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Reciprocal fiat

1st argument - I don't have much to back this up, except a strong intuition
that there is a "true" answer to the question "how much fiat does neg get?"
If there is a true answer, then affirmatives can't change it any more than
negatives can.  There is, for example, a true answer to the question "is it
OK to fab ev."  Claiming "they fabbed ev, so I get to too" is inane.  If
there's a true answer to "how much fiat" then claiming "they took too much
so I get to too" seems equally false.  However,

2nd argument - The most persuasive reason for a variation in fiat is the
mandate of the resolution.  As Ken argued many moons ago, the resolution
dictates legitimate fiat.  Accepting the principle that fiat varies based on
resolutional wording still doesn't legitimate a straight reciprocity standard.

This topic, for example, permits a fairly broad range of potential
affirmative fiats.  Emory, for example, just fiats Senate approval of the
Law of the Sea treaty, which I think is a fairly small step since the treaty
is already before the Senate and they read feasibility ev to indicate that
only a few key Senators object.  We, on the other hand, sometimes fiat mass
OTEC construction, ocean colonization and eventual space colonization.
That's probably a larger step.

My argument is that given that the resolution permits a range of fiat
powers, the affirmative shouldn't get to pick the amount the negative gets.
Emory shouldn't, for example, get to exclude a "build OTEC & sea colonies"
counterplan on the grounds that they only used a tiny smidgen of fiat.
Rather, the standard should be potential reciprocity - negatives should get
the same range of fiat the affirmative does.

To apply that standard, affirmatives would argue not that the counterplan
isn't parallel with the plan, but rather that the counterplan exceeds the
maximum topical fiat.  Negatives would respond with counterexamples of
topical cases that use roughly parallel fiat.

Matt
|--------------------------|
|Matthew K. Roskoski       |
|Asst. Director of Debate  |
|UMKC Debate Forum         |
|--------------------------|
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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