Instigator / Pro
24
1518
rating
1
debates
100.0%
won
Topic
#532

Capitalism is ill-equipped to deal with climate change

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
9
6
Better sources
8
8
Better legibility
4
4
Better conduct
3
4

After 4 votes and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...

Uther-Penguin
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Six months
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
22
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

Burdens:
-By "equipped", Con must argue that our current economic system can realistically expect to be able to keep global warming temperatures below 1.5 degrees within the next twelve years.
-This includes "mixed economies" or capitalist societies where the state has a share in the means of production or intervenes in the economy.
Rules:
-This debate assumes that climate change is man made and poses a significant threat to human civilization.
- This is *not* a debate on capitalism vs socialism, not is it about any socialist alternatives to environmental protection,
-Burden of proof is shared
-No squirreling
-Be civil and follow the format.
Terms:
Capitalism: "An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets" i.e The current international economic system.
ill-equipped: Incapable of achieving, in the context of this debate. Incapable of containing the global average temperature to below 1.5 C degrees within the next twelve years.
Climate change: Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). We will be focusing on anthropogenic climate change, climate change caused my humans.
Format:
Round 1: Acceptance only, no arguments.
Round 2: Opening Cases
Round 3: Rebuttals
Round 4: Closing closing cases/ Counter-rebuttals (Now new arguments)

yeah uther won

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@Ramshutu

Ok.

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@King_8

These votes would and will be removed on any moderated debates; There are only a very limited number of circumstances in which we remove votes from unmoderated debates: for the reason that they are unmoderated.

In this case the default policy is not to remove votes: however, the benefit of this policy is that others can review the vote and counter it: in a way that itself would not be prohibited on other debates.

The issue here is not bias, it’s the policy we have for unmoderated debates. While I am sympathetic to your issue (and we are still discussing it); the
Voting policy for unmoderated debates has been in place since the start of Dart, and the expectation from these debates are that votes will not be removed. Whilst you likely have a point that there is an argument to be made about changing the rules, that’s not something I can decide without wider input from the community given current debate and vote expectations.

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@Ramshutu

RationalMadman put that same exact reason on one of my debates "Rap Battle 6" it was an unfair vote because he did it since he dislikes me and he even mirrored Club's vote on that debate, so whenever you get through, it was also a troll vote. The same energy you're putting into deleting votes that doesnt go with CoC, the same should apply to me. I have a feeling Pinkfreud's votes will never be deleted and same wit RM. This site has nothing but bias and unfair treatment when it comes to mods. It doesnt matter if its a rap battle and it being an "unmoderated" debate. A b.s vote is still a b.s vote.

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@TheGreatGameLord

*******************************************************************
>Reported Vote: TheGreatGameLord // Mod action: [Removed]
>Points Awarded: 7 points to pro

>Reason for Decision: I feel as if Uther-Penguin was the better debater here. They added the definitions in one of their rounds which I know is really hard to do. Also RM made a grammatical mistake.

Reason for Mod Action> This voter is not eligible to vote. In order to vote, an account must: (1) Read the site’s COC AND have completed 2 non-troll/non-FF debate OR have 100 forum posts.

Saying that: the vote was also insufficient on all points awarded. Please review the CoC for RfD requirements here: https://www.debateart.com/rules

*******************************************************************

just finished reading. Great debate 10/10

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@Our_Boat_is_Right

*******************************************************************
>Reported Vote: Our_Boat_is_Right // Mod action: Removed

>Points Awarded: 1 point to Con for conduct

>Reason for Decision: Conduct to con for the forfeit by pro. Con kept it respectful throughout and din't have poor conduct, but pro forfeited which was bad for the debate and con as con didn't have an argument to go off of and didn't know clearly what pro's position was.

>Reason for Mod Action: The voter cannot award points merely on the basis of a single forfeit unless the voter is also awarding argument points, which they are not.
************************************************************************

Capitalism isn't the cause of climate change. Assuming that humans have affected climate change drastically by carbon emissions, though I will withhold my own opinion, then industrialization and the resulting status quo are at fault. Instead of just burning coal and oil for light and heat, we have been also using it to produce electricity for over 100 years.
China was/is roughly equal to/a greater consumer of coal during its communist era than the U.S.
Russia is #5 in oil consumption.
So capitalism isn't the cause of climate change, nor is an alternate system the solution.

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@RationalMadman

I don't know... you didn't give me a lot of time to consider this. Only 106 days? How can I possibly manage?

In all seriousness, give me reminders and I'll get to this.

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@RationalMadman

I've been procrastinating this one because the vote time is so long. I promise I'll take a look and feel free to remind me if I forget.

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@whiteflame
@oromagi

would appreciate a vote from either/both of you a lot.

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@RationalMadman

“It is better that you think you are tricking me as for some reason you bother to do things like give me the conduct vote here and such.
So, let's say you're right and I'm delusional as somehow you play nicer than you otherwise would since I shut up about it.”

I’m thinking you meant this:

“It’s best you think you are tricking me: as this way you seem to give me some points.
Let’s just keep thinking I’m delusional - you behave better when I don’t harass you for it.”

As quite frankly deciphering what you meant is a bit of a crap-shoot.

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@Ramshutu

It is better that you think you are tricking me as for some reason you bother to do things like give me the conduct vote here and such.

So, let's say you're right and I'm delusional as somehow you play nicer than you otherwise would since I shut up about it.

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@RationalMadman

The last 16 times I have voted for you - it’s 12-3-1. I have voted you to win at a rate of 75%, - which is actually better than your win ratio. I’m voting you to win a higher percentage of the time than debates you have actually won.

The draw - there were 2 other votes someone else voted a draw, and someone else voted against you: so my vote was more in your favor than the decision. Out of the times I voted against you in these 16 last debates - one was the only vote (but another voter indicated they would have mostly voted the same way. Two other times were in a rap battle (where supa also voted against you), and a 2 for 2 against an EDM debate.

So not only do I vote for you at a better rate than your overall win rate (so by definition I’m doing better than average), over the last 16 times I’ve voted for you, but every time I’ve voted against you, someone else has too (or at least agreed)

The fact that you appear overly sensitive and appear to be misremembering facts, tells me that this is simply your unwillingness to accept your arguments were not as good as they should have been - that’s what I always vote on.

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@Ramshutu

the thing is every single debate you voted against me lately, everyone else is voting for me on or neutral on. This is teaching me indeed, just not what you think it is.

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@Ramshutu

They were not bad. They were not non-topical. You just think they are; justify why they are. :)

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@RationalMadman

I voted against you because your arguments were either bad or non topical. The only real arguments on topic, that had any validity on the topic was that capitalism has innovation - which even if I accept this as true it doesn’t prove the resolution - and the idea that capitalism will deal with the problem at the last minute: this was partially refuted and cast into doubt by an argument in the shock doctrine you didn’t really respond to, and fundamentally undermines by the urgency and the fact that you never justified why “as late as possible” was unlikely to be “too late”, which was necessary for me to accept the argument.

You keep repeating these same errors of topicality repeatedly, you can either learn from the vote - or keep making the errors and being voted against.

Unfortunately - the reason for your anger and paranoia is your personal overassessment is your abilities rather than my underassessment of your arguments.

I vote on the debates in front of me.

If I wanted to vote against you, I wouldn’t have awarded conduct here, and would have dinged you on sources. You’d also be in 3rd right now - as I could have easily voted against you in multiple troll and actual debates against Type1, which would have massively harmed your current rating.

Fortunately for you, my motivations are voting on merits

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@Ramshutu

I used to think it was my error in understanding voters but as the population of the site is increasing i realise now it's not just your inability to understand my logic but intentional voting against me and hatred of my ego that's motivating your votes.

Your flawed voting style may pass for now, and heck it may pass for the entirety of your time on the site, but when you ask 'so what?' 'what does that mean?' to diminish my brilliant rebuttals in every single debate I flawlessly debate and do the polar opposite for my opponent, it's kind of pathetic since it's blatant cherypicking and toxically motivated sabotage of a person with higher rating than you.

Pro pointed out that capitalist governments seem to be easily controlled by billion dollar corporations - nothing said here refutes that by con

Con also neglects to provide a refutation to pros example both that innovation isn’t
Necessarily tied to capitalism (and it’s occurred in other systems), and that innovation from capitalism is mitigated by its inherent harm.

Pro round 4:

So pro points out that con argues capitalism will deal with the problem as late as possible: pro claims con concedes the debate (I don’t think this is literally true), and I feel he could have done a bit better to summarize how capitalism inherent last minute solution would be too late, but he points it out well enough to build on cons inherent lack of warrant.

Pro reaffirms the second pillar by pointing out the link between the necessity of government intervention - and how its previous failure shows capitalism likely can’t be harnessed - this makes a little bit more sense to me now with that clarification.

Con round 4. Con summarizes what has already been said.

As a result, pro clearly casts sufficient doubt on capitalism’s ability to deal with the issue. Cons arguments were mostly non topical, and what scant topical arguments were made seemed not to be unwarranted, and picked about by pro.

Saying this, I felt pro could have done better picking some of this apart. Though it can be hard trawling through so much irrelevance. Pro did just enough here, but if he were against a better opponent I feel this could have gone differently.

Arguments to pro.

All other points tied: I would have given pro sources has he sources shock doctrine - that was a great argument.

Conduct to con for the first round forfeit.

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@MrMaestro

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>Reported Vote: MrMaestro // Mod action: Removed

>Points Awarded: 2 points to pro for sources and 1 point to con for conduct

RFD:

Conduct:
I feal like Pro was "Moving the Goalposts". They changed the terms of the debate half way through, and they refused to debate alternatives to Capitalism. It feel that Pro was arguing in bad faith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

It wasn't clear to me as a judge that discussing alternatives to Capitalism should be off the table. Con had the burden of proof, however an argument by elimination is still a valid argument.Con argued that non-capitalist societies are worse off environmentally. Therefore, comparing the environmental state of non-capitalist countries to capitalist countries makes sense.

>Reason for Mod Action: Conduct is sufficiently explained, though sources are not. In order to award sources, the voter is required to compare the sources. The voter needs to explain how the sources were relevant to the debate. This requires that the voter explain how the sources impacted the debate, directly assessing the strength of at least one source, and explaining how it either strengthened or weakened the argument it was utilized for
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@RationalMadman
@Uther-Penguin

I accidentally submitted my vote too soon. I also wanted to point out that you were both very convincing. If we look at it from shared BoP then I would lean Con, but taking that away I have to give it a tie.

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@Alec

*******************************************************************
>Reported Vote: Alec // Mod action: Removed

>Points Awarded: 3 points to con for sources and conduct

>RFD: Pro forfeit a round but arguments were comparable on both sides. Pro cited mostly biased sources.

>Reason for Mod Action: Conduct is sufficiently explained, though sources are not. In order to award sources, the voter is required to compare the sources. The voter needs to explain how the sources were relevant to the debate. This requires that the voter explain how the sources impacted the debate, directly assessing the strength of at least one source, and explaining how it either strengthened or weakened the argument it was utilized for
***********************************************************************

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@Ramshutu

when you vote pls take note i meant smaller, not huger as i didnt realise i meant the 'ill'

The degree of 'ill' that the equipment of Capitalism is, with regards to Climate Change, is unimaginably huger in magnitude and proportion to that of Socialism and anarchy.

SMALLER NOT HUGER

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@Uther-Penguin

That's your heart racing with displeasure and fear, mine's pumping my brain full of high IQ pathways of thinking and adrenaline rush for high-quality thrill.

Tick tock tick tock

But unless you're breaking alt-account rules, I'm severely confused who you are and how you know me.

Maybe you are Dermot from CD? You wouldn't fear me if you were Brontoraptor and the others I got beef with there are Socialist-sided.

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@RationalMadman

I am taking your advice in your biography about evil enemies and not giving you a second chance. lol

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@Uther-Penguin

Still waiting for the IPCC's claim that climate change will cause 50 million refugees by 2010. To this date, there have been zero climate change refugees. Thus, all the climate change predictions are total nonsense.

Interesting, 'somebody' has blocked me.

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@Uther-Penguin

Quote - "This is *not* a debate on capitalism vs socialism, not is it about any socialist alternatives to environmental protection,"

If you put capitalism in the title, then, the debate is automatically preset to be about the only alternative which is socialism. Thus, you are a complete twit who doesn't have any inkling about politics or language usage. I wouldn't debate with a twit. Note - Communism is all about creating unfair rules and blocking fair play. Thus, I can see why you did this. lol

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@Uther-Penguin

doesn't lack******

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@RationalMadman

Tee hee

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@Uther-Penguin

"It is in this type of crisis that the private sector, namely, major oil & energy companies,"

As if that's the only company applicable to capitalism... I'm sad to see you take the exact angle I hoped you would... This will be much easier than I thought.