whiteflame

Wanted to make this short, but ended up having quite a bit to say.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13MFeTQ8B-nIflORdA3s0mFbC1kGp7pqoM75ZIrPOaQs/edit?usp=sharing

For the tl:dr, I found that the debaters largely argued past each other, there was too little discussion on the framework for the debate, and almost no weighing analysis. What's left on the table largely favors Pro in terms of raw numbers and impact, so that's where I vote.

Not much of a debate, so not much to say. Con's argument basically functions as a statement that we have a system in place that would function as a minimum wage through labor for the government. Pro's response comes too late (final round responses are generally bad form), but the argument just doesn't do much for me. Basically, he's just stating that this would provide a form of the minimum wage, though it's unclear how it actually benefits beyond providing more people for construction work to rebuild hurricane-damaged areas. Setting aside the fact that not everyone can work in construction, that all such disasters would only need short-term work (and therefore result in short-term employment), that they would require people to move far away from homes and families, and that the government cannot endlessly employ such a large population at such wages (all of which were points Con could have made, but likely didn't have the space to provide), Con's just getting no offense on this point - he's just reproducing status quo through a different means, perhaps slightly improving on minimum wage for an uncertain length of time.

Pro's case allows for the same kinds of wage increases through the minimum wage. He also makes a convincing case for both boosting the economy (locally and nationally) as well as the increasing number of jobs. Both probably could have been challenged in a more meaningful way if space and more rounds had allowed, but Con's response doesn't challenge Pro's reasoning, and Pro's final round reasoning was a solid rebuttal to that argument that provided more detail on how the minimum wage functions as Pro claims. Even if I am affording Con some offense through his argument, it comes almost entirely as assertion, whereas Pro's comes with clear warrants and evidence. That gives me enough reason to side with Pro.

Admittedly, I'm a little short on time, so I won't be able to post an exhaustive vote like usual. In this case, however, I don't feel that's necessary.

The framework debate, almost entirely alone, decides the debate for me. Due to the lapse in R3 (I'm really not sure why Con chose to eschew that round almost entirely), Con didn't get an opportunity to address the framework arguments Pro presented in that same round. What comes in the following round is simply too little too late, and basically just involves Con referring back to his statements on consequentialism in R1. That's not enough, largely because Con doesn't ever take the time to spell out what he means by consequentialism, except to say that the ends should be preferred to the means, though he does not examine anywhere in the debate why that would be the case. Pro spells out much more clearly what consequentialism actually looks like, and explains how it's in conflict with other facets of Con's framework, which he also characterizes with more clarity than Con. Con puts some response on the latter in the final round, but it's late, and I have to disregard it. Pro is the only one that's doing any meaningful framework analysis beyond vague statements about what should be preferred, and since I can't nail down what Con's framework is and what I can nail down appears to be in conflict, I am forced to default to Pro's framework, which receives a lot more explanation and support.

That leaves us with the Land Ethic point, an argument that receives quite a bit of backing from Pro's monism contention, to which I receive very little response beyond some misrepresentations of what monism is. Pro's arguments on this front stand largely uncontested. The only point Con has that might function within this framework is the notion that harming the environment leads to more benefits for the environment later, but I see Pro effectively addressing that by pointing out the extinction problem (which provides a clear and impassable upper limit for human advancement, and thus limits the benefits we can provide to the environment) and, more importantly, the lack of clear means to prevent ecosystem/biosphere collapse, leaving nothing to save.

In terms of general feedback, I think Pro handled this pretty well on the whole, though I probably would have focused more on Con's notion that more tech = better environment. I'm surprised the issue of damage to the ozone layer (which seems impossible to repair), in particular, didn't come up. Still, I think you hit enough points, particularly on pollution and its shorter term effects, to challenge the notion that it's fundamentally beneficial.

Con, you were strangely both overly focused and overly scattered. You had a lot of points that you didn't spend any time supporting, just claiming you could support it. When you got into depth on an argument, you spent so much time there that you missed opportunities to address the arguments Pro was bringing to the table. You don't need to go into the kind of depth you did in many of your arguments, particularly if you just present some evidence. I would have loved to see a series of examples of how resource extraction has benefited the environment, and focusing more on how there are ongoing harms to the environment that only tech can fix (and how we're on our way to fixing those problems) really would have helped your case. I felt like the entire conversation regarding humans being natural was mainly an annoying distraction from a case that otherwise made some decent points. Even if I bought it, it was pretty clearly a Kritik, so I would have invalidated it anyway.

Pro sets up a rather clear equation on which to base his comparison, explaining that by turning each of the fractions he's presented into a decimal, you can find that adding them together leads to a number that is not 1, in spite of the fact that adding those two fractions together does result in 1. The difference is infinitesimally small, but it does exist. He's essentially stating that the number 0.000r is equivalent to 0 for the same reason. While I understand Con's responses regarding the need to round in order to get a real number, I don't think that's necessary when you're comparing what is, effectively, an unmeasurable quantity. That's what Pro is doing with his argument, and while I think he could have defended it better, I don't think just railing against the lack of rounding suffices as a reason for me to vote Con. I do think there are ways to challenge this that involve more complex math, but those aren't presented, leaving me with little choice but to vote Pro.

RFD given here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q3rJX6vngQp0JCAX6g5W60teuooe5yaQ2D-iTlLFKeQ/edit?usp=sharing

RFD: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zYgdLhLOBbe18hvhz_1leW9KqvmMLV1zJ9BqIe5-MJQ/edit?usp=sharing