliberalism IL
Centralization is good. Devolution strengthens neoliberalism.
Boyer, 06 (Clinical Assistant Professor of Dept. of Science and Technology Studies at Resselaer
Polytechnic, 2006 (Kate Boyer, Editorial Board of Antipode, Reform and Resistance: A Consideration of
Space, Scale and Strategy in Legal Challenges to Welfare Reform, NM))
Welfare reform has been marked by a downward transfer of decisionmaking power regarding the
content and administration of welfare policy from federal, to state and local governments as well as
the private sector (devolution). With this change has also come a shift in the level at which services themselves are provided, such
that for- and not-for-profit organizations as well as faith-based groups now compete with the public sector for funds (Boyer, Lawrence and
Wilson 2001). Devolution expresses the goals of a broader neoliberal agenda by enabling both inter-locality
competition and, especially, privatization. By transferring some of the responsibilities that were once
under the auspices of the federal government downward and outward to the private sector, devolution can be
seen as an expression of hollowing out some of the responsibilities of the federal government under
neoliberalism described by Jessop (1999).
 Corruption/Tyranny
Decentralization leaves states vulnerable to corruption and tyranny.
Levine, 84 (Andrew Levine, Arguing For Socialism, 1984, pg 45)
Countervailing powers work to promote freedom. To the extent power is concentrated, individuals
find themselves at the mercy of the powers that be . At the limit, were there only one employer, to run afoul of that
employer would be to incur trouble indeed; worse trouble by far than where effective power is less concentrated. The less concentrated
power is, the easier it is for troublemakers and dissidents of all sorts to avoid the effects of blacklisting
or outright proscription. Thus capacity-freedom and also liberty are advanced by institutional
arrangements where countervailing powers exist. Countervailing power are hedges against tyranny.
Capitalism may not provide much of a hedge, particularly if there is a tendency for capital to concentrate and to
dominate the state; but some resistance to tyranny is built into the capitalist system in virtue of the space capitalism provides for civil
society.
 Definitions Of Government
Weber
Democracy Bad
 This
Democratic policy options lead to violent domination of people and the continuation
of injustices.
Kappeler, Susanne. The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior. October 14, 2015. Web.
October 11, 2015. <https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Will_to_Violence.html?
id=Fjm8QgAACA AJ>.
While the democratic relationship, of course, fundamentally differs from systems of slavery, colonialism
or sexual enslavement physical force in particular having (theoretically) no part in it we might none
the less say that it (and democracy in general) constitutes a historically new and almost inverse situation:
while slavery, conquest and occupation begin with violent physical subjection, followed by ideological
subjugation, Western society today presents a situation where slavery, serfdom and colonialism are
theoretically abolished and direct physical violence is officially outlawed, yet where the ideological
subjugation of people, their inculcation with the values of dominance and mastery, seems wellnigh
complete. Individuals of equal rights encounter one another with interests and values corresponding to
those of slaveholders, conquistadores, colonialists and husbands, without even first needing to reorient
their potential victims to these values. The values of mastery and the interest in domination are not in
question, only who will manage to assert these more successfully or how they may be evenly shared. For
the culture that constitutes the ideological framework of our private interpersonal relationships is a
culture which celebrates mastery as democracy, and the individuals claims to power as universal
freedom and human rights. Accordingly, violence in the democratic relationship shifts to a power
struggle of perception: the struggle to assert ones own perception as the common perception, ones own
interests as the shared interests of the relationship. It begins with the mutual perception of each other as
exploitable and usable for ones own needs, that is, as candidate for a relationship: supplier of
satisfaction, minister of care, and generally as material for realizing my relationship and my interests.
There is violence in the intention to commit the other to a frame of guaranteed mutual trade and to design
interactions as debit and credit, considering neither ones own nor the others actions as actions, but as
sequences in a trade exchange. It is the violence of the arrogant perceiver not to see the other on principle
as independent and indifferent, but as interested in common trade and mutual exploitation, that is,
mutual prostitution.
 Environment
Liberal Democracy is structurally unable to confront ecological challenged
engendered by human society.
Shearman, David. The Climate Change Challenge And The Failure Of Democracy. Greenwood
Publishing Group. January 05, 2012. Web. December 07, 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?
id=divhhP_kmMUC&dq=The+Climate+Change+Chall
enge+and+the+Failure+of+Democracy&source=gbs_navlinks_s>.
An evolutionary and therefore genetic mechanism relevant to our analysis is the need and acceptance of
authoritarian social structures conferred upon us by our primate ancestors. These forces can even be seen
to operate within a liberal democracy in which leaders and democratic institutions themselves gradually
evolve to become more authoritarian. Freedom and individuality expressed through the market economy
result in elites widening the gap between rich and poor and enriching themselves by acquisitions in
developing countries under the guise of freedom and democracy. Maladaptations of society as defined by
Stephen Boyden26 become more common, for example the economic view that retail spending is good
for society or the accumulation of vast assets by the rich that they cannot possibly use or spend in their
lifetimes. The number of billionaires in the world is increasing rapidly and the majority are in the liberal
democracies. As we will see in the discussion to follow, many liberal democracies are moving visibly
toward authoritarianism. Governments see this as an option to protect their power, and many of their rich
supporters favor it to protect their assets. It will be argued in chapter 6 that liberal democracies are
inherently unstable and move slowly but surely to authoritarianism. Theorists who have seen liberal
democracy as representing humanity's final political system have adopted a too narrow historical
perspective, which can be corrected by adopting a biohistorical or sociobiological view of the human
species. We should not be blind to the possibility that an authoritarian meritocracy might have advantages
in world crisis management compared to the present democratic mediocracy. Our patient in the intensive
care unit could not be managed successfully under liberal democracy. Recognizing that totalitarian states
have caused as much, if not more, environmental damage as the liberal democracies, we will nevertheless
argue in chapter 4 that some historical totalitarian regimes have averted some catastrophic environmental
damage by dictate. We will document the personal and democratic failures that render the environmental
crisis difficult to address. An altruistic, able, authoritarian leader, versed in science and personal skills,
might be able to overcome them. But liberal democracy predisposes the election of the slick wielders of
the political knife and then encumbers them with the burdens of economic chains and powerful self-
interested corporates who cannot be denied. They fuel the growth economy that preserves their power and
that of government. It is instructive to ask our democratically elected leaders: What do you see as the
endpoint of this liberalized growth economy? Surely to maintain this growth to infinity is unsustainable?
Yet this growth is necessary for the present economic system to survive and satisfy the perceived material
needs of humanity. Our leaders cannot provide an answer to this question. To some it falls beyond their
elected period, and they do not have to address it. To others there is the hope that science and technology
will capture the carbon dioxide of climate change, create hydrogen fuel from water, and feed the millions
with genetically modified foods. But in general it is not an issue that democratic societies are addressing
in a way that will encourage solutions
 Causes War
Democracies start more wars. Statistical analysis proves.
Henderson, 02 (Errol Henderson, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Political Science at the University of
Florida, Democracy and War The End of an Illusion? p. 146 2002)
Are Democracies More Peaceful than Nondemocracies with Respect to Interstate Wars ? The results indicate that democracies are more
war-prone than non-democracies (whether democracy is coded dichotomously or continuously) and that democracies are
more likely to initiate interstate wars. The findings are obtained from analyses that control for a
host of political, economic, and cultural factors that have been implicated in the onset of interstate
war, and focus explicitly on state level factors instead of simply inferring state level processes from dyadic level observations as was done in
earlier studies (e.g., Oneal and Russett, 1997; Oneal and Ray, 1997). The results imply that democratic enlargement is more
likely to increase the probability of war for states since democracies are more likely to become involved inand to initiate
interstate wars.
 Doesnt Prevent War
Democracy doesnt prevent wars. Empirics prove. Their analysis is a causal fallacy.
Shaw, 2k (Martin, professor of international relations at University of Sussex, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/
Users/hafa3/democracy.htm 7/8/11)
In the global era, established liberal-democratic states do not fight each other. But once again, it obvious that this
is not simply because they are democracies, but because they are embedded in the raft of common Western
and global state institutions. Indeed it is not just liberal democracies which do not fight each other: the major non-
Western states (Russia, China, India, Brazil, etc.), whether democratic or not, are not likely to fight with the
dominant Western powers. Outside the Western core of global state power, however, national centres are more weakly integrated
with its institutional structures, and regional institutions which might inhibit local conflicts are much weaker than they are in the core. In the Cold
War era, interstate rivalries between major regional powers - such as between Russia and China, India and Pakistan and China, Indonesia and
Malaysia, Iran and Iraq, Israel and the Arab states - led to wars and border incidents. While the integrative tendencies in the emerging global
polity, including the democratization trends, may increasingly inhibit wars, it clearly remains possible that
such interstate rivalries
will generate new wars. It is clear that democratisation in itself is not a guarantee of
war-avoidance in such conflicts. Israel, the only internally democratic state in the Middle East, has also
been the most belligerent; Indian democracy has been quite compatible with bellicosity towards
Pakistan. Democratic as well as military governments may see war, so long as it can be kept limited and relatively cost-free, as a means of
boosting popularity. Thus Yeltsins Russia sought a military solution in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, despite the lessons of the late-Soviet
failure in Afghanistan. Only in defeat did Russias weak democracy penalize the regime for the new disaster, and then not decisively.
 False Sense Of Security Turn
Turn: their claims promote a dangerous false sense of security.
TE, 11 (The Economist, "Democracies and war," p. 17-18, 1995 http://faculty.washington.edu/
caporaso/courses/203/readings/economist_Democracies_and_war.pdf, 7/9/11)
The real danger, then, is that too great a confidence in a simple correlation between democracy and peace ,
based on outdated assumptions, may lull into a false sense of security those who proclaim it. This is not
to devalue democracy, nor to advocate a tolerance of dictatorship. Democracy carries overwhelming advantages, including a close correlation
with prosperity. The individual freedom it promotes is inherently good. The argument is rather that there is no easy route to
perpetual peace, whether through democracy or anything else. Human nature tends to get in the
way.
 Transition War Turn
Turn: transitions to democracy lead to war.
Mansfield and Snyder, 02 (Edward D. Mansfield, Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science and
Co-Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of
Pennsylvania, and Jack Snyder, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations at Columbia
University, published in International Organization Spring 2002)
In previous research, we reported that states undergoing democratic transitions were substantially more likely
to participate in external wars than were states whose regimes remained unchanged or changed in an
autocratic direction. 6 We argued that elites in newly democratizing states often use nationalist appeals to attract
mass support without submitting to full democratic accountability and that the institutional weakness of transitional states
creates the opportunity for such war-causing strategies to succeed. However, these earlier studies did not fully
address the circumstances under which transitions are most likely to precipitate war, and they did not take into account various important causes
of war. Equally, some critics worried that the time periods over which we measured the effects of democratization were sometimes so long that
events occurring at the beginning of a period would be unlikely to influence foreign policy at its end. 7 Employing a more refined
research design than in our prior work, we aim here to identify more precisely the conditions under which democratization
stimulates hostilities. We find that the heightened danger of war grows primarily out of the transition from
an autocratic regime to one that is partly democratic. The specter of war during this phase of democratization looms
especially large when governmental institutions, including those regulating political participation, are especially weak. Under these conditions,
elites commonly employ nationalist rhetoric to mobilize mass support but then become drawn into the
belligerent foreign policies unleashed by this process. We find, in contrast, that transitions that quickly culminate in a fully
coherent democracy are much less perilous. 8 Further, our results refute the view that transitional democracies are simply inviting targets of
attack because of their temporary weakness. In fact, they tend to be the initiators of war. We also refute the view that any regime change is likely
to precipitate the outbreak of war. We find that transitions toward democracy are significantly more likely to
generate hostilities than transitions toward autocracy.
 Diversionary War Turn
Turn: democracies start diversionary wars.
Daase, 06 (Christopher, Chair in International Organisation, University of Frankfurt, Democratic Wars,
pg. 77)
However, there is a contradictory effect as well. Democratic governments are tempted to use military violence
prior to elections if their public esteem is in decline and if they must fear not being re-elected (Ostrom and]ob, 1986; Russett, 1990; Mintz
and Russett, 1992; Mintz and Geza, 1993). In doing so, they count on the 'rally round the flag' effect , which is
usually of short duration but long enough to make the public forget economic misery or
governmental misbehaviour in order to influence tight elections results in favour of the incumbent.
This diversionary effect of warfare is especially attractive to democracies since they have no other
means at their disposal to diffuse discontent or suppress internal conflict. Therefore, the use of military
force for diversionary purposes is generally 'a pathology of democratic systems' (Gelpi, 1997, p.
Democracy Good
 Democratic Decision Making Good
Democratic decision making is the most reliable.
Christiano, 06 (Thomas, (University of Arizona). Democracy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Jul 27, 2006.http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/democracy/#NonInsVal)
Epistemologically, democracy is thought to be the best decision-making method on the grounds that it is
generally more reliable in helping participants discover the right decisions. Since democracy brings
a lot of people into the process of decision making, it can take advantage of many sources of
information and critical assessment of laws and policies. Democratic decision-making tends to be
more informed than other forms about the interests of citizens and the causal mechanisms necessary
to advance those interests. Furthermore, the broad based discussion typical of democracy enhances
the critical assessment of the different moral ideas that guide decision-makers.
 Environment
Democracy is consistently better for the environment than other forms of
government.
Li and Reuvene, 06 (Quan and Rafael, Associate Professor of Political Science at The Pennsylvania
State University and Associate Professor of International Political Economy and Sustainable
Development at Indiana University, International Studies Quarterly, December, Vol 50 No 4, Wiley
InterScience Online)
Our analysis contributes to the democracyenvironment literature by empirically testing the net
effect of democracy on environmental degradation. We use a wide array of empirical measures of environmental
degradation. We also use a continuous measure of the level of democracy/autocracy and two dichotomous measures of democracy and autocracy.
The empirical scope of our data analysis is generally wider than in previous studies. The empirical results
we report are consistent across the different types of environmental degradation. We
find that a higher level of democracy
leads to less CO2 emissions per capita, less NOx emissions per capita, less organic pollution in
water, lower deforestation rates, and less land degradation. But such an effect appears discontinuous along the
continuous scale of political regime types. We find that the difference between autocracy and nonautocracy significantly influences CO2
emissions, NOx emissions, and organic pollution in water, while the difference between democracy and nondemocracy significantly affects land
degradation. But the effect of democracy on the deforestation rate and the forested land area appears to be monotonic along the democracy scale.
In sum, democracy reduces the extent of human activities that directly degrade the environment, and
the nonmonotonic effects of democracy vary across the environmental indicators. We also find that
the effect of democracy on environmental degradation varies in size across degradation types. But
in all cases, a rise in democracy produces a noticeable effect on environmental degradation. This also
applies to CO2 and organic water pollution when we take into account the long-run effect of democracy via the lagged-dependent variable. The
sizes of effects are considerable for the rate of deforestation, the size of forested land, NOx emissions per capita, and land degradation. The
immediate (annual) effects of a rise in democracy on organic pollution in water and CO2 emissions per capita appear to be small, but the
cumulative effects of this rise in democracy over time are much larger. Yet, these two effects are still smaller than the effects of democracy on
NOx emissions, rate of deforestation, forested land, and land degradation. Hence, democracy reduces some types of environmental degradation
more than other types. Our results also suggest that democratization could indirectly promote environmental degradation through its effect on
national income. This effect is subtle and works through the environmental Kuznets curve. Across the five aspects of environmental degradation,
we find evidence supporting the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve for CO2 emissions per capita, NOx emissions per capita, the rate of
deforestation, and the level of land degradation. When income per capita is low, a rise in income per capita causes more degradation; once
passing a threshold, a rise in income per capita reduces degradation. Although existing evidence on the effect of democracy on economic growth
is inconclusive, to the extent that a rise in democracy promotes economic growth, the environmental Kuznets curves that we find suggest that
democracy could indirectly cause more environmental degradation for the above-mentioned indicators at the initial stage of development, and
only later help to reduce it.
 War
Democracy checks multiple scenarios for extinction.
Diamond, 95 (Larry Diamond , senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the
1990s, December 1995 http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through
increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The
very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these
new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or
absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern
themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their
neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their
own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against
one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another.
Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer
better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must
answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor
international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret.
Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are
the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity
can be built.
 War
Democracy solves war international democratization causes global peace.
Jones, 98 (Sean Lynn-Jones, at the International Security Program at the Kennedy School of
Government, Why the United States Should Spread Democracy, March,
http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/lys02/)
In addition to improving the lives of individual citizens in new democracies, the spread of democracy will benefit the
international system by reducing the likelihood of war. Democracies do not wage war on other
democracies. This absenceor near absence, depending on the definitions of "war" and "democracy" usedhas been called
"one of the strongest nontrivial and nontautological generalizations that can be made about international
relations." 51 One scholar argues that "the absence of war between democracies comes as close as anything
we have to an empirical law in international relations." 52 If the number of democracies in the
international system continues to grow, the number of potential conflicts that might escalate to war will
diminish. Although wars between democracies and nondemocracies would persist in the short run, in the long run an
international system composed of democracies would be a peaceful world . At the very least, adding to the
number of democracies would gradually enlarge the democratic "zone of peace."
 War
Democracy checks war. Popular accountability prevents conflict.
Sharansky, 04 (Nathan Sharansky, Israels Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs and former
Soviet dissident, 2004, The Case for Democracy, p. 78-80)
So if the majority of people in all societies are inherently peace-loving, then what is so unique about democracies that keeps them from waging
war with one another? The answer can be found in the political mechanics of every democratic society. Democratic leaders depend on
their people. There-fore they have an enormous incentive to satisfy the demands of their constituencies if they
want to stay in power. In democracies, the personal interests of the political leadership, even the most venal among them, is effectively tied to
improving the lives of those they govern. Those leaders who are perceived to be delivering peace and prosperity tend to
be reelected, while those who are not tend to be removed from office. As the United States learned during Vietnam,
and the government of Spain learned during the recent war in Iraq, no democratic government will be
able to fight a protracted war that the majority of its citizens does not support . This is especially true when
the costs of war are felt close to home. If democratic people believe there is an alternative to war whether that
alternative is real or imagined is immaterial they will demand that their government pursue it . And a democratic
government that does not heed the will of the people will sooner or later be replaced by one that does. Thus, the critical factor that prevents
democratic nations from fighting against each other is not values that are particular to democratic peoples but rather the fact that the power of a
democratic government is ultimately dependent on the popular will. When two democratic states are faced with an issue that can potentially lead
to conflict, their leaders, whose own power depends on citizens who see war as a last resort, will do everything possible to avoid war and reach a
compromise. For this reason, democratic leaders also have a propensity towards appeasement. Their first instinct is
to seek a peaceful solution first, and they are slow to relinquish this approach. War is almost always seen as an expensive, disruptive last resort,
and few democratic leaders embrace the prospect with anything other than extreme caution. Indeed, so strong is the popular antipathy to war that
democratic societies are at a disadvantage when confronting threats that require preemptive military action. In response to their voters, most
democratic leaders will be inhibited by a pacific reflex, be slow to act, and be overly cautious. This propensity for appeasement can be extremely
dangerous if potential threats that could have been nipped in the bud are instead allowed to grow more dangerous.
 War
Even if democracies go to war, they are still more likely to negotiate, and more likely
to fight short and small wars.
Tarzi, 07 (Shah, Professor of Economic Affairs @ Bradley, Democratic Peace, Illiberal Democracy and
Conflict Behavior, International Journal on World Peace, vol 24)
Bueno de Mequita, Morrow, Siverson, and Smith are among the few who have sought to overcome the conceptual dilemmas noted above.
Specifically they have provided insights on the link between institutions and foreign policy choices with reference to international disputes and
conflicts. They find that democratic leaders, when faced with a choice, are more likely to shift greater resources to war efforts than leaders of the
autocratic governments because political survival of the elected democratic regime demands successful policy performance, especially as the
winning coalition grows. Thus, democratic regimes tend to have a military edge over autocratic regimes in war because of the extra efforts
required. Also, "democratic leaders only choose to fight when they are confident of victory. Otherwise
they prefer to negotiate." (22) Bueno de Mequita and his colleagues conclude, Democrats make relatively
unattractive targets because domestic reselection pressures cause leaders to mobilize resources for
the war effort. This makes it harder for other states to target them for aggression. In addition to
trying harder than autocrats, democrats are more selective in their choice of targets. Defeat
typically leads to domestic replacement for democrats, so they only initiate war when they expect to
win. These two factors lead to the interaction between polities that is often termed the democratic peace. Autocrats need a slight
expected advantage over other autocratic adversaries in devoting additional resources to the war
effort. In order to initiate war, democrats need overwhelming odds of victory , but that does not mean they are
passive. Because democrats use their resources for the war effort rather than reserve them to reward backers, they are generally able, given their
selection criteria for fighting, to overwhelm autocracies, which results in short and relatively less costly wars. Yet, democracies find it
hard to overwhelm other democracies because they also try hard. In general, democracies [they
also] make unattractive targets, particularly for other democracies. Hence, democratic states rarely
attack one another. (23)
 Economies
Democracies is key to the economic growth and stability.
Halperin, 05
Morton Halperin et al, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the
Open Society Policy Center, 2005, The Democracy Advantage, p. 12
What explains the consistently superior development outcomes of democracies? We outline the conceptual underpinnings of democracys
superior developmental performance in Chapter 2. The reasons are many and varied, but boil down to three core characteristics of representative
government: shared power, openness, and adaptability. Although holding free elections is what commonly defines democracy, what makes it work
is the way it disperses power. Consequently, in contrast to most autocratic governments, a broader range of interests are considered on a more
regular basis. This increases the likelihood that the priorities of the general public will be weighed. Indeed, the argument that
authoritarian governments can ignore special interest groups and therefore make decisions that are
for the overall good of the society is based on a series of highly dubious assumptions. One is that the
unelected leaders in these systems actually have the interest of the public at heart. The behavior of Fidel Castro in
Cuba, Kim Jung-Il in North Korea, Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, and Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir in Sudan, to say nothing of former Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein, would strongly suggest otherwise. Another assumption is that authoritarian governments dont have to satisfy their
own special-interest constituencies. In fact, most authoritarian systems are built on the foundations of extensive
patronage networks upon which they rely to stay in power. Although typically shielded from public view, these
networks have enormous impacts on economic opportunity and development. The separation of
powers inherent in a democracy acts as a constant reminder to the public that the central governments powers are limited. Thus, it
encourages the expansionand the independenceof the private sector. This, in turn, fosters a
climate of innovation and entrepreneurship, the engines of economic growth. The multiplicity of
influences on the decision-making process in democracies also leads to more moderate and nuanced
policies. This moderating influence contributes to one of the most distinctive qualities of democratic developmentits
steadiness. The ups and downs of economic growth in low-income countries are smaller in democracies. Rather than experiencing
alternating bouts of boom and bust, economies in democracies are more likely to undergo a stable pattern of moderate
gains and small declines. For poor democracies, that quality of steadiness is exceedingly important, for it means that they are more able than
countries run by dictators to avoid economic and humanitarian catastrophes. For broad segments of their populations, this
is
the difference between life and death. Consider this remarkable statistic: 95 percent of the worst economic
performances over the past 40 years were overseen by nondemocratic governments . Similarly, virtually all
contemporary refugee crises have been wrought by autocratic governments. Although shared decision-making is frequently slower, this process is
more likely to weigh risks, thereby avoiding calamitous policies. When something is going wrong, leaders hear about it and are forced to take
action.
 Promotes General Interest
Democracy is the only form of government that serves the interests of people it
governs.
JM, 78 (James Mill, Essay on Government Utilitarian Logic and Politics, Ed. Jack Lively and John
Rees, 1978, pg 40)
How then was the interest of the community to be made for the actual end of government? The answer in Benthams words was through
Democratical ascendancy, or Ascendency of the people. This is a major them of Mills Essay too. If one or few men hold political
power, government will serve a sinister personal or group interests. Only if the whole community
can check government through a representative democracy will the general interest become the actual
end of government. Mill states this as a self-evident, but, given the meaning which Benthamites attached to the general interest, it is by
no means so. The conclusion might follow if the greatest happiness of the greatest number was identical to the greatest happiness of the
majority. For, if the majority are rational egoists and the majority decide on the composition and direction of government, the government will
attend to the interests of the majority.
Federalism Bad
Federalism Good
Feminism Bad
Feminism Good
Government Bad
 Dehumanizing
The modern states is dehumanizing due to bureaucracy and the ability to make war.
Stephens, 04 (Robert L. Stephens, software engineer, 6/2/04,
http://robertlstephens.com/essays/essay_frame.php?essayroot=stephens-robert-
l/&essayfile=002BadInfluence.html)
Dehumanization, of a sort, is yet one more inevitable consequence of the sheer size and structure of the
modern state. There is simply no way for the agents of an organization claiming to "serve" hundreds of
thousands (or hundreds of millions!) of people to know anything about the vast majority of those individuals
beyond some disembodied entries on a tax return, or an arbitrary accounting convenience like a Social
Security number. To borrow a phrase often used by critics of large private enterprises, the modern state is "beyond
human scale." Another, more insidious, form of dehumanization is inseparable from the political
process that is the very essence of the state . To see this, let's first consider the most extreme act of the state:
war. In order to break down people's natural resistance to the killing of other human beings, states have historically made
dehumanization of the enemy one of the major components of their war propaganda . With the
enemy reduced to less-than-human status, it's easier to justify the use of lethal force against him.
Government Good
Monarchy Bad
Monarchy Good
Realism False/Bad
Realism True/Good
 Explanation
Realism is a theory that explains international relations by recognizing that there is
international anarchy and that states are inherently self-interested. Thus, states
always seek to benefit themselves, and power politics shape relations.
 True And Inevitable
Realism is a valid theory of international politics, and its inevitable.
Mearsheimer, 01 (John J., Professor of Political Science @ the University of Chicago, The Tragedy
of Great Power Politics, Pg. 1-3)
The optimists claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong. In fact, all of the
major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power and are destined to compete for power among themselves for the
foreseeable future. Consequently, realism will offer the most powerful explanations of international politics over
the next century, and this
will be true even if the debates among academic and policy elites are dominated
by non-realist theories. In short, the real world remains a realist world. States still fear each other and
seek to gain power at each others expense, because international anarchy-the driving force behind
great-power behavior-did not change with the end of the Cold War, and there are few signs that such change is likely any time
soon. States remain the principal actors in world politics and there is still no night watchman standing above them. For sure, the collapse of the
Soviet Union caused a major shift in the global distribution of power. But it did not give rise to a change in the anarchic structure of the system,
and without that kind of profound change, there is no reason to expect the great powers to behave much differently in the new century than they
did in previous centuries. Indeed, considerable evidence from the 1990s indicates that power politics has not
disappeared from Europe and Northeast Asia, the regions in which there are two or more great powers, as well as possible great powers
such as Germany and Japan. There is no question, however, that the competition for power over the past decade has been low-key. Still, there is
potential for intense security competition among the great powers that might lead to a major war. Probably the best evidence of that possibility is
the fact that the United States maintains about one hundred thousand troops each in Europe and in Northeast Asia for the explicit purpose of
keeping the major states in each region at peace.
 Inevitable
Realism is inevitable.
Guzzini, 98 (Senior Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, 98 Associate
Professor of Political Science, International Relations, and European Studies at the Central European
University in Budapest, 1998 (Stefano, Realism in International Relations, p. 212))
Therefore, in a third step, this chapter also claims that it is impossible just to heap realism onto the dustbin of history
and start anew. This is a non-option. Although realism as a strictly causal theory has been a disappointment, various realist
assumptions are well alive in the minds of many practitioners and observers of international affairs. Although it does not
correspond to a theory which helps us to understand a real world with objective laws, it is a world-view which suggests thoughts about
it, and which permeates our daily language for making sense of it. Realism has been a rich, albeit very contestable, reservoir
of lessons of the past, of metaphors and historical analogies, which, in the hands of its most gifted representatives, have been proposed, at times
imposed, and reproduced as guides to a common understanding of international affairs. Realism is alive in the collective memory and self-
understanding of our (i.e. Western) foreign policy elite and public whether educated or not. Hence, we cannot but deal with it. For
this reason, forgetting realism is also questionable. Of course, academic observers should not bow to the whims of daily politics. But staying at
distance, or being critical, does not mean that they should lose the capacity to understand the languages of those who make significant decisions
not only in government, but also in firms, NGOs, and other institutions. To the contrary, this understanding, as increasingly varied as it
may be, is
a prerequisite for their very profession. More particularly, it is a prerequisite for opposing the more
irresponsible claims made in the name although not always necessarily in the spirit, of realism.
 True And Beneficial
Empirics prove that power politics shapes the world of international relations.
Viewing the world through realism is valid and beneficial.
Trachtenberg, 03 (Trachtenberg, Marc. The Question of Realism: An Historians View. Security
Studies. 26 Sept. 2003. Political Science Department at the University of California at Los Angeles.)
Different countries want different things; sometimes those desires conflict; how then do those conflicts get worked out? This is perhaps the most basic problem in the study of international
the way such conflicts run their course is heavily
politics, and the fundamental insight of the realist approach to international politics is that

conditioned by power realities. In a world where war cannot be ruled out if conflicts are not settled peacefully, rational states are bound to be concerned with the
structure of power in the sense not just of the distribution of military capabilities both actual and potential, but also of the whole web of relationships that would affect what would happen if war
the structure of power is of such fundamental
actually broke out. But rational states not only adjust their policies to such power realities. If

importance, it stands to reason that states might well try to alter it to their advantage. That striving for power political
advantage in turn might well come to dominate the system. The fact that states live in an anarchic systemthat is, a system not governed by supranational authority
can therefore have a profound impact on state behavior, and some of the most central problems of international relations theory thus have to do with the importance of such systemic or
structural effects in international political life. It is commonly assumed that this concern for power, and especially this striving for power political advantage, puts states at odds with each other
that the struggle for power is a major source of conflict in and of itself. Such arguments are quite familiar. Opponents of realism have always assumed that power politics leads to conflict.
Woodrow Wilsons whole approach to international politics was rooted in assumptions of that sort, and even today such attitudes are by no means dead. One leading contemporary theorist,
Alexander Wendt, thus takes it for granted that a world in which states behave in accordance with the dictates of Realpolitik is a violence-prone, kill-or-be-killed, Hobbesian world. It is perhaps
more surprising to find realists themselves arguing along these lines. The prevailing assumption among realists as a whole is that mutual fear drives the great powers apart, that international
anarchy fosters competition and conflict, and that the anarchic nature of international politics encourages cut-throat behavior among states. The argument is developed in its purest form by
offensive realists like John Mearsheimer. The structure of the international system, Mearsheimer writes, forces states which seek only to be secure nonetheless to act aggressively toward
each other. Great powers, he says, that have no reason to fight each otherthat are merely concerned with their own survivalnevertheless have little choice but to pursue power and to seek
to dominate the other states in the system. They have little choice because they fear other states and they know that they have to seek more power if they want to maximize their odds of
survival. But if states want to maximize relative power, Mearsheimer argues, they have to think offensively toward other states, even though their ultimate motive is simply to survive. The
basic argument, however, is by no means limited to people like Mearsheimer. Even the defensive realists, those scholars of a realist bent who take a relatively moderate position on this whole
set of issues, fundamentally agree that a dynamic of this sort plays a central role in international politics. To be sure, their analyses are more guarded, more hedged, more inclined to emphasize
the importance of second-order or unit-level considerationsthe offense/defense balance, most notablywhich in their view determine how strong in practice that dynamic is. And they
sometimes write in a way that suggests that security competition need not be a major source of international instabilitythat states will normally be satisfied with an appropriate amount of
security, and will show little interest in reaching for more. But the comparatively mild way in which they frame their arguments should not obscure the fact that, whatever qualifications they
make, even leading defensive realists believe that in an anarchic system the major powers are pushed into conflict with each otherthat anarchy is more than just a permissive cause of war.
Kenneth Waltz, for example, clearly believes that anarchy breeds conflict. Waltz, the most important theorist in the defensive realist camp, developed his argument most explicitly in an important
1988 article called The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory. Competition and conflict among states, Waltz wrote, stem directly from the twin facts of life under conditions of anarchy: States
in an anarchic order must provide for their own security, and threats or seeming threats to their security abound. Preoccupation with identifying dangers and counteracting them become a way of
life. The measures states take to deal with these problems and make themselves more secure necessarily threaten other powers, who react in kind. Some states, he says, may hunger for power
for powers sake. But neorealist theoryand that means Waltzs own theoryshows that it is not necessary to assume an innate lust for power in order to account for the sometimes fierce
competition that marks the international arena. In an anarchic domain, a state of war exists if all parties lust for power. But so too will a state of war exist if all states seek only to ensure their own
safety. This logic does not, of course, explain the origins of particular wars, but it does, he says, explain wars dismal recurrence through the millenia. The recurrence of war is to be
understood in structural terms: The origins of hot wars lie in cold wars, and the origins of cold wars are found in the anarchic ordering of the international arena. Other defensive realists share
that basic view. Indeed, as one leading scholar points out, in the international relations literature more generally nowadays, the anarchic structure of international politics is routinely cited as a
root cause of or explanation for the recurrence of war. Some traditional realists, howevernot every major writer, but people like George Kennan, for exampletook a very different view. They
stability depended on the ability of states to pursue a policy framed in realistic power
took it for granted that

political terms. Over and over again, they stressed the point that to ignore the importance of powerto allow emotion and
ideology and impractical idealism to dictate policywas to court disaster. Implicit in that whole line of argument was
the assumption that realist foreign policiesthat is, policies attuned to power realitieswere not the problem. But today most realists seem to assume that they are the problem, and that a
system of states acting rationally in power political termsa system of states pursuing realist policies, the sorts of policies the system tended to encourageis a violent, brutal, war-prone
power politics was not the problemthat
system. For me, this issue was particularly salient because, like those traditional realists, I had come to believe that

trouble developed only when states failed to act in a way that made sense in
is, I had come to believe that serious

power political terms. My basic thinking in this area had taken shape as a simple by-product of ordinary historical work; I had never tried to think these issues through on a
more theoretical level; and I was puzzled when it became clear to me that the prevailing view among realists today was rather different. The aim here is thus to bring an historians perspective to
bear on this basic problem. This does not mean that I am going to make the standard historians argument about how political scientists exaggerate the importance of the system and about
the system is enormously important
how the problem of war and peace needs to be studied at a much lower level of abstraction. I myself believe that

that a system based on power has a certain logic to it, and that to understand international politics,
one has to have some sense for what that logic is. But how exactly does such a system work? Is it really the case that structural imperatives push
states into conflict with each other? Or do things work in a very different way? My basic point in this article is that the argument about the systemic sources of conflict is far more problematic,
even in principle, than many people seem prepared to admit. But I want to take things a bit further than that. I want to argue that there are ways in which systemic forces can play a stabilizing
role. And it is that argument, I think, that gives the analysis here its distinct character. The claim that anarchy breeds conflict has of course been challenged before. Scholars have argued that for a
variety of reasons the effects of anarchy might be relatively mild. Some scholars have even argued that the system on balance plays a neutral rolethat sometimes states find it in their interest to
cooperate, and sometimes not. The argument here, however, is that systemic forces can actually play a positive roleand indeed that systemic pressures by and large have a stabilizing effect.
That view might sound somewhat unconventional today, but it is in fact rooted in ideas that have been part of the realist tradition for centuries. Why is it important to resurrect those notions, and
why more generally is the argument here worth making? I think there is a gap between the sorts of policies many realists supportmoderate, cautious, rooted in a concern with the stability of the
system as a wholeand certain important theoretical views those same people hold. On the one hand, you have a theory that suggests at its core that a system in which states act in accordance
with the dictates of Realpolitik is a violent, war-prone system. On the other hand, you have people who hold that view calling for realist policiesthat is, policies based on power and interest,
policies that are rational in terms of the imperatives of the system. It is as though you had a group of economists, firmly convinced that the free play of market forces would inevitably lead to
economic collapse, nonetheless calling on everyone to act in accordance with market forces. The two levels of argument are just not in harmony with each other. But if we can see why certain
If we can see how a
basic assumptions about how a power political system works are misleading, we might be able to put those policy arguments on a firmer basis.

system based on power has a certain stability, then we might be better able to see why policies that
are rational in power political terms might make for a more peaceful world. So let me begin in the next section by
outlining the kind of thinking that lies behind the view that a system based on power is not inherently unstableor really the basis for the view that realist policies, policies that make sense in
terms of the basic logic of the system, actually make for a relatively stable international order. In the following section, some key arguments on the other side, especially fundamental arguments
about the way an anarchic system is supposed to work, will be examined. In the final section, I want to look at policy arguments, and especially at what they can tell us about the fundamental
assumptions that lie at the heart of the realist understanding of international politics.
 True (Evolutionary Psychology)
Realism is legitimate. Evolution proves. Prefer my evidence. Its scientifically and
empirically grounded.
Thayer, 04 (Ph.D., a political scientist, is a tenured professor and Head of the Department of Political
Science at. Utah State University, 2004 (Bradley A., Darwin and International Relations: On the
Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict, pages 10-12)//CS)
Bringing Darwin into the study of international relations means examining its major questions and
issues through the lens of evolutionary biology Of course, scholars of international relations have imported ideas from other disciplines
before. They have used both psychological theories and formal modeling largely borrowed from economics to advance our understanding of important issues in the
discipline. The application of evolutionary biology may generate equally important insights." The central question of this book is to show how evolutionary biology
and, particularly evolutionary theory can contribute to some of the major theories and issues of international relations. While the discipline of international relations
has existed for many years without evolutionary biology, the latter should be incorporated into the discipline because it improves the understanding of warfare, ethnic
conflict, decision making, and other issues. Evolution
explains how humans evolved during the late-Pliocene, Pleistocene, and Holocene epochs, and
how human evolution affects human behavior today All students of human behavior must accept knowledge
that our species has spent over 99 percent of its evolutionary history largely as hunter-gatherers in those epochs.
Darwin's natural selection argument (and its modifications) coupled with those conditions means that
humans evolved behaviors well adapted to radically different evolutionary conditions than many
humans for example, those living in industrial democracies face today. We must keep in mind that the period most
social scientists think of as human history or civilization, perhaps the last three thousand years, represents only the blink of an eye in human evolution. As
evolutionary biologist Paul Ehrlich argues, evolution should be measured in terms of "generation time," rather than "clock time."" Looking at human history in this
way hunting and gathering was the basic hominid way of life for about 250,000 generations, agriculture has been in practice for about 400 generations, and modern
industrial societies have only existed for about 8 generations. Thus Ehrlich Ends it reasonable to assume "that to whatever degree humanity has been shaped by
genetic evolution, it has largely been to adapt to hunting and gathering-to the lifestyles of our pre-agricultural ancestors. Thus, to understand completely much of
human behavior we must first comprehend how evolution affected humans in the past and continues to affect them in the present. The conditions of 250,000
generations do have an impact on the last. Unfortunately; social scientists, rarely recognizing this relationship, have explained human behavior with a limited
repertoire of arguments. ln this book I seek to expand the repertoire. My central argument is that evolutionary biology contributes significantly to theories used in
international relations and to the causes of war and ethnic conflict."The benefits of such interdisciplinary scholarship are great, but to gain them requires a precise
and ordered discussion of evolutionary theory an explanation of when it is appropriate to apply evolutionary theory to issues and events studied by social scientists, as
well as an analysis of the major-and misplaced-critiques of evolutionary theory I discuss these issues in chapter. In chapter 2,1 explain how evolutionary
theory contributes to the realist theory of international relations and to rational choice analysis. First,
realism, like the Darwinian view of the natural world, submits that international relations is a competitive
and dangerous realm, where statesmen must strive to protect the interests of their state through an almost
constant appraisal of their state's power relative to others. In sum, they must behave egoistically,
putting the interests of their state before the interests of others or international society . Traditional realist
arguments rest principally on one of two discrete ultimate causes, or intellectual foundations of the theory." The first is Reinhold Niebuhr's argument that humans are
evil. The second, anchored in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and Hans Morgenthau, is that humans possess an innate animus dominant-a drive to dominate. From
these foundations, Niebuhr and Morgenthau argue that what is true for the individual is also true of the state: because individuals are evil or possess a drive to
dominate, so too do states because their leaders are individuals who have these motivations. I argue that realists have a much stronger foundation for the realist
argument than that used by either Morgenthau or Niebuhr. My intent is to present an alternative ultimate cause of classical realism: evolutionary theory The
use
of evolutionary theory allows realism to be scientifically grounded for the first time, because evolution explains egoism.
Thus a scientific explanation provides a better foundation for their arguments than either theology or meta-physics. Moreover, evolutionary theory can anchor the
branch of realism termed offensive realism and advanced most forcefully by John Mearshcimer. He argues that the anarchy of the international system, the fact that
there is no world government, forces leaders of states to strive to maximize their relative power in order to be secure." I argue that theorists of international relations
must recognize that human evolution occurred in an anarchic environment and that this explains why leaders act as offensive realism predicts. Humans evolved in
anarchic conditions, and the implications of this are profound for theories of human behavior. It is also important to note at this point that my argument does not
When human
depend upon "anarchy" as it is traditionally used in the discipline-as the ordering principle of the post-1648 Westphalian state system.
evolution is used to ground offensive realism, it immediately becomes a more powerful theory than
is currently recognized. lt explains more than just state behavior; it begins to explain human
behavior. lt applies equally to non-state actors, be they individuals, tribes, or organizations. Moreover, it explains this behavior before the
creation of the modern state system. Offensive realists do not need an anarchic state system to advance their argument. They only need
humans. Thus, their argument applies equally well before or after 1648, whenever humans form groups, be they tribes in Papua New Guinea, conflicting city-states in
ancient Greece, organizations like the Catholic Church, or contemporary states in international relations.
 AT Realism Bad (True And Inevitable)
Realism is a valid theory of international politics, and its inevitable. Their rejection
of realism is not objective.
Mearsheimer, 2k (Mearsheimer, John J. Realism, the Real World, and the Academy. 2000.
<http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0029.pdf>. American professor of Political Science at the
University of Chicago, international relations theorist.)
The claim that realism has bitten the dust is wrong. In fact, realist theories are likely to dominate academic debates about
international politics for the next century, much the way they have since at least the early days of the cold war.4 What the future has in
store for realism will be largely a function of two considerations. First, what will it tell us about events in the real world? Because the study of
international politics is an empirical science, the most important criterion for assessing the worth of any theory is how well it explains state
behavior. Realism has long been recognized as the dominant paradigm in international relations
even by scholars who dislike itbecause it does a better job of explaining politics among states than
any other body of theories. Second, what kind of respect will academiaone of the key institutions in any society for fostering
thinking about world politicsaccord realism? The potential problem for realism is that academics sometimes
attempt to denigrate and silence ideas they dislike, even when those ideas shed light on important
subjects. Realism appears to have a bright future in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, we still live in a nasty and brutish world where
the great powers compete with each other for power. The only possible threat to realism is likely to come from inside academia, where it is
frequently reviled. But any attempt to silence realism within the academy is likely to fail, simply because it is so difficult to repress or exclude
compelling arguments, especially in the United States.
 AT Realism Bad (Neorealism)
They attack structural realism which is flawed. Neorealism however explains the
world accurately.
Hanami, 03 (Andrew K., Associate Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State
University Introduction Perspectives on Structural Realism pg. 5)
Using a quantitative approach, Professor Robert Powell takes the predictive utility of structural realism and puts it to a rigorous test. In applying
game theory to predictions or explanatory correctness of structural realism, he finds that structural realism fails to explain why
states bandwagon a majority of times, especially when the use of force prevails. Structural realist theory predicts, as he
points out, that states will tend to balance the behavior of other states, but in fact his findings show that
generally states have chosen to bandwagon or ally with another in order to preserve their security.
Under game theory conditions, states in fact balanced only in a very narrow range of circumstances. Professor Powell also finds that in contrast
to structural realist theory, bipolar states are not a more stable system, in part, because the peaceful desires of states often result in conflict. But
he concludes that neorealist theory, led by Waltz, has provided a significant, disciplining advance in the field
of international politics by introducing the concept of structure and the expected behavior of states
that see it. But he adds that ordinary language arguments ultimately fail to define structure and
interaction, and that game theory represents the next step in advancement of theory because of its formal precision in identifying or
distinguishing political structures.
Role Of Government
 Same As Any Moral Agent
The role of a government is the same as any other moral agent
Rule Of Law Bad
Rule Of Law Good
 Objectivity/Societal Benefit
Rule of Law essential to promote the legitimacy of laws that benefit society while
preventing arbitrary and illegitimate exercise of power.
Sellers, 15 (Mortimer N.S. Sellers, University of Baltimore Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-15
What is the Rule of Law and Why is It so Important? http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=1790070820000761160661200851020000110080350010290520270180240281260061190980661100
7003111911505505101610508511812610312709106404403609104004110306401411311200107108700
5030124125095003068074017006069081118081107015083006065074081001097027121031030&EXT
=pdf)
The rule of law signifies "the empire of laws and not of men": the subordination of arbitrary power
and the will of public officials as much as possible to the guidance of laws made and enforced to serve
their proper purpose, which is the public good ("res publica") of the community as a whole. When positive laws or
their interpretation or enforcement serve other purposes, there is no rule of law, in its fullest sense,
but rather "rule by law" -- mere legalism -- in service of arbitrary power. The vocabulary here is important,
because the concept of the rule of law enjoyed its fullest elaboration in tandem with related struggles for "liberty" and "republican government"
against tyranny and oppression. The liberty ("libertas") of the ancients, the Enlightenment, and the republican revolutions of emergent modernity,
signified protection by the law and government of all members of society against domination by other persons, or by 4 states, or by the
governments of states (where "domination" consists in the arbitrary control by one person or faction of another, without reference to the common
good). The key here is the purposes for which positive laws and state action are created, interpreted, or enforced. The law may legitimately
control us, but public officials must respect laws proper purpose, which is the common good of society as a whole, and not their own private
interests. When we have and maintain a legal system that serves the common good of society as a
whole, then we have the rule of law (because the laws rule and not men), we have liberty (because
the law prevents oppression), and we live in a republic (because government advances the "res publica"
or " common good of its subjects"). The rule of law, liberty, and republican government are three facets of the same substantive good,
secured only where the laws rule and protect us from tyranny and oppression. When positive laws and their interpretation
and enforcement serve the public good, and prevent domination by any person or group of persons,
then we have the "imperium legum", the rule of law in its fullest and best sense: "the empire of
laws and not of men".
 Democratic, Legal, and Governmental Legitimacy
The rule of law is vital to democratic, legal, and governmental legitimacy.
ODonnell, 04 (O'Donnell, Guillermo A. "Why the rule of law matters." Journal of Democracy15.4
(2004): 32-46. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jod/summary/v015/15.4odonnell.html)
The rule of law is among the essential pillars upon which any high-quality democracy rests. But this
kind of democracy requires not simply a rule of law in the minimal, historical sense that I will
shortly explain. What is needed, rather, is a truly democratic rule of law that ensures political rights, civil liberties, and mechanisms of accountability which
in turn affirm the political equality of all citizens and constrain potential abuses of state power. Seen thus, the rule of law works intimately
with other dimensions of the quality of democracy. Without a vigorous rule of law, defended by an
independent judiciary, rights are not safe and the equality and dignity of all citizens are at risk.
Only under a democratic rule of law will the various agencies of electoral, societal, and horizontal
accountability function effectively, without obstruction and intimidation from powerful state actors.
And only when the rule of law bolsters these democratic dimensions of rights, equality, and
accountability will the responsiveness of government to the interests and needs of the greatest
number of citizens be achieved. Although in some of my previous writings readers may find partial attempts at the theoretical and normative
justification of a democraticrule of law, here I make only passing reference to these matters. My intention is to contribute to a discussion concerning if and how
something called the rule of law, or the democratic rule of law, may be conceptualized and, insofar as possible, empirically gauged. To this end, the concluding section
of this essay proposes a set of variables for the exploration of this dimension. Please note that what follows has been formulated with contemporary Latin America
centrally in mind; it is of course an open question how well it might apply outside this region. The
"rule of law" (like partially concurrent expressions such
meaning is
as Rechsstaat, tat de droit, or estado de derecho) isa disputed term. For the time being, let me assert that its minimal (and historically original)
that whatever law exists is written down and publicly promulgated by an appropriate authority
before the events meant to be regulated by it, and is fairly applied by relevant state institutions
including the judiciary (though other state institutions can be involved as well). By "fairly applied" I mean that the administrative application or
judicial adjudication of legal rules is consistent across equivalent cases; is made without taking into consideration the class, status, or relative amounts of power held
by the parties in such cases; and applies procedures that are preestablished, knowable, and allow a fair chance for the views and interests at stake in each case to be
properly voiced. The following is a minimal but significant criterion: If A is attributed the same generic rights (and, at least implicitly, the same legal personhood and
agency) as the more powerful Bwith whom A enters into a crop-sharing arrangement, employment contract, or marriage, then it stands to reason that A has the right to
expect equal treatment from the state institutions that have, or may acquire, jurisdiction over such acts. This
implies formal equality, in two
senses. First, it is established in and by legal rules that are valid (at least ) in that they have been sanctioned following
previously and carefully dictated procedures, often ultimately regulated by constitutional rules.
Second, the rights and obligations specified are universal, in that they attach to each individual
considered as a legal person, irrespective of social position, with the sole requirement that the
individual in question has reached competent legal adulthood and has not been proven to suffer
from some (narrowly defined and legally prescribed) disqualification. These rights support the claim of equal treatment
in the legally defined situations that underlie and may ensue from the kind of acts above exemplified. "Equality [of all] before the law" is the expectation tendentially
inscribed in this kind of equality.
 Governmental Legitimacy
Respecting the rule of law is essential to maintaining legitimate government.
Louw, 13 (Leon Louw, Leon is executive director and co-founder of the Free Market Foundation. He
writes a weekly column for Business Day newspaper and BDliv, Why the rule of law is of the utmost
importance, 26 JUNE 2013, http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/06/26/why-the-rule-of-
law-is-of-the-utmost-importance)
MOST people say they believe in the rule of law, yet few can define it coherently. High rule-of-law scores are the single
biggest contributor to national prosperity, peace, liberty and freedom from corruption. Virtually
nothing is more important for us to understand and uphold than the rule of law. Most references and
definitions are so vague that people can be forgiven for regarding the rule of law as little more than a cliche. Few, if any, think it a practical aspect
of daily life; a way of knowing, for instance, whether roadblocks, taxi regulations, labour laws and exchange controls are lawful. How many
people can recognise rule-of-law violations by tax collectors, building inspectors, employers, shops, courts or civilians? How many vote for
parties that promise to uphold the rule of law but dont do so? Niall Ferguson, rated by Time magazine as one of the worlds 100 most influential
people, believes western democracies will collapse if erosion of the rule of law is not reversed. While the rule-of-law score is rising in most
countries, it is falling in South Africa. The rule of law should be a living reality properly understood by ordinary people. It is constitutionally
more important than is generally realised. It is not just in our Bill of Rights, it is above it. It is a binding and
"justiciable" foundational
provision of section one of the constitution, which says that the country is founded
on the "supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law". In other words, the rule of law is as supreme as
the constitution itself. They are equals. Why is something so pivotal so little understood? The rule of law is as jurisprudentially
complex as it is conceptually simple, at least in its traditional form. The "modern" tendency, mistakenly and dangerously according to Ferguson,
is to erode the rule of law to the point where it virtually vanishes, which has happened to the separation of powers in South Africa. Legislative
and judicial functions of the government are being transferred to the executive to the extent that the former two are becoming redundant.
Dictatorships are characterised by the conflation of power in the executive. The rule-of-law idea is that free people are ruled by law, not man.
When unsure of your rights and duties, always question whether they are determined by man or law ("man" in the original neutral gender-
insensitive sense). One of countless examples of man replacing law was reported in the weekend press. The Financial Services
Board ombudsman rejected law and ruled against Old Mutual insurance company on the basis of
"fairness". Such discretionary power at the expense of objective law plunges society into a casino-
like morass in which outcomes are decided by a roll of dice instead of the rule of law.
 Avoids Oppression
Respecting the rule of law is essential for any society to avoid oppression and
preserve freedom and governmental legitimacy.
Sellers, 15 (Mortimer N.S. Sellers, University of Baltimore Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2015-15
What is the Rule of Law and Why is It so Important? http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?
ID=1790070820000761160661200851020000110080350010290520270180240281260061190980661100
7003111911505505101610508511812610312709106404403609104004110306401411311200107108700
5030124125095003068074017006069081118081107015083006065074081001097027121031030&EXT
=pdf)
The rule of law is of vast and permanent value to any society, because only the rule of law can
secure justice, by preventing tyranny and oppression. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the
General Assembly of the United Nations without dissent, recognized that it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last
resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the Rule of Law.9 More recently, the General
Assembly identified human rights, the rule of law and democracy as universal and indivisible core principles of the United Nations.10 These
ringing assertions, repeated or paraphrased by the European Convention on Human Rights,11 the American Convention on Human Rights,12 the
African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights,13 and numerous other regional agreements and national constitutions14 illustrate the substantive
moral component always present in appeals to the rule of law. The rule of law in its best and usual sense implies the
fulfillment of justice through law and the negation of arbitrary government. The battle of the rule
of law against arbitrary government takes place in every human society when those with power
seek to expand their discretion, and their subjects resist. Nor are the advocates of unfettered power without arguments
in their favor. The most learned apostle of despotism, Thomas Hobbes, denied any distinction between right and wrong, good and evil,
justice and injustice, beyond our separate and conflicting desires.15 Hobbes had seen in the horrors of Englands Civil War the indiscriminate
misery of anarchy, which is the greatest evil that can happen in this life.16 From this it follows (he suggested) that we need an absolute and
uncontested sovereign power to rule us and keep us safe.17 The fear of anarchy is a powerful and compelling argument for despotism, and as a
result the struggle for freedom usually begins with small and incremental advances, beginning with the simple call for written laws, to contain the
discretion of those in authority, and only later even attempting to secure just and impartial laws, a much more difficult undertaking.18 The
rule of law is so valuable precisely because it limits the arbitrary power of those in authority. Public
authority is necessary, as Thomas Hobbes rightly observed, to protect against private power, but the rule of law keeps public authorities honest.
The rule of law implies constitutionalism, and all states or societies that struggle toward the rule of law are also working toward constitutional
government, to control power with reason, or (more prosaically) make ambition counteract ambition,19 with the constant aim to divide and
arrange the offices in such a manner as that each may be a check upon the other that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel
over the public rights.20 The rule of law is valuable, because only the rule of law compels the formation of good and
equal laws, an impartial execution, and faithful interpretation of them, so that citizens may
constantly enjoy the benefits of them, and be sure of their continuance. 21
Small Government Bad
Small Government Good
Economics
Capitalism Bad
 Extinction
Capitalism prioritizes short term profit over the well-being of society and the
environment making extinction inevitable.
Nhanenge, 07 (South Africa development studies masters (Jytte, Ecofeminsm: Towards Integrating
The Concerns Of Women, Poor People And Nature Into Development, February,
http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/570/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1, DOA: 7-4-12))
Generation of wealth was an important part of the Scientific Revolution and its modern society. The scientific discipline of economics therefore
became a significant means for wealth creation. However, since it is founded on similar dualised premises as science, also economics
became a system of domination and exploitation of women, Others and nature. The following discussion is
intended to show that. The way in which economics, with its priority on masculine forces, becomes dominant relates to web-like, inter-connected
and complex processes, which are not always clearly perceived. The below discussions try to show how the dualised
priority of the individual over society, reason over emotion, self-interest over community-interest,
competition over cooperation, and more pairs, generate domination that leads to the four crises of
violence and war, poverty, human oppression and environmental degradation. The aim in sum is to show how
the current perspective of economics is destroying society (women and Others) and nature. The following discussion is consequently a
critique of economics. It is meant to highlight some elements that make economics a dominant ideology,
rather than a system of knowledge. It adopts a feministic view and it is therefore seen from the side of women, poor people and
nature. The critique is extensive, but not exhaustive. It is extensive because economics is the single most important tool used by mainstream
institutions for development in the South. Thus if we want to understand why development does not alleviate poverty, then we first need to
comprehend why its main instrument, economics, cannot alleviate poverty. A critical analysis of economics and its influence in development is
therefore important as an introduction to next chapter, which discusses ecofeminism and development. However, the critique is not exhaustive
because it focuses only on the dualised elements in economics. It is highly likely that there are many more critical issues in economics, which
should be analyzed in addition to the below mentioned. However, it would exceed this scope. Each of the following 10 sections discusses a
specific issue in economics that relates to its dualised nature. Thus, each can as such be read on its own. However, all sections are systemically
interconnected. Therefore each re-enforces the others and integrated, they are meant to show the web of masculine forces that make economics
dominant towards women, Others and nature. The first three sections intend to show that economics sees itself as a
neutral, objective, quantitative and universal science, which does not need to be integrated in social and natural reality.
The outcome of this is, however, that economics cannot value social and environmental needs.
Hence, a few individuals become very rich from capitalising on free social and natural resources, while the health of
the public and the environment is degraded. It also is shown that the exaggerated focus on
monetary wealth does not increase human happiness. It rather leads to a deteriorating quality of
life. Thus, the false belief in eternal economic growth may eventually destroy life on planet Earth.
The next section shows that economics is based on dualism, with a focus solely on yang forces. This has serious consequences for all yin issues:
For example, the priority on individualism over community may in its extreme form lead to self-
destruction. Similarly, the priority on rationality while excluding human emotions may end in
greed, domination, poverty, violence and war. The next section is important as a means to understanding "rational"
economics. Its aim is to clarify the psychological meaning of money. In reality, reason and emotion are interrelated parts of the human mind; they
cannot be separated. Thus, economic "rationality" and its focus on eternal wealth generation are based on
personal emotions like fears and inadequacies, rather than reason. The false belief in dualism means that human
beings are lying to themselves, which results in disturbed minds, stupid actions with disastrous consequences . The focus on masculine
forces is consequently psychologically unhealthy; it leads to domination of society and nature, and
will eventually destroy the world. The following three sections are intending to show that the new global capitalism is doing just
that. First, the neo-liberal economical scheme is presented. Secondly, its application in the Third World as Structural Adjustment Programmes and
as the New Economic Partnership for African Development is critiqued. Thirdly, the extreme application of the disturbed "rational" human mind,
manifested in the form of an institutional psychopath "the corporation", is discussed. After concluding that economics is a patriarchal system of
domination, alternative economic models, which can support women, Others and nature, are presented.
 Structural Violence
Millions of people are dying every year as a direct result of structural violence
caused by Capitalism.
Fischer and Brauer, 02 (Dietrich Fischer, Pace University, and Jurgen Brauer, Augusta State
University, Georgia, Twenty Questions for Peace Economics: A Research Agenda, Defence and Peace
Economics, April 2002, http://www.aug.edu/~sbajmb/paper-DPE.PDF), KB
Poverty and high unemployment, especially in the presence of conspicuous wealth, contribute to
frustration, social unrest, and sometimes civil war. It is easy to design [because of] an economy that
produces luxuries for a few. Far more challenging is to design an economic system that satisfies the human needs for food, clothing,
homes, education, and medical care of all. What are the characteristics of such an economy? What obstacles prevent it from emerging, and how
can they be overcome? Galtung coined the notion of structural violence (as opposed to direct violence) for social conditions that
cause avoidable human suffering and death, even if there is no specific actor committing the
violence. Khler and Alcock (1976) have estimated that structural violence causes about one hundred times as
many deaths each year as all international and civil wars combined. It is as if over 200 Hiroshima
bombs were dropped each year on the children of the world, but the media fail to report it because
it is less dramatic than a bomb explosion. How can we estimate the loss of life resulting from poverty and unequal income
distribution? How can we reduce it?
 War
This capitalist relationship to the world is the largest cause of war
Goldstein, 08 (Fred Goldstein is a leader of an American Workers World Party. He is a member of the
Secretariat, a six member leading body of Workers World Party. He is a contributing editor of Workers
World, and frequently writes economic analysis for the paper. Goldstein is the author of the book Low
Wage Capitalism, Oct 9, 2008, "Capitalism breeds war, depression",
http://www.workers.org/2008/us/capitalism_1016/)
During the Reagan administration, a severe recession in 1982 and 1983 sent unemployment above 11 percent. The capitalist class used
the opportunity to begin the technological restructuring of industry, leading to millions of workers
losing high-paying jobs. Reagan then stimulated the economy with $2 trillion in military spending,
using Cold War propaganda to justify this huge handout to the military-industrial complex. The
economy expanded and the stock market boomed againuntil it collapsed in October 1987 with record losses. Several trillion dollars of paper
wealth were wiped out. An economic collapse was prevented only when Alan Greenspan, who was appointed head of the Federal Reserve in
August 1987, poured tens of billions of dollars into the financial system to support the banks and the stock market on an emergency basis. This
emergency rescue of the economy lasted only until 1991, when there was another recession. However, the collapse of the USSR, also in 1991,
stimulated a decade of capitalist expansion. Capital flooded into the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, India and other places. The upturn in
economic output accelerated in the mid-1990s with the development of the Internet and related technologies. From 1995 to 2000, venture
capitalists, who are really fronts for the big banks, poured billions of dollars in speculative capital into technology companies. New companies
were being created on a daily basis. The stock market boomed, creating the so-called dot-com bubbleuntil the overproduction of technology
led to another collapse, beginning in March 2000. From that time until October 2002, $5 trillion in paper wealth was wiped out and an economic
downturn developed simultaneously. In the 110 years since the Spanish-American war of conquest, imperialist capitalism has brought
an endless cycle of wars, recessions, depressions and more wars. After each economic downturn, the
system has had to resort to military expansion and financial manipulation to revive itself. During the
depression of the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to get the economy going with the Works Project Administration and by allowing workers
wages to rise. But by 1937-1938, after a brief uptick, there was a second depression. Only preparations for World War II and conquest in the
Pacific and Europe revived the U.S. economy. Throughout the entire Cold War period, U.S. capitalism was dependent on military spending to
keep its economy going. The growth of the military-industrial complex , with its web of prime contractors
and tens of thousands of subcontractors thriving on Pentagon appropriations for war and for arms
exports, was the principal means of keeping the capitalist economy from sinking into stagnation
and depression. This history illustrates that since the turn of the twentieth century, capitalism, in order to sustain itself, has had to resort to
artificial measures that bring disaster in their wake, in the form of war, depression or both.
 Dehumanization
Capitalism inevitably leads to dehumanization.
Willis, ND (Susan Willis, online, mesastate.edu/~blaga/marxism/capitalismx.html.)
Marx demonstrated that in selling labor power, the worker was separated both from control over
production and from the fruits of labor, the commodities and the profits from the sale. This separation is called alienation, for
the worker is no longer associated with the product or the profit. In fact, by selling one's labor, the laborer becomes a commodity
[themself] herself, a kind of product that is owned and consumed by the owner. People are no longer
valued as humans but as things, objects, or human resources; humans are, in effect, commodified Anything-friendship,
knowledge, people, actions, values, nature-can be commodified once they are understood in terms of their market
value. They have no intrinsic worth, for worth is determined by the market (just as structuralism notes that
nothing has value outside a system). The entire process dehumanizes humans in the same way slavery
dehumanized slaves (and Thomas Jefferson, problematic and contradictory man that he was, even noted that slavery made slaver-holders
lose their humanity as well).
 Privatization Inefficient And Ineffective
Privatization is inefficient and ineffective.
Vestal, 06 (Christine Vestal, Staff Writer of Stateline.org, 8/4/06, States Stumble Privatising Social
Services, http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=131960)
Advocates for the poor worry that putting too much responsibility in the hands of profit-motivated companies
could endanger the vulnerable people the programs are intended to help. Federal rules require state employees to
make final decisions for some entitlement programs, but letting a private contractor make the initial eligibility cut could have a profound effect on
welfare outcomes, they say. Supporters of privatization argue that antiquated state eligibility systems no longer are cost-effective, and say
improvements best can be accomplished by a high-tech, profit-motivated contractor with incentives to operate efficiently. Texas policy-makers
say their plan not only will save taxpayer dollars but modernize the social services eligibility process, allowing people to apply for support over
the Internet, by fax, through call centers and at self-serve kiosks. Currently social services applicants must travel to their local social service
offices during business hours and wait in line to talk to a caseworker. Daniels, who left his post as Bushs top budget advisor to run for governor
in 2003, grabbed headlines this year when he privatized an Indiana toll road, granting a 75-year lease to a foreign consortium for $3.8 billion.
Most agree that the state welfare eligibility process with long lines, limited office hours and error rates in the 25 percent rage -- needs
improvement. But advocates for the poor argue that the problems result from underfunding and understaffing, not lack of expertise. The only
people with experience in the complex and sensitive work of determining welfare eligibility are state
workers. Why would you hire a high-tech company to do that? asks Stacey Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an advocacy
group for the poor. Other privatization critics argue that transferring public services to private companies has been
plagued by quality-of-service problems for the last two decades. The concept makes sense and state
policy-makers always are eager to save money, but in practice, privatization has failed more than it
has succeeded, says Mildred Warner, a privatization expert at Cornell University. In an analysis of privatization of state and local services
over the last 20 years, Warner concluded that the majority of projects failed because of deteriorating quality of
service. And in more than half the cases, the projects did not save taxpayer dollars, she said.
 Privatization Causes Corruption
Privatization leads to corruption within companies and politics.
Bjorvath and Sreide, 05 (Kjetil Bjorvath Bachelors in Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, MA
Industrial economics and competition policy, Development economics, PhD International economics,
Economic geography, Research: Economic geography, Economic development, Fiscal federalism, Tina
Sreide research focuses on incentive-structures in governance institutions. She holds a PhD in
economics from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH) and a Master
degree in economics from the University of Bergen. Her PhD project offered an extensive analysis of the
causes and consequences of corruption. From 2008 to 2010, she was on leave from CMI to work on the
Governance and Anti- Corruption (GAC) agenda at the World Bank, Washington, DC. Sreide teaches a
course in political economy at the University of Bergen, Department of Economics, where incentive
structures in governance is the cross-cutting theme., European Journal of Political Economy, Science
Direct, 12/04/2005, Pages 903-914,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268005000133)
In many cases, and in particular in developing and transition economies, concerns have been raised about the privatization
process, both in terms of the price paid for the assets and the resulting effect on the local economy. Stories about corruption abound. In the
words of Joseph Stiglitz (2002: 58): Perhaps the most serious concern with privatization , as it has so often been
practiced, is corruption. (...) Not surprisingly the rigged privatization process was designed to maximize the amount government ministers
could appropriate for themselves not the amount that would accrue to the government's treasury let alone the overall efficiency of the economy.
One way for corrupt officials to rig the privatization process is to offer the acquiring firm a
monopoly position in the post-privatized market. This increases the acquiring firm's willingness to pay for the state assets,
and hence increases the amount that the government ministers are able to appropriate for themselves. Indeed, there are clear signs that corruption
and market concentration go hand in hand. In an empirical study Ades and Di Tella (1999) report that: ...corruption is higher in countries where
domestic firms are sheltered from foreign competition by natural or policy induced barriers to trade, with economies dominated by a few number
of firms, or where antitrust regulation is not effective in preventing anti-competitive practices. The size of the effect is rather large... This
conclusion is consistent with Djankov et al. (2002) who argue that countries with greater regulation of entry have higher
corruption and larger unofficial economies. A number of studies show that privatization does not necessarily lead to increased
competition and efficiency. Manzetti (1999: 328) argues that many cases of privatization in South America have resulted in more market
concentration, not less. Puntillo (1996) and Black et al. (2000) report that the hasty process of privatization in Russia in the 1990s often resulted
in very limited improvements in productivity and negligible state revenues. Turnovec (1999) demonstrates that privatization in the Czech
Republic was less successful than official statistics indicate in transferring state assets to the private sector, partly as a result of corrupt
transactions. One reason why corruption may be a particularly severe problem in the sale of public assets is that it is typically very difficult to
place a value on these assets. Hence, it is not easy for a third party to judge whether or not the price announced after the sale of the asset is
reasonable. In the case of privatization, Rose-Ackerman (1999: 35) notes that: Corrupt officials may present information to the
public that makes the company look weak while revealing to favored insiders that it is actually doing well. There
may be a gap
between the actual price of the asset and the price announced to the public, with the difference ending up
in the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.
Capitalism Good
 Inevitable/Focus On Reform
Capitalism is inevitable. The focus should be on reforming it and not rejecting it.
Rejection alone cedes the political and strengthens the right by engaging in useless
discourse rather than promoting positive change.
Wilson, 2k (John K, coordinator of the Independent Press Associations Campus Journalism Project,
How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People, pages 14-17)
Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you
will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're hoping,
usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to be a
part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to make money and be successful. What's
wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible
inequality between rich and poor as if it were an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring
the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything
else will be better financed in the place populated by rich people. The aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul
it. Give it a social-justice tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all
cylinders [work] for everybody, and stop putting out so many environmentally hazardous
substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But
the right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The Revolutionary Communist Party helps stabilize the "free
market" capitalist system by making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to Stalinism. Prospective
activists for change are instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary
potential of the proletariat. Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far
left talks to itself (which may be a blessing, given the way it communicates) and tries to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to an uninterested
public.
 Inevitable
Capitalism is inevitable. The alternative fails to accomplish anything.
Sayers, 99 (Sean Sayers. (PhD. Philosophy University of Kent). "The Prospects for Socialism in the
Twenty First Century." Sep. 1999)
Often, it is said that socialism has been discredited and Marxism refuted by the historical experience of
the twentieth century. The whole direction of world history has moved against it. The collapse of
communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has demonstrated the impossibility of a historical stage
beyond capitalism and shown up the utopian character of Marxism. We are at the `end of history; there is no
alternative to capitalism and liberal democracy in the modern world. The globalization of the world
economy, which has greatly accelerated since the collapse of Soviet communism, has added a further dimension
to this argument. For the capitalist free market has intensified and expanded its reach so that there is
now nowhere in the world which can escape its influence. All economies are forced to bow to its
dictates if they are to avoid poverty and backwardness. Socialism is no longer an option.
 Reformable
Capitalism is reformable.
Mander, 13 (Co-Founder, International Forum on Globalization (Jerry, There Are Good Alternatives
to US Capitalism, But No Way to Get There, http://www.alternet.org/books/there-are-good-alternatives-
us-capitalism-no-way-get-there?page=0%2C0,July 24th 2013))
Some aspects of capitalism could be easily reformed, if only the laissez-faire, anti-government capitalist fundamentalists werent
depositing gifts into the pockets of legislators. Regulations could be advanced to control pollution and resource
use, to prevent banking excess, to stop the buying of all politicians and government, and to promote
equity. Theoretically, we could quickly start mitigating inequity problems. We could require that
the wealthy pay taxes at the same rate as the middle class , or at surplus wealth rates (graduated rates that went as
high as 90 percent) that rose from the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman through Dwight Eisenhower. We could/should have
excess profits taxes on corporations to cover their externalized costs, or their depletion of the public-resources commons. We could ban tax
havens and the many subsidized tax rates on financial transactions and inheritance. We could establish maximum and minimum guaranteed
income levels. We could place controls on salary ratios within corporations. Thats all good. We could have better guarantees for workers rights
and better public services for everyonehealth, education, transportation, childcare, elder care. We could prevent corporations from abandoning
local communities and moving to China. And we could establish a new, more realistic relationship with the
natural world, one based on equality, mutual dependence, and the full acknowledgment of limits.
Mos tpeople would appreciate these interventions. Theyre all good. Im sure they would make us a
happier society. Maybe Americans would start voting again and eating less junk food while
permitting the natural world a deserved breather and long-term protections. Only oligarchs and free-market
fundamentalists would oppose them. Unfortunately, however, they are in charge . Those and a hundred others ideas are all
doable by relatively simple acts of Congress and the President. Many other modern countries like
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Iceland, and Japanalready enjoy
many of those practices within their own versions of a kind of hybrid economics, an active
collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions that most of these countries call social democracy.
Of course, they have problems, toosome of them caused, actually, by U.S. deregulation of finance under Clinton and Bush II but, according
to friends in Europe and members of my own family who live in Scandinavia, as well as the statistics we cited in the last chapter, these countries
are in far better shape than we are in terms of public satisfaction, economic balance, environmental awareness, levels of equality, quality of public
discourse, freedom from ideological domination, willingness to adapt, and happiness.
 Capitalism Is A Dysphemism
Capitalism is an unfair dysphemistic term that paints a grossly misrepresentative
and misleading picture of economics. Reject the term and the criticism.
Mises, 22 (Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: A Treatise on Economics, 1922.)
The terms Capitalism and Capitalistic Production are political catchwords. They were invented by
socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to [and] condemn. Today, they [are] have only
to be uttered to conjure up a picture of the relentless exploitation of wage-slaves by the pitiless rich.
[but] From a scientific point of view, they are so obscure and ambiguous that they have no value
whatever. Their use, therefore, is entirely pernicious, and the proposal to extrude them altogether
from economic terminology, and to leave them to the matadors of popular agitation, deserves serious consideration.
 Root Cause Turn
Turn: capitalism is not the root cause of all societal ill and saying that it is is
counterproductive. It prevents pragmatic solutions and fractures the movement by
isolating moderates as capitalists and refusing to accept pragmatic compromises and
solutions.
Levin, 98 (Richard Levin, president of Yale, 1998, The Minnesota Review, 48-49, a/online)
As a result of this view of the world,many people on the far right and far left are single-causers; they believe not only that
everything the demon does has bad effects in our society, but also that everything bad in our society
is caused by this demon. Right-wing extremists hold feminism or secular humanism or ZOG responsible for drugs, crime, floridation,
and the decline of "family values," and many leftistsincluding some appearing in mrclaim that capitalism is the cause of
racism and sexism (Cotter 119-21, Lewis 97-98, Young 288-91). This, in turn, leads to the belief that there's a single
cure, and only this one cure, for all these social ills: the complete extirpation of the demon that
causes them and the complete transformation of society. Thus extremists on both sides tend to be all-or-
nothingists, to reject all reforms as "band-aids" that are doomed to fail since they don't get at the source
of our problems and so won't further this radical transformation (Neilson/Meyerson 45: 268-69). Many are also
millenarians who believe the transformation will be brought about by an apocalyptic clash between the forces of good and evil ending in the
permanent defeat of the demon and the creation of a utopia(for fundamentalists this is a literal Armageddon and Second Coming, for militias it's
RaHoWa (Racial Holy War) or the uprising of true patriots against our traitorous government foretold in The Turner Diaries with its Hitlerian
"final solution," and for Marxists it's the proletarian revolution that, their anthem tells us, will be "the final conflict." Another
consequence of their polarization is that partisans at both extremes try to eliminate the
intermediate positions between them, often by denying their differences. Neilson and Meyerson say that "we
should see liberalism and conservatism as flipsides" (45: 269) and argue that Republicans and Democrats are really the same (47: 242), as does
Tom Lewis at greater length (89-90). Similarly, George Wallace, in his racist, third-party campaign, insisted that "there isn't a dime's worth of
difference between them." More sinister is their tendency to "disappear" these intermediate positions by
equating them with the opposite extreme. McCarthy and his followers attacked Democrats and even liberal Republicans as
"pinkos" and "fellow travelers," and Marxist regimes condemned social democrats and even communists who deviated from the party line as
fascist counterrevolutionaries who must be liquidated. Some extremists on the academic left employ this tactic against moderates and liberals,
although with less lethal results. The same Marxist critic who called me a "self-confessed liberal" also called me, in another essay published in
the same year, a "reactionary" ("Terminator" 64), and Donald Morton and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh consign Gerald Graff, Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty,
and Andrew Ross to the same camp as Rush Limbaugh (32-33). (Neilson and Meyerson's attack on Brub is more restrained--the worst thing
they call him is a "liberal pluralist" [45: 267, 47: 239, 245]; but they try to connect him, as I noted, to support of the far right in Central America.)
Such people need a simplistic division of the political world into two polar opposites with no awkward alternatives (just as they need a simplistic
explanation of the cause and cure of all our problems), because they can't tolerate complexity or uncertainty. That mental set, I believe, is the
most significant similarity (or "equivalence") between the far right and far left.
 Extinction
Turn: capitalism is good. Continued growth, progress, and production is key to
prevent extinction.
Zey, 98 (Michael, Executive Director Expansionary Institute, Professor of Management Montclair
State University, Seizing the Future, p. 34, 39-40)
However, no outside force guarantees the continued progress of the human species, nor does anything mandate that the human species must even
continue to exist. In fact, history is littered with races and civilizations that have disappeared without a trace. So, too, could the human species.
There is no guarantee that the human species will survive even if we posit, as many have, a special purpose to the
species existence. Therefore, the
species innately comprehends that it must engage in purposive actions in order to
maintain its level of growth and progress. Humanitys future is conditioned by what I call the
Imperative of Growth, a principle I will herewith describe along with its several corollaries. The Imperative of Growth states that in
order to survive, any nation, indeed, the human race, must grow, both materially and intellectually. The
Macroindustrial Era represents growth in the areas of both technology and human development, a natural stage in the evolution of the species
continued extension of its control over itself and its environment. Although 5 billion strong, our continued existence depends on our
ability to continue the progress we have been making at higher and higher levels. Systems, whether organizations, societies, or cells,
have three basic directions in which to move. They can grow, decline, or temporarily reside in a state of equilibrium. These are the choices.
Choosing any alternative to growth, for instance, stabilization of production/consumption through zero-growth policies, could
have alarmingly pernicious side effects, including extinction. The fifth corollary of the Imperative of Growth claims
that a society can remain in a state of equilibrium only temporarily. In reality, a society seemingly in a phase where it neither improves nor
regresses is actually in a transition to either growth or decline. Such periods easily seduce their contemporaries into a false sense of security, that
their institutions will last forever, they have all the science they need, and there are no more challenges. In fact, during such periods some imagine
that they have reached their golden age, perhaps even the end of history. During such periods of supposed equilibrium,
the population ceases to prepare itself for new challenges and becomes risk averse. Importantly,
they reject the idea that growth and progress are necessary for their survival. The sixth corollary
evolves from the fifth. If the system chooses not to grow, it will decline and eventually disappear,
either because other organisms or systems overtake it or because it is impossible to maintain itself even at static levels without in some way
deteriorating. This is the Law of Spiraling Regression. It is indeed a curiosity of the late-twentieth-century culture that this truism has been
ignored. In the morass of claims about the risks of technological growth and its impact on the ecosystem, the mainstream media and orthodox
academics have decided not to consider what harm the full pursuance of zero growth or non growth might inflict on the sociotechnical system,
which includes our technological infrastructure, culture, and standard of living.
 Extinction
Turn: Capitalism is key to progress, growth, and a laundry list of other impacts.
Extinction is inevitable without it.
Rockwell, 02 (Lew. President of the Mises Institute. Why They Attack Capitalism 2002
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=418 2002)
If you think about it, this hysteria is astonishing, even terrifying. The market economy has created unfathomable
prosperity and, decade by decade, for centuries and centuries, miraculous feats of innovation,
production, distribution, and social coordination. To the free market, we owe all material
prosperity, all our leisure time, our health and longevity, our huge and growing population, nearly everything we call life
itself. Capitalism and capitalism alone has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant
sickness, and early death. In the absence of the capitalist economy, and all its underlying institutions, the
worlds population would, over time, shrink to a fraction of its current size, in a holocaust of
unimaginable scale, and whatever remained of the human race would be systematically reduced to
subsistence, eating only what can be hunted or gathered. And this is only to mention its economic benefits. Capitalism
is also an expression of freedom. It is not so much a social system but the de facto result in a society where individual rights are respected, where
businesses, families, and every form of association are permitted to flourish in the absence of coercion, theft, war, and aggression.
Capitalism protects the weak against the strong, granting choice and opportunity to the masses who once
had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politically connected and their enforcers. The high value placed on
women, children, the disabled, and the aged unknown in the ancient worldowes so much to capitalisms productivity and distribution of
power. Must we compare the record of capitalism with that of the state, which, looking at the sweep of
this past century alone, has killed hundreds of millions of people in wars, famines, camps, and
deliberate starvation campaigns? And the record of central planning of the type now being urged on American enterprise is
perfectly abysmal
 Environment
Capitalism solves the environment.
Wilson, 97 (James Q Wilson (Professor at Harvard University). "The Morality of Capitalism." The
Hilton. 15 Oct. 1997. http://www.cis.org.au/events/jbl/ifr_wilson.html)
It is also the case that capitalism makes it easier to deal with environmental problems . Enviro-n-mental problems
exist. Air is free; we consume air without charge, we emit pollutants back into the air, often without charge. And if something is free people will
consume more of it then they really need, or at least much more than they would if they had to pay for it. Since we have found no way to endow
clean air with property rights, we do not know how to limit this except by the use of an external authority that will put some restrictions on it. To
compel people who are engaged in production and exchange to internalise all of their costs without destroying production and exchange, one
must be able to make proposals to people who do not want to hear them, induce action among people who do not want to act, and monitor
performance by people who do not like monitors and do all of this only to the extent that the gains in human welfare are purchased at an
acceptable cost. No regime will make this result certain, but only democratic capitalist regimes make it at all possible. Why? It is not that
capitalists believe in the environment or have a wish to improve the world. It is because they are part of a system in which the
world must be improved if they are to survive. Capitalism brings three advantages to the environmental task: (i) It
creates and maintains a private sphere of action. A private sphere of action makes capitalism possible because you can
operate free of government control. But by maintaining a private sphere you also provide a protected place for people to stand who wish to make
controversial proposals. You create a world in which the critics of capitalism those who wish to see capitalism restrained in order to protect the
environment have an opportunity to move. No such world existed for them in the Soviet Union, and no such world exists for them today in the
Peoples Republic of China. The absence of a private sphere means the absence of an environmental ethic. (ii)
Secondly, capitalism produces prosperity, and prosperity changes the minds of people , especially young
people. It endows them what we in the social science business call in our professional journals, post-materialist or post-industrial goals. That is a
fancy way of saying that when society becomes rich enough for everybody to be fed and where no-one has
to struggle day and night to put food on their table, we begin to think of other things we can use resources for. Those other things
include taking care of animals, protecting the environment, preserving land and the like . The prosperity
induced by capitalism produces of necessity an environmental movement. How that environ-mental movement is managed of course is a very real
question; sometimes it is managed very badly, other times it is managed reasonably well. Environmental policies in capitalist
systems will vary greatly from the inconsequential through the prudent to the loony but they will scarcely exist at all
in non-capitalist ones. (iii) The final thing capitalism brings to this task is that it creates firms that can be
regulated. You may think that this is a trivial statement. You all know that business firms are regulated sometimes to the advantage of the
firm, sometimes to its disadvantage. But I dont think you realise the importance of this fact. Consider the alternative. Suppose the government
ran everything. What would be regulated? The main reason why Eastern Europe was a vast toxic waste dump, and why many
parts of China are becoming a vast toxic waste dump, is because the government owns the enterprises
and one government agency does not cannot regulate another government agency. This is because neither the
regulator nor the regulatee has any personal motives to accept regulation. But they can regulate firms , and so when firms are
producing wealth and people decide that the distribution of wealth ought to be made to accord to an environmental ethic, capitalism makes that
possible.
 Environment
Only Capitalism can solve the environment.
Vidal, 05 (John Vidal. Rude Awakening. The Guardian. 9 Nov. 2005.
http://www.risc.org.uk/readingroom/Comment_28_porritt_again.htm)
To underline what he has learned, he has written a book called Capitalism As If the World Matters. It's no contrarian potboiler, but it will shock
some people because its stark premise is that capitalism is the only global force able to get the world out of its
present deep troubles. His argument is pragmatic and goes briefly like this: it is impossible to deny the need for
profound change in the face of today's ecological crises; the pace of change is not sufficient, and
conventional environmentalism has failed to win over hearts and minds; change has to be desirable
and will not come by threatening people with ecological doom; therefore, we must embrace
capitalism as the only overarching system capable of both reconciling ecological sustainability, and
reforming it. More to the point, he says, "we don't have time to wait for any big-picture ideological
successor". It has taken 30 years of heart-searching to distill that, but Porritt insists that he is not complacent. "I don't have great faith in
capitalism, but it is formidably flexible," he says. "It is potent, able to recreate itself in many forms . I also
feel that there are enough capitalists who feel passionately that they don't want to see their system
disappear. But this is a last- chance-saloon job. If you leave through the wrong door your passion for capitalism is finished."
 Warming
Climate change cant be solved by radical social transformation. Working within the
current system is key.
Parenti, 13 (professor of sustainable development at the School for International Training, Graduate
Institute. He is a contributing editor to the Nation (Christian, Dissident Magazine, A Radical Approach
to the Climate Crisis, summer 2013, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-radical-approach-to-the-
climate-crisis)
Several strands of green thinking maintain that capitalism is incapable of a sustainable relationship with non-human
nature because, as an economic system, capitalism has a growth imperative while the earth is finite. One finds
versions of this argument in the literature of eco-socialism, deep ecology, eco-anarchism, and even among many
mainstream greens who, though typically declining to actually name the economic system, are fixated on the
dangers of growth. All this may be true. Capitalism, a system in which privately owned firms must continuously
out-produce and out-sell their competitors, may be incapable of accommodating itself to the limits of the natural
world. However, that is not the same question as whether capitalism can solve the more immediate climate crisis.
Because of its magnitude, the climate crisis can appear as the sum total of all environmental problems
deforestation, over-fishing, freshwater depletion, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, chemical contamination. But
halting greenhouse gas emissions is a much more specific problem, the most pressing subset of the larger
apocalyptic panorama. And the very bad news is, time has run out. As I write this, news arrives of an ice-free arctic
Dealing with
summer by 2050. Scientists once assumed that would not happen for hundreds of years.
climate change by first achieving radical social transformation be it a socialist or
anarchist or deep-ecological/neo-primitive revolution, or a nostalgia-based localista conversion back to a mythical
small-town capitalismwould be a very long and drawn-out, maybe even
multigenerational, struggle. It would be marked by years of mass
education and organizing of a scale and intensity not seen in most core capitalist states since the 1960s or
even the 1930s. Nor is there any guarantee that the new system would not also
degrade the soil, lay waste to the forests, despoil bodies of water, and find
itself still addicted to coal and oil. Look at the history of actually existing
socialism before its collapse in 1991. To put it mildly, the economy was not at peace with
nature. Or consider the vexing complexities facing the left social
democracies of Latin America. Bolivia, and Ecuador, states run by
socialists who are beholden to very powerful, autonomous grassroots movements, are still very
dependent on petroleum revenue. A more radical approach to the crisis of
climate change begins not with a long-term vision of an alternate society
but with an honest engagement with the very compressed timeframe that
current climate science implies. In the age of climate change, these are the real
parameters of politics. Hard Facts The scientific consensus, expressed in
peer-reviewed and professionally vetted and published scientific
literature, runs as follows: For the last 650,000 years atmospheric levels of CO2the primary heat-
trapping gashave hovered at around 280 parts per million (ppm). At no point in the preindustrial era did CO2
concentrations go above 300 ppm. By 1959, they had reached 316 ppm and are now over 400 ppm. And the
rate of emissions is accelerating. Since 2000, the world has pumped almost 100 billion tons of
carbon into the atmosphereabout a quarter of all CO2 emissions since 1750 .
At current rates, CO2
levels will double by mid-century. Climate scientists believe that any
increase in average global temperatures beyond 2 degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levels will lead to dangerous climate change, causing large-
scale desertification, crop failure, inundation of coastal cities, mass
migration to higher and cooler ground, widespread extinctions of flora and
fauna, proliferating disease, and possible social collapse. Furthermore, scientists
now understand that the earths climate system has not evolved in a smooth linear fashion. Paleoclimatology has
uncovered evidence of sudden shifts in the earths climate regimes. Ice ages have stopped and started not in a
matter of centuries, but decades. Sea levels (which are actually uneven across the globe) have risen and fallen
more rapidly than was once believed. Throughout the climate system, there exist dangerous positive-feedback
loops and tipping points. A positive-feedback loop is a dynamic in which effects compound, accelerate, or amplify
the original cause. Tipping points in the climate system reflect the fact that causes can build up while effects lag.
Then, when the effects kick in, they do so all at once, causing the relatively sudden shift from one climate regime to
another.
 War
Capitalism is empirically proven to solve war. Free trade leads to interdependence,
stability, improved relations, and prosperity.
Bernstien, 05 (Andrew Bernstein. (Lecturer at Harvard, Stanford, and Yale). The Capitalist Manifesto:
The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez Faire. 2005. p. 234-5.)
The essence of capitalist foreign relations is international free trade. Free trade simply means that
individuals and companies in one country can trade with individuals and companies in other
countries without bartiers and taxes imposed by their respective governments. The moral right of peaceful,
non-criminal individuals to trade and interact across national boundaries is protected. International free trade is simply the principle of individual
rights applied to economic and cultural relationships across national borders. Practically, such a policy of abolishing tariffs and trade barriers
opens nations to various forms of peaceful intercourse, including mutually-beneficial commerce, emigration and immigration, and cultural
exchange. Free trade removes the economic incentive to war, by making it possible for citizens of one
country to gain by trade the goods produced by citizens of other countries. Capitalism renders
unnecessary the murderous practice of plunder, and replaces it with the cordial and mutually-
beneficial relation of trade. The institution of such a policy is a major step toward the diminishment of suspicion and hostility
between nations that have often developed over centuries. It is no accident "that capitalism gave mankind the longest
period of peace in history a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized
world from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914." It is
also no accident that, with the 20th century emergence of the most virulent form of statism in
history the socialist regimes of Germany and Russia the world was plunged into its most destructive war ever.11
 War
Capitalism solves war. Free markets improve relations, cause interdependence, and
make war too expensive.
Bandow, 05 (Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, November 10th, 2005, Spreading
Capitalism Is Good for Peace, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/spreading-capitalism-is-
good-peace)
In a world that seems constantly aflame, one naturally asks: What causes peace? Many people, including U.S. President George W. Bush, hope that
spreading democracy will discourage war. But new research suggests that expanding free markets is a far more important factor, leading to what Columbia
University's Erik Gartzke calls a "capitalist peace." It's a reason for even the left to support free markets. The capitalist peace theory isn't new: Montesquieu and Adam
Smith believed in it. Many of Britain's classical liberals, such as Richard Cobden, pushed free markets while opposing imperialism. But World War I demonstrated that
increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of
markets. An even greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war essentially unthinkable among leading industrialized - and democratic
- states. Support grew for the argument, going back to Immanual Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems. Today's corollary is that creating
democracies out of dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United States for the invasion of Iraq. But
Gartzke argues that "the 'democratic peace' is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom." That is, democracies typically have freer
economies than do authoritarian states. Thus, while "democracy is desirable for many reasons," he notes in a chapter in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the
World, created by the Fraser Institute, "representative governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace." Capitalism
is by far the
more important factor. The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed
the economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable .
Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets and other aspects of
globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of military conflict .
Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war to achieve foreign policy ends. Gartzke considers other variables,
including alliance memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences. Although
the causes of conflict vary, the relationship
between economic liberty and peace remains. His conclusion hasn't gone unchallenged. Author R.J. Rummel, an avid proponent of the
democratic peace theory, challenges Gartzke's methodology and worries that it "may well lead intelligent and policy-wise analysts and commentators to draw the
wrong conclusions about the importance of democratization." Gartzke responds in detail, noting that he relied on the same data as most democratic peace theorists. If
it is true that democratic states don't go to war, then it also is true that "states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either." The point
is not that democracy is valueless. Free political systems naturally entail free elections and are more likely to protect other forms of liberty - civil and economic, for
instance. However, democracy alone doesn't yield peace. To believe is does is dangerous: There's no panacea for creating a conflict-free world. That doesn't mean that
nothing can be done. But promoting open international markets - that is, spreading capitalism - is the best
means to encourage peace as well as prosperity. Notes Gartzke: "Warfare among developing nations will remain unaffected by the
capitalist peace as long as the economies of many developing countries remain fettered by governmental control." Freeing those economies is
critical. It's a particularly important lesson for the anti-capitalist left. For the most part, the enemies of economic liberty also most stridently denounce war, often
in near-pacifist terms. Yet they oppose the very economic policies most likely to encourage peacIf market critics don't realize the obvious economic and philosophical
value of markets - prosperity and freedom - they should appreciate the unintended peace dividend. Trade
encourages prosperity and
stability; technological innovation reduces the financial value of conquest; globalization creates
economic interdependence, increasing the cost of war . Nothing is certain in life, and people are motivated by far more than
economics. But it turns out that peace is good business. And capitalism is good for peace.
 Transition War
Turn: attempting to move away from capitalism will cause transitional conflicts that
will end in increased domination and unsustainable exploitation.
Gubrud, 97 (Mark Avrum Gubrud @ the Center for Superconductivity Research, Nanotechnology
and International Security, a/online 1997)
With molecular manufacturing, international trade in both raw materials and finished goods can be replaced by decentralized production for local
consumption, using locally available materials. The decline of international trade will undermine a powerful source of common interest. Further,
artificial intelligence will displace skilled as well as unskilled labor. A world system based on wage labor, transnational capitalism and global
markets will necessarily give way. We imagine that a golden age is possible, but we dont know how to organize one. As global
capitalism retreats, it will leave behind a world dominated by politics, and possibly feudal
concentrations of wealth and power. Economic insecurity, and fears for the material and moral future of humankind
may lead to the rise of demagogic and intemperate national leaders. With almost two hundred sovereign nations, each
struggling to create a new economic and social order, perhaps the most predictable outcome is chaos: shifting
alignments, displaced populations, power struggles, ethnic conflicts inflamed by demagogues, class
conflicts, land disputes, etc. Small and underdeveloped nations will be more than ever dependent on the major
powers for access to technology, and more than ever vulnerable to sophisticated forms of control or
subversion, or to outright domination. Competition among the leading technological powers for the political loyalty of clients
might imply reversion to some form of nationalistic imperialism.
 Poverty
The data doesnt lie, capitalism is the best way to decrease poverty
Adorney, 14 (economic historian, entrepreneur, and contributor for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Hes citing studies from professors and globally recognized institutes (Julian, Foundation for Economic
Education, Free the Poor, 3/07/14, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/free-the-poor)//jk)
2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, and many claim that President Johnsons program has lifted millions out of poverty. But
if we really want to help the poor, research suggests that economic freedom does more than
government aid. Economic Freedom Within the United States In A Dynamic Analysis of Economic Freedom and Income Inequality in
the 50 States: Empirical Evidence of a Parabolic Relationship, Daniel L. Bennett and Richard K. Vedder argue that, past a certain point,
economic freedom decreases inequality. Increasing economic freedom [and] benefits the poor and
middle class more than it helps the wealthy. Bennett and Vedder analyze the 50 states in terms of their economic freedom and
their income inequality over 25 years (from 1979 to 2004). Bennett and Vedder define economic freedom as more or less the degree to which
government is limited. They measured and ranked states according to the size of government, the level of taxation, and the level of labor market
regulation. They define income inequality using the Gini coefficient. Because different states have radically different levels of economic freedom
(compare New York and North Dakota, for instance), the authors were able to draw on a wealth of data about relative economic freedom in 50
distinct economies. The authors find a parabolic relationship between a states economic freedom and
its income inequality. As states initially become more economically free, most of the gains go to the wealthy. But at a certain
inflection point X, which 21 states had already hit by 2004, the relationship shifts: past this point, as states become more free,
income inequality declines. But does income inequality decline because the rich lose wealth (perhaps through fewer opportunities for
crony capitalism), or because the gains from increasing economic freedom go primarily to the poor? In Income Inequality and Economic
Freedom in the U.S. States, Nathan J. Ashby and Russell S. Sobel find that its the latter. Ashby and Sobel analyze the 48 states of the
continental United States in terms of their economic freedom and the incomes of their poor, middle-class, and wealthy residents over 20 years
(from the early 1980s to the early 2000s). They use the same measure of economic freedom as Bennett and Vedder. The authors find a strong
positive correlation between a states economic freedom and the income level of the poorest 20 percent of residents. Freer states did better by
their poor than less free ones. In particular, Ashby and Sobel found that increasing the economic freedom of a state by one unit (equivalent to
moving from 40th-freest state to 7thfreest-state) increased the incomes of its poorest residents by 11 percent. By contrast, the same change
increased the incomes of the richest quintile by just over a third of that (4.3 percent). The middle class also saw increases, greater than the rich
but less than the poor. Increasing a state's economic freedom by reducing taxation and regulation creates broadly shared
prosperity across all quintiles. Their research helps explain why, as states become more economically free, their income inequality
declines: The poor and the middle class see more gains than the wealthy . But couldnt this be a case of mistaken
causality? Maybe some states have less poverty because they have more natural resources. With less poverty, they need less government to help
the poor, meaning theyre economically freer. But Ashby and Sobel anticipated this claim. They control for about a dozen variables, including
education, geography, and median income. The last controlled variable is especially important; it places richer and poorer states on a level playing
field, so to speak, for the study. It combats the idea that perhaps wealthier states need less government because they have less poverty, and firmly
points the arrow of causality toward economic freedom reducing poverty. Ashby and Sobels research is a compelling argument against
government poverty programs. Other research, for instance the Mercatus Centers Freedom in the 50 States annual report, notes the positive
effects of economic freedom on aggregate economic growth. But because their data is left in the aggregate, its difficult to determine to whom
exactly the economic gains go. But by breaking down their research by quintile, Ashby and Sobel make a case that economic growth especially
helps the poor. Economic Freedom Worldwide Nor is the connection between economic freedom and bottom-rung prosperity unique to the United
States. Recent research in the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) 2013 Annual Report finds the same trend internationally. The Economic
Freedom of the World (EFW) Annual Report, published by the Fraser Institute, analyzes around 150 countries in terms of factors like their
economic freedom, closeness to a laissez-faire state, poverty levels, and per capita income.
 Freedom And Prosperity
Capitalism is the best system to foster freedom and prosperity.
Boaz, ND (David Boaz (executive vice president to the Cato Institute) 1997: Editorial: Pro-Choice.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-19n4-2.html)
Kristol and Wolfson are struggling, not just against the principles on which America was founded, but against the modern world. It is capitalism
that has given us moderns so many choices. Capitalism is the economic system of free people; it is what happens when you
let people alone. The
virtues that capitalism rewards--prudence, discipline, initiative, self-reliance, new
ideas--and the [prosperity] affluence it creates tend to push people in the direction of confidence in
their own abilities, skepticism about organized authority, and a desire to manage their own affairs in
all realms of life. That's why capitalism is not in the long run compatible with political repression or governmental restrictions on freedom.
Freedom is also necessary for the development of strong moral character. Surely Kristol and Wolfson don't want to undermine the bourgeois
virtues, but the effect of restricting choice is to eliminate the incentive and the opportunity for people to make good choices and develop good
habits. People do not develop prudence, self-reliance, thrift, and temperance when their choices are imposed by force. Welfare-state liberals
undermine moral character when they subsidize indulgence in destructive choices. Big-government conservatives undermine character when they
deny people the right to shape their own characters through their choices.
 Productivity
Capitalism maximizes the productiveness of society in a just way.
Youngkins, 2k (Edward W. Younkins (Professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at
Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia), Civil Society: The Realm of Freedom, Capitalism and
Commerce, June, 2000.)
The profit-and-loss system in a voluntaristic society is just and moral. A person's wealth under
capitalism depends upon his productive achievements and the choice of others to recognize them. Profits indicate
that a businessman has served [society] his fellow men by using resources to produce a product or render
a service at costs below the value people place upon the product or service. The firm making profits is using
resources in a manner that satisfies what people want and need. Losses indicate that a businessman has failed to serve his fellow men efficiently.
Justice does not imply that everyone deserves some predetermined share of wealth, but that what
people deserve varies according to their accomplishments, and that it is proper to observe those
differences. As people recognize that rewards depend upon their efforts and outputs, their incentives to produce increase. Not only does
profit provide risk-takers with incentives, it also serves as a guide for allocating resources, provides a reward for efficiently serving other people,
and serves as a measure of efficiency in the use of resources to satisfy customers.
 Privatization Efficient And Responsible
Private organizations are more efficient and responsible than governments.
Rothbard, 04 (Murray Rothbard, The Myth of Efficient Government Service, Man, Economy, and
State, with Power and Market, (Mises Institute, 2004), pages 1260-1272)
Private businesses must obtain their funds from investors. It is this allocation of funds by investors on the basis of
time preference and foresight that rations funds and resources to the most profitable and therefore the most
serviceable uses. Private firms can get funds only from consumers and investors; they can get
funds, in other words, only from people who value and buy their services and from investors who
are willing to risk investment of their saved funds in anticipation of profit. In short, payment and service are,
once again, indissolubly linked on the market. Government, on the other hand, can get as much money as it likes.
The free market provides a mechanism for allocating funds for future and present consumption,
for directing resources to their most value-productive uses for all the people. It thereby provides a means for
businessmen to allocate resources and to price services to insure such optimum use. Government, however, has no checkrein
on itself, i.e., no requirement for meeting a profit-and-loss test of valued service to consumers, to
enable it to obtain funds. Private enterprise can get funds only from satisfied, valuing customers
and from investors guided by profits and losses. Government can get funds literally at its own
whim.
 Private Charities Good
Private charities are better than government welfare. They provide more specific,
targeted, and effective aid.
Tanner, 96 (Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, December 96,
Cato Policy Report, Replacing Welfare, http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-18n6-1.html)
Private efforts have been much more successful than the federal government's failed attempt at charity. America is the most generous nation on
earth. Americans already contribute more than $125 billion annually to charity. In fact, more than 85 percent of all adult Americans make some
charitable contribution each year. In addition, about half of all American adults perform volunteer work; more than 20 billion hours were worked
in 1991. The dollar value of that volunteer work was more than $176 billion. Volunteer work and cash donations combined bring American
charitable contributions to more than $300 billion per year, not counting the countless dollars and time given informally to family members,
neighbors, and others outside the formal charity system. Private charities have been more successful than government
welfare for several reasons. First, private charities [they] are able to individualize their approach to
the circumstances of poor people in ways that governments can never do . Government regulations
must be designed to treat all similarly situated recipients alike. Glenn C. Loury of Boston University explains the
difference between welfare and private charities on that point. "Because citizens have due process rights which cannot be fully abrogated . . .
public judgments must be made in a manner that can be defended after the fact, sometimes even in court." The result is that most
government programs rely on the simple provision of cash or other goods and services without any
attempt to differentiate between the needs of recipients In addition to being better able to target
individual needs, private charities are much better able to target assistance to those who really need
help. Because eligibility requirements for government welfare programs are arbitrary and cannot
be changed to fit individual circumstances, many people in genuine need do not receive assistance,
while benefits often go to people who do not really need them. More than 40 percent of all families
living below the poverty level receive no government assistance. Yet more than half of the families
receiving means-tested benefits are not poor. Thus, a student may receive food stamps, while a homeless man with no
mailing address goes without. Private charities are not bound by such bureaucratic restrictions Private charity also has a better
record of actually delivering aid to recipients. Surprisingly little of the money being spent on federal and state
social welfare programs actually reaches recipients. In 1965, 70 cents of every dollar spent by the
government to fight poverty went directly to poor people. Today, 70 cents of every dollar [most]
goes, not to poor people, but to government bureaucrats and others who serve the poor. Few private
charities have the bureaucratic overhead and inefficiency of government programs.
 Better Than Alternatives
There is no viable alternative to capitalism and empirics prove that their proposals
are utopian and beget totalitarian societies far worse than capitalist ones.
Meltzer, 09 (Dr. Allan H. Meltzer, economist and professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon
Universitys Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh (The eighth lecture in the 2008-2009 Bradley
Lecture series, 3/9/2009, There is no better alternative than capitalism,
http://hiram7.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/there-is-no-better-alternative-than-capitalism/))
Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice and fairness, but they do
not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The alternatives that have been tried are types of Socialism or
Communism or other types of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First, they
ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection. Second, they ignore [and] individual differences. In place
of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness,
or justice. These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair and just . In practice, the rulers
choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison, or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates
how enforcement of promised ends became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized. Transferring resource
allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest,
and corruption. Experience tells us these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems
continue. Ludwig von Mises recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the allocation problem. Capitalism
allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers demands. Fixing prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and
replaces consumer choice with official decisions. Some gain, but others lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them. Not all
Socialist societies have been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of Robert Owen, the Amana people, and many others chose a Socialist
system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements produced sustainable growth. None survived. All
faced the problem of imposing allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group , sometimes a
majority, often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market responds to the
mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many different tastes or
beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular
culture vulgar, and he distrusted the workers choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he
said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he was not opposed to Hitlers ban in the 1930s. But Adorno offered no way of achieving
the culture he desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American
pop culture whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom to make them. Some radio stations play jazz, some offer opera and
symphonies, and many play pop music. Under capitalism, advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch.
Under Socialism, the public watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats
outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several prominent intellectuals gave to the
question: Does the free market corrode moral character? Several respondents recognized that free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and
the rule of law. The slave trade and slavery became illegal in the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of
democratic choice that public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced by a war.
Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The philosopher John Gray recognized that greed and envy are driving forces under capitalism, but
they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of
the system rather than as a characteristic of some individuals that remains under Socialism. Michael Walzer recognized that political activity also corrodes moral
character, but he claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or sustain moral
abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as fascism and
Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kants view that mankind includes a range of individuals who differ in their
moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices individuals make or reject. No democratic
capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to the murders committed by Hitlers Germany, Maos
China, or Lenin and Stalins Soviet Union. As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to
impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control opposition. Communism
proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was unattainable because individuals differ about what is good .
And what is good to them and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism. Kants principle warns that utopian visions are
unattainable. Capitalism does not offer a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism
combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and progress with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It
creates societies that treat men and women as they are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society
and Its Enemies, Karl Popper showed why utopian visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal
must be prevented.
 Sustainable And Self-Correcting
Capitalism is the best economic choice. Its the most sustainable system and its
inherently self-correcting.
Eighenwald, 02 (Kurt Eichenwald, writer for the New York Times "The Nation: Clay Feet; Could
Capitalists Actually Bring Down Capitalism?" June 30, 2002, Lexis-Nexis Universe)
OVER the last few centuries, capitalism has been the heartiest contender in the global bout for
economic supremacy. It emerged from its decades-long death match with communism as the unquestioned victor. Its dust-up with socialism barely
lasted a few rounds. It flourished in wartime, and survived wrongheaded assaults from embargoes and tariffs. Even terrorism aimed at
capitalism's heart failed to deliver a knock-out punch. But now, a staggering rush of corporate debacles is raising a disturbing
question: can capitalism survive the capitalists themselves? The scandals that have oozed out of corporate America with alarming regularity in recent months have
repeatedly featured executives betraying the marketplace for their own short-term self-interest. From Enron to Global Crossing, Adelphia to WorldCom, the details
differ but the stories boil down to the same theme: the companies lied about their performance, and investors paid the price. To those inured to corporate wrongdoing
-- perhaps by the insider trading scandals or the savings and loan debacle of recent decades -- the latest scourge of white-collar malfeasance might seem like more of
the same, with greedy executives cutting corners to make a profit. But in truth, the corporate calamities of the new millennium are of a different ilk, one that
challenges the credibility of the financial reporting system, and in turn the faith of investors in the capital markets -- the very engine that has driven capitalism to its
success. It wasn't supposed to be like this. In the wake of the stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing revelation of the scams and rigged dealings that had helped
inflate the market, America faced what appeared to be capitalism's chief vulnerability. Through Senate hearings in the early 1930's with the special counsel Ferdinand
Pecora, investors learned about stock price manipulation, insider trading and profiteering through so-called investment trusts, all of which had made fortunes for the
capitalists, while costing investors their savings. How did it happen? Capitalism, at its most basic, dictates that the company producing the best product at the lowest
price wins. For capitalists, victory is measured solely in profits. Left to their own devices, it was clear, some capitalists would aggressively pursue profits even if it
meant cheating the investors who provided all the capital. So, the game stayed the same, but the government put in referees. Congress passed the Securities Exchange
Act of 1933 and 1934, and created a new federal agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, to enforce those laws. Disclosure became the centerpiece of the
system. Companies could pretty much make whatever business decision they wanted, so long as the material information was revealed to investors in periodic filings
with the S.E.C. The result was an entire bulwark of protections: the board of directors entrusted with overseeing corporate managements, the independent accounting
firms relied upon to insure the numbers were accurate, the government regulators in place to supervise the rules. Despite all the apparent bricks and mortar of these
protections, they turned out to be as permanent and impenetrable as smoke. At bottom, the system still relied on faith -- just in someone besides the top executives or
company owners. The trust was given to the competence of the directors, the integrity of the accountants and the abilities of regulators. That was evident back in 1933,
when a member of Congress asked Col. A. H. Carter, senior partner of Deloitte Haskins & Sells: if accountants would be auditing the companies, who would be
auditing the accountants? The reply was noble -- and proved to be hollow. "Our conscience," Colonel Carter said. By the late 90's, as is now becoming clear, that
foundation of personal integrity had been eroded by easy profits. Eventually, driven by shareholder expectations and their own stock-option packages, some
executives began hiding losses incurred in the faltering economy, manipulating the numbers they reported to investors. The fact that their companies are, in all
probability, bad apples among many, many honest corporations makes little difference. By being deceptive on their disclosures for short-term gain, these capitalists
have led investors to question the reliability of all the reported data -- and the reliability of the checks and balances instituted to keep the data valid. Not only has the
accounting branch of the market been tarred by Arthur Anderson's enabling of Enron's schemes, but, from company to company, insular boards of directors,
incompetent internal auditors and underfunded regulatory oversight have allowed the perception of stringent standards and protections to wither. IT is not as if
corporate cheating comes out of nowhere. History holds many tales of businessmen who begin breaking the rules in boom times, when rising stock prices literally give
them a sense of invincibility. Then, as the markets turn -- and they always turn -- these men try to preserve their power and wealth with more wrongdoing. They keep
believing that stock prices will rise and cover their misdeeds. They really seem to think they won't get caught. This time, the crisis in investor confidence is becoming
a primary policy issue for the leaders of the industrialized world -- a world largely formed on the American model, and that the United States has insisted virtually
everyone else follow, too. "It's a preoccupation of all the leaders that this is creating at this time a lack of confidence in the markets, and people are not sure about the
way that information is transmitted to the public," Jean Chretien, the prime minister of Canada, said on the first day of a summit of the Group of Eight leading
industrialized nations. Workers are going to take it on the chin. WorldCom started laying off 17,000 people on Friday. Many more people, at many other companies,
are worried. And investors -- shaken by the past and uncertain where the next disaster might emerge -- are moving their money about, dumping many stocks and
moving cash into safer havens, like Treasury bonds. Could
the short-term, self-rewarding mentality of a handful of
capitalists truly destroy capitalism? Bring on hundreds of bankruptcies, force banks under, end the giving of loans? Destroy America as we
know it? Not very likely. The system has a built-in corrective factor, which kicks in when abuses go too
far. Harm to investor confidence harms the market, which harms the ability of corporations to raise
the capital they need to grow and be profitable. Eventually, the capitalists' desire get investor
confidence back wins the day. Already, after years of sniffing at naysayers who wagged fingers about fundamentals, investors seem to be
discovering a new affection for stodgy old stock analysis. "Nobody was paying attention to seemingly boring topics like accounting and corporate governance," said
Troy Paredes, an associate professor at Washington University School of Law. "People are realizing that those are the things that matter." At the same time, a range of
proposals has emerged from Wall Street and Washington to overhaul corporate America. The S.E.C. is making moves to get tough on accounting standards. But still,
there are some capitalists who are keeping their eyes on their short-term prize, betting that, despite all the evidence of corporate lies, investors need no substantial
changes to justify keeping their confidence in the market. Many Wall Street firms are lobbying to cut back the power and authority of state securities regulators, the
very individuals who historically have been particularly hard-nosed in their dedication to proper disclosure and investor protection. Meanwhile, accounting firms are
doing their all to beat back efforts to strengthen their regulation. On Capitol Hill, there were rumors that tough accounting legislation was dead -- until WorldCom
exploded. ULTIMATELY, capitalism will almost certainly survive this onslaught from the capitalists --
if only because survival is the most profitable outcome for all involved. Investors may well emerge wiser, less willing to
jump into the latest fad and more concerned about the fundamentals. In the end, though, the experts say, that will only last as long as the memory of this period, which
will wash away the next time unbridled exuberance creates a booming market. "People eventually will emerge from this more discriminating about how they invest,"
said David Hawkins, a professor at Harvard Business School and Merrill Lynch's accounting consultant. "But this isn't the last time we'll go through this. People will
forget, and it will all happen again."
 Sustainable
Shifts to sustainable capitalism solve collapse and decline. Its awesome and
empirically proven.
GIM, 12 (Generation Investment Management, January 2012, Generation Investment Management is
based in London and uses research to help create funding methods, Sustainable Capitalism,
http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-sustainable-capitalism-v1.pdf)
Capitalism has great strengths and is fundamentally superior to any other system for organising
economic activity. It is more efficient in allocating resources and in matching supply and demand. It
is demonstrably effective in wealth creation. It is more congruent with higher levels of freedom and self-governance than any other system. It
unlocks a higher fraction of the human potential with ubiquitous, organic incentives that reward
hard work, ingenuity, and innovation. These strengths are why it is at the foundation of every
successful economy. Critically, capitalism has proven itself to be adaptable and flexible enough to fit the specific needs of particular
countries. Capitalism comes in many forms , from that practised in the US to the very different model that has been adopted within
communist China. The causes and consequences of these variations are, of course, significant but the more important fact remains: the
mainstream debate is about how to practise capitalism not whether we should choose between capitalism and some other system. Yet while the
present form of capitalism has proven its superiority, it is nevertheless abundantly clear that some of the ways in which it is now practised do not
incorporate sufficient regard for its impact on people and the planet and are now posing a number of fundamental challenges that require
attention, particularly in a resource-constrained world of seven billion (soon to be 8-10 billion) people. These include short-termism, over-
reliance on GDP growth as a primary metric of prosperity, diverting wealth into shadow banking and financial engineering and away from
addressing real needs. These challenges also include rising inequality, increasing volatility in the global financial market, and growing
contributions to the climate crisis perpetuated by a resistance to internalise externalities. We and others have argued for long-
term responsible capitalism for some time. We have called this Sustainable Capitalism.4
Sustainable Capitalism is more than corporate social responsibility or impact investing, which are
worthwhile endeavours compatible with the precepts of sustainable investing, but narrower in
focus. DEFINITION Sustainable Capitalism is a framework that seeks to maximise long-term
economic value creation by reforming markets to address real needs while considering all costs and
integrating ESG metrics into the decision-making process. It applies to the entire investment value
chain from entrepreneurial ventures to publicly traded large-cap companies, from investors
providing seed capital to those focused on late-stage growth-orientated opportunities, from
company employees to CEOs, from activists to policy makers and standard setters. Sustainable
Capitalism transcends borders, industries, forms of ownership, asset classes, and stakeholders . THE
ECONOMIC CASE The economic rationale for Sustainable Capitalism is emerging through the
quantitative and qualitative results of empirical research as well as real-world examples. Mainstreaming
Sustainable Capitalism by 2020 will require independent, collaborative and voluntary action by companies, investors, government and civil
society, which we hope to accelerate by advancing the discourse on the economic benefits of sustainability.
 AT Resource Depletion
Resource scarcity is self-correcting.
Haynes, 08 (BYU economics professor, 2008 (Beth, Finite Resources vs. Infinite Resourcefulness, 8-
19, http://wealthisnottheproblem.blogspot.com/2008/08/finite-resources-vs-infinite.html))
Its common sense. Save today in order to have some available tomorrow. Its how our bank accounts work, so it seems logical to apply the same
reasoning to resource use. But there is a catch. All of economic history, up to and including today, demonstrates that the
more we exploit our natural resources, the more available they become . (3-7) How can this possibly be? If we
use our limited, non-renewable resources we have to end up with less, right? Actually, no. And here is why. We dont simply use up existing
resources; we constantly create them. We continually invent new processes, discover new sources, improve the
efficiency of both use and extraction, while at the same time we discover cheaper, better alternatives.
The fact that a particular physical substance is finite is irrelevant. What is relevant is the process of
finding ways to meet human needs and desires. The solutions, and thus what we consider resources, are constantly
changing. Oil was a nuisance, not a resource, until humans discovered a use for it. In order to survive and flourish, human beings must succeed at
fulfilling certain needs and desires. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways using a multitude of materials. The requirements of life set
the goals. How these goals are met does not depend on the existence or the availability of any particular material. Limits are placed not by the
finiteness of a physical substance, but by the extent of our knowledge, of our wealth, and of our freedom. Knowledge. Wealth. Freedom. These
are the factors which are essential to solving the problems we face. The Stone Age didnt end because we ran out of stones. (8) Think for a
minute about how we have solved the problem of meeting basic needs throughout history: Transportation: from walking to landing on the moon
Communication: from face-to-face conversations to the World Wide Web. Food: from hunting and gathering to intravenous feeding and
hydroponics. Shelter: from finding a cave to building skyscrapers Health care: from shamans to MRIs and neurosurgery. How does progress
happen? A synopsis of the process is provided by the main theme of Julian Simons book, The Ultimate Resource 2: More people, and
increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity
causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to
search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long
run, the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen, that is, prices eventually become lower than before the scarcity
occurred. (9) This idea is not just theory. Economists and statisticians have long been analyzing the massive amounts of data collected on
resource availability. The conclusion: our ability to solve the problems of human existence is ever-expanding. Resources have become less scarce
and the world is a better place to live for more and more people. (3-7) Overall, we create more than we destroy as evidenced by the steady
progress in human well being and there is no evidence for concluding that this trend can't and won't continue. Doomsday predictions have been
with us since ancient times and they have consistently been proven wrong.
 AT Collapse (Global Capitalism Strong)
Global capitalism is strong.
Gnalingham, 09 (Tan Sri Gnanalingam. "Only Citizens Can Engineer a Recovery." The Star online. 2-
7, 2009. Online)
Capitalism and democracy, we have long been told, are the twin ideological pillars capable of bringing
unprecedented prosperity and freedom to the world. In recent decades, the two have shared a common ascent.
By almost any measure, global capitalism [it] is triumphant. Most nations around the world are
today part of a single, integrated, and turbo-charged global market . Democracy has enjoyed a
similar renaissance. Three decades ago, a third of the worlds nations held free elections; today,
nearly two-thirds do. Robert B. Reich, the former US Secretary of Labour, in his book, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of
Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, said the vast majority of us are global consumers and, at least indirectly,
global investors. In these roles we should strive for the best deals possible. That is how we participate in the global market economy. But
those private benefits usually have social costs. And for those of us living in democracies, it is imperative to remember that we are also citizens
who have the power to reduce these social costs, making the true price of the goods and services we purchase as low as possible. We can
accomplish this larger feat only if we take our roles as citizens seriously. World trade is today globalised. Globalisation, says British
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is a highway, and the vehicles, which use the highway are the various countries with different rules of driving.
When there is a massive accident, people on both sides of the highway cannot move. So, the world needs a uniformed regulation for globalisation
to be effective. Since we live in a globalised world, inter-dependence on world trade and not protectionism
should be the ideal practice. Citizens of the world will ultimately decide whether globalisation is meaningful.
 AT Collapse (Banks FailedNot Capitalism)
Banks failed. Capitalism didnt.
Reece, 09 (Damian Reece was Head of Business for the Telegraph Media Group. Telegraph.co.uk
"Capitalism is alive and Kicking - Look at Reed Elsvier."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/damianreece/4701176/Capitalism-is-alive-and-kicking-
look-at-Reed-Elsevier.html 2-20, 2009)
But while we might need "new banking" or indeed "new banks" we don't need new capitalism, we already
have it. What defines capitalism is reinvention, or at least innovation spurred by its biggest source of
energy, entrepreneurialism. Elements of banking have failed but capitalism hasn't. Its working can
be expansionary, or the reverse, but it's still working. One of the greatest failings of capitalism, for instance, would have
been its inability to realise the great potential of the internet to change our lives. The changes the web has wrought are going to be more
fundamental and far reaching to this generation, and future generations, than the current recession. But capitalism is delivering the potential of
the internet, in a way that governments or their quangos and regulators could never do, as revealed by yesterday's results from Reed Elsevier. It's
one of the many companies that has harnessed the internet and transformed its business and its long-term potential. It's gone from a dusty old
specialised print publisher without much of a future into a company providing millions of professionals across the law, science, health and
government with the essential tools to do their daily jobs delivered over the web. This capitalism yesterday provided one of the bright spots on
yet another gloomy day for news. It's also worth remembering that the sort of corporate social responsibility advocated by "new capitalists"
already exists in spades courtesy of the "old capitalism" which delivered such creations as Google to the public markets in 2004, including its
guiding principle number 6: "You can make money without doing evil."
 AT Structural Violence
Turn: the epistemology behind their structural violence claims is flawed. They
isolate a single line of causality. Doing so results in inaccurate analysis and cant
solve.
Thompson, 03 (William, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of
International Relations at Indiana University, A Streetcar Named Sarajevo: Catalysts, Multiple Causation
Chains, and Rivalry Structures, International Studies Quarterly, 47(3), AD: 7-10-9)
Richard Ned Lebow (20002001) has recently invoked what might be called a streetcar interpretation of systemic war and change. According to
him, all our structural theories in world politics both overdetermine and underdetermine the
explanation of the most important events such as World War I, World War II, or the end of the Cold War. Not only do
structural theories tend to fixate on one cause or stream of causation, they are inherently incomplete
because the influence of structural causes cannot be known without also identifying the necessary
role of catalysts. As long as we ignore the precipitants that actually encourage actors to act, we
cannot make accurate generalizations about the relationships between more remote causation and
the outcomes that we are trying to explain. Nor can we test the accuracy of such generalizations without accompanying data
on the presence or absence of catalysts. In the absence of an appropriate catalyst (or a streetcar that failed to arrive), wars might never have
happened. Concrete information on their presence (streetcars that did arrive) might alter our understanding of the explanatory significance of
other variables. But since catalysts and contingencies are so difficult to handle theoretically and empirically, perhaps we should focus instead on
probing the theoretical role of contingencies via the development of what if scenarios
Communism Bad
Communism Good
Growth Bad
 1NC

Growth rates are unsustainable we are exceeding the earths biophysical limits
Klitgaar and Krall 11 (Kent A. Klitgaard, , Lisi Krall, ,Ecological economics, degrowth, and
institutional change, 12/12/2011, Ecological Economics journal issue no. 84 pages 247-248,
www.elsevier.com/ locate/ecolecon, DJE)
The age of economic growth is coming to an end. The mature economies of the industrial North
have already entered the initial stages of the era of degrowth. This is evidenced by data that show
overall economic activity has increased at a decreasing rate since the Golden Age of 1960s postwar
capitalism turned into the era of stagflation in the 1970s. Despite the supposed revival of growth in the
neoliberal age, percentage growth rates have continued their secular decline. In the United States
real GDP growth was lower in the1980s and 1990s than in the 1970s and lower still in the first years
of the 21st century (Tables 1). While percentage growth rates may have declined over the last five
decades the absolute size of the economy, as measured by real gross domestic product (for all its flaws)
has increased, more than tripling from 1970 until 2011. This creates a dilemma within our present
institutional context. Absolute growth, which uses more resources, especially fossil fuel resources,
destroys more habitat, and emits more carbon and other pollutants into the planet's sinks, has
grown exponentially. At the same time, relative, or percentage growth, upon which employment
depends, has fluctuated over the same decades and shows a downward trend. We are growing too fast to
remain within the limits of the biophysical system. At the same time the world economy is growing too
slowly to provide sufficient employment and there appears to be a secular decline at work. Despite rapid
and sustained rates of economic growth in many newly emerging market economies (e.g. Brazil, India
and China) patterns of declining growth rates also exist for the world economy (Table 2). The
reduction in the long-term growth rates, especially for mature market economies, is not something we
must contend with in the distant future. They have been occurring for decades. Neither are they simply
the result of misguided policy, as growth rates have fallen in times of both liberal and conservative
policy regimes. Rather, we believe the growth rate decline is embedded deeply within the institutional
structure of the economy, as well as within biophysical limits. Clearly a better understanding of the
complex dynamics of the interactions of the economic and biophysical systems is needed to provide
important insights for the degrowth and steady-state agendas. While ecological economics has addressed
ecological limits, it has not explored as fully the limits to growth inherent in a market system. The
analysis of biophysical limits has been the strength of ecological economics. Beginning with the work of
Herman Daly, who placed the economy within the context of a finite and non-growing biophysical
system, through the first 1997 text by Robert Costanza and colleagues, ecological economists have
carefully delineated limits such as the climate change, the human appropriation of the products of
photosynthesis, and biodiversity loss (Costanza et al., 1997). Subsequent analyses by Rees and
Wackernagel showed that the human ecological footprint now exceeds the earth's biocapacity, and
the Limits to Growth studies by Meadows et al. concluded that human activity has overshot the
carrying capacity and the scale of human activity is unlikely to be maintained into the next century .
The work of many energy analysts (Campbell, 2005; Campbell and Laherrere, 1998; Deffeyes, 2001; Hall
and Klitgaard, 2011; Hallock et al., 2004; Heinberg, 2005; Simmons, 2006) concludes that we are at or
near the global peak of fossil hydrocarbons and future economic activity will be impacted strongly
by more expensive and less available petroleum. The second set of limits is internal and is to be found
in the dynamics of the accumulation process, involving the complex structural interaction of production,
consumption, and distribution. The internal limits that gear the economy toward both cyclical variation
and secular stagnation have not been considered systematically by ecological economists. When the
economy reached these limits historically the result has been a series of periodic recessions and
depressions. Renewed growth has been the answer, just as it is now. If the system reaches its own internal
limits at the same time the world reaches its external biophysical limits we will have a profound challenge
because we need a way to facilitate decent standards of living when economic growth can no longer be
the vehicle to maintain incomes and assure social stability. In the last instance, a system in overshoot can
neither growits way out of its inherent tendency toward stagnation, nor can it grow its way into
sustainability. We believe it is unlikely that the present system of capitalism, dominated by
multinational corporations, globalization, speculative finance, and dependence upon fossil fuels, can
adjust to the era of degrowth and remain intact as is. In order to devise an economy that meets human
needs as it approaches both sets of limits, ecological economics needs to understand more fully the
structural and institutional dimensions of the internal and external limits, as well as the interaction
between the two. This is our challenge, and it is a difficult one. Ecological economics can better
understand the necessary institutional configuration of the non-growing economy only by an improved
understanding of the dynamics of growth and capital accumulation, because it is here that the inherent
tendencies to stagnate and the resolution to stagnation are found.
 2NC Top Level

Growth is not sustainablemodels prove

Fagnart 14 (Jean-Francois Fagnart, Marc Germain, Energy, complexity and sustainable long-term
growth, Elsevier, September 2nd, 2014)
This note has reconsidered what type of long-term growth is possible in a model with expanding product variety a la Gross- man and Helpman
(1991) where all human activities require en- ergy. In this framework, we have linked the complexity of final production to the
number of different components (or inputs) en- tering into its assembly process. We have considered two cases, whether complexity is costly or
not, i.e. whether product complex- ity increases the energy requirements of production operations or not . A balanced growth path
combining quantitative and non- quantitative growth has appeared possible only if the potential of energy
efficiency gains is unbounded in all (production and re- search) activities. This requires in particular a decrease (towards zero) of the
energy intensiveness of final production in spite of its increased complexity. Less optimistic assumptions unavoidably lead
to less favourable long-term growth scenarios. If the energy intensiveness of intermediate and/or final productions is
bounded from below by a strictly positive constant, quantitative growth is not sustainable in the long-run but a
purely non-quantitative growth path remains possible (i) if the impact of complexity on energy consumption is nil or
not too strong and (ii) if the energy intensiveness of the innovation process (the research activities in the present model) tends towards zero . If
either one of these two conditions is not met, zero-growth is the most favourable long-run scenario.
It is not obvious to assess the realism of the conditions under which long-term growth (even limited
to its non quantitative dimension) is possible. First, even though common perception suggests an
increasing complexity of human productions and pro- cesses, and of the economy as a whole, we do
not have at our dis- posal an objective index of the complexity of our economies. A fortiori, we do not
have a quantification of the link between complexity and energy intensiveness at the aggregate level.
How- ever, the present note tends to reinforce the pessimistic view of ecological economics with
respect to the feasibility of long-term growth: in a finite world, even the intermediary case of a
purely non-quantitative long-term growth is only feasible under rather restrictive conditions, as
discussed above.
 Environmental Limits Ext.

Market Capitalism requires waste to survive

Klitgaar and Krall 11 (Kent A. Klitgaard, , Lisi Krall, ,Ecological economics, degrowth, and
institutional change, 12/12/2011, Ecological Economics journal issue no. 84 page 250,
www.elsevier.com/ locate/ecolecon, DJE)
Harrod also enunciated the concept of the Natural Growth Rate, Gn, which is determined by the
increase in population, the accumulation of capital and the level of technology, among other
variables. The economic system could not advance at a rate greater than allowed by the natural rate. If
the warranted rate exceeded the natural rate the result would be chronic tendency toward depression. The
depression would drag down the warranted rate, and the reduction in Gw could only be accomplished by
means of chronic unemployment (Harrod, 1939). The impending onset of peak oil, the effects of
climate instability, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, etc. will certainly reduce the natural rate of
growth. Without some institutional change the dynamics of market capitalism will bring on the end
of economic growth as we know it, with the natural rate falling the closer the system comes to its
limits. If we are to avoid chronic unemployment and increasing poverty a new set of institutional
arrangements must be found. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy also analyzed the mature capitalist economy
in their 1966work,Monopoly Capital. Starting fromthe classical notion of economic surplus, or the
difference between the value of the output and the sum of subsistence consumption and replacement
investment, they argued that modern capitalism is dominated by giant corporations (or oligopolies)
which maximize long-term profits by avoiding price competition, extending market share, and
reducing the cost of production. As a result the economic surplus tends to rise and needs to be
absorbed. If it is not, productionwill decline and chronic stagnation will appear . Baran and Sweezy
stated that there were three methods of absorbing this rising economic surplus: it could be consumed,
invested or simply wasted. To analyze the increase in consumption to levels sufficient to avoid stagnation
Baran and Sweezy chronicle the development of the sales effort. Mass consumption was not the result
of rational consumers maximizing their subjective utilities subject to limited incomes, but a conscious
effort on the part of profit-seeking corporations and the state to assure that consumption levels are
adequate to produce profit absorb economic surplus. It is certainly possible to see the over extension of
credit in our present era in the same vein. Investment directly absorbs the economic surplus but
simultaneously creates more surplus to be absorbed in the next period. Waste such as planned
obsolescence or energy inefficiency could also serve as a potential absorber as well as war. Baran
and Sweezy show that a market economy would succumb to long-term stagnation in the absence of
waste. If they are correct moving toward sustainability by reducing waste may exacerbate the economic
stagnation that is already occurring within our current economic structure. Certainly, in a rationally-
planned economy, employment could be boosted, and the environment improved, by large scale
public investment in non-fossil transportation and the construction of a non-fossil infrastructure.
However Baran and Sweezy argue that large scale public investment would not absorb sufficiently
the economic surplus generated by the economy because of the power relations of monopoly
capitalism. Public investment that competed effectively with the private sector would be kept within
limits Baran and Sweezy, 1966. Their argument seems to have contemporary relevance, as the role of the
government as a demand manager is being debated both in the United States and in Europe at the present
time.

Sustaining economic growth is impossible in light of its environmental harms

McElwee and Daly 14 (Sean McElwee, research assosciate, Lew Daly, the director of policy and
research at Demos, a public policy research organization, What if economic growth is no longer possible
in the 21st century?, 3/20/2014, The Week, http://theweek.com/articles/449050/what-economic-growth-
no-longer-possible-21st-century, DJE)
For decades, rapid economic growth has been the norm for developed countries. An educated workforce,
a large population boom, major technological advances, and abundant fossil fuels were the key
components of growth, generating substantial and broadly distributed increases in standards of living in
many countries. We have grown so used to such growth that we inevitably view it as a panacea for a
host of economic ills, whether it's a deep recession or income inequality. We now understand,
however, that the postwar growth paradigm is not environmentally sustainable. We also know that
the shared prosperity it once delivered is itself unraveling. With these combined trends, something has to
give in order to maintain living standards. One possible scenario, with surprisingly good news for
average Americans, is that constraints on growth will force political leaders to accept redistribution
as a policy tool. Indeed, if we cannot grow our way to broadly shared prosperity again, redistribution is
the only way to save the middle class. Many economists have warned that the old model is dying out.
In a much-cited paper, Robert Gordon argues that the rapid growth we take for granted is not only
historically anomalous but likely to slow significantly in the 21st century, pointing in particular to
diminishing returns from technology as one major drag. Developed countries have already picked the
"low-hanging fruit" of technological advance (in Tyler Cowen's phrase), and future innovations will
produce far less growth, he argues. Steven King, chief economist at HSBC, similarly argues, "The
underlying reason for the stagnation is that a half-century of remarkable one-off developments in the
industrialized world will not be repeated." Gordon also points to rising inequality, which has led to
stagnating middle-class wages, as a drag on future growth. As a result of these trends and others, average
annual growth will fall below 1 percent in the 21st century, he predicts. The IMF to the rescue? Then
there is the impact on the global economy that will result from combating global warming. Working
from a conservative carbon budget of 450 parts per million (PPM), Humberto Llavador, John
Roemer, and Joaquim Silvestre predict that achieving this target will require a substantial slowing of
growth, mainly borne by the United States and China. The U.S. and China must keep growth within the
threshold of 1 percent and 2.8 percent of GDP per year, respectively, for the next 75 years, they say. In an
interview, Roemer tells us that these results are optimistic; after all, some economists have argued that
growth may not occur at all. In the paper, the three argue that "there is no politically feasible solution to
the climate change problem unless" both the U.S. and China "honestly recognize the connection between
restricting emissions and curbing growth." In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office's long-range
analyses use a growth projection of 2.2 percent on average over the next 75 years. Other economists have
come to similar conclusions about the connections between growth and sustainability. Early in 2012,
Kenneth Rogoff argued that maximizing growth must be weighed against the negative possibilities of
growth, like global warming. Indeed as James Gustave Speth notes, environmental impacts are the most
significant challenges to growth: "Economic activity and its growth are the principal drivers of
massive environmental decline." Growth constraints will push the issue of distribution to the forefront
of political discussions. In his forthcoming book Capital, Thomas Piketty predicts that growth will slow to
between 1 and 2 percent 19th-century levels by the end of the 21st century. This trend, he further
argues, will be accompanied by higher returns to capital and lower returns to labor, thereby exacerbating
inequality. The conclusions that flow from these observations are stark. The old economic paradigm relied
on unsustainable growth, so we must change the paradigm. For decades, our rising standard of living
came at a deep cost to our environment and our children's future. There is simply not enough planetary
bio-capacity to grow our way out of the messy moral discussions of distribution. The idea that
inequality is merely an inefficiency to be corrected with a technocratic fix or perpetual growth is no
longer tenable. Fortunately, we have plenty of GDP that could help the middle class, with approximately
$200,000 a year potentially available for each family of four. Given that the median family of four only
gets about $67,000 a year at this point, it should be clear that it is possible to grow and strengthen our
middle class, significantly, while adjusting to the lower GDP growth we are likely to experience in the
future. The question is, will political leaders accept the need for distributional remedies, or will they
continue to side with the wealthy against the struggling middle class?
Growth Good
Neoliberalism Bad
 Poverty, Exclusion, Disintegration, Violence, Environmental
Degradation
Neoliberalism is terrible. It causes poverty, social exclusion, societal disintegration,
violence and environmental destruction.
De la Barra, 07 (De La Barra, Chilean political activist, international consultant and former UNICEF
Latin America Public Policy Advisor 07-- (Ximena, THE DUAL DEBT OF NEOLIBERALISM,
Imperialism, Neoliberalism and Social Struggles in Latin America, 9/1/09, edited by Dello Bueno and
Lara, Brill Online)//AS)
The currently prevailing neoliberal development model has brought with it various technological advances and
economic and commercial growth. However, these results ultimately benefit fewer and fewer people
while augmenting social inequality, injustices, and promoting serious social and ethical setbacks. It
is definitely not eradicating poverty On the contrary, it creates conditions for a growing tendency
towards political, economic and social exclusion for the majority of the worlds population. The
model exacerbates poverty, social disparities, ecological degradation, violence and social
disintegration. Loss of governability flows from its systematic logic of emphasising an ever cheaper
labour force, the reduction of social benefits, the disarticulation and destruction of labour
organisations, and the elimination of labour and ecological regulation (de la Barra 1997). In this way, it
consolidates a kind of cannibalism known as social dumping that seeks to lower costs below the
value of social reproduction rather than organising a process of progressive social accumulation . For
most of Latin America and the Caribbean, the present minimum wage levels only allow for a portion of the basic consumption package needed by
working people (Bossio 2002).At present, the global income gap between the 10% poorest portion of the worlds population and the wealthiest
10% has grown to be 1 to 103 (UNDP2005). According to this same source, around 2.5 billion people, almost half of humanity, lives on less than
US$ 2. per day (considered the poverty level),while 1.2 billion of these people live on less than US$ 1. per day (considered the level of extreme
poverty).Given its neoliberal character, globalisation failed to produce the benefits that were touted. Indeed, the
process has greatly harmed the most vulnerable social sectors produced by the previous phase of
capitalist development. The lack of social and ethical objectives in the current globalisation process has resulted in benefits only in
those countries where a robust physical and human infrastructure exists, where redistributive social policies are the norm, and where fair access to
markets and strong regulatory entities are in place. Where such conditions do not exist, globalisation has led to stagnation and
marginalisation, with declining health and educational levels of its children, especially among the
poor. Some regions, including Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, and more recently, Latin America and the
Caribbean, as well as some countries within regions and some persons within countries (poor children and adolescents, rural inhabitants and
urban slum dwellers, indigenous peoples, children of illiterate women, illegal immigrants, etc.) have remained mostly excluded (UNICEF 2001).
Neoliberalism Good
 Inevitable
Neoliberalism is natural and inevitable. Its human nature. The alternative would
just lead to sketchy illegal trade.
Bowles, 07 (Paul Bowles. (London School of Economics). Capitalism. 2007. p. 25-6.)
The act of market exchange was, for Smith, "natural" in the sense that it was based upon a propensity which was found in all humans and, more
strongly, only in humans. That is, for Smith, market exchange was a central defining characteristic of our own humanness. The question "what
distinguishes humans as humans?" was a well-debated topic at the end of the eighteenth century. For some, the answer to this lay in the ability of
humans to communicate and to develop language. For Smith, the answer was to be found in humans' ability to enter into exchange. Smith (1976:
25) refers to this as "the propensity to truck, barter and exchange", in other words, to trade. This propensity, Smith (1976:
25-26) tells us, "is common to all [people] men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any
other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert.
Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavors to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the
effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a
fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to
another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that." From this view, important implications arise. Firstly, market exchange, being
based on a natural propensity, is common to all people and all places. The "market" is a universal institution arising from
an innate "propensity" within human beings. Attempts to limit exchange are regarded as both futile and
oppressive. They are futile in that they attempt to deny human nature and, as such, will ultimately fail. Thus,
attempts to limit the operations of the market in many countries , such as those which occurred in the countries of
the former communist bloc, simply resulted in the rise of "black" or "grey" market activity; that is, in market exchange which
was not officially sanctioned by the state. Attempts to suppress the market in any significant degree
could not work in the long run, since human nature would always find an avenue to escape the
shackles of any state-imposed restrictions. The contemporary relevance of this view is lot only that economic systems
which seek to radically limit the operations of the market are doomed to failure because I nan ingenuity, propelled by the
"propensity to truck, barter, J exchange", will overcome such limitations. This position o implies that the transition to a market system can be
iieved reasonably quickly, since markets will "naturally" and ontaneously develop. For example, the "transition to capit- sm" in the former Soviet
bloc could possibly be a short one if supportive enabling environment was quickly established. The second implication of Smith's argument is
that limits on arket exchange are limits on human freedom. If our humanity expressed and defined by our ability to enter into exchange
4ationships with others, then any attempts to limit these exchanges are therefore attempts to limit our humanity.
 Bad Definition/No Link
Their definition of Neoliberalism is too general. Make them provide a specific link
that takes into account the purposes and context of the resolution.
Barnett, 05 (Open University social sciences faculty, 2005 (Clive, The consolations of
neoliberalism, Geoforum, ebsco))
The blind-spot in theories of neoliberalismwhether neo-Marxist and Foucauldiancomes with trying to account for how top-down initiatives
take in everyday situations. So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop thinking of neoliberalism as a coherent
hegemonic project altogether. For all its apparent critical force, the vocabulary of neoliberalism and neoliberalization in fact
provides a double consolation for leftist academics: it supplies us with plentiful opportunities for unveiling the real workings of hegemonic
ideologies in a characteristic gesture of revelation; and in so doing, it invites us to align our own professional roles with the activities of various
actors out there, who are always framed as engaging in resistance or contestation. The conceptualization of neoliberalism as a hegemonic
project does not need refining by adding a splash of Foucault. Perhaps we should try to do without the concept of
neoliberalism altogether, because it might actually compound rather than aid in the task of figuring out how
the world works and how it changes. One reason for this is that, between an overly economistic derivation of political economy
and an overly statist rendition of governmentality, stories about neoliberalism manage to reduce the understanding of social
relations to a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental programmes of rule (see Clarke, 2004a).
Stories about neoliberalism pay little attention to the pro-active role of socio-cultural processes in
provoking changes in modes of governance, policy, and regulation. Consider the example of the restructuring of
public services such as health care, education, and criminal justice in the UK over the last two or three decades. This can easily be thought of in
terms of a hegemonic project of neoliberalization, and certainly one dimension of this process has been a form of anti-statism that has
rhetorically contrasted market provision against the rigidities of the state. But in fact these ongoing changes in the terms of public-policy debate
involve a combination of different factors that add up to a much more dispersed populist reorientation in policy, politics, and culture. These
factors include changing consumer expectations, involving shifts in expectations towards public entitlements which follow from the
generalization of consumerism; the decline of deference, involving shifts in conventions and hierarchies of taste, trust, access, and expertise; and
the refusals of the subordinated, refer- ring to the emergence of anti-paternalist attitudes found in, for example, womens health movements or
anti-psychiatry movements. They include also the development of the politics of difference, involving the emergence of discourses of institutional
discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, and disability. This has disrupted the ways in which welfare agencies think about inequality,
helping to generate the emergence of contested inequalities, in which policies aimed at addressing inequalities of class and income develop an
ever more expansive dynamic of expectation that public services should address other kinds of inequality as well (see Clarke, 2004b). None of
these populist tendencies is simply an expression of a singular hegemonic project of neoliberalization. They are effects of much longer
rhythms of socio-cultural change that emanate from the bottom-up. It seems just as plausible to suppose that what we have come to
recognise as hegemonic neoliberalism is a muddled set of ad hoc, opportunistic accommodations to
these unstable dynamics of social change as it is to think of it as the outcome of highly coherent political-ideological projects.
Processes of privatization, market liberalization, and de-regulation have often followed an ironic pattern in so far as they have been triggered by
citizens movements arguing from the left of the political spectrum against the rigidities of statist forms of social policy and welfare provision in
the name of greater autonomy, equality, and participation (e.g. Horwitz, 1989). The political re-alignments of the last three or four
decades cannot therefore be adequately understood in terms of a straightforward shift from the left to the right, from values
of collectivism to values of individualism, or as a re-imposition of class power. The emergence and generalization of this populist ethos has much
longer, deeper, and wider roots than those ascribed to hegemonic neoliberalism. And it also points towards the extent to which easily the
most widely resonant political rationality in the world today is not right-wing market liberalism at all, but is, rather, the polyvalent discourse of
democracy (see Barnett and Low, 2004).
 Extinction
Turn: neoliberalism is good. Its key to progress, and growth. Extinction is
inevitable without it.
Rockwell, 02 (Lew. President of the Mises Institute. Why They Attack Capitalism 2002
http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=418 2002)
If you think about it, this hysteria is astonishing, even terrifying. The market economy has created unfathomable
prosperity and, decade by decade, for centuries and centuries, miraculous feats of innovation,
production, distribution, and social coordination. To the free market, we owe all material
prosperity, all our leisure time, our health and longevity, our huge and growing population, nearly everything we call life
itself. Capitalism and capitalism alone has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant
sickness, and early death. In the absence of the capitalist economy, and all its underlying institutions, the
worlds population would, over time, shrink to a fraction of its current size, in a holocaust of
unimaginable scale, and whatever remained of the human race would be systematically reduced to
subsistence, eating only what can be hunted or gathered. And this is only to mention its economic benefits. Capitalism
is also an expression of freedom. It is not so much a social system but the de facto result in a society where individual rights are respected, where
businesses, families, and every form of association are permitted to flourish in the absence of coercion, theft, war, and aggression.
Capitalism protects the weak against the strong, granting choice and opportunity to the masses who once
had no choice but to live in a state of dependency on the politically connected and their enforcers. The high value placed on
women, children, the disabled, and the aged unknown in the ancient worldowes so much to capitalisms productivity and distribution of
power. Must we compare the record of capitalism with that of the state, which, looking at the sweep of
this past century alone, has killed hundreds of millions of people in wars, famines, camps, and
deliberate starvation campaigns? And the record of central planning of the type now being urged on American enterprise is
perfectly abysmal
 Extinction
Turn: neoliberalism is good. Continued growth, progress, and production is key to
prevent extinction.
Zey, 98 (Michael, Executive Director Expansionary Institute, Professor of Management Montclair
State University, Seizing the Future, p. 34, 39-40)
However, no outside force guarantees the continued progress of the human species, nor does anything mandate that the human species must even
continue to exist. In fact, history is littered with races and civilizations that have disappeared without a trace. So, too, could the human species.
There is no guarantee that the human species will survive even if we posit, as many have, a special purpose to the
species existence. Therefore, the
species innately comprehends that it must engage in purposive actions in order to
maintain its level of growth and progress. Humanitys future is conditioned by what I call the
Imperative of Growth, a principle I will herewith describe along with its several corollaries. The Imperative of Growth states that in
order to survive, any nation, indeed, the human race, must grow, both materially and intellectually. The
Macroindustrial Era represents growth in the areas of both technology and human development, a natural stage in the evolution of the species
continued extension of its control over itself and its environment. Although 5 billion strong, our continued existence depends on our
ability to continue the progress we have been making at higher and higher levels. Systems, whether organizations, societies, or cells,
have three basic directions in which to move. They can grow, decline, or temporarily reside in a state of equilibrium. These are the choices.
Choosing any alternative to growth, for instance, stabilization of production/consumption through zero-growth policies, could
have alarmingly pernicious side effects, including extinction. The fifth corollary of the Imperative of Growth claims
that a society can remain in a state of equilibrium only temporarily. In reality, a society seemingly in a phase where it neither improves nor
regresses is actually in a transition to either growth or decline. Such periods easily seduce their contemporaries into a false sense of security, that
their institutions will last forever, they have all the science they need, and there are no more challenges. In fact, during such periods some imagine
that they have reached their golden age, perhaps even the end of history. During such periods of supposed equilibrium,
the population ceases to prepare itself for new challenges and becomes risk averse. Importantly,
they reject the idea that growth and progress are necessary for their survival. The sixth corollary
evolves from the fifth. If the system chooses not to grow, it will decline and eventually disappear,
either because other organisms or systems overtake it or because it is impossible to maintain itself even at static levels without in some way
deteriorating. This is the Law of Spiraling Regression. It is indeed a curiosity of the late-twentieth-century culture that this truism has been
ignored. In the morass of claims about the risks of technological growth and its impact on the ecosystem, the mainstream media and orthodox
academics have decided not to consider what harm the full pursuance of zero growth or non growth might inflict on the sociotechnical system,
which includes our technological infrastructure, culture, and standard of living.
 Environment
Neoliberalism and globalization are key to solve the environment. International
cooperation and economic development are necessary to solve existing crises.
Chen, 2k (Jim Chen, Professor of Law and Julius E. Davis Professor of Law, 2000-2001, University of
Minnesota Law School. Pax Mercatoria: Globalization As A Second Chance At "Peace For Our Time".
November/December 2000. 24 Fordham Int'l L.J. 217. Lexis.)
The true nature of the environmental crisis. The most serious environmental problems involve "the
depletion and destruction of the global commons." n188 Climate change, ozone depletion, [*247] and the
loss of species, habitats, and biodiversity are today's top environmental priorities. n189 None can be
solved without substantial economic development and intense international cooperation. The systematic
degradation of the biosphere respects no political boundaries. Worse, it is exacerbated by poverty. Of the myriad environmental
problems in this mutually dependent world, "persistent poverty may turn out to be the most aggravating and
destructive." n190 We must remember "above all else" that "human degradation and deprivation ... constitute the greatest threat not only to
national, regional, and world security, but to essential life-supporting ecological systems." n191
 Environment
Neoliberalism solves both existing and future environmental harms while
alternatives fail. Economic evaluation and using markets for positive change are key
to the environment.
Thompson, 03 (Stanford natural resources professor (Barton, What Good is Economics, 27
Environs Envtl. L. & Pol'y J. 175, lexis))
economics is
Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable for other purposes. Indeed,
indispensable in diagnosing why society currently does not achieve the level of environmental protection
desired by the moralist. Those who turn their backs on economics and rely instead on ethical [*187] intuition to
diagnose environmental problems are likely to find themselves doomed to failure. Economic theory suggests that flaws in economic
markets and institutions are often the cause of environmental problems. Three concepts of market
failure have proven particularly robust in analyzing environmental problems. The first is the
"tragedy of the commons." n28 If a resource is open and free for multiple parties to use, the parties
will tend to over-utilize the resource, even to the point of its destruction. Economists and others
have used the tragedy of the commons to explain such environmental problems as over-fishing, the
over-drafting of groundwater aquifers, the early and inept exhaustion of oil fields, and high levels of
population growth. n29 The second, more general concept (of which the tragedy of the commons actually is a specialized instance) is the
"negative externality." n30 When parties do not bear the full cost to society of environmental harms
that they cause, they tend to under-invest in the elimination or correction of the harm. Externalities
help explain why factories pollute, why landowners destroy ecologically valuable wetlands or other
forms of habitat, and why current generations consume high levels of exhaustible resources. The
final concept is the problem of "collective action." n31 If political or market actions will benefit a
large group of individuals and it is impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, each
individual will have an incentive to "free ride" on the actions of others rather than acting themselves, reducing the
possibility that anything will get done. This explains why the private market does not provide us with more wildlife refuges or aesthetic open space. n32
Although these economic explanations for environmental problems are not universal truths,
accurate in all settings, they do enjoy a robust [*188] applicability. Experimenters, for example, have found that subjects
in a wide array of countries succumb to the tragedy of the commons. n33 Smaller groups sometimes have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons and
govern a resource in collective wisdom. Yet this exception appears to be the result of institutional characteristics peculiar to the group and resource that make it easier
to devise a local and informal regulatory system rather than the result of cultural differences that undermine the economic precepts of the tragedy of the commons. n34
These economic explanations point to a vastly different approach to solving environmental problems than a focus on environmental ethics alone would suggest. To
environmental moralists, the difficulty is that the population does not understand the ethical importance of protecting the environment. Although governmental
regulation might be necessary in the short run to force people to do what they do not yet appreciate is proper, the long run answers are education and moral change. A
principal means of enlightening the citizenry is engaging them in a discussion of environmental goals. Economic analysis, by contrast, suggests that the problem lies
in our economic institutions.
The solution under economic analysis is to give those who might harm the
environment the incentive to avoid the harm through the imposition of taxes or regulatory fines or
the awarding of environmentally beneficial subsidies. The few studies that have tried to test the relative importance of
environmental precepts and of economics in predicting environmentally relevant behavior suggest that economics trumps ethics. In one 1992 experiment designed to
test whether subjects would yield to the tragedy of the commons in a simulated fisheries common, the researchers looked [*189] to see whether the environmental
attitudes of individual subjects made any difference in the subjects' behavior. The researchers measured subjects' environmental beliefs through various means. They
administered questionnaires designed to elicit environmental beliefs; they asked the subjects how they would behave in various hypothetical scenarios (e.g., if
someone asked them to volunteer to pick up litter on the weekend); they even tried to see how the subjects would react to real requests for environmental help (e.g., by
asking them to participate in a Saturday recycling campaign). No matter how the researchers tried to measure the environmental attitudes of the subjects, attitude
failed to provide a statistically significant explanation for participants' behavior in the fishing commons. Those who appeared to have strong environmental beliefs
behaved just as tragically as those who did not when fighting for the limited stock of fish. n35 In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high
amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve
energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals
of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that
led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and
emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a
valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its
earlier levels. n36 Ethical
beliefs, in short, frequently fall victim to personal convenience or cost
considerations. Ethical views sometimes can make a difference in how people behave. Examples include the role that ethics has played in encouraging
people to recycle or to eat dolphin-free tuna. n37 But the [*190] personal cost, if any, of recycling or of eating dolphin-free tuna is exceptionally small. For most of
the environmental dilemmas that face the nation and the world today, the economic cost of changing behavior is far more significant. And where costs are high,
economics appears to trump most peoples' environmental views. Even if ethics played a more powerful role, we do not know for certain how to create or strengthen
environmental norms. n38 In contrast, we do know how to change economic incentives. Although environmental moralists should continue trying to promote
environmental ethics, economic
analysis currently provides the strongest tool for diagnosing and thus
helping to resolve environmental problems. The environmental moralist who ignores this tool in
trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration.
 Transition War
Turn: the alternative leads to global war and only worsens oppression.
Kothari, 82 (Rajini Kothari Professor of Political Science @ University of Deli. Toward a Just Social
Order. 1982. p.571.)
Attempts at global economic reform could also lead to a world racked by increasing turbulence, a
greater sense of insecurity among the major centres of power and hence to a further tightening of the
structures of domination and domestic repression producing in their wake an intensification of the old arms race and
militarization of regimes, encouraging regional conflagrations and setting the stage for eventual global
holocaust.
 Political Stability/State Failure
Neoliberalism solves state failure and political instability. Empirics prove. The
numbers dont lie.
Gurr, 2k (Professor of Government and Polics, Ted Robert Gurr et al, Director, Minorities at Risk
Project; Distinguished University Professor, Department of Government & Politics at the University of
Maryland, 9-30-2000, (State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings,
http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/stfail/SFTF%20Phase%20III%20Report%20Final.pdf))
Assessing the Impact of Trade Openness The Task Force has examined a wide range of economic variables and
their association with state failure including: inflation rates; total and per capita investment; levels
of government taxation, debt, and spending; flows of foreign aid and rates of GDP growth. None of
these, however, has proven to be significantly associated with state failure in models that also include indicators of a countrys quality of life (as
measured by infant mortality or GDP per capita relative to world medians) and regime type. The one persistent exception, for a wide variety of
global, regional, and failure-type analyses, is a countrys openness to international trade, measured as the value of a countrys imports plus
exports as a percentage of GDP. Higher trade openness is strongly associated with a significantly lower risk of
state failure. Depending on the region or type of failure, countries with levels of trade openness below the global
median were two to two-and-one-half times as likely to experience state failure as countries with
above-median levels of trade openness. Why should low trade openness go hand in hand with a higher risk of state failure?
Several economists pointed out to the Task Force that trade openness is generally related to population; countries with larger populations
generally supply more of their own needs, and their imports and exports therefore tend to be smaller relative to their domestic economy.
Economists also maintain that countries at higher levels of development benefit more from trade and thus are likely to have higher levels of trade.
However, we found that even when controlling for both population size and population density, and for levels of development, the effect of trade
openness on state failure was still significant. The impact of trade openness worked the same way whether looking at the entire world or only at a
sample of countries generally less disposed to trade, such as those of Sub-Saharan Africa. We found that trade openness was generally unrelated
to other economic and trade variables, such as the concentration of a countrys exports, or of its trading partners, or its GDP per capita. A
growing body of social-science research links trade openness to a host of other virtues, including
faster economic growth, strengthened democracy, and improved environmental performance. These
virtues, in turn, are widely thought to be associated with political stability. In this story, trade openness helps to produce
political and economic outcomes that reduce the risk of state failure. Trade leads to faster growth and more democracy,
both of which encourage political stability.
 Poverty
The numbers dont lie, free trade is the best way to decrease poverty
Adorney, 14 (economic historian, entrepreneur, and contributor for the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Hes citing studies from professors and globally recognized institutes (Julian, Foundation for Economic
Education, Free the Poor, 3/07/14, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/free-the-poor)//jk)
2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, and many claim that President Johnsons program has lifted millions out of poverty. But
if we really want to help the poor, research suggests that economic freedom does more than
government aid. Economic Freedom Within the United States In A Dynamic Analysis of Economic Freedom and Income Inequality in
the 50 States: Empirical Evidence of a Parabolic Relationship, Daniel L. Bennett and Richard K. Vedder argue that, past a certain point,
economic freedom decreases inequality. Increasing economic freedom [and] benefits the poor and
middle class more than it helps the wealthy. Bennett and Vedder analyze the 50 states in terms of their economic freedom and
their income inequality over 25 years (from 1979 to 2004). Bennett and Vedder define economic freedom as more or less the degree to which
government is limited. They measured and ranked states according to the size of government, the level of taxation, and the level of labor market
regulation. They define income inequality using the Gini coefficient. Because different states have radically different levels of economic freedom
(compare New York and North Dakota, for instance), the authors were able to draw on a wealth of data about relative economic freedom in 50
distinct economies. The authors find a parabolic relationship between a states economic freedom and
its income inequality. As states initially become more economically free, most of the gains go to the wealthy. But at a certain
inflection point X, which 21 states had already hit by 2004, the relationship shifts: past this point, as states become more free,
income inequality declines. But does income inequality decline because the rich lose wealth (perhaps through fewer opportunities for
crony capitalism), or because the gains from increasing economic freedom go primarily to the poor? In Income Inequality and Economic
Freedom in the U.S. States, Nathan J. Ashby and Russell S. Sobel find that its the latter. Ashby and Sobel analyze the 48 states of the
continental United States in terms of their economic freedom and the incomes of their poor, middle-class, and wealthy residents over 20 years
(from the early 1980s to the early 2000s). They use the same measure of economic freedom as Bennett and Vedder. The authors find a strong
positive correlation between a states economic freedom and the income level of the poorest 20 percent of residents. Freer states did better by
their poor than less free ones. In particular, Ashby and Sobel found that increasing the economic freedom of a state by one unit (equivalent to
moving from 40th-freest state to 7thfreest-state) increased the incomes of its poorest residents by 11 percent. By contrast, the same change
increased the incomes of the richest quintile by just over a third of that (4.3 percent). The middle class also saw increases, greater than the rich
but less than the poor. Increasing a state's economic freedom by reducing taxation and regulation creates broadly shared
prosperity across all quintiles. Their research helps explain why, as states become more economically free, their income inequality
declines: The poor and the middle class see more gains than the wealthy . But couldnt this be a case of mistaken
causality? Maybe some states have less poverty because they have more natural resources. With less poverty, they need less government to help
the poor, meaning theyre economically freer. But Ashby and Sobel anticipated this claim. They control for about a dozen variables, including
education, geography, and median income. The last controlled variable is especially important; it places richer and poorer states on a level playing
field, so to speak, for the study. It combats the idea that perhaps wealthier states need less government because they have less poverty, and firmly
points the arrow of causality toward economic freedom reducing poverty. Ashby and Sobels research is a compelling argument against
government poverty programs. Other research, for instance the Mercatus Centers Freedom in the 50 States annual report, notes the positive
effects of economic freedom on aggregate economic growth. But because their data is left in the aggregate, its difficult to determine to whom
exactly the economic gains go. But by breaking down their research by quintile, Ashby and Sobel make a case that economic growth especially
helps the poor. Economic Freedom Worldwide Nor is the connection between economic freedom and bottom-rung prosperity unique to the United
States. Recent research in the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) 2013 Annual Report finds the same trend internationally. The Economic
Freedom of the World (EFW) Annual Report, published by the Fraser Institute, analyzes around 150 countries in terms of factors like their
economic freedom, closeness to a laissez-faire state, poverty levels, and per capita income.
 Poverty
Neoliberalism and globalization are reducing poverty.
Obhof, 03 (Graduate of Yale Law School, Why Globalization? A Look At Global Capitalism And Its
Effects. University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy. Fall 2003)
The effects of globalization have largely been positive for both developed and developing countries. Consider, for example, the effects of the
Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, which lasted from 1986 to 1994 and resulted in agreements to reduce tariffs and other non-tariff
barriers. Advanced countries agreed to lower their tariffs by an average of 40%, and [*99] the signatories agreed to liberalize trade in the
important areas of agriculture and clothing. n32 The effects of the Uruguay Round have been both positive and large. Reducing tariffs and non-
tariff barriers has produced annual increases in global GDP of $ 100-300 billion. n33 This figure is five times larger
than the total worldwide aid to developing countries. n34 More importantly, a significant share of this increase
has gone to the poorest people. The percentage of the population in developing countries living
under $ 1 per day has fallen from 30% to 24% in the past decade. n35 The recent experience of Mexico offers an
excellent example of global capitalism in action. The extent of poverty in Mexico is shocking; 20 million people live on less than $ 2 per day. n36
This is so for a number of reasons, including government intervention in the market in the form of protectionist measures intended to help ailing
or failing industries. Using government interventions to shape the allocation of resources traditionally led to gross inefficiencies and a low pace of
innovation and adoption of new technologies. n37 Trade liberalization has helped curb such interventions - indeed, the opening of its markets has
become one of the most important and far-reaching reforms in Mexico. The effects of trade liberalization on the Mexican economy have been
significant. Exports in Mexico have increased sixfold since 1985, and the GDP of the country has grown at an average rate of 5.4% per year since
1996. n38 Since NAFTA created a "free trade area" among the United States, Canada, and Mexico in 1994, Mexican labor productivity has grown
fast in its tradable sectors. n39 Not surprisingly, however, productivity has remained stagnant in nontradable sectors. n40 NAFTA has also
improved Mexico's aggregate trade balance and helped to ameliorate the effect of the [*100] peso crisis on capital flows. n41 As most
economists predicted during the NAFTA debate, the effects of the agreement have been positive and large for Mexico. n42 The effects have also
been positive, although smaller, for the United States. This is also consistent with the pre-NAFTA analyses of most economists. n43 The positive
effects of globalization have been consistent throughout the developing world. Dramatic increases in per capita income have accompanied the
expansion of trade in countries that have become more globalized. Korea, for example, has seen average incomes increase eightfold since 1960.
n44 China has experienced an average growth of 5.1% during the same period, and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America have experienced faster growth than that in advanced countries . n45 The evidence is
incredibly one-sided. "[P]romoting openness, and supporting it with sound domestic policies, leads
to faster growth."
 War
Neoliberalism and globalization result in peace and social progress. Empirics and
methodologically sound analysis proves.
Soysa et al, 11 (Norwegian University of Science and Technology professor (Indra de, Does Being
Bound Together Suffocate, or Liberate? The Effects of Economic, Social, and Political Globalization on
Human Rights, 19812005, KYKLOS, Vol. 64 February 2011 No. 1, 2053, ebsco))
There is a large volume of research on human rights and their determinants, but theoretical models and empirical evidence on the effects of
globalization on the extent of human rights are sparse. The empirical evidence on this subject that does exist assess very simple dimensions of
globalization, typically measures such as the level of trade openness or the penetration of FDI (Hafner-Burton 2005). Instead of these commonly-
used proxies of globalization, we use an index that aggregates several factors that in combination capture
how globalized a country is along three main dimensionseconomic, political, and social
globalization (Dreher et al. 2008). As far as we are aware, no study has estimated how differentially these three dimensions of globalization
affect government respect for human rights and the degree of political terror, an important normative policy concern as well as a crucial aspect of
future socio-political development. We employ panel data for 118 countries for which there is complete data
(94 developing and 24 developed countries) over the period 19812005 (25 years). Our results are easily
summarized: globalization and the disaggregated components along economic, social, and political dimensions predict
higher human rights, controlling for a host of other factors. These results are robust to instrumental variables
techniques that allow us to assess the endogenous nature of the relationship between human rights and globalization. The results support
those who argue that increased globalization could build peace and social progress, net of all the other factors such
as democracy and higher levels of income.
 War
Trade and interdependence prevent wars. Empirics prove. The numbers dont lie.
Lee and Pyun, 13 (Lee, Jong-Wha, and Ju Hyun Pyun. Professor of Economics and Director of the
Asiatic Research Institute Korea University Assistant Professor Korea University Business School "Does
Trade Integration Contribute to Peace?." Available at SSRN 2333070 (2013).
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2333070)
We investigate the effect of trade integration on interstate military conflict. Our empirical analysis, based on a large panel
data set of 243,225 country-pair observations from 1950 to 2000, confirms that an increase in
bilateral trade interdependence significantly promotes peace. It also suggests that the peace-
promotion effect of bilateral trade integration is significantly higher for contiguous countries that
are likely to experience more conflict. More importantly, we find that not only bilateral trade but
global trade openness also significantly promotes peace. It shows, however, that an increase in
global trade openness reduces the probability of interstate conflict more for countries far apart
from each other than it does for countries sharing borders. The main finding of the peace-promotion effect of bilateral
and global trade integration holds robust when controlling for the simultaneous determination of trade and peace.
 War
Neoliberalism, free trade, and globalization solves war. 3 warrants. Empirics prove.
Griswold, 05 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at Cato, Peace on earth? Try free
trade among men, http://www.freetrade.org/node/282)
As one little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story recently reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say." According to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in
decline for the past half century. In just the past 15 years, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 18, with all of them now civil
conflicts within countries. As 2005 draws to an end, no two nations in the world are at war with each other. The death toll from war has also been
falling. According to the AP story, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below
20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Those estimates are down sharply from annual tolls
ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War. Many causes lie behind the good news
-- the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them -- but expanding trade and globalization appear to be
playing a major role. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author has argued, growing commercial
ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war, for three main
reasons. First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and
democracies don't pick fights with each other. Freedom to trade nurtures democracy by expanding
the middle class in globalizing countries and equipping people with tools of communication such as cell
phones, satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes more travel, more contact with people in other countries, and more exposure to new ideas.
Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies -- a record high. Second, as national
economies become more integrated with each other, those nations have more to lose should war
break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but
also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short,
globalization has dramatically raised the economic cost of war. Third, globalization allows nations
to acquire wealth through production and trade rather than conquest of territory and resources.
Increasingly, wealth is measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human
capital.
 Sustainable
Neoliberalism is resilient, flexible, and can be sustainable.
Peck, 02 (Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography,
University of British Columbia. Former Honourary Professorial Fellow, School of Environment and
Development, University of Manchester. PhD in Geography. ANDAdam TickellProfessor of
Geography, University of Bristol. PhD (Jamie, Neoliberalizing space, Antipode 34 (3): 380-404,
AMiles))
In many respects, it would be tempting to conclude with a Ideological reading of neoliberalism, as if it
were somehow locked on a course of increasing vulnerability to crisis. Yet this would be both
politically complacent and theoretically erroneous. One of the most striking features of the recent history
of neoliberalism is its quite remarkable transformative capacity. To a greater extent than many would have predicted,
including ourselves, neoliberalism has demonstrated an ability to absorb or displace crisis tendencies, to ride
and capitalize uponthe very economic cycles and localized policy failures that it was complicit
in creating, and to erode the foundations upon which generalized or extralocal resistance might be
constructed. The transformative potentialand consequent political durabilityof neoliberalism has been
repeatedly underestimated, and reports of its death correspondingly exaggerated. Although antiglobalization protests
have clearly disrupted the functioning of "business as usual" for some sections of the neoliberal elite, the underlying power structures of
neoliberalism remain substantially intact. What remains to be seen is how far these acts of resistance, asymmetrical though the power
relations clearly are, serve to expose the true character of neoliberalism as a political project. In its own explicit politicization, then, the resistance
movement may have the capacity to hold a mirror to the process of (ostensibly apolitical) neoliberalization, revealing its real character, scope, and
consequences.
 AT Resource Scarcity
Resource scarcity is self-correcting.
Haynes, 08 (BYU economics professor, 2008 (Beth, Finite Resources vs. Infinite Resourcefulness, 8-
19, http://wealthisnottheproblem.blogspot.com/2008/08/finite-resources-vs-infinite.html))
Its common sense. Save today in order to have some available tomorrow. Its how our bank accounts work, so it seems logical to apply the same
reasoning to resource use. But there is a catch. All of economic history, up to and including today, demonstrates that the
more we exploit our natural resources, the more available they become . (3-7) How can this possibly be? If we
use our limited, non-renewable resources we have to end up with less, right? Actually, no. And here is why. We dont simply use up existing
resources; we constantly create them. We continually invent new processes, discover new sources, improve the
efficiency of both use and extraction, while at the same time we discover cheaper, better alternatives.
The fact that a particular physical substance is finite is irrelevant. What is relevant is the process of
finding ways to meet human needs and desires. The solutions, and thus what we consider resources, are constantly
changing. Oil was a nuisance, not a resource, until humans discovered a use for it. In order to survive and flourish, human beings must succeed at
fulfilling certain needs and desires. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways using a multitude of materials. The requirements of life set
the goals. How these goals are met does not depend on the existence or the availability of any particular material. Limits are placed not by the
finiteness of a physical substance, but by the extent of our knowledge, of our wealth, and of our freedom. Knowledge. Wealth. Freedom. These
are the factors which are essential to solving the problems we face. The Stone Age didnt end because we ran out of stones. (8) Think for a
minute about how we have solved the problem of meeting basic needs throughout history: Transportation: from walking to landing on the moon
Communication: from face-to-face conversations to the World Wide Web. Food: from hunting and gathering to intravenous feeding and
hydroponics. Shelter: from finding a cave to building skyscrapers Health care: from shamans to MRIs and neurosurgery. How does progress
happen? A synopsis of the process is provided by the main theme of Julian Simons book, The Ultimate Resource 2: More people, and
increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity
causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to
search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long
run, the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen, that is, prices eventually become lower than before the scarcity
occurred. (9) This idea is not just theory. Economists and statisticians have long been analyzing the massive amounts of data collected on
resource availability. The conclusion: our ability to solve the problems of human existence is ever-expanding. Resources have become less scarce
and the world is a better place to live for more and more people. (3-7) Overall, we create more than we destroy as evidenced by the steady
progress in human well being and there is no evidence for concluding that this trend can't and won't continue. Doomsday predictions have been
with us since ancient times and they have consistently been proven wrong.
 AT Structural Violence
Turn: the epistemology behind their structural violence claims is flawed. They
isolate a single line of causality. Doing so results in inaccurate analysis and cant
solve.
Thompson, 03 (William, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of
International Relations at Indiana University, A Streetcar Named Sarajevo: Catalysts, Multiple Causation
Chains, and Rivalry Structures, International Studies Quarterly, 47(3), AD: 7-10-9)
Richard Ned Lebow (20002001) has recently invoked what might be called a streetcar interpretation of systemic war and change. According to
him, all our structural theories in world politics both overdetermine and underdetermine the
explanation of the most important events such as World War I, World War II, or the end of the Cold War. Not only do
structural theories tend to fixate on one cause or stream of causation, they are inherently incomplete
because the influence of structural causes cannot be known without also identifying the necessary
role of catalysts. As long as we ignore the precipitants that actually encourage actors to act, we
cannot make accurate generalizations about the relationships between more remote causation and
the outcomes that we are trying to explain. Nor can we test the accuracy of such generalizations without accompanying data
on the presence or absence of catalysts. In the absence of an appropriate catalyst (or a streetcar that failed to arrive), wars might never have
happened. Concrete information on their presence (streetcars that did arrive) might alter our understanding of the explanatory significance of
other variables. But since catalysts and contingencies are so difficult to handle theoretically and empirically, perhaps we should focus instead on
probing the theoretical role of contingencies via the development of what if scenarios
Socialism Bad
Socialism Good
 Utilitarianism Justifies
Utilitarianism justifies wealth redistribution.
Singer, 81 (Peter Singer, Professor of Philosophy, Monash University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey
Paul, ed., 1981, p. 50. )
Utilitarianism has no problem in justifying a substantial amount of compulsory redistribution from the rich to
the poor. We all recognize that $1,000 means far less to people earning $100,000 than it does to people
trying to support a family on $6,000. Therefore in normal circumstances we increase the total
happiness when we take from those with a lot and give to those with little. Therefore that is what we ought to
do. For the utilitarian it is as simple as that. The result will not absolute equality of wealth. There may be some
who need relatively little to be happier, and others whose expensive tastes require more to achieve
the same level of happiness. If resources are adequate the utilitarian will give each enough to make
him happy, and that will mean giving some more than others.
 AT Violates Political Liberties
Socialism doesnt violate political liberties.
Levine, 84 (Andrew Levine, Arguing For Socialism, 1984, pg 43)
What can be said on behalf of socialism in general does not unequivocally carry over to forms of socialism that replace
private property in means of production with state bureaucratic domination. Political liberties
particularly have fared badly in actually existing socialism, to the detriment, surely, of capacity-freedom; but this
shortcoming of existing socialism is, I would hazard, mainly a consequence of conjunctural political and historical
factors. With an important reservation to be noted presently, the failure of existing socialist societies to uphold political
liberties cannot be ascribed to their socialism.
 AT Socialism Bad (Democratic Socialism Good)
State Bureaucratic Socialism has problems, but democratic socialism solves them.
Levine, 84 (Andrew Levine, Arguing For Socialism, 1984, pg 43)
A desire to distribute societal benefits and burdens more equally is, historically, an important motive of socialists of all sorts, including the leaders
of existing socialist countries. No corresponding desire motivates pro-capitalist positions, though some pro-capitalists my in fact value material
equality. In any case, in so far as political will is decisive, there is nothing to impugn socialisms advantage in theory. The requisite political will
is more likely under socialism than under capitalism, even if it is not always more evident. State bureaucratic socialism is, in this
regard as in so many others, more
problematic than is the democratic model. But it is not so problematic as to require
significant qualification of the general case. We will find that democratic
socialism enjoys an overwhelming advantage
over both capitalism and the state bureaucratic model, not only for having fewer mechanisms for
generating material inequalities, but also for generating the requisite political will for achieving
equality.
 Self-Determination
Welfare enhances self-determination.
Kymlicka, 90 (Will Kymlicka, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, CONTEMPORARY
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, 1990, p 122.)
Libertarians claim that liberal welfare programmes, by limiting property-rights, unduly limit people's
self-determination. Hence the removal of welfare redistribution programmes (Nozick), or their limitation to an absolute minimum
(Fried), would be an improvement in terms of self-determination. But that is a weak objection. Redistributive
programmes do restrict the self-determination of the well off to a limited degree. But they also give
real control over their lives to people who previously lacked it. Liberal redistribution does not
sacrifice self-determination for some other goal. Rather, it aims at a fairer distribution of the means
required for self-determination. Libertarianism, by contrast, allows undeserved inequalities in that
distribution-its concern with self-determination does not extend to a concern for ensuring the fair
distribution of the conditions required for self-determination. In fact, it harms those who most need
help in securing those conditions. If each person is to be treated as an end in herself, as Nozick says repeatedly, then I see no reason for
preferring ;a libertarian regime to a liberal redistributive one.
Tragedy Of The Commons
Metaphysics/Ontology/Epistemology
Atheism
Theism
Dialectic
Naturalism Bad
Naturalism Good
 Good
Any account of ethics fails unless it uses fundamental aspects of nature to explain
morality.
Reader, 2K (Soran Reader, Department of Philosophy, Durham University. New Directions in Ethics:
Naturalisms, Reasons and Virtue December 2000. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice pp. 347-348 PC)
What is the alternative? To understand ethics in its own terms. This deprives us of explanatory naturalism.
We can't without error expect to understand ethics in any terms but ethical. This has seemed to
many philosophers to be unduly restrictive, and to threaten relativism.8 But in fact it does not lead to these
difficulties - or, more accurately, it doesn't exacerbate them. The problem of displaying the rationality of ethics in a
compelling way is real. But it is also general. It is the same as the problem of displaying the rationality of
all the other things we do - playing games, conducting scientific enquiry, writing philosophy papers. We might be able to make
connections between activities using an analogy with another game, say, to illuminate the game of chess for someone. But all we will
ever be able to lay our hands on in the activity of explaining, is more of the same: parts of our life.
The idea of our being able to use 'the world as it is in itself to explain any of our activities is
practically contradictory. And the idea that rationality - supernature, rather than first nature - can
be used to explain ethics in this way, involves a similar error. The way we think acquire beliefs,
deliberate, justify ourselves is also part of our life. It is as 'fundamental' in that life as ethics is, but no more so - no more
knowable 'in itself, as Aristotle, in the grip of a similar error to our own, would have put it, than it is 'to us', here and now, living as we live. So
explanatory accounts of ethics, whether they invoke first-nature or super natural reason, are
mistaken. Explicatory naturalism is as far as we can go. And as far as we need to go.
Determinism True
 We Follow The Laws Of Chemistry And Physics
Determinism is valid. Human decision-making is governed by principles of biology,
chemistry, and physics.
Coyne, 12 (Jerry Coyne (Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago).
Why You Dont Really Have Free Will. USAToday. January 1, 2012.)
The first is simple: we are biological creatures, collections of molecules that must obey the laws of physics.
All the success of science rests on the regularity of those laws, which determine the behavior of every molecule in the
universe. Those molecules, of course, also make up your brain the organ that does the "choosing." And the neurons and molecules in your
brain are the product of both your genes and your environment, an environment including the other people we deal with. Memories, for
example, are nothing more than structural and chemical changes in your brain cells. Everything
that you think, say, or do, must come[s] down to molecules and physics. True "free will," then, would
require us to somehow step outside of our brain's structure and modify how it works. Science hasn't
shown any way we can do this because "we" are simply constructs of our brain. We can't impose a
nebulous "will" on the inputs to our brain that can affect its output of decisions and actions, any
more than a programmed computer can somehow reach inside itself and change its program.
 fMRI Scans Prove
Determinism is valid. fMRI scans prove that our decisions are governed by the
physical nature of our brains.
Newell, 09 (Brandi Jo Newell (Department of Psychology, Wellesley College). Can Neuroscience
Inform the Free Will Debate? Indiana Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science 4 (2009) 54-64.)
For example, by utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers are able to
observe which areas of the brain are active as participants engage in experimental tasks. In one study by
Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, and Cohen (2004), participants were scanned while making difficult moral
decisions. Greene and his colleagues found that the neural activation varied systematically depending on
whether the dilemma was of a personal or impersonal nature. Additionally, depending on the relative
activation of the brain centers associated with cognitive and emotional processing, one could make
relatively accurate predictions as to how the participants would respond to the questions being
posed. Another experiment by Huettel, Stowe, Gordon, Warner, and Platt (2006) found that differential levels of activation within the lateral
prefrontal cortex during a gambling task could predict participants preferences for risk taking and general behavioral impulsiveness. Looking at
studies like these, it seems evident that the neural activations researchers are detecting have a causal
relationship with the behavior being observed. It also seems clear that it is not an immaterial soul that is
at work during the decision-making processes, but a very material brain. Furthermore, it is hard to
imagine a task that would be more under the souls jurisdiction than solving a moral dilemma. If
the brain is at work solving even this most sacred problem, chances are good (and research points
to the conclusion) that the brain is, in fact, in charge of all of our cognitive function.
Indeterminism True
 Conscious/Unconscious Distinction
Determinism cant explain consciousness, nor the conscious/unconscious distinction.
If all of our choices were determined by regular processes of physics and chemistry,
then consciousness wouldnt exist, and even if it did, our conscious and unconscious
brain activity wouldnt be distinct from each other.
 Determinism Is Nihilism
Embracing indeterminism is essential to morality itself. If we reach the conclusion
that the future is predetermined, then we have no motivation to try to do anything
good, and virtue cant conceptually exist. So even if theres the slightest chance of
indeterminism being valid, then we have every reason to embrace it for the sake of
making the world a better place rather than reaching the conclusion that we have no
control over ourselves or anything around us.
 Who Cares About Determinism/Indeterminism?
Who cares whether determinism or indeterminism is true. We have no way of
definitively proving one or the other, and if we did, it wouldnt affect the way that
we act whether thats out of necessity or truly free choice.
Idealism True
 Idealism True
We are able to perceive things, but our perceiving of something doesnt prove that
those things exist. It only proves that our perception exists. Even if things existed
beyond perception, we couldnt have any way of knowing through sense or logic,
and if we didnt have our perception, those things might as well not exist, because
we wouldnt have any way of experiencing them at all. Therefore, perception is
everything, and you prefer idealism to physicalism.
 Sensation Cant Prove Objects Existence
The senses can never provide support for the existence of anything beyond
sensation.
Berkeley, 1710 (George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710)
That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow. And it
seems no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is,
whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them. I think an intuitive knowledge
may be obtained of this by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term exists, when applied to sensible things. The table I write
on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existedmeaning
thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an
odour, that is, it was smelt; there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. [ But] This is
all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence
of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that seems perfectly unintelligible.
Their essence is perception, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds of
thinking things which perceive them. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers,
and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But, with how great
an assurance and acquiescence whatsoever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question
may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve[s] a manifest contradiction. For, what are the fore-mentioned objects but the things
we perceive by sense ? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly
repugnant [It is impossible] that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?
 No Way Of Knowing
Even if an external world exists, we could never know it.
Berkeley, 1710 (George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710)
But, though it were [it] possible that solid, figured, movable substances may exist without the mind,
corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we
must know it by sense or by reason. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our
sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that things exist
without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if
we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from
what is immediately perceived by sense. But what reason can induce us to believe the existence of
bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of Matter themselves do not pretend there is any
necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, phrensies, and the like, puts
it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there
were no bodies existing without resembling them. Hence, it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the
producing our ideas; since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always in the same order, we see them in at
present, without their concurrence.
Physicalism True
Dualism True
Who Cares About Idealism/Physicalism/Dualism?
Who cares whether Idealism, Physicalism, or Dualism are true. We have no way of
definitively proving any of the 3, and if we did, it wouldnt affect anything that we
do.