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Re: Artificial Counterplans - Definitions from the respondants

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Josh wrote:

> Do all of the plan but X - If the case is written in such a way that the X
> part of the plan is not essential to attaining an advantage...I think the
> negative has preformed a service to you in pointing it out to you.  Why is
> this counterplan illigitimate???? What is theoretically wrong with it (trust
> me I have wrestled with this question before).The counterplan either suffers
> a solvency deficit or you turn the net benefit or you run a disadvantage to the
> counterplan that outweighs the net benefit etc.  Why is it theoretically
> illigitimate?????
> 

I think this is the most interesting of the theory debates I've heard or
been involved in (I guess you could say we ran an exclusion CP a few times
last year).  I think the two most interesting arguments I heard against
exclusion CPs were these:

1.  They're unnecessary to test competition: this is the answer to the tag
line "competition checks abuse".  If you have a disad that's so hot, then
run it.  Why do you need to CP with the whole plan except the part that
links to the disad?  The CP does nothing to test the plan, and you can run
the disad without the CP.

2.  "That's my plan.  Why you got to take my plan?":  Todd Graham and I
were talking about their strategy against exclusion CPs at the NW CEDA
Champs tournament.  He told me that if BJ was ever in trouble with a CP
they haden't researched, his advice was to basically repeat over and over
"Why you got to take my plan?"  We heard many variations of this argument,
expecially at the NDT.  There seems to be a trend (at least among 2ACs)
that stealing the plan is not legitimate.

The problem I have with the second one is that lots of other CPs use the
plan too: states, Japan, delay (ok, that one's whack, but you get the
idea).  I didn't notice teams complain that we stole their ground on the
oceans topic when we ran Japan nearly as much as they complained when we
ran NEPA.  Perhaps agent CP's are somehow different, but I'm not sure how
because they take most of plan too.  Perhaps someone can help me sort this
one out.

Sean Harris
Whitman College
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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