NEGATIVE UPDATES
Just a few different negative arguments that supplement different camp files. A few aff updates
at the end of the file.
OFFSHORING GOOD
Answers advantages about US tech / manufacturing industry. Few cards are about IT, but may
still be useful to defend the trend towards offshoring and lost US competitiveness.
Economy
Offshoring is key to the US economy - it has a ripple effect in the economy
Roberts ‘4 (Eric, University of Stanford, no “The Economics of the Software Industry,” 2004,
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2003-04/offshoring/economics.htmlThe
Economics of the Software Industry)
When considering the offshore outsourcing dilemma from a macro level, the unemployment problem does not look as negative. A
study released by Global Insight, a private consulting firm hired by the Information Technology Association of America,
indicates that offshore outsourcing has had a positive impact on job creation within the US.
The report found that offshore outsourcing lowered inflation, increased productivity, and was
linked with lower interest rates. All these things, according to Global Insight, are positive
indicators for the economy as a whole and will encourage job creation. Global Insight claims
offshoring has had a “ripple effect in the economy” to the tune of 90,000 new jobs offered in
the US in 2003. Skeptics of offshore outsourcing have had a hard time believing that a “ripple effect” exists. Lee Price, research
director at the Economic Policy Institute a think tank in Washington DC told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm dubious that the boost in
corporate profitability from outsourcing has contributed much to creating new jobs. Unfortunately the jobs created, as envisioned
by Global Insight, have not been and will not be the same IT jobs that have been shipped offshore. Instead, unemployed IT workers
will have to develop new skills, and in some cases move to entirely different industries. Globalization and offshoring, as Bill
Clinton noted in his 1992 presidential debate with George Bush and Ross Perot, “will, on the whole, do
more good than bad… if [the US] has a genuine commitment to educate and retrain American
workers who lose their jobs.” The difficult task facing the US IT industry is determining what to do with unemployed IT
professionals.
Offshoring is good for the economy – multiple warrants
IHS 05 – IHS provides information and analysis to support the decision-making process of
businesses and governments in industries (IHS Inc., “The Comprehensive Impact of Offshore
Software and IT Services Outsourcing on the U.S. Economy and the IT Industry”, October 2005,
http://www.ihsglobalinsight.com/publicDownload/genericContent/103105execsum.pdf)
Through new research, analysis, and model simulations, Global Insight’s major findings are: • While global software and IT service
outsourcing displaces some IT workers, total
employment in the United States increases as the benefits
ripple through the economy. The incremental economic activity that follows offshore IT outsourcing creates over 257,000
net new jobs in 2005 and is expected to create over 337,000 net new jobs by 2010. • The benefits of global sourcing of
IT services and software contribute significantly to real Gross Domestic Product in the United
States, adding $68.7 billion in 2005. By 2010, real GDP is expected to be $147.4 billion higher than it would be in an environment
in which offshore software and IT services outsourcing does not occur. • Demand for U.S. exports is expected to
increase due to relatively lower prices of U.S. produced goods and services and higher incomes in
the offshore outsourcing destinations. Real exports are estimated to be $5.1 billion higher in 2005 and are expected
to be $9.7 billion higher by 2010. • Workers are expected to enjoy a bump up in real wages. Offshore software
and IT services outsourcing actually increases average real wages of U.S. workers. With lower inflation and higher productivity, real
wages are estimated to be $0.06 higher in 2005 and are expected to be $0.12 higher in 2010. • Cost savings and
use of
offshore resources lower inflation, increase productivity, and lower interest rates. This boosts
business and consumer spending and increases economic activity. • Spending for global sourcing of
computer software and services is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of just over 20%, increasing from approximately $15
billion in 2005 to $38 billion in 2010. During the same time period, total savings from the use of offshore resources are estimated to
grow from $8.7 billion to $20.4 billion. • The impact of global sourcing on employment varies by industry sector. The major industry
groups that are expected to gain a significant number of incremental jobs over the next five years include Professional, Consulting
and Business Services; Transportation and Utilities; Education and Health Services; Construction; Retail Trade; Wholesale Trade;
Manufacturing; and Financial Services. • The U.S. has a large and rapidly growing trade surplus in services. The expected increase in
offshore software and IT services outsourcing will not reverse this trend. Our findings conclude that while certain tasks may be
performed offshore, many high-end activities are likely to remain near the client.
Offshoring spurs the US economy
Gross 04 (Grant, covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for the IDG
News Service, “Offshore outsourcing helps U.S. economy” Mar 30, 2004
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2667556/techology-business/offshore-outsourcing-helps-us--economy.html)
The outsourcing of U.S. IT jobs to foreign workers is good for the U.S. economy and will result
in the creation of twice as many jobs as are displaced, according to a study released Tuesday by the
Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). Offshore outsourcing, which the study calls "global sourcing,"
created 90,000 more jobs in 2003 than it sent outside of the U.S., according to a study conducted by economic analysis
firm Global Insight Inc. Offshore sourcing lowers costs to U.S. companies, allowing them to spend
money on new U.S. workers, plus it increases the efficiency of the U.S. economy and results in
higher wages and increased exports, said the study. "The use of offshore resources lowers costs, frees domestic
resources to pursue other productive ends, yields high quality software and services, and increases labor productivity among endusers," said the executive summary of the study. "These benefits flow through to lower prices, lower interest rates, and higher
spending throughout the economy." [ Read Bill Snyder's Tech's Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. | Cut
to the key news for technology development and IT management with the InfoWorld Daily newsletter, our summary of the top tech
happenings. ] The study estimates that 104,000 U.S. software and services jobs were moved overseas in 2003, but 90,000
more
jobs were created as a result of the cost savings associated with offshore outsourcing. The study
estimates that in 2008, 317,000 new U.S. jobs will be created as a result from the savings and
efficiencies created by offshore outsourcing. IT worker groups have taken a different view on offshore outsourcing,
and in recent months, the U.S. Congress has been looking at legislation to limit offshore outsourcing. Early this month,
Representative Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, announced legislation that would prohibit federal grants and loans from
going to some companies that send jobs out of the country. A representative of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersUSA (IEEE-USA), which has questioned the benefits of offshore outsourcing in the past, said the organization was just seeing the
study early Tuesday and it was too early to comment. But the IEEE-USA has previously criticized offshore outsourcing defenders.
"Their interest is in profits," Ron Hira, chairman of the IEEE-USA's research and development committee, said during an interview in
December. "They don't feel a responsibility to their workforce." The unemployment rate for electrical and computer hardware
engineers was near 7 percent in late 2003, in part because of offshore outsourcing, according to the IEEE-USA. But the ITAA study
suggests that other factors, including the dot-com bust and recent recession, have contributed more heavily to IT job losses. Of the
372,000 IT software and services jobs lost since 2000, less than a third can be pinned on outsourcing, according to the study. The
study predicts that total savings from the use of offshoring
are estimated to grow from $6.7 billion to $20.9
billion between 2003 and 2008. "The cost savings and use of offshore resources lower inflation,
increase productivity, and lower interest rates," the study said. "This boosts business and consumer
spending and increases economic activity."
Global Job Growth
Offshoring leads to global wage equality and stability
Acemoglu 14 (Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics in
the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Can offshoring cut
inequality?” https://agenda.weforum.org/2014/10/offshoring-unskilled-wages-innovationinequality/) BJ
The production structure of Apple’s iPod illustrates some of the potential effects. Like many other high-tech products, the iPod is
designed in the US and is made of components produced all over the world and assembled in China. Though most production jobs
are offshored, a significant number of high-skill engineering jobs and low-skill retail jobs are created in the US, and more than 50% of
the value added of the iPod is captured by domestic companies. With more
limited offshoring, some of the production jobs
may have stayed within the US borders, increasing the demand for the services of low-skill production workers. But this would
have also increased the cost and price of iPods, reducing employment not only in engineering and design
occupations but also in retail and other related tasks. In Acemoglu et al. (2014), we study the impact of offshoring on wages of highand low-skill workers through its effect on technological progress. Returning to the example of Apple products, the variety of iPods
may not have been profitable to introduce and develop if labour costs were higher – as they would have been without offshoring.
More importantly, iPods and other products may have been designed differently in the face of these different labour costs. To study
these issues, we build a model where an advanced country (the ‘West’) invests in innovation to boost the productivity of either highskill or low-skill workers, and can pay an offshoring cost to relocate part of production to a skill-scarce, low-wage country (the ‘East’).
As in models of directed technical change (e.g. Acemoglu 2002, 2007), the effect of offshoring on the factor-bias of innovation works
through price and market-size effects. By lowering the cost of tasks performed by low-skill workers, offshoring opportunities
increase the relative price of skill-intensive products. This price effect tends to spur innovation in the skill-intensive sector.
Counteracting this, however, offshoring
opportunities expand the market for technologies used by
low-skill labour. This market-size effect tends to induce innovations in less skill-intensive
sectors. Our key finding is that which force dominates depends on the level of offshoring. In the most plausible scenario, for low
levels of offshoring (i.e. when offshoring is initially expensive), the price effect dominates, so that greater offshoring opportunities
initially induce skill-biased technical change. If the level of offshoring is already high (i.e. when the offshoring cost is sufficiently low),
however, the opposite pattern obtains. Thus, the
inequality-promoting effect of offshoring is greatest at
the beginning. The reason for this switch in the direction of technological progress is that more offshoring increases
the demand for labour abroad and thus wages in the East. In turn, the closing of the wage gap
between countries mutes the price effect that was fuelling skill-biased innovation. The impact of
offshoring on technology yields new implications for the evolution of the skill premium. Not surprisingly, offshoring first
increases wage inequality in the West. However, as offshoring continues, technical change
eventually changes direction and may even lower the skill premium. Under mild conditions, the same
pattern can hold in the East as well. But which scenario is more plausible? To address this question, we calibrated the model to
roughly match wages and offshoring in the US and China. The results of our simulations suggest that, during the period 2000–2008,
offshoring may have increased the skill premium by 10% and marginally eroded the real wage and welfare of US low-skill workers.
Conclusion The predictions of our model are broadly consistent with the available evidence. The first wave of offshoring in the 1980s
coincides with a sharp decline in the real wages of US low-skill workers, but as
offshoring continues to expand in the
late 1990s and 2000s, unskilled wages stabilize and begin rising (e.g. Acemoglu and Autor 2011). Moreover, the
finding that offshoring may have triggered skill-biased technical change, thereby raising wage disparities, is consistent with recent
findings that imports from China encouraged investments in information technology (Bloom et al. 2011) and reduced US
employment (Autor et al. 2013). According to the theory, however, the implications of offshoring are very different once its volume
reaches a critical level. If wages in China keep rising at current rates, further offshoring may soon induce innovation in less skillintensive sectors. Thus, the future distributional effects of offshoring could be quite different from its past impact.
Jobs
Offshoring creates and increases many jobs
Carter 12 (Ted Carter, Banking & Real Estate Writer at Mississippi Business Journal,
“Offshoring — it's all good, economic study says” http://msbusiness.com/2012/07/offshoringits-all-good-economic-study-says/ July 18, 2012)
Here’s a little something that might not go down easy for workers in Mississippi and elsewhere in the United States: Offshoring
of jobs and the influx of immigrant labor into the country do not – on the whole – damage the
U.S. labor force, says a new paper from the London School of Economics Center for Economic Performance. In fact, for
every job sent overseas, a 1.72 percent increase in employment occurs in the United States, say
the three economists who examined 58 U.S. manufacturing industries from 2000 to 2007. The economists say they are more inclined
to see the numbers as a wash, noting the 0.72 percent increase is too small to be statistically significant. They did note an extra
upside, however: Offshoring tends to push native U.S. workers toward more complex jobs, while offshore workers tend to specialize
in less-skilled employment. Here’s something from the study you aren’t likely to hear from either of the presidential candidates as
they accuse each other of being world-class exporters of U.S. jobs: Increased
productivity and reduced costs from
off-shoring lead companies to expand domestic hiring enough to more than offset the jobs
lost to workers overseas. “Offshoring has no effect on native employment in the aggregate,” the authors said. “While
offshore workers compete directly with natives, their employment generates productivity gains that ‘increase the size of the pie,’
leading to an overall neutral impact on native employment.” The study’s authors emphasized a distinction between “horizontal” and
“vertical” offshoring. With “horizontal” offshsoring, production moves abroad and the products manufactured are consumed
aboard. By contrast, “vertical” offshoring through which some intermediate stages of production are moved abroad and the
intermediates are re-imported to the United States for further processing is found to be beneficial to domestic manufacturing
employment, the authors say. In a finding that could draw surprise (and skepticism) from immigration opponents, the
study
concluded that every 1 percent increase in immigrant jobs boosted aggregate employment for
American-born workers by 3.9 percent.
Offshoring creates jobs and benefits the economy- Stanford economist says
Fastenberg 12 (Dan, Reuters Video News at Thomson Reuters, “Is Outsourcing Good For The
Economy -- And Workers?” http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/09/14/is-outsourcing-good-forthe-economy-and-worker/ Sep 14th 2012 11:30AM)
But in spite of such heated rhetoric, a broad range of experts maintain that offshoring is beneficial for the economy
and even results in the creation of jobs. They acknowledge that it can be brutal for laid-off workers but say that
overall there is a net gain of jobs for the U.S. economy. "It lets companies do their grunt work
abroad, and focus resources domestically on research, development and product. We know
more innovation grows the economy and as a result creates more jobs," says Vivek Wadhwa, a
fellow at Stanford Law School and an economist who is a recognized authority on outsourcing. "Such
allocation also helps businesses stay competitive to stay open, which of course is the No. 1 issue for keeping jobs."
Offshoring leads to an increase in high-paid jobs; the cons are exaggerated
Maclay 14 (Kathleen, citing Clair Brown who is a UC Berkeley economics professor and Tim
Sturgeon who is a senior research affiliate with MIT’s Industrial Performance Center, “Report:
Offshoring and outsourcing a mixed bag for American jobs, wages”
http://news.berkeley.edu/2014/02/18/report-offshoring-and-outsourcing-a-mixed-bag-foramerican-jobs-wages/)
Without solid numbers, many have assumed that most of the offshored jobs go to developing
countries where workers are paid near-poverty wages in less than ideal working conditions.
However, the researchers said public
fear that offshoring to lower-cost countries is putting downward
pressure on U.S. jobs may be overblown. Brown and Sturgeon found that most international sourcing is
to high-cost locations such as Canada and Western Europe, reflecting a long history of U.S. companies
participating in these markets. The work offshored to very low-cost countries, where U.S. companies
might be searching for new markets as well as low wages, is relatively modest in comparison.
“While offshoring appears to be complementary to U.S. employment, in that it is associated
with a relative increase in higher-paid jobs, it could be undermining lower-wage jobs,” said Brown, also coauthor of
“Chips and Change: How Crisis Reshapes the Semiconductor Industry” (2009). “But in this initial study, we weren’t able to estimate
how globalization affects the total number of domestic jobs.”
Offshoring increases the amount of US jobs – studies prove
Mississippi Business Journal 12 (msbusiness.com, “Offshoring — it's all good, economic
study says.” http://msbusiness.com/2012/07/offshoring-its-all-good-economic-study-says/)
Here’s a little something that might not go down easy for workers in Mississippi and elsewhere in the United States: Offshoring
of jobs and the influx of immigrant labor into the country do not – on the whole – damage the U.S. labor force, says
a new paper from the London School of Economics Center for Economic Performance. In fact, for every job sent overseas,
a 1.72 percent increase in employment occurs in the United States, say the three economists who
examined 58 U.S. manufacturing industries from 2000 to 2007. The economists say they are more inclined to see the numbers as a
wash, noting the 0.72 percent increase is too small to be statistically significant. They did note an extra upside, however:
Offshoring tends to push native U.S. workers toward more complex jobs, while offshore workers tend to
specialize in less-skilled employment. Here’s something from the study you aren’t likely to hear from either of the presidential
candidates as they accuse each other of being world-class exporters of U.S. jobs: Increased
productivity and reduced
costs from off-shoring lead companies to expand domestic hiring enough to more than offset
the jobs lost to workers overseas. “Offshoring has no effect on native employment in the aggregate,” the authors said.
“While offshore workers compete directly with natives, their employment generates productivity gains that ‘increase the size of the
pie,’ leading to an overall neutral impact on native employment.” The study’s authors emphasized a distinction between
“horizontal” and “vertical” offshoring. With “horizontal” offshsoring, production moves abroad and the products manufactured are
consumed aboard. By contrast, “vertical” offshoring through which some intermediate stages of production are moved abroad and
the intermediates are re-imported to the United States for further processing is found to be beneficial to domestic manufacturing
employment, the authors say. In a finding that could draw surprise (and skepticism) from immigration opponents, the study
concluded that every
1 percent increase in immigrant jobs boosted aggregate employment for
American-born workers by 3.9 percent.
Investment Costs
Offshoring has a cost advantage, helps companies grow, and alleviates time
zone problems
Balasubramaniyan 4 (S.M., graduated from the University of Madras, India in Electronics
and Communication Engineering. He also has a Masters from IIT, Madras and did General
Management study in IIM, Bangalore. Bala has 33 years experience in Telecom in various
capacities. He started his career in the R & D of ITI Ltd, Bangalore where he spent 16 years
covering all aspects in product life cycle of Switching Systems for PSTN, Defense and Enterprise
networks. Bala joined Wipro in 1995 and his responsibilities have included Captive Lab
Operations, Competency Development, Account Management, Product and Process Quality
Assurance for telecom clients. Currently he leads the Central Services group of Mission: Quality
for Wipro, “Offshoring’s Positives Outweigh Its Negatives”, 7/5/2004,
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2323783/software/offshoring-s-positives-outweigh-itsnegatives.html)ML
Perhaps the greatest benefit of offshoring is the cost advantage it produces, which directly affects the
company's bottom line. In tight fiscal situations, any savings in operating costs will contribute toward the
company's sustenance and growth. Companies in recession segments sustain themselves and grow
through innovation. Lower operating costs means they have more money to invest in innovation,
resulting in a stabilized domestic workforce. In the service sectors, the cost saving from offshoring enables
companies to create new service lines, many of which had been deferred for want of investment. New services
increase customer satisfaction and become new revenue streams, as well as growth paths for companies.
The geographic nature of offshoring brings its own advantages . It helps the company expand its
reach, thereby helping the company grow. This growth mitigates any negative effects of offshoring. Offshoring also
helps a company be closer to its global customers, thereby providing appropriate offerings to its
regional market and ensuring speedier problem resolution. Developers and support personnel
in the relevant geographies have a better understanding of customers' needs, regulatory
compliances and regional preferences, and can better implement the product or provide the
service. In addition, offshoring alleviates problems created by time differences, enabling companies to
support remote customers too in a virtual 24-7 operation. For companies with constrained resources, offshoring also
offers better utilization of capital investments through remote usage in multiple time zones .
Offshoring reduces costs and increases investment in new ideas
Chakraborty 04 – professor of economics at Emporia State University (Kalyan, “IMPACT OF
OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING OF IT SERVICES ON THE US ECONOMY”,
http://swer.wtamu.edu/sites/default/files/Data/73-94-69-258-1-PB.pdf)
Over the past year the debate on offshore outsourcing of information technology (IT) services jobs to low-wage countries has gained
considerable momentum. There is a growing fear among ordinary Americans that what we are witnessing might be the largest
offshore outsourcing of white color jobs in the U.S. economic history. Offshore outsourcing is not a new phenomenon in the
U.S. Over the last two decades outsourcing in manufacturing industry displaced 2 million blue color jobs in the U.S. but created 43
million white color jobs in other service areas. This has
raised the output in manufacturing by raising the
labor productivity by 3.5 percent annually and has increased the standard of living of the
American people [3]. The current problem is that those white color jobs (high tech IT jobs) once insulated from foreign
competition are now vulnerable to offshore outsourcing because these jobs can be performed at a fraction of the cost in low wage
countries such as India and China. Due to a revolution in digital technology and reduction in telecommunication costs, jobs related to
functions such as software programming and design, call center operations, accounting and payroll operations, medical record
transcription, paralegal services, and software research and testing etc., can be performed at a foreign location and transferred
through the internet. The
cost saving from outsourcing services jobs abroad can be used to lower
software and services prices, raise productivity, and enable companies to invest in the next
generation technology and business ideas to create new jobs and increase exports. For example,
McKinsey Consulting [25] estimates for every dollar of corporate spending outsourced to India, U.S. gains $1.14 and India captures
0.33 cents. Mann [24] estimated that U.S. GDP growth between 1995 and 2002 would have been 0.3 percent lower per year without
offshore outsourcing of jobs in information technology.
Productivity
Offshoring increases US productivity – comparative advantages
Garner 04 – assistant vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
(C. Alan, “Offshoring in the Service Sector: Economic Impact and Policy Issues”,
https://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/econrev/pdf/3q04garn.pdf)
Moreover, increased international trade in services may raise U.S. productivity growth over the long
run. International trade shifts resources from sectors where U.S. workers are comparatively
less efficient to sectors where they are comparatively more efficient. The U.S. comparative advantage is
likely to be in industries employing large amounts of physical and human capital per worker, factors that increase labor productivity.
As a result, U.S. labor is likely to be shifted toward industries with higher real output per worker.
(A different issue is whether offshoring leads to mismeasurement of productivity growth. This issue is discussed in the accompanying
box.) In addition, foreign competition puts pressure on U.S. firms to innovate by developing new products, improving their
management techniques, and so forth. Many empirical studies find that more open economies tend to have faster productivity
growth (Edwards). Offshoring
could also facilitate greater IT investment in the future. Some
economists argue that the offshoring of IT hardware production helped drive down the costs
of high-technology goods and speeded the adoption of new technologies, raising U.S.
productivity growth in the late 1990s. A similar process now may be under way in computer software and services (Mann).
To the extent that foreign production of computer software and services lowers costs, adoption of these technologies will likely
expand further in healthcare, construction, and other services, categories that have lagged in productivity growth.
Offshoring leads to benefits – tech diversification and new revenue
Carmel and Tija 5 (Erran Carmel is an Associate Professor at the Kogod School of Business at
American University in Washington DC, USA. Paul Tjia is a Senior Consultant and founder of GPI
Consultancy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. “Offshoring Information Technology: Sourcing and
Outsourcing to a Global Workforce” Pages 96-101) BJ
Large technology firms can diversify their technology portfolio more effectively when they spread
their R&D facilities globally. Granstrand and colleagues[5.] studied global technology firms and found that the companies
that attain long-run competitive advantage are those that have expanded to many foreign
locations and, in the process, achieved technological diversification. These corporations are leveraging
their offshore units to attain strategic diversification. Companies need to have a diversified set of technological
competencies not only in the firms’ distinctive core competencies – those that outsiders are likely to recognize – but in three others.
The first of these competencies is in “niche” areas, which are intrinsically small, and are those in which the firm has less expertise, a
lower profile, and fewer resources. The second competency is in background areas, dealing with processes and coordination,
allowing firms to benefit from technical change. For example, the emergence of India as a global center for applying mature quality
processes in software development is a strategic “background competency” for some companies. Third, companies may also retain
competencies in some marginal areas in which they have no distinct advantages, although these generally tend to be outsourced. 5
Deeper localization Almost all software has to be localized to local language and culture. The closer you are to your customer, the
deeper the localization. In strategic parlance this is called local responsiveness. Many companies localize by hiring foreign language
experts at home. However, situating localization in the target market allows firms to better customize products to the local markets,
particularly the large and more promising markets, such as India and China. This is the case with Microsoft’s significant presence in
China, with its development centers in Shanghai and Beijing which devote significant resources to Chinese language scripts and
other local needs. 6 New revenue generation Since
the offshore markets are growing much faster than
those in industrialized nations, a company that is offshoring its IT functions has greater
opportunities to generate new revenue and new value from these operations. The path that many
companies have taken is to spin off their offshore center, create an independent offshore unit that can sell IT services or products to
third parties. A number of firms have gone beyond that point. Offshoring
has given creative players greater
opportunities to capture value from their operations, particularly in India, by selling assets at a multiple of their
original investment. One offshore expert summarized it this way: “You take a look at your assets, polish them in India where it is
cheap, and sell them dear.”
Competitiveness
Offshoring is necessary to stay competitive – innovation, speed, flex, and talent
Carmel and Tija 5 (Erran Carmel is an Associate Professor at the Kogod School of Business at
American University in Washington DC, USA. Paul Tjia is a Senior Consultant and founder of GPI
Consultancy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. “Offshoring Information Technology: Sourcing and
Outsourcing to a Global Workforce” Pages 10-11)
However, in some industries, IT offshoring is beginning to be viewed as a strategic necessity. Some call it
“offshore or die.” When one company’s cost efficiencies allow it to lower prices or expand its
competitive options, then other companies must match their competitor’s strategy, or fail.
Offshoring is becoming part of the larger context of hyper-competition: companies are swept into faster and faster cycles of
competitive responses and reactions in order to remain financially viable and cost competitive. Not
offshoring may well
become a strategic peril. Such was the case of one of America’s largest television manufacturers, Zenith Electronics, which
resisted offshoring for decades, while slowly shrinking, before it disappeared completely. While cost reduction is the primary
strategic focus of most companies that are offshoring, it is not the only strategic advantage to offshoring. The fourth
and final stage in the Offshore Stage Model is labeled “Leveraging Offshore.” As we saw in the estimates of Table 1.1, there are
relatively few companies that have reached this stage. Those that have progressed to this stage have moved beyond mere cost
reduction and benefit from innovation, speed, flexibility, and new revenues. We discuss these benefits in
greater detail in Chapter 5, Offshore Strategy. Here we introduce the two most important of these additional strategic goals:
attaining speed and accessing talented
labor. The first strategic lever is the increase in speed, agility, and flexibility. This
means that companies that offshore can rapidly ramp-up (by reducing the time to get the project started)
and reduce project duration (time-to-completion). The abundant supply of labor offshore gives
companies greater agility: to assign a large number of engineers to a problem; to forge ahead in several
directions instead of just one; to ramp-up (scale-up) and respond to a business need within days
instead of months. Companies that develop software products benefit from the second strategic
advantage: accessing talent. For these companies, their success stems from innovation and their
innovation capabilities come from their talent – their most brilliant and creative engineers. Firms that
expand abroad to tap this talent are called “knowledge seekers”[10.] and tend to behave somewhat differently than
those seeking mainly lower wage rates. In previous decades technology companies would tap foreign talent by going to other highwage, industrialized nations. In the 1990s, they began turning to Israel, India, and later to China. For example, by 2003, 77 global
software product firms established direct R&D subsidiaries in India.[11.] Many others perform contract R&D on an out-tasking basis
in India.
Offshoring helps US competitiveness and cuts costs
USA Today 5 (Sandy Huffaker Jr., editorial writer, “Offshoring benefits the consumer”,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/industry/2005-01-16-dhl-advice_x.htm)ML
Enter Uwe Doerken, 45, who stepped down last year as DHL's executive chairman after leading its
globalization efforts for 13 years. DHL is a package delivery company known for its yellow planes, trucks and envelopes.
It acquired Airborne in 2003 to launch an invasion of the USA and challenge UPS and FedEx in one of the world's hottest industries.
DHL, with headquarters in Belgium, is a subsidiary of Deutsche Post, the privatized German postal service. Its 170,000
employees serve 220 countries and territories.
Doerken's tips: Business leaders who support offshoring should
say so. It's a mistake to tax companies to stop offshoring. Today's skilled job is tomorrow's unskilled job. Computers are the modern
world's paper. Get educated. Stay educated. CEO jobs in the USA may be safe, but regional offices are often best run by a foreigner.
Countries that establish clusters of expertise keep jobs. About Doerken Born in 1959 in Schwelm, Germany. Fluent in English,
German, French, Spanish and Dutch. Master's degree in business, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1985. McKinsey
consultant in Amsterdam, 1986-90. Became executive chairman of DHL USA in January 2004, months after the 2003 Airborne-DHL
merger. Stepped down after integration to try something new. Drives a BMW M3 convertible. Rides a Harley along coastal and
mountain roads. Over the past four years, he has not been in one place for more than two weeks and has slept in a different bed, on
average, every third night. Favorite travel destination: Thailand, because of its natural beauty, kind people and wonderful food.
Doerken agreed to answer the offshoring questions of USA TODAY corporate management reporter Del Jones after
about a dozen CEOs of large corporations turned down the offer. Q: Offshoring is a polarizing issue. One survey says 16% of
Americans agree that it's good for the U.S. economy. If the masses are wrong, why? A: Offshoring first of all benefits the
consumer. More efficient and less costly production leads to more affordable products and
services and allows companies in higher-labor-cost economies like the USA or Europe to stay competitive and
preserve their remaining jobs. Q: To many, it doesn't seem to be working. Good-paying technology jobs are moving to India.
Exporting unskilled jobs was one thing. What about offshoring skilled jobs? A: Skilled and unskilled are not absolute. Economies
move up the skill curve continuously, and what was a high-skill job yesterday may have become a medium skill today and low skill
tomorrow. Sewing mass-market clothing was high-tech in England in the 19th century and a major industry in developed countries
until the 1970s. It has migrated mostly to India, China and other Asian economies. For
the USA, it's about staying
ahead of the game by always adapting and keeping the highest value-added jobs in the
country. Q: It seems that any job that can be done on a computer or over a phone is at risk. Are we being naive to believe that a
good education will make our job safe? A: Education does make us safe, but education is continuous. It's not enough to learn a trade
for life. Computers are just the modern world's paper. The content is key. Q: Reuters is hiring business journalists in India to report
on U.S. companies. Why shouldn't USA TODAY lay me off and get someone cheaper in India to conduct this interview? A: While
some outsourcing may be possible even in journalism, I do not think that an interviewer on the other side of the earth can be
connected to the information needs of his readers like somebody living in this culture. Q: CEOs in other countries make far less
money than CEOs in the USA. Why aren't companies offshoring those jobs? A: Maybe CEOs are like journalists. You need to live in
the main market of your company and with your shareholders to fully understand the needs of your employees, customers and
shareholders. However, when establishing regional offices, labor costs and skill availability is a major factor. Q: Do CEOs owe any
allegiance to workers in their home country? A: Yes. They owe them fairness when new business practices force layoffs. Social plans,
outplacement assistance, transfers to other parts of the same company, etc. The same fairness is owed to all employees these
companies employ in all geographies. Q: Many say the government should tax companies that move jobs offshore to keep jobs at
home. What's wrong with that? A: Why would we tax companies who are going to great lengths to make their businesses more
competitive in order to offer their customers more affordable products and services? Q: OK, explain
why offshoring
doesn't drive down wages and ruin the U.S. standard of living. Is offshoring of no threat at all?
A: The USA, as the leading economy of the world, must stay at the forefront of value creation to earn the
higher salaries which its people have come to expect. Outsourcing to lower-cost countries is
one of many tools to stay ahead. The highest value-added jobs will always stay in the USA as
long as we adapt and keep our businesses competitive. Outsourcing helps make this possible.
Q: Is offshoring strictly about cheap labor, or are there other reasons to move jobs abroad? A: There is a lot
more to it than cutting cost. Economic skills tend to build in tightly packed geographic clusters.
For example, a large portion of the world's diamonds are cut in some cities in India and around the Belgian city of Antwerp. It
makes sense to source where there is an ample supply of those skills and honed to be up to
date. That's another reason outsourcing brings to the world more choice of products and services at
affordable prices..
DATA LOCALIZATION ANSWERS
Useful arguments to turn internet freedom or take out the Internal link to data localization.
Econ
Data localization makes US companies create new jobs
Fleisher 15 (Lisa, Tech reporter specializing in privacy, “Apple to Spend Nearly $2 Billion on
New European Data Centers”, 2/23/15, http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-invest-1-9-billionin-european-data-centers-1424685191)//EM
Apple Inc. said Monday that it would spend nearly $2 billion to build its first two data centers in
Europe, the latest U.S. tech giant to open computing centers in the region amid a tightening regulatory
environment. The two data centers, each covering 166,000 square meters, will be built in Denmark and Ireland, the latter serving as
Apple’s European headquarters. The data centers will go online in 2017, the company said. They will be used for a range of Apple
products, including iTunes, messaging and Siri, its software that recognizes some spoken commands. Apple joins
a growing
list of U.S. companies looking to plant servers on European soil, including Amazon.com Inc. and
Salesforce.com Inc. The move comes as Europeans have become more concerned about data
privacy and allegations of spying by the U.S., fears that were heightened after leaks from former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden. In Europe, companies that want to transfer people’s personal
information abroad—such as customer names, addresses, or billing information—have to
jump through a series of regulatory hoops, such as requiring any subsidiaries or third parties to agree to protect the
information from breaches or improper uses. MARKET TALK Under new proposed regulations being debated in Europe,
companies that violate the data protection rules could face fines of as much as €100 million,
about $114 million, or 5% of annual revenue. Also, a trans-Atlantic agreement known as Safe Harbor allows
American companies to self-certify that they comply with European rules, but it is being challenged in European courts and
simultaneously renegotiated between the U.S. and the European Union. Patrick Van Eecke, a lawyer with DLA Piper, said he has seen
several companies setting up data centers in Europe to avoid the question altogether, so they can tell customers that all data is kept
in Europe. “It makes life easier,” he said. Over the past year, Apple has increasingly emphasized its commitment to its customers’
privacy. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has publicly said several times that the company doesn’t depend on customers’ data to
make money, distancing it from companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., which sell targeted ads. Apple said the
data
centers would run entirely on renewable energy and create hundreds of local jobs. The company’s
message over the past year has sharpened around its economic benefit to Europe, as scrutiny from European lawmakers heats up,
particularly over the question of whether Apple pays enough taxes. EU regulators have said they believe Apple’s tax arrangements
with Ireland were illegal. Apple has said it received no selective treatment from Irish officials and was subject to the same tax laws as
other companies that do business in Ireland. Some tech companies building massive data centers have tried to make them run as
much as possible on power produced by wind or solar sources, which has been welcomed by environmental groups. Greenpeace
published a report in April that applauded companies including Apple, Google and Facebook for their actions.
Surveillance
Data localization makes foreign surveillance easier
Chander and Le 14 (Anupam, Director of the California International Law Center, Uyen P Le,
senior research fellow at University of California Davis, “Data Localization vs. the Global
Internet”, 3/12/14, http://ssrn.com/abstract=2407858, page 28-31)//EM
Anger at disclosures of U.S. surveillance abroad has led some countries to respond by attempting to keep data from leaving their
shores, lest it fall into U.S. or other foreign governmental hands. For example, India’s Deputy National Security Advisor Nehchal
Sandhu has reportedly sought ways to route domestic Internet traffic via servers within the country, arguing that “[s]uch an
arrangement would limit the capacity of foreign elements to scrutinize intra-India traffic.” 113 The BRICS nations (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa) are seeking to establish an international network of cables
that would create “a network free of US eavesdropping.”114 But does data localization in fact stave off
foreign surveillance? There are significant reasons to be skeptical of this claim. First, the United States, like
many countries, concentrates much of its surveillance efforts abroad. Indeed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is focused on
gathering information overseas, limiting data gathering largely only when it implicates United States persons. 115 The recent NSA
surveillance disclosures have revealed extensive foreign operations.116 Indeed, constraints
on domestic operations
may well have spurred the NSA to expand operations abroad. As the Washington Post reports, “Intercepting
communications overseas has clear advantages for the NSA, with looser restrictions and less oversight.”117 Deterred by a 2011
ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court barring certain broad domestic surveillance of Internet and telephone traffic,118
the NSA
may have increasingly turned its attention overseas. Second, the use of malware
eliminates even the need to have operations on the ground in the countries in which surveillance
occurs. The German newspaper Handelsblatt reports that the NSA has infiltrated every corner of the world
through a network of malicious malware.119 A German computer expert points out that “data was intercepted here
[by the NSA] on a large scale.”120 The Handelsblatt report suggests that the NSA has even scaled the Great Firewall
of China, demonstrating that efforts to keep information inside a heavily secured and
monitored ironclad firewall do not necessarily mean that it cannot be accessed by those on
the other side of the earth. This is a commonplace phenomenon on the Internet, of course. The recent enormous security
breach of millions of Target customers in the United States likely sent credit card data of Americans to servers in Russia, perhaps
through the installation of malware on point of sale devices in stores. 121 Third, not only do governments spy overseas,
governments routinely share information with each other, even outside the official
information sharing treaty procedures.122 The Guardian reports that Australia’s intelligence agency collects and
share bulk data of Australian nationals with its partners—the United States, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand (collectively known as
the 5-Eyes).123 Even while the German government has been a forceful critic of NSA surveillance, the
German intelligence
service has been described as a “prolific partner” of the NSA. Der Spiegel reports that the German
foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) has been collaborating with the NSA,
passing about 500 million pieces of metadata in the month of December 2012 alone.124 The NSA
has collaborated with the effort led by the British intelligence agency Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) to hack into Yahoo!’s webchat service to access unencrypted webcam images
of millions of users.125 A German computer expert observes, “We know now that data was intercepted here on a large
scale. So limiting traffic to Germany and Europe doesn't look as promising as the government and [Deutsche Telekom] would like
you to believe.” 126 Fourth, far from making surveillance more difficult for a foreign government, localization
requirements might in fact make it easier. By compelling companies to use local services rather
than global ones, there is a greater likelihood of choosing companies with weak security
measures. By their very nature, the global services are subject to intense worldwide competition, while the local services are
protected by the data localization requirements. Weaker security makes such systems easier targets for foreign surveillance. This is
what we call the “Protected Local Provider” problem. Fifth, collecting
information about users in a locality might
the logistical burdens of foreign intelligence agencies, which can now concentrate
their surveillance of a particular nation’s citizens more easily. Call this the “Honeypot” problem. Finally, we
actually ease
might note that the United States is hardly alone in laws empowering authorities to order corporations to share data of private
persons. A recent study shows that such powers are widespread.127 Indeed, some other states permit access to data without
requiring a court order.128 One data localization measure—South Korea’s requirement that mapping data be stored in the
country—seems especially difficult to defend. After all, under the rules, one can access South Korean maps from abroad freely, as
long as services are themselves based in South Korea. Thus, if a foreigner wants to access online maps of South Korea, it simply
needs to turn to Naver and Daum, services that use servers located in that country.129 As Yonsei University Business School
Professor Ho Geun Lee notes, “In reality, if North Korea wants to, it can use Naver and Daum’s services to view street maps and
photographs of streets.”130 In sum, as Emma Llansó of the U.S.-based Center for Technology and Democracy warns with respect to
Brazilians efforts to block information from leaving that country, data localization “would not necessarily keep Brazilians’ data out of
the NSA’s hands.”131 One security professional observes, “The only way to really make anything that is NSA proof is to not have it
connect to the Internet.”132
National Security
Data localization doesn’t limit access to the internet – it keeps information
online in times of crisis.
Kramer 14 (Andrew, Moscow correspondent for The New York Times, “Putin Supports Project
to ‘Secure’ Russia Internet”, 10/1/14,
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-internet.html?_r=1”,
7/24/15) WZ
President Vladimir V. Putin appeared on Wednesday to throw his support behind a plan to isolate the Internet in Russia from the
rest of the World Wide Web, but said the Russian government was “not even considering” censoring Internet sites. In a speech to
the Russian National Security Council, Mr. Putin said the plan was intended to build a backup system to keep websites in the Russian
domains — those ending in .ru and .rf — online in a national emergency. Mr. Putin said other
countries had taken to
using the Internet “for not only economic, but military and political goals” and said information
security was a priority for the country. The Russian news media has labeled the plan, some details of which were
reported last month by Vedomosti, a Russian daily, a “kill switch” for the Internet, or Russia’s answer to the “Great Firewall” put up
by the Chinese. “It’s
important to secure the Russian segment of the Internet,” Mr. Putin said, according to a
do not intend to limit access to the Internet, to put it under total
control, to nationalize the Internet. “We need to greatly improve the security of domestic
communications networks and information resources, primarily those used by state structures,” he added. The
transcript posted on the Kremlin website. “We
Russian goals appear for now distinct from those of the Chinese, experts on Internet policy say, and inspired partly by a revelation
this summer in Wired magazine by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, who lives in Moscow, that
United States government hackers inadvertently crashed the Syrian web in 2012. Russia has recently promulgated policies to censor
the Internet through laws banning extremist content and requiring social networking and financial companies to base their data
servers in Russia. The
goal of the new system, however, appears not to block foreign content, but rather
to keep Russia’s own news and information machine online in times of crisis. Oleg Demidov, an
authority on Russian Internet policies at the PIR center in Moscow, said that Russia wanted to create a “double
channel” for the Internet. The backup channel would of course be under government control. “In normal times, it
would work like it does now,” he said of this Russian vision of the Internet. “But in an emergency, the
reserve system would come alive.”
Localization protects a country against threats.
Sonne et al 14 (Paul, correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Moscow, covers Russian
politics, business and society. Olga Razumovskaya, reporter for The Wall Street Journal and Dow
Jones Newswires in Moscow, “Russia Steps Up New Law to Control Foreign Internet
Companies”, 9/24/14, http://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-steps-up-new-law-to-control-foreigninternet-companies-1411574920) WZ
MOSCOW—Russia's parliament sped up measures to tighten control over foreign Internet companies such as Google Inc., Twitter
Inc. and Facebook Inc., raising concerns over state pressure on social networks that have become one of the country's few remaining
spaces for dissent. The Duma, Russia's lower chamber of parliament, passed a bill Wednesday that would move up the deadline of a
law requiring foreign Internet companies to store the personal data of users from Russia within the country's borders. The deadline,
moved to Jan. 1, 2015, from Sept. 1, 2016, would create a near-impossible challenge for U.S.-based firms that have millions of
Russian users but generally store data on servers outside the country. Russian
authorities have presented the
personal-data law as a necessary security measure to protect against foreign threats and U.S. spying.
But rights advocates say the Kremlin is pursuing the measure as part of a broader drive to curtail freedom of information and
intensify scrutiny of Internet activity. The accelerated effort comes amid Moscow's increasing distrust of the Internet and a
hardening of anti-Western policies. Authorities are separately proceeding with legislation to limit foreign firms to 20% ownership of
Russian media outlets, a move that risks curbing press freedoms in a country already dominated by state-controlled media. The bill
that would move up the personal-data law's implementation passed Wednesday after its second reading, making the new deadline
all but certain to come into effect. The Duma must vote once more before sending the bill to Russia's upper chamber of parliament
and the Kremlin for approval. The remaining steps are largely a formality. The bill is likely to become law in weeks. Russian President
Vladimir Putin signed the new personal-data measures into law in July. This month, though, Russian lawmakers proposed speeding
up their enactment, citing ever-present hacking threats and an "information war" being waged against Russia by foreign powers
over the crisis in Ukraine. Yevgeny Fyodorov, a Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party and co-author of the bill
that passed Wednesday, warned this month that the Internet was an instrument of what he described as "orange interventions," or
Western-backed antigovernment uprisings. "That's where the censorship and revision of the events taking place in Russia come
from," Mr. Fyodorov said in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper this month. "All the information is stored there and used
against Russia. To avoid this and protect
the country, we have to take these objects under national
control," he said, referring to the foreign firms' storage servers. Russia's largest social network, Vkontakte, could benefit from the
state's crackdown on foreign Internet companies such as Google and Facebook. Russian lawmakers acknowledge that it would be
near impossible for companies such as Google to build their own data-storage centers in Russia in just over three months. "But if a
company wants to operate on the territory of the Russian Federation, there are a wide range of rental opportunities," Alexander
Yushchenko, a Communist Party deputy in the Duma and co-author of the bill, said this month. Mr. Yushchenko said foreign
Internet firms could rent storage from Russian companies such as state-controlled telecom provider OAO
Rostelecom. Spokeswomen for Google and Twitter declined to comment Wednesday. Facebook didn't respond to a request to
comment. Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, a Russian trade body, described
the law as impossible to implement in its current form. He said it would be difficult for global Internet companies to track which
personal data is coming from Russia.
China Internet Cards
Free internet in China hurts political activism – entertainment distracts people
Leibold, PhD in Chinese History, 11 (James, PhD in Chinese History, “Blogging Alone:
China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion”, 11/1/11,http://www.abstract.libebook.com/a1-political/1747123-1-blogging-alone-china-the-internet-and-the-democraticillusion-jam.php, page 2-6)//EM
2 James Leibold and private life in contemporary China. China watchers now tend to agree that the internet has both
expanded and altered the discursive terrain of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) while allowing its citizens to
mobilize in new ways. What remains unclear, however, is the precise socio-political consequences of these changes. Positioned here,
this Trends article presents a critical re-appraisal of the interactive blogosphere and its effects on Chinese society. My analysis is one
focused on the discourse and behavior of Chinese netizens rather than the efforts of the Chinese party-state or private enterprise to
influence their thoughts and actions. The growing convergence of online technologies makes any differentiation based on
functionality increasingly problematic, with individual sites now embedding multimedia, search, e-commerce, social networking, and
blog features. In their special issue on the blogosphere, Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell (2008, 2) provide the following definition of
web-based blogs or weblogs: “a web page with minimal to no external editing, providing on-line commentary, periodically updated
and presented in reverse chronological order, with hyperlinks to other online sources.” This definition is broad enough to
incorporate the different functionalities and uses of two distinct yet related types of usergeneration content in Chinese cyberspace:
personal blogs or microblogs (referred to as boke 博客 or weiboke 微博客 in Chinese) and community-based web forums (known as
bulletin board systems, BBS, or luntan 论坛 in Chinese). Both mediums provide a dynamic platform for asynchronous, interactive
information sharing and discussion on a wide variety of topics. Taken together weblogs represent the single largest, and most
dynamic, communication platform on the Chinese internet, providing unprecedented opportunities for netizens to both engage in
national-level debate and indulge their personal fetishes in isolated, interest-based enclaves. To date, analysts
writing in
English have painted a generally rosy assessment of the impact of the blogosphere on Chinese
society. These range from those who speak of a “communication revolution” (Yang 2009, 213), “political liberalization” (Zheng
2007, 167), or a “gradual, slow evolution” (MacKinnon 2008, 45). Others posit that the Chinese internet is “a platform for bottom-up
information and public debate” (Zhou 2009, 1006) and “a new channel for individual expression” (Shen et al. 2009, 470), which
either “democratizes communication of information in Chinese society” (Tai 2006, 289), “promote[s] political openness,
transparency, and accountability” (Zheng 2007, 186), “erode[s] the CCP’s ideological and social control” (Xiao 2011, 223) or
“challenges the mainstream culture” through its “playful (mis)use (and often juxtaposition) of the available resources” (Yu 2007,
429). Playing on one of Chairman Mao’s famous revolutionary phrases, Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof (2006)
declared that a “single blog can start a prairie fire,” arguing that the unprecedented free speech in the Chinese blogosphere
threatens to eventually topple the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from power. Even the euphemistic “harmonizing” (bei hexie le 被
Blogging Alone 和谐了), or forced closure, of Kristof’s own Chinese-language blog on Sina.com failed to dampen his confidence,
when he boldly announced this year: “the internet will one day be remembered as helping to transform China, byte by byte. Let a
billion blogs bloom” (Kristof 2011). In sharp contrast, research and debate on the political impact of the internet in the West has
been more robust and wide-ranging in its focus, and far more cautious in its conclusions. Many commentators continue to defend
the innately empowering nature of new communication technologies, as first sketched out by Alvin Toffler and others in their 1994
manifesto “Cyberspace and the American Dream” (Dyson et al. 1996; see also Negroponte 1996; Benkler 2006; Shirky 2008). Yet,
new empirical evidence and theoretical intervention have complicated this picture. In The Myth of Digital Democracy, Matthew
Hindman (2008) demonstrates how blogging remains a narrow, elite pursuit, which does little to increase the representative basis of
American politics, while Cass Sunstein (2007) has shown how blogging can actually fragment and polarize speech communities.
Evgeny Morozov’s provocative new book The Net Delusion provides a forceful critique of the naïve assumption that Google,
Facebook and Twitter will bring down authoritarian regimes like China with a few clicks of the mouse, suggesting that in many
authoritarian countries the internet actually “empowers the strong and disempowers the
weak” (Morozov 2011, xvii). Recent events in the Arab world and corresponding calls for a similar “Jasmine Revolution” in China
have intensified the debate (Coll 2011; Wasserstrom 2011). But beyond the well-developed literature on internet censorship in
China (see for example, Tsui 2003; Lagerkvist 2006; MacKinnon 2009; Jiang 2010), few
studies have fully probed those
elements of Chinese cyberculture that might be working against positive social change . Like other
technologies, the internet is normatively neutral and socially malleable and, depending on the particular context and pre-existing
social patterns, can function as a force for both good and evil. While any definitive assessment of the Chinese blogosphere awaits
more detailed, empirical research, I will argue that much
of the optimism that pervades current writing on
the Chinese internet seems premature and possibly misplaced. Drawing on surveys of online usage,
comparative research and my own personal engagement with the Chinese internet, this article suggests that the Chinese-language
blogosphere is producing the same sort of shallow infotainment, pernicious misinformation, and interest-based ghettos that it
creates elsewhere in the world. Blogging isn’t the same as bowling. And clearly holds the potential to link individuals and
communities in revolutionary new ways—counteracting the worldwide decline in civic engagement identified by Robert Putman
(2000) and other sociologists. But before declaring that the Sinophone internet and weblogs are “changing the rules of the game
between society and the state” and contributing to an unprecedented “power shift in Chinese society” (Xiao 2011, 203, 222), we
need to explore the complex and countervailing ways that 4 James Leibold sitting alone in front of our blinking screens can both
connect and disconnect us from others; alter and perpetuate long-standing patterns of socio-political engagement. DIGITAL OPIUM:
CHINESE WEBLOGS USES AND THEIR At present, the
Chinese internet is chiefly an intranet of playful
selfexpression and identity exhibition. Survey data reveals that Chinese bloggers, like others around the globe, are
motivated by the desire to “record one’s own feelings/emotions” (64%) and “express one’s opinions” (37%) (CNNIC 2009, 27; see
also Yangzi and Pugsley 2010; Wallis 2011). Among Chinese forum users, 67 percent employ them to “discuss matters of common
interest” and 49 percent to “share life experiences” (iResearch 2007a). These
surveys have repeatedly found that
entertainment and socializing rather than “hard news” retrieval, political activism and social
criticism dominates Chinese internet usage , while linguistic and router barriers ensure that most netizens
consume only locally produced and vetted content. According to CNNIC’s most recent survey, the leading
uses of the internet in China are: search (82%), music (79%), news (77%), instant messaging
(77%), and gaming (67%) (CNNIC 2011, 31). The dominance of soft infotainment led Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
researcher Guo Liang to suggest that the Chinese internet functions more like an “entertainment
highway,” rather than the promised “information superhighway” (Guo 2007, 36). Much of this online
amusement takes place on interactive weblogs, with percent of Chinese netizens using blogs, 32 percent BBS forums, and 14 percent
micro-blogs (CNNIC 2011, 31). Most of China’s leading websites, including even the eBay clone Taobao, incorporate some sort of
weblog alongside their other functions. Given the sheer size of the Sinophone internet, its not surprising that 1.6 billion weblog
pages are viewed and 10 million new posts are written each day (Jin 2008, 11). Most of these pages
are filled with the
ephemeral waxing of quotidian life—discussing travel plans, telling jokes, sharing photos,
searching for jobs, pursuing love interests, and gossiping about sports, entertainment and
news—and here Chinese netizens are no different from their global counterparts (iResearch 2007b). But occasionally, discussion
reaches a more serious level and can redirect public attention and anger at the state and political actors in the real world,
empowering ordinary netizens to shape and, in some limited cases, alter government policies, as was the case with the now
infamous arrest and custody death of migrant student Sun Zhigang in 2003 (Zheng 2007, 147–51; Yang 2009, 34–35). Empirical
studies have shown, that unlike mainstream television and newspapers in China, weblogs contain information that is both critical
and divergent from party-state propaganda (Esarey and Xiao 2011). But political
content comprises only an
extremely tiny portion of China’s cyber-cacophony—an important point that is rarely noted in
the scholarly and journalistic literature on the Chinese internet. Film and fashion starlets Zhang Ziyi and
Zhao Wei return more results on China’s leading search engine Baidu than the “national father” Sun Yat-sen and nearly as many as
current CCP Secretary General Hu Jintao, and a staggering 361 million netizens have visited the web forum dedicated to discussing
Supergirl star Li Yuchun at the Baidu Post Bar (baidu tieba 百度贴 吧) BBS site, leaving 56 million posts in 2.8 million different
threads. During the last week of March 2011, to take another example, the two most popular search terms on Baidu were the South
Korean serial drama Temptation of Wife (huijia de youhuo 回家的诱惑) and the serialized online fantasy novel Smashing the
Universe (doupo cangqiong 斗破苍穹), which attracted nearly 40 times more searches than the Japanese earthquake/tsunami and
the Libyan conflict combine. Matthew Hindman (2008, 60–1) has demonstrated how political websites in America comprise only
0.12 percent of overall web traffic, and remain dominated by highly educated, white men. This compares to around 10 percent for
pornographic content, web-mail, and search. With the exception of hardcore pornography, the Sinophone internet is little different.
Entertainment, sports, relationship and investment-related sites dominate China’s largest
weblog portals: with stock market guru Xu Xiaoming and his metrics-based system for striking it rich topping the Sina blog
chart with 1.6 billion hits over the last five years; the site maintained by pop psychologist Su Qin attracting over 501 million hits on
the QQ blog since 2007; and television actress Yao Chen being the most popular individual (with nearly 12 million “fans”) on China’s
new Twitter-like micro-blog platform Sina Weibo.3 Given these figures, it
should come as no surprise that Chinese
netizens are not only generally apathetic about discussing politics online but also highly
supportive of government controls in cyberspace
(Liang and Lu 2010, 109). To date, much of the Anglophone
analysis of the Chinese blogosphere has focused on the ability of Chinese bloggers to influence or check state action, serving as both
a source of public criticism and increased accountability. This watchdog function needs to be balanced, however, with these more
plebeian uses of the web. Here Baidu’s daily top search terms are revealing: at times they are serious —“housing prices in first tier
cities fall” (yixian chengshi fangjia xiajiang 一线城市 房价下降), but more often they provide a window into the salacious—“third
wave of [sexy] Pan Shuangshuang photos” (Pan shuangshuang di sanbo zhaopian A 26 October 2010 search on Baidu
(www.baidu.com) returned the following results: Hu Jintao (78,200,000), Zhao Wei (61,700,000), Zhang Ziyi (55,900,000), Sun Yat-
sen (37,700,000). Li Yuchun’s forum can be found at http://tieba.baidu.com/gift/f/dir?id=1. A list of the most popular keyword
searches on Baidu can be found at http://top.baidu.com/. As of 13 September 2011: see http://blog.sina.com.cn;
http://blog.qq.com; and http://weibo.com/. 6 James Leibold 潘霜霜第三波照片), the mundane—“flights between Wuhan and
Nanjing cancelled” (wuhan nanjing tingfei 武汉南京停飞)—and the bizarre—“tongue bitten off during kiss” (jiewen yaodiao shetou
接吻咬掉舌头).4 In contrast to those that argue the internet is empowering ordinary citizens, many inside China worry that the web
is peddling a new “digital opium” (dianzi yapian 电子鸦片): one that threatens to undermine the spiritual and cultural “quality”
(suzhi 素质) of Chinese youths without proper regulation (Hao and Pang 2006; Ye 2007). In authoritarian countries like China, the
stakes of this sort of digital escapism are high. Killing
time on the net, Evgeny Morozov (2011) warns, helps to
depoliticize large segments of the population, and without a free media and civic
organizations that can openly criticize those in power, net surfing can actually strengthen the
ruling party and its elite . With its low barrier to entry, the Sinophone internet is a raucous place. But critical voices
can easily get lost within this echo chamber of banality. Fax-machines and satellite television did little to tear
down the Iron Curtin in Europe, and the Internet now provides Chinese netizens with even more diverse
and far more engrossing ways to distract and dampen any subversive thoughts and actions.
Their authors misinterpret the internet’s effect on political activism
Leibold, PhD in Chinese History, 11 (James, PhD in Chinese History, “Blogging Alone:
China, the Internet, and the Democratic Illusion”, 11/1/11,http://www.abstract.libebook.com/a1-political/1747123-1-blogging-alone-china-the-internet-and-the-democraticillusion-jam.php, page 6-8)//EM
Few have studied the Chinese internet as closely and carefully as Guobin Yang. In his landmark study, The Power of the Internet
in China, Yang (2009) provides the single most comprehensive survey of the Sinophone internet to
date. While his analysis is both critical and wide-ranging, a deep sense of optimism underlies
his argument. In the concluding chapter, “China’s long revolution,” Yang speaks of “a restive society alive with
conflict and contention” (p. 209) and one that is ultimately moving in a positive direction—one marked by “the palpable
revival of the revolutionary spirit” (p. 209), and the forging of “the social and cultural foundations for a democratic political system”
(p. 214). Central
to Yang’s argument is the conviction that the internet (and weblogs in
particular) have opened up new spaces for competing viewpoints, creating a sort of “digital
civil society,” which “can challenge cultural stereotypes, correct misinformation, and resist symbolic violence (symbolic violence
meaning violence inflicted on society by the ruling elites through labeling, categorization, and other discursive forms)” (p. 216), and
even without formal institutional reform, “this communication revolution is expanding citizens’ unofficial democracy” by
undermining state control and generating greater political transparency (p. 213). China-based new media scholar Zhou Xiang is
equally buoyant about the power of China’s blogosphere to democratize public discourse. Providing a qualitative content analysis of
posts related to the controversial dismissal of ShanghaiCCP boss Chen Liangyu on the popular NetEase blog (网易博客
www.163.com), Zhou concludes that bloggers’ responses “paint a relatively promising picture of the blogosphere as a platform for
personal expression in political discussion and online civic messages from diverse perspectives, relatively independent of official
media” (Zhou 2009, 1016). Despite the fact that only 13 percent of the posts analyzed adopted an explicitly critical attitude of the
government’s actions, Zhou argues that this small number is still “very meaningful” due to “the heavy censorship imposed on
mainstream news media.” This is part of the “blog revolution” that Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the
University of California at Berkeley and its widely read China Digital Times (CDT) website, claims is sweeping China, and “shaking up
the power balance between the people and the government of the world’s most populous nation” (Xiao 2004). By using code-words,
satire, humor, and other rhetorical techniques, Chinese bloggers are “speaking truth to each other, and by doing so in a widely
accessible manner, are speaking truth to power,” representing “a major breakthrough toward the formation of a Chinese public
sphere, albeit a virtual one” (Esarey and Xiao 2008, 753, 755). Others have argued that blogging represents more “light-hearted
resistance through playful collective action,” but one still capable of challenging mainstream culture through less overtly political but
equally empowering social critiques (Yu 2007, 431). Here egao 恶搞 (online parody, or literally “evil work”) is often celebrated as an
“alternative locus of power,” one that “playfully subverts a range of authoritative discourses and provides a vehicle for both comic
criticism and emotional catharsis” (Gong and Yang 2010, 4). A less sanguine Rebecca MacKinnon noted in 2005 that the internet and
weblogs in particular are a new tool for political expression but also require offline causes to reach their full potential. Furthermore,
the ultimate impact of interactive media in China “will depend not only how people choose to use them but also to what extent the
Chinese government succeeds in controlling the use of weblogs for political dissent” (MacKinnon 2005, 34). Despite noting the
growing sophistication of the state’s censorship regime and the declining use of proxy servers and other technologies to circumvent
the so-called Great Firewall of China, MacKinnon seems to share the long-term optimism of the professional blogging community in
China and abroad—the power of what new media scholar Zhu Ying terms the emerging “critical masses” to keep the party-state in
check through increased transparency and thus accountability (Zhu and Robinson 2010). MacKinnon concludes: In the longer term,
the space for civil discourse is quietly deepening, thanks to blogs and other forms of online citizens’ media. And it appears that every
inch of that space is being actively and cleverly utilized. If this civil discourse in Chinese cyberspace continues to mature, deepen and
develop, that leads to a number of intriguing questions:Over the course of a generation, will a new group of Chinese emerge who
have grown up debating public affairs, engaging in critical thinking and respecting the sanctity of the individual in ways that were not
possible before? Will this new generation who have grown up using blogs and other forms of online participatory media be much
more ready for reasoned self-governance than the current generation? (MacKinnon 2005, 44) MacKinnon’s questions
are
good ones. But they still rest on a set of assumptions about the internet’s ability to foster
robust public debate, critical and rational thinking and the sort of participatory individualism
that is fundamental to Western-style democracy, what Yang describes as “a place for demanding democratic
supervision and independent thinking” (Yang 2009, 110). This sort of digital-utopianism permeated much of
the early literature on the internet in the West , such as Howard Rheingold’s “virtual
community” or Stewart Brand’s often quoted axiom “information wants to be free” (Rheingold
1993; Brand 1987, 202). But now a new generation of commentators are starting to question these assumptions. Among China
scholars, Jens
Damm (2007) has perceptively argued that the internet is leading to the spatial
fragmentation and localization of Chinese society, creating numerous “isolated niches,” in
which people explore their own narrow identities and interests with like-minded individuals.
Moreover, a recent interpretation of survey data on Chinese internet usage suggests that the
repressive political culture in China helps to explain why most netizens avoid “sensitive topics
and are only involved in discussing trivial and mawkish topics” (Fei 2009, 469). Yet, Damm’s claim that the
commercialization of the Chinese internet has rendered most online discourse trivial and apolitical seems to be only part of the full
picture. As the work of Yang and numerous other scholars have demonstrated, highly politicized and critical speech—in a variety of
forms—does permeate certain quarters of the Chinese internet. We would be foolish to completely dismiss the inherently political
and potentially subversive nature of internet speech (regardless of how oblique it is) in a society where both the education system
and the mainstream media remain highly controlled. Yet, at the same time, it is important to note that political
speech does
not always promote greater openness, tolerance and civic-mindedness, and that liberalization
and greater expression, as Hindman (2008, 1–19) and Morozov (2010, 47) warn, do not necessarily lead to
greater political participation and democratization.
Russia
Russia about to pass a data localization bill – key to their security.
Eremenko 14 [Alexey, Writer and Correspondent for the Moscow Times, "Russia Wants State
Control of Root Internet Infrastructure”, Moscow Times, 10/23/14,
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-wants-state-control-of-root-internetinfrastructure/509989.html, July 24, 2015] KL
Russia has mounted an effort in recent weeks to bring the root infrastructure of the Internet under control of state-affiliated
bureaucracies, both internationally and at home. The
global push is likely to fizzle out, industry experts said — but
at home, the plan has every chance of succeeding. Backers of the Kremlin line say bigger state
control of the Internet is mandatory for national security, hinting that the U.S. could disconnect Russia from
the Web. But critics say that Russia, which already censors the Internet, simply wants to expand its means
of political censorship. "Russia wants state control of the global network … instead of public
control," said Artem Kozlyuk, a freedom of information activist with Rublacklist.net, an independent
Internet freedom watchdog. The latest wave-generating proposal came from Russian
Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov, who urged the launch of a reform at the
United Nations to give control of the Internet to national governments. The move would prevent deliberate
disconnections of national segments of the Internet, Nikiforov said earlier this week in South Korea at a
session of the International Telecommunications Union, a UN body. He identified the United States as a possible
threat to other nations' Internet access, according to a transcript on the ministry's website.
Government Domain Nikiforov's proposal comes hot on the heels of the Kremlin's attempt to take
over the domestic system of domain name assignment, currently overseen by the non-profit organization
Coordination Center for TLD RU. The government wants the Coordination Center's job transferred to a
state agency, several prominent media outlets, including business daily Vedomosti, said last month. The
issue was discussed at the now-famous Security Council meeting of Oct. 1, when top Russian
officials reportedly gathered to discuss the possibility of Russia's disconnection from the
Internet. Nikiforov said last month that it was only contingency planning in case Russia's Western opponents pull the plug,
possibly as further sanctions for Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March. However, Kozlyuk of
Rublacklist.net said that so far, most cases of a country going off the grid were the work of
domestic governments trying to suppress dissent, such as — most famously — Egypt in 2011 during the Arab
Spring. The proposal for a takeover of the Coordination Center has been stalled, but the government could follow
through with it at any time simply by pushing the group to amend its charter to recognize
state superiority, said Ilya Massukh, head of the state-affiliated Information Democracy Foundation. ICANN vs. Autocrats
The key role in managing the global Internet is currently played by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees domain name assignment throughout the world.
ICANN is a California-based non-profit organization that operates under an agreement with
the U.S. Department of Commerce. The U.S. role in Internet policing has caused much grumbling in recent years as the
Internet has spread across the globe, and prompted calls to move to a so-called "multi-stakeholder governance model" that would
give other players a greater say in managing the World Wide Web. Russia had previously staged a campaign to give root control of
the Internet to the UN at an earlier International Telecommunications Union conference in Dubai in 2012. Its proposal gathered a
handful of backers at the time — mostly authoritarian countries such as China, Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia — but was torpedoed
by Western powers. But
this time, China withdrew its support, which makes Nikiforov's initiative
even less likely to succeed, said Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst for the lobby group the Russian Association of
Electronic Communications. "China has a working censorship system, and it is not going to antagonize the world, and the other
backers don't have enough geopolitical clout to push it through," Kazaryan said by telephone Wednesday. Kozlyuk of Rublacklist.net
claimed that Russia was courting European Parliament members for lobbying support. The
claim could not be
independently verified. RuNet Regulated President Vladimir Putin famously pledged to leave
the Internet alone at a meeting with industry representatives at his ascension to the Kremlin
in 2000. Free from state intervention, the Russian segment of the Internet — the RuNet — blossomed, now counting 58 million
daily users in Russia, according to the state-run Public Opinion Foundation, and spawning highly successful companies such as
Yandex and Mail.ru. But
things began to change in late 2011, when Russian netizens, many of them
educated young urbanites, became the driving force of record anti-Putin protests. Since then, the
government has been so busy imposing new regulations that it is now routinely accused of building the "Great Russian Firewall" of
censorship. The state now has the power to blacklist websites without court order for a variety of reasons, including political ones.
Separate legislation ramps up state control over popular blogs and online news aggregators, making it easier to shut down any of
them. And another Kremlin-penned law under review in the State Duma would oblige most organizations handling the personal data
of Russians — including the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Booking.com — to store them solely on Russia-based servers, easily
accessible to secret services. Bureaucrats
and Utopias Russia is not unique in its push to give control of
the Internet to traditional bureaucratic structures, said Massukh, a former deputy
communications minister. The Internet is finally big enough for governments to take it seriously and consider possible
online threats to national security, such as disruption of domestic banking systems, Massukh said. He compared the push for state
control of national segments of the Internet to the introduction of country calling codes, each of which is unique and sovereign to a
specific country. But
Kozlyuk of Rublacklist.net argued that UN or state takeover of the Internet
would really just boost information access restrictions by governments dominating
fragmented shards of the World Wide Web. "We need total decentralization of the Internet
instead," he said. "It's almost a utopia, but it is a bit more real with public rather than state
control of the Net." "There are a lot of problems with [the current structure of] the Internet,
but handing it over to UN bureaucrats is definitely not a good solution," agreed analyst Kazaryan.
Internet Bad
Economy & Information Sharing
Internet Bad – Promotes unproductivity and fails to give information
Michka 13 [Walter, Writer for Chicagonow, “The Internet Was a Bad Idea”, Chicagonow, October 14,
2013, http://www.chicagonow.com/open-heart/2013/10/the-internet-was-a-bad-idea/, July 28, 2015] KL
Let me be the first person to say:
the Internet was a bad idea . Remember when they called it “The Information
Superhighway?” Just like actual super highways allowed our parents and grandparents to go from point A to point B faster and more
directly than ever before, giving them access to more parts of the country in a fraction of the time, The
Information
Superhighway was supposed to do the same for knowledge. Imagine, the experts prophesied,
the entire world’s collective intellect a mouse click away! Anything you’d need to know
accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere. Truly infinite wisdom. The possibilities were mind-boggling.
Then people started actually using the Internet and information wasn’t exactly the first thing
they clicked their mice on. Or the second thing. Or even the third. Mostly they clicked on cat pictures. Or porn. Or Willie
Wonka memes. Explore the deepest reaches of the ocean? Not now. I want to watch Gangnam
Style again. MRIs of Alzheimer’s patients’ brains to further understand grandpa’s condition? Maybe later. I've got to check out
Panda Cam. The Internet will allow the world to stay connected, they promised, to share the
human condition, united in one social universe. Or maybe we'll just tweet each other
Instagrams of food. Before the World Wide Web, if you wanted to show 600 friends, relatives,
co-workers, or ex-classmates what you had for dinner, you’d have to: 1. snap the photo, 2.
wait a couple days for Fotomat to develop the film, 3. get everyone in a room to show them
the prints or 4. go door to door. Now it’s just point, click, share. (Bragging about your meal is a
very First World thing to do.) The Internet will open the lines of communication, they said, enabling billions freedom of
expression! Or it'll just give trolls a place to spew their anonymous hatred. We always had crazy people, nut jobs with weird ideas.
That’s okay. It’s America, that’s what makes this nation great. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. It’s why the bullhorn was
invented, I’m pretty sure. Free speech! Damn the torpedoes! and all that. Before the Internet, all the way back to say, 1992, they
were solitary nuts. They muttered to themselves in their dingy apartments, out of everyone’s way. Maybe they’d say something in
the lunchroom at work, have some sort of ranty outburst, a shouting match in line at McDonald’s. And that’d be it. But the Internet
gathers these nuts, like a giant, indiscriminating cyber squirrel, and stores them in one place for everyone to see. These nuts are all
strung together like a big nut necklace, hanging around our country’s neck, choking the life out of us. Left
wing. Right wing.
Mental hospital wing. Doesn’t matter, there’s strength in numbers. Suddenly any crackpot
idea, any kooky theory, no matter how farfetched, has authority and gathers steam because
a group says it’s so.
More than ten people think it, so we must give it as much attention and weight as if millions did.
And forget the truth. The truth is pretty much the last thing you should expect from the
Internet --- whether its obviously Photo Shopped pictures of Obama pledging allegiance with his left hand or Marty McFly’s
DeLorean displaying various dates as the future he went back to… Between the Nigerian Princes who can’t cash a check and the
Canadian pharmacies that want to give you a boner, there’s not a lot of truth out there. What
promised to be
educational and enlightening turned out to be just a way to sell us stuff, track our
whereabouts, and waste what precious time we’ve got on earth. Oh, and to look at porn. Like so many
other great inventions, the Internet was a great idea at first. Then it fell into the wrong hands… ours.
Relationships
The Internet is bad – It destroys relationship, everything becomes superficial
Risen 14 [Tom, Technology and Business reporter from US News, “Is the Internet Bad for Society and
Relationships?”, US News and World Report, February 27, 14,
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/02/27/is-the-internet-bad-for-society-andrelationships, July 28, 2015] KL
The Internet becomes a bigger part of our lives everyday, making life more convenient but
also taking away the human element of living in the moment and making relationships more
superficial, survey respondents told the Pew Research Center. The think tank on Thursday published a survey of 1,000 U.S.
adults about their views of how the Internet impacts their lives, which it conducted in January. When asked if the Internet
has been good or bad for society, 15 percent of respondents said it was bad, 76 percent said it
was good and 8 percent said it was both good and bad. Respondents agreed the Internet was
good for individuals, however. When asked if the Internet was good for themselves 90 percent said it was good, 6 percent
said bad and 3 percent said both good and bad. Graph showing poll answers to question asking about the impact of the Internet on
respondents' relationships. “There
is considerable debate about whether people’s use of the Internet
has enriched their relationships or not and whether the online environment is friendly or menacing,” the Pew report
said. When asked if the Internet strengthened their relationships with family and friends 67 percent of Internet users said yes, 18
percent said it weakens those relationships, 4 percent said both and another 4 percent said neither. Graph showing answers to poll
asking whether the Internet has been a good thing or a bad thing. With
the increase of smartphones in recent
years many have all griped about the narcissism of people who spend all their time on social
networks, text messaging at a dinner table or taking photos of the food they eat. There is talk about
how social networks and new devices like the Google Glass visor have diluted privacy, to the
point that Google published do’s and don’ts for using the visor as guidelines on how not to be
“creepy or rude (aka, a ‘Glasshole’)” The movie “Her” has generated talk about the wired world and even an Academy
Awards nomination for Best Picture for its depiction of a man who falls in love with his smartphone operating system.
LEGALISM BAD
Useful for Foucault, Neoliberalism, or any K that needs to answer “Law Good.” Particularly good
against plans that embed a legal rationale or constitutional justification for the surveillance
reform.
Constitutional Morality Module
a. Using the Constitution to frame value decisions trades-off with intrinsic
moral considerations and legitimates the legal system’s deferral to “what is
constitutional” instead of what is “just.”
West 92 (Robin West, “Constitutional Skepticism”, Hass Professor of Law and Philosophy at
Georgetown University Law Center,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=facpub
Methodologically, the Constitution is also hostile to political and moral progressivism, simply because
it elevates one set of moral values above others, relegating non-constitutional ideals or visions
to the sphere of the "merely political." The Constitution's peculiar status as a bridge between liberal morality and
aspirations and positive law, although much heralded by liberal philosophers and constitutionalists, poses a triple danger to
progressive ideals. First, because the Constitution is indeed law, and law in the ordinary as well as extraordinary sense, it imprints
upon the liberalism on which it rests the imprimatur of positive legal authority. One set of political convictions hence receives not
only the persuasive authority derived from its merits, but also the political, willed authority of the extant, empowered, positive
sovereign. These ideals simply are, as well as ought to be; and they are in a way that makes compliance mandatory. Second, because
the Constitution is law in the extraordinary as well as ordinary sense, the positive political authority imprinted upon the liberal
morality of the Constitution is of a higher, permanent, and constitutive sort. It severely
constrains moralities and
aspirations with which it is inconsistent in the name of the community from which it
purportedly draws its sovereign authority. Thus, it is not just "the law" that is hostile to non-liberal moral
aspirations, such as progressivism. It is also, more deeply and meaningfully, "we the people"-all of us, the inter-generational
community of citizens-for whom the Constitution speaks and from whom it draws its authority that is hostile to the ideals with
which it is inconsistent. Third, because
the Constitution is also undeniably a moral as well as legal
document, the authority it embodies is exercised not only coercively-telling us who we must
be-but also instructively-telling us who we ought to be. It defines and confines not just our
options-as does any law, higher or lower-but our aspirations as well. For all three reasons, the
Constitution is not just a peculiarly authoritarian legal document, but is also authoritarian in a peculiarly parental way.
Like a parent's authority over the identity of his or her children, the Constitution both
persuades us to be a certain way and it constitutes us in a certain way. It creates us as it
defines a morality to which we will and should subscribe.
b. The causes structural and life-denying violence.
West 92 (Robin West, “Constitutional Skepticism”, Hass Professor of Law and Philosophy at
Georgetown University Law Center,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=facpub
No liberal court or commentator reads the Constitution to require that states or Congress take
action to protect against homophobic violence and rage, or to protect against the deadening,
soul-murdering, and often life-threatening effects of homelessness, hunger, and poverty. The
Constitution apparently leaves untouched the very conditions of subordination, oppression, and coercion
that relegate some to "lesser lives" of drudgery, fear, and stultifying self-hatred. For that reason alone, the Constitution
appears to be fundamentally at odds with progressive ideals and visions. The incompatibility, however,
of progressivism and the Constitution goes deeper. Not only does the Constitution fail to prohibit
subordinating abuses of private power, but, at least a good deal of the time, in the name of guaranteeing
constitutional protection of individual freedom, it also aggressively protects the very hierarchies of wealth,
status, race, sexual preference, and gender that facilitate those practices of subordination.
Thus, the Constitution seemingly protects the individual's freedom to produce and consume
hate speech, despite its propensity to contribute to patterns of racial oppression. It also clearly protects the individual's right to
practice religion, despite the demonstrable incompatibility of the religious tenets central to all three dominant mainstream religions
with women's full civic and political equality. It protects the individual's freedom to create and use pornography, despite the
possible connection between pornography and increases in private violence against women. It protects the privacy and cultural
hegemony of the nuclear family, despite the extreme forms of injustice that occur within that institution and the maldistribution of
burdens and benefits visited by that injustice upon women and, to a lesser degree, children. Finally, it
protects, as a
coincidence of protecting the freedom and equal opportunities of individuals, both the system
of "meritocracy" and the departures from meritocracy that dominate and constitute the
market and economy, despite the resistance of those systems to full participation of African Americans and hence despite
the subordinating effects of those "markets" upon them. Very generally, the Constitution, incident to protecting the
ideational, economic, and familial spheres of individual life against the intrusive effects of benign and malign legislative initiatives,
protects that realm of private, intimate, social, and economic culture that creates and then
perpetuates a spirit of intolerance toward, alienation from, and active hatred of subordinated persons. By
so doing, the Constitution not only fails to protect against that subordination, but it also fails to
exhibit neutrality toward it: it nurtures precisely those patterns and practices that are most injurious
to the economic opportunities, the individual freedoms, the intimacies, and the fragile communities of
those persons already most deprived in the unequal and unfree social world in which we live.
L – Law
Sovereignty trumps legality – State power will always create new layers of the
law on which to act
Williams 07 (Daniel R. Williams, Professor of law at Northeastern University, AFTER THE GOLD
RUSH – PART I: HAMDI, 9/11, AND THE DARK SIDE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, NORTHEASTERN
PUBLIC LAW AND THEORY FACULTY WORKING PAPERS SERIES, NO. 16-2007)
In fact, as the recent passage of the 2006 Military Commissions Act shows, this process
jurisprudence invites the expansion of sovereignty through legislative manufacturing of a
rights regime outside the established framework of the Constitution.28 It is thus wrong to
criticize governmental actions in the war on terror as lawless, for sovereignty forges aheadCin a
resurgence of sorts, according to Judith Butler29Cthrough a process of legality that manufactures law
to suit the state’s global ambitions.30 Detainees at Guantanamo are not on the receiving end of any sort of “lawless”
conduct. Their existence---and existence should be taken quite literally---has come within the ambit of the most fearsome sort of
legality, a form of law that permits the bracketing of all other law, a legality that has reduced them to bare-life beings with no right
to have rights (other than, at the most, utilitarian prerogatives to pose challenges to evidence so as to improve the administrative
accuracy of the detention proceedings). This
fearsome sort of legality is largely shielded from our view (that
with the veil of democracy, knitted together
with the thread of process jurisprudence. Within process jurisprudence, there is no inquiry into the fundamental
is, from the view of Americans---the ones wielding this legality)
question: allocation of power between the branches to accomplish . . . what? It is very easy to skip that question, and thus easy to
slide into or accept circular argumentation.31 With the focus on the distribution of power, arguments about what to do in this socalled war on terror start off with assumptions about the nature of the problem (crudely expressed as violent Jihadists who hate our
freedoms) and then appeal to those assumptions to justify certain actions that have come to constitute this “war.”
If the
Executive’s asserted prerogative to prosecute a war in a way that will assure victory is
confronted with the prior question about what exactly we want to accomplish in that war- that
is, we confront the question posed by Slavoj Zizek, noted at the outset of this article-then the idea of national
security trumping law takes on an entirely different analytical hue. Professor Owen Fiss is probably right
when he says that the Justices in Hamdi searched for ways to honor the Constitution without
compromising national interests. 35 But that is a distinctly unsatisfying observation if what we
are concerned about is the identification of what exactly those national interests are.36 We may
not feel unsatisfied because, in the context of Hamdi, it undoubtedly seems pointless to ask what we are trying to accomplish,
since the
answer strikes us as obvious. We are in a deadly struggle to stamp out the terrorist
threat posed by Al Qaeda, and more generally, terrorism arising from a certain violent and nihilistic strain of Islamic
fundamentalism. Our foreign policy is expressly fueled by the outlook that preemptive attacks is not merely an option, but is the
option to be used. In the words of the Bush Administration’s 2002 National Security Strategy document, In the world we have
entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.
L – Constitution
America should not be bound to obey the Constitution
Seidman ‘12 (Louis Michael Seidman, Georgetown University Law Center, “On Constitutional
Disobedience,” Georgetown Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 12-002,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/fwps_papers/158)
Unfortunately, there are many things wrong with this story. We can start with the awkward fact that the
Constitution itself
was born of disobedience. The delegates were summoned to Philadelphia to amend the existing Articles of Confederation,
not to displace it. They immediately decided to ignore their mandate as well as the requirements spelled out in the Articles for its
alteration. Why
should we feel obligated to obey their handiwork when they themselves disobeyed
the legal limits on their power? Perhaps the voice of the people should be allowed to override the law, but at this late
date, we cannot know what the people’s voice actually said. As historians of ratification have demonstrated, the process was shot
through with political shenanigans, systematic suppression of the views of the Constitution’s opponents, misrepresentation, and
outright coercion. We 6 can
only guess at what a majority of people who participated in the
ratification process “really” thought. Indeed, it is a myth to suppose that the people can ever somehow speak clearly
and directly without their voice being distorted by flawed, real world political mechanisms that translate their voice into a legal
mandate. This
problem is compounded by the fact that many people were not considered “people”
in late eighteenth century America. No women, African Americans, or Indians and few
individuals without property were allowed to cast votes. More significantly, no one alive today
had anything to do with the ratification process. As Thomas Jefferson famously insisted, the world belongs
to the living. It is hard to see how even a pristine process that perfectly captured the views of
eighteenth century America can bind the very different people who populate the United States
today. These are all reasons that ought to give us pause about the Constitution’s binding force. But there is another reason that is
at once simpler and more powerful than any of these. The test for constitutional obligation arises when one thinks that, all-thingsconsidered, the right thing to do is X, but the Constitution tells us to do not-X. It is only in this situation that constitutional obligation
really has bite. It is only then that if
we obey the Constitution, we are doing so for the sole reason that we
are bound to obey. But who in their right mind would do this? If we are convinced after taking everything into account that
one course of action is right, why should we take another course of action just because of words written down on a piece of paper
more than two hundred years ago? 7 As a practical matter, in
the real world, almost no one changes her opinion
about anything important just because of the Constitution. We regularly avoid this distasteful necessity by
reading the Constitution so as to support the opinions we already hold. Progressives insist on their reading while conservatives insist
on theirs. We are asked to believe that it is no more than coincidence that the supposedly good faith and politically neutral effort of
both sides to understand the same eighteenth century text leads each side to read it in a fashion that embodies its own contestable
political programs while delegitimating the programs of its adversaries. Or, more precisely, we are asked by each side to believe that
its disinterested reading leads to this result, while the other side’s manipulation of text and history amounts to a cynical, politically
motivated effort to distort the Constitution’s true meaning. To be sure, there
is a way to read the Constitution that
avoids this sort of division. The Constitution could be a symbol of national unity if we focused on
its commands at the most abstract level. Almost no one disagrees with the great goals of
forming a more perfect union and providing for the common defense. Almost everyone
supports liberty and equality in the abstract. We could all embrace the Constitution if we read it
as a work of art, designed to evoke a mood or emotion, rather than as a legal document commanding
specific outcomes. I believe that this is, in fact, the way that the Constitution should be read. The Constitution might provide
us with a common vocabulary we could use to discuss our disagreements. Speaking on the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the
Constitution’s ratification, Franklin
Roosevelt endorsed this version of constitutionalism: The
Constitution of the United States was a layman's document, not a lawyer's contract. That cannot be
stressed too often. Madison, most responsible for it, was not a lawyer; nor 8 was Washington or Franklin, whose sense of the giveand-take of life had kept the Convention together. This great layman's document was a charter of general principles, completely
different from the "whereases" and the "parties of the first part" and the fine print which lawyers put into leases and insurance
policies and installment agreements. The problem, though, is that this reading sidesteps rather than solves the problem of
obedience. The
obligation of obedience arises only when we are asked to do something that we
otherwise would not want to do. But everyone can support their political agenda by referring to constitutional ideals at
the most abstract level. If the Constitution allows all of us to do whatever we want to do, then the problem of obedience never
arises. It
makes sense to talk about obeying the law, but no sense to talk about obeying a
symphony or a painting. In the rough and tumble of contemporary politics, neither side is interested in inspiring us with a
work of art that requires nothing. Both sides want to treat the Constitution as law that commands real outcomes. The upshot is that
both progressives and conservatives are content to beat each other around the head and shoulders with charges of constitutional
infidelity. In this book, I argue that this is no way to engage in serious and authentic dialogue about the issues that divide us. We
should give up on the pernicious myth that we are bound in conscience to obey the commands
of people who died several hundred years ago. Rather than insisting on tendentious interpretations of the
Constitution designed to force the defeat of our adversaries, we ought to talk about the merits of their proposals and ours.
L – Constitutional Intrep
Reliance on the constitution as a supreme doctrine renders all forms of
oppression and structural violence inevitable
West 92 (Robin West, Georgetown University Law Professor, Constitutional Skepticism, Boston
University Law Review Vol. 72:765, 72 B.U. L. Rev. 765 (1992),
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=facpub)PD
If that progressive insight is basically correct, then at least two problems exist with the scheme
of individual rights and liberties protected by the Constitution. First, the Constitution does not
prohibit the abuse of private power that interferes with the equality or freedom of
subordinated peoples. The Constitution simply does not reach private power, and therefore
cannot possibly prohibit its abuse. Even the most far reaching liberal interpretations of the
Reconstruction Amendments-the only amendments that seemingly reach private powerrefuse or fail to find either a constitutional prohibition of private societal racism, intimate
sexual violence, or economic coercion or a constitutional imperative that the states take
affirmative action to eradicate it. Justice Harlan's famous liberal dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson,19 for example, made
painfully clear that, even on his reading of the amendment (which, of course, would have outlawed Jim Crow laws), the
Fourteenth Amendment does not challenge the sensed or actual cultural and social superiority
of the white race. More recently, Justices Brennan and Marshall's argument in their dissent in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson
Co. ,20 that the state may remedy private discrimination if failure to do so would enmesh the state in those discriminatory practices,
did not suggest that the Constitution requires the state to address private discrimination. Similarly,
virtually no liberal
judges or commentators have read the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments to
require that states take affirmative action to address the unconstitutional maldistribution of
household labor, with its serious, well-proven, and adverse effects on women's liberty and
equality. No liberal court or commentator reads the Constitution to require that states or Congress take action to protect against
homophobic violence and rage, or to protect against the deadening, soul-murdering, and often life-threatening effects of
homelessness, hunger, and poverty. The
Constitution apparently leaves untouched the very conditions
of subordination, oppression, and coercion that relegate some to "lesser lives" of drudgery,
fear, and stultifying self-hatred. For that reason alone, the Constitution appears to be fundamentally at odds with
progressive ideals and visions
Turning to a broad constitutional interpretation preempts interpretive choices
Michelman ’14- Professor at Harvard University Law School (Frank I. Michelman, “WHY NOT
JUST SAY NO? AN ESSAY ON THE OBDURACY OF CONSTITUTION FIXATION,” Vol. 94:1141, Boston
University Law Review,
http://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2014/08/MICHELMANDYSFUNCTION.pdf)
Within our current conversations, that should register as no wild or unheralded suggestion. Recent scholarship from
leading authors, including contributors to this Symposium, is thick with suggestions for the relief
of American politics from harms and burdens of constitutional subjection just as such. Proposed
remedies range from a turn towards broadly idealized or instrumentalized modes of
constitutional interpretation,1 to institutional reconstruction (affecting, say, the role and conduct of the Supreme Court),2
to a stepped-up reliance on ground-level social mobilizations to preempt the constitutional-interpretive choices
of courts and other official bodies,3 to a more-or-less complete takeover of constitutionalconstructive work by legislatures and voters,4 to – at the outer edge – expressions of doubt about the
value of the constitutional project tout court5 and proposals to Americans that they should simply and
systematically “ignore the Constitution.”6 Despite their saliency and vigor in the scholarship surrounding us, these
counterconstitutional thematics (as I name them) are mainly absent from our Symposium.
Contention over interpretive methods makes its appearance here7 and so does the social-movement “talking cure.”8 The rest – and
most glaringly
L – Due Process
Due Process is flawed- Legality will always be influenced by a drive for
hegemony and free market dominance
Williams 07 (Daniel R. Williams, Professor of law at Northeastern University, AFTER THE GOLD
RUSH – PART I: HAMDI, 9/11, AND THE DARK SIDE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, NORTHEASTERN
PUBLIC LAW AND THEORY FACULTY WORKING PAPERS SERIES, NO. 16-2007) PD
Robert Cover says that the surreal
epistemology of due process forges meaning in our normative
world. The epistemology of due process within Hamdi, the discussion in Part Two suggests, is predicated
on an ontology that situates so-called enemy combatants (read: terrorists) as the impediment to a
global order moving inexorably towards ubiquitous democracy, the free flow of capital and
goods, and the tightening nexus of cultures and peoples through ever more sophisticated
communication systems and mass media. But what it shields from view, through legalistic
(hence, seemingly apolitical) reasoning, is the new post-Cold War reality of a free-market global order,
loosely captured by the umbrella term globalization, managed for the benefit of multinational corporations
through a level of unilateral force never witnessed in human history. It is a global reality that is moving rapidly towards the
evisceration of the distinction between war and peace.56 The
administrative decisional process of categorizing
people as enemy combatants forges a meaning of our nation and its hegemonic aspirations
that is studiously removed from genuine debate and argument within our juridical institutions
and within the public sphere generally. What more profound and important issue is there, for our courts and for us
as citizens, than the choice between preserving our republic and pursuing empire? Buried within Hamdi is that unexplored choice.
With all the hand-wringing over Executive authority and congressional authorization, the Hamdi Court ignores completely what will
surely become the longlasting meaning of Guantanamo, the place, which is Guantanamo, the symbol, this article’s shorthand
gesture for a form of indivisible sovereignty that equates sovereign power with the ability to inflict violence without juridical
impediment. Despite
O’Connor’s efforts to keep the opinion tightly focused on the particular facts
of Yaser Hamdi’s capture on an Afghani battlefield, Hamdi itself unleashed, at the very least, could not
restrain the ascendancy of Guantanamo, the culmination of sovereignty-as-violence outside a juridical
framework in order to attain the unattainable. The unattainable being a global peace through
the military might of a sole superpower imposing order upon a global free market, a
globalized role for the United States that is reminiscent of liberalism’s vision of the State as
night-watchman over the activities of private actors. It does not take much imagination to see that
Guantanamo-style detention to impose order on a global community can infiltrate a domestic culture faced with forces of disorder
within national borders. This
deeper significance of Hamdi is obscured by the seemingly legalistic
process-oriented question of how much power does the President have in a time of war, in
light of what Congress has legislated.
L - Legal Rationality
The “legal rationality” used by the state masks a system of ongoing violence
Williams 07 (Daniel R. Williams, Professor of law at Northeastern University, AFTER THE GOLD
RUSH – PART I: HAMDI, 9/11, AND THE DARK SIDE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT, NORTHEASTERN
PUBLIC LAW AND THEORY FACULTY WORKING PAPERS SERIES, NO. 16-2007) PD
Though it may appear to be a surging of a new kind of sovereignty, what we are witnessing is actually the resurrection of one that is
quite old. Once
we understand that the Western quest for control and domination of nature,
a
cauldron of desires and impulses and drives that is, once we understand that rationality
unveiled a vast, dark wellspring of irrationality then we can appreciate that the quest for
control and domination ultimately unveils the folly of the quest itself. And so it is perhaps with
America in this post-9/11 age of fear. The Western drive to control and dominate the globe
has now led to a mode of free-market globalization that threatens to obliterate cultural
diversity and reduce the world’s peoples to passive consumers who have nothing else to offer
except their labor. But what that quest for empire has unveiled is something akin to what Freud discovered,
that the pursuit of a stable and supposedly rational global order managed by the military
force of a sole global hegemon ultimately exposes another vast and dark wellspring of
irrationality, manifesting as a cycle of violence, nihilistic violence of the so-called terrorists
and the vengeful violence of the superpower committed to stamping out whatever may
impede the quest for control and dominance. And on the micro level, what legality has
produced in Hamdi what supposedly apolitical legal rationality has spawned is a form of
sovereignty that reverts us back to a preEnlightenment moment when sovereignty was
indivisible and expressed itself ultimately in its capacity to use violence outside any juridical
framework. The very thing that our Enlightenment heritage bequeathed us, Legality, has
driven us back into that unveiled cauldron of irrational violence.
culminating in Freud’s rationalistic investigation into the very source of rationality itself (human consciousness), unveiled
L – Negative Liberty
The constitution only reifies the notion of “negative liberty”, which oppresses
the subordinate
West 92 (Robin West, “Constitutional Skepticism”, Hass Professor of Law and Philosophy at
Georgetown University Law Center,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1637&context=facpub)
Finally, this incompatibility of the Constitution with progressive ideals is neither momentary nor contingent. It is not a product of
false or disingenuous interpretation by a particular court or Justice hostile to progressive politics. Rather, the Constitution's
incompatibility with progressive ideals stems from at least two theoretical and doctrinal sources that lie at the heart of our
constitutional structure: first, the conception of liberty to which the Constitution is committed and, second, its conception of
equality. First, as is often recognized, the
Constitution protects a strong and deeply liberal conception of
what Isaiah Berlin has termed the "negative liberty' 21 of the individual to speak, think,
choose, and labor within a sphere of noninterference from social, community, or state
authority. As is less often recognized, however, the Constitution creates and protects these spheres of
noninterference not only in preference to, but also at the cost of, the more positive conceptions of
freedom and autonomy necessary for progressive change. The cultural, intimate, private, and economic
spheres of noninterference protected by the Constitution are the very spheres of private
power, control, and coercion within which the positive liberty of subordinated persons to live lives
of meaning is most threatened. Thus, the Constitution protects the rights of producers and
consumers of racial hate speech and pornography so as to protect the negative liberty of those speakers
and listeners. By doing so, it not only fails to protect, but also actively threatens, the positive
freedom of women and African Americans to develop lives free from fear for one's safety , the
seeds of racial bitterness, the "clouds of inferiority,"'22 the interference with one's movements, and the crippling
incapacities to participate fully in public life occasioned by the constitutionally protected cultures of racism and misogyny. The
negative liberty of the individual heralded and celebrated by liberalism is not only inconsistent with,
but also hostile to the positive liberty central to progressivism, simply because protection of
"negative liberty" necessarily creates the sphere of noninterference and privacy within which the
abuse of private power can proceed unabated. The Constitution is firmly committed to this
negative rather than positive conception of liberty, and is thus not only not the ally, but also a very real obstacle, to
progressive ideals.
COMPETITIVENESS BAD
Useful as a specific link module for Neoliberalism or the Cosmopolitanism K. It could also be
used to supplement a Hege bad, Security K, or impact answers to a competitiveness advantage.
K Module
The discourse of competitiveness in the 1AC perpetuates a hegemonic framing
of economic debates that secures neoliberalism and market patriotism.
Bristow 3 (Gillian, Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at the School of City and Regional
Planning at Cardiff University, “Everyone's a ‘winner’: problematising the discourse of regional
competitiveness.” Journal of Economic Geography, June 2005 5(3): 285-304)
A major
debate exists in the policy studies literature about the scope and limitations of reason, analysis
and intelligence in policy-making—a debate which has been re-ignited with the recent emphasis upon
evidence-based policy-making (see Davies et al., 2000). Keynes is often cited as the main proponent of the importance of
ideas in policy making, since he argued that policy-making should be informed by knowledge, truth, reason and facts (Keynes, 1971,
vol. xxi, 289). However, Majone (1989) has significantly challenged the assumption that policy makers engage in a purely objective,
rational, technical assessment of policy alternatives. He has argued that in
practice, policy makers use theory,
knowledge and evidence selectively to justify policy choices which are heavily based on value
judgements. It is thus persuasion (through rhetoric, argument, advocacy and their institutionalisation) that is the key to
the policy process, not the logical correctness or accuracy of theory or data. In other words, it is
interests rather than ideas that shape policy making in practice. Ultimately, the language of
competitiveness is the language of the business community. Thus, critical to understanding the power of the
discourse is firstly, understanding the appeal and significance of the discourse to business interests and, secondly, exploring their
role in influencing the ideas of regional and national policy elites. Part of the allure of the discourse of competitiveness for the
business community is its seeming comprehensibility. Business leaders feel that they already understand the basics of what
competitiveness means and thus it offers them the gain of apparent sophistication without the pain of grasping something complex
and new. Furthermore, competitive
images are exciting and their accoutrements of ‘battles’, ‘wars’
and ‘races’ have an intuitive appeal to businesses familiar with the cycle of growth, survival and
sometimes collapse (Krugman, 1996b). The climate of globalisation and the turn towards neo-liberal, capitalist
forms of regulation has empowered business interests and created a demand for new concepts
and models of development which offer guidance on how economies can innovate and prosper
in the face of increasing competition for investment and resources. Global policy elites of governmental
and corporate institutions, who share the same neo-liberal consensus, have played a critical role in promoting both the discourse of
national and regional competitiveness, and of competitiveness policies which they think are good for them (such as supportive
institutions and funding for research and development agendas). In the EU, for example, the European Round Table of Industrialists
played a prominent role in ensuring that the Commission's 1993 White Paper placed the pursuit of international competitiveness
(and thus the support of business), on an equal footing with job creation and social cohesion objectives (Lovering, 1998; Balanya et
al., 2000). This discourse rapidly spread and competitiveness policies were transferred through global policy networks as large quasigovernmental organisations such as the OECD and World Bank pushed the national and, subsequently, the regional competitiveness
agenda upon national governments (Peet, 2003). Part of the appeal of the regional
competitiveness discourse for
policy-maker s is that like the discourse of globalisation, it presents a relatively structured set of
ideas, often in the form of implicit and sedimented assumptions , upon which they can draw in
formulating strategy and, indeed, in legitimating strategy pursued for quite distinct ends (Hay and
Rosamond, 2002). Thus, the discourse clearly dovetails with discussions about the appropriate level at which economic governance
should be exercised and fits in well with a growing trend towards the decentralised, ‘bottom-up’ approaches to economic
development policy and a focus on the indigenous potential of regions. For example, in the UK:‘the Government believes that a
successful regional and sub-regional economic policy must be based on building the indigenous strengths in each locality, region and
county. The best mechanisms for achieving this are likely to be based in the regions themselves’ (HM Treasury, 2001a, vi). The
devolution of powers and responsibilities to regional institutions, whether democratic or more narrowly administrative, is given
added tour de force when accompanied by the arguments contained within the regional competitiveness discourse. There is clear
political capital to be gained from highlighting endogenous capacities to shape economic processes, not least because it helps
generate the sense of regional identity that motivates economic actors and institutions towards a common regional purpose
(Rosamond, 2002). Furthermore, the regional competitiveness discourse points to a clear set of agendas for policy action over which
regional institutions have some potential for leverage—agendas such as the development of university-business relationships and
strong innovation networks. This provides policy-makers with the ability to point to the existence of seemingly secure paths to
prosperity, as reinforced by the successes of exemplar regions. In this way, the discourse of regional competitiveness helps to
provide a way of constituting regions as legitimate agents of economic governance. The language of regional competitiveness also
fits in very neatly with the ideological shift to the ‘Third Way’ popularised most notably by the New Labour government in the UK.
This promotes the reconstruction of the state rather than its shrinkage (as under neo-liberal market imperatives) or expansion (as
under traditional socialist systems of mass state intervention). Significantly, this philosophy sees state economic competencies as
being restricted to the ability to intervene in line with perceived microeconomic or supply-side imperatives rather than active
macroeconomic, demand-side intervention—an agenda that is thus clearly in tune with the discourse around competitiveness. The
attractiveness of the competitiveness discourse may also be partly a product of the power of pseudo-scientific,
mathematised nature of the economics discipline and the business strategy literature from which it emanates.
This creates an innate impartiality and technicality for the market outcomes (such as competitiveness) it
describes (Schoenberger, 1998). Public policy in developed countries experiencing the marketisation of the state, is increasingly
driven by managerialism which emphasises the improved performance and efficiency of the
state. This managerialism is founded upon economistic and rationalistic assumptions which include an emphasis upon measuring
performance in the context of a planning system driven by objectives and targets (Sanderson, 2001). The result is an
increasing requirement for people, places and organisations to be accountable and for their
performance and success to be measured and assessed. In this emerging evaluative state, performance tends to
be scrutinised through a variety of means, with particular emphasis placed upon output indicators. This provides not only a means of
lending legitimacy to the institutional environment, but also some sense of exactitude and certainty, particularly for central
governments who are thus able to retain some ‘top-down’, mechanical sense that things are somehow under their control (Boyle,
2001). The evolutionary, ‘survival of
the fittest’ basis of the regional competitiveness discourse clearly
resonates with this evaluative culture. The discourse of competitiveness strongly appeals to the stratum of policy
makers and analysts who can use it to justify what they are doing and/or to find out how well
they are doing it relative to their ‘rivals’. This helps explain the interest in trying to measure regional competitiveness
and the development of composite indices and league tables. It also helps explain why particular elements of the discourse have
assumed particular significance—output indicators of firm performance are much easier to compare and rank on a single axis than
are indicators relating to institutional behaviour, for example. This in turn points to a central paradox in measures of regional
competitiveness. The key ingredients of firm competitiveness and regional prosperity are increasingly perceived as lying with assets
such as knowledge and information which are, by definition, intangible or at least difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy.
The obsession with
performance measurement and the tendency to reduce complex variables to
one, easily digestible number brings a ‘kind of blindness’ with it as to what is really important
(Boyle, 2001, 60)—in this case, how to improve regional prosperity. Thus while a composite index number of regional
competitiveness will attract widespread attention in the media and amongst policy-makers and development agencies, the difficulty
presented by such a measure is in knowing what exactly needs to be targeted for appropriate remedial action. All of this suggests
that regional competitiveness is more than simply the linguistic expression of powerful exogenous interests. It has
also
become rhetoric. In other words, regional competitiveness is deployed in a strategic and
persuasive way, often in conjunction with other discourses (notably globalisation) to legitimate
specific policy initiatives and courses of action. The rhetoric of regional competitiveness serves a useful political
purpose in that it is easier to justify change or the adoption of a particular course of policy action
by reference to some external threat that makes change seem inevitable. It is much easier for example,
for politicians to argue for the removal of supply-side rigidities and flexible hire-and-fire workplace rules by suggesting that there is
no alternative and that jobs would be lost anyway if productivity improvement was not achieved. Thus, ‘the language
of
external competitiveness…provides a rosy glow of shared endeavour and shared enemies
which can unite captains of industry and representatives of the shop floor in the same big
tent’ (Turner, 2001, 40). In this sense it is a discourse which provides some shared sense of meaning
and a means of legitimising neo-liberalism rather than a material focus on the actual
improvement of economic welfare.
Competition is the root cause of all genocide and ethnic cleansing
Schandorf 8 <Michael, B.A. in English, Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago in Communication,
May 2008, “A Rhetoric of Resolution: The Limits of Competition”, Mervyn H. Sterne Library,
https://www.mhsl.uab.edu/dt/2008m/schandorf.pdf>//wx
The concern here is that by
understanding the world in terms of constant, perpetual competition, social
and cultural conflict becomes not only inescapable, but extremely limited in its ability to produce lasting, adaptive,
and constructive results. Kenneth Burke used the idea of the “god
term” to describe any concept that came to fulfill all of the roles in his pentad
certainly fulfills these criteria in
of aspects of human motives: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. “Competition”
Western culture. Many Americans define their very lives by 2 the act of competition even outside the realm of business—devotion to a
particular sports team being only perhaps the most obvious example (a phenomenon not confined to American culture as news surrounding nearly any
World Cup soccer event will easily demonstrate). The scene or “field of competition” is regularly applied (in practice, if not in verbal reality) to such
mundane events as the daily commute (e.g., “jockeying for position,” “the Lexis cut me off”). At a larger scale, the
reigning Western
political and economic theory metaphorically embodies competition quite clearly as the
“invisible hand.” Tellingly for my purposes here, the “invisible hand” concept is both metaphorical and metonymic; the more complete idea is
the “invisible hand of competition.” Here competition is both agent and agency—it becomes an instrument
used by itself to further its own goals, which is, of course, more competition. This self-referentiality is
consistent with Burke’s “god term” and demonstrates his assertion in A Grammar of Motives that agency implies purpose. It also illustrates my point :
Western culture is motivated by competition for the sake of competition. And, despite rare and meager
references to “how you play the game,” the purpose of competition is understood to be “winning.” A reasonable
response to this possibly obvious assertion might be, what’s wrong with winning? Competition ideally results in the best competitors succeeding.
Competition in the market ideally results in the success of the best products and services. Competition in the work place ideally results in the most able
work force. Competition in academia ideally results in the most able thinkers producing the most useful, productive, and fecund ideas. Competition in
politics ideally results in the survival of the most able candidates and policies. Even life
itself is maintained through
competition, in Herbert Spencer’s famous “survival of the fittest.” A society and culture that encourages
competition insures the propagation of values necessary for continuing progress. The “losers”
adapt to create novel challenges (the 3 results of which necessarily entail further progress through further competition) or are
eliminated so as not to clog the system. The short answer to this objection is that in practice all but one of these examples involve actual goals,
actual purposes, and actual results—they entail specific ends, and competition is a method for reaching
those ends with the best possible results. Ideally, competition should serve, in Burke’s terms, as an
agency, an instrument or tool, functioning as a means of quality control : competition provides the vital function of
eliminating the weaker, the less useful, and the less fecund, and promoting the stronger, the
more useful, and the more productive. A misused instrument, however, can be worse than
detrimental. A hammer can be used to build; it can also be used indiscriminately for blunt-force destruction. When “Competition”
functions as a god term, the goals, purposes, and results of competition are “Competition”
itself—motivations and intentions are subsumed into “play,” or worse “battle,” and what
“progress” occurs is merely a happy or convenient by-product that allows further
opportunities for conflict. In a world where technological progress and the increased cultural
interaction it makes possible can and do allow the escalation of human conflict to nuclear
annihilation, ethnic cleansing, and the elimination of entire cultures and large-scale
ecosystems through the excesses of economic globalization, this is a problem.
L – Competition
The very word “competition” as a god term binds us to a single, violent
meaning, leaving no room for ontological change
Schandorf 8 <Michael, B.A. in English, Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago in Communication,
May 2008, “A Rhetoric of Resolution: The Limits of Competition”, Mervyn H. Sterne Library,
https://www.mhsl.uab.edu/dt/2008m/schandorf.pdf>//wx
And this is not merely a human social phenomenon: complex life is not possible without cooperation. In the words of eminent
biologist Ernst Mayr, “every individual of most species is actually a consortium of several species” (Margulis and Sagan xiv). More
explicitly, the
very idea of an “individual” is a generalization. But it is a generalization built into the
contemporary idea of competition. The word compete derives from the earlier competitor, which is a borrowing from
the Latin com-(together) petere (to aim at, go toward, try to reach, seek, etc.) (OED, Skeat). The etymology suggests two individuals
in dialectical interaction toward a specific goal, and in fact, according to the OED, the modern sense of “to contend or strive,” while
deriving from the 17th century Italian competere, is recognized as a 19th century “‘Scotticism’ and ‘an American discovery.’” Driven
by the economic philosophies of the 18th century,
the idea of competition evolved from a dialectical to a
rhetorical sense and, with the cultural influences of Nietzsche and Darwin, came to metaphorically
encompass any form of struggle. However, in an example of the overreliance on this
anthropocentric metaphor of competition, the idea has been extended in the field of biology to include “indirect
competition” in which supposedly competing species or individuals have no interaction at all, and occasionally no actual
“competitors.”1 Feminist critics and others (e.g. Gross and Averill, Moulton) have explored the connections between 5 the
conceptualization of competition and the historical development of science in terms of patriarchy and dominance, but their
arguments and conclusions have largely fallen on deaf ears. This is not surprising since “Competition”
as a god term
leaves no conceptual alternative, no space in which to reframe the understanding of the
world.
It is worth noting, however (since the elevation of competition as a god term is based in part on the concept of natural
selection), that the very foundations of life, the bacterial realm that makes higher life possible, function on a very different paradigm
from Darwinian natural selection. Not only is sexual selection rare (such as it is) at the microbiological level, horizontal gene transfer
(which, by the way, makes a far more appropriate foundation for the “meme” metaphor of communication than sexual selection)
involves the broadcasting of genetic material into the environment (as opposed to direct individual-to-individual transmission). This
selective acquisition of widely broadcast genetic material problematizes traditional scientific understandings of evolution
considering the intimate systemic and ecological relationships among bacteria, viruses, and more complex life (see Godenfeld and
Woese, Hotopp, et al, and Woese). Furthermore, the best known and documented cases of actual speciation involve symbiosis—
direct cooperation among different species and usually bacteria—which also led to the incorporation of mitochondria as well as to
photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation in plants (see Margulis and Sagan). Symbiogenesis – not competition – may, in fact, be
responsible for all plant and animal life; Margulis argues that eukaryotic cells are the result of an ancient collaboration and
ultimately fusion of archaebacteria and eubacteria (Margulis and Sagan xii).2 Arguments in the hard sciences may at first glance
seem external to the concerns of rhetoric and communication, but they are not. They demonstrate how natural
human
conceptualization, mediated by language, can direct the development and acquisition of
knowledge into narrow channels and exclude conceptualizations that do not fit the frame , by
the action of what Burke called “terministic screens”: a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. In this case, a
devotion to “Competition” as a guiding principle significantly restricts the capacity to acquire
and understand information in terms that allow for cooperative and systemic interaction
among individuals and groups. Furthermore, these ideas lead to realworld conflicts that involve
highly developed competing rhetorics. Naturally occurring horizontal gene transfer, for example, is at the root of
conflicts over genetically modified foods—perhaps those scientists who downplay safety concerns about genetically modified
organisms are less susceptible to the commonly attributed motives of greed than to a blind adherence to a concept of competition
through individual selection that regards speciation by horizontal gene transfer or symbiosis as, at best, minor curiosities. Similarly,
Goatly has discussed how the medical metaphor DISEASE IS AN INVADER, while integral to the development of modern medicine
and society through the development of antibiotics, has proven less than helpful in other areas of contemporary medicine, such as
auto-immune disease and antibiotic resistance. In such cases, understanding disease as miscommunication among the body’s
various networks is much more helpful than understanding the immune system as an army constantly fighting off attacking invaders.
The metaphors we use to understand the worlds we live in shape the way we understand
those worlds – and thereby limit the ways in which we are able to conceive responses to those
worlds. When different perspectives conflict, those very perspectives, “regimes of truth” in Foucault’s
terminology, or “webs of belief” in Quine’s, condition the possibilities for response to difference and
conflict. And such conflicts, human conflicts, are the point.
L – Winning
Economic theories of competitiveness train us to view others solely as obstacles
to success and ignores the possibility of cooperation
Kohn 86 <Alfie, writer in human behavior, B.A. from Brown University, October 1986, “No Contest: The
Case Against Competition”, http://teacherrenewal.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/CompetitionAlfie+Kohn.pdf>//wx
Life for us has become an endless succession of contests. From the moment the alarm clock rings until sleep
overtakes us again, from the time we are toddlers until the day we die, we are busy struggling to
outdo others. This is our posture at work and at school, on the playing field and back at home. It is the common denominator
of American life. Precisely because we are so immersed in it, competition can easily escape our notice. A fish does not reflect on the
nature of water, Walker Percy once remarked, "he cannot imagine its absence, so he cannot consider its presence."' Even those who
think and write for a living have paid surprisingly little attention to the subject. In the last fifty years, for example, no one has written
a book that explores the very idea of competition and the way it plays itself out in all the varied arenas of human life. I do not mean
a lament about what has happened to sports today or a recipe for being a winner in business or a statistical operation performed on
abstractions that issue from experimental games. These roll off the presses regularly. I mean a took at what it really means to try to
beat other people, a careful investigation of this arrangement that requires some people to fail in order that others can succeed. If
such an analysis is long past due, the need for it is nowhere more urgent than in this country. Different cultures depend on
competition to different degrees in structuring their economic system or schooling or recreation. At
one end of the
spectrum are societies that function without any competition at all. At the other end is the
United States. Here is social psychologist Elliot Aronson: From the Little League ball player who bursts into tears after his team
loses, to the college students in the football stadium chanting "We're number one!"; from Lyndon Johnson, whose judgment was
almost certainly distorted by his oft-stated desire not to be the first American President to lose a war, to the third grader who
despises his classmate for a superior performance on an arithmetic test; we
manifest a staggering cultural
obsession with victory. Others have used similar language. "Competition is almost our state religion," says one observer. It
is "an American cultural addiction," remarks another. "Resistance to competition is viewed as suspiciously un-American," notes a
third. This does not mean that competition is found only in the United States. The examples offered in this book will likely seem
familiar to readers elsewhere. But what may be merely familiar in other places has reached exaggerated, often ludicrous,
proportions in this country. We
can see this both in the pervasiveness of competitive activities and in
the fervor with which we approach them. Our economic system is predicated on competition,
while our schooling, from the earliest grades, trains us not only to triumph over others but to
regard them as obstacles to our own success . Our leisure time is filled with highly structured games in which one
individual or team 2 must defeat another. Even within the family there is rivalry--a muted but often desperate struggle that treats
approval as a scarce commodity and turns love into a kind of trophy. Not only do we get carried away with competitive activities, but
we turn almost everything else into a contest. Our collective creativity seems to be tied up in devising new ways to produce winners
and losers. It is not enough that we struggle against our colleagues at work to be more productive; we also must compete for the
title of Friendliest Employee. The only way we can think of to socialize with the people who work for another company is to try to
beat them in a competitive game. If we want to escape all of this by, say, going out dancing, we find that even here we are involved
in a contest. No
corner of our lives is too trivial--or too important--to be exempted from the
compulsion to rank ourselves against one another. Even where no explicit contest has been set up, we tend to
construe the world in competitive terms. Several years ago, to cite one small illustration, the New York Times Magazine featured a
profile of Placido Domingo that declared he had "challenged Luciano Pavarotti - and, many say, surpassed him - for the title of the
world's leading tenor." Opera, too, cannot be enjoyed without our thinking in terms of who is number one. Thus it is that Vince
Lombardi's famous comment - "Winning
isn't everything; it's the only thing" - must be understood not
merely as the expression of one football coach's fanaticism, but as a capsule description of our
entire culture. Our lives are not merely affected by, but structured upon, the need to be "better than." We seem to have
reached a point where doing our jobs, educating our children, and even relaxing on the
weekends have to take place in the context of a struggle where some must lose . That there might
be other ways to do these things is hard for us to imagine - or, rather, it would be hard if we were sufficiently reflective about our
competitiveness to think about alternatives in the first place. Mostly we just accept it as "the way life is." The current celebration of
business competition makes these issues particularly timely. Bookstores have been deluged with guides to winning in the
marketplace largely because of the rhetoric spilling out of Washington over the last few years. The competition that has been
indiscriminately encouraged actually has the effect of shifting power from elected representatives to private corporations, from
those who are theoretically accountable to all citizens to those who are, at best, accountable to only the tiny fraction of people who
stand to make a profit. (Half of all corporate stock is owned by one percent of the population, while 81 percent of all families own no
stock at all.) But even if the mystique of corporate success becomes less fashionable after a few years--even if public officials no
longer see themselves chiefly as cheerleaders for private industry--our
economic system is fundamentally
grounded in competition, and an exploration of the subject will continue to be relevant. Moreover, I am concerned in this
book with far more than the machinations of the business world. Competition is a deeply ingrained, profoundly
enduring, part of our lives, and it is time to look more closely at what it does to us. Let us begin
with a more precise formulation of the topic. I think it is useful to distinguish between what might be called structural competition
and intentional competition. The former refers to a situation; the latter, to an attitude. Whereas structural competition has to do
with the win/lose framework, which is external, intentional competition is internal; it concerns the desire on the part of an individual
to be number one. To
say that an activity is structurally competitive is to say that it is characterized
by what I will call mutually exclusive goal attainment ("MEGA," for short). This means, very simply, that my
success requires your failure. Our fates are negatively linked .
If one of us must lose exactly as much as
the other wins, as in poker, then we are talking about a "zero-sum game." But in any MEGA arrangement, two or more individuals
are trying to achieve a goal that cannot be achieved by all of them. This is the essence of competition, as several social scientists
have observed.
L – Zero Sum
Competitive discourse makes everything zero sum – no hope for cooperative
win-win arrangements.
Karlberg 2005 – Michael Karlberg is a Professor in the Department of Communication at
Western Washington University. (Michael ; “THE POWER OF DISCOURSE AND THE DISCOURSE OF POWER:PURSUING
PEACE THROUGH DISCOURSE INTERVENTION”; International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2005;
page 7-8; http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol10_1/Karlberg_101IJPS.pdf)//pk
A Systems Model of Power Many systems theorists have articulated a theory of power that is remarkably similar to the feminist
theory outlined above, yet derived from the relational complexities that characterize the study of dynamic systems. The
fundamental premise of systems theory is that different types of complex systems – physical, biological, ecological, social, and so
forth – exhibit many structural and functional similarities. In systems terminology, complex systems are characterized by emergent
properties that do not characterize any of their component parts in isolation. These emergent properties are made possible by the
internal interdependence of a system’s parts or subsystems, which exist within complex networks of relationships with one another,
characterized by mutual influence and interchange (for overviews of systems theory, refer to Bertalanffy, 1998; Englehart, 1995;
Skyttner, 1996). Complex dynamic systems can therefore be understood as functional unities. They perform various functions that
their component parts or subsystems could not perform alone. For instance, a cell can metabolize energy while its component
elements, in isolation, cannot. An organ can perform specialized physiological functions that its component cells, in isolation, cannot.
A living organism can reproduce itself while its component organs, in isolation, cannot. And a species can evolve while individual
organisms, in isolation, cannot. Each of these functions is made possible through increasing levels of system complexity and
integration. Human societies can also be understood as functional unities – at least potentially. Interpretations vary widely,
however, regarding the functionality of contemporary Western social systems. Many conventional theorists have argued that
Western social, political, and economic systems are highly functional. The writings of Talcott Parsons (1986), for instance, exemplify
such thought (for a critique of Parsonian functionalism, refer to Giddens, 1968). This conventional functionalism has frequently
served as a framework of apologetics for Western-liberal civilization. In contrast, many
critical functionalists have
concluded that contemporary Western-liberal social systems are largely dysfunctional because
they are socially unjust and/or ecologically unsustainable. In a series of Heretical Reflections on Today’s
Values, Culture and Politics, systems theorist Ervin Laslo (1989) asserts that idealized norms of aggression,
competitive acquisition, and unregulated competition are no longer sustainable in an
increasingly interdependent global society. In place of these traditional Western-liberal norms,
Laslo (1989, pp. 109-15) calls for a reorientation of basic human relationships from adversarial
“negative-sum” and “zero-sum” relations toward mutualistic “positive-sum” relations. Another
prominent systems theorist and peace researcher, Kenneth Boulding, has articulated a theory of power that
is consistent with Laszlo’s analysis. Boulding’s (1990) integrative theory of power provides an
alternative way of thinking and talking about social relations in an age of interdependence.
Integrative power, he (Boulding, 1990, p. 25) explains, is “the capacity to build organizations, to create
families and groups, to inspire loyalty, to bind people together, to develop legitimacy”.
According to Boulding, it embodies cooperation and reciprocity, friendship and collective
identity, the growth of a sense of community, the ability to create and pursue constructive
images of the future together, and the belief that one’s own welfare is increased through an
increase in the welfare of others. Drawing on his background in systems theory, economics, and peace research,
Boulding concludes that functional social and political systems can only be constructed on the
normative basis of these integrative power relations. Though he acknowledges the historical existence of
adversarial power relations, and even accepts their necessity in some limited contexts, Boulding (1990) argues that
contemporary world conditions demand a much wider recognition of the importance of
integrative power in human affairs. From the perspectives of Laslo, Boulding, and other like-minded theorists,
adversarial power relations are becoming anachronistic in the context of human social evolution. Militarism, nationalism,
sectarianism, racism, competitive materialism, and other expressions of social dysfunction
reflect a failure to adapt to changing historical conditions – a failure to model social systems
according to the “positive sum” or “integrative” relations needed to promote collective
human interests in an age of increasing interdependence. Indeed, Laslo (1989, pp. 128-9) concludes
that the “obsolete
modes of thinking and acting” embodied in contemporary Western cultures
have reached the upper limits of their stability within these new conditions of global interdependence.
Feminism Booster
Competitive discourse reinforces the patriarchy
Karlberg 2005 - Michael Karlberg is a Professor in the Department of Communication at
Western Washington University. (Michael ; “THE POWER OF DISCOURSE AND THE DISCOURSE OF POWER:PURSUING
PEACE THROUGH DISCOURSE INTERVENTION”; International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2005;
page 5-6; http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol10_1/Karlberg_101IJPS.pdf)//pk
Feminism, of course, is not a uniform or homogenous theoretical tradition. It embodies diverse currents of thought and
accommodates internal difference of perspective. Accordingly, the following discussion does not imply that all feminists speak with
one essential voice. However, many feminist
scholars have offered similar critiques of the power as
domination paradigm. All of these critiques derive from an understanding that the normalization of aggressive
and competitive behaviors within Western societies has served, historically, as a structure of
male privilege. On the most obvious level, this has occurred through the direct physical domination of women by men. When
competitive power struggles are seen as inevitable expressions of human nature, this places most women at a physical disadvantage
to most men. In addition to overt physical domination, the power as domination paradigm has also served as a more subtle
structure of male privilege. Throughout
the public sphere, in our economy, political institutions,
judicial systems, educational systems, and so forth, systems of reward tend to privilege
conventionally “masculine” adversarial traits over conventionally “feminine” traits such as
caring and cooperation. Given the historical association of aggression and competition with masculinity, these systems of
reward often serve as systems of male privilege. In addition, even when women do adopt aggressive and
competitive attitudes, they have historically not received equivalent rewards for equivalent
behaviors. Male expressions of aggression and competition have historically been rewarded
because they have been viewed as natural and appropriate. Female expressions of aggression and
competition have not been rewarded because they have been viewed as unnatural and inappropriate (Lakoff, 1975; Moulton, 1983).
Finally, beyond the relative disadvantages that women experience within these structures of male privilege, many feminists also
express concern regarding the domination of masculine qualities (as opposed to male persons) over feminine qualities (as opposed
to female persons) – regardless of whether these qualities are displayed by women or men (e.g., Brocke-Utne, 1989; Reardon, 1993).
The flip side
of a culture that privileges aggressive and competitive qualities is a culture that
devalues caring and mutualistic qualities. By devaluing these latter qualities, such a culture
rewards conformity, by both men and women, to the established norms of a patriarchal order.
In doing so, it also promotes a deficit of nurturing and cooperative traits among those who occupy the most influential positions at
the top of existing hierarchies in government, business, law, and so forth. On the margins of this (arguably male) culture
of
competitive power struggles, many women employ alternative ways of thinking and talking
about power. In the 1940s, Mary Parker Follett (1942, pp. 101-6) articulated a distinction between “coercive” and “coactive”
power, or “power over” and “power with”. Follett argued that the usual understanding of power relations as coercive was limited
and problematic. She (Follett, 1942, pp. 101) argued instead for an expanded understanding – a “conception of power-with, a jointly
developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power” – that could serve as a new normative basis for social and political relations.
This distinction was soon echoed by others, including Dorothy Emmett (1953) and Hannah Arendt (1969). In Arendt’s (1969, p. 44)
words, “power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert”. The conflation of power with domination, she
(Arendt, 1969, p. 43) warned, results “in a kind of blindness” to human social reality. “It is only after one ceases to reduce public
affairs to the business of dominion”, she (Arendt, 1969, pp. 43-44) asserted, that “human affairs will appear, or rather, reappear, in
their authentic diversity”.
Neoliberalism Booster
Competitive discourse is the root of neoliberalism
Bradanini 9, (Davide, PhD student at IMT in Italy, BA degree in international relations, MA
degree in international and diplomatic studies from University of Bologna, MA degree in
European political and Administrative Studies, The Rise of the Competitive Discourse,
https://www.coleurope.eu/system/files_force/researchpaper/wp10_bradanini.pdf?download=1, AL)
These are crucial questions for any attempt to understand the nature of the integration process, its driving forces, and also its moments
of crisis (as, arguably, the one the EU is currently experiencing). This paper seeks to provide a brief analysis of the changing
underlying structural powers within the European Union through the prism of the
rise of the competitiveness
discourse, which has arguably shaped the form and content of several EU institutions and policies
in recent years. This paper provides an empirical application of some of the theoretical insights provided by the growing neoGramscian literature on the European Union, and shows how the latter may be particularly well- suited to understanding current
developments within the Union. It reviews some of the claims of this literature and attempts to elaborate on them by highlighting the
fragility of the consensus around European socio-economic governance, on which the recent economic crisis adds further strain. I
argue that socio-economic
governance in the European Union's multi-level system has been
underpinned and increasingly shaped by a competitiveness discourse, which has been
instrumental for the objective of cementing a neoliberal hegemony which has moulded the
process of European integration since the mid-1980s. This competitiveness discourse is part
and parcel of an attempt to develop and to consolidate a hegemonic discourse to build social
support for the project of 'embedded neoliberalism'. In this context, competitiveness becomes the
cornerstone not only of economic, but also of social governance, in such a way that it becomes a goal it
itself, and 4 not a means to achieve wider objectives (social welfare, employment). In Jessop’s terms, competitiveness is constituted as
"the national interest".
# - Poverty
The theory of competitiveness creates a social underclass to oppress and throw
in a cycle of poverty
Taylor 10 <Marcus, Department of Global Development Studies, Queen’s University, 2010, “Conscripts of
Competiveness: Culture, Institutions and Capital in Contemporary Development”, Putting Culture in
Development / Putting Development in Culture’, forthcoming, Third World Quarterly>//wx
Outside of the positive sum games of the neoclassical cannon and the institutional-fetishisms of the new institutional economics, these manifestations
of uneven development breed the conditions for violence. In a context in which the urban centres of the global South have become the collecting
ground for the dispossessed, struggles inevitably erupt over what David Harvey, following Henri Lefebvre, terms the ‘right to the city’. The
urban
bourgeoisie – vanguard of competitiveness – seek spatial segregation from the disorder and
insecurity of the slums through their own self-enclosures. They travel, as Arjun Appadurai evocatively puts it, “from guarded
homes to darkened cars to airconditioned offices, moving always in an envelope of privilege through the
heat of public poverty and the dust of dispossession”. Yet beyond the fences of these gated communities, the
worlds of competitiveness and dispossession overlap. Conflict over the uses and abuses of urban
space is inevitable as the high modernity of the formal economy is interspersed within an
uneven urban environment of rapidly expanding slums and a proliferating informal sector incorporating the internal
migrants from impoverished rural areas who desperately strive to avoid being a segment of surplus humanity unable to integrate into the circuits of
Violence resides at the heart of this contradiction between the pursuit of
competitiveness and those rendered ontologically impossible under its dictates . These dynamics, for
capital.
example, are captured in the coercive street and slum clearances that are currently occurring prior to the hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in
the imagery of an international
sporting competition is readily reworked to project a broader image of international
competitiveness. In particular, the New Delhi authorities have harnessed the Games to project an image of a ‘World Class City’, a refrain that
readily resuscitates a previous slogan of ‘shining India’. The trouble facing the architects of this image, however, is that
the ambivalences of competitiveness are written into the urban space of New Delhi where the
passage from a ‘competition state’ of high modernity to a ‘failed state’ of capital’s wastelands
can be as minimal as crossing a street. As a consequence, the lead up to the games has been characterised by concerted
New Delhi. Desired by the Indian government as a showpiece for Indian modernisation,
infrastructural investment across the city to reconfigure Delhi’s urban landscapes in ways that either remove or hide manifestations of its ingrained
uneven development. Such trends are not new. Indeed, the city’s slums have been continuous targets for reform, renovation or relocation since
they fit closely
into the ongoing project that Sanjay Srivastava terms “the making of a new culture of consumption” in and
through transformations of New Delhi’s urban space that reorganise space for the high
consumption life-styles of India’s entrepreneurial elite and new middle classes. To accomplish these goals, around US$1 billion has gone
colonial times when concerns over congestion and disease were the pretexts for coercive urban restructuring. Moreover,
towards renovating the city centre, including building an athletes’ village, with full provision of electricity and water, on the east bank of the Yamuna
river. This
area first had to be cleared of informal slum settlements and, over the past two years,
more than two million people have been forcibly removed from such informal settlements as
the city attempts to coercively purge itself of those unable to conform to the dictates of
competitiveness. For other slums, visible from the roads leading to the primary venues of the Games, the municipal authorities have resigned
themselves to planting bamboo to cover over the blemishes of ‘Incredible India’. As a synchronized dimension of this housecleaning, the state
authorities have simultaneously targeted the presence of tens of thousands of beggars, most of which are migrants from the co untryside across central
and northern India. As New Delhi's Social Welfare Minister Mangat Ram Singhal commented, "We Indians are used to beggars but Westerners are not
and so we need to clean up" before adding that "We'll catch them all". To do so, the state has introduced mobile courts, housed in the backs of vans
operated by a special police task force, in order to speed up convictions for begging. Bylaws allow beggars to be sent to a special home for a year while
habitual offenders can be jailed for ten. Furthermore, officials have suggested the creation of a biometric database to identify repeat offenders so that
they can be locked up or expelled from the city. To
reconcile the contradictions of competitiveness, civil society
has attempted to obliterate the ambiguities of political society by deploying the coercive apparatus
of the state to clearly delineate the boundaries of where informality is rendered illegal . As a
coercive expression of the contradictions at the heart of global capitalism, the marginalised masses of the streets of New Delhi
have been criminalised in the name of competitiveness .
# - Imperialism
US’s patriotism in the market leads to corruption and untrammeled violence
Whyte 7 – David Whyte is a professor of Sociology, Social reform and Criminology at the University of
Liverpool(“Market patriotism and the "war on terror”;9/22/2007 page 17-18; Social Justice Vol 34. No ¾)//pk
It has become unfashionable to look to the nation-state as an organizing category of analysis. Yet the alliances and competing
national interests revealed in the prelude to the Iraq invasion bring into sharp relief that it is insufficient to discuss the replacement
of imperialism by a generalized notion of Empire. Of course, the
brutal turn in U.S. imperialism is related to the
internationalization of the neoliberal market form. But insofar as there is a struggle for dominance
over the international economy and the U.S. is the leading economy in this struggle-with this
occurring at the level of competing varieties of capitalist economies-an understanding of how
the internationalization of the neoliberal market is constructed around a simultaneous
reconfiguration of national and transnational interests is more crucial than ever. If market
patriotism is an ideological marker that the nation-state remains the key site of economic
policy formation, certainly for the strongest states, this is not to say that the "globalizing"
tendencies of markets and the emergence of key transnational institutions (intergovernmental and
those of transnational capital) have had no lasting effect on nation-states. Indeed, the probability of pressures
from above and below upon the integrity of national states means that market patriotism is unlikely to remain a stable source of
legitimacy. Further instability stems from the paradox at the heart of market patriotism. Statemarket symbiosis, the source of the material strength of the ruling fraction, is also a source of neoliberalism's vulnerability.
Market patriotism seeks to provide an alibi for a remarkably intricate web of personal
interconnections between state servants, the most senior politicians, and a growing number of war profiteers. Yet
this openness lays bare the real consequence of state-capital symbioses: the corruption of
political authority and the untrammeled violence of imperial wars. At the openly violent frontiers of the
neoliberal market, consensus is both less likely and more necessary; moreover, the readiness with which the U.S. ruling class resorts
to violence to promote its own economic advantage undermines its own political legitimacy. The
potential for mobilizing
market patriotism as an ideological support varies considerable across neoliberal economies.
Although Tony Blair appealed for people to "keep shopping" in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks upon the U.S., the official
response to the July 7 bombings contained little in the way of economic jingoism. Discussions in official publications on how best to
allow business to continue uninterrupted no longer exhorted the public to "keep shopping" or made a discernible bid for market
ideology and practice of counterterrorism has become a key location for mobilizing
ideological support for neoliberalism. Beyond this, a new market patriotism is surfacing in a range
of policy areas. We find it in the new state racism in Western democracies that supplants
asylum policy with managed "economic" migration. We also find it in welfare policy in the U.K., whereby the
right to welfare is increasingly linked to a new politics of "economic citizenship." In those cases, there is a complex
interplay between race, economy, and nationalism. Neoliberal governments are set to resort
to market patriotism more frequently to legitimize profligate corruption, the intensification of
state attacks upon individual liberties, and the extreme violence against subordinate
populations that is necessary to secure the Imperium at home and abroad. Just as in Rhodes' late British Empire, the
patriotism. The
corresponding interests of private profiteers and the state-expressed most clearly in the new market patriotism-will continue to
shape the struggle for hegemony in the late American Empire.
# - Epistemology / Solvency
Competitive Discourse limits development of Solvency mechanisms – The 1AC’s
discourse wrecks solvency
Schandorf 8, (Michael, B.A. in English, 1999. M.A. in English (Rhetoric & Composition),
Graduate from University of Alabama, Thesis to Graduate Facility, “A RHETORIC OF
RESOLUTION: THE LIMITS OF COMPETITION”, AL)
The idea of competition underlies most all Western cultural practices making conflict
inevitable, but understanding the world in terms of constant, perpetual competition limits the
development of lasting, adaptive, and constructive solutions to human problems and conflicts.
While competition serves the vital functions of quality control and the identification of best practices, the function of
“Competition”
as a god term betrays a misunderstanding of both the value and process of
competition as an instrument, and demonstrates how human conceptualization, mediated by
language, can direct the development and acquisition of knowledge into narrow channels and
exclude ways of understanding that are inconsistent with prior interpretation of experience.
The challenge herein is to bring a balance of dialectical cooperation back into rhetoric by analyzing common conceptualizations of
social conflict and developing a method for productively resolving such conflicts using rhetorical theory, nonagonistic argument, and
cognitive linguistics.
A2: Helps Economy
The ideology of competitiveness causes protectionism and destroys global
economic growth.
Yost 10 <Keith,
graduate student in
technology policy at MIT,
4/23/2010, “Opinion: The
real danger of Chinese
‘competition’”, MIT The
Tech,
http://tech.mit.edu/V130
/N21/yost.html>//wx
It has been common
for economists to tolerate the blather of competitiveness, not only because there are practical difficulties with trying
to educate non-economists on comparative advantage and the mechanics of free markets, but also because it is commonly believed
that such rhetoric can be harnessed in support of good policies. If I am worried about the large negative
externalities posed by global warming, and believe it is in the U.S. or the world’s best interest for America to invest in public energy research, then what
harm is there if others believe that such expenditures are necessary to “win” against China? To quote Paul Krugman: “ A
government
wedded to the ideology of competitiveness is as unlikely to make good economic policy as a
government committed to creationism is to make good science policy, even in areas that have no direct relationship to the theory of evolution.”
Adherents to the competitiveness doctrine are suffering from a fundamental
misunderstanding of economics . It is inevitable that there will come a day when flawed thinking comes home to roost, and when it
does, it is likely that more will suffer than just trade policy. For now, let us consider the most likely victim of the
competitiveness doctrine, free trade, and to illustrate the threat, let us take the production of solar panels as an example. China,
due to the labor intensity of cell and module assemblage, produces nearly all of the world’s commercial solar panels. Clueless pundits such as
Thomas Friedman claim that this is evidence that the U.S. is “losing” in some great race to a green economy.
The Chinese, we are told, are the pinnacle of savvy — while we blunder about with our boneheaded Detroit automakers, those crafty Asians are eating
our lunch with their green manufacturing. Unless we get serious about investing in green energy, our opponents will gain an everlasting edge and
relegate our children to serfdom. Thus is the argument for a range of green policies — increased research spending, production subsidies, feed-intariffs, and so on. Perhaps these policies make sense on their own — we could construct some argument (maybe not a convincing one) that such
expenditures will raise our productivity or mitigate environmental damage or some such. But justifying these
moves on the basis of
competitiveness is illogical. The Chinese do not install many solar panels of their own (it turns out that they are an incredibly expensive
and impractical method of generating electricity). Instead, the only reason they have built a solar cell industry is because the United States and Europe
have created a demand for solar cells through massive subsidies. Were we to end our subsidies, the Chinese workshops would go back to making
something else, like plastic toys and electric irons — mundane items that wouldn’t get so many pundits worked up. If it is so important that we not let
our rivals beat us in whatever competition it is presumed we are playing, then we have two realistic options in the face of this solar panel evidence.
One is to cut our subsidies for green power until we deem that American industry is strong enough to duke it out with a cheap labor China. But if green
investment really does make sense, this would mean sacrificing a good policy to avoid some imagined bad outcome. The other alternative is to treat
American solar panel manufacturers as an infant industry in need of protectionist trade policy — we might continue to offer subsidies, but only
American-manufactured panels could receive them, or we would handicap our rivals with large import tariffs. The
competitiveness
advocates claim that they want us to win the trade game, not abandon it, but suppose it becomes
obvious that we cannot “win”? Accepting the competitiveness rhetoric, despite whatever the
pronouncements of support for free trade that come with it, is to invite protectionists in to the
debate. As the Obama administration shifts to populist mode, it is likely that it will be rewarded for preaching the competitiveness
doctrine. It is much easier to tell a struggling working class “they took our jobs” than to try and
explain that economic performance is a nuanced problem without simple fixes. The rhetoric will also win Obama
many friends among the CEO’s at the Business Roundtable — businessmen are comforted by the notion that national economies operate on the same
principles as corporations, it lets them believe that their life experience entitles them to debate international economics on the same plane as actual
economists. But for those of us who understand comparative advantage, it is time to stand up and put Washington on notice. At best, the president
playing with fire. At worst, he actually believes what he is reading from his teleprompter. There
could not be a worse time for us
to substitute sound economic thinking with voodoo recipes. So let’s start telling the truth: American living
standards are determined almost wholly by American productivity, the Chinese are not stealing your job, and
our obsession with
competitiveness is both dangerous and wrong.
Economic competitiveness is worse for productivity – kills quality and safety
Kohn 86 <Alfie, writer in human behavior, B.A. from Brown University, October 1986, “No Contest: The
Case Against Competition”, http://teacherrenewal.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/CompetitionAlfie+Kohn.pdf>//wx
In 1940, Lawrence Frank listed some of the
costs of economic competition. He included
business failures, copious litigation, idle equipment, a reduction in quality,
unsafe working conditions, and the need to regulate the private sector in
order to keep all of these problems under control. These problems were experienced most
dramatically in the laissez-faire economy of the last century, which, according to economist
John Culbertson, "performed badly, provoking general demands for reform and regulation. The country's
'production miracle' occurred in the Second World War, under the
wartime economic controls." When regulation is cut back in order to bring
more competition to the marketplace, we again witness the true
consequences of this competition: its advantages often prove illusory or
shortlived or selective. A few examples: The recent deregulation of the airline industry, has, it is true, led to lower fares on busy routes
(e.g., New York to Los Angeles), but service to less heavily traveled cities is either 29 much more expensive or no longer available. Precisely the same
thing happened
when bus companies were able to compete without regulation: they "cut out
less-profitable routes, and the cheap service that the young, the elderly and the poor have
historically depended on (was] less, available." Increased competition for large depositors has led banks to offer highinterest accounts. But how do banks pay for this? They have either had to make riskier, high-interest loans or jack up
fees and minimum requirements on small accounts, thus penalizing poorer people. Is it advantageous
to have book publishers compete for the rights to publish a desirable manuscript? The author may receive extravagant sums, but this often means that
there is less money for other authors (whose names cannot guarantee enormous sales); arguably, the reading public loses, too. States compete fiercely
for business investment by lowering their taxes. The corporations benefit, but citizens lose critical services when the tax base declines. Examples of this
sort are limited only by the varieties of economic competition. I am intentionally calling attention to cases where it is competition itself--rather than
unfair competition--that is involved. A fierce price war between two giant conglomerates often has the effect of driving small businesses out of the
market, and even apologists of capitalism usually acknowledge this is not desirable. I would contend that this is the rule rather than the exception in
our economic system - as rapid concentration in virtually all sectors demonstrates--and I would also argue (though I will not follow through %ere) that
such unfairness inevitably develops as a result of competition itself. This aside, competition
is of questionable value. The
watchword of classical economics, that competition keeps prices down, is far from obvious.
When economists are presented with counterexamples, they sometimes respond by saying that the higher price (for, say, an airline ticket) is perfectly
appropriate since this is its "natural" price. But in what sense is it natural? In that the market (i.e., a competitive system) decrees it. Since the value of
the competitive system is precisely what is at issue, it begs the question to say that anything resulting from the system is ipso facto justified. We need
to ask whether it is really true that competition is the most efficient arrangement across the board. A comprehensive investigation is beyond the scope
of this book and my competence, but these few remarks may at least open this dogma to question. Beyond the matter of prices, let us ask what effect
competition has on quality. Even
if the race for profits results in a higher speed of production and
greater volume, this may well come at the expense of quality. Norman Lear, for example, insists that the dreadful
mediocrity of television programming is a direct result of competition among the networks. Earlier I noted that trying to be number one and trying to
do a task well are two different things; here we may observe the relevance of this distinction to economics. " The
aim of competition
often becomes one of winning the market rather than producing a better product," argues Arthur W.
Combs. "Competition seeks to prove superiority, even if it does not exist. It places the emphasis upon capturing the buyer rather than producing a
better product." It is exactly in this vein that Sinclair Lewis has Babbitt hear a confession from his friend in the roofing business: " 'You know, my
business isn't distributing roofing--it's principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats
and make the public pay for it!" Similar examples can be found in virtually any competitive sector. 30 Competition
may reduce not
only quality but safety. With airplanes, as with most products, "the best design from an economic standpoint
is the worst thing for safety";... the more ferocious the competition among manufacturers, the
less consideration we can expect that safety will receive. "While no manufacturer would build an unsafe aircraft
intentionally," argues Frederick C. Thayer, "competitive pressures can affect judgments.... The race to 'keep up' may have introduced hidden
dangers.""' What is true of the shoddily assembled DC-10 is true of the dangerous drug that a pharmaceutical firm has marketed hastily in order to beat
its rivals or of the wastes spewed out by a business that feared installing pollution control equipment would cause it to lose its competitive edge. Let
us not overlook, finally, the noneconomic costs of economic competition, which have been said to include
a loss of community and sociability, a heightening of selfishness, and such other consequences
as anxiety, hostility, obsessional thinking, and the suppression of individuality ." In all, we may
conclude from this admittedly incomplete discussion that economic competition of any kind
may be a more dubious proposition than is generally assumed. This, let me emphasize again, is not to suggest
that criticism of unfair competition is misplaced or that all kinds of economic competition are equally harmful. (The
typical competition among workers for jobs and the atypical competition among employers for workers are hardly equivalent, and neither are
competition between a small family business and a giant corporation, on the one hand, and between two family businesses, on the other.) Let me also
acknowledge that this discussion, intended to raise questions about the fundamental bases of our current economic system, does not include a
consideration of alternatives. It may well be that a centralized economy--even one based on group-interest rather than self-interest principles--cannot
function without some kind of competition. But this should lead us to investigate decentralized possibilities--small-scale cooperatives, for example-rather than to shrug our shoulders and accept the inevitability of competition. There
is good evidence that various
cooperative models in the workplace are considerably more productive than competitive
businesses. 114 This search for noncompetitive alternatives will be in- formed not only by this consideration of productiveness in the economic
realm but by all the research reviewed in this chapter--research that challenges the myth of competition's contribution to achievement. The End
Their ev is just wrong – doesn’t take into account regional internal factors
Bristow 4 <Gillan, Professor in economic geography at Cardiff University, 7/1/2004,
“Everyone’s a ‘winner’: problematizing the discourse of regional competitiveness”, Journal of
Economic Geography, http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/3/285>//wx
Previous SectionNext Section
3. Problematising regional competitiveness: critical questions This section of the paper focuses on providing a
critique of key elements of the regional competitiveness
discourse. It is argued that the discourse which has become
so firmly ensconced in regional policy agendas is based on relatively thinly developed and
narrow conceptions of how regions compete, prosper and grow in economic terms. The argument
focuses on three core, inter-related strands of the regional competitiveness discourse—the importance of the region to firm
competitiveness, the role of firm competitiveness in generating regional prosperity, and the broader modalities of regional
competition and strategic competitive behaviour. It is argued that as a result, the
prevailing approach to regional
economic development policy has serious limitations. The discourse of regional
competitiveness lacks clarity as to the precise significance of different determinants of firm
competitiveness. In fact, there has been a tendency to assert that the myriad of determinants of firm competitiveness
uncovered by theoretically driven efforts to comprehend it are of equal importance in all spatial and locational contexts. Thus, Malecki
(2002, 941) observes ‘all of the issues that have risen to the top of the research agenda over the past 30 years are relevant—indeed,
essential…Having only some of these conditions in good order is not enough’. Similarly, Deas and Giordano (2001) assert that the
competitiveness literature has tended to proffer a generalised ‘checklist’ of relevant
determinants of firm competitiveness and that further empirical research is required to test
the relative importance of factors deemed to generate competitive advantage for
internationally successful firms. The literature is strong in its assertion that the key ingredients shaping firm
competitiveness are predominantly endogenous to the region and reside in the institutional environment. Amin and Thrift (1994) have
argued that ‘institutional thickness’ is the secret ingredient found in successful places and absent in others. By this is meant a
complex of strong, viable and interacting institutions (both formal and informal) that share a sense of common enterprise. To this list
may also be added a whole host of other qualitative or ‘soft’ location factors which may create a favourable environment for the
development of local firms. These include, the local entrepreneurial culture, the availability of specialised suppliers, forms of bankindustry relations, forms of labour-management relations, the quality of the local living or social environment, the cultural resources
of a region, and the regional identity and international image (Cappellin, 1998). However, the literature is somewhat vague as to the
precise significance of the region's influence. By way of illustration, in a paper asserting the role of the region (‘territory’) in shaping
firm competitiveness, Camagni (2002) asserts that the companies and entrepreneurs that compete in international markets are ‘to a large
extent generated by the local context’ (p. 2396). One might ask what exactly constitutes ‘a large extent’ and whether this necessarily
holds for all firms in all regions. Gardiner (2003, 20) argues for ‘case studies of successful regions to assess the importance of more
qualitative factors, e.g. regional governance, and the ability to transfer the factors driving success to those areas which are currently
less competitive’. Indeed, there are various grounds for questioning both the universality and strength of the region-firm
competitiveness nexus. In some instances the competitiveness of firms in the region might be altogether disconnected from the
region. This is certainly the case with multinational enterprises (MNEs), the competitiveness of which might reflect conditions in the
parent country as much as the host one. For example, Phelps
et al. (2003) have shown that it is factors
internal to major MNEs (such as expertise, the existence of spare capacity and plant size) that
drive the re-investment process in regions rather than local or regional factors . Even non-MNE firms
find themselves increasingly locked into, and therefore shaped by, the international networks in which they increasingly participate
(Tracey and Clark, 2003). This reflects both the imperative to find partners with the best ‘fit’ in relation to the kinds of product they develop
and the markets in which they compete, as well as the permissive factor of advanced transport and communications systems.
Similarly,Malecki (2002) has drawn attention to the potential importance of global networks as sources of knowledge in shaping firm
competitiveness in an area. However, he acknowledges that just how and where these connections are made—and by whom—is
rarely identified except anecdotally, thus highlighting an area where there is a clear need for further empirical research. There is an
emerging body of empirical research into firm innovation which, as has been indicated above, is viewed as central to regional
competitiveness. This research suggests that factors
internal to the firm may be as important, if not more
important, than factors endogenous to the region in shaping innovative behaviour. In a study of
the innovation activities of SMEs in 10 European regions, for example, Sternberg and Arndt (2001) have found that firm-level factors (including,
inter alia, market position, organisational status, staff competencies and financial resources) have a greater overall influence on
innovation activity than most regional-level determinants. Todtling and Kaufman (2001) have also found that much small firm innovation in
European regions tends to take place within vertical networks that are dominated by large corporations. Neither is it necessarily the
case that the region is the spatial scale influencing competitive advantage. New Regionalism has come under increasing attack for its
tendency to take the fundamental concept of ‘the region’ for granted thereby displaying a kind of ‘spatial fetishism’ that tends to
elide intra-regional divisions and tensions (MacKinnon et al., 2002). Similarly, Lovering (1999) observes that it
is not always clear how
the abstract notion of the ‘region’ used in competitiveness discourse relates to the actual
regions in which people and firms reside and, to the spatial delimitations which may influence competitive
advantage. Some authors have argued that the spatial specificities that provide the impetus for economic development and firm
competitiveness may exist at the local (e.g. city) rather than the regional scale (see, for example, Hamilton, 1991;Healey and Dunham, 1994; Begg, 1999;
Kresl and Singh, 1999; Waters and Lawton Smith, 2002). This is not to say that the region and localisation economies are irrelevant to the performance
of firms. Rather the argument here is that their significance tends to be overstated in the regional competitiveness discourse. In
practice, the region's influence may vary depending on the particular industrial structure and context, the balance of globally- and
locally-orientated firms, and the degree to which the region constitutes an internally cohesive, homogenous economic space. The
critical point is that the nature and significance of this contingency is barely acknowledged in the regional competitiveness discourse.
There is thus an inherent paradox here in that whilst the discourse emphasises the importance of factors endogenous to the region
in shaping firm performance, the key ingredients for success are uniformly prescribed making for a ‘one-size fits all’ approach to
regional economic development policy. The result is that policy-makers
and economic development
practitioners across very different regions end up pursuing ‘identikit’ competitiveness strategies
based upon improving regional institutional thickness, with no clear prioritisation or tailoring of the dominant
prescriptions to suit local circumstances. The regional competitiveness discourse is also characterised by the belief
that regional economic performance and prosperity is ultimately derived from and thus is reducible to the competitiveness of firms
in the region. In so doing, it displays a narrow focus on the firm and on growth in a region rather than the development of a region
(see Markusen, 1994; alsoPerrons, 2004). Thus, even if the rationale for creating a supportive microeconomic business environment for the
development of productive firms is accepted, the importance of this for the improvement of regional living standards is much less
clearly defensible. Indeed, Porter's thesis has been criticised for its general failure to perfectly reconcile the micro-level analysis of
the competitive advantage of firms with the macro-level analysis of development prosperity (Grant, 1991). Porter simply presumes some
‘invisible hand’ whereby the pursuit of competitive advantage by firms translates into increasing productivity and prosperity. As Martin
and Sunley (2003,
15) observe, ‘equating
competitiveness with productivity is to invite tautology and
ontological confusion: is a region more competitive because it is more productive, or is it more productive because it is
more competitive?’ There are a number of difficulties in asserting that simply having a stock of more productive firms necessarily
makes a region more prosperous. Firstly, the
direction of causation between productivity and regional
prosperity is itself problematic. Higher standards of living in a region may attract investment from more productive
firms over the longer run, or change the structure of economic activity (see e.g. Commission of the European Communities, 1999). Thus income
growth may propel productivity improvement as well as the other way around. Secondly, the
links between firm competitiveness and regional prosperity may also be highly contingent
upon the character and stock of firms and industries in a region, a fact largely ignored in
competitiveness discourses. Regional productivity is clearly an average of a region's different economic activities, and will
therefore reflect its particular industrial structure and pattern of specialisation (Markusen, 1994). High productivity firms and sectors may
well sit ‘cheek by jowl’ with low p
Alt - Reject
Solving competitive discourse is a prerequisite to this round - debate’s
competition-centric nature kills education and advocacy skills
Kohn 86 <Alfie, writer in human behavior, B.A. from Brown University, October 1986, “No Contest: The
Case Against Competition”, http://teacherrenewal.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/CompetitionAlfie+Kohn.pdf>//wx
The simplest way to understand why competition generally does not promote excellence is to realize that trying to do well and
trying to beat others are two different things. Here sits a child in class, waving his arm wildly to attract the teacher's attention,
crying, "Ooohl Oooh! Pick me!" The child is finally recognized but then seems befuddled. "Um, what was the question again?" he
finally asks. His mind is on beating his classmates, not on the subject matter. The fact that there is a difference between the two
goes a long way toward explaining why competition may actually make us less successful. At the beginning of
this chapter, I argued that excellence and victory are conceptually distinct. Now I want to add that the two are experienced as
different. One can attend either to the task at hand or to the enterprise of triumphing over someone else-- and the latter often is at
the expense of the former. It is true, of course, that the
relative quality of performance is what determines
who wins in a competition, but this does not mean that competition makes for better performance.
This is partly because those who believe they will lose may see little point in trying hard. The
same is true for those who feel sure of winning. But even where there is enough uncertainty involved to avoid these problems, the
fact remains that attending to the quest for triumph, to victory as such, to who is ahead at the moment, actually distracts one from
the pure focus on what one is doing. Helmreich proposes this as one explanation for his surprising discovery that competition is
counterproductive in the real world: "Competitive
individuals might ... focus so heavily on outshining others
they lose track of the scientific issues and produce research that is
more superficial and less sustained in direction. And, more succinctly: "They may become so preoccupied with
winning... that they become distracted from the task at hand." Let us see how this distinction plays itself
and putting themselves forward that
out in different fields. I have already noted, in the case of piano competitions, that artistic excellence is not promoted by making
performing artists compete. This is true for the same reason that anyone who wants to run for president may, ipso facto, be a bad
choice for the job: those who enjoy--and possess the skills necessary for--a 15 competitive campaign may not he the kind of people
we want running the country. (It is theoretically possible for one person to be both a good leader and a good campaigner, but these
two talents are quite different and would coincide only by accident.) We find the same phenomenon even in sports, as philosopher
John McMurty explains: Actually, the pursuit of victory works to reduce the chance for excellence in the true performance of the
sport. It tends to distract our attention from excellence of performance by rendering it subservient to emerging victorious. I suspect
that our conventional mistake of presuming the opposite--presuming that the contest-for-prize framework and excellence of
performance are somehow related as a unique cause and effect--may be the deepest-lying prejudice of civilized thought." Consider a
different sort of example: the case of competitive debate. This is an activity as consuming and, in its own way, as brutal as football.
High school and college students
spend their days and evenings preparing for tournaments in which they
will debate a major issue of public policy. These tournaments require them to argue in support of a resolution in
one round and then against it in the next. The practical emphasis in debate is on tying logical knots,
sounding persuasive, and even speaking so quickly that an opponent cannot respond to all of
one's arguments. The point is not to arrive at a fuller understanding of the question at hand or to
form genuine convictions. Debaters develop considerable expertise as a result of their preparations, but this is only a
means to victory. As for convictions, a premium is placed on not having any ; believing in something could
interfere with one's ability to win on both sides of the issue. This arrangement is usually defended on the grounds that it forces
participants to see both points of view, but it does so in a way that
promotes a kind of cynical relativism: no
position is better than any other since any position can be successfully defended. When asked
whether he personally supported a guaranteed annual income (which was that year's national high school topic), one debater of my
acquaintance could answer only that this depended on which side he was on at the moment. A recent newspaper feature story
carried the apt headline: "Young Albany Debaters Resolve Who's Best."" Regardless
of the resolution under
consideration, the exclusive focus of competitive debate is to determine who is the better
debater.
Alt – Compromise
The alternative is to use compromise repertoire
WeatherHead 14, (Edward, Head of Cranfield Water Science Institute, Cranfield University,
“Competition, Conflict, and Compromise: Three Discourses Used by Irrigators in England and
Their Implications for the CoManagement of Water Resources”, AL)
In this paper we use discourse analysis to explore the current dynamic that exists among farmer irrigators in England, and between
irrigators and water managers in order to understand the potential for comanagement to develop. To do this we employ two concepts
from the field of critical discursive psychology – 'interpretive repertoires' and 'subject positions' – and apply them to a qualitative
analysis of 20 interviews with farmers who are members of irrigator groups and two focus group discussions with farmers thinking
about forming an irrigator group. The findings reveal that the participants drew upon three interpretive repertoires when talking about
the relationship between farming and water resources management, namely the 'competition', 'conflict', and 'compromise' repertoires,
with the latter being the least dominant. We situate the repertoires in their wider historical context to reveal the ideological forces at
play, and conclude that
the relative dominance of the competition and conflict repertoires serve as
a barrier to co-management. In particular, this is because they engender low levels of trust and
reinforce a power dynamic that favours individualism and opposition. At the same time, the lessdominant compromise repertoire challenges the power of the other two, providing some
hope of achieving more participatory forms of water resources management in the future. To this
end, we discuss how the restructuring of current agri-environment schemes and government water programmes may be used to
promote the adoption and institutionalisation of the compromise repertoire in order to
facilitate the emergence of co-management.
Alt solves – cooperation leads to the best strategies and decision-making
Kohn 86 <Alfie, writer in human behavior, B.A. from Brown University, October 1986, “No Contest: The
Case Against Competition”, http://teacherrenewal.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/CompetitionAlfie+Kohn.pdf>//wx
We sometimes assume that working toward a goal and setting standards for oneself can take
place only if we compete against others. This is simply false. One can both accomplish a task and measure
one's progress in the absence of competition. A weightlifter may try to press ten pounds more than he did yesterday, for example.
This is sometimes referred to as "competing with oneself," which seems to me a rather unhelpful and even misleading phrase. A
comparison of performance with one's own previous record or with objective standards is in no way an instance of competition and
it should not be confused with it. Competition is fundamentally an interactive word, like kissing, and it stretches the term beyond
usefulness to speak of competing with oneself. Moreover, such
sloppy usage is sometimes employed in order to
argue that competition is either inevitable or benign: since nobody loses when you try to beat your own best time,
and since this is a kind of competition, then competition is really not so bad. This, of course, is just a semantic trick rather than a
substantive defense of competition. The third alternative, cooperation, will play a more important role in the pages that follow.
The word refers
to an arrangement that is not merely noncompetitive but requires us to work
together in order to achieve our goals. Structural cooperation means that we have to coordinate our
efforts because I can succeed only if you succeed, and vice versa. Reward is based on collective
performance. Thus, a cooperative classroom is not simply one in which students sit together or talk with each other or even share
materials. It means that successful completion of a task depends on each student and therefore that each has an incentive to want
the other(s) to succeed. 5 When
we think about cooperation at all, we tend to associate the concept
with fuzzy-minded idealism or, at best, to see it as workable only in a very small number of situations. This may result
from confusing cooperation with altruism. It is not at all true that competition is more successful because
it relies on the tendency to "look out for number one" while cooperation assumes that we
primarily want to help each other. Structural cooperation defies the usual egoism/altruism
dichotomy.
It sets things up so that by helping you I am helping myself at the same time. Even if my motive initially may have
been selfish, our fates now are linked. We sink or swim together.
Cooperation is a shrewd and highly successful
strategy --a pragmatic choice that gets things done at work and at school even more
effectively than competition does (as I will show in chapter 3) and can serve as a basis for creating challenging and
enjoyable games that do not require us to compete against one another (as I will show in chapter 4). There is also good evidence
that cooperation is more conducive to psychological health and to liking one another. Even in a competitive culture there are
aspects of cooperative and independent work. In fact, a single day at the office can include all three models. The most common mix
consists of intragroup cooperation and intergroup competition: working with others in a group in order to defeat other groups.
Football players cooperate in order to win and employees pull together in order that their company can earn higher profits than
another company. It should be clear, however, that these orientations do not appear with the same frequency. Notice how often
cooperation in our society is in the service of competition--and how often we must compete without being able to cooperate at all.
As Robert Bellah and his colleagues put it, "The world of individualistic competition is experienced every day; the world of
harmonious unanimity is fully realized only in sporadic flashes of togetherness, glimpses of what might be if only people would
cooperate and their purposes reinforce, rather than undercut, one another."
AFFIRMATIVE UPDATES
OFFSHORING BAD
Jobs are on the brink of being outsourced – offshoring spills over to collapse all
industry and erodes US hegemony
Roberts 14 (Paul Craig Roberts has held academic appointments at Virginia Tech, Tulane University, University of New
Mexico, Stanford University where he was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution, George Mason University where he had
a joint appointment as professor of economics and professor of business administration, and Georgetown University where he held
the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has published many articles
in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics. Dr.
Roberts was associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard
News Service. He was a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. In 1992 he received the Warren
Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the
United States. Public Service President Reagan appointed Dr. Roberts Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and he
was confirmed in office by the U.S. Senate. From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the
Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. After leaving the
Treasury, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Roberts is a graduate
of the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a postgraduate at the University of
California, Berkeley, and at Merton College, Oxford University. “The Offshore Outsourcing of American Jobs: A Greater Threat Than
Terrorism”. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-offshore-outsourcing-of-american-jobs-a-greater-threat-than-terrorism/18725) BJ
Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To
convince Americans of outsourcing’s benefits,
corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided “studies.” Only a small handful of people have looked
objectively at the issue. These few and the large number of Americans whose careers have been destroyed by outsourcing have a
different view of outsourcing’s impact. But so far there has been no debate, just a shouting down of skeptics as “protectionists.”
Now comes an important new book, Outsourcing America, published by the American Management Association. The authors, two
brothers, Ron and Anil Hira, are experts on the subject. One is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the other is
professor at Simon Fraser University. The authors note that despite the enormity of the stakes for all Americans, a state of denial
exists among policymakers and outsourcing’s corporate champions about the adverse effects on the US. The Hira brothers succeed
in their task of interjecting harsh reality where delusion has ruled. In what might be an underestimate, a
University of
California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced
offshore. These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information
technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal
services. The authors note that these are the jobs of the American Dream, the jobs of upward mobility that generate
the bulk of the tax revenues that fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social
security systems. The loss of these jobs “is fool’s gold for companies.” Corporate America’s short-term mentality, stemming
from bonuses tied to quarterly results, is causing US companies to lose not only their best employees-their human capital-but also
the consumers who buy their products. Employees displaced by foreigners and left unemployed or in lower paid work have a
reduced presence in the consumer market. They provide fewer retirement savings for new investment. Nothink economists assume
that new, better jobs are on the way for displaced Americans, but no economists can identify these jobs. The authors point out that
“the track record for the re-employment of displaced US workers is abysmal: “The
Department of Labor reports that
more than one in three workers who are displaced remains unemployed, and many of those
who are lucky enough to find jobs take major pay cuts. Many former manufacturing workers who were
displaced a decade ago because of manufacturing that went offshore took training courses and found jobs in the information
technology sector. They are now facing the unenviable situation of having their second career disappear overseas.” American
economists are so inattentive to outsourcing’s perils that they fail to realize that the same
incentive that leads to the outsourcing of one tradable good or service holds for all tradable
goods and services. In the 21st century the US economy has only been able to create jobs in nontradable domestic servicesthe hallmark of a third world labor force. Prior to the advent of offshore outsourcing, US employees were shielded against low wage
foreign labor. Americans worked with more capital and better technology, and their higher productivity protected their higher
wages. Outsourcing forces Americans to “compete head-to-head with foreign workers” by “undermining US workers’ primary
competitive advantage over foreign workers: their physical presence in the US” and “by providing those overseas workers with the
same technologies.” The
result is a lose-lose situation for American employees, American businesses,
and the American government. Outsourcing has brought about record unemployment in engineering fields and a major drop
in university enrollments in technical and scientific disciplines. Even many of the remaining jobs are being filled by lower paid
foreigners brought in on H-1b and L-1 visas. American employees are discharged after being forced to train their foreign
replacements. US corporations justify their offshore operations as essential to gain a foothold in emerging Asian markets. The Hira
brothers believe this is self-delusion. “There
is no evidence that they will be able to outcompete local
Chinese and Indian companies, who are very rapidly assimilating the technology and knowhow from the local US plants. In fact, studies show that Indian IT companies have been consistently
outcompeting their US counterparts, even in US markets. Thus, it is time for CEOs to start thinking about
whether they are fine with their own jobs being outsourced as well.” The authors note that the national security implications of
outsourcing “have been largely ignored.” Outsourcing is rapidly eroding America’s superpower status .
Beginning in 2002 the US began running trade deficits in advanced technology products with Asia, Mexico and Ireland. As these
countries are not leaders in advanced technology, the deficits obviously stem from US offshore manufacturing. In effect, the US is
giving away its technology, which is rapidly being captured, while US firms reduce themselves to a brand name with a sales force.
DATA LOCALIZATION
Economy
Data Localization bad – Destroys global economy and doesn’t solve
cybersecurity problems
Padilla 15 [Christopher, Padilla is vice president of IBM Government and Regulatory Affairs,
previously served as under secretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce, and
assistant secretary of Commerce for Export administration, “Preserving digital trade is vital to America’s
economic future”, The Hill, April 14, 2015, http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/238625-preserving-digitaltrade-is-vital-to-americas-economic-future, July 25, 2015] KL
The growth of the Internet has transformed the makeup of the global economy, creating vast
opportunities for digital trade. The U.S. International Trade Commission, for example, suggests that digital
trade has increased the United States’ real GDP by close to five percent. Sustaining and accelerating
that growth is an economic and policy imperative in an age when data is reshaping society and commerce. Congress is
expected to soon take-up legislation on Trade Promotion Authority – or TPA – which can, if passed, pave the
way for landmark trade agreements to be finalized. Both the TPA bill and the first of these agreements, the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), would expand global trade and GDP, in no small part by preserving the free flow of
data between nations and by preventing countries from implementing forced data localization
policies. Together, these measures will strengthen America’s place at the forefront of the world’s digital economy. Protecting
cross-border data flows via TPA and the TPP is vital to the growth of the U.S. economy. IDC
estimates that 70 percent of the world’s IT market lies outside of the United States. Ensuring U.S. companies’ unrestricted access to
that market is crucial at a time when the pace of data-driven innovation is accelerating exponentially. According to the Business
Roundtable, there has been an 18-fold increase in online cross-border data flows between 2005 and 2012. Another eight-fold
increase is projected by 2025. Data
is the new natural resource, and we should be growing – not limiting –
its potential to power new innovations. Simply removing restrictions on cross-border data flows in digitally intensive
industries would increase the U.S. real GDP by an estimated $16.7−$41.4 billion, according to the International Trade Commission.
As the world’s leading services exporter, and the leader in the technologies and services that enable digital trade, the United States
has the most to lose from the expansion of digital protectionism. On the flip side, all countries touched by agreements that follow
the “platinum standard” digital trade example of TPA and the TPP stand to benefit. The Business Roundtable found that more
connected economies experience up to 40 percent greater GDP growth from data flows than less connected economies. Barriers to
digital trade can come in a variety of forms, including traditional mechanisms and those specific to online commerce. TPA and the
TPP would restrict countries from arbitrarily forcing companies to house data or locate IT infrastructure within their borders as a
condition of doing business. A
study by the European Center for International Political Economy found
that localizing servers – which limit data flows by mandating that data be stored and processed on computer servers
located within a country – would significantly hurt GDP in all of the countries examined, including a
number of TPP negotiating countries. One key argument for forced localization is that
information is safer when stored locally. This is a flawed concept . Recent reports of
international computer hacking make it clear that simply storing data locally does not make
it secure . A more effective approach to protecting data would focus on applying up-to-date
technical security solutions, implementing appropriate secure operating procedures and
properly educating users. TPA and the TPP follow this logical and evidence-based theory, leading to stronger economies
and performance as well as a steady stream of innovative new products and services. TPA and the TPP recognize the merit of these
methodologies by removing key restrictions and fostering growth in services delivered electronically by the information and
communications (ICT) sector. The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that U.S. exports of “ICT-enabled services” grew from 45
percent of U.S. services exports in 1998 to 61 percent in 2010. Today, U.S. firms are the global leaders in ICT services. Without the
digital trade provisions enshrined in TPA and the TPP, protectionist policies could limit further growth by U.S.-based companies,
which include 31 of the world’s top 50 Internet firms.
Data localization has negative impacts on global economic recovery and
growth.
Bauer et al 14 (Matthias, Senior Economist at ECIPE, Ph.D., previous Coordinator of
International Political Economy at the international cooperation division of Konrad Adenauer
Foundation, Berlin. Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of ECIPE and a leading author on trade
diplomacy, EU-Far East relations and the digital economy, named “One of the 20 most influential
people for open internet” by the readers of the Guardian UK in 2012, Fellow at the department
International Relations at the London School of Economics. Erik van der Marel, Senior Economist
at ECIPE, PhD in international economics. Bert Verschelde, Digital policy analyst at ECIPE. “THE
COSTS OF DATA LOCALISATION: FRIENDLY FIRE ON ECONOMIC RECOVERY”, ECIPE OCCASIONAL
PAPER No. 3/2014) WZ
Industry and internet advocates have warned against an Internet which is fragmented along
national borderlines. Some of them are going as far as calling balkanisation the greatest threat to
the Internet today, even greater than censorship.9 One comprehensive study by Chander and Lê (2014) from the California
International Law Centre established that data localisation “threatens the major new advances in
information technology – not only cloud computing, but also the promise of big data and the Internet of things”.10 It is not
unlikely that future trade agreements will include disciplines against data localisation
requirements, as there are often less trade-restrictive measures available to address privacy and security. However, the more
immediate effect of data localisation measures – the impact on economic recovery and growth – is even more
dangerous. As this study has shown, this impact is a direct consequence of the complex relations
between cross-border data flows, supply chain fragmentation and domestic prices. These are
complexities that are generally not understood by policymakers, who are often in the field of security and privacy law, rather than
international trade. The findings regarding the effects on GDP, investments and welfare from data localisation requirements and
discriminatory privacy and security laws are too considerable to be ignored in policy design. It is also reasonable to assume that
SMEs and new firms are the first to be displaced from the market, as they lack resources to adapt to the regulatory changes. In the
current security policy context, many regulators and privacy advocates stress the importance of discretion to tackle problems at a
national level (e.g. NetMundial 2014 draft conclusions)11. The economic evidence however proves that unilateral trade restrictions
are counterproductive in the context of today’s interdependent globalized economy. The self- incurred losses make data
localisation a policy that unilaterally puts the country at a relative loss to others while the
possibilities for offsetting the negative impact through trade agreements or economic
stimulus are relatively limited over the long term.
Security
Data localization bad – Doesn’t solve internet security or deter attacks
Heidt 15 [Frank, Worker and gatherer of information for Leviathan Security Company, “THE HARMS
OF FORCED DATA LOCALIZATION”, Leviathan Security Group, Private contractor for the government and
other private businesses, February 25, 2015, http://www.leviathansecurity.com/blog/the-harms-offorced-data-localization, July 26, 2015] KL
How we store data---and how we think about keeping our memories available over the long
term---has changed in the last few years. The world has become better at keeping data secure
and safe by distributing it to multiple continents. However, some leaders are calling for "national Internets"--censored, walled gardens set up to appease special interest groups that range from political factions, to property cartels, to religious
police.
Other leaders have taken a different tack, called forced localization; rather than blocking
your communications, they want to require that all your data (and all the computers that
handle it) be inside a single country: theirs, for whichever country they represent. These would be major
changes to the structure of the Internet---changes that would harm both businesses and the general public.
Currently, services on the modern Internet are built with "cloud computing"---the idea that
services that you use, from Facebook, to Google, to Netflix, should store your data in many
different, geographically diverse places, as well as close to where you are. This makes sure that your
work, your entertainment, and your memories are available wherever you might want them, whether that's on your phone, your
laptop, your tablet, or your TV. Cloud
computing not only powers most companies, but a huge amount
of research: from genomics and drug discovery, to climate modeling and radio astronomy. The
ability to use computing power spread across the globe is making discoveries faster and more
achievable; around the world, cars are safer, applications are smarter, and operations are
more efficient. At first, forced data localization might not seem so bad. The problem is that there is no
country on the planet big enough to defend your data on its own. Natural disasters pose one type of threat;
earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and typhoons now cause devastation for hundreds or
thousands of miles. Many times, disasters will destroy datacenters or power facilities, which may destroy your data forever;
other times, such events will compromise the fiber-optic cables that connect data and computers to the Internet, making your data
inaccessible for days or weeks. Data
destruction doesn't always require a continent-scale event; in 2011, a
slow water drip in a nondescript office building in Calgary, Alberta set off an explosion that
caused days of computer outages for hospitals, ambulances, radio stations, taxis, and criminal
justice facilities around the province. While most of the data was eventually recovered, we may never know how
many illnesses were made worse, or situations made less safe, by centralizing so much critical data. Right now, companies
are able to use the whole world's cloud resources so that if a computer in Seattle goes offline,
a computer in Dublin can take up the slack. Your photos might be stored in Singapore, London, and Toronto to
make sure that no matter what happens, your data is protected from loss. The cloud is made of computers that
have to live somewhere, however, and if a few misguided people get their way, a water drip,
car crash, or squirrel on a power line may be all it takes to destroy the photos of your child or
cut off access to the data your business needs to survive. Once your data is limited to a tiny geographic area,
subject to weather, earthquakes, and political whimsy, all bets are off. Some will say that keeping things in a single
country is the only way to prevent international spies from reading our data, since we now know that
certain countries have a bad habit of not minding their own business on the Internet. This is misguided. The lawless are
not deterred by new laws; keeping data within a border won't stop those who believe that rules don't apply to them,
even though it will curtail the ability of law-abiding people to keep their data safe. The way to protect secrets from prying eyes is
through software that is both secure and easy to use, with projects like Peerio, RedPhone, SpiderOak, and Silent Circle making
powerful security available to the general public. The conclusion is simple. Applying national borders to data, the way we would to a
shipment of coffee beans, solves no real problems; it only creates a threat to our work and to our memories. It will be a harm to
business that we can't afford, and it will destroy the communication system that has revolutionized this century. We need the world
to work together to face the challenges that lie ahead. Let's bring our friends along for the journey.
Data localization has negative effects on information security and innovation.
Maisog 15 (Manuel E., partner and chief representative of the Beijing office of Hunton &
Williams LLP, principal of the Centre for Information Policy Leadership. “Making the Case Against
Data Localization in China”, 4/20/15, https://iapp.org/news/a/making-the-case-against-datalocalization-in-china/”) WZ
There is an old saying in baseball that a strong defense is so fundamental that one does not appreciate or even notice it until the
moment when one no longer has it. Likewise, free
and unencumbered information flows over the Internet
have become so fundamental to the way we now do business, find our news, learn new skills and even go on vacation
that we no longer appreciate or even notice them. However, data localization policies are a recent international
development that, if they take root in enough places, will teach us, well and truly, to notice and appreciate our access to
information. And they will do so in vivid and painful fashion. While data localization has most recently and dramatically come to
prominence in the form of Russian data localization legislation, at bottom it is a global issue. In fact, to date the Internet has linked
the world’s information platforms so seamlessly that the
effects of a successful data localization effort in any
one major country or economy would make itself felt globally and immediately . Quite ironically, what
may seem at first to have been an act of spectacularly literal self-absorption may have an impact that ripples quickly and resolutely
outward into other countries. In
indeed have
an interconnected world, it seems, an act of misguided introversion can
an impact of which an extroverted malevolence of global ambition could only have
dreamed. While data localization has most recently and dramatically come to prominence in the form of Russian data
localization legislation, at bottom it is a global issue. As highlighted in the recent American Chamber of Commerce report entitled
Protecting Data Flows in the U.S.-China Bilateral Treaty, in a further irony, there
is reason to doubt whether data
localization can actually achieve its intended goal of increasing information security . In fact, as
the report argues, forcing concentrations of data storage in single or limited locations runs contrary to accepted information-security
protocols and, therefore, may
well have the effect of weakening information security. In the coming months and
years, it will be interesting to observe how the politically—and perhaps even emotionally—driven impulse for data localization will
weather its encounter with the technical and economic realities that have caused the more sober and clear-eyed among us to argue
against it. If the impulse survives that encounter, it will be interesting to observe what compromises to its original stances it will
have to accept in order to press forward into the future. The impulse for data localization is alive in China as well. As always, crossborder data transfer restrictions have a practical impact that is often similar or identical to the objectives of data localization. In
China, personal information protection laws and regulations have been enacted on a sector-by-sector basis, and cross-border data
transfer restrictions are no exception. At this time, the strictest cross-border personal information transfer restriction—apart from
notice and consent requirements—apply to: Ÿ personal financial information, Ÿ personal credit reference information and Ÿ
personal health information. Aside from the foregoing, cross-border transfer restrictions are imposed under the Law on Protecting
State Secrets, which restricts offshore transfers of media that has been identified and designated as containing information related
to national security and national interests. Cross-border transfer restrictions are also suggested under nonbinding industry
guidelines for the information-services sector and under guidelines for the formulation of laws and regulations to govern cloud
computing. Adopting data localization policies ... would thereby consign Chinese businesses in these industry sectors to the role of
being late adapters rather than innovators in their own right. Restrictions in more industry sectors can of course be added as new
laws and regulations are enacted. Most recently, a draft Counter-Terrorism Law was circulated in 2014 that, if enacted in its original
form, would require business operators in the Internet and telecommunications sectors to store data on servers in China and
provide encryption keys to public security authorities. While this law remains in draft form, and was not passed by the National
People’s Congress during its past March session, the prospect remains that the bill and its data localization terms could be
promulgated in the near future. This would be unfortunate. Again as highlighted in the report, data
localization policies
have the effect of undermining innovation. Despite all the economic and technological advances that China has
made in recent decades, for many important economic sectors, the engines of innovation and discovery still do not reside within
China. They reside elsewhere, and therefore to participate in this innovation China’s own industries must—short of physically
relocating themselves to these other countries—remain in close communication with them. Adopting
data localization
policies would cut off China’s communications with these engines of innovation. It would thereby
consign Chinese businesses in these industry sectors to the role of being late adapters rather than innovators in their own right. In
the end, these Chinese industry sectors would find themselves simply awaiting and accepting innovations achieved elsewhere and
then executing practical applications of them while others in the world have already commenced their next wave of innovation. This
has special relevance for China. In
the past, long periods of isolation from the rest of the world
economy have placed China in positions of relative backwardness. China found herself in such positions
not only in 1978 but also in 1839. The latter had vast consequences, as a long dearth of innovation left China unprepared for the
moment when the world turned upside down, British military forces wielding superior technology stormed upon her shores to
protect an illicit international narcotics traffic and the Celestial Empire was reduced to the position of being somebody else’s semi-
colony. Never again, China has promised herself, and would that it be so, and yet it must be clear by now that in order to remain
strong and competitive against the rest of the world, China cannot isolate herself from it again. Data-localization policies can and
should be opposed by those who want what is best for China, for her own sake, and want her to have the control over her own
future that an openness to innovation stands to de
LEGALISM GOOD
Perm
Perm solves – short-term legal strategies are not mutually exclusive with the alt
Smith 13 (Andrea, UC Riverside media and cultural studies professor, “The Moral Limits of the
Law: Settler Colonialism and the Anti-Violence Movement”, Settler Colonial Studies, Taylor and
Francis)
At the same time, violence against Native women is at epidemic rates. The 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, American Indians
and Crime, finds that sexual assault among Native Americans is 3.5 times higher than for all other races living in the US. Unlike other
racial groupings, the majority of sexual assaults committed against Native American women are inter-racial.3 In particular, the
majority of people who perpetrate sexual assault against Native women are white. Because of the complex jurisdictional issues
involving tribal lands, the majority of sexual assaults against Native women are committed with impunity. Depending on the tribe,
non-Native perpetrators of sexual assault on Indian reservations may fall out of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction. And tribes
themselves have not developed effective means for addressing violence in their communities. The intersections of gender violence
and colonialism in Native women’s lives force Native anti-violence advocates to operate through numerous contradictions. First,
they must work within a federal justice system that is premised on the continued colonisation of Native nations. Second, they must
work with tribal governments that often engage in gender oppressive practices. In addition, as Native studies scholar Jennifer
Denetdale argues, many tribal governments act as neo-colonial formations that support tribal elites at the expense of the
community.4 Third, they must also address women who need immediate services, even if those services may come from a colonising
federal government or a tribal government that may perpetuate gender oppression. Given the logics of settler colonialism, it may
seem to be a hopeless contradiction to work within the US legal system at all. In fact, many social justice advocates eschew engaging
in legal reform for this reason. Consequently, we
are often presented with two dichotomous choices: shortterm legal reform that addresses immediate needs but further invests us in the current
colonial system or long-term anti-colonial organising that attempts to avoid the political
contradictions of short-term strategies but does not necessarily focus on immediate needs.
This essay will explore possibilities for rethinking this dichotomous approach by rethinking the
role of legal reform in general. The essay foregrounds alternative approaches using a Native feminist analytic towards
engaging legal reform that may have a greater potential to undo the logics of settler colonialism from within. As I have argued
elsewhere, Native feminism as well as Native studies is not limited in its object of analysis.5 Rather, in its interest in addressing the
intersecting logics of heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism, it is free to engage with diverse materials. In looking then towards
alternative strategies for undoing settler colonialism through the law, I contend that it is important to engage important work that
might not seem to be directly about Native peoples or settler colonialism if this work helps provide new resources for how we could
strategically engage the law. Consequently, I engage the work of legal scholars and activists that address very different areas of law
as a means to challenge some of the current assumptions that undergird both reformist and revolutionary approaches to the law.
DECOLONIAL REALISM Critical race theorist Derrick Bell challenged the presupposition of much racial justice legal reform strategies
when he argued that racism is a permanent feature of society. While his work is generally cited as a critical race theoretical
approach, I would contend that his work implicitly suggests a settler colonial framework for understanding legal reform. That is,
many of the heirs of Derrick Bell do not follow the logical consequences of his work and argue for an approach to race and the law
that seeks racial representation in the law.6 However, Bell’s analysis points to the inherent contradictions to such an approach.
Rather than seeking representation, Bell calls on Black peoples to ‘acknowledge the permanence of our subordinate status’.7
Espousing the framework of ‘racial realism’, Bell disavows any possibility of ‘transcendent change’.8 To the contrary, he argues that
‘[i]t is time we concede that a commitment to racial equality merely perpetuates our disempowerment’.9 The alternative he
advocates is resistance for its own sake – living ‘to harass white folks’ – or short-term pragmatic strategies that focus less on
eliminating racism and more on simply ensuring that we do not ‘worsen conditions for those we are trying to help’.10 While Bell
does not elaborate on what those strategies may be, he points to a different kind of reasoning that could be utilised for legal reform.
In his famous story, ‘Space Traders’, aliens come to planet Earth promising to solve the world’s problems if world leaders will simply
give up Black people to the aliens. This story narratively illustrates how thin white liberal commitments to social justice are. First, the
white people of course do give up Black people to the aliens without much thought. But what more dramatically illustrates this point
is that the reader knows that, almost without a doubt, if this were to happen in real life, of course Black people would be given up.
Within this story, however, is a little-commented scene that speaks to perhaps a different way to approach legal reform within the
context of white supremacy. Gleason Golightly, a conservative black economics professor who serves as an informal cabinet
member for the President, becomes embroiled in a fight with the civil rights legal establishment about the best means to oppose the
proposed trade. Golightly had previously pleaded with the President and his cabinet to reject it. When his pleas are not heard, he
begins to reflect on how his support for conservative racial policies in the interests of attaining greater political power had been to
no avail. He realises the strategy behind his appeal to the President was doomed to fail. In retrospect, though [his] arguments were
based on morality […] [i]nstead of outsmarting them, Golightly had done what he so frequently criticised civil rights spokespersons
for doing: he had tried to get whites to do right by black people because it was right that they do so. ‘Crazy!’ he commented when
civil rights people did it. ‘Crazy!’ he mumbled to himself, at himself.11 Realising the error of his ways, Golightly interrupts this civil
rights meeting in which activists plan to organise a moral crusade to convince white Americans to reject the space traders proposal.
Instead, he suggests that they should tell white people that they cannot wait to go on the ship because they have learned they are
being transported to a land of milk and honey. White people, argues Golightly, so oppose policies that benefit Black people, even if
they benefit white people, that they will start litigating to stop the space traders’ proposed plan.12 The civil rights establishment
rejects this strategy as a moral outrage and begins a racial justice campaign, ultimately to no avail. What this story troubles is social
justice movements’ investment in the morality of the law. Despite the US legal system’s complicity in settler colonialism, patriarchy,
capitalism and white supremacy since its inception, they advocate strategies for change that rest on the presupposition that the law
can somehow be made to support the end of sexism, racism and classism. Historically, as more radical racial and social justice
organisations were either crushed or co-opted by the US governments during the 1970s, these movements shifted from a focus on a
radical restructuring of the political and economic system to a focus on articulating identity based claims that did not necessarily
challenge the prevailing power structure.13 If groups were not going to directly challenge the state, they could then call on the state
to recognise their claims to equality and redress from harms perpetrated by other social actors. Ironically, then, the same US
government that codified slavery, segregation, anti-immigrant racism, and the genocide of indigenous peoples, now becomes the
body that will protect people of colour from racism. The fact that the US itself could not exist without the past and continuing
genocide of indigenous peoples in particular does not strike liberal legal reformists as a contradiction. Bell suggests that it
may
be possible to engage in legal reform in the midst of these contradictions if one foregoes the
fantasy that the law is morally benevolent or even neutral. In doing so, more possibilities for
strategic engagement emerge. For instance, in the ‘Racial Preference Licensing Act’, Bell suggests that rather than
criminalise racial discrimination, the government should allow discrimination, but tax it. Taxes accrued from this discrimination
would then go into an ‘equality’ fund that would support the educational and economic interests of African-Americans.14 As I have
argued elsewhere, the law enforcement approach has been similarly limited in addressing the issues of gender violence when the
majority of men do, or express willingness to engage in, it.15 As a result, criminalisation has not actually led to a decrease in violence
against women.16 Anti-violence activists and scholars have widely critiqued the supposed efficacy of criminalisation.17 As I will
discuss later in this essay, Native women in particular have struggled with the contradictions of engaging the legal system to address
the legacies of colonial gender violence. While there is growing critique around criminalisation as the primary strategy for addressing
gender violence, there has not been attention to what other frameworks could be utilised for addressing gender violence. In
particular, what would happen if we pursued legal strategies based on their strategic effects rather than based on the moral
statements they propose to make? DISTRUSTING THE LAW Aside from Derrick Bell, because racial and gender justice legal advocates
are so invested in the morality of the law, there has not been sustained strategising on what other possible frameworks may be
used. Bell provides some possibilities, but does not specifically engage alternative strategies in a sustained fashion. Thus, it may be
helpful to look for new possibilities in an unexpected place, the work of anti-trust legal scholar Christopher Leslie. Again, the work of
Leslie may seem quite remote from scholars and activists organizing against the logics of settler colonialism. But it may be the fact
that Leslie is not directly engaging in social justice work that allows him to
disinvest in the morality of the law in a
manner which is often difficult for those who are directly engaged in social justice work to do.
This disinvestment, I contend is critical for those who wish to dismantle settler colonialism to
rethink their legal strategies. In ‘Trust, Distrust, and Anti-Trust’, Christopher Leslie explains that while the economic
impact of cartels is incalculable, cartels are also unstable.18 Because cartel members cannot develop formal relationships with each
other, they must develop partnerships based on informal trust mechanisms in order to overcome the famous ‘prisoners’ dilemma’.
The prisoner’s dilemma, as described by Leslie, is one in which two prisoners are arrested and questioned separately with no
opportunity for communication between them. There is enough evidence to convict both of minor crimes for a one year sentence
but not enough for a more substantive sentence. The police offer both prisoners the following deal: if you confess and implicate
your partner, and your partner does not confess, you will be set free and your partner will receive a ten-year sentence. If you
confess, and he does as well, then you will both receive a five-year sentence. In this scenario, it becomes the rational choice for both
to confess because if the first person does not confess and the second person does, the first person will receive a ten-year sentence.
Ironically, however, while both will confess, it would have been in both of their interests not to confess. Similarly, Leslie argues,
cartels face the prisoners’ dilemma. If all cartel members agree to fix a price, and abide by this price fixing, then all will benefit.
However, individual cartel members are faced with the dilemma of whether or not they should join the cartel and then cheat by
lowering prices. They fear that if they do not cheat, someone else will and drive them out of business. At the same time, by cheating,
they disrupt the cartel that would have enabled them to all profit with higher prices. In addition, they face a second dilemma when
faced with anti-trust legislation. Should they confess in exchange for immunity or take the chance that no one else will confess and
implicate them? Cartel members can develop mechanisms to circumvent pressures. Such mechanisms include the development of
personal relationships, frequent communication, goodwill gestures, etc. In the absence of trust, cartels may employ trust substitutes
such as informal contracts and monitoring mechanisms. When these trust and trust substitute mechanisms break down, the cartel
members will start to cheat, thus causing the cartel to disintegrate. Thus, Leslie proposes, anti-trust legislation should focus on laws
that will strategically disrupt trust mechanisms. Unlike racial or gender justice advocates who focus on making moral statements
through the law, Leslie proposes using the law for strategic ends, even if the law makes a morally suspect statement. For instance, in
his article, ‘Anti-Trust Amnesty, Game Theory, and Cartel Stability’, Leslie critiques the federal Anti-Trust’s 1993 Corporate Lenience
Policy that provided greater incentives for cartel partners to report on cartel activity. This policy provided ‘automatic’ amnesty for
the first cartel member to confess, and decreasing leniency for subsequent confessors in the order to which they confessed. Leslie
notes that this amnesty led to an increase of amnesty applications.19 However, Leslie notes that the effectiveness of this reform is
hindered by the fact that the ringleader of the cartel is not eligible for amnesty. This policy seems morally sound. Why would we
want the ringleader, the person who most profited from the cartel, to be eligible for amnesty? The problem, however, with
attempting to make a moral statement through the law is that it is counter-productive if the goal is to actually break up cartels. If the
ringleader is never eligible for amnesty, the ringleader becomes inherently trustworthy because he has no incentive to ever report
on his partners. Through his inherent trustworthiness, the cartel can build its trust mechanisms. Thus, argues Leslie, the most
effective way to destroy cartels is to render all members untrustworthy by granting all the possibility of immunity. While Leslie’s
analysis is directed towards policy, it also suggests an alternative framework for pursuing social justice through the law, to employ it
for its strategic effects rather than through the moral statements it purports to make. It is ironic that an anti-trust scholar such as
Leslie displays less ‘trust’ in the law than do many anti-racist/anti-colonial activists and scholars who work through legal reform.20 It
also indicates that it is possible to engage legal reform more strategically if one no longer trusts it. As Beth Richie notes, the antiviolence movement’s primary strategy for addressing gender violence was to articulate it as a crime.21 Because it is presumed that
the best way to address a social ill is to call it a ‘crime’, this strategy is then deemed the correct moral strategy. When this strategy
backfires and does not end violence, and in many cases increases violence against women, it becomes difficult to argue against this
strategy because it has been articulated in moral terms. If, however, we were to focus on legal reforms chosen for their strategic
effects, it would be easier to change the strategy should our calculus of its strategic effects suggest so. We would also be less
complacent about the legal reforms we advocate as has happened with most of the laws that have been passed on gender violence.
Advocates presume that because they helped pass a ‘moral’ law, then their job is done. If, however, the criteria for legal reforms are
their strategic effects, we would then be continually monitoring the operation of these laws to see if they were having the desired
effects. For instance, since the primary reason women do not leave battering relationships is because they do not have another
home to go, what if our legal strategies shifted from criminalising domestic violence to advocating affordable housing? While the
shift from criminalisation may seem immoral, women are often removed from public housing under one strike laws in which they
lose access to public housing if a ‘crime’ (including domestic violence) happens in their residence, whether or not they are the
perpetrator. If our goal was actually to keep women safe, we might need to creatively rethink what legal reforms would actually
increase safety. REVOLUTIONARY REFORMS As mentioned previously, there has been insufficient evaluation of the strategic effects
of legal strategies opposing gender violence. However, the work of Native anti-violence scholar and activist, Sarah Deer, points to
possible new directions in engaging legal reform for the purpose of decolonisation. Deer notes that the issues of gender violence
cannot be separated from the project of decolonisation. For instance, currently, tribal governments are restricted to sentencing
tribal members to three years in tribal prison for even major crimes such as rape. Much of the focus of the anti-violence movement
has been on increasing the number of years tribal governments can incarcerate members. Because of this effort, the Tribal Law and
Order Act of 2010 increased the length of sentences from one to three years. However, Deer notes that prior to colonisation,
violence against women was virtually unheard of, even though tribes did not have prisons.22 Instead, tribes utilised a number of
social mechanisms to ensure safety for women and children, and none of these mechanisms are prohibited by federal legislation.
Because the federal government restricts the amount of prison time allowed for sexual offenders, tribes primarily call on the federal
government to expand tribes’ ability to incarcerate. However, as a variety of scholars have noted, expanded sentencing has not
actually led to decreased violence.23 Thus, rather than focusing their attention simply on incarceration, Deer suggests that tribes
look to pre-colonial measures for addressing violence and begin to adapt those for contemporary circumstances.24 At the same
time, Deer notes that it is not necessarily a simple process to adapt pre-colonial measures for addressing violence. Unfortunately,
many of the alternatives to incarceration that are promoted under the ‘restorative justice model’ have not developed sufficient
safety mechanisms for survivors of domestic/sexual violence. ‘Restorative justice’ is an umbrella term that describes a wide range of
programs that attempt to address crime from a restorative and reconciliatory rather than a punitive framework. As restorative
justice frameworks involve all parties (perpetrators, victims, and community members) in determining the appropriate response to a
crime in an effort to restore the community to wholeness, restorative justice is opposed to the US criminal justice system, which
focuses solely on punishing the perpetrator and removing him (or her) from society through incarceration. These models are well
developed in many Native communities, especially in Canada, where the legal status of Native nations allows an opportunity to
develop community-based justice programs. In one program, for example, when a crime is reported, the working team that deals
with sexual/domestic violence talks to the perpetrator and gives him the option of participating in the program. The perpetrator
must first confess his guilt and then follow a healing contract, or go to jail. The perpetrator is free to decline to participate in the
program and go through the criminal justice system. In the restorative justice model, everyone (victim, perpetrator, family, friends,
and the working team) is involved in developing the healing contract. Everyone is also assigned an advocate through the process.
Everyone is also responsible for holding the perpetrator accountable to his contract. One Tlingit man noted that this approach was
often more difficult than going to jail: First one must deal with the shock and then the dismay on your neighbors faces. One must live
with the daily humiliation, and at the same time seek forgiveness not just from victims, but from the community as a whole […]. [A
prison sentence] removes the offender from the daily accountability, and may not do anything towards rehabilitation, and for many
may actually be an easier disposition than staying in the community.25 These models have greater potential for dealing with crime
effectively because, if we want people who perpetuate violence to live in society peaceably, it makes sense to develop justice
models in which the community is involved in holding him/her accountable. Under the current incarceration model, perpetrators are
taken away from their community and are further hindered from developing ethical relationships within a community context.
However, the problem with these models is that they work only when the community unites in holding perpetrators accountable. In
cases of sexual and domestic violence, the community often sides with the perpetrator rather than the victim. As Deer argues, in
many Native communities, these models are often pushed on domestic violence survivors in order to pressure them to reconcile
with their families and ‘restore’ the community without sufficient concern for their personal safety.26 In addition, Native advocates
have sometime critiqued the uncritical use of ‘traditional’ forms of governance for addressing domestic violence. They argue that
Native communities have been pressured to adopt circle sentencing because it is supposed to be an indigenous traditional practice.
However, some advocates contend that there is no such traditional practice in their communities. Moreover, they are concerned
that the process of diverting cases outside the court system can be dangerous for survivors. In one example, Bishop Hubert
O’Connor (a white man) was found guilty of multiple cases of sexual abuse but his punishment under the restorative justice model
was to participate in a healing circle with his victims. Because his crimes were against Aboriginal women, he was able to opt for an
‘Aboriginal approach’ – an approach, many argue, that did little to provide real healing for the survivors and accountability for the
perpetrator. Deer complains that there is a tendency to romanticise and homogenise ‘traditional’ alternatives to incarceration. First,
she notes traditional approaches might, in fact, be harsher than incarceration. Many Native people presume that traditional modes
of justice focus on conflict resolution. In fact, Deer argues, penalties for societal infractions were not lenient – they entailed
banishment, shaming, reparations, physical punishment and sometimes death. Deer notes that revising tribal codes by
reincorporating traditional practices is not a simple process. It is sometimes difficult to determine what these practices were or how
they could be made useful today. For example, some practices, such as banishment, would not have the same impact today. Prior to
colonisation, Native communities were so close-knit and interdependent that banishment was often the equivalent of a death
sentence. Today, however, banished perpetrators could simply leave home and join the dominant society. While tribes now have
the opportunity to divest from the US colonial system, many Native women remain under violent attack. They may need to use the
federal system until such time that more advanced decolonisation becomes possible. Thus Deer advocates a two-fold strategy: 1)
The short-term strategy of holding the federal government accountable for prosecuting rape cases; and 2) encouraging tribes to hold
perpetrators accountable directly so that they will eventually not need to rely on federal interference. This approach can be misread
as a simple formula for reform. However, it is important to remember that the project of prison abolition is a positive rather than a
negative project. The goal is not to tell survivors that they can never call the police or engage the criminal justice system. The
question is not, should a survivor call the police? The question is: why have we given survivors no other option but to call the police?
Deer is suggesting that it is not inconsistent to reform federal justice systems while at the same time building tribal infrastructures
for accountability that will eventually replace the federal system. If we focus simply on community accountability without a larger
critique of the state, we often fall back on framing community accountability as simply an add-on to the criminal justice system.
Because anti-violence work has focused simply on advocacy, we have not developed strategies for ‘due process’, leaving that to the
state. When our political imaginaries are captured by the state, we can then presume that the state should be left to administer
‘justice’ while communities will serve simply as a supplement to this regime. To do so, however, recapitulates the fundamental
injustice of a settler state that is founded on slavery, genocide and the exploitation of immigrant labour. Further, we are unable to
imagine new visions for liberatory nationhood that are not structured on hierarchical logics, violence and domination. We face a
dilemma: on the one hand, the incarceration approach for addressing sexual/domestic violence promotes the repression of
communities of colour without really providing safety for survivors. On the other hand, restorative justice models often promote
community silence and denial under the rhetoric of community restoration without concern for the safety of survivors. Thus, our
challenge is to develop community-based models that respond to gender violence in ways that hold perpetrators accountable.
Unfortunately, in this discussion advocates often assume only two possibilities: the criminal justice system or restorative justice.
When anyone finds faults with the restorative justice model, it is assumed that the traditional criminal justice approach must be the
back-up strategy. Deer’s approach, by contrast, is to work with the criminal justice system while continuing to develop effective
strategies for addressing violence. These will eventually eliminate the need to rely on the criminal justice system. Of course, the trap
of pursuing reforms is that they can create investment in the current US legal system and detract from building new systems of
governance that are not based on violence, domination and control. At the same time, we are not going to go from where we are
now to revolution tomorrow. Thus, it becomes important to strategise around what may be called ‘revolutionary’ reforms. Other
abolitionists have argued that the only reforms that should be supported are those that diminish the criminal justice apparatus.
Other abolitions have argued that this approach leaves people vulnerable to the ‘crimes of the powerful’, such as rape and domestic
violence.27 It is in this context that we can understand Deer’s current projects. She has worked on building tribal infrastructure by
encouraging and assisting tribes to develop tribal civil protection orders. Her strategy is not so much based on the rationale that civil
protection orders will in themselves provide protection for women. Rather, by developing these orders, tribes gain the practice of
developing their own systems for addressing violence. Deer notes that this is one area that is not likely to be interfered with by the
US federal government. At the same time, it is not an approach that is directly tied with investing tribes in the project of
incarceration. Thus, it becomes a reform that tribal communities may adopt now as they develop creative responses for addressing
violence. The reason for this suggested reform is that many tribal governments incorrectly think that the federal government is
already adequately addressing gender violence and do not take initiative to address it themselves.28 In the end, the importance of
Deer’s recommendation is not so much an investment in that particular strategy, but the manner in which it encourages us to think
of short-term strategies that are not simply based on increased incarceration, strategies that will more likely fall under the federal
radar screen so that tribal communities have more time to practice new ways of supporting accountability for violence. This will
encourage communities to develop better decolonial practices in the future. As Deer notes, a ‘long-term vision for radical change
requires both immediate measures to address sexual violence and a forward-looking effort to dismantle the culture of rape that has
infiltrated tribal nations’.29 At the same time, many other Native activists are engaging community accountability strategies that do
not work with the current system at all. These strategies are not broadly advertised because these activists do not want to gain the
attention of federal authorities. Yet, many communities have developed informal strategies for addressing authorities. For instance,
one man who assaulted a relative was banished from his community. As he was simply able to move to the city, tribal members
would follow him to various work places, carrying signs that described him as a rapist. Again, this may be a strategy that we may or
may not support. But the point is that it is important to engage the experimental and ‘jazzy’ approaches for developing communitybased accountability strategies.30 In his recent book X-Marks, Scott Lyons engages with Native activists and scholars who call for
decolonisation as a central focus for organising.31 Those who
call for decolonisation often do not effectively
engage in any short-term reformist strategy, even though they may save the lives of
indigenous peoples who are currently under immediate attack. As a result, the immediate
needs of people often get sacrificed in favour of articulating seemingly politically-pure ideals.
Conversely, those who do engage in short-term reform strategies often decry the goal of decolonisation as ‘unrealistic’. In doing so,
they do not critique the manner in which these strategies often retrench rather than challenge the colonial status quo. Lyons affirms
the need for decolonisation, but notes that decolonization happens with pre-existing materials and institutions. He calls on Native
peoples to think creatively about these institutions and about the ways in which they can be deployed not just for short-term gains
but for a long-term vision of liberation. BEYOND SHAMING THE SYSTEM Legal reformists who often focus on shaping the law to
reflect their moral values and those who focus on extra-legal revolutionary strategies often share the same goal. Often the
presumed ‘radical’ strategy adopted by social justice groups is to engage in civil disobedience. While these groups ostensibly break
the law, they often do so in rather ceremonial fashion; they essentially want to shame the system. People are supposed to get
arrested, and those in power are supposed to be so shamed by the fact that an unjust system required people to break the law. The
expectation is that they will then change the laws. Acts of civil disobedience often are not targeted toward changing a policy directly
or building alternative systems to the current one. Many Native groups in the southwest US, however, have developed an
alternative framework for extra-legal social change. Rather than breaking the law to change the system, they propose to make
Native communities ungovernable. For instance, during the passage of SB1070, Native groups with the Taala Hooghan Infoshop,
O’odham Solidarity Across Borders, and others occupied the Border Patrol Office.32 However, rather than engaging in the
occupation with the expectation of getting arrested, they chained themselves to the building so that the office could not perform its
work. This approach has continued with their efforts to stop the US government’s desecration of the San Francisco Peaks through
the construction of a ski resort. While they have not eschewed legal strategies for stopping this desecration, they have focused on
preventing tourists from visiting the area so that the ski resort will no longer be economically viable. According to their promotional
material on TrueSnow.org: For the last decade defenders of the peaks have used every legitimate way they could think of to try to
stop the US Forest Service from allowing treated sewage effluent to be sprayed on the Peaks to make snow. More than 20,000
people took part in the Forest Service Environmental Impact Statement process with letters and appeals asking them not to spray
treated sewage effluent on the peaks to make snow. Thousands of us went to Flagstaff City Council meetings to voice our opposition
to the sale of treated sewer water for the project. Yet still they approved it – before even an environmental impact statement was
done. They were the most clueless of all. Currently the Hopi tribe is seeking lawsuit against the city because of this treated sewage
effluent sale. A group of tribes and environmental and social justice organizations took a lawsuit all the way to the steps of the
Supreme Court. The lawsuits have only called into question the legitimacy of what is loosely termed the ‘justice’ system. For it seems
there is no justice in this system. It is just us, IN this system. There is also yet another lawsuit in play which I have termed ‘Save the
Peaks Coalition vs The Snowbowl Movement’ which may have the possibility of stopping this project in the long term. But if we wait
for a verdict, all the trees will be cut and the pipeline installed. This has not stopped the politically connected ski area from going
ahead with their project right now and they have already clear-cut 100,000 trees (or more) and have already buried a few miles of
pipeline along Snowbowl road. If they lose in court they would be expected to repair the damages. How do you get back 400 year
old trees? Greed and hatred seems to be Snowbowl's only motivation […]. But isn't there some way to stop it? Well we could hit
them where it hurts! In the pocketbook. If you live in the Fort Valley area of Flagstaff you must see by now how little Arizona
Snowbowl really cares about the ‘economic benefits’ it brings our fair town. I know some of us had a good deal of trouble even going
to work when the snow was good and Snowbowl was busy. The traffic jam was incredible. Stretching more than 15 miles. They took
our livelihood away and hope to make that a daily occurrence by having a ‘predictable’ ski season using sewer water to make snow.
This jam up gave us an idea! Why don't we do the same thing? Arizona Snowbowl does not own the mountain, and it is perfectly
legal to drive up to the area for any permitted public lands use. This means hiking, camping, praying, skiing, sitting, loving,
mushroom hunting, etc. So what do I do? It is time to stop waiting for a government entity, an environmental group, or any of the
people you have come to expect to save the peaks for us. The time has come to show them how much power the people have! And
believe me, you are the most powerful people in all of the world! You! Yep you! You can do it! All summer the Arizona Snowbowl is
open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for scenic skyrides, food, and alcohol. They do get a pretty good business up there and it would
have an impact if the mountain was just ‘too busy’ with people doing all the other things our Public Forests are for. There is nothing
illegal about it and it would send a clear message to the forest service that we don't need Snowbowl to ‘recreate on the mountain’.
Heck, we don't even need a ski area up there to ski! In essence, take a vacation. Just do it up on the peaks and don't use Snowbowl.
Our government officials are forgetting what ‘all power to the people’ really means. You cannot wait any longer for someone else to
save the peaks for you. It will take of all us together to do this. So what are you waiting for? Pack a lunch this Saturday morning and
Converge on the Peaks!33 What these activists suggest is to divest our moral investment in the law. This will affect not only what
legal reforms we may pursue, but what revolutionary strategies we might engage in. Rather than engaging in civil disobedience to
force legislators to change laws to conform to our moral principles, we might be free to engage creatively in strategies that build
political and economic power directly. CONCLUSION In the debates prevalent within Native sovereignty and racial justice
movements, we are often presented with two seemingly orthogonal positions – long-term revolutionary extra-legal movements or
shortterm reformist legalist strategies. Short-term legal strategies are accused of investing activists within a white supremacist and
settler colonial system that is incapable of significant change. Meanwhile, revolutionaries are accused of sacrificing the immediate
needs of vulnerable populations for the sake of an endlessly deferred revolution. The reality of gender violence in Native
communities highlights the untenability of these positions.
Native women’s lives are at stake now – they
cannot wait for the revolution to achieve some sort of safety. At the same time, the short-term strategies often adopted
to address gender violence have often increased violence in Native women’s lives by buttressing the prison industrial complex and
its violent logics. While this reformist versus revolutionary dichotomy suggests two radically different positions, in reality they share
a common assumption: that the only way to pursue legal reform is to fight for laws that that reinforce the appropriate moral
statement (for instance, that the only way to address violence against Native women is through the law and to make this violence a
‘crime’). Because the US legal system is inherently immoral and colonial, however, attempts to moralise the law generally fail. It is
not surprising that the response to these failures is to simply give up on pursuing legal strategies. However, the works of Derrick Bell,
We can
challenge the assumption that the law will reflect our morals and instead seek to use the law
for its strategic effects. In doing so, we might advocate for laws that might in fact contradict
some of our morals because we recognize that the law cannot mirror our morals anyway. We
might then be free to engage in a relationship with the law which would free us to change our
strategies as we assess its strategic effects. At the same time, by divesting from the morality of the
law, we then will also simultaneously be free to invest in building our own forms of
Christopher Leslie, and Sarah Deer, while working in completely different areas of the law, point to a different approach.
community accountability and justice outside the legal system. Our extra-legal strategies would go beyond
ceremonial civil disobedience tactics designed to shame a system that is not capable of shame. Rather, we might focus on actually
building the political power to create an alternative system to the heteropatriarchal, white supremacist, settler colonial state.
Alt Fails
Legalism is the only way to constrain violence – any alternative paints the law
as indeterminate which justifies illegality
Ristroph 9 (Alice, Associate Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law, “Is Law?
Constitutional Crisis and Existential Anxiety,” Constitutional Commentary Vol. 25, 431-459.
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1457&context=facpub)
One reason to care whether law is in “crisis” concerns our own expectations of the function of law. A possible achievement is to
offer an alternative to violence—as we saw in Levinson and Balkin’s account of the Constitution as enabling nonviolent
dispute resolution.66 This might be called the anti-Thrasymachus view of law. Early in Plato’s Republic (before Socrates has tamed
him), a young man called Thrasymachus describes justice as “the advantage of the stronger.”67 The claim is that might makes right,
and Western political and legal thought has produced many efforts to prove Thrasymachus and his heirs wrong. If law
distinguishes right from might, then it becomes important to say what law is, and to show that
it exists. Hence, many ongoing jurisprudential debates about the criteria for a valid and
functional system of law (including worries about legal indeterminancy) are motivated by worries about
arbitrary power and violence.68 To show Thrasymachus to be mistaken, we want to show that
the rule of law is really different from the rule of (the strongest) men. In legal theory, we could view John
Austin’s positivism— law as commands backed by threats of punishment—as a descendant of Thrasymachus’s claim.69 Here, I want
to examine briefly one of the most influential, and most plausible, efforts to show that law is something more and different from the
commands of a gunman: H. L. A. Hart’s response to Austin. Hart framed his discussion around the question, “What is law?”.70 But
perhaps, as the Stoppard passage that opened this essay suggests, beginning with this question led us to conjure an image of law
with various predicates that do not, as it turns out, include existence. A second form of existential anxiety, one that I suspect shapes
present talk of crisis, is the anxiety thast Thrasymachus and Austin were right and law, if it is anything more than command and
force, does not exist. For my purposes here, the critical features of Hart’s account are the rule of recognition and the internal point
of view. Since, in most of The Concept of Law, Hart takes law’s existence for granted, it is helpful to look at the passages where law’s
existence, or at least the existence of a particular form of law, is up for grabs. In his classic discussion of the question, “Is
international law really law?”, H. L. A. Hart deployed the concepts of a rule of recognition and the internal point of view to conclude
that international law was at most in a state of transition toward fully legal law, moving toward law properly so called but certainly
not yet there.71 At the time he wrote The Concept of Law, Hart believed that international law departed from domestic (or
“municipal”) law in that it lacked a widely accepted rule of recognition and in that states could not be said to take the internal point
of view toward international obligations. (Hart’s argument has been challenged by many contemporary scholars of international law,
but that particular dispute need not occupy us here.72) For law qua law to exist, Hart argued, there must be a rule of recognition
under which the authoritative status of other rules was accepted or denied, and the officials who would apply the rule of recognition
must themselves take the internal point of view toward it. That is, the officials needed to view the rule of recognition as a binding,
authoritative guide to their own decisions. Suppose Hart was right and the rule of recognition and the internal point of view are
conditions for the existence of law. Two questions arise: what is the rule of recognition for constitutional law, and who must hold
the internal standpoint toward that rule? The Constitution itself initially seems a candidate for the rule of recognition, though the
fact that the Constitution must itself be interpreted leads some theorists to amend this account and say that the rule of recognition
must include authoritative statements of the meaning of the Constitution, under prevailing interpretive standards.73 As for the
internal point of view, we might hope that all state officials would take this point of view toward constitutional rules.74 In other
words, we might hope that every state actor would comply with the U.S. Constitution because it is the Constitution, not simply to
avoid injunctions, or judicial invalidation of legislative action, or liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. But Hart’s theory does not demand
universal adherence to an internal point of view. Even if legislators and other public officials complied with First or Fourth or
Fourteenth Amendment doctrine only to avoid invalidation or § 1983 liability —even if these public officials were the equivalent of
Holmes’s bad man—Hart might find that constitutional law still existed in a meaningful sense so long as the judges applying
constitutional rules believed themselves to be bound by a constitutional rule of recognition.75 Here is a possibility, one I believe we
must take seriously and one that prompts anxiety about the existence of constitutional law itself: there is no common rule of
recognition toward which judges and other officials take an internal point of view.76 Individual judges may adhere to their particular
understandings of the rule of recognition —the Constitution as interpreted by proper originalist methods, for example, or the
Constitution as elucidated by popular understandings. But the fact that individual state actors follow their own rules of recognition
in good faith does not satisfy Hart’s account of law, and it does not provide a satisfying alternative to Thrasymachus. (There is no
reason, on the might-makes-right account, that the mighty cannot hold the good faith belief that they are pursuing a common good
or acting pursuant to rule-governed authority. What matters is that their power is in fact traceable to their superior strength.) There
is reason for academic observers to doubt the existence of a single rule of recognition in American constitutional law. There are too
many core interpretive disputes, as discussed in Part I, and it is now widely accepted that constitutional rules are at least
underdeterminatc. Should there be doubt about this claim, consider this feature of constitutional law textbooks: they include
majority and dissenting opinions, and questions after each case frequently ask the reader which opinion was more persuasive. Those
questions are not posed as rhetorical. For most constitutional decisions, we can say, it could have been otherwise. With a few votes
switched, with a different line-up of Justices, the same precedents (and in some cases, the same interpretive methodology) could
have produced a different outcome. Moreover, these suspicions of indeterminancy or underdetermi-nancy are not the unique
province of the academy. Think of the discussions of Supreme Court appointments in presidential elections. Many voters, law
professors or not, understand their vote for president to be also a vote for a certain kind of Justice and for certain kinds of
constitutional outcomes. Discussions of Supreme Court appointments are often framed in terms of judicial methodology —”I will
appoint judges who are faithful to the text of the Constitution” —but that language may be more a matter of decorum than of real
constitutional faith. Judges, of course, are not ignorant of the charges of indeterminancy or of the politicization of judicial
appointments. And it seems possible that the erosion of constitutional faith has reached the judiciary itself.771 claim no special
insight into judicial psychology, but it seems implausible that the reasons for constitutional skepticism—the discussions of
underdetermined rules, the contingency of outcomes based on 5-4 votes, and the great attention to swing justices such as Sandra
Day O’Connor or Anthony Kennedy—have not influenced judges themselves. Here again it seems worthwhile to consider dissenting
opinions. Justice Scalia’s polemics come to mind immediately; he has often accused his colleagues of acting lawlessly.78 Yet he
keeps his post and continues to participate in a system that treats as law the determinations of five (potentially lawless) Justices. It is
possible, I suppose, that Justice Scalia’s dissents express earnest outrage, that he is shocked (shocked) by decisions like Lawrence v.
Texas79 and Boumediene. It is possible that he believes himself to be the last best hope of constitutional law properly so called. But
it seems more likely that he shares the skepticism of academic observers of the Court. Though one can’t help but wonder whether
judges are still constitutionally devout, I should emphasize here that my argument does not turn on a claim that judges are acting in
good or bad faith. Individual judges may well take the internal point of view, in Hart’s terms, and strive faithfully to apply the
principles they recognize as law. But
it seems clear that American judges do not all hold the internal
point of view toward a single, shared rule of recognition, given the nature of disagreements
among judges themselves. If there are multiple rules of recognition, varying from judge to
judge, then legal outcomes will depend on which judge is empowered to make the critical
decision, and Thrasymachus is not so far off the mark. Contemporary judicial disagreement is profound, and it
is not just a matter of Justice Scalia’s flair for colorful rhetoric. Consider Scott v. Harris, the recent decision granting summary
judgment (on the basis of qualified immunity) to a police officer who had rammed a passenger car during a high-speed chase,
causing an accident that left the driver a quadriplegic.80 Like most use-of-force opinions, the decision applies a deferential Fourth
Amendment standard that gives police officers wide leeway. What is unusual about Harris is that, because the case arose as a civil
suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the critical question (whether the driver, Victor Harris, posed a sufficient threat to others’ bodily safety
such that the use of deadly force was reasonable) was nominally a jury question, and at summary judgment, the court should have
taken the facts in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—the injured driver. Thus, in earlier use-of-force cases that
reached the Court as § 1983 claims, the Court articulated the Fourth Amendment standard and then remanded the case to the trial
court.81 But in Harris, the Court had access to videotapes of the chase recorded by cameras on the dashboards of the police vehicles
involved.82 In the view of the eight-Justice majority, the videotape “spoke for itself”: it made Harris’s threat to the public so clear
that no reasonable juror could conclude that the officer’s use of force was unreasonable.83 Accordingly, the Supreme Court found
the officer to be entitled to summary judgment.84 Doubtless there are many instances in which a court grants summary judgment to
one party though non-judicial observers believe a reasonable juror could find for the other party. Harris is of particular interest,
though, because the “reasonable juror” who might have found in favor of Victor Harris was clearly visible to the majority—in fact,
this juror had a spokesman on the Court. Justice Stevens, the lone dissenter in Scott v. Harris, viewed the same videotape and found
it to confirm the factual findings of the district court (which had denied the police offic-er’s motion for summary judgment).85
Though Justice Stevens was careful not to base his argument on an actual determination of the substantive Fourth Amendment
question (chiding his colleagues for doing just that and thereby acting as “jurors” rather than judges),86 he viewed the video
evidence and explained how one might conclude, perfectly reasonably, that Scott had used excessive force.87 In order for the eight
Justices in the Harris majority to believe their own opinion, they would have to conclude that Justice Stevens lived outside the realm
of reason. Harris is nominally a dispute about what reasonable jurors could conclude, rather than a direct argument about the
meaning of a particular constitutional provision. But the two reactions to the videotape should call to mind Larry Tribe’s worry that
American constitutional law is plagued by “deep and thus far intractable divisions between wholly different ways of assessing truth
and experiencing reality.”88 It is not just abortion and assisted suicide that reveal profound disagreement about what is true and
real. A videotape that “speaks for itself’ in the eyes of eight Justices says something entirely different to the ninth. Looking beyond
the judiciary, consider the consequences of constitutional disagreement and constitutional indeterminancy for other government
officials and for would-be critics of those officials. Earlier I noted that with sufficient constitutional indeterminancy, there’s no such
thing as an unconstitutional president. A more extreme version of this argument is that with
sufficient legal
indeterminancy, there’s no such thing as illegality. When John Yoo wrote the Office of Legal Counsel
memos that defend practices formerly known as torture, he was simply doing to bans on
torture what critics had long argued it was possible to do for any law: he was trashing them.89
This was the spawn of CLS put to work in the OLC; deconstructions on the left are now
deconstructions on the right.90 And that, of course, is cause for anxiety among those who would like to argue that
George W. Bush or members of his administration acted illegally. As I suggested in the Introduction, this may be the Pyrrhic
victory of critical legal studies: If the crits were correct, then there is no distinctively legal form
of critique. About torture, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and so on, we can
say I don't like it or it doesn’t correspond to my vision of the good, but we cannot say it’s
illegal. To argue that the Bush administration violated the rule of law, we need to believe that
the rule of law exists. But for 30 years or more, we have found reasons to doubt that it does.91 Perhaps it will seem that I
am overstating the influence of legal realism and critical legal studies, or the doubts about law’s existence. I’m willing to entertain
those possibilities, but I do want to emphasize that the focus is on constitutional law. It’s easy enough to believe in law when we see
it applied and enforced by figures of authority in a recognized hierarchy. That is, the sentencing judge or the prison warden can
believe in law—he has applied it himself. And the criminal should believe in law— he has felt its force. But these examples illustrate
Austinian law: commands backed by force. What remains elusive, on my account, are laws that are truly laws given to oneself, and
especially law given by a state to itself.92 That is why, in Part I of this essay, I suggested that brute
force is a poor
candidate to distinguish ordinary politics, or ordinary legal decisions, from extraordinary
moments of crisis. What would be truly extraordinary is not the use of force, but its absence: a system of law truly based on
consent and independent of sanction. The Constitution, in theory, is a law given unto oneself. By this I mean not simply that the
Founders gave the Constitution to future generations, but that each
successive generation must give the
Constitution to itself: each generation must adopt the internal point of view toward the
Constitution in order for it to be effective. Even once we have accepted the written text as authoritative, all but the
strictest constructionists acknowledge that many meanings can plausibly be extracted from that text. (And even the strict
constructionists must acknowledge that as a factual matter many meanings have been extracted; they deny only the plausibility of
those varied readings.) Any law given unto oneself requires what Hart called the internal point of view, and what one more cynical
might describe as self-delusion: it requires a belief that one is bound though one could at any minute walk away. It is possible, I
think, that we have outwitted the Constitution: that we
have become too clever, too quick to notice
indeterminancy, even too post-modern to believe ourselves bound. A third possible explanation for
contemporary references to crisis is professional malaise. It could be, as I suggested earlier, that after too many years of chewing
what judges had for breakfast, professors have lost their appetites. It could be that the problems of originalists and historicists and
popular constitutionalists don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. And if these possibilities have not crossed the law
professor’s mind, they probably should. We might consider again Larry Tribe’s explanation of his decision to stop work on his
treatise of American constitutional law. There are two questions of meaning there, one of which Tribe confronts directly and the
other which he brushes off quickly. Most obviously, there is the search for constitutional meaning, as Tribe acknowledges, a search
that cannot be concluded within the Constitution’s own text. “I see no escape from adopting some perspective... external to the
constitution itself from which to decide questions not indisputably resolved one way or the other by the text and structure--------”9*
Tribe goes on to wonder where these extra-constitutional criteria come from, and “who ratified the meta-constitution that such
external criteria would comprise?”.94 Supreme Court Justices (and other judges) must struggle with these questions, given “the
public authority that they have the enormous responsibility and privilege to wield.”95 But Tribe need not. He can simply decline to
finish the treatise. If he declines to finish the treatise, though, we can’t help asking ourselves what was at stake, and what remains at
stake. If the law professor lacks the responsibility of a judge, is his constitutional theory just an amusing hobby? What was the point
of the constitutional law treatise, or of other efforts to discern coherent principles of constitutional law? The significance of a
treatise is the question of meaning that Tribe brushes off quickly: he says a treatise is an “attempt at a synthesis of some enduring
value” and insists that his decision is not based on doubts about whether constitutional treatises arc ever worthwhile.96 But Tribe’s
letter leaves the “enduring value” of a treatise rather underspecified, and it is possible that current references to constitutional crisis
in the academy stem from uncertainty about such questions of value. Is
constitutional theory good for absolutely
nothing? Only if we believe that the effort to resist Thrasymachus is futile or pointless.
Constitutional theory is a species of legal and political theory, and the most intriguing forms of such theory are produced by worries
that law and violence are too closely intertwined.97 Thus I suggested at the outset of this essay that existential anxiety is not always
to be regretted, cured, or mocked. Such anxiety
may be an important indication that we have noticed the
ways in which Thrasymachus seems right, and we still care enough to try to prove him
wrong.98 After so much talk of crisis and anxiety, consider an illustration from the dramatic genre. Tom Stoppard’s play
Jumpers features a troupe of philosophy professors who double as acrobats: “Logical positivists, mainly, with a
linguistic analyst or two, a couple of Benthamite utilitarians ... lapsed Kantians and empiricists generally... and of course the usual
Behaviorists... a mixture of the more philosophical members of the university gymnastics team and the more gymnastic members of
the Philosophy School.”99 The
Jumpers seem to practice what we would now identify as post-modern nihilism:
One shoots and kills another, then conceals the murder with cheerful aplomb. Against these
intellectually and physically adroit colleagues, the clumsy and old-fashioned Professor George Moore struggles to defend “the
irreducible fact of goodness,”100 the possibility of a “moral conscience,” and the claim that “there is more in me than meets the
microscope.”101 “Is God?” Moore wonders. He can neither shake nor defend his faith. Law schools, I think, are
filled with moral sympathizers to Professor Moore who possess the skills of modern-day Jumpers.102 The current discourse of crisis
is the latest manifestation of an old struggle between faith and doubt, and it is not one that we will resolve. On one hand, we have
observed too much to believe (in law) unquestioningly. And on the other hand, we
are determined to have law, even
if we must make it ourselves. There was at least a smidgen of truth in John Finnis’s claim that scholars of critical legal
studies were “disappointed ... absolutists.”103 But it is not just crits that are disappointed when they look for
law and see nothing. Few scholars of any stripe want to vindicate Thrasymachus. All of this is
just to reiterate the difficulty, and perhaps the necessity, of giving a law unto oneself. If
constitutional law did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
COMPETITIVENESS
Competitiveness Discourse Good
The politicization of national economics is inevitable and necessary – it’s the
only way to craft effective and socially responsible economic systems.
Gilpin, ‘1 (Robert Gilpin, scholar of international political economy and the professor emeritus
of Politics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Global Political Economy:
Understanding the International Economic Order,
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7093.html
Yet, as I shall argue throughout this book, although globalization had become the defining feature of the international economy at
the beginning of the twenty-first century, the
extent and significance of economic globalization have been
greatly exaggerated and misunderstood in both public and professional discussions; globalization in
fact is not nearly as extensive nor as sweeping in its consequences (negative or positive) as many contemporary observers believe.
This is still a world where national
policies and domestic economies are the principal determinants of
economic affairs. Globalization and increasing economic interdependence among national economies are indeed very
important; yet, as Vincent Cable of the Royal Institute of International Affairs has pointed out, the major economic achievement of
the post-World War II era has been to restore the level of international economic integration that existed prior to World War I.1 My
1987 book lacked an adequate domestic dimension. It analyzed the international economy as if domestic economic developments
were of only minor importance. In part, this neglect was due to my desire to help advance an autonomous, self-contained
international political economy. The present book attempts to overcome this unfortunate weakness through a focus on what I call
"national systems of political economy" and their significance for both domestic and
international economic affairs. As national economies have become more and more integrated,
the significance of the fundamental differences among national economies has greatly
increased. The 1987 book had several other serious limitations, including its treatment of the multinational corporation,
economic development, and economic regionalism; although I discussed all three of these important subjects at that time, much
more needs to be said, especially in light of subsequent developments. In the mid-1980s, a revolution in international economic
affairs occurred as multinational firms (MNCs) and foreign direct investment (FDI) began to have a profound impact on almost every
aspect of the world economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, increased international trade transformed international economic affairs.
Subsequently, in the 1980s, the overseas expansion of multinational firms integrated national economies more and more
completely. Moreover, whereas the term "multinational" had been synonymous with the expansion of American firms, in the 1980s
firms of other nationalities joined the ranks of multinationals. Most importantly, MNCs led the way in internationalization of both
services and manufacturing. My discussion of economic development in the 1987 book has become totally outdated; scholarship at
that time gave serious attention to quasi-Marxist dependency theory and the deep division between the less developed and the
developed world. Today,
the debate over economic development centers on the appropriate role for
state and market in the development process. In the conclusion to the 1987 book, I referred to economic
regionalism as the wave of the future. Today, economic regionalism has reached flood tide and is having a significant impact on the
international economy. Financial developments since the mid-1980s have greatly increased the integration of the world economy
and, therefore, deserve attention. This book also addresses
the question of whether or not the increased
importance of the market in the organization and functioning of the global economy means the
end of the nation-state and of international political economy as that term is defined in this book. Those familiar with
my past work will not be surprised to learn that I think not. The principal purpose of this book is to draw upon
these real-world and recent theoretical developments in order to formulate a more
comprehensive understanding of international political economy than in my earlier publications. The
eclectic 1987 book presented what I considered to be the three major perspectives on international political economy (IPE)-liberalism, Marxism, and nationalism; this book takes
a consciously realist or state-centric approach to
analysis of the international economy. Differing from many contemporary writings on the global economy, I believe
that the nation-state remains the dominant actor in both domestic and international economic
affairs. Believing that both economic and political analyses are necessary for an understanding
of the workings of the international economy, this book integrates these distinct modes of scholarly inquiry.
Perm
Perm Solves – both discourses are needed together
Karlberg 2005 - Michael Karlberg is a Professor in the Department of Communication at
Western Washington University. (Michael ; “THE POWER OF DISCOURSE AND THE DISCOURSE OF POWER:PURSUING
PEACE THROUGH DISCOURSE INTERVENTION”; International Journal of Peace Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2005;
page 8-12; http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol10_1/Karlberg_101IJPS.pdf)//pk
Toward a Unified Schema As many feminists and systems theorists point out, understanding power merely in terms of domination
does not provide an adequate basis for social and political theory. It obscures as much as it reveals. As a basis for normative social
theory it is especially problematic. At the same time, the power as domination paradigm serves a very important analytical function.
“Power over” relations do exist and they warrant sustained critical attention – especially in the context of peace research, given that
social justice is often an important precondition to peace. What
is needed, however, is a comprehensive
framework that recognizes the complex and multifaceted nature of power relations and
provides an adequate basis for critical as well as normative social theory. Elements of such a
framework can already be found, scattered across the writings of diverse social and political
theorists, including many of those cited above. Though the distinction between “power to” versus “power over” is widely used
to denote the major fault lines among power theorists, other ways of thinking and talking about power cut across this distinction in
complex ways. For instance, one concept that does not fit neatly into the “power to” versus “power over” schema is the concept of
“balance of power” (or "intercursive power", e.g., Blau, 1964; Gamson, 1968; Reismann, Denny, & Glazer, 1951). Neither do the
expressions “power with” (Follett, 1942) and “power against” (Wrong, 1997). All of these expressions point to slightly different
models of power. What has been lacking, to date, has been an effort to integrate all of these models into a unified and
comprehensive schema. The
first step in formulating this schema is to recognize that the categories
“power to” versus “power over” are, in fact, neither parallel nor mutually exclusive
categories. “Power to”, in the broadest sense, denotes power as capacity. This is an overarching definition of the term power.
“Power over” on the other hand, is a special case of this overarching concept. If we say that we have “power over” someone, this is
simply another way of saying that we have the “power to exercise control over” that person. All possible expressions of “power
over” can be understood in this way, as the power to exert control over others. For the purposes of delineating a more
comprehensive schema of power relations, the first step is to recognize that “power over” is more accurately viewed as a subcategory of the more general power as capacity concept.1 “Power over”, however, is not the only sub-category of power as capacity.
Feminist and systems models point to other relations of power that do not entail exercising “power over” others. In keeping with
these models, one could say that people who are acting in a cooperative or mutualistic manner in the pursuit of a common goal are
exercising “power with” one another. For
definitional purposes, this “power with” category will be
referred to as mutualistic power relations – which constitutes another subcategory of the
power as capacity concept. The two categories identified above, associated with the phrases
“power over” and “power with”, are still not parallel or mutually exclusive categories . To
demonstrate this, consider the example of two equal adversaries that are exercising “power against” one another in a manner that
results in mutual frustration, or a stalemate. Neither of these adversaries is exercising “power over” the other. Yet they are clearly
not exercising their powers in a cooperative or mutualistic manner either. In this context, one could say that people either exercise
“power with” one another in a mutualistic manner, or they exercise “power against” one another in an adversarial manner. For
definitional purposes, this latter category will be referred to as adversarial power relations. Together, mutualistic
power
relations and adversarial power relations constitute two parallel and mutually exclusive
relational categories of the more general concept power as capacity. So where does “power over” fit
into this schema? For analytical purposes, mutualistic power relations and adversarial power relations can each be divided into two
additional subcategories, and it is at this level that the concept of “power over” can be located. Exercising “power over” others is
clearly a subcategory of adversarial rather than mutualistic power relations. The other subcategory of adversarial power relations
would be “balance of power” relations, such as the stalemate referred to above. What distinguishes “balance of power”
relationships from “power over” relationships is the relative equality or inequality of the adversaries. In a “balance of power”
relationship, power is distributed equally so that neither adversary can dominate the other. In a “power over” relationship, power is
distributed unequally so that one adversary can dominate the other. For definitional purposes, these parallel and mutually exclusive
subcategories of adversarial power relations will be referred to as power equality (i.e., “balance of power”) and power inequality
(i.e., “power over”). Likewise, power
equality and power inequality have mirror counterpoints within
the category of mutualistic power relations. In other words, two or more agents acting cooperatively can also be
characterized by equal or unequal distributions of power. The consequences, however, are quite different
when the relationships are mutualistic. Power equality within a mutualistic relationship
results in the “mutual empowerment” of all cooperating agents. An example would be a buying or
marketing cooperative created by a group of people with similar economic resources. On the other hand, power inequality
within a mutualistic relationship results in the “assisted empowerment” of the less powerful
agent(s) by the more powerful agent(s). An example would be the nurturing relationship between a parent and
child, or the mentoring relationship between a teacher and student.2 POWER AS CAPACITY ADVERSARIAL RELATIONS “power
against” competition MUTUALISTIC RELATIONS “power with” cooperation INEQUALITY “power over” coercion domination
oppression win/lose EQUALITY “balance of power” stalemate compromise frustration lose/lose INEQUALITY “assisted
empowerment” education nurturance assistance (win)/win EQUALITY “mutual empowerment” synergy collaboration coordination
win/win The
schema outlined above provides a simple yet comprehensive framework for thinking
and talking about the entire field of power relations – as the visual summary in Figure 1 illustrates.
This visual schema provides a vocabulary of ideal types by which broad patterns and distinctions can be recognized and discussed.
Most obviously, it reveals that “power to” and “power over” are not equivalent categories. In doing so, it also demonstrates that an
exclusive focus on “power over” cases obscures many other important categories. This exclusive focus also conflates and confuses
the relational aspects of power (adversarial vs. mutualistic) with the distributive aspects (inequality vs. equality). Beyond these basic
analytical clarifications, this schema permits other conceptual distinctions that tend to be obscured in conventional discourses on
power. For instance, though power inequality may be oppressive when coupled with adversarial power relations, inequality can lead
to empowerment in the context of mutualistic power relations – as in the nurturing relationship between a parent and child or the
mentoring relationship between a teacher and student referred to above. Relations of domination between entire social groups can
even potentially be reformed into relations of assisted empowerment in order to rectify historical inequities of power. Affirmative
action policies and progressive taxation schemes – when they are well conceived – provide examples of assisted empowerment on a
socio-structural level. Hierarchy, as an organizational principle, can also be seen as a desirable form of inequality under some
circumstances. In a social or organizational context, hierarchy refers to unequally structured power relations. Not
surprisingly,
many people equate hierarchy with oppression. But this equation again conflates power
inequality with adversarial power relations. In the context of mutualistic power relations,
hierarchy can be a valuable organizing principle. When any group of equal people is too large to effectively
engage every member in every decision-making process, the group may benefit from delegating certain decision-making powers to
smaller sub-groups. This consensually agreed upon inequality – or hierarchy – can empower a group to accomplish things it could
otherwise not accomplish. In the process, it can also relieve the burden of ongoing decision-making responsibilities from large
numbers of people who are thereby freed to devote their time and energy to other productive pursuits that can benefit the entire
group. Though
this schema illustrates that hierarchy cannot automatically be equated with
oppression, it also cautions that hierarchy cannot automatically be equated with
empowerment, as some conventional functionalist theorists conversely assume (e.g., Parsons,
1986). Within competitive or adversarial power relationships, which are common in
contemporary societies, hierarchy does lead to oppression, exploitation, and other
undesirable outcomes. Even as this schema reveals the positive and negative dimensions of
power inequality, it also reveals the positive and negative dimensions of power equality . While
power equality is clearly a desirable condition in many mutualistic power relations, where it leads to mutual empowerment, it can
be highly dysfunctional in many adversarial power relations, where it leads to mutual frustration. Consider, for instance, the partisan
gridlock that characterizes so much contemporary political decision making in Western-liberal democracies. Such gridlock not only
disempowers equally powerful political parties, it disempowers the entire public by rendering its only means of collective decision
largely dysfunctional.
Alt Fails
Alt Fails –Communal discourse leads to competitive discourse --- competitive
discourse inevitable --- the system can’t be changed
Cullick 94 - Jonathan S. Cullick is in the doctoral program in English at the University of Kentucky. He
has an article on historiography and Robert Penn Warren in a forthcoming issue of Southern Quarterly.
Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism(“Always Be Closing" : Competition and the Discourse of Closure in David Mamet's
Glengarry Glen Ross”; All pages; Spring 1994; https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/jdtc/article/download/1896/1859)//pk
An examination of the language utilized in the characters' interactions reveals two primary patterns of discourse, which I will call
"Discourse of Community" and "Discourse of Competition." The
discourse of community is transactional,
comprised of speech acts that communicate and invite responses. It is a language of
mediation, negotiation, and cooperation-an open discourse. On the other hand, discourse of
competition is adversarial, the language of manipulation, deception, and self-interest.
Whereas communal discourse is interactive, participatory, multidirectional, and
communicative, competitive discourse is interjectional, oppositional, monodirectional, and
obfuscatory. Whereas communal language treats others as members of a community,
competitive language isolates others as opponents or obstacles. In Mamet's business world, it is the latter
form of communication that prevails, because for the salesmen to succeed, they must subdue both customers and other salesmen;
their primary means of domination is verbal. Utilizing military metaphors, one critic notes that the salesmen "deploy language as a
tactic, a weapon, a shield, a Similarly, another critic observes that in the real estate office, "aggressive selling has become a means of
defense and attack, of selfidentification and of being" and this equivocation between selling ability and selfworth is accomplished
through the play's dialogue, which presents the transformation of speech "from a means of communication into a grinding, almost
unstoppable machine for onslaught" Use
of communal rather than adversarial language may result in
verbal defeat by the machine of competitive discourse. To these salesmen, discourse of community is
passive, submissive, weak, gendered as feminine, and associated with buying. Discourse of competition, however, is active,
dominant, strong, masculine, and associated with selling. Since closing sales with clients requires closing each other off from
competition, the salesmen utilize the competitive discourse of closure. In the sales office, dominating others monetarily requires
dominating others linguistically. Using the division of discourse into communal and competitive as a paradigm, it becomes possible
to understand the dynamics between the salesmen.
Interactions are not fueled by a desire for fair exchange,
but by the drive for advantage over others . Each scene is a locus of persuasion, and the subtext of a salespitch
conditions (or informs) every interaction. Scene One presents a declining salesman, Shelly Levene, attempting to convince the office
manager, John Williamson, to give him good leads so that he can get on the sales board. Levene
is caught in the
mechanistic structure of the company, wherein those with the best sales are rewarded with
the best leads, the worst leads going to those with low figures. In this scene Levene attempts not to break
from the structure, but to master it; he would perform again as a well-tuned "machine," according to the reputation of his
nickname. Thus, Levene must enact a series of rhetorical strategies to convince a man who is younger and much less experienced.
Levene, in effect, speaks a foreign language every time he attempts to get Williamson to empathize, for Levene lacks the credentials
to be heard by Williamson. As an employee, particularly one whose position with the company has descended to probationary at
best, his statements of self-defense are simply inadmissible. In other words, since he
cannot sell land to customers, he
rhetorical strategy thus attempts to solicit empathy
from Williamson, an objective for which he adopts language from a communal perspective:
lacks the status to sell language to Williamson.7 His
Those guys lived on the business I brought in. They lived on it. . . Give me a chance. That's all I want... I need your help.8 "Want,"
"need," "give me," and "your help" are all communal terms that are indicative of Levene's inferior status.
Although Levene
apparently believes that Williamson communicates in communal language, such discourse
does not persuade Williamson. (Levene's misjudgement of Williamson foreshadows the play's ironic conclusion when
Williamson reveals his duplicity against Levene: Williamson takes advantage of Levene's inaccurate discourse in Scene One.) The
only way for Levene to have his discourse taken seriously is to speak the correct discourse.
However, since Levene is an experienced salesman, it is feasible to question whether his
emotional pleas are actually part of a competitive strategy that blurs the boundary between
communal and competitive discourse. For example, we will see in Roma the possibility of utilizing
communal language with a competitive subtext, when direct adversarial language may be too harsh. Since
Levene was Roma's mentor, and since Levene will use communal discourse when closing the sale with Bruce and Harriet Nyborg, it is
possible to conclude that Levene's human side is just another aspect of his sales pitch. Nonetheless, this approach fails, so
Levene transforms his language into a mode that Williamson can comprehend: Levene: I'll give you
ten percent. (Pause.) Williamson: Of what? Levene: Of my end what I close. Williamson: And what if you don't close. Levene: I will
close. Williamson: What if you don't close .. . ? Levene: I will close.9 Levene realizes that he must argue in monetary, not humanistic,
terms, for Williamson cannot be charmed, he can only be bought. This exchange of dialogue also implies a gendered aspect to the
sales pitch. Levene has moved from a passive position to an active one, affirming his potency as he reiterates, "I will close."
Williamson responds to this repeated assurance with: "What if you don't! Then I'm fucked. You see . . . ? Then it's my job."10
Williamson interprets failure in his job literally in terms of finding himself in an emasculating position, just as Levene is in a position
viewed as passive or feminine by being at the bottom of the sales board rather than on the top. Levene's insistence is an assertion
not only of his vitality in sales, but also of his virility as a male; however, by refusing to be sold on Levene's idea, Williamson tries to
maintain his own masculinity, because being sold to is equated with being in a passive position. For these men, the act of selling is
masculine; closing a sale is a closing of discourse—a position of power. Thus, Levene can persuade him only by promising a kickback,
for by receiving money for his service, Williamson can maintain his power. As early as the opening scene, therefore, Mamet exposes
the power relationships that propel all the characters by virtue of the revelation that Levene is a pitiable example of what all other
salesmen must fear. Levene discovers that he is not considered worthy as an individual, but only in terms of what he can produce.
His nickname—"The Machine"—illustrates how the company values him. Originally the name was a compliment, given to a man who
was an unstoppable selling machine. However, machines age, wear down, and are discarded; Levene will be objectified and
displaced. Such
a corporate system poses an insurmountable force over the salesmen. They must
play by demeaning rules or risk exclusion from the sales force. Unfair as the sales contest is,
they can do nothing to alter the situation because they lack the status to invoke change within
the corporate structure. None of the salesmen are part of the rule-creating apparatus; even Williamson answers to higher
forces. Like the salesmen, his job requires that he perform according to a strictly adversarial model, or he too will face dismissal. He
argues: I'm hired to watch the leads. I'm given . . . hold on, I'm given a policy. My job is to do that. What I'm told. That's it.11 With
this argument, Williamson
is able to evade a sense of responsibility because he operates only
according to what he is permitted to do. The forces over him are the owners, Mitch and Murray, who never appear
but are referred to consistently. These bosses are inaccessible, leaving the salesmen to perform with no possibility of negotiating
their grievances. Nevertheless, they are a presence, as illustrated when Williamson reinforces his position with statements such as,
"Murray said ... . "12 Because they exist only in the speech of the salesmen, Mitch and Murray function as a transcendent, yet purely
locutionary, form. Their names, taken together, form a signifier for impersonal power.13 In Scene Two Moss considers transgressing
their power. He and Aaronow express frustrations at the unfairness of the rules, which enable Moss to feel justified in constructing
rules of his own. He plans to burglarize the office of all the leads, and then sell them to a competitor, but he wants to convince
someone to burglarize the office for him, so as to deflect suspicion. Like Levene in Scene One, Moss exercises a sales pitch on
Aaronow.
The dialogue of this scene seemingly begins in communal discourse, but is actually
communal with a competitive subtext. Moss supposedly empathizes with Aaronow's situation: Moss: Polacks and
deadbeats. Aaronow: . . . Polacks . . . Moss: Deadbeats all. Aaronow: . . . they hold on to their money . . . Moss: All of 'em. They, hey:
it happens to us all. Aaronow: Where am I going to work? Moss: You have to cheer up, George, you aren't out yet. Moss
and
Aaronow share a competitive discourse by attributing their own failure to their customers'
ethnicity. Due to his declining sales, Aaronow fears expulsion from the office, which would make him a foreigner like the Poles
and Indians he derides. This scene parallels Scene One in that an individual's ability to sell is equated not only with sexuality, but
with inclusion in the sales community. The fear of losing sales is a fear of losing identity, of becoming a sexual and cultural outcast.
The discourse of Scene Two parallels Scene One in another respect. Scene One
depicts a division between
communal and competitive, but also shows that the latter can use the former. Like Levene, Moss
uses communal discourse as part of his rhetorical strategy to convince Aaronow to participate in the burglary. Consequently, this
scene further blurs the boundary between the two types of discourse, demonstrating that as
morality becomes transgressive, language becomes slippery as well.
The scene opens with Moss and
Aaronow voicing frustration with the exploitive rules governing the sales board: Aaronow: You're on this . . . Moss: All of, they got
you on this "board ... " Aaronow: I, I . . . I . . . Moss: Some contest board . . . Aaronow: I. . . Moss: It's not right. Aaronow: It's not.
Moss: No.15 By being "on this board," they are metaphorically pieces on a gameboard, with the omnipotent Mitch and Murray as
the players. To become players themselves, Moss suggests and finally proposes that they must objectify the employers in an act
which, though illegal, appears to have the sanction of morality since it is borne by the desire to right an unfair situation. The
consequent verbal exchange expresses frustration with the power that works against their efforts to earn a sound commission, a
frustration illustrated by the profusion of pauses (ellipses), stresses (italics), and repetition of phrases, all of which are rhetorical
markers that indicate an inability to find a potent language: Moss: . . . you find yourself in thrall to someone else. And we enslave
ourselves. To please. To win some fucking toaster .. . In one of the most graphic passages of the text, Moss argues that the system
emasculates. He describes how an employer ought not behave: Look look look look, when they build your business, then you can't
fucking turn around, enslave them, treat them like children, fuck them up the ass . . . Moss also feels like a slave, possessed and
humiliated, as though he were an object. These passages suggest that the system not only confines the men; it also attacks their
emotional security. To strike back, then, would seem to be an act of self-defense. Striking back, however, is illegal and would bring
economic harm to the other salesmen (though neither one addresses this factor). Thus, Moss proceeds cautiously, permitting the
language to defer closure by meandering into secondary meanings without committing himself to those meanings. Mamet's writing
in this scene is masterful, as each character tests the intentions of the other by uttering statements of double-intention, and then
checking the reactions of the other. Moss: I want to tell you what somebody should do. Aaronow: What? Moss: Someone should
stand up and strike back. Aaronow: What do you mean? Moss: Somebody . . . Aaronow: Yes .. . ? Moss: Should do something to
them. Aaronow: What? Moss: Something. To pay them back. (Pause.) Someone, someone should hurt them. Murray and Mitch.
Aaronow: Someone should hurt them. Moss: Yes. Aaronow: (Pause.) How? Moss: How? Do something to hurt them. Where they
live. Aaronow: What? (Pause.) Moss: Someone should rob the office.18 In this exchange, Moss speaks ambiguously, planting cues
(with the vague pronouns "somebody," "someone," and "something") which invite Aaronow's requests for clarification (the
interrogatives "Yes .. . ?" "What?" "How?"). Moss's language appears to be communal discourse, for it solicits Aaronow's voice;
however, it is a competitive discourse, for its ulterior purpose is to make Aaronow a participant. Moss accomplishes this purpose, for
the specific objective—"Someone should rob the office"—appears to emerge only because of Aaronow's questions, thereby making
Aaronow appear to be a co-creator of the idea. Thus, success
in competitive discourse depends upon the
ability to blur the boundary between communal and competitive discourses so that the target
of the sales pitch remains unsure of which discourse in which to respond.
Competition => cooperation which solves for the economy
Trapido 2007 – Business Prof @ Stanford
Denis, Competitive Embeddedness and the Emergence of Interfirm Cooperation, Social Forces,
Volume 86, Number 1, September 2007, pp. 165-191, 2007
The logic that I develop here integrates several separate theoretical fragments into a new argument. The argument inherits its
central problem – understanding the influence of a history of competition on the emergence of cooperation
– from the interdependence tradition. Its explanatory mechanisms and implications are, however, substantially different. The
discussion will refer to this new argument and to the social process that it describes as competitive embeddedness. The competitive
embeddedness argument begins with noting that economic
competition heightens mutual awareness. A number
are more likely
than non-competitors to get acquainted through professional associations. Sohn (2002) notes that
competition tends to be geographically socialized, hence the likelihood of a personal encounter
between competitors is higher than between non-competitors. White (1981) goes probably further than any
author in highlighting the role of mutual awareness in economy. White’s sociological theory of markets “insist[s]
that what a firm does in a market is to watch the competition in terms of [other firms’ observable
behavior and outcomes].” (1981:518) Rather than listing reasons why mutual awareness increases with competition, White
argues that awareness and “watching” are inherent, defining features of a market.
of studies document this effect. For example, Davis et al. (1990) point out that economic competitors