Total votes: 222
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XSTWIyY2dQfTWxMR75N0La52ySOLVJFCpuQ_PDoL1ao/edit?usp=sharing
Good selections by both sides, loved listening to these.
Pro sets a criterion for interpreting the resolution that can be written as "only silly people would vote Con." Con says we should all be silly. I see no reason not to embody that.
There really isn't much for me to say here. I've read through his arguments on similar debates before and there isn't much different here. He establishes that legalization improves outcomes for users by showing that the legal market would produce safer drugs, going through the chemical basis for the difference.
By contrast, Con's arguments focus entirely on a comparison to alcohol, which is notably not backed up by any sources. The case he's making has some potential merit: legal alcohol causes a lot of deaths, ergo legal heroin could also cause a lot of deaths. What's missing from this argument are the warrants for these points. It's not enough for Con to argue that legal alcohol causes deaths - if illegal alcohol caused greater numbers of deaths (Pro argues that prohibition had terrible effects resulting from contamination), then arguing that making it legal increased the damage alcohol causes is just wrong on its face. It's not enough to simply state that legal alcohol is dangerous; you have to compare the danger posed by illegal alcohol to that of legal alcohol. Pro is the only one I see doing that, and the case isn't favorable for Con. Similarly, it's not enough to argue that legalizing heroin is automatically going to cause a great deal of deaths simply because legalizing alcohol did. They're different drugs. Con had to establish the harms resulting from heroin, not merely coast on the known harms of alcohol. Finally, if you want to make the argument that the regulations that currently apply to alcohol and cannabis represent a unique harm when applied to heroin (which I believe is Con's point, if I'm reading him correctly), then that point needs to be warranted. What is it about existing regulations for these drugs that would make them more damaging when applied to heroin?
Con's case is a lot of suggestion and assertion, but lacks any meaningful support for his central claim, while Pro's case has a great deal of unaddressed material and support for his claims. As such, arguments and sources to Pro.
Fundamentally, the biggest question is this: when does a representation of capitalism in SK become accurate? There necessarily must be a point where a portrayal of that system becomes accurate - any point before that is necessarily inaccurate. That's a pretty straightforward scale and the most important thing for both debaters here to define.
So, how does each side do this?
Pro makes it rather clear that exaggerating elements of the primary message necessarily slips into inaccuracy, regardless of whatever else the story may do correctly in its portrayal. He points out several examples of exaggeration in the story, which Con largely concedes as exaggerations. So if Pro is correct in his framing of the debate, he wins.
Con also makes a pretty clear alternate framework that includes a checklist of items the show must include for SG to be an accurate portrayal, and this list is largely dropped by Pro. So if Con is correct in his framing of the debate, he wins.
While there are other reasons I considered, there's one central reason that makes the decision for me: I know what Pro's threshold is, whereas I'm uncertain where Con's resides. Both sides agree that SG has a primary message that relates to capitalism and the harms it causes in SK, so both sides agree regarding what issues could and could not be exaggerated under Pro's framework, even if there's disagreement regarding whether that framework is valid or what details can be exaggerated. The problem with Con's framework is that I don't know why this particular checklist of items is both necessary and sufficient to establish accuracy. Con keeps telling me that every example Pro mentions is unimportant, while these are important. I can agree that these themes are bigger picture, that they are more important as take-aways from the SG story, and that they are relevant to capitalism in SK. Assuming these are sufficient, how many can I take away before SG becomes inaccurate? Why doesn't the exaggeration Pro cites detract from their relevance? I agree that they make watching SG more engaging, but that doesn't support their accuracy. I think Con came up with a good set of reasons why certain elements of SG are accurate representations of capitalism in SK, but having individual accuracies in its messages and even being broadly relevant does not establish that the primary message of SG as a whole is accurate. Without a clear bar on which to weigh that accuracy more holistically beyond a few examples that largely just establish what falls solidly into either camp rather than what is close to the line between accurate and inaccurate, I have to go with the clearer metric, and that puts me in Pro's camp.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xj6CGLcLVPaADISnQKLxi8tnfmPCzc1v3xTt8zqfbpY/edit?usp=sharing
Not an easy decision for a bunch of reasons that I probably explained in too much detail, but here we are. I think both debaters did a good job presenting their points, but you both could have done quite a bit to make this a much simpler debate to judge by focusing on the bigger picture and how this debate was likely to be evaluated (or explaining how it should be).
TL;DR: I think a lot of the technical issues don't end up being important to the outcome of the debate, as it still comes down to a straight up evaluation of the net benefits of Pro's case, and, due to a combination of Pro doing more work on the impact level and a shared assumption of solvency, Pro comes out on top in a narrow decision.
Not too much to say here. I buy Con's definition of "accurate," though it's odd that the definition Con is arguing against is the very one he put into the description as the instigator. Once that's established, there's not a lot else to talk about here. Con establishes that his comparison allowed to deviate in some ways from the existing system in South Korea, and he demonstrates through his argument that there are multiple accurate applications of existing issues under the capitalist system in South Korea showcased in the show Squid Game. They may not be perfect or, as Pro argues multiple times, accurate representations of what the majority of people experience in South Korea under their existing economic system, but that doesn't mean that these aren't accurate depictions of what anyone experiences.
Telling me that this would be more accurate for China doesn't tell me that it's inaccurate for South Korea. Telling me that capitalism has positive attributes or that capitalism may not be the direct cause of all these problems isn't enough, either. It's too broad, and doesn't get at the specific cases Con brings up in his argument. I need direct responses to the comparisons that Con is making in order to show that he is making inaccurate comparisons. At most, what I see from Pro is that he's demonstrating that Squid Game paints with a broad brush, but not that it's inaccurate in representing how at least a sizeable minority experience the economic system that exists/has existed in South Korea recently, and since neither side is particularly willing to explain what goes beyond a "slight" or "acceptable limit" for deviation "from a standard," it's unclear that Pro has met any threshold for demonstrating inaccuracy, which is his burden in the debate. Therefore, Arguments to Con.
Pro gets conduct because of the forfeit.
Unfortunately, not much to say here. I thought Con might be able to present an interesting argument about when personal perception affects the way societies interact with individuals, and there were certainly the makings of such an argument in Con's first round, but they're missing key warrants. Forfeiting the next 3 rounds guaranteed a loss, and particularly with Pro's extensive response, the lack of continued argument from Con is glaring. Hence, arguments and conduct to Pro.
There's really not too much for me to say here.
I agree with Con that this debate got pretty far off topic as you each went into discussions of behavior rather than the existence of distinct genders. It didn't help the debate to go off on this tangent or any of the others regarding how either side felt on the issue. It's a fact debate. Debate the existence of the fact.
Pro basically lets Con both get the ball rolling and, by virtue of his position in the debate, have the last word, which is never a great combination, but it's still possible to win even giving yourself that kind of handicap. I will say that Pro automatically wins conduct due to the forfeit, but let's talk about the arguments.
First off, by conceding that intersex occurs in humans, Pro concedes the debate. If I buy his argument that gender and sex are identical, then intersex + male + female = 3 genders. That's more than 2, so I consider that a concession of the debate overall.
Second, I'm not really sure I understand Pro's argument. He largely dismisses the definition provided for gender by Con, arguing that a social construct is not objective fact and therefore does not exist. In that case, I think Pro needed to offer an alternate definition rather than just saying that Pro's definition is flawed. If you want to argue that the lack of any external validation necessarily makes the entire concept of a social construct or self-definition invalid because it is fabricated within the mind, then there needs to be another definition on the table. Asserting over and over again that sex and gender are the same doesn't offer a definition - it's just Pro clarifying his own views on the issue, not providing any way to externally validate his views. The closest I get to that is an argument from R2 about how job applications use the term gender in the same way he would use sex, which doesn't tell me why they're correct. Again, this is a fact debate. You have to establish that this is the fact. So, whether I agree with Pro or not, Con's the only one that's providing me with a definition I can use to adequately explain what gender is. Even if it's entirely fabricated, if that's part of the definition of gender, then I'm forced to accept that gender is fabricated... which isn't a great position for Pro to be in, since that necessarily means there can be more genders resulting from that fabrication.
So, long story short, Pro is asking judges to do a lot with his arguments and not really justifying it. He's asking that judges conflate sex and gender because the definition for gender necessitates some subjectivity, but doesn't tell me why subjectivity invalidates the definition or provide me an alternate definition to work with. He cherry-picks portions of his opponents' definition to make the case for him, but excludes essential context. Even if I end up agreeing entirely that the perception of gender clashing with sex is delusional, that only establishes that gender and sex should consistently align, not that gender doesn't exist at least somewhat independently of sex (they can be wrong in their perceptions of themselves, but that doesn't make the perception nonexistent nor does that tell me that that perception is not their assumed gender). I think if the debate had stayed a little more focused on the topic, this might have been more interesting, but as it is there's just not a lot to pick up from Pro's side in the debate, whereas Con better establishes the facts regarding gender. So that's where my vote goes.
I think when it comes to weighing what issues are most important in this debate, I'm just not getting enough reason to weigh issues of freedom/liberty over more tangible harms. I know a large part of Pro's argument comes from the position that harms are worse with drugs that are currently legal, and while I take his point, I don't think that does anything to move the needle. I can acknowledge that there are hypocrisies in existing drug policies and see that legalization of these particular drugs is still damaging, even if the harms they cause are less than the harms of currently legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. In fact, the argument could have been made that their legalization is part of the reason they're so harmful, and that piling on with more legal drugs doesn't yield a positive impact just because those drugs cause lesser harms.
Still, there's a lot to take in here with regards to the actual harms of these drugs, and I think both sides could have done a better job in this department. Pro argues extensively about the chemistry of these drugs, and while that point is interesting, I don't think it does much for his position except limit the degree of harm caused by these drugs, assuming that they're not adulterated. I think the better point is that those adulterants are only likely to be in these drugs currently because they are illegal, i.e. the chief cause of harm is the adulterants and legalizing them removes those adulterants. Pro also argues that legalization reduces the number of instances where law enforcement actively utilizes drug laws to inflict harms by planting drugs or just securing larger prison sentences that aren't warranted. I think the latter could use more explanation (there are good points there but Pro doesn't spend much time fleshing them out), but the former is decent, albeit limited in actual quantity of cases to a couple of examples.
Con's argument to this effect is initially strong, arguing that an increase in the number of people using these drugs (both sides kind of just assume that will happen) yields an increase in the number of addicts and he shows pretty clearly that addiction is bad. I don't think he's winning on the numbers of addicts, and while the adolescent point initially looks like it could bolster it, the argument just seems to disappear after R2. The trouble with this argument is that, while I buy that the number of addicts would increase, it's more difficult to buy that their circumstances would be anywhere near as bad as they are now with the presence of adulterants. I think when Con drops the issue of adulterants, it kind of sinks the whole argument that more addicts is worse than leaving these drugs illegal, mainly because the vast majority of harms are associated with the adulterants, not the addiction (bad though that is). I think Pro also makes the point well that different levels of addiction/abuse make that harm more variable than Con lets on. I think what could potentially have bolstered this point the most was the argument about regulation or lack thereof. I don't love the fact that Pro is still defining how his system would work all the way out in R3, and some of his claims about how the system would function seem to rely on some pretty loose assumptions of how these drugs would enter the market and be regulated. I think there was room to argue that this system might not be much better than the existing black market, relying on sufficient chemists to monitor marketed products and the assumption that the drug companies peddling them would not modify the recipe in ways that might not be easily caught, introducing their own adulterants. There just isn't enough of an argument here, though - Con keeps his points too general to the failures of a hybridized system rather than engaging with the specifics of Pro's system. I also just don't buy that cartels would assume substantial control over the government. That scenario needed more warrants and evidence for what happens in a legal system.
Overall, while Pro did forfeit a round (hence Conduct), I think he's winning on bigger issues of safe use of drugs in the absence of black market adulterants and preventing abuses of the legal system that cost lives. While Con has some solid points about addiction, they just don't gain the kind of steam they need to overcome these issues.
...This was a slog to read. The debate just gets incredibly repetitive after the first round and I read completely through the third before I started skipping large chunks of the same points being made over and over.
It's very simple. Pro has a general argument about why these psychoactive substances should be legalized and provides reasoning that's largely based on free access being a general good. That's fine, albeit it remains poorly weighed against safety concerns in the end. I've judged a debate by Pro before and I still don't buy the "what about this other dangerous thing that's allowed right now?" argument. It's an argument that utilizes existing hypocrisy in the legal structure as a basis for legalizing something, which may make sense on a level of fairness, but since fairness is never weighed as an impact, it feels a bit empty.
That being said, none of this matters. Con never argues against any of it beyond saying that safety matters more, so fine, let's talk about safety.
Con's sole argument against the resolution is that cocaine is bad. The entirety of his reasoning for this comes in R1, where he says "it brings about cardiovascular issues which escalate to stroke and brain seizures." and cites an article by Mark Shrayber. First off, usually a good idea to provide a link to the article so that your opponent and your audience can read your evidence, especially since this was your only source. Second, just because you say something about health harms that can result from drug usage doesn't mean that you've weighed your argument. Stroke and brain seizures are terrible, but how often do they happen and at what dosages? The article goes into some detail on this, but Con relies entirely on voters and his opponent to read into his source. You can't weigh these points just by claiming them over and over again. You can't get any extra weight just by saying that there's a safety risk that can be triggered on first use, one that could even result in death. That's a big impact, but it matters a lot more when you give numbers, and Con cannot rely on the article to provide those without quoting them in his argument.
More importantly, though, that argument has multiple counters from Pro. I see several places where he talks about mixing drugs and the effect those mixed drugs have on the body. Even if I buy Con's argument wholesale that pure cocaine presents a substantial risk, Pro tells me that the mixing of ingredients that happens on the black market results in deadlier drugs. So, at minimum, there's a boost to safety of cocaine use among those who are already using it on the illegal market, and since I don't know if or how much cocaine usage would expand post-legalization, that point stands pretty strong. But let's say I'm not entirely sure how that safety balances with the safety of pure cocaine usage. Pro also has this benefit for every other drug on his list, and with no apparent harms resulting from their usage in their pure forms (Con builds his entire case on cocaine), Pro is, essentially, achieving absolute safety for every drug on the market aside from cocaine. That's a huge safety impact, and the only response I see to all this is that the government currently makes these drugs illegal, so they must be dangerous. That's a broad appeal to authority that isn't based on any evidence. It's a weak response to the kind of biochemical information that Pro provides, and it doesn't suffice.
So, frankly, it's pretty obvious Pro is winning this on the safety level, but also beyond it since he's the only one arguing issues of freedom and fairness, despite those likely being smaller impacts overall. Pro, don't let the debate get dragged out like this in the future. You basically had this locked up by the end of R2 and you just have to stay focused on the key issues. Letting Con distract you and get under your skin could only hurt your position.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19uUewHSDGqs7WovrdFw3Wp_OjDOJkSl0izkiT95eygQ/edit?usp=sharing
It really was a great debate, guys. I don't mean to come off as though this was really one-sided because it wasn't. Both sides had strong cases to build from and, while better choices could have been made by both sides, you both made strong efforts throughout and it showed in the result. Definitely a future HoF addition and a great way to cap off the tournament.
That’s a shame. I think there’s an argument to be had here, even if it’s a little wonky given how these worlds work so differently. Still, full forfeit and concession give the debate to Pro.
Not too much to say on this one.
Pro provided a framework for his case that goes unaddressed, essentially arguing that unjust laws should not exist and that any law that inflicts structural violence is inherently unjust while providing room to argue that the net effect of a given law needs to be positive to warrant its existence. Con never directly addresses this, but he makes the case that the net effect of existing law is positive, which by itself still would not be sufficient to fully push back on this framework. That's already a problem as Con doesn't provide a competing framework. Moreover, Pro's argument includes a large stretch on human rights and that all laws ought to respect them, providing thought experiments to impact this out. I don't see any responses to these. That just leaves benefits to immigrants, which are basically dropped (Con argues that things would be worse for them, but each of his points get turned against him since they only apply due to the existence of border security), effects on the economy, which Con did talk about, and ownership of public spaces, which seems somewhat tangential to the issues of the debate but also goes dropped. That's a lot to leave on the table.
Con's arguments keep moving over the course of the debate, as he doesn't really defend previous points he has made. There is no implied "can" in the resolution, I buy Pro's response - "should" debates engage with fiat as a given. A difficult immigration system and the troubles with changing it could have been a disadvantage because changing laws tends to result in political fallout, but Con doesn't talk about that. Much of Con's position on the US economy is based on the existence of big numbers, e.g. the 500,000 people who would immigrate, but it's never clear what those numbers mean. Pro tells me a lot about what happens with each individual who comes into the US and what the cost per person is. If Con wants to argue that his statistics are flawed when numbers get too high, then it needs to be clear what the numbers we should expect are. You can't just keep saying that these numbers are big and hope to get anywhere - the cost has to be clear. Con does get to that a bit in R2 where he talks about the potential job cost for native-born people, but Pro brings a mess of sources to the table as a counter and shows that this is a correlative effect, not one necessarily driven by immigration. Con also argues that Pro's plan somehow favors immigrants, which doesn't follow - allowing entry and access doesn't mean providing special privileges. Con does hint at bigger issues, particularly in his final round where he mentions that the US has to prioritize its own citizens (would've been really nice to hear about social contracts as an alternate framework) and that it has no responsibility to foreigners (again, there are frameworks that this would build into really well), but they aren't early or fleshed out enough to affect the debate.
Vote to Pro. Also, sources to Pro. There's just a lot more support for the points he's making and much of the support that Con uses is for points he later drops.
The difference between the two given arguments is that Pro talks about it from the perspective of justification (i.e. were these characters justified in taking their actions and having their perspectives), whereas Con focuses solely on Light and talks about how it’s tragic that he had options taken away from him. An argument could have been made that this was a greater form of tragedy (opportunity cost), but there are 3 problems.
1) Con doesn’t discuss Anakin at all, so he provides no meaningful comparison. Discussing how Anakin’s life and contributions could have been different had he not been pressured to join the Jedi would be similar, but that comparison has to be made if you’re going to make this point. Light isn’t tragic in isolation, he has to be more tragic to win this debate.
2) Pro already made the argument that Light chose to pick up the Death Note. I need a response to that. Telling me he was bestowed with the Death Note doesn’t change the fact that he actively chose to pick it up and use it. You can argue that it, as well as the influence of Ryuk, makes it difficult to call it a choice, but I need to see that point. In the absence of it, the opportunity cost argument is weak because he would always choose some line of thought like this. The Death Note is a tool to push his aims, it does not direct his actions.
3) If you’re going to push this perspective, you have to cover what makes it tragic. There’s a definition for tragic character in the description:
“Tragic Character- The protagonist of a tragic story or drama, in which, despite their virtuous and sympathetic traits and ambitions, they ultimately meet defeat, suffering, or even an untimely end.”
So you have to engage on that level. You have to establish that Light has or had virtuous and sympathetic traits and ambitions. Pro largely focuses on motives, but that provides a bit of support on this level. Con does not. When Con’s argument is:
“Light would have spent the rest of his life pursuing something more meaningful and putting his high intellect to good use.”
That’s not enough. It suggests that Light might have been sympathetic if he hadn’t gotten the Death Note, not that he is sympathetic, even before he received the Death Note. Beyond that, it’s just a suggestion that he might have behaved differently, for which Con provides no support. There’s an argument to be made here about following in his father’s footsteps or talking about his pursuits, but I’m not going to fill in the blanks for you. There has to be a reason for me to see him as sympathetic based at least on what I can reasonably predict would happen, and Con’s not giving me a reason to predict it beyond basic assertion. That’s always going to be overwhelmed by clearly sympathetic history.
I vote Pro.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16FJlWjQTz74VUHxP64ubjpXkG5FTII-CAJpeU1y254I/edit?usp=sharing
Close debate. Let me know if you have any questions/concerns.
Long story short, the case Pro is making seems largely nebulous whereas Con's case is more defined, which gives him the advantage. When you're talking about "justified" as you both did in this debate (there's been a rash of topics using this word in reference to history lately and, frankly, I think all of them could do with better discussion of that word, its context in these topics, and how each side could use it), those definite impacts are going to stand out because it's an issue of net benefits, i.e. were the American colonies/world better off for having had the American revolution? When you frame it like that, the side that can better articulate both its link story and impacts is going to come out ahead.
So let's dive into those.
Pro's position largely comes down to three points: colonists were justified in rebelling against 1) taxation without representation, 2) violations of other rights, and 3) a status quo that would yield a much greater US in the future. The last of those really isn't relevant, no matter how many times Pro restates it. Long-term changes that the US chose to make are not directly connected with the Revolution at any point in the debate. Pro cites the Constitution (I don't see a direct quote, but he mentions it), but doesn't provide the kind of direct link required to make a case for the impetus of the Revolution itself being directly tied to the later outcomes like banning slavery. Points 1 and 2 give Pro a little bit of ground, but they're nebulous because it's never clear what the negative impact was. I buy that the British government was oppressive, but I don't know what that means for the colonists living under that oppression. Con points out the taxation only amounted to 1-1.5%, and while that might still be difficult to manage, it's up to Pro to demonstrate how. I also don't see a response to Con's point about how this amount was justified, since the British spent more on the colonies than they were bringing in from taxation. Similarly, telling me that a lack of representation is damaging is not enough - you have to give me specifics on how it harms the people who lack it. Pro keeps referencing "a series of events that demonstrated the British government's failure to protect the colonists' rights and interests," but I see more of a specified path to revolution from Con than I do from Pro (Pro provides a link in R1 that provides some of the surrounding events, but Con is the first to mention The Boston Massacre and I don't see the path up to that incident or anything that came after from Pro). It's all very vague, and while these points suggest that there were justifications, none of them have any weight. Even if I consider the future of the US, how do I weigh that as a justification against the harms Con cites? Pro gives me no indication.
As for Con's case, he largely turns Pro's impacts by referencing specific events and weighing his impacts. If I buy the slavery point Pro was making, Con tells me it would have happened earlier if the colonies were still colonies. He tells me the Native Americans would have been better off as well. I've got quibbles with these points, but I don't see responses from Pro. Moreover, he gives me much more direct harms: the cost of war (lives and dollars) and the loss of support from England (military and otherwise) are solid points that, again, go unaddressed. I don't think that these points are necessarily going to win the day in this debate regardless of what Pro had done, but I need something to counterbalance all this, and I'm not getting much, and when these impacts are largely or entirely conceded, they loom large on my flow. It doesn't help that Con suggests a number of other possible methods to manage the relationship without war, and while I think that's largely extra topical, Pro does nothing to argue that back, so I'm left thinking that Pro's arguments may have justified doing something, but not necessarily revolution.
All this leads me to vote Con. I also award Con sources because, frankly, he's doing a lot more across all the points. Pro's single source doesn't help him much.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-_r6dww3Ecfw_GifxdL4-8f_W7fedWRygMIFAgMufAc/edit
Let me know if you guys have questions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/157u04sNvUb3Qqir5XhwYK9QE0wIwhL6wqAL0FWpF2wE/edit?usp=sharing
It was a good debate, guys, even if it felt like it was missing some big picture crystallization at the end. Let me know if you have any questions about the decision.
Con is correct in arguing that the burden on Pro is very large. However, there are two reasons why Pro still wins this debate.
One, Pro has an absolutely massive argument sitting in this debate that is never countered in any way. Con doesn't contest his definitions, nor does he address any of the points about how indoctrination occurs, when it occurs, and how that is universal. Instead, Con provides a weak argument based entirely on anecdote where someone (he doesn't cite who it is) demonstrated the capacity for critical evaluation, which is irrelevant to the topic and this definition of indoctrination, and points to someone in the comments, which is vague and also unproven.
Two, simply stating that Pro has a high burden accomplishes nothing. Saying that the absolute nature of the resolution makes it hard to support doesn't help your side unless you also give me a lot of instances that contradict that resolution. Arguing that there might be countless people out there for whom the resolution is not true is ipse dixit - it's an assertion without proof. You can't use that as a case against Pro - you have to actually demonstrate the flaw, not just claim that there is likely is one. Pro demonstrates his case with evidence. Con leaves it up to voters' imaginations.
Con conceded the debate.
The biggest problem with this debate is that it gets to bogged down in the back-and-forth on specific arguments that it largely doesn't go anywhere after the first round. There are additional arguments sprinkled in and further rebuttals, but the cases are made at the outset and neither side does a whole lot to expand on the essential points of their side, since you're both so caught up in the line-by-line. I think the opening rounds by both sides are good, but until the last round, neither side really takes a step back and evaluates the bigger picture.
ME and CE are clearly defined in the description. The distinction is solely on one level: who should control production and pricing - the government or the people? There's a lot tangled up in that, but as this is also limited to two countries with known systems (Cuba and Vietnam), there are pretty discrete limits to what can be discussed. So it's good that both sides talked a lot about where these countries are right now on that sliding scale and why elements of ME or CE have been helpful or harmful to them. I thought there would be a lot more discussion of what it would take to push each of these countries in either direction, but that was surprisingly limited. Instead, a lot of the discussion moves to other countries and their implementation of ME and CE, which seems to complicate things more by introducing a variety of other factors that might explain those differences. If one side had really focused their on what this shift would look like within these countries - talked about implementation and weighed the harms and benefits of both directions - I think that would have been an easy way for me to decide the debate.
As it stands, though, there's not actually that much for me to mention. There's surprisingly little acknowledgement by either side of the failings of the system they're defending, especially after R1, since both sides spend the rest of the debate focusing on hyping up their system and attacking the other. It makes me question whether a lot of the positive points apply to absolute ME or CE, but that's just a general frustration. The back-and-forth largely favors Con, since he sources more of his rebuttals and those support more specific points that apply to how these affect economies. One of the bigger examples of the contrast between the two sides is Pro's consistent claims of financial collapse juxtaposed with Con's focus on poverty, income inequality, economic growth and capacity to rebound from crisis. There's just a lot more steps present in Con's points that, while not always effective in turning Pro's points, at least introduce enough doubt that none of Pro's points come through unscathed. By contrast, the comparisons to other countries and, in particular, the authoritarianism argument emerge relatively unscathed and while their value as a Kritik is... questionable (I don't see voters specific to buying the Kritik and it largely just morphs into a disadvantage with a distinct link story), it's also the strongest connection we have to how countries behave when they are pushing towards a CE structure.
I don't think either side runs away with this debate, but while I'm not fond of the "add up impacts and give them a score" RFD structure, it's hard to ignore just how many rebuttals and counter-rebuttals Con is employing and how the responses to those from Pro lack the specificity and support to match them. It's also the only basis I have for voting in this debate, as neither side provides a framework that would make certain points stand out. It's just a straight up "who's winning on the flow" situation. As such, I vote Con.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xgJoMKpTOpfa799-qqqrfcyVYXnuUgNU_q6-QReNgx4/edit?usp=sharing
Good debate, guys. Sorry to hear that it's your last, RM.
Full forfeit. Best of luck to both debaters in the rest of the tournament, hope Lxam can participate in future rounds.
Unfortunately, full forfeit. Good luck in the finals, Austin, and hope whatever kept Lxam busy is soon alleviated or remedied.
Full forfeit.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eq13NnfB2hB2g13R2XwvuUY1oEvad0nDMlmPV-nq8Yg/edit?usp=sharing
Interesting debate, guys. If you have questions or concerns, feel free to tag me in a comment or message me directly.
I consider an argument generated by AI to be plagiarism, so that would be reason enough to grant the debate to Pro, though the full forfeit definitely doesn't help.
So, in general, I'm not a big fan of how this debate is set up. This isn't a comparison between two different philosophies - it's a comparison between a nuanced capitalist system with socialist elements ("America's current form of capitalism") and just straight up socialism. It's not that it's unclear, but it's also clearly imbalanced for two major reasons: one, a socialist system like this doesn't and has never existed in America or elsewhere, and two, it seems best to compare philosophies, and the philosophy behind the current system in America is mixed at best. I think both of these realities were underutilized by each side.
Pro, repeatedly pointing to failed systems in other countries doesn't get your point across because it's not establishing concrete realities in the US, and being overgeneral about how a socialist economy would work in the US similarly runs into potential problems as your opponent isn't confined to a single way of implementing socialism. Yes, he has to follow the definition, but as he discovers much later in the debate, there's nuance in how that implementation affects the market. It comes too late to matter, but you should be designing your points in a way that rejects any application of socialism on this scale.
Con, you are arguing a philosophy of economics against an established system. I honestly expected you to jump all over the fact that there are established, clear and huge harms to the existing American system, while the vast majority of what Pro comes up with to counter socialism is economic theory. One has solid, known impacts. One has theoretical impacts. That's a big difference that you could have used in your favor. For that matter, you kept bringing up how socialism plays a role in the economy to bolster your case when you should have been using it to undermine his. You're going for more socialism. You have to say why that increase is beneficial with concrete examples. You can, however, stay pretty general when you talk about how the benefits he claims to gain from capitalism are undermined by the very forces he says are so corrupt. Most importantly, though, your biggest problem is that you don't land on a clear policy position. You keep jumping between positions, talking about Finland as a model for it (despite that country not meeting the definition), then democratic socialism, then about how "socialism can adapt to american needs," then about moving away from the mixed economy. It's not clear what actually happens beyond what's spelled out in the description, and that's not good when it comes to claiming that you have benefits because I don't see anything that isn't tied to one of these somewhat tangential comparisons.
What ends up happening is that there's almost no debate over what the existing system in the US does well or does poorly. Pro argues that it's necessary to have the capitalist elements to ensure progress and a stable, growing economy. Con's responses are largely to point out things like lead poisoning that just don't stack up meaningfully against that argument and don't seem particularly unique to Pro's case. And with no clear position for Con to take, he spends most of the debate shifting his case around looking for ways to find benefits, largely conceding the set of harms laid out early in Pro's arguments. They're overgeneralized and poorly applied, but given that it's impossible to nail down Con's position, I can't fault him on application. That's enough for Pro to win the debate.
Honestly, neither of you seemed very interested in addressing the topic throughout - you both seemed more interested in the tangents. The topic is:
“Is abortion murder from the point of conception?”
That’s a fact topic, and early on, there’s some debate over it. What is being aborted? Can it be called murder to abort that stage of a human life? Those are relevant questions, as is the question of what murder is in the “moral sense,” though I think those questions answer it for the purposes of this debate.
Everything else is window dressing. Pro argues multiple times that he’s going to prove why it’s bad to abort, which is as irrelevant to this topic as Con’s argument that murder of certain forms of life isn’t bad. Abortion can be murder without making any judgement calls on whether said murder is justified. And much as Pro’s argument uses this as a portion of his overall argument, Con relies on it almost entirely, as though the main purpose of his argument is to challenge the supposition that murder is bad instead of engaging with the central question of the debate. There is most definitely some interesting discussion to be had on these tangents, but as they’re not related to the debate, I go with what I have.
Con effectively conceded the debate in R3 by saying that he wouldn’t engage in the semantic debate any further and then in R4 by bringing up the legal definition for murder as justification for his position on the topic, the latter of which doesn’t work because of the specification made as regards the definition of murder in the description. Pro, meanwhile, largely rests his hat on the argument that the scientific community has already effectively defined when a human being starts, so it must be murder. I’ve got problems with that point, mainly because they don’t engage with the “why” of it from a biological perspective, but there are more logical justifications and they aren’t really challenged, so they stand. That’s enough to win.
Pro argues that we need to avoid bias in news media. Con concedes this. Expanding on that, Pro offers in R2 that it affected the COVID-19 response. This is a great start to an argument, especially when taken together, but it still lacks in two areas: solvency and impact. I'll focus on solvency when I get to Con's case, but on impact, it pays to spell out what the actual harm of this bias is. Just saying that there have been two different schools of thought on the pandemic doesn't tell me what that actually results in as a concrete harm. Con grants you a lot of your internal links, which means he grants how effective media bias can be in shifting opinions. Work with that. Tell me why shifting opinion on COVID-19 led to a serious harm for society at large. It doesn't require a lot of explanation, and it establishes a basis for why a given truth about COVID-19 being undermined is so harmful.
Con's argument, meanwhile, comes with a serious amount of storytelling as he explains two important principles that drastically affect Pro's solvency: masking and the impact of neutrality. The masking point, in particular, is something Pro had to address in order to establish that this requirement has teeth, and I don't see any effective response. Companies will work within the requirements to keep shilling for their side of the political aisle, and realistically, their rhetoric won't change beyond the introduction of a token "opponent" to be included in discussions. Many news outlets already do this. Responding with "people are biased now" only tells me that little, if anything, will change post-implementation. What's more, since this is masking, it provides an air of legitimacy to their actions that previously didn't exist. Now, these companies are following the protocols, so they must be impartial by the government's standards. That's a net negative when both sides recognize that bias is non-unique. I don't see any responses to this.
But Con takes it a step further. He also argues that anything that is excluded as "biased" is a loss we can ill afford, essentially turning news media into mouthpieces of the majority parties to the exclusion of critical views. While it's not given as a direct response, to Pro's point on COVID-19 could be seen as a response, with Pro arguing that some of those critical views are net harmful. Still, that would be me stretching Pro's argument to places he doesn't use it, and even if I did, it would also mean adding missing pieces, like a clear set of harms that establish certain views of COVID-19 and the responses to it as net harmful. And if that were all the case, I would still have to balance that against a more existential and wide reaching harm that Con sets out: the availability of critical arguments is the only means by which the biases that both sides decry can be adequately challenged. Con is effectively arguing that Pro is increasing bias towards more centrist viewpoints and nixing outliers. If bias is paramount, and it's unclear that more extreme viewpoints are necessarily harmful, then this is reason enough to vote Con.
50% forfeit. Too bad, this one looked good.
A frustratingly low effort affair from both sides that makes the decision far harder than it has to be.
Pro presents a case that amounts to a logical argument premised on statistics that he doesn't present. Bias is a quantifiable metric. Distrust can be evaluated. Apathy/disengagement is quantifiable. Corruption and control efforts are documented - examples should be plentiful. Rates of depression and anxiety are quantifiable and their links to receiving news, specifically, from social media should be sourced information. The link between that and depression and anxiety should be provided. Providing a list of 4 sources at the bottom of your argument without taking any relevant information from them or even showing what arguments those sources support does very little to support your arguments. You cannot expect judges to dig through your sources to find the support you need for your points, and frankly, only the one about bias seems directly relevant to this debate. For that matter, it's important for Pro to distinguish that it's not all of social media that's causing these problems, but the fact that social media is on the rise as the primary source of news distribution. Giving me a coherent story for how that could be harmful is a start, but you keep drifting back and forth between evaluating social media as a whole and evaluating it as a distributor of news. It also really doesn't help when you keep talking about how social media could become a primary source of news distribution. The resolution assumes that it IS a primary source, not that it could become one.
Con's opening is even more frustrating. It's an argument that treats the resolution as necessarily false by saying that, since social media is on the rise, individuals are choosing to engage with it in this way, ergo it does... more good... than harm. Out of R1, that's not an argument. It's just an assertion that rise in use = beneficial to individuals. By R2, that assertion has a link story now that is... another assertion: "people would only choose what is net beneficial". Lovely. The story here just doesn't make any sense, either: Con basically just says that people do things because they find some benefit in it for themselves (not always true, but fine), therefore it's net beneficial, which... doesn't follow. Achieving some benefit does not automatically yield a net benefit for a given choice.
So both sides are asserting a lot in this debate. It really doesn't help that Pro forfeits R3, which was his only opportunity to respond to the expanded reasoning from Con. Still, even without a response, I'm still voting Pro. At least his case had a clearly established set of harms with as much or more elucidation on why they're harmful than what Con gave, and that's excluding the sources which are at least present in the round. Con's only source is an analysis of net balance debates, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. He's essentially placing a burden on Pro to do more weighing analysis, which might be important (emphasis on the "might" - it's a pretty weak burdens argument that's basically just "this is what you should do if you want to do optimally under this framework") if Con had himself compared the benefits for individuals to those harms spelled out by Pro, since you both share that burden. I don't see responses to any of Pro's arguments beyond the fact that they aren't directly sourced. Con doesn't tell me that these arguments don't have merit, so he's conceding them, and since they have more support (logically and evidence-based) than Con's argument, I vote Pro.
Full forfeit. The failure to argue at all outstrips any failure to adhere to an internal rule of the debate.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zb91FS_HFW8Y_xhpdwH0YX1ztZU-SFbR_FSgxcLav04/edit?usp=sharing
TL;DR: the definitional debate largely didn't end up mattering, both sides had potentially strong impacts, but Pro's held a bit more weight in the end.
It was a close one, so yeah, I went a bit longer than I intended initially. I don't mean to be overly negative in this, but if I come off that way, I'll just say here that I think both sides had solid arguments, though they could have used more polishing. Not a fan of how the definitional debate went down, but I think both sides share some blame for that.
Pro concedes the debate with the following sentences:
"There will be some professions where statistically, men make more than women."
"As it currently stands, there are likewise professions where women make more than men."
"The Gender Pay Gap doesn't exist, but the Reverse Gender Pay Gap does."
"In different professions, the statistical evidence may very well show that women come to earn more than men or the reverse."
Honestly, after all this, Con's argument is dispensable. Pro acknowledges the existence of a gender pay gap. He challenges whether it exists because of gender discrimination, but the title of the debate is "The Gender Pay Gap doesn't exist." Cause is irrelevant. Amount is irrelevant. Direction (favoring men or women) is irrelevant. Its existence is all that is relevant. Con demonstrates that one exists and does so at 7%. Pro's only reason why this does not hold is because it's the number of people in a given career from each gender, which again, is about what the cause is, not whether it exists. Pro concedes the debate, Con wins.
"All psychoactive substances should be legalized for adults to purchase, possess, and use."
That's the topic. The topic is not "All psychoactive substances MUST be legalized for adults to purchase, possess, and use." As Con himself states, there must be some moral obligation to legalize these drugs, but that moral obligation can be achieved in multiple ways. If something should happen because it achieves a certain net benefit, that is sufficient reason to say that we "should" do it. So, while Con keeps arguing throughout the debate that Pro must meet some arbitrary threshold that, as he put it, "demonstrate[s] the need for psychoactive substances," it's neither clear that the resolution demands that threshold be met, nor is it clear what the threshold is. The two issues of "who" and "why" aren't thresholds, so it remains unclear throughout the debate.
So, yes, while the burden of proof is on Pro, I think the problem for Con is that the burden doesn't set the bar high enough to functionally make it unnecessary for Con to argue his side of the debate. Sure, Pro is required to present some reason to legalize psychoactive substances, which he does: correlative data shows a reduction in overdose deaths (just saying that it's only correlative doesn't invalidate the point, it only makes the link more tenuous), which likely result from a more consistent composition and better education (admittedly the latter point is non-unique since both sides claim they can do it), as well as the benefit of having fewer people rotting in jail (not a lot of impact built off of this, but Con's response that it can also be a reason to make murder legal isn't particularly convincing - it's a point that's meant to contrast with the harms of allowing the activity, which was a point Con never made). That's something, it's a non-zero reason to believe that legalizing psychoactive substances produces a genuine benefit. There are points to be made against this, but just denying that there's a solid point here isn't enough. As such, I vote Pro. Also, sources to Pro, since he backed up his points with substantial sources (even if they didn't fully prove his case, they proved aspects of it), whereas Con's responses to those sources were highly generalized and he didn't present any himself.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mCu0_bi1kemyqjwZ-GNKKimzKlxnUHvsBuZdLvodzik/edit?usp=sharing
Good debate, guys. Close one.
I'll start with the semantics debate.
There are a couple of jargon terms in debate that could probably have been used to better frame this: fiat and inherency. Fiat involves saying that, when we engage on certain resolutions in debate, we discuss them under the assumption that it will happen (i.e. that any inherent barriers to action will somehow be circumvented). Fiat is almost part and parcel with a "should" resolution, as what's being discussed is whether or not Lancelot should be president. Those inherent barriers to action (inherency), however, do not get dismissed because fiat exists. You can fiat that all problems will be overcome, but you can't fiat that those problems will be overcome without in some way causing harm. You can say, for example, that we should pass a given piece of legislation, but also recognize that doing so would require making concessions to a given side of the political aisle and talk about the harms those concessions cause. In other words, those inherent barriers can't function as reasons to affirm the resolution in and of themselves, but the effects of breaking them can.
So that means a lot of this debate goes away, since both sides focus much of their attention on this issue. It comes down to one point per side. I'll start with Con.
Con presents a set of reasons for supporting his presidency after stating existing problems. That's fine. The problem, however, is that all of these are unverifiable claims. Con doesn't link to anywhere that confirms the existence of his following, nor does he confirm that that following would be likely to follow his advice for an entirely separate site. The funding is, admittedly, unverifiable without providing information that clearly shouldn't be made public, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a big claim without any support. It's unclear how much money Con has, how much he plans to spend, what he plans to spend it on, etc. The coding team is probably the most egregious claim, though. Again, probably not wholly verifiable without problems, but just claiming you have one and claiming their willingness to work on this project, not to mention asserting that Mike would accept the help, is not enough. There's too much assertion here and no evidence.
Meanwhile, Pro's reasons against Sir.Lancelot's presidency are heavily mitigated. He's right that changing two rules to allow his run at the presidency could have problems, but Con's sole piece of evidence shows that moderation has that propensity anyway and demonstrates that any effect would be linear at worst. Pro acknowledges the problem, but doesn't do much to establish what effects this will have. How many people on the site are likely to turn against moderation as a result? How much will that harm the site? Is there a specific and deeper harm to allowing some candidates to circumvent the rules of the site just because they promise a lot? I think these are all relevant points for Pro to address to establish the degree of impact that his case against Sir.Lancelot's presidency has.
So neither side has a stand-out case. Con's might be entirely illusory, given the absence of any support for his central claims, and Pro's case might have no impact at all given that we don't know how breaking these rules for this person is likely to affect the site. I'm tempted to go with Pro on that basis, since there is at least something there with an established history to it, but it's unclear that this harm exceeds that history in any way. Pro can call it a non sequitur and irrelevant, but the point stands: why is this particular choice to break the rules the one that should concern us?
Given all that, I tie the argument points. Instead, I award Pro sources. The absence of support for Con's central claims is really glaring and hard to get past, whereas the problems with Pro's case come from having too much information regarding how the mods have handled election rules.
RFD: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1auBtKAwjpTkyeKYOk-9HPfzcxkJ1GTa0A7c3Rc8rBSY/edit?usp=sharing
Let me know if you have any questions/concerns.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r9efWyga1_KjF37Pn6PBauqc9RhqjSSxtBQ2ls_bNsI/edit?usp=sharing
I thought I might have to do a longer RFD for this, but honestly, there's not much to talk about. Pro's argument goes largely unrefuted, and Con's argument is largely built on arguing that Pro cannot affirm the resolution if certain conditions aren't met. So, let's talk about those conditions.
He starts off by arguing that the topic is an absolute, i.e. that any individual instances of "slowing the spread of COVID-19" are sufficient to negate. This is a nitpicky argument that I'm having trouble getting on board with from the start, and it devolves into semantics. The inclusion of an "on balance" or "on average" would have helped, but just because the topic lacks those doesn't mean that you can insert the term "in any instance" into the start of it. The topic pretty plainly addresses the whole of the issue: what have the vaccines done as regards to the spread of COVID-19? Did they slow the spread or did they not? If they sped up the spread of the virus, then on the whole, they did not slow the spread. That's a pretty straightforward interpretation, and while Con claims that Pro never addressed all this in his final round, it's pretty clear that he did. The absolutist interpretation only spreads so far, and frankly, Con doesn't do enough to support it. Simply saying that it's possible to interpret the topic in that way, as far into the debate as R2, is not enough. There's some discussion before that about whether speeding up the rate of transmission would count in Pro's favor, and frankly, it does. The rate of spread needs to go down for it to slow. If its rate goes up, then the rate required to be called "slowing" requires a higher threshold. I think this debate could have done with some clear burdens up front that examined this, but that's how I'm interpreting it.
It doesn't help that Con's support for his side is relatively light. Con provides a single source in R2, which includes a number of internal sources. Pro responds to all of them by the end of R4, and yes, he is allowed to address those sources going into the final round. It was still up to Con to defend them, which he barely does. I buy that the research presented complicates Pro's conclusions, but Con doesn't seem concerned in the slightest with the possibility that winning on that level may not be sufficient to win the debate. A lot of the rest of Con's case is built on introducing more uncertainty. Uncertainty is fine, but you still have to win that your studies are demonstrating that uncertainty and not so flawed that they should be dismissed out of hand. I don't agree that they should be dismissed as readily as Pro seems to believe, but Con had to do the work to support them. Even if he had, though, the absence of any direct comparisons between studies just leads me to believe that, with all things taken into consideration (the speed ups of transmission presented by Pro and the slow downs presented by Con), it's more likely that things lean in Pro's direction, meaning that the vaccine in aggregate didn't slow the spread of COVID-19 based on the presented data. That's enough for me to vote Pro.
Con, I think relying on skewed interpretations of the resolution is only ever going to work if your opponent isn't actively arguing back the point. If you both have interpretations of the resolution, then the judge will decide which is more reasonable, and when you're arguing that the topic should only be interpreted in the most absolute of terms, that's not going to help your case. You did a lot of semantic work here, but frankly, it seemed mostly nitpicky and dedicated to pointing out how Pro could have specified the resolution better rather than how the topic should actually be interpreted. You might have had a better chance convincing me if it didn't feel like every round you were moving onto a new semantic problem rather than engaging in the debate before you.
Full forfeit.
Neither debater seems to like or want to argue on the topic for much of the debate. A reminder, the topic is: "Kashmir is an integral part of India"
That's an "is" statement, suggesting a fact debate about what Kashmir's existing status is. That is distinct from an "ought" or "should" statement, which would have suggested what would be most beneficial for Kashmir and its inhabitants. Yet, the latter becomes the focus of this debate from the beginning of Con's argument. So, really, the only on-topic argument given in this debate is a history breakdown from Pro in R1, where he states that an accession proposal was signed and that that was tantamount to accepting their merger. Whether this makes Kashmir an "integral part" of India is unclear, but it at least treats this as a fact debate with regards to whether evidence suggests that, at least on the basis of this one agreement, Kashmir is a part of India, if only in this sense. That's the only fact-based support for why they are a part of India and not just why they should be a part of either India or Pakistan. If this was an ought resolution, Con would have done more than enough to support why Kashmir should be a part of Pakistan over India. Given that it wasn't, and given that Con is the only one with an argument on the fact resolution, I vote Pro.
Some of Pro's arguments end up going nowhere, including the consistency with the acronym's components (Con pointed out that there are a wide variety of acronyms with similar inconsistencies, and it's unclear that this causes any problems) and confusion with the brand Jif (Pro basically drops this after R1, since Con pointed out that their context in sentences makes them distinct). For Con's side, I'd say the same about how Wilhite used it. It's not really relevant to whether it should be used a certain way, nor is the relatively weak instance of confusion that may result from slurring the word "gift" something I would consider strongly. Maybe sentence structure could cause problems here, but as Pro points out, it's simple enough to clarify. Pro made an effective argument for why text to speech is the greater consideration, regardless.
It's in the rest of the points that things get more interesting, though both sides run into internal inconsistencies.
Pro starts off by arguing historical usage of the letter "g," but then argues that language is dictated by popular usage. One of those points is paramount, and Pro ends up emphasizing the latter, but having suggested the former, it's difficult to give him this point wholesale, even with what I would consider a relatively weak response from Con (saying that he's shifting the goalposts doesn't really tell me anything - Pro can argue what should occur by any means he wishes so long as he does so before the final round, and I wouldn't consider it a truism to argue that popularity should be the paramount metric).
Con doesn't do himself any favors, either, since he dances from the position that all he has to prove is that they're equally good to the position that "ʤif" is the better pronunciation. These positions aren't in direct contradiction, but Con does end up sacrificing the former for the latter, since the former drops out of the debate almost entirely after the first round. That's probably for the best, since the former doesn't provide much in the way of offense and would have required that Con beat back every argument Pro made to win. Still, it means much of Con's opening round, which focused on defeating Pro's points and presenting his sole argument that they should be treated as equally valid because dictionaries say so, end up rather weak because Con just doesn't seem to care about them by the end. Giving yourself two independent avenues to win is rarely an ineffective strategy and it could have worked here.
Still, uncertainty becomes Con's sole way to win this debate, since the only argument in his favor at this point - that we reduce confusion to use his pronunciation - is nonunique, as both sides reduce confusion. So if Pro doesn't have any benefits beyond that, then I vote Con.
But that's the thing: popularity is a benefit. I don't agree with Pro that popularity inherently imparts correctness to a term, but if it is the most common usage, then it is most effective at reducing confusion for the most people because fewer people have to change. I can see reasons for going the ʤif route, but since confusion over terms seems to be a common thread throughout this debate for both sides, since I don't see a reason why I should disregard popularity as an issue when it comes to linguistics, specifically (Con had the opportunity in both R2 and R3 to make this case), and since popularity clearly affects confusion, I end up voting Pro.
RFD given here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UvsRs2_mNCWYsLy5ufZoAGvduqCEq9Je3Xc2rTU3bng/edit?usp=sharing
TL;DR: Con effectively utilized the absence of thresholds from Pro's arguments, as well as points that Pro either dropped entirely or punted to Con early, to establish that he at least meets some criteria for what Pro considers to be a good debater. Since Pro didn't include offense in his argument (e.g. why Barney is a bad debater), largely just undermining the question or arguing that he can't demonstrated that he is, winning on any of these points was sufficient to net Con the debate. Con wins on some of them, so I vote Con.
Whew, almost ran out of time with this one. Here's my RFD:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F1ZGIUycM3PjfPdcyWtWTyzn9YWLD7qGs8W7P6bAcxo/edit?usp=sharing
Long story short: the debate came down to Wisconsin, and the numbers just didn't add up in Pro's favor. There were many opportunities for both sides to win more concretely via other aspects of the debate that were little mentioned or misrepresented, but I still think this was a strong debate by both sides.
There's a lot of discussion in this debate over what makes a strong vs. a weak democracy, particularly from Pro. That's not a particularly relevant question in this debate, since this debate is a yes or no question: does the US have a democracy or not? The case Pro brings argues that the system is often oligarchic, which he does support, but Con makes a rather convincing case that democracy still exists within the US, albeit sometimes without the typical majority rule system. Pro concedes that majority rule does, at least sometimes, play a role in how we elect our officials, since he only mitigates the evidence Con presents. As such, we need a clear delineation, i.e. what would make the US a non-democracy? Pro stipulates that there are three distinct elements that are all required to call a country a democracy:
"(CA) public opinion has significant impact on lawmaking.
(CB) each individuals voice is of equal power.
(CC) the population is called to a free election at regular intervals"
Pro concedes the third. Pro also concedes the first, since he concedes (largely by omission) that public opinion has a significant impact on who becomes/stays a lawmaker, and as such, there is at least some significant impact on lawmaking. The only question is whether each individual must have equal power, as Pro does make the case quite convincingly that that equality does not exist.
The problem here is definitional. It's unclear from Pro's definitions that equal power must exist between voters for it to be a democracy. His Dictionary.com definition does include the necessity of "equality of rights and privileges" and "political or social equality", though in both cases, it's unclear how much equality must be achieved to be called a democracy. Must this be absolute? Also, it doesn't help that Pro presents two definitions, the first of which (from Oxford) doesn't include these specifications of equality, nor does Con's Merriam-Webster definition. So if the majority of definitions in this debate don't include this stipulation, I need to know why Dictionary.com definition is the end-all-be-all, and I need to know what degree of equality is required to meet the threshold for democracy. In the absence of that clarification, all of Pro's arguments end up on the sliding scale between weak and strong democracies. Con basically concedes that the US is a weak democracy, but he nonetheless demonstrates that, under the majority of definitions in this debate as well as those best clarified throughout the debate, it is still a democracy. As such, I vote Con.
The resolution is a contingent statement: Pro's agreement is required in order to demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with a parent killing their child. As such, it was Pro's burden to demonstrate that his agreement with incidents where this occurs is sufficient to demonstrate that the act was not morally wrong. Instead of doing so, Pro argues that there are cases where parents killing their child have done nothing wrong that are obvious cases of self-defense under the law. As Con argues, it's not Pro's agreement that demonstrates a lack of wrongness in these cases, but rather a legal basis for allowing it and a societal view about when these incidences can be considered moral. Pro's response to Con repeatedly pointing this out is to say in R4 that:
"Like a machine that indicates a green light when things are working properly. The green light does not make it work properly. It's the properly working components in the machine that are responsible.
The green light is just the confirmation or verification if you will."
That doesn't agree with a reasonable interpretation of the resolution. As written, the wrongness is contingent on Pro's agreement. In other words, that green light cannot just indicate that things are working properly - it has to be sufficient in and of itself to demonstrate that things are working properly, regardless of other parts of the machine. Pro may have wanted to have a different debate, but he wrote the resolution and it disagrees with his argument. As such, I vote Con.