Why Value Debating, Statist Bias and Counter-Props
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
When we discuss a policy in the course of a debate, we bring arguments for and against it. Good debates result in persuasive arguments being brought, attacked and compared. Beyond the thrill of competition or teaching critical thinking, I feel that one of the greatest things debating offers is often brilliant and innovative analysis of policy based around a search for creative solutions to pressing issues. Time and time again debating has led me to reevaluate my position on a variety of issues as I heard arguments which I had never been exposed to before. Debating made me that little bit less ignorant, made my map resemble the territory that little bit more and for that I am intensely grateful. That being said, what if a certain set of persuasive arguments were to be arbitrarily excluded from debating? What if we weren't allowed to bring up local opposition when discussing humanitarian interventions? What if we couldn't mention black markets in debates about drug legalization? It seems obvious that such arbitrary restrictions would make debating worse by ensuring that the discussions we had in debating were detached from reality. Yet, there seem to be two problems with BP as it exists now which result in precisely such exclusion of argumentative categories.
In reality, a point of contention between right and left is what the role of the state should be. Some of this disagreement is down to differing attitudes towards the morality of taxation or the economic benefits of state intervention in markets Another part of the split comes down to fear of state power and the belief that state is not only fallible but corruptible. The problem is that BP debating often excludes concerns about the extent to which we can trust a state because in BP we are the state. In reality one reason I and many people are against laws restricting free speech, even hate speech, is that we do not trust the state to enforce such laws fairly or to not expand them beyond their original scope. Yet, this argument and others like it do not hold water in most BP debates as the government team can simply state that they will only enforce the law fairly and in a limited context. In other words, it seems that BP has an intrinsic statist bias which seriously limits the extent to which the dynamics of many debates reflect reality. This is a problem that I cannot see a simple solution to.
Another feature of good policy discussions in reality is that when we assess the merits of a policy, we do so by comparing it to a range of alternatives and not just to the policy which currently happens to be in place. When we discuss whether to renew Trident, the UK's continuous at sea nuclear deterrent, we shouldn't simply compare disarmament to keeping Trident as it is today but also to alternate options such as switching to aircraft based deterrence. In debating, counter-props are the mechanism which allows for such comparisons. Without the ability to counter-prop, opposition teams are locked into defending whatever the status quo of the day happens to be. Yet, I often meet CAs and judges who either see counter-props as entirely illegitimate or as strange and unfair. The problem with disliking or restricting counter-props is that doing so restricts comparison to only the proposed policy and the status quo, excluding a whole range of other potentially superior options and ensuring debaters cannot discuss a policy as it would be discussed in reality. The solution to problem is simple: allow counter-props for most debates and do not view them as unusual or deserving of punishment. If certain rare motions require a strict dichotomy between two options, it is always possible to restrict comparison by making the dichotomy intrinsic to the motion, for example with the wording "THW do X instead of Y".
Member discussion