Re: Opportunity cost (shorter response)

[Alan Dove <ad52@columbia.edu>]

On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, lucius K wrote:

> Bryant's main criticism of opportunity cost fiat is that it artificially
> severs the propensity aspect of opportunity analysis. My response is that
> the opportunity lost is one lost by the judge and not by real world
> actors. It seems that the different types of descion makers must first be
> realized. The first decision maker is the judge, master of the debate
> world, while the others are in the real world, like the United States
> Federal government. An opportunity cost is an opportunity lost by the
> judge, NOT by other real world actors. So propensity debates should be
> over what propensity the judge has in voting for a policy. For instance, a
> tabula rasa judge has as much propensity to vote for a plan as she/he does
> for a counterplan. But if the Aff wins that the counterplan doesn't solve,
> then the counterplan loses some propensity as an opportunity cost.

I find this absurd.  The debaters are going to debate the propensity I
have for voting Aff or Neg?  Or they're going to fiat that I vote one way
or the other?  This is not my interpretation of propensity or fiat at all.
See below for some questions about this interpretation of opportunity
cost.

> OPPORTUNITY COST: opportunity lost by the judge. (i.e., Counterplan:
> Voting for policy X prevents the judge from voting for the more desirable
> policy Y)

This is also completely random to me.  By voting for one team, the judge
always closes off the opportunity to vote for the other one - this has
absolutely nothing to do with argumentation theory, and it doesn't matter
if a counterplan is run.  Also, your argument begs the question: voting
for policy X prevents the judge for voting for the more desirable policy
Y, so what makes policy Y more desirable?  Are you saying that the
negative is actually advocating the c-plan?  

As I understand opportunity cost analysis of counterplans, ENACTING the
plan is bad because it closes off the opportunity to ENACT the
counterplan.  The counterplan is not actually advocated by the negative,
it is merely put forward as an opportunity that will be lost because of
the plan.  If the negative says that by voting to enact the plan, I lose
the opportunity to vote for the negative, they are stating the obvious.
If opportunity cost applies only to the judge choosing a winner, then why
would the negative need to show that the ACTION of the counterplan is
mutually exclusive from the ACTION of the plan?  The judge, after all,
won't actually enact the plan by signing the ballot, according to your
theory, so he won't actually lose the opportunity of the counterplan
either.

Please explain this part, since I must be missing something.

My understanding of Bear's argument is that he is asking for a
justification of opportunity cost where the propensity of the particular
alternative is not considered.  Most economists would probably not think
of evaluating an "opportunity cost" for a course of action that has a
near-zero probability of taking place, so why can we appropriate this
economic theory and apply it to exactly that use in a debate round?  I
assume Mike is going to post an answer to this soon, and I look forward to
it.

          --Alan

__________________
Alan Dove
N3IMU
ad52@columbia.edu
http://128.59.173.136/Poliolab/Alan/Dove.html

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References:

• Opportunity cost (long)
• From: lucius K <lkahng@osf1.gmu.edu>

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