Josh and Artificialy Competitive Counterplans

[Dedevelop3@aol.com]

This is the first time that I have ever entered into a theory discussion on
the L, but I think that Josh is just wrong about this one, and I think there
are a few very compelling arguments against artificially competitive
counterplans.  I have not followed the discussion very closely thus far, so
here is my interpretation of what an artificial Counterplan is- A Counterplan
that competes by banning the affirmative or in the instance of an
exclusionary c/p, a part of the affirmative.  So if the resolution was- The
USFG should increase Social services for the homeless, and the plan was
provide free housing, an artificially competitive Counterplan would compete
by banning all social services to the homeless.  Why is this abusive?, there
are a few reasons.

1.  The permutation cannot check any abuse- it is theoretically impossible
because the counterplan bans ALL social services, meaning that there is no
possible combination of the plan and the counterplan.  Josh will answer this
by saying the logical check is- Perm- Ban all social services except for the
plan.  The problem with this is that then I may have to compete with an
artificial net-benefit to the counterplan.  The negative could read cards
against the permutation that say that partial bans of social services are bad
for X reason.  Now, that is not a dis-ad to the affirmative, because the
affirmative does not ban anything, yet it is a dis-ad to the permutation
which gives the counterplan an artificial net-benefit, in addition to any net
benefit that the counterplan would normally claim, that may or may not be
tested out by the permutation ban all social services except the plan. The
counterplan essentially creates a link to the affirmative. This is why I
don’t think the exclude Native Americans from our plan, we essentially
decreased/streamlined government regulations, competed last year.  Negatives,
in some pretty big rounds, said “well even if you decrease regulations, we
decrease more of them because we except Native Americans from all
regulations, you just decrease some of them, but some are still on the
books.”  That is complete non-sense.  Why does a counterplan compete because
you do more government streamlining than I do.  Our plan in no way increased
regulations on Native Americans, so what if the counterplan decreased more
regulations than we did.  The net benefit has to be an independent reason to
be able to reject the plan, not just some nebulous advantage that the
counterplan can capture that the affirmative can not. (or does not because of
the text of the plan)- 

Josh says:
 In my mind, affirmatives that get beaten by exclusion counterplans should
finish the round by thanking the negative   for pointing out the errors in
plan construction.

Josh- I did not thank people for telling me that my plan should have been
written differently, I thanked them for a 3-0 in 1/4s because of an
artificially competitive counterplan.

2. It lets negatives provide uniqueness to disadvantages- this is where Sean
is on the money, but I don’t think he goes the next step with the argument.
 Sean says, “why do you get to take my affirmative away?,”  “why not just run
your disad?” - Well here is the reason why, because if you ban all social
services, refer to the example above, all your dis-ads become unique.  Thats
why the counterplan is net beneficial.  Now, Josh explain to me ANY theory of
debate, that legitimizes the use of a counterplan with no other means of
competition than, it is another policy option that provides uniqueness the
dis-ads.  I think, but am not sure, that Josh would say that the permutation
would check the abuse.  That is answered above.

3. It destroys the topic-  I learned early in my debate career, from Josh
ironically, that the best debates don’t occur on issues like exclusionary
counterplans because there is usually no literature that makes comparisons
that debaters make. I.E. do all the aff. but fund it not though “normal
means.”  Another type of artificially competitive counterplan.  Most debaters
define normal means as discretionary spending, it does not really matter
though.   If the counterplan bans the affirmative funding and funds the plan
through military cuts, it means that now affirmatives have to go and research
the disadvantages to military cuts. This can become infinitely regressive
very quick.  My favorite example of the absurdity that is possible came from
our 2nd round at the NDT.  We ran an exclusion counterplan and they said, we
could have just done the affirmative and printed it on a different color
paper.  Now, I really don’t think that will be a “core” issue on next years
topic.

I normally agree with Josh on most debate issues, and this is not the first
time we have engaged with other on this issue in particular.  Although I
respect Josh tremendously, I think he is wrong on this one!

“Do not believe everything you were taught......Some rules make no
sense!  Josh”-  

This rule makes perfect sense. Larry

---

• Prev by Date: hoop
• Next by Date: Competition
• Prev by thread: hoop
• Next by thread: Re: Josh and Artificialy Competitive Counterplans
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread
  • Author

---

Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
Return to main CEDA-L Archive Page