1nc
Politics
Obama’s push secures Democratic votes for TPA passage
Needham 2-19-15 (Vicki, “Pritzker expects fast-track to pass Congress,”
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/233285-pritzker-expects-fast-track-to-pass-congress, CMR)
Obama administration officials are acknowledging the challenge of passing trade promotion authority
(TPA) as they ramp up efforts to build broad support . Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said Thursday that
getting a fast-track measure through Congress has always proven difficult and that this time around won't be any different. "These are
never easy votes so let’s not think it’s different or there’s some circumstance now that’s different than before,” she said in a call with
reporters. "Trade promotion legislation is a hard vote to get passed because takes a lot of explanation as to what it is,” she said. Still,
Pritzker is confident that a fast-track measure, despite widespread opposition from Democrats in Congress,
will pass, most likely by a small margin . Pritzer said she has been talking to Republicans and Democrats who were involved in
previous TPA battles and understands what is needed to get push a measure through Congress. The last TPA bill passed in 2002, only by a few
votes in the House. Earlier in the day, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that a
TPA vote is a “close call,” according to press
reports. Pritzker and Jeff Zients, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the lobbying effort to convince
lawmakers and Americans continues in earnest and will succeed on TPA and the broader trade
agenda.
The plan tanks PC
GBGC 13, Global Betting and Gaming Consultants, a specialist, independent, international gambling
consultancy, June 17 2013, “New Congress, New US I-Gaming Bill, Same Long Odds,”
http://www.gbgc.com/new-congress-new-us-i-gaming-bill-same-long-odds/
responses to Congressman Peter King’s online gambling bill (H.R. 2282) so closely mirror those of
all the failed attempts at federal regulation in the past : Advocates outside the commercial casino establishment are enthusiastic; they’re
guarded and non-committal within; and the public lotteries and the Indian tribes and the leaders of the states
where they reside are as ever skeptical and resistant. In a broad sense these are views that speak to the historic
fault lines riddling U.S. gambling policy that no regulatory scheme out of Washington , except in
regard to sports betting, has been able to repair or surmount. Weigh in the near-total absence of any
It’s interesting and telling how the
political capital to be gained with that to be lost from appearing to endorse Internet
gambling as a matter of national policy, which is what regulation implies, and Mr. King’s bill is not expected to fare any
better. “I don’t see anything happening,” said Nevada’s Harry Reid, who heads the slender Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate and has all but given up on
the possibility that either his chamber or the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives will get behind the poker-only legislation he favors, let alone a bill like King’s that legalizes casino games as well. One
U.S.-based reporter in the poker blogosphere went further, pronouncing the bill, which has attracted no co-sponsors, “100% DOA” (“Dead on Arrival”). It’s reported that for the sake of a poker
bill aimed at salvaging a nationwide player pool for his Las Vegas casino constituency
Reid is trying to mend fences with the Republican opposition. But he knows the
votes don’t exist and has said as much. A poker-only bill his staff had crafted last year in partnership with GOP Senator Jon Kyl, who has since retired, was bungled over
election politics. Not that it had any chance, given language in it that sought to lock up regulatory primacy for Nevada and freeze out the lotteries, and it never made it to the Senate chambers.
That’s key to dampen Asian power competition
Miller 14 Scott Miller, Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, Paul Nadeau, program manager and research associate with the Scholl Chair at
CSIS, 1/31/14, TPP Is More than a Trade Agreement, csis.org/publication/tpp-more-trade-agreement
The White House needs TPA because the TPP is the “pivot to Asia.” The military realignment is
important, but the repositioning is mostly relative, driven by drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pivot is a
political and economic realignment that aims to improve cooperation and integration
among the United States and East Asia. Then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton said this explicitly in her Foreign Policy article,
“America’s Pacific Century,” when she wrote “[O]pen markets in Asia provide the United States with
unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology.
Our economic recovery at home will depend on exports and the ability of American firms to tap
into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia.” Military presence was only one out of the
six courses of action that Secretary Clinton used to define the Asia Pivot, while the TPP is arguably the key ingredient
of three (deepening America's relationships with rising powers, including China; engaging with
regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment). If solving the financial crisis and passing health care
reform were President Obama’s key domestic policy victories, then the Asia Pivot is primed to be the area where he beneficially changes the
course of U.S. foreign policy (the discussions with Iran are still too nascent to determine how far reaching they will become).
are tensions among Asia’s large powers , and the United States is likely the single entity
that can influence the situation. The United States and Asia need each other and TPP is the
vehicle that can functionally, economically, and politically help bind them together. The
Members of Congress and staff that have drafted the TPA bill have put admirable effort into legislation. Trade
negotiators working on TPP have been equally tireless. But TPP, and Asia, cannot wait forever. Many in
Asia are already concerned that the Pivot was only superficial and that United States is already moving on. If TPA and TPP remain
framed as a trade issue, with all of the political baggage that comes with that, the Administration risks
putting TPP on ice for 2014.
Alternatively, the Administration can influence perceptions by framing the TPP as a strategic
goal that will be the cornerstone of the Asia Pivot. This would reassure U.S. partners in
Asia and answer domestic critics who argue that the Pivot lacks substance. Moreover, it would give the President an
Today, there
achievable goal in advance of his April trip to Asia.
Nuclear war
*most probable
Campbell 8 (Kurt M, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Dr. Campbell served in several
capacities in government, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and the Pacific, Director on theNational
Security Council Staff, previously the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of the Center for a New American
Security (CNAS), served as Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Washington
Quarterly, and was the founder and Principal of StratAsia, a strategic advisory company focused on Asia, rior to co-founding
CNAS, he served as Senior Vice President, Director of the International Security Program, and the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in
National Security Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, doctorate in International Relation Theory from
Oxford, former associate professor of public policy and international relations at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and
Assistant Director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, member of Council on Foreign
Relations and International Institute for Strategic Studies, “The Power of Balance: America in iAsia” June 2008,
http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CampbellPatelSingh_iAsia_June08.pdf)
Asian investment is also at record levels. Asian countries lead the world with unprecedented infrastructure projects. With over $3 trillion in
foreign currency reserves, Asian nations and businesses are starting to shape global economic activity. Indian firms are purchasing industrial
giants such as Arcelor Steel, as well as iconic brands of its once-colonial ruler, such as Jaguar and Range Rover. China’s Lenovo bought IBM’s
personal computer We call the transformations across the Asia-Pacific the emergence of “iAsia” to reflect the adoption by countries across Asia
of fundamentally new strategic approaches to their neighbors and the world. Asian
nations are pursuing their interests
with real power in a period of both tremendous potential and great uncertainty. iAsia is: Integrating:
iAsia includes increasing economic interdependence and a flowering of multinational forums to deal with trade, cultural exchange, and, to some
degree, security. Innovating: iAsia boasts the world’s most successful manufacturing and technology sectors and could start taking the lead in
everything from finance to nanotech to green tech. Investing: Asian nations are developing infrastructure and human capital at unprecedented
rates. But the
continent remains plagued by: Insecurity: Great-power rivalry is alive in Asia.
Massive military investments along with historic suspicions and contemporary territorial
and other conflicts make war in Asia plausible. Instability: From environmental degradation to
violent extremism to trafficking in drugs, people, and weapons, Asian nations have much to
worry about. Inequality: Within nations and between them, inequality in Asia is more stark than anywhere
else in the world. Impoverished minorities in countries like India and China, and the gap in
governance and capacity within countries, whether as backward as Burma or as advanced as Singapore, present
unique challenges. A traditional approach to Asia will not suffice if the United States is to both protect American interests and help
iAsia realize its potential and avoid pitfalls. business and the Chinese government, along with other Asian financial players, injected billions in
capital to help steady U.S. investment banks such as Merrill Lynch as the American subprime mortgage collapse unfolded. Chinese investment
funds regional industrialization, which in turn creates new markets for global products. Asia now accounts for over 40 percent of global
consumption of steel 4 and China is consuming almost half of world’s available concrete. 5 Natural resources from soy to copper to oil are being
used by China and India at astonishing rates, driving up commodity prices and setting off alarm bells in Washington and other Western capitals.
Yet Asia
is not a theater at peace. On average, between 15 and 50 people die every day from causes
tied to conflict, and suspicions rooted in rivalry and nationalism run deep. The continent
harbors every traditional and non-traditional challenge of our age: it is a cauldron of
religious and ethnic tension; a source of terror and extremism; an accelerating driver of the
insatiable global appetite for energy; the place where the most people will suffer the
adverse effects of global climate change; the primary source of nuclear proliferation; and
the most likely theater on Earth for a major conventional confrontation and even a nuclear
conflict. Coexisting with the optimism of iAsia are the ingredients for internal strife, non-traditional threats like
terrorism, and traditional interstate conflict, which are all magnified by the risk of
miscalculation or poor decision-making .
Speed
The 1AC is a politics of speed cosmopolitanism – reducing human inquiry and
interaction into a plug-and-play matrix of prediction and technicity.
Hunsinger 13 - *Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. He is an Assistant
Professor in Communication Studies (Jeremy, 10-1-13, Against Speed Cosmopolitanism towards the
slow university, http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/10_1/hunsinger10_1.html) NAR
Speed cosmopolitanism globalizes the transformative accelerations of capitalism as a
normative ideology. It claims that we should be fast, move fast, decide fast, and if anything we
should do them faster as exemplified by global business literatures(Jennings & Haughton, 2002; Gates, 1999;
Gleick, 2000). Speed cosmopolitanism highlights a generalized strategic vision of how to take advantage of other people being slower and thus
implies we should always be quicker. As it globalizes, speed
cosmopolitanism transforms global value systems,
reconfiguring those systems in relation to speed and acceleration culture. As an assemblage
of our social imaginations; speed cosmopolitanism entails the alienation of elements of our
subjectivity through the reimagining and resubjectifying of elements of ourselves withing
the context of the necessities of relative acceleration and speed. Being quicker, as the ideology demands, can
be and frequently is a strategic disadvantage in our lives as consumers and our lives as learners due to the limiting frameworks in which we exist.
These limits constrain our ability to be quick in a strategic manner because they limit what we can know before we act. To act strategically in our
best interests, we already must know what is best or at least we need to know the heuristics of discovering the optimal bestness within the
framesworks of speed cosmopolitanism. If we don't have those heuristics or the knowledge to operate without them, we must find ways to
construct or constrain our environments to provide us with the strategic advantage. However, speed
ablaits our efforts, and
frequently it is not possible to reconstruct the environment to our advantage when moving
at speed. Without the ability to change the environment or our situatedness in relation to our strategic speed, we are left with the only thing
left to change, ourselves. This re-construction of our subjectivity first imagines, then re/creates human
beings as strategic fast-moving, machinic, individualities that must operationalize within
themselves a strategic daemon optimized for our own capacities at performing decisions
based on limited and imperfect information, we become calculating machines in ourselves
and could be best thought of less as humans in that light, then as information processors
like computers(Beck-Gernsheim & Beck, 2002; Guattari, 1995; Guattari, 1996). This is the model of homo
economicus in speed cosmopolitanism, we become the creators and operators of robots
inside of ourselves that manage the optimizations that the accelerating world requires. These
operationalized robots function as our primary adaptation to speed cosmopolitanism and they govern our everyday lives in those contexts. This
makes our bodies into the defacto zombies of hypercapitalism, in which our subjectivities
are primarily robotized responses to stimuli and ensconced within our streams of
informational stimuli. We seldom find time to escape into any critical or reflective mode of thought that would actually allow us to
transform our lives toward actual creative thought leading to innovations. That escape would be resisted socially as it would make the whole
system remarkably inefficient at precisely what the system is supposed to be becoming efficient. In the case of universities, those efficiencies
would be the operationalizations surrounding the markets of information and knowledge being constructed as their replacement in
neoliberalism(Olssen & Peters, 2005). Speed
cosmopolitanism is a form of hypercapitalism which could
be thought of as one form of trans-temporal neoliberalism(Graham, 2001; Pedersen & Nielsen, 2013; Reid,
1978). As neoliberalism, it attempts to formalize markets where none exist by transforming
systems, processes and/or thoughts into commodities . This neoliberalism assumes these
markets are just systems of exchange for mutual profit, and all goods are about profit.
(Habermas, 2000) These markets of thought and process like all markets center on questions of
information and the lack of perfect information. Thus in neoliberalism we construct a system of
informationally biased 'free' trading within those markets which given the imperfections of
information is anything but free and likely anything but just. This lack of freedom is
comparably exploited by those with more information, who are theoretically more free. But
in this hypercapitalist environment, these 'free' traders need to act before their private
information propagates to others thus becoming public information. The need for speed in
neoliberal environments created the hypercapitalist tendency that is the trans-temporality
of neoliberalism and thus the promotion of the imaginary over the reality in our market
environments(Graham, 2001; Massumi, 2005). While the imaginations are important to consider, the central operation of the re/creation
of realities through those market operationalizations in speed cosmopolitanism plays within the both the technesis and technics of
hypercapitalism, from
the computers and their programmable systems trading shares faster than
humanly capable, to prediction markets predicting future actions, and the statistical systems that support
all the technics of hypercapitalism within their normal and non-normal frameworks. These technics/techneses operate both historically and in the
future across our normal experiences of time, creating the trans-temporal space of activity through which our markets of knowledge will operate.
We can already see this with the subtle editing of systems like wikipedia by certain groups use those technics to alter our understandings ever so
slightly, while other groups create a plurality of competing sources of knowledges, each with their own biases. These movements toward the past
and its projection to future systems are policy decisions by groups and individuals that then are read by the computational engines aiming at
providing accurate models. Hypercapitalism's trans-temporality operates through the systems, organizations, processes and thoughts that
neoliberalism is transforming into markets through our own actions(Feldman & Feldman, 2006).
The impact is a politics of enframing which destroys the Earth through nuclear and
environmental collapse by relying on increasingly alienated pseudo-sollutions.
Berger 9 - Clinical psychologist and a former assistant professor in the Department of
Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Louisville School of Medicine. (Louis
S., Averting Global Extinction: Our Irrational Society as Therapy Patient Hardcover –
June 11, 2009, Jason Aronson, Inc. 0765706520, p. x-xiii) NAR
The hallmark of Western civilization is bifurcation, the setting up of strongly disjunctive dualities
and polarities everywhere. We take for granted compartmentalizations and dichotomies such as mind-matter, living-inanimate,
subject predicate, substance-attribute, science-art, theory-practice, analysis-synthesis, inner-outer, past-present-future, us-them, and so forth. It is
often held that these and the many similar walling-off compartmentalizations are the legacy of the Cartesian mindbody dualism that ushered in
the era of modern science, but Martin Heidegger, a major philosopher who pondered such matters deeply, tells us that this is not so. In his view,
while the now pervasive and dominant mind-set that sees and constructs alienating compartmentalizations everywhere did receive a
major boost with the rise of modern science, actually this state of mind began in ancient Greece and has ever since been deployed with increasing
intensity in the Western world. Now it permeates everything. Heidegger calls it variously "enframing" ( Gestell),
apophantic thought, or technological or rational-representational calculative thinking: As the mind-set that underlies the rise of technology and
that permeates our daily habits of speech and thought, enframing is Heidegger's term for a way of objectifying
our world and
our experience ... a way of revealing. 1It is formalized thinking-roughly, mathematized and mathematizing
thinking, logicist, a specific way of perceiving, structuring, and conceptualizing both "inner" and "outer" entities, events, processes, phenomena.2
This perspective objectifies, reduces, and quantifies anything and everything. In its modern garb, it
privileges the domain of primary qualities (mass, movement, location, energy, etc.), dismissively banishing the unquantifiable remainders into
limbo, deriding them as subjective epiphenomena or linguistic aberrations. It is the mind-set that ultimately leads to what the philosopher Thomas
Nagel famously calls "the view from nowhere." Heidegger emphasizes that enframing
must not be confused with
technology; that is but rational-calculative thinking's most recent manifestation- another symptom, if you like- of the millennia-old
enframing mind-set. He also emphasizes that taken by itself, there is nothing wrong with technological thinking; it becomes
highly toxic only when it is misapplied, when it invades domains where it does not belong. 3 What does all this Western
civilization's proclivity for rational- calculative thinking have to do with this book? Everything. I see technological thinking as
a particularly virulent factor in our inability to relinquish the current path toward
wholesale global destruction . Enframing's hubris banishes the human element; then,
technological-scientific solutions come to be seen as the only legitimate kind, seemingly optimal.
Rational-calculative thinking obscures other types of options, both by constricting the range
of possibilities that one can see or is willing to consider, and by making the search for other,
radically different kinds of approaches seem superfluous (surely, the needed solutions are already available). The
upshot is that society comes to rely almost exclusively on alienated, alienating, mechanistic pseudosolutions-technological answers such as the creation of missile shields, the turning of decisions to launch missiles over to computer
software, improving the reliability of nuclear weapomy, developing alternative energy sources,
4 and so on; and formalistic, dehumanized strategies, such as making treaties , passing laws , or
imposing economic sanctions (examples of why technological, rational-calculative thinking is not the same as technology). In short,
enframing in this context leads readily to ill-advised remedial strategies predicated on a
depersonalized, lifeless, mechanistic, instrumental view of the world. Not only are these kinds of
programs unlikely to work in the long run, as history and common sense tell us,5 but some are patently insane. The most telling example is the
development of our nuclear arsenal after J. Hobert Oppenheimer had been dismissed from government service, largely as the result of the
machinations of his main enemies, the physicist Edward Teller, and the then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Lewis Strauss.
Oppenheimer had been the most influential and vocal advocate for a limited nuclear arsenal and opponent of developing a hydrogen bomb. When
he was tried and publicly discredited in congressional hearings, we had about 500 atomic bombs-more than enough to destroy the entire globe.
His opponents said that obviously we needed more, and once Oppenheimer was out of the way, not only did we go on to develop the order-ofmagnitude more powerful hydrogen bomb, but \Ve also increased the numbers our nuclear weapons arsenal to 70,000.6 (The Hussians did the
same.) If that is not an insane strategy, I don't know what is. That is one aspect of enframing-its impact on planning and remedial acts.
A
closely related effect is the hostility it engenders toward humanistically-grounded
approaches, and that is probably the phenomenon that most directly motivated writing this book. I began in the early 1960s to occasionally
make small attempts over the years to interest any planners who were addressing global clangers, especially the nuclear threat, in expanding their
standard approaches by injecting psychodynamic thinking into their approaches. My first attempts, made long before I began formal studies in
psychology, were made in 1962 during several Boston meetings of the nuclear physicist Leo Szilard's "Council for Abolishing vVar," later
renamed the "Council for a Livable World." At those meetings, my
suggestions that psychological factors ought to
be incorporated into the approaches the organization was developing and recommending
were disdainfully dismissed out of hand: It is naive to think that psychological factors and
measures could he consequential in the Council's endeavors; psychologists and
psychotherapists need to remain in their bailiwick- which, incidentally, is a view still shared by many of my
colleagues. The chapters that follow are intended to negate this compartmentalization, a splitting that sustains depersonalized and depersonalizing
approaches to the problems, and to propose a way to make psychodynamic thought and practice relevant to the pressing and frightening global
dangers we are facing (or not facing). An aside: a second
kind of objection voiced in the Council meetings was
that incorporating psychological considerations or approaches would be much too slow.
The problems were too pressing; time was too short; immediately effective measures were
called for . Well, here we are, almost fifty years later, and we are no better off; we are still in mortal
danger, still relying on the strategy of mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.), surely as psychotic a policy as its acronym implies. We
remain at the stage where the best advice we can off er to school children still is that were a
nuclear attack imminent, they should duck under their desks. So much for lacking the time
to explore unconventional approaches (and so much for technological thinking).
Our advocacy: vote negative to demand for more time– our pedagogy reorients us
toward a slow university which is the only way to resolve the 1AC’s harms.
Hunsinger 13 - *Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. He is an Assistant
Professor in Communication Studies (Jeremy, 10-1-13, Against Speed Cosmopolitanism towards the
slow university, http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/10_1/hunsinger10_1.html) NAR
If we think, as professors, that the modern university is under attack by the neoliberal,
hypercapitalist knowledge-oriented robber barons, then as a class we are self-deceiving.
While this narrative gives us an externality to resist which is not based in the complicities of ourselves within the universities, it is also not
revelatory of the actual conditions of our complicity in our own condition. It is not only the outside of the university bringing about this
transformation, but it us, within the university that enables the transformation. What we have is the faculties, the central bodies of the university
system, becoming disempowered through their own self constructed interests of wanting less work in the face of the mounting workload of the
bureaucratic environments being imposed upon by the system of governance as founded in legislative and juridical arenas.(Adorno, 2001;
Foucault, 2008) This ballooning bureaucratic workload needs balanced by the professoriate against their related goals of service, teaching, and
research. In the face of the ever increasing workload, the ideology of speed cosmopolitanism requires speedy resolution of the bureaucratic
requests originating both from within and outside of the university. The ideology of speed requires the requests to be removed from the arena of
faculty decision with its implicit slowness of consideration and moved into the new efficient academic bureaucracy. By necessity the bureaucracy
grows exponentially in relation to the increasing workload, increasing budgets, and in the end requiring even more faculty oversight, which
faculty no longer have time to provide(Essaji & Horton, 2010; Vest, 2007). The tension between the growth of university bureaucracy and the
increasing workload of faculty is the essential driver of the transition toward the death of the university in its contemporary and nostalgic forms.
In its place will be born, if the managerial class continues to flourish, a new series of service oriented knowledge production centers where a
former member of a university faculty will now be a for contract service provider at either: a learning oriented service center, which provides
basic credentializaton of the population as its teaching core; a research oriented service center which provides research on demand for anyone that
will pay; or a community oriented service center which will apply the knowledge of highly specialized services workers to specific problems for
people who can pay. All of this will be managed by a class of managers far removed from the experiences of the service provider, but work to
ensure the quality of the programs through systemically abstracted evaluative metrics. This is one predictive story of how the hypercapitalist
university becomes the hyperbureaucratic university, which in terms eventually becomes nothing more than a hyperbureaucratic service provider.
The university is always and has always been a place of struggle between governance and knowledge production. The current struggle centers on
the implications of the required workloads of governance and knowledge production. Faculties are frequently engaged in everything other than
confronting their own governance and thus become complicit in schemes to make their own lives and systems of knowledge production more
efficient, more bureaucratized, and more capitalized(Rutherford, 2005; Nowotny, Scott, & Gibbons, 2001; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). The
mode of resistance is not to revolutionize the university, but contrarily to deny the acceleration culture and the ideology of speed
cosmopolitanism driving the revolution. Slow Science and the Slow university Virtually
all slow movements are
resistances to speeded-up qualities of life (Carp, 2012) 104 Acceleration culture and the ideology of speed
cosmopolitanism are not new in academia nor is it new in the North American research context. Bertrand Russell was
confronted with what he perceived as the culture of "quick results" at Harvard University,
which is why he decided not to join that university. But if Russell liked, even admired, the students, he had little
good to say about the faculty, which persisted in trying to recruit him. “Dull,” “tiresome,” “complacent” people, forced to spend themselves in
endless teaching and to produce “quick results,” they were deprived of the “patient solitary meditation...that go[es] to producing anything of
value.” They lacked, he said, “the atmosphere of meditation and absent-mindedness that one associates with thought—they all seem more alert
and businesslike and punctual than one expects very good people to be.” Above all, it was the “blind instinctive devotion to ideals dimly seen”
that Russell missed, “regardless of whether they are useful or appreciated by others.”(Bailyn, 1991) What Russell was indicating was the virtual
blindness toward knowledge caused by the culture of quick results and the related acceleration culture around academic knowledge production.
That Bertrand Russell crossed the Atlantic to be confronted with such problematic circumstances is not surprising, because by then the systems of
knowledge production were cosmopolitan. Russell did not end his critique of that well regarded institution of higher learning. Baylin continues
the description of what Russell thought of the President of the university thusly: Lowell was determined, Russell wrote, “to get his money’s worth
out of [the faculty] and throw them on the scrap heap when they are used up.” Under Lowell’s administration, he wrote, “this place is Hell.” The
only remedy for Lowell’s “hard slave-driving efficiency,” his “loathsome” regime, Russell believed, was a reversal of precisely those
developments of the early eighteenth century that had come to distinguish Harvard and other American colleges and universities from the pattern
University
administrations are attempting to maximize profits from faculty labors as part of the need
to be fact, the need to compete, the need to participate in the marketplace of higher
education and research. The university and its faculty do not have to compete, we do not
need to maximize profits, and we do not need to perpetually compare ourselves to others in
order to justify our existence. What we need to do in order to justify our existence is to
produce communities that generate knowledge. Knowledge needs time, science needs time
and to that end some scientists have put forth a manifesto which is emblematic of some of
the problems faced by researchers these days: THE SLOW SCIENCE MANIFESTO We are scientists. We don’t
of the ancient colleges he knew so well.(Bailyn, 1991) We can see the same responses amongst faculty today.
blog. We don’t twitter. We take our time. Don’t get us wrong—we do say yes to the accelerated science of the early 21st century. We say yes to
the constant flow of peer-review journal publications and their impact; we say yes to science blogs and media & PR necessities; we say yes to
increasing specialization and diversification in all disciplines. We also say yes to research feeding back into health care and future prosperity. All
of us are in this game, too. However, we maintain that this cannot be all. Science needs time to think. Science needs time to read, and time to fail.
Science does not always know what it might be at right now. Science develops unsteadi-ly, with jerky moves and un-predict-able leaps forward—
at the same time, however, it creeps about on a very slow time scale, for which there must be room and to which justice must be done. Slow
science was pretty much the only science conceivable for hundreds of years; today, we argue, it deserves revival and needs protection. Society
should give scientists the time they need, but more importantly, scientists must take their time. We do need time to think. We do need time to
digest. We do need time to mis-understand each other, especially when fostering lost dialogue between humanities and natural sciences. We
cannot continuously tell you what our science means; what it will be good for; because we simply don’t know yet. Science needs time. —Bear
with us, while we think. (http://slow-science.org/) Slowness
works for knowledge, slowness works for
science(Pels, 2003). It does not have to be super-slowness, but it has to be the slowness of
knowledge and science that actually is prudent for the world in which we live, that world's
futures. We need time to read, time to think, time to reflect and time to come to know. We
need time to make knowledge work on the human scale and our ecological scales. If knowledge
takes time to create and time to process on a human scale, why are we pushing both faculty and students to do more with less? Why are we
forcing our students to not be able to learn in our classes by forcing them to learn according to schedules which do not actually map onto their
possible timeframes for coming to know? It is because we are caught in a series of ideologically biased traps about time and capital. These traps
all assume knowledge is fast, but only people who can actually move fast, strategically are those that actually taken the time to come to their
knowledge, or those that deny the benefit of knowledge, though the latter could hardly be called strategic. The ideologies of speed
cosmopolitanism and acceleration culture in knowledge production as such should be thought of as a deceit driven by ignorance of the system of
knowledge production. Beyond being deceipt, these ideologies also are creating unreal and impossible conditions for the creation of that
knowledge for all learners. The
university is not traditionally a place of teaching, it is a place of
learning; a place that houses our professional learners which are called professors. This
focus on learning is key differentiation that defines the nature of the community of learning
that is the university. Teaching, if it happens at a university, is only in service of learning.
Our learning goes beyond the mere gaining of knowledge and then representing it. Our learning is about learning to construct new knowledges.
We base much of this learning to construct new knowledges by learning models of old knowledge's constructions. The intimate knowledge of our
processes of knowledge construction allows us to trust what we know. For unless we actually know the processes of knowledge production, we
cannot really know the knowledge is legitimate, nor can we really understand the knowledge at all. Without that learning, we can only trust the
authority which is presenting us with claims to knowledge, which may or may not be someone who actually is an authority on the subject. This
focus on authority undermines our professors, who do not traditionally rely on the mediated authority structures that our students are presented on
television, nor necessarily the authority structures of the traditional elementary and secondary schools. Similarly the novice learners or students
students need to be able to move beyond those models of authority and into the systems and processes of knowledges focussed on enabling them
develop the capacity to recognize the legitimation of knowledge which is found in the practices of knowledge. Our students need time; they need
to slow down, to focus on their work, and to practice their knowledge processes. They do not need a prepackaged informational system that may
not be anything more than they can read on the internet such as those in moocs. Our students need time, because science takes time and all modes
of research take time. Time is consistently poached from the researching and learning in order for the time to be placed in administrative tasks or
placed in teaching tasks. As professional learners, professors know knowledge takes time, research takes time, and students need time to learn
those processes. Since
knowledge and learning are slow and require time, perhaps we need to
promote the idea of a slow university. One conception of a slow university arises in
conjunction with the slow food movement, that movement attempts to resist the
acceleration of food culture into a homogeneous normality of blandness in order to instead
celebrate the unique food traditions, flavours, and regional identities that arise from living
local, cooking slow, and eating slow. Their university is the University of Gastronomic
Science, which much like the food it supports, supports slow learning and depth of learning
over the speed of production of the neoliberal institutions which would prefer to graduate
students in scheduled fashion. However, the slow food movement is not the only model of a slow university, Warsaw also has
its slow university, their motto as an autonomous, nomadic university is, "Freedom through slowness". Speed and acceleration will inevitably
cause us to be trapped in a race to the finish where we do not determine the terms of the race or the finish, and thus we must always lose.
Knowledge production should not be seen to be a race to be won or lost as it is in the speed
cosmopolitanism of the hypercapitalist/hyperbureaucratized university, it should be about
the generation of knowledge in communities that require it. This situation requires an education system that
generates and sustains the knowledge production system. This is also one of the real reasons why universities are also institutions that teach
students. This education system should also be predicated on admitting that knowledge production and acquisition is slow, is fluxing, and entirely
dependent on trans-temporalities of the knowledge system. Education
whether fast or slow is not a game of
achievements or check-boxes; it is about life improvement and the opening of possible
trajectories for that life(Illich, 1971). Education is also about joining a community of knowledge that is dedicated to learning about
a topic. Slow education as described as part of a sustainability movement in Japan is described in terms of developing a good life that is
embedded in its community. SLOW EDUCATION: We pay less attention to academic achievement, and create a society in which people can
enjoy arts, hobbies, and sports throughout our lifetimes, and where all generations can communicate well with each other.(2003) The
ability to communicate knowledge across communities is part of the legitimizing system of
knowledge and the only solution to the problem of legitimation of knowledge in the slow
university. (Habermas, 1975; Lyotard, 1984; Hunsinger, 2005) The capacity to enjoy knowledge and to love it is also part of the good life.
That enjoyment is also necessary for the good of our communities and for us to have good lives together. By slowing education down and
allowing students the freedom to find what they love to learn and what they will learn to love, we can transform the slow university through slow
education, thus transforming the university from a system of individualized instruction based on personal achievements to a system of community
learning based on the development of good communities (of knowledge, of people, of things) and people participating in those communities.
With the communities will arise the new systems of legitmation needed to sustain those
communities and thus to sustain slow education and the slow university. Slowness as Tenant: a
Conclusion The Slow movement connects people to the material conditions of existence in a way that informs and honors their relationship to
their everyday surroundings. The lived experience of the senses, of personal reciprocity and exchange, of cultural diversity and history and sense
of place, of health and well-being is engaged with respect to a particular social, cultural, and ecological context. The Slow movement articulates
the interrelationship among natural resources, the process of making (whether it be music, sense, love, or cheese), and use. (Carp, 2012) 105
Our world does not need needs to be fast. Being fast does not improve our world. It is that
people do not resist the fast. In this paper, I propose that we resist the fast, that we slow
down. By slowing down, I want us to have more time to think, not just think individually,
but to think as a community. Knowledge as I have argued in this paper is slow, and its
central processual tenant is its slowness. If we run into fast knowledge or the demand for
speed within knowledge production, we should slow down. we should go slow, be
skeptical,and consider why someone wants something fast and think about what the
implications of speed for that knowledge will be for everyone. We should not transform our
subjectivities toward knowledge and its legitimation in relation to speed cosmopolitanism.
We need to de-daemonize/de-mechanize our subjectivities in relation to knowledge systems.
The implications of speed cosmopolitanism and its resistance, as I have argued, are going to
be far broader than we can individually think. If we stop and take the time to discuss the
knowledge, to actually generate the knowledge and its reflexive positions in our
communities, we stand a chance to develop a system of knowledge production that can
actually resist the nihilism of acceleration; that will recognize and promote our values. This
type of system is possible both for the internet and the university.
Anthro
The 1AC’s presentation of a better future continues modernity’s project of genocide
and ecological collapse through speciest chauvinism. The alternative is to endorse
the status quo as a thought experiment for global suicide.
Kochi & Ordan 8 – *Professor @ University of Sussex in Law, **Linguistic Specialist
(Tarik, Noam, An Argument for the Global Suicide of Humanity, Borderlands, Volume 7, Number 3,
2008, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf) NAR
Along with his call for us to go forward and colonise other planets, Hawking does list
a number of the human actions
which have made this seem necessary. [1] What is at issue, however, is his failure to reflect upon the
relationship between environmental destruction, scientific faith in the powers of technology and the attitude of
speciesism. That is, it must be asked whether population movement really is the answer. After all,
Hawking’s suggestion to colonise other planets does little to address the central problem of human action which has destroyed, and
continues to destroy, our habitat on the earth. While the notion of cosmic colonisation places faith in the saviour of humanity by
technology as a solution, it lacks a crucial moment of reflection upon the manner in which human action and human technology has been and
colonisation of other planets would in no way solve the
problem of environmental destruction ; rather, it would merely introduce this problem into a new habitat. The destruction
of one planetary habitat is enough – we should not naively endorse the future destruction of others .
Hawking’s approach to environmental catastrophe is an example of a certain modern faith in technological and social progress.
continues to be profoundly destructive. Indeed, the
One version of such an approach goes as follows: As our knowledge of the world and ourselves increases humans are able to create forms of
technology and social organisation that act upon the world and change it for our benefit. However, just as there are many theories of ‘progress’
[2] there are also many modes of reflection upon the role of human action and its relationship to negative or destructive consequences. The
version of progress enunciated in Hawking’s story of cosmic colonisation presents a view whereby
the solution to the
negative consequences of technological action is to create new forms of technology, new forms of action.
New action and innovation solve the dilemmas and consequences of previous action. Indeed, the very act of moving away, or rather evacuating,
an ecologically devastated Earth is an example at hand. Such an approach involves a moment of
reflection – previous errors and consequences are examined and taken into account and efforts are made to make things better. The
idea of a better future informs reflection, technological innovation and action. However, is the form of reflection
offered by Hawking broad or critical enough? Does his mode of reflection pay enough attention to the
irredeemable moments of destruction , harm, pain and suffering inflicted historically by
human action upon the non-human world ? There are, after all, a variety of negative consequences of human
action, moments of destruction, moments of suffering, which may not be redeemable or ever made
better. Conversely there are a number of conceptions of the good in which humans do not take centre stage at the expense of others. What we
try to do in this paper is to draw out some of the consequences of reflecting more broadly upon the negative costs of human activity in the context
of environmental catastrophe. This involves re-thinking a general idea of progress through the historical and conceptual lenses of speciesism,
colonialism, survival and complicity. Our proposed conclusion is that
the only appropriate moral response to a
history of human destructive action is to give up our claims to biological supremacy and to
sacrifice our form of life so as to give an eternal gift to others. From the outset it is important to make clear
that the argument for the global suicide of humanity is presented as a thought experiment . The
purpose of such a proposal in response to Hawking is to help show how a certain conception of modernity, of which his approach is
representative, is problematic. Taking
seriously the idea of global suicide is one way of throwing into
question an ideology or dominant discourse of modernist-humanist action. [3] By imagining
an alternative to the existing state of affairs, absurd as it may seem to some readers by its nihilistic and
radical ‘solution’, we wish to open up a ground for a critical discussion of modernity and
its negative impacts on both human and non-human animals, as well as on the environment. [4] In this respect , by giving
voice to the idea of a human-free world, we attempt to draw attention to some of the
asymmetries of environmental reality and to give cause to question why attempts to build
bridges from the human to the non-human have, so far, been unavailing.
Markets
Nano impossible – just science fiction
Shachtman 3 (Noah, Wired News, “Support for Nanobots Shrinking”, 6-17,
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59268,00.html)
That is if the little buggers ever can be built. A lot of scientists aren't so sure.
"(Nanorobotics) isn't a serious issue on the science side. It's really science fiction ," Stephen
Quake, a California Institute of Technology physicist, said. Critics contend that the constant motion of atoms
and molecules makes molecular machines nearly impossible to construct. Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle -- the theory that the more you know about a subatomic particle's position, the less you
know about its momentum, and vice versa -- also argues against nanobots. How can you manipulate
atoms if their component pieces are so hard to find? The most potent attack came from Richard Smalley,
Rice University's Nobel laureate in chemistry. In 1999, Smalley was extolling the benefits of a world where "we
learn to build things at the ultimate level of control, one atom at a time." By 2001, he said, such control
wouldn't really be possible. The "fingers" we'd need to handle such a delicate task are too
big, Smalley asserted in a Scientific American article (PDF).
No impact future tech – their ev is just speculative and has no studies to back it up.
Impact can also go the other way – no reason future tech doesn’t solve the impact.
Social media already solves better than markets.
Huberman & Asur 10 - *Social Computing Lab HP Labs Palo Alto, California,
**Social Computing Lab HP Labs Palo Alto, California (Bernardo, Sitaram,
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.5699v1.pdf, March 29th 2010) NAR
Social media has exploded as a category of online discourse where people create content,
share it, bookmark it and network at a prodigious rate. Examples include Facebook, MySpace,
Digg, Twitter and JISC listservs on the academic side. Because of its ease of use, speed and reach, social
media is fast changing the public discourse in society and setting trends and agendas in
topics that range from the environment and politics to technology and the entertainment industry. Since
social media can also be construed as a form of collective wisdom, we decided to investigate
its power at predicting real-world outcomes. Surprisingly, we discovered that the chatter of a
community can indeed be used to make quantitative predictions that outperform those of
artificial markets . These information markets generally involve the trading of statecontingent securities, and if large enough and properly designed, they are usually more accurate than other
techniques for extracting diffuse information, such as surveys and opinions polls. Specifically, the
prices in these markets have been shown to have strong correlations with observed outcome frequencies, and thus are good indicators of future
outcomes [4], [5]. In
the case of social media, the enormity and high variance of the information
that propagates through large user communities presents an interesting opportunity for
harnessing that data into a form that allows for specific predictions about particular
outcomes, without having to institute market mechanisms. One can also build models to
aggregate the opinions of the collective population and gain useful insights into their
behavior, while predicting future trends. Moreover, gathering information on how people converse regarding particular
products can be helpful when designing marketing and advertising campaigns [1], [3]. This paper reports on such a study. Specifically we
consider the task of predicting box-office revenues for movies using the chatter from Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networks in the
Internet. Twitter 1 , a micro-blogging network, has experienced a burst of popularity in recent months leading to a huge user-base, consisting of
several tens of millions of users who actively participate in the creation and propagation of content. We have focused on movies in this study for
two main reasons. • The topic of movies is of considerable interest among the social media user community, characterized both by large number
of users discussing movies, as well as a substantial variance in their opinions. • The real-world outcomes can be easily observed from box-office
revenue for movies. Our goals in this paper are as follows. First, we assess how buzz and attention is created for different movies and how that
changes over time. Movie producers spend a lot of effort and money in publicizing their movies, and have also embraced the Twitter medium for
this purpose. We then focus on the mechanism of viral marketing and pre-release hype on Twitter, and the role that attention plays in forecasting
real-world boxoffice performance. Our hypothesis is that movies that are well talked about will be well-watched. Next, we study how sentiments
are created, how positive and negative opinions propagate and how they influence people. For a bad movie, the initial reviews might be enough to
discourage others from watching it, while on the other hand, it is possible for interest to be generated by positive reviews and opinions over time.
For this purpose, we perform sentiment analysis on the data, using text classifiers to distinguish positively oriented tweets from negative. Our
chief conclusions are as follows: • We show that social
media feeds can be effective indicators of real-world
performance. • We discovered that the rate at which movie tweets are generated can be
used to build a powerful model for predicting movie box-office revenue. Moreover our
predictions are consistently better than those produced by an information market such as
the Hollywood Stock Exchange, the gold standard in the industry [4]. • Our analysis of the sentiment
content in the tweets shows that they can improve box-office revenue predictions based on tweet rates only after the movies are released. This
paper is organized as follows. Next, we survey recent related work. We then provide a short introduction to Twitter and the dataset that we
collected. In Section 5, we study how attention and popularity are created and how they evolve. We then discuss our study on using tweets from
Twitter for predicting movie performance. In Section 6, we present our analysis on sentiments and their effects. We conclude in Section 7. We
describe our prediction model in a general context in the Appendix [
marked on page 2, continues
at conclusion] In this article, we have shown how social media can be utilized to forecast
future outcomes. Specifically, using the rate of chatter from almost 3 million tweets from the
popular site Twitter, we constructed a linear regression model for predicting box-office
revenues of movies in advance of their release. We then showed that the results
outperformed in accuracy those of the Hollywood Stock Exchange and that there is a
strong correlation between the amount of attention a given topic has (in this case a
forthcoming movie) and its ranking in the future. We also analyzed the sentiments present
in tweets and demonstrated their efficacy at improving predictions after a movie has
released.While in this study we focused on the problem of predicting box office revenues of
movies for the sake of having a clear metric of comparison with other methods, this method
can be extended to a large panoply of topics, ranging from the future rating of products to
agenda setting and election outcomes. At a deeper level, this work shows how social media
expresses a collective wisdom which, when properly tapped, can yield an extremely
powerful and accurate indicator of future outcomes
Not enough track record for integrating markets with science - its more likely to
fail.
Thicke 14 - Ph. D. candidate at the University of Toronto's IHPST. His research
concentrates on social epistemology, the use of economics in philosophy of science, and
philosophy of economics. (Mike, January 31st 2014,
http://thebubblechamber.org/2014/01/prediction-markets-for-science-preliminary-reviewand-thoughts/) NAR
Given the apparent potential for prediction markets to provide reliable probability estimates for scientific predictions while also serving as an
efficient funding mechanism for science, why aren’t scientific prediction markets being developed and used? Prediction market advocate Tom
Bell claims, “for no good reason” (Bell 2006, 45). To some extent I agree. A primary reason that prediction markets don’t see wider use is that
they run afoul of U.S. gambling laws. In late 2012 the leading prediction market website, Intrade.com, barred U.S. participants due to legal
pressure from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Mangu-Ward 2013). Intrade is now essentially defunct. Regardless of what you
think about gambling in general, it seems that prediction markets ought not be lumped together with online horse betting or blackjack.
Nevertheless,
I disagree with Bell that there are no good reasons to be wary of implementing
scientific prediction markets. Rather, there are some very good reasons to be cautious of
prediction markets for science and to be suspicious of proposals to create them . I will outline
three. First, it might seem absurd to claim that science can be made more rational by making
it more like the market. The dot-com bubble of the late 90s appears, to all but its most diehard advocates, to obviously
falsify the efficient market hypothesis. The 2008 financial crisis must surely be the nail in
the coffin, and financial markets have been characterized by bubbles and crashes for their
entire existence. Further, behavioural economists have demonstrated numerous widespread and
persistent biases that offer compelling explanations for such market deviations from
rational pricing, and therefore suggest that they are a regular part of markets in general (Shleifer and Vishny 1997). Why should
we expect prediction markets to be immune from these forces? We shouldn’t , and in fact some
experimental prediction markets have demonstrated similar behaviours as financial markets. For instance, Almenberg, Kittlitz, and Pfeiffer
(2009) found that significant mispricing can occur when traders are trading primarily on private information. On the other hand, there are reasons
to expect that prediction markets will perform better than the stock market. Michael Polanyi suggested that science and the market should be
considered as two versions of a class of spontaneously organizing systems, and that in some respects science
might outperform
the market from this perspective (Polanyi 2000). Similarly, the stock market and prediction markets are two versions of a more general
“market”, and it is entirely possible that prediction markets will behave more like theoretical markets than the stock market does. One reason to
expect that they will is that prediction markets have much clearer criteria for success. The “correct” price of a financial security depends on the
long term income that security will generate; and there is no precise definition of “the long term”, except perhaps when a company goes bankrupt.
In judging stock market prices, therefore, economists are forced to use proxy measures: whether prices appear to accord with other theories of
pricing, such as the capital asset pricing model, which are also open to dispute. Indeed, when the efficient market hypothesis appears to disagree
with these other models, efficient market advocates feel free to propose that it is the other models which are incomplete, not the efficient market
hypothesis (Guo 2004). In contrast, prediction markets such as election markets have well defined criteria for success and well defined expiry
dates. Additionally, prediction markets have, for the most part, performed quite well. So there are theoretical and empirical reasons to suspect that
prediction markets will not suffer from the same degree of problems that stock markets do. Nevertheless, it
would be foolish to
adopt such markets too wholeheartedly and to trust their assessments of scientific questions
too completely . Their track record is short and their theoretical differences from financial
markets are suggestive, not conclusive .
Tradesoff with other scientific institutions - the aff contributes to the
neoliberalization of science with devestating consequences.
Thicke 14 - Ph. D. candidate at the University of Toronto's IHPST. His research
concentrates on social epistemology, the use of economics in philosophy of science, and
philosophy of economics. (Mike, January 31st 2014,
http://thebubblechamber.org/2014/01/prediction-markets-for-science-preliminary-reviewand-thoughts/) NAR
The second good reason to be cautious of prediction markets is that adopting them into the
practice of science has the potential to harm other scientific institutions. Its flaws aside, I can think of
nobody who would claim that science has been anything other than tremendously successful at expanding human knowledge over the last few
hundred years. We
should be very cautious of any changes to science that have the potential to
threaten its continued success. The institution most immediately threatened by prediction markets is the funding of research by
public granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). Philip Mirowski sees prediction markets as just
another facet of the neoliberalization of science (Mirowski 2011, L39). While prediction markets aren’t necessarily
linked to the other types of privatization Mirowski discusses (and prediction markets only garner passing reference in Science-mart), there are
both significant ideological and significant practical connections. Ideologically, prediction
markets and the privitization
of science share a common faith in the power of markets to coordinate effort better than
any centralized body possibly could. Practically, proposals such as Hanson’s above, where scientists
fund their research by having banks issue “idea futures”, cut out agencies like the NSF from the funding process.
The NSF and similar agencies were an explicit target of the best known free market
advocate of the twentieth century , Milton Friedman: Basic science in the United States prospered prior to large-scale
government research by combining research with teaching in colleges and universities and by soliciting grants from private individuals and
foundations. . . . Given the undisputed success of private financing in the past, the burden of proof that the benefits of government financing
exceed the costs surely rests on those who support such funding. . . I favor
major cuts in NSF grants to all disciplines
as a step toward the abolition of the NSF (Friedman 1981, quoted in Mirowski 2011, L749). Similarly, it seems
reasonable to see proposals for prediction markets to replace the NSF peer review funding
process as a first step to eliminating the NSF, and the public funding of science, entirely . On a more reduced scale, there
is also the risk that areas of science amenable to prediction markets would become favoured over
those that aren’t. So even if scientific prediction markets would, in isolation, improve the
operation of some areas of science, we should balance this against the increased risk that
they will crowd out other means of scientific funding that could have negative consequences
for science as a public resource.
UIGEA doesn’t collapse prediction markets, but Dodd-Frank and insider trading
regs do---the plan is not key
Adam Ozimek 14, ESI Director of Research and Senior Economist, March 2014, “THE
REGULATION AND VALUE OF PREDICTION MARKETS,”
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/Ozimek_PredictionMarkets_v1.pdf
Despite the 2006 passage of the UIGEA and a general environment of regulatory uncertainty, there was a growing interest in
prediction markets leading up to the 2008 election. As a result of the heightened interest, the CFTC announced it was reviewing the applicability of the
Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) to event contracts and released a request for comments.28 While it did not issue a comprehensive response to the comments, in 2010 the CFTC allowed the operation of two prediction markets for
box-office futures. The commission found that movie revenues constituted “a non-price-based measure of an economic activity, commercial activity or environmental event” that was similar to other commodities for which the CFTC
has approved futures or options contracts (CFTC 2010). The commission’s statement clarified its stance on prediction markets by explicitly arguing that “event contracts” were potentially commodities within the CFTC’s jurisdiction:
The term “event” contract has no meaning under the Act. More than 500 contracts have already been submitted to the Commission that are based on some type of event or activity with economic consequences. The statutory definition
of “commodity” does not suggest that an “event” cannot underlie a futures or options contract. Thus, that a contract is based on an event does not preclude it from being a commodity under section 1(a)(4). (CFTC 2010) The
commission also offered support for the economic value of box-office prediction markets. Until 2000, the CEA required an “economic purpose test,” which specified that a futures or option contract had to have utility as a hedging or
price-basing tool (CFTC 2010). While the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 repealed this requirement, the commission’s statement on box-office futures made clear it believed box-office futures markets passed the
the Dodd-Frank Act modified the CEA to explicitly
define box-office revenues as not a commodity, and thereby effectively banned box-office futures (Anderson 2011). In addition, Dodd-Frank provided explicit rules requiring
the CFTC to prevent the listing or trading of “event contracts” if they are determined to be
“contrary to the public interest,” which is defined as involving 1. activity that is unlawful under any federal or state law, 2. terrorism, 3. assassination, 4. war, 5. gaming, or 6. other
similar activity determined by the Commission, by rule or regulation, to be contrary to the public interest (Stawick 2012). The sixth criterion in particular potentially grants a large
degree of discretion to regulators. What constitutes “contrary to the public interest” and
the CFTC’s general view of prediction markets post–Dodd-Frank can be seen in a 2012
ruling against the North American Derivatives Exchange ( NADEX) political futures market . To determine whether a contract was contrary to the public
economic purpose test and could serve both hedging and price-discovery purposes. The exemption for box-office futures markets was short lived, as
interest, the CFTC argued it should utilize the same “economic purpose test” that was part of the CEA until 2000 and required hedging or pricing utility. In the ruling against NADEX, the CFTC argued that political futures had no
The commission also has discretion to consider other factors in addition to the
“economic purpose test” in determining public interest. In the NADEX ruling, it argued that political prediction markets were against the
public interest because they “can potentially be used in ways that would have an adverse
effect on the integrity of elections, for example by creating monetary incentives to vote for particular candidates even when such a vote may be contrary to the voter’s political views
of such candidates” (Stawick 2012). An additional move to limit prediction markets came in November 2012
when the CFTC sued Intrade for violating the conditions of the 2005 order it had consented to and the terms required of it as an exempt board of trade. Intrade had allowed US customers
hedging or pricing purpose due to “the unpredictability of the specific economic consequences of an election” (Stawick 2012).
to trade prohibited contracts. In particular, the CFTC alleged that Intrade was offering binary options in the following markets: • gold: “February 2011 gold futures to close on or above 1,000 on 30 Dec 2011” • currencies: “euro/US
dollar to close on or above 1.0000 on 30 Dec 2011” • US economic numbers: “United States will go into recession during 2011” • banking: “75 or more US banks to fail during 2011” • war: “United States to conduct overt military
action against North Korea before midnight ET on 31 Dec 2011” (Banar and Slovick 2012) In addition, the CFTC alleged that Intrade failed to warn US customers via website pop-ups that they were not allowed to trade these options,
and it alleged that Intrade was not verifying that US customers were “eligible contract participants” with assets exceeding $5 million to $10 million. The suit asked a federal judge to file an injunction against Intrade and fine it for
violating federal commodity law.29 As a result of the CFTC complaint, Intrade ceased allowing US customers to trade and instructed them to empty their accounts.30 Volume on Intrade collapsed, and the following March, all trading
The modern regulatory history of prediction markets has
generally been a move from uncertainty and legal gray areas to gradually more restrictive
laws and enforcement. The legal space carved out for the Iowa Electronic Markets has proved to be an exception. Traders in private markets face greater
liability under insider trading laws than those in public markets. These laws forbid insiders from trading a company’s securities “on the basis of material, nonpublic information.”
was shut down, with the company citing “financial irregularities.”31
Normally, these laws apply to executives and not to average employees or independent contractors. However, if they participate in private prediction markets that give them material nonpublic information, these low-level employees
or contractors can become “remote temporary insiders” for whom insider trading laws apply. Even if the corporation takes the necessary precautions and sees a minimal chance of insider trading occurring, the added risks can
discourage prediction markets simply because “no corporation would welcome the heavy evidentiary burdens imposed by investigations into illegal trading of its shares” (Bell 2008).
Plan’s not sufficient---absent federal subsidies, prediction markets will stay limited
to entertainment topics
John O. McGinnis 13, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern, 2013,
Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology, p. 73
bad laws alone are not responsible for the paucity of public policy prediction markets.
Even in nations like Ireland where such markets are legal, markets generally have been focused on
entertainment issues such as predicting Oscar winners and horse races of both the equine and electoral kind. Conditional
markets that benefit public policy are relatively few . This development is also not surprising. Simple
markets that concern celebrities and election results are likely to attract broader public
interest.62 A larger stream of visitors helps the online gambling sites earn additional
revenue from advertising. Events like winning an Oscar or an election are also easy to reduce to a contract. Bettors would
be deterred from markets on the long-term effects of public policy , because in the interim
they would lose the time value of money. Yet public policy markets, particularly conditional ones, help generate better
But
information about policy effects of great significance to democracy in a manner that can catch citizens' attention. As a result, they provide a
public good whose greater production society should support to a larger extent than the market supplies.61 The
federal government
should thus undertake a program of subsidizing these markets .
It should do so in an experimental way, seeking to find the market designs that are most accurate and the circumstances in which markets will be
most useful.
WTO
No trade war impact
Fletcher 11 Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, former Research
Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council M.A. and B.A. from Columbia and U Chicago, "Avoid
Trade War? We're Already In One!" August 29 2011 www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/avoid-tradewar-were-alre_b_939967.html
The curious thing about the concept of trade war is that, unlike actual shooting war, it has no
historical precedent . In fact, there has never been a significant trade war, "significant" in the
sense of having done serious economic damage. All history records are minor skirmishes at best.
Go ahead. Try and name a trade war. The Great Trade War of 1834? Nope. The Great Trade War of
1921? Nope Again. There isn't one. The standard example free traders give is that America's Smoot-Hawley tariff of
1930 either caused the Great Depression or made it spread around the world. But this canard does not
survive serious examination, and has actually been denied by almost every economist who
has actually researched the question in depth -- a group ranging from Paul Krugman on the left to Milton
Friedman on the right. The Depression's cause was monetary. The Fed allowed the money supply to
balloon during the late 1920s, piling up in the stock market as a bubble. It then panicked, miscalculated,
and let it collapse by a third by 1933, depriving the economy of the liquidity it needed to breathe. Trade
had nothing to do with it . As for the charge that Smoot caused the Depression to spread worldwide: it
was too small a change to have plausibly so large an effect. For a start, it only applied to about one-third
of America's trade: about 1.3 percent of our GDP. Our average tariff on dutiable goods went from 44.6 to
53.2 percent -- not a terribly big jump. Tariffs were higher in almost every year from 1821 to 1914. Our
tariff went up in 1861, 1864, 1890, and 1922 without producing global depressions, and the recessions of
1873 and 1893 managed to spread worldwide without tariff increases. As the economic historian (and free
trader!) William Bernstein puts it in his book A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World,
Between 1929 and 1932, real GDP fell 17 percent worldwide, and by 26 percent in the United States, but
most economic historians now believe that only a miniscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and
the United States' GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars. .. At the time of Smoot-Hawley's passage, trade
volume accounted for only about 9 percent of world economic output. Had all international trade been
eliminated, and had no domestic use for the previously exported goods been found, world GDP would
have fallen by the same amount -- 9 percent. Between 1930 and 1933, worldwide trade volume fell off by
one-third to one-half. Depending on how the falloff is measured, this computes to 3 to 5 percent of world
GDP, and these losses were partially made up by more expensive domestic goods. Thus, the damage done
could not possibly have exceeded 1 or 2 percent of world GDP -- nowhere near the 17 percent falloff seen
during the Great Depression... The inescapable conclusion: contrary to public perception, Smoot-Hawley
did not cause, or even significantly deepen, the Great Depression. The oft-bandied idea that Smoot Hawley started a global trade war of endless cycles of tit-for-tat retaliation is also mythical .
According to the official State Department report on this very question in 1931: With the exception of
discriminations in France, the extent of discrimination against American commerce is very slight...By far
the largest number of countries do not discriminate against the commerce of the United States in any way.
That is to say, foreign nations did indeed raise their tariffs after the passage of Smoot, but this was a
broad-brush response to the Depression itself, aimed at all other foreign nations without distinction, not a
retaliation against the U.S. for its own tariff. The doom-loop of spiraling tit-for-tat retaliation between
trading partners that paralyzes free traders with fear today simply did not happen. "Notorious"
Smoot -Hawley is a deliberately fabricated myth , plain and simple. We should not allow this myth to
paralyze our policy-making in the present day. There is a basic unresolved paradox at the bottom of
the very concept of trade war . If, as free traders insist, free trade is beneficial whether or not one's
trading partners reciprocate, then why would any rational nation start one , no matter how
provoked? The only way to explain this is to assume that major national governments like the Chinese
and the U.S. -- governments which, whatever bad things they may have done, have managed to hold
nuclear weapons for decades without nuking each other over trivial spats -- are not players of realpolitik,
but schoolchildren. When the moneymen in Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, and the other nations currently
running trade surpluses against the U.S. start to ponder the financial realpolitik of exaggerated
retaliation against the U.S. for any measures we may employ to bring our trade back into balance, they
will discover the advantage is with us, not them . Because they are the ones with trade surpluses to
lose, not us. So our present position of weakness is, paradoxically, actually a position of strength.
Likewise, China can supposedly suddenly stop buying our Treasury Debt if we rock the boat. But this
would immediately reduce the value of the trillion or so they already hold -- not to mention destroying, by
making their hostility overt, the fragile (and desperately-tended) delusion in the U.S. that America and
China are still benign economic "partners" in a win-win economic relationship. At the end of the day,
China cannot force us to do anything economically that we don't choose to. America is still a
nuclear power. We can -- an irresponsible but not impossible scenario -- repudiate our debt to them (or
stop paying the interest) as the ultimate counter-move to anything they might contemplate. More
plausibly, we might simply restore the tax on the interest on foreign-held bonds that was repealed in 1984
thanks to Treasury Secretary Donald Regan. Thus a certain amount of back-and-forth token retaliation
(and loud squealing) is indeed likely if America starts defending its interests in trade as diligently as our
trading partners have been defending theirs, but that's it. The rest of the world engages in these
struggles all the time without doing much harm; it will be no different if we join the party.
GATT/WTO decline key to development of regionalism which is a better check on
protectionism and war.
Brkic 13, Economics Prof at U of Sarajevo (Snježana, 3/25, Regional Trading Arrangements –
Stumbling Blocks or Building Blocks in the Process of Global Trade Liberalization?,
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239275)
Besides those advocating the optimistic or pessimistic view on regionalism effect on global trade
liberalization, some economists, such as Frankel and Wei, hold a neutral position, in a way. Frankel and
Wei believe that forms and achievements of international economic integrations can vary and that, for this
reason, regionalism can be – depending on circumstances – linked to greater or smaller global
trade liberalization. In the years-long period of regional integration development, four periods have been
identified during which the integration processes were becoming particularly intensive and which have
therefore been named "waves of regionalism". The first wave was taking place during the capitalism
development in the second half of the 19th century, in the course of British sovereign domination over the
world market. Economic integrations of the time primarily had the form of bilateral customs unions;
however, owing to the comparative openness of international trading system based on the golden standard
automatism, this period is called the "era of progressive bilateralism". The next two waves of
regionalism occurred in the years following the world wars. Since the disintegration processes caused
by the wars usually spawned economic nationalisms and autarchic tendencies, it is not surprising that
post-war regionalisms were marked by discriminatory international economic integrations,
primarily at the level of so-called negative integration, with expressedly “beggar-thy-neighbor”
policies that resulted in considerable trade deviations. This particularly refers to the regionalism
momentum after the First World War, which was additionally burdened by the consequences of Big
Economic Crisis. The current wave of regionalism started in late 1980s and spread around the
world to a far greater extent than any previous one did: it has covered almost all the continents and
almost all the countries, even those which have mis to join all earlier regional initiatives, such as the
USA, Canada, Japan and China. Integration processes, however, do not show any signs of flagging.
Up till now, over 200 RTAs have been registered with GATT/WTO, more than 150 of them being still
in force, and most of these valid arrangement have been made in the past ten years. Specific in many
ways, this wave was dubbed "new regionalism". The most specific characteristics of new regionalism
include: geographic spread of RTAs in terms of encompassing entire continents; greater speed;
integration forms success; deepening of integration processes; and, the most important for this
theoretical discussion, generally non-negative impact on outsiders, world economy as a whole, and
the multilateral liberalization process. Some theorists (Gilpin) actually distinguish between the "benign"
and "malign" regionalism. On the one hand, regionalism can advance the international economic stability,
multilateral liberalization and world peace. On the other, it can have mercantilist features leading to
economic well-being degradation and increasing international tensions and conflicts . Analyses of
trends within the contemporary integration processes show that they mainly have features
of "benign" regionalism . Reasons for this are numerous. Forces driving the contemporary
regionalism development differ from those that used to drive earlier regionalism periods in the
20th century. The present regionalism emerged in the period characterized by the increasing
economic inter-dependence between different world economy subjects, countries attempts to
resolve trade disputes and multilateral framework of trade relations. As opposed to the 1930s episode,
contemporary regional initiatives represent attempts to make the members' participation
in the world economy easier, rather than make them more distant from it. As opposed to
1950s and 1960s episode, new initiatives are less frequently motivated exclusively by political
interests, and are less frequently being used for mercantilist purposes. After the Second World
War, more powerful countries kept using the economic integration as a means to strengthen their
political influence on their weaker partners and outsiders. The examples include CMEA and
European Community arrangements with its members' former colonies. As opposed to this practice,
the new regionalism, mostly driven by common economic interests, yielded less trade diversion
than previous one, and has also contributed to the prevention of military conflicts of greater
proportions . Various analyses have shown that many regional integrations in earlier periods
resulted in trade deviations, particularly those formed between less developed countries and between
socialist countries. In recent years, however, the newly formed or revised regional integrations
primarily seem to lead to trade creation. Contrary to the “beggar thy- neighbor” model of former
international economic integrations, the integrations now offer certain advantages to outsiders as
well, by stimulating growth and spurring the role of market forces. The analyses of contemporary
trends in world economy also speak in favor of the "optimistic" proposition. The structural analysis
shows that the world trade is growing and that this growth results both from the increase in intraregional and from the increase in extra-regional trade value (Anderson i Snape 1994.)28. Actually, the
intraregional trade has been growing faster, both by total value and by its share in world GDP.
The extra-regional trade share in GDP was increasing in some regions – in North America, Asia-Pacific
and Asian developing countries. However, the question arises as to whether the extra-regional trade
would be greater without regional integrations or not? The answer would primarily depend both on the
estimate of degree of some countries' trade policy restrictedness in such circumstances, and on factors
such as geographic distance, transport communications, political relations among states. One should also
take into account certain contemporary integration features – the primarily economic, rather than
strategic motivation, and continuous expansion, which mostly includes countries that are
significant economic partners. With respect to NAFTA, many believe that the negative effects on
outsiders will be negligible, since the USA and Canada have actually been highly integrated
economies for a long time already, while the Mexican economy is relatively small. The same view
was pointed out by the EU, with respect to its expansion. It particularly refers to the inclusion of
the remaining EFTA countries, because this will actually only complete, in institutional terms,
the EU strong economic ties with these countries. Most EFTA countries have been part of the
European economic area (EEA), i.e. the original EC-EFTA agreement, for a few years already, and
conduct some 70% of their total international exchange with the Union countries. EU countries are also
the most significant foreign-trade partners of Central and East Europe countries, and the recent
joining the Union of several of them is not expected to cause a significant trade diversion.
Besides, according to some earlier studies, during the previous wave of regionalism, in the 1967-70
period, the creation of trade in EEC was far greater than trade diversion: trade creation ranged
from 13 to 23% of total imports, while trade diversion ranged from 1 to 6%. In Latin America,
the new regionalism resulted in the faster growth of intra-regional trade, while the extra-regional
exports and imports also continued to grow. Since early 1990s, the value of intra-regional imports
registered the average annual growth of 18%. In the same time, the extra-regional exports were also
growing, although at a lower rate of 9% average a year; its share in the total Latin America exports at the
end of decade amounted to 18% as compared to 12% in 1990. In the 1990-1996 period, the intraregional
imports grew by some 18% a year. The extra-regional imports were also growing very fast, reaching the
14% rate. These data reflect a great unbalance in the trade with extra-regional markets, since the imports
from countries outside the region grew much faster the exports.30 Since the described trends point to
the continued growth of extra-regional imports and exports, they also show that regional
integration in Latin America has had the open regionalism character. Besides, the pending
establishment of FTAA – Free Trade Area of Americas will gather, in the same group, the so-called
"natural" trade partners – countries that have had an extremely extensive mutual exchange for years
already, and the outsiders are therefore unlikely to be affected by strengthening of regionalism in
this part of the world. Contemporary research shows that intra-regional trade is growing ,
however, same as interdependence between North America and East Asia and between the EU
and East Asia. It can also be seen that the biggest and the most powerful countries, i.e. blocs, are
extremely dependent on the rest of the world in terms of trade. For the EU, besides the intraEuropean trade, which is ranked first, foreign trade has the vital importance since it accounts for
10% of European GDP. In early 1990s, EU exchanged 40% of its foreign trade with non-members, 16%
out of which with North America and East Asia together. EU therefore must keep in mind the rest of
the world as well. The growing EU interest in outsiders is confirmed by establishing "The Euro-Med
Partnership", which proclaimed a new form of cooperation between the EU and the countries at its South
periphery32. Besides, the past few years witnessed a series of inter-regional agreements between
the EU on the one hand, and certain groups from other regions on the other (MERCOSUR,
CARICOM, ASEAN and GCC). In case of North America the ratio between intra-regional and interregional trade is 40:60, and in East Asia, it is 45:55. Any attempt to move towards significantly
closed blocs ("fortresses") would require overcoming the significant inter-dependence
between major trading blocs . Besides the analysis of contemporary trends in extra- and intraregional trade, other research was conducted that was supposed to point to the reasons why the new
regionalism has mainly a non-negative impact on outsiders and global liberalization. The
distinctive features of new regionalism were also affected to characteristics of international
economic and political environment it sprouted in. In the 1980s, economic nationalisms were not
so expressed as in the interventionism years following the Second World War; however, the neoliberalism represented by GATT activities did not find the "fertile ground” in all parts of the world.
Regionalism growth in the circumstances of multilateral system existence is, among other things,
the consequence of distrust in multilateralism . „The revival of the forces of regionalism
stemmed from frustration with the slow pace of multilateral trade liberalization... If the world
trade regime could not be moved ahead, then perhaps it was time for deeper liberalization within
more limited groups of like-minded nations... Such efforts would at least liberalize some trade... and
might even prod the other nations to go along with multilateral liberalization.“33 Kennedy's round and
Tokyo round of trade negotiations under GATT auspices brought a certain progress in the global trade
liberalization. However, the 1980s witnessed significant changes in the world economy that the
GATT trade system was not up to. Besides. GATT had not yet managed to cover the entire trade in
goods, since there were still exceptions in the trade in agricultural and textile products that particularly
affected the USA and developing countries. GATT system of conflict resolutions, and its organizational
and administrative mechanism in general also required revision. In this vacuum that was created in
promoting trade and investment multilateralism from the point when GATT inadequacy became
obvious until the start of the Uruguay round and the establishment of World Trade Organization, the
wave of regionalism started spreading across the world again. Prodded by the Single European Act
and the success of European integration, many countries turned to an alternative solution –
establishment of new or expansion and deepening of the existing economic integrations. Even the
USA, the multilateralism bastion until then, made a radical turn in their foreign-trade policy and started
working on designing a North American integration.
Regionalism coming now – best model, solves great power war– locally activates the
aff warrants for cooperation.
Krishnan Srinivasan, "International Conflict and Cooperation in the 21st Century," THE ROUND
TABLE v. 98 n. 400, 2--09, pp. 37-47.
The new world order of the first half of the present century will be one of peaceful mutual
accommodation between the big powers located in the East and West, North and South.
The priority for these powers will be for economic progress and regional order , with defence
expenditure being used to build technological capacity for deterrence against the other big powers and as
an enabler for their self-appointed but globally recognized role as regional enforcers. In this neoHobbesian world system, the lesser states will come to their own bilateral arrangements with
the local regional hegemon upon whom they will be dependent not only for their security
but for economic, technical and trading facilitation. Some of these lesser entities will enjoy
economic prosperity, depending on their ability to maintain internal cohesion, to turn globalization to
their advantage, and to control the socio-economic consequences of climate change, but they will not be
able to mount a challenge to the hierarchical nature of international society. They will have
far greater recourse to the United Nations than the major powers, who will prefer to apply unilateral
methods with the connivance and consent of their peers. The debate between Westphalian national
sovereignty and the right to intervene to breach the sovereignty of other states on the grounds of
preventing threats to international peace and security will not be resolved. Political and economic
inequality between nations will be drawn in ever sharper focus. Regional institutions will be
dominated by the local big power. Reform of the United Nations will be incomplete and unappealing
to the vast majority of member states. The world’s hegemonic powers will lose faith in the Security
Council as an effective mechanism to deliberate issues of peace and security. World bodies will be
used for discussion of global issues such as the environment and climate change, pandemic
disease, energy and food supplies, and development, but resulting action will primarily
devolve on the big powers in the affected regions. This will particularly be the case in the realm of
peace and security in which only the regional hegemon will have the means, the will and the
obligation, for the sake of its own status and security, to ensure resolution or retribution as
each case may demand. Even in a globalized world, regional and local action will be the prime
necessity and such action will be left to the power best equipped to understand the
particular circumstances, select the appropriate remedy and execute the action required to
administer it. Conflict will be contained and localized. There will be no menace of war on a
world-wide scale and little fear of international terrorism. Private-enterprise terrorist actions will
continue to manifest political, social and economic frustrations, but they will be parochial, ineffective and
not state-sponsored. There will be far less invocation of human rights in international politics, since these
will be identified with a western agenda and western civilization: there will be an equal recognition of
community rights and societal values associated with Eastern and other traditions. Chinese artists, Indian
entrepreneurs, Russian actors, Iranian chefs, South African song-writers and Brazilian designers will be
household names; models on the fashion cat-walk and sporting teams from all major countries will be
distinctly multi-racial, reflecting the immigration to, but also the purchasing power of, the new major
powers. National populations will show evidence of mixed race more than ever before in history. Climate
change will be an acknowledged global challenge and all countries, led by the regional hegemons, will
undertake binding restraints on carbon emissions. The world will become acutely conscious of the
essentiality of access to fresh water. The pace of technological innovation will accelerate at dizzying
speed, further accentuating inequalities. There will be very rapid steps taken to develop alternative
sources of energy in the face of dwindling and costly oil supplies. Western industrialized nations, to
remain competitive, will vacate vast areas of traditional manufacturing in favour of new technologies and
green engineering. The world will be a safer and stable place until one of the hegemons eventually
develops an obvious ascendancy first regionally, then continentally and finally globally over all the others.
The squo preserves the trend - the plan just leads to soft-balancing which
guarantees our turns and kills their offense.
Michael J. Mazarr, Professor, National Security Strategy, U.S. National War College, "The Risks of
Ignoring Strategic Insolvency," WASHINGTON QUARTERLY v. 35 n. 4, Fall 2012, p. 14-15.
Diplomacy increasingly fails . A parallel risk has to do with the ebbing force of U.S.
diplomacy and influence. International power is grounded in legitimacy , and in many ways it
is precisely the legitimacy of the leading power’s global posture that is under assault as its
posture comes into question. Historically, rising challengers gradually stop respecting the
hegemon’s right to lead, and they begin to make choices on behalf of the international
community, in part due to strategies consciously designed to frustrate the leading power’s
designs . Germany, under Bismarck and after, is one example: It aspired to unification and to its
‘‘rightful place’’ as a leading European power as its power and influence accumulated, its willingness to
accept the inherent legitimacy of the existing order as defined by other states, and the validity and force of
their security paradigms, declined proportionately. At nearly all points in this trajectory, German leaders
did not seek to depose the international system, but to crowd into its leadership ranks, to mute the voices
of others relative to its own influence, and to modify rather than abolish rules.¶ We begin to see this
pattern today with regard to many emerging powers, but especially of course, China’s
posture toward the United States.31 As was predicted and expected in the post-Cold War context of
growing regional power centers, the legitimacy of a system dominated by the United States is
coming under increasing challenge. More states (and, increasingly, non-state actors) want to
share in setting rules and norms and dictating outcomes.¶ The obvious and inevitable result
has been to reduce the effectiveness of U.S. diplomacy. While measuring the relative success of a
major power’s diplomacy over time is a chancy business (and while Washington continues to have
success on many fronts), the current trajectory is producing a global system much less subject
to the power of U.S. diplomacy and other forms of influence. Harvard’s Stephen Walt catalogues
the enormous strengths of the U.S. position during and after the Cold War, and compares that to recent
evidence of the emerging limits of U.S. power. Such evidence includes Turkey’s unwillingness to support
U.S. deployments in Iraq, the failure to impose U.S. will or order in Iraq or Afghanistan, failures of
nonproliferation in North Korea and Iran, the Arab Spring’s challenges to long-standing U.S. client rulers,
and more.32 As emerging powers become more focused on their own interests and goals,
their domestic dynamics will become ever more self-directed and less subject to
manipulation from Washington, a trend evident in a number of major recent elections.¶
Washington will still enjoy substantial influence, and many states will welcome (openly or
grudgingly) a U.S. leadership role. But without revising the U.S. posture, the gap between U.S.
ambitions and capabilities will only grow. Continually trying to do too much will create
more risk of demands unmet, requests unfulfilled, and a growing sense of the absurdity of
the U.S. posture. Such a course risks crisis and conflict . Similarly, doubt in the threats and
promises underpinning an unviable U.S. security posture risks conflict: U.S. officials will press into
situations assuming that their diplomacy will be capable of achieving certain outcomes and will make
demands and lay out ultimatums on that basis only to find that their influence cannot achieve the
desired goals, and they must escalate to harsher measures. The alternative is to shift to a
lesser role with more limited ambitions and more sustainable legitimacy.
a.) WTO wrecks developing economies –
-support of agricultural subsidies, protectionist policies, exploitative trade agreements, reduced access to
legal complaints, and a policy of favoring the rich countries has led to an anti-developing country
environment
Walker 11 (Aurelie, trade policy advisor at the Fairtrade Foundation, “The WTO has failed developing nations”
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/nov/14/wto-fails-developing-countries) AU
Ten years ago, a new World Trade Organisation that put developing country needs at the centre
of the international trade negotiation agenda was proposed. The Ministerial Declaration adopted at the
start of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations, on 14 November 2001, was a promising response to the antiglobalisation riots of the 1990s.
But the WTO membership has failed to deliver the promised pro-
development changes. Finding "development" in the Doha Development Round today is like looking for a needle in a
haystack. Developing countries have been completely sidelined by the economic and political
interests of global powers. Here are 10 examples of how the WTO has failed the poor: 1. Cotton: the
Fairtrade Foundation revealed last year how the $47bn in subsidies paid to rich-country
producers in the past 10 years has created barriers for the 15 million cotton farmers across
west Africa trying to trade their way out of poverty, and how 5 million of the world's poorest
farming families have been forced out of business and into deeper poverty because of those subsidies. 2.
Agricultural subsidies: beyond cotton, WTO members have failed even to agree how to
reduce the huge subsidies paid to rich world farmers, whose overproduction continues to
threaten the livelihoods of developing world farmers. 3. Trade agreements: the WTO has
also failed to clarify the deliberately ambiguous rules on concluding trade agreements that allow the
poorest countries to be manipulated by the rich states. In Africa, in negotiations with the EU, countries
have been forced to eliminate tariffs on up to 90% of their trade because no clear rules
exist to protect them. 4. Special treatment: the rules for developing countries, called "special and differential treatment"
rules, were meant to be reviewed to make them more precise, effective and operational. But the WTO has failed to work through
the 88 proposals that would fill the legal vacuum. 5. Medicine: the
poorest in developing countries are unable
to access affordable medicine because members have failed to clarify ambiguities between
the need for governments to protect public health on one hand and on the other to protect
the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies. 6. Legal costs: the WTO pledged to
improve access to its expensive and complex legal system, but has failed. In 15 years of dispute settlement under
the WTO, 400 cases have been initiated. No African country has acted as a complainant
and only one least developed country has ever filed a claim. 7. Protectionist economic policies: one of
the WTO's five core functions agreed at its inception in 1995 was to achieve more coherence in global economic policy-making.
the WTO failed to curb the speedy increase in the number of protectionist measures
applied by G20 countries in response to the global economic crisis over the past two years – despite G20
Yet
leaders' repeated affirmations of their "unwavering" commitment to resist all forms of protectionist measures. 8. Natural disaster:
the WTO fails to alleviate suffering when it has the opportunity to do so. In the case of
natural disaster, the membership will have taken almost two years to agree and implement
temporary trade concessions for Pakistan, where severe flooding displaced 20 million
people in 2010 and caused $10bn of damage. Those measures, according to the International Centre for Trade
and Sustainable Development, would have boosted Pakistan's exports to the EU by at least €100m this year. 9. Decision-making:
the WTO makes most of its decisions by consensus – and achieving consensus between 153
countries is nearly impossible. But this shows another failure of the WTO: to break the link
between market size and political weight that would give small and poor countries a voice
in the trade negotiations. 10. Fair trade: 10 years after the start of the Doha Development Round, governments
have failed to make trade fair. As long as small and poor countries remain without a voice, the role of campaigning
organisations, such as Traidcraft and Fairtrade Foundation, which are working together to eliminate cotton subsidies, will remain
critical. The WTO has failed to live up to its promises over the past decade, which reveals a wider systemic problem in the
True and lasting solutions to global economic problems can only come when
the model of global competitiveness between countries becomes one of genuine cooperation.
global community.
b.) Causes state collapse
Putzel 14 (James Putzel, Professor of Development Studies, Director of the Crisis States Research
Centre at the London School of Economics, The Impact of the Financial Crisis on ‘Fragile States,’”
Global Economic Symposium 2014, http://www.global-economic-symposium.org/knowledgebase/theglobal-polity/repairing-failed-states/proposals/financial-crisis-and-fragile-states)
Since 9/11 there has been a growing awareness that states existing on the margins of the
international system, where public authority is challenged and the organisational reach of the state is
short, constitute threats to regional and global security . This has been evident with the emergence
of international terrorist networks, which clearly have benefitted from weak and porous
states to establish safe havens for their activities. This security threat has prompted a belated
reconsideration of how the international community should deal with the poorest and most unstable of
developing countries – those that have come to be known as fragile states. The international
financial crisis has taken its toll on this group of states that exists on the margins of survival. Almost all
of these states have poorly developed economic systems and many rely primarily on
primary commodity exports, often just one or two commodities, to earn their foreign exchange.
The impact of the contraction of international finance in 2008 was almost immediate in the resource
extractive economies in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo or even the more stable Zambia.
Why was this so? In both these countries there is heavy reliance on copper mining. While the
international price of copper fell at the start of the crisis, it did not fall to all time lows. This is because
copper has been one of the commodities in which forward speculation on prices has continued during the
crisis. But international corporations, facing a decline in the physical demand for copper,
first cut back their expansion plans in the risky environments found in fragile states.
Layoffs in Zambia’s copper belt and the mines of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo have
been massive. Plans for recovery in the DRC have largely been based on the expansion of mineral
extraction and trade. In these fragile states, government finance, beyond that which is
provided by foreign aid, is largely dependent on revenues from the mineral sector. The
knock on effects of the crisis have had a severe impact on government revenues. The financial crisis has
served to underline the precariousness of banking on single commodities as a basis to create the economic
conditions for state-building. Fragile states have also remained heavily dependent on the remittance
earnings from citizens working abroad. The international crisis has had a severe impact on remittances,
which often constitute the primary source of foreign exchange in a poor economy and form the core of
what little investment funds there are for the establishment of new service or agricultural activities. The
crisis has also had a serious impact on international tourism, again one of the few areas where those
fragile states that have secured a modicum of stability and private investment have pinned their hopes for
economic development. Right across the board, the contraction of international finance has
brought a halt to new investment in fragile states.
c.) Extinction
Manwaring 05 [Max, Retired U.S. Army colonel and an Adjunct Professor of International Politics at
Dickinson College, “Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivarian Socialism, and Asymmetric Warfare”,
October 2005, http://w1ww.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub628.pdf]
President Chávez also understands that the process leading to state failure is the most dangerous
long-term security challenge facing the global community today. The argument in general is
that failing and failed state status is the breeding ground for instability, criminality,
insurgency, regional conflict, and terrorism. These conditions breed massive humanitarian
disasters and major refugee flows. They can host “evil” networks of all kinds, whether they
involve criminal business enterprise, narco-trafficking, or some form of ideological crusade
such as Bolivarianismo. More specifically, these conditions spawn all kinds of things people in
general do not like such as murder, kidnapping, corruption, intimidation, and destruction of
infrastructure. These means of coercion and persuasion can spawn further human rights
violations, torture, poverty, starvation, disease, the recruitment and use of child soldiers,
trafficking in women and body parts, trafficking and proliferation of conventional weapons
systems and WMD, genocide, ethnic cleansing, warlordism, and criminal anarchy. At the same
time, these actions are usually unconfined and spill over into regional syndromes of poverty,
destabilization, and conflict. Peru’s Sendero Luminoso calls violent and destructive activities that
facilitate the processes of state failure “armed propaganda.” Drug cartels operating throughout the
Andean Ridge of South America and elsewhere call these activities “business incentives.”
Chávez considers these actions to be steps that must be taken to bring about the political conditions
necessary to establish Latin American socialism for the 21st century. Thus, in addition to
helping to provide wider latitude to further their tactical and operational objectives, state and nonstate
actors’ strategic efforts are aimed at progressively lessening a targeted regime’s credibility
and capability in terms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national
territory and society. Chávez’s intent is to focus his primary attack politically and
psychologically on selected Latin American governments’ ability and right to govern. In that
context, he understands that popular perceptions of corruption, disenfranchisement, poverty, and lack of
upward mobility limit the right and the ability of a given regime to conduct the business of the state.
Until a given populace generally perceives that its government is dealing with these and other basic
issues of political, economic, and social injustice fairly and effectively, instability and the threat of
subverting or destroying such a government are real. But failing and failed states simply do
not go away. Virtually anyone can take advantage of such an unstable situation. The
tendency is that the best motivated and best armed organization on the scene will control that
instability. As a consequence, failing and failed states become dysfunctional states, rogue
states, criminal states, narco-states, or new people’s democracies. In connection with the creation
of new people’s democracies, one can rest assured that Chávez and his Bolivarian populist allies
will be available to provide money, arms, and leadership at any given opportunity. And, of
course, the longer dysfunctional, rogue, criminal, and narco-states and people’s democracies
persist, the more they and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, and
prosperity.
2NC
Addon
The worst case scenario happened – no extinction
Dove 12 [Alan Dove, PhD in Microbiology, science journalist and former Adjunct Professor at New York University, “Who’s Afraid of the
Big, Bad Bioterrorist?” Jan 24 2012, http://alandove.com/content/2012/01/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-bioterrorist/]
The second problem is much more serious. Eliminating the toxins, we’re left with a list of infectious
bacteria and viruses. With a
single exception, these organisms are probably near-useless as weapons, and history proves it.¶ There have been at least three
well-documented military-style deployments of infectious agents from the list, plus one deployment of an agent that’s not on the list. I’m
focusing entirely on the modern era, by the way. There are historical reports of armies catapulting plague-ridden corpses over city walls and
conquistadors trying to inoculate blankets with Variola (smallpox), but it’s not clear those “attacks” were effective. Those diseases tended to
spread like, well, plagues, so there’s no telling whether the targets really caught the diseases from the bodies and blankets, or simply picked them
up through casual contact with their enemies.¶ Of the four modern biowarfare
incidents, two have been fatal. The first was the
1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax incident, which killed an estimated 100 people. In that case, a Soviet-built biological weapons lab
accidentally released a large plume of weaponized Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) over a major city. Soviet authorities tried to blame the resulting
fatalities on “bad meat,” but in the 1990s Western investigators were finally able to piece together the real story. The second
fatal incident
also involved anthrax from a government-run lab: the 2001 “Amerithrax” attacks. That time, a rogue employee (or perhaps
employees) of the government’s main bioweapons lab sent weaponized, powdered anthrax through the US postal service. Five people
died.¶ That gives us a grand total of around 105 deaths, entirely from agents that were grown and weaponized in
officially-sanctioned and funded bioweapons research labs. Remember that.¶ Terrorist groups have also
deployed biological weapons twice, and these cases are very instructive. The first was the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, in
which members of a cult in Oregon inoculated restaurant salad bars with Salmonella bacteria (an agent that’s not on the
“select” list). 751 people got sick, but nobody died. Public health authorities handled it as a conventional
foodborne Salmonella outbreak, identified the sources and contained them. Nobody even would have known it was a deliberate attack
if a member of the cult hadn’t come forward afterward with a confession. Lesson: our existing public health infrastructure was
entirely adequate to respond to a major bioterrorist attack.¶ The second genuine bioterrorist attack took
place in 1993. Members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult successfully isolated and grew a large stock of anthrax bacteria,
then sprayed it as an aerosol from the roof of a building in downtown Tokyo. The cult was well-financed,
and had many highly educated members, so this release over the world’s largest city really represented
a worst-case scenario .¶ Nobody got sick or died. From the cult’s perspective, it was a complete and utter failure. Again, the
only reason we even found out about it was a post-hoc confession. Aum members later demonstrated their lab skills by producing Sarin nerve
gas, with far deadlier results. Lesson: one of the top “select agents” is extremely hard to grow and deploy even for relatively skilled non-state
groups. It’s a really crappy bioterrorist weapon.¶ Taken together, these events point to an uncomfortable but inevitable conclusion: our biodefense
industry is a far greater threat to us than any actual bioterrorists.
Anthro
A2: Framework
You have an ethical obligation to think and write in place of animals whose screams
are categorically ignored and silenced.
Collard 13—Geography Department at the University of British Columbia
(Rosemary-Claire, “Apocalypse Meow”, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 24:1, 35-41, dml)
‘‘A true political space,’’ writes Swyngedouw (2010b, 194), ‘‘is always a space of contestation for those
who are not-all, who are uncounted and unnamed.’’ This true political space necessarily
includes*if only by virtue of their exclusion*animals, the ‘‘constitutive outside’’ of
humanity itself. How we respond to this dynamic ought to be a central question of critical
scholarship and philosophizing. To be a philosopher, says Deleuze in the ‘‘A for Animal’’ entry to the
‘‘abecedary’’ (L’abe´ce´daire de Gilles Deleuze 1989), ‘‘is to write in the place of animals that die.’’ This is still an
imperfect way of describing my objective (for one thing, I am also interested in animals that are still alive), but it is an
improvement over being a ‘‘spokesperson’’ for animals, which are often characterized as
speechless and may be rendered more so having spokespeople appointed to speak on their
behalf. To write in the place of animals that die seems a preferable, though still fraught,
characterization.
This paper is therefore written in the place of those uncounted and unnamed non-subjects of
political space, the animals that die, the nonhumans, the hundreds of millions of animals
that are ‘‘living out our nightmares’’ (Raffles 2010, 120): injected, tested, prodded, then discarded.
We have denied, disavowed, and misunderstood animals. They are refused speech, reason,
morality, emotion, clothing, shelter, mourning, culture, lying, lying about lying, gifting,
laughing, crying*the list has no limit. But ‘‘who was born first, before the names?’’ Derrida (2008, 18) asks. ‘‘Which one
saw the other come to this place, so long ago? Who will have been the first occupant? Who the subject? Who has remained the despot, for so long
now?’’ Some
see identifying this denial as a side-event, inconsequential, even sort of silly. The
belief in human superiority is firmly lodged and dear to people’s hearts and senses of
themselves. It also seems a daunting task, not a simple matter of inserting the excluded into
the dominant political order, which as Z ˇ izˇek (1999) writes, neglects how these very subversions
and exclusions are the order’s condition of being.
A2: Perm
The permutation fails
1.) Its impossible and severance which is a voting issue bc it destroys all negative
ground: we ask you to vote for the squo
2.) It sustaining the existing image of humanism – only a radical shock through
the thought experiment can solves.
Kochi & Ordan 8 – *Professor @ University of Sussex in Law, **Linguistic Specialist
(Tarik, Noam, An Argument for the Global Suicide of Humanity, Borderlands, Volume 7, Number 3,
2008, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf) NAR
In order to consider whether any dialectical utopian anti-humanism might be possible,
it becomes necessary to reflect upon the
role of moral action which underlies the modern humanist view of the subject as drawn upon by thinkers such as Hawking. Our argument is that
the logical end-point of ethically motivated technical action is a certain type of human apoptosis – the global
suicide of humanity. In what follows we set out some aspects of the problematisation of the modern humanist view of moral action and the way in
which this causes difficulties for not only Hawking’s project of cosmic colonisation, but also for many in the environmental movement more generally. Faced
with what seems to be a looming environmental crisis spiralling out of control and an awareness of a history of
human action which has caused this crisis, the reaction of many environmentalists is, contra Hawking, not to run away to another habitat but to call for new forms of
The call for urgent political and social action to change human behaviour in relation to
the environment is echoed globally not only by environmentalists and activists but also by celebrities and politicians. [6] The response is
action.
highly modern in the sense that a problem such as global warming is not considered to be something ordained by fate or the outcome of divine providence. Instead it is
understood as something caused by human action for which humans bear the responsibility and, further, that disaster may still be averted if we act in such a way to
The move towards critical historical reflection, the assuming of
responsibility, and action guided by such an attitude, is certainly a better approach than shutting one’s eyes to the
violence and errors of human history or placing blind faith in technology. Indeed, criticism of these latter views is heard from within
change the course of history. [7]
eco-ethics circles themselves, either by labelling such endeavours as ‘technofix’ or ‘technocentric’ (Smith, 1998), or by criticizing the modes of action of greenpolitics as ‘eco-bureaucracy’ and ‘men-politics’ (Seager, 1993). However, even if we try to avoid falling into the above patterns, maybe it is actually too late to change
the course of the events and forces that are of our own making. Perhaps a modern discourse or belief in the possibilities of human action has run aground, hamstrung
the only forms of action available are attempts to revert to a pre-industrial lifestyle, or a new
radical form of action, an action that lets go of action itself and the human claim to continued habitation
within the world. In this case, the action of cosmic colonisation envisaged by Hawking would not be enough. It would merely
perpetuate a cycle of destructive speciesist violence . Further, general humanist action, guided by some obligation of
‘care’ for the environment, would also not be enough as it could not overcome an individual’s complicity in systematic and
by its own success. Perhaps
institutional speciesist violence. The question here is open. Could a modern discourse of reflection, responsibility and action be strong enough to fundamentally
reorientate the relationship between humans and other species and the natural environment? If so, then maybe a truly revolutionary change in how humans, and
specifically humans in the West, conceive of and interact with the natural world might be enough to counter environmental disaster and redeem humanity.
anything short of fundamental change – for instance, the transformation of modern, industrial
society into something completely different – would merely perpetuate in a less exaggerated
fashion the long process of human violence against the non-human world. What helps to render a certain
Nonetheless,
type of action problematic is each individual’s ‘complicity’ in the practice of speciesist violence. That is, even if one is aware of the ways in which modern life
destroys or adversely affects the environment and inflicts suffering upon nonhuman animals, one cannot completely subtract one’s self from a certain responsibility
for and complicity in this. Even if you are conscious of the problem you cannot but take part in doing ‘evil’ by the mere fact of participating within modern life. Take
for example the problematic position of environmental activists who courageously sacrifice personal wealth and leisure time in their fight against environmental
destruction. While activists assume a sense of historical responsibly for the violence of the human species and act so as to stop the continuation of this violence, these
actors are still somewhat complicit in a modern system of violence due to fact that they live in modern, industrial societies. The activist consumes, acquires and spends
capital, uses electricity, pays taxes, and accepts the legitimacy of particular governments within the state even if they campaign against government policies. The
bottom line is that all of these actions contribute in some way to the perpetuation of a larger process that moves humanity in a particular direction even if the
individual personally, or collectively with others, tries to act to counter this direction. Despite people’s good intentions, damage is encapsulated in nearly every human
action in industrial societies, whether we are aware of it or not. In one sense, the human individual’s modern complicity in environmental violence represents
something of a bizarre symmetry to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the ‘banality of evil’ (Arendt, 1994). For Arendt, the Nazi regime was an emblem of modernity, being
a collection of official institutions (scientific, educational, military etc.) in which citizens and soldiers alike served as clerks in a bureaucratic mechanism run by the
state. These individuals committed evil, but they did so in a very banal manner: fitting into the state mechanism, following orders, filling in paperwork, working in
factories, driving trucks and generally respecting the rule of law. In this way perhaps all individuals within the modern industrial world carry out a banal evil against
the environment simply by going to work, sitting in their offices and living in homes attached to a power grid. Conversely, those individuals who are driven by a
moral intention to not do evil and act so as to save the environment, are drawn back into a banality of the good. By their ability to effect change in only very small
aspects of their daily life, or in political-social life more generally, modern individuals are forced to participate in the active destruction of the environment even if
they are the voices of contrary intention. What is ‘banal’ in this sense is not the lack of a definite moral intention but, rather, the way in which the individual’s or
institution’s participation in everyday modern life, and the unintentional contribution to borderlands 7:3 14 environmental destruction therein, contradicts and
counteracts the smaller acts of good intention. The banality of action hits against a central problem of social-political action within late modernity. In one sense, the
ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction opens onto a difficulty within the relationship between moral intention and autonomy.
While an individual might be autonomous in respect of moral conscience, their fundamental interconnection with and interdependence upon social, political and
economic orders strips them of the power to make and act upon truly autonomous decisions. From this perspective it is not only the modern humanist figures such as
Hawking who perpetuate present violence and present dreams of colonial speciesist violence in the future. It is also those who might reject this violence but whose
lives and actions are caught up in a certain complicity for this violence. From a variety of political standpoints, it would seem that the issue of modern, autonomous
action runs into difficulties of systematic and institutional complicity. Certainly both individuals and groups are expected to give up a degree of autonomy in a modern
liberal-democratic context. In this instance, giving up autonomy (in the sense of autonomy as sovereignty) is typically done in exchange for the hope or promise of at
some point having some degree of control or influence (i.e. via the electoral system) over government policy. The price of this hope or promise, however, is continued
complicity in government-sanctioned social, political and economic actions that temporarily (or in the worst case, eternally) lie beyond the individual’s choice and
control. The answer to the questions of whether such complicity might ever be institutionally overcome, and the problems of human violence against non-human
species and ongoing environmental destruction effectively dealt with, often depends upon whether one believes that the liberal hope or promise is, either valid and
worthwhile, or false and a sham. [8] In another sense the ethical demand to respond to historical and present environmental destruction runs onto and in many ways
intensifies the question of radical or revolutionary change which confronted the socialist tradition within the 19th and 20th centuries. As environmental concerns have
increasingly since the 1970s come into greater prominence, the pressing issue for many within the 21st century is that of social-environmental revolution. [9]
Socialenvironmental revolution involves the creation of new social, political and economic forms of human and environmental organisation which can overcome the
deficiencies and latent oppression of global capitalism and safeguard both human and non-human dignity. Putting aside the old, false assumptions of a teleological
account of history, social-environmental revolution is dependent upon widespread political action which short-circuits and tears apart current legal, political and
economic regimes. This action is itself dependent borderlands 7:3 15 upon a widespread change in awareness, a revolutionary change in consciousness, across enough
of the populace to spark radical social and political transformation. Thought of in this sense, however, such a response to environmental destruction is caught by many
of the old problems which have troubled the tradition of revolutionary socialism. Namely, how might a significant number of human individuals come to obtain such a
radically enlightened perspective or awareness of human social reality (i.e. a dialectical, utopian anti-humanist ‘revolutionary consciousnesse’) so that they might
bring about with minimal violence the overthrow of the practices and institutions of late capitalism and colonial-speciesism? Further, how might an individual attain
such a radical perspective when their life, behaviours and attitudes (or their subjectivity itself) are so moulded and shaped by the individual’s immersion within and
active self-realisation through, the networks, systems and habits constitutive of global capitalism? (Hardt & Negri, 2001). While the demand for social-environmental
Both liberal and social
revolutionary models thus seem to run into the same problems that surround the notion of
progress; each play out a modern discourse of sacrifice in which some forms of life and
modes of living are set aside in favour of the promise of a future good. Caught between social hopes and
revolution grows stronger, both theoretical and practical answers to these pressing questions remain unanswered.
political myths, the challenge of responding to environmental destruction confronts, starkly, the core of a discourse of modernity characterised by reflection,
responsibility and action. Given the increasing pressures upon the human habitat, this modern discourse will either deliver or it will fail. There is little room for an
existence in between: either the Enlightenment fulfils its potentiality or it shows its hand as the bearer of impossibility. If the possibilities of the Enlightenment are to
be fulfilled then this can only happen if the old idea of the progress of the human species, exemplified by Hawking’s cosmic colonisation, is fundamentally rethought
.
The aim, however, would be to not just accept one side or the other, but to re-think the basis of moral action along
the lines of a dialectical, utopian anti-humanism. Importantly, though, getting past inadequate conceptions of action, historical
and replaced by a new form of self-comprehension. This self-comprehension would need to negate and limit the old modern humanism by a radical anti-humanism
time and the futural promise of progress may be dependent upon radically re-comprehending the relationship between humanity and nature in such a way that the
human is no longer viewed as the sole core of the subject, or the being of highest value. The human would thus need to no longer be thought of as a master that stands
over the non-human. Rather, the human and the non-human need to be grasped together, with the former bearing dignity only so long as it understands itself as a part
of the latter. How might such a standpoint of dialectical, utopian anti-humanism reconfigure a notion of action which does not simply repeat in another way the
modern humanist infliction of violence, as exemplified by the plan of Hawking, or fall prey to institutional and systemic complicity in speciesist violence? While this
question goes beyond what it is possible to outline in this paper, we contend that the thought experiment of global suicide helps to locate this question – the question
of modern action itself – as residing at the heart of the modern environmental problem. In a sense perhaps the only way to understand what is at stake in ethical action
which responds to the natural environment is to come to terms with the logical consequences of ethical action itself. The point operates then not as the end, but as the
starting point of a standpoint which attempts to reconfigure our notions of action, life-value, and harm. For some, guided by the pressure of moral conscience or by a
appropriate response to historical and contemporary environmental
destruction is that of action guided by abstention. For example, one way of reacting to mundane, everyday complicity is the
attempt to abstain or opt-out of certain aspects of modern, industrial society: to not eat non-human animals, to invest ethically,
to buy organic produce, to not use cars and buses, to live in an environmentally conscious
commune. Ranging from small personal decisions to the establishment of parallel economies (think of organic and fair trade products as an attempt to set up a
quasi-parallel economy), a typical modern form of action is that of a refusal to be complicit in human practices that are violent and destructive. Again, however, at
a practical level, to what extent are such acts of nonparticipation rendered banal by their
complicity in other actions? In a grand register of violence and harm the individual who abstains from eating non-human animals but still uses the
practice of harm minimisation, the
bus or an airplane or electricity has only opted out of some harm causing practices and remains fully complicit with others. One response, however, which bypasses
the only way to
truly be non-complicit in the violence of the human heritage would be to opt-out altogether.
Here, then, the modern discourse of reflection, responsibility and action runs to its logical conclusion – the global suicide of humanity – as
the problem of complicity and the banality of action is to take the non-participation solution to its most extreme level. In this instance,
a free-willed and ‘final solution’. While we are not interested in the discussion of the ‘method’ of the global suicide of humanity per se, one
method that would be the least violent is that of humans choosing to no longer reproduce. [10] The case at point here is that the global suicide of
humanity would be a moral act; it would take humanity out of the equation of life on this
earth and remake the calculation for the benefit of everything nonhuman. While suicide in certain forms
of religious thinking is normally condemned as something which is selfish and inflicts harm upon loved ones, the global suicide of humanity would be the highest act
, global suicide would involve the taking of responsibility for the destructive
actions of the human species. By eradicating ourselves we end the long process of inflicting
harm upon other species and offer a human-free world. If there is a form of divine
intelligence then surely the human act of global suicide will be seen for what it is: a
profound moral gesture aimed at redeeming humanity. Such an act is an offer of sacrifice to pay for past wrongs that
of altruism. That is
would usher in a new future. Through the death of our species we will give the gift of life to others. It should be noted nonetheless that our proposal for the global
suicide of humanity is based upon the notion that such a radical action needs to be voluntary and not forced. In this sense, and given the likelihood of such an action
it operates as a thought experiment which may help humans to radically rethink what it
means to participate in modern, moral life within the natural world. In other words, whether or
not the act of global suicide takes place might well be irrelevant. What is more important is
the form of critical reflection that an individual needs to go through before coming to the
conclusion that the global suicide of humanity is an action that would be worthwhile. The
point then of a thought experiment that considers the argument for the global suicide of
humanity is the attempt to outline an anti-humanist, or non-human-centric ethics. Such an ethics
not being agreed upon,
attempts to take into account both sides of the human heritage: the capacity to carry out violence and inflict harm and the capacity to use moral reflection and creative
social organisation to minimise violence and harm. Through the idea of global suicide such an ethics reintroduces a central question to the heart of moral reflection:
To what extent is the value of the continuation of human life worth the total harm inflicted
upon the life of all others? Regardless of whether an individual finds the idea of global
suicide abhorrent or ridiculous, this question remains valid and relevant and will not go
away, no matter how hard we try to forget, suppress or repress it. Finally, it is important to note that such a
standpoint need not fall into a version of green or eco-fascism that considers other forms of life more important than the lives of humans. Such a position merely
replicates in reverse the speciesism of modern humanist thought. Any choice between the eco-fascist and the humanist, colonial-speciesist is thus a forced choice and
is, in reality, a non-choice that should be rejected. The point of proposing the idea of the global suicide of humanity is rather to help identify the way in which we
Hence the idea of global
suicide, through its radicalism, challenges an ideological or culturally dominant idea of lifevalue. Further, through confronting humanist ethics with its own violence against the nonhuman, the idea of global suicide opens up a space for dialectical reflection in which the
utopian ideals of both modern humanist and anti-humanist ethics may be comprehended in
relation to each other. One possibility of this conflict is the production of a differing standpoint from which to understand the subject and the scope
differentially value different forms of life and guide our moral actions by rigidly adhered to standards of life-value.
of moral action. From the outset, global suicide throws into question the linkage between life-value and the subject of moral action. It proposes a moral question, the
first moral question, which must accompany every human action:
to others?
Is my life, and its perpetuation, worth the denial of life
Prediction - Social Soles
Social solves – Huberman Asur:
-Using media sites like twitter and facebook
-crowdsourcing techniques pointed question generates surveyed response w/ accurateness
-ev says it outperforms artificial information markets
Plan’s not sufficient---absent federal subsidies, prediction markets will stay limited
to entertainment topics---their author
John O. McGinnis 13, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern, 2013,
Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology, p. 73
bad laws alone are not responsible for the paucity of public policy prediction markets.
Even in nations like Ireland where such markets are legal, markets generally have been focused on
entertainment issues such as predicting Oscar winners and horse races of both the equine and electoral kind. Conditional
markets that benefit public policy are relatively few . This development is also not surprising. Simple
markets that concern celebrities and election results are likely to attract broader public
interest.62 A larger stream of visitors helps the online gambling sites earn additional
revenue from advertising. Events like winning an Oscar or an election are also easy to reduce to a contract. Bettors would
be deterred from markets on the long-term effects of public policy , because in the interim
they would lose the time value of money. Yet public policy markets, particularly conditional ones, help generate better
But
information about policy effects of great significance to democracy in a manner that can catch citizens' attention. As a result, they provide a
public good whose greater production society should support to a larger extent than the market supplies.61 The
federal government
should thus undertake a program of subsidizing these markets . It should do so in an experimental way, seeking to
find the market designs that are most accurate and the circumstances in which markets will be most useful.
Prediction Markets 2NC – Fails
Peer Review key to science – only the turn solves the aff
Scott, visiting fellow at Separations Process Research Unit ‘07
(Allister Scott, January 29 2007 Science Direct “Peer Review and the relevance of science” http://bscwapp1.ethz.ch/pub/bscw.cgi/d448195/Scott2007_peer_review_Futures.pdf 6/25/11 BLG)
Peer review is not only a routine component of the scientific role, but it is also fundamental to
the institution of science, defended as symbol and guarantor of the autonomy of science. Thus
peer review is built so deeply into the brickwork of science that many refuse to examine and
improve it, fearing that any significant change would weaken the entire edifice. In some minds,
to question peer review is to question science itselfSince this thought from Chubin and Hackett—
and possibly for the reasons they identify—we do not seem to have made much progress in studying
the practice of peer review. My investigations of the procurement of ‘relevant’ science have led me
inexorably to the topic of peer review, and to some critical perspectives on how peer review, as usually
practised, influences the priorities and decision-making processes of researchers and research
organisations. The question of how science can be made more relevant to the needs of society is
increasingly central in science-policy debate. Yet many of these discussions approach the question
from the outside, as it were, preferring to leave the workings of science itself untouched; the focus is
on the role of ‘technology transfer’, ‘intermediaries’ and ‘dissemination’. In this article, I want to
explore the inner workings of science by investigating its central decision-making tool: peer review.
Peer review plays a significant role in many of the key moments in science, as it is the main form of
decision-making around: who receives money to do what science; who gets to publish in the scientific
literature; and which individual scientists are selected and promoted within research institutions. Peer
review is also the core tool used in various methods aimed at evaluating scientific institutions
themselves:
Prediction markets are no better than experts.
Leonhardt 12 - Managing editor of a new New York Times website covering politics and policy,
scheduled to begin in 2014. (David, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/sunday-review/when-thecrowd-isnt-wise.html, When the Crowd Isn’t Wise, July 7th 2012) NAR
IN the days leading up to the Supreme Court’s health care decision, rumors began to
circulate in Washington that the justices had decided to uphold the law. Liberals around town who
might have reason to know the outcome seemed happy, according to the gossip, and a couple of conservative justices had seemed angry when the
court met three days before the announcement. On the eve of the ruling, a few respected court watchers went so far as to predict publicly that the
law would be upheld. It is impossible to know how much of the gossip sprang from actual information. Several dozen people — the justices, their
clerks, other members of the court staff — did indeed know the outcome in advance. Although they have a record of discretion exceeding even
that of some parts of the national security apparatus, they are human. They have friends and relatives, and they have emotions. With the rumors
swirling, I began to check the odds at Intrade, the
online prediction market where people can bet on real-world events, several
to show about a 75 percent chance that the law’s
so-called mandate would be ruled unconstitutional, right up until the morning it was ruled constitutional. The
market — the wisdom of crowds — turned out to be wrong. I have since come to think of the
court’s ruling as the signature example of the counterattack of the insiders. After the better part of a
times a day. The odds had barely budged. They continued
decade in which various markets, from Intrade to the stock market, became many people’s preferred way to peer into the future, a backlash is
clearly under way. Not so long ago, knowing about the existence of Intrade was a mark of being in the vanguard. Today, mocking Intrade, ideally
on Twitter, is a sign of sophistication. This development matters because predictions matter. They allow government officials, corporate
executives and citizens to plan for the future. They are an unavoidable part of life. The rise of prediction markets started in the middle of the last
decade, brought about by a combination of politics, psychology and technology. The politics came mostly from the aftermath of the Iraq war,
when the collective, pro-invasion opinion of Washington experts came to look tragically wrongheaded. The psychology came from a barrage of
research, often called behavioral economics, that created a science of human foibles. People
were systematically too
confident, the research found. They put too much weight on information they liked and too
little on data that contradicted their assumptions. The only good alternative to a few flawed
opinions, some researchers argued, was a vast number of flawed opinions. The biases often
canceled one another out. The legitimate information rose to the surface. It was the wisdom
of crowds, as the writer James Surowiecki called his 2004 book. The Internet made collecting the wisdom of crowds vastly easier than
before. Intrade, Betfair and other British and Irish betting sites became the public face of prediction markets. Google and other companies started
their own internal prediction markets to help them make decisions about where to invest. The
Pentagon planned one, to
track threats, before deciding it did not like the image of American officials making bets
about war and famine. The early successes of prediction markets were notable. To take a small personal example, my wife and I, not
exactly frequent moviegoers, twice won money in a large Oscars pool simply by hewing to the British odds. Much more significantly, Intrade
was a more reliable guide to the 2006 midterm election than cable networks. On election night, its odds showed that the Democrats had become
the favorites to retake the Senate, while television commentators were still telling viewers it was unlikely.
But the crowd was not
everywhere wise . For one thing, many of the betting pools on Intrade and Betfair attract relatively few traders, in part because using
them legally is cumbersome. (No, I do not know from experience.) The thinness of these markets can cause them to adjust too slowly to new
information. And there is this: If
the circle of people who possess information is small enough — as with the
selection of a vice president or pope or, arguably, a decision by the Supreme Court — the crowds may not have much
wisdom to impart. “There is a class of markets that I think are basically pointless,” says Justin
Wolfers, an economist whose research on prediction markets, much of it with Eric Zitzewitz of Dartmouth, has made him mostly a fan of them.
“There is no widely available public information.” These flaws have become fodder for the markets’ critics. On the
day of the health care ruling, the widely read financial writers Barry Ritholtz, Felix Salmon and David Wessel all took to Twitter to point out that
Intrade looked bad. Tony Fratto, a former aide to President George W. Bush, noted his “real glee” that “Intrade was wrong, again.” But such
schadenfreude raises a question: once you accept that prediction markets are flawed, do
you turn back to the inside experts? ALAS, the experts’ overall record remains as poor as the
behavioral economists maintained — and often worse than the markets’ record. Mutual fund managers, as a class, lose their
clients’ money because they do not outperform the market and charge fees for their mediocrity. Sports pundits have a dismal
record of predicting games relative to the Las Vegas odds, which are just another market price. As imperfect as
prediction markets are in forecasting elections, they have at least as good a recent record as polls. Or consider the housing bubble:
both the market and most experts missed it . The answer, I think, is to take the best of what both experts and markets
have to offer, realizing that the combination of the two offers a better window onto the future than either alone. Markets are at their
best when they can synthesize large amounts of disparate information, as on an election night.
Experts are most useful when a system exists to identify the most truly knowledgeable — a
system that often resembles a market. Sometimes, this approach involves a wisdom-of-crowds approach to experts. My colleague Nate Silver,
whose book on prediction comes out later this year, has found that a simple average of well-known economic forecasts is substantially more
accurate than individual forecasts. Other times, the approach might involve as much art as science — and, again, the Internet allows for strategies
that once would have been impossible. Think for a moment about what a Twitter feed is: it’s a personalized market of experts (and friends), in
which you can build your own focus group and listen to its collective analysis about the past, present and future. An RSS feed, in which you
choose blogs to read, works similarly. You make decisions about which experts are worthy of your attention, based both on your own judgments
about them and on other experts’ judgments. Their predictions now face a market discipline that did not always exist before the Internet came
along. “Experts exist,” as Mr. Wolfers says, “but they’re not necessarily the same as the guys on TV.” After several years in which the market
was often celebrated as a crystal ball, the Supreme Court ruling was a useful corrective.
like so many others, initially
well.
The prediction-market revolution,
promised more than it could deliver . But it’s not as if the old order was working particularly
WTO
B. gradually builds to a stronger global trade system
Brkic 13, Economics Prof at U of Sarajevo (Snježana, 3/25, Regional Trading Arrangements –
Stumbling Blocks or Building Blocks in the Process of Global Trade Liberalization?,
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239275)
There are over 180 independent states in the modern world, most of which differ enormously in
economic development and power. World economy is therefore a battlefield of varied interests
expressed in the action of different national economic policies. In such conditions, attempts to
integrate world economy by global liberalization of international trade cannot yield significant
results overnight. Global free trade is considered the first best solution, but is not feasible
immediately and at once, since too many people believe that they would lose with global
liberalization. According to the view believed to be optimistic, creation of international economic
integrations could be a distinctive inter-step in the process of free world market creation. Lester
Thurow points out: "In the long run, regionalism development could be favorable for the world. Free
trade within regions and regulated trade between regions could be the proper road to free world
trade in a long term. The shift from national to world economy at once would be too big a jump.
One should first make a few smaller inter-steps, and pseudo-trading blocs coupled with regulated
trade could be such a necessary inter-step." The essential rationale of this view is actually the
speed of reforms - the gradual versus “big bang” approach. Many contemporary economists, in
their analyses of world economy trends, conclude that political forces behind regional integration
show signs of consistency with those acting towards global world trade. According to the
optimistic view, the multilateralization process is slowed down by different standpoints on the free
trade usefulness, by economic nationalisms, even by varying political interests, and therefore
another way had to be found in order to achieve the world market integration – a slower one, but
more effective in the existing constellation of international economic relations. This view denies
the opposition between regionalism and multilateralism, and explains it as follows: Since integration
improves economic relations between members through removing trading and other barriers, and since all
these integrated regions are part of the world territory, the advancement of economic relations within
regions can be understood as the advancement of global economic relations. Regional trading, i.e.
economic blocs would in this case be only a bypass towards the creation of unified world market. "...
What could not be achieved in global relations was achieved within regions, through
multilateralization of the European economic area. These achievements were later followed by many
countries in other world regions, in their mutual relations practice. Practically, we thus got regional
multilateralisms." Regionalism advocates also point out that the formation of economic integrations could
facilitate the pending WTO negotiation rounds. Actually, the Uruguay round was partly protracted due to
a great number of participants and the "free riders" issue. Viewed in broader context, one could say that
regionalism contributes to overall globalization as well, since these are processes motivated from
the same source. Both regionalism and globalization are driven by big capital interests, and that these
two phenomena are actually ways to make the centuries-long capitalism aspiration – unified
world market - come true. According to this view, the globalization process as a process of world
economy functional integration under the circumstances of imperfect market and hegemony weakening
early in the 20th century has to be supported by the institutional component, either on a multilateral basis
through international organizations and institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO, or on
regional scale through regional trading arrangements.
LINK
Lack of US trade leadership collapsing the WTO, causes shift to RTAs
Huang, Professor Law Wuhan University, ’11 (Zhixiong- Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law
School, “Rise and Fall of Trade Multilateralism: A Proposal for “WTO à la Carte” as an Alternative
Approach for Trade Negotiations” Front Law China, Vol 6 No 1, p 35-43, SpringerLink)
It has to be admitted that the crisis that the WTO currently faces is of a systematic nature, arising
out of a number of factors. For example, the waning public support for multilateral trade liberalization
and hence the lack of leadership on the part of major developed countries, the imbalance between
the political and judicial branches of the WTO, the energies devoted to and challenges of regionalism, to
varying degrees, are all responsible for the status quo. However, one of the root problems for the
WTO is that its governance structure failed to address the diverse needs and preferences of its
members in the new international trade environment of 21st century. Contrary to the purpose of fully
involving developing countries into the negotiation package of the Uruguay Round, the US and the EU
has led the MTS to the direction that can be characterized by “one size for all.” Unfortunately, it has not
strengthened the multilateral trading system, but rather has weakened it. To be sure, it should not be
underestimated that in the light of the stricter consensus decision-making rule, the single
undertaking principle has increasingly become a “trouble-maker” for the WTO. In view of the
frequent stalemate in the multilateral trading system, countries now tend to negotiate with “likeminded” groups and enter into Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) at regional or bilateral level.
To a large extent, it accounts for the relative “rise and fall” between regionalism and
multilateralism.
Loss of faith in multilateral trade causes shift to regional agreements
Benini, Professor Economics University of Bologna, and Plummer, Professor International
Economics Johns Hopkins University, ‘8 (Roberta and Michael, December, “Regionalism and
multilateralism: crucial issues in the debate on RTAs” Econ Change Restruct, Vol 41, p 267-287)
Disillusionment with progress at Doha may be one additional reason for the proliferation of
regional agreements in Asia and the rest of the world, particularly accords between developed and
developing countries. The ambitious agenda of Doha, from both developed- and developing-country
viewpoints, could be more easily managed bilaterally or between a small group of countries—e.g.,
regional areas—than in an organization of 151 highly-divergent economies: what is needed to
integrate global markets further, from non-tariff barriers to non-border issues, might go beyond the
WTO’ scopes and capacity. In some ways, the supposed ‘‘North-South’’ conflict at the WTO is a sign
of maturity.
UQ
Softbalancing turn is real - countries will point out hypocracy and undercut the
United States at every step which tanks their ability to access a broader I/L to WTO
solvency - Nat-Gas and REM are a unique instance in the context of the aff.
Johnson, geopolitics and energy expert at Foreign Policy, ‘14
(Keith, “Unfair Trade,” 3-26-14, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/26/unfair_trade,
accessed 9-24-14) PM
The World Trade Organization ruled Wednesday that China broke trade rules by limiting the export of rare-earth metals in recent years, handing a victory to the
United States, Japan, and other countries that have long accused Beijing of giving Chinese firms a powerful advantage over their foreign rivals by hoarding minerals
essential to the manufacture of smartphones, solar panels, and batteries for hybrid and electric cars. In making formal a ruling that was first hinted at last fall, the
WTO brushed aside China's claims that environmental concerns had forced it to restrict the sales of materials such as lithium and tungsten. The ruling will cheer
lawmakers and free-trade advocates in the United States, who have for years warned that China's decision to keep many of the minerals for itself was threatening
the WTO
ruling, by slapping down limits on raw-material exports, could also have profound
implications for the debate over whether or not to export part of the U.S. energy bounty.
That's because the WTO said that countries can't limit exports just to ensure preferential access to
American businesses and national security by raising manufacturing costs and imperiling access to materials vital to the defense industry. But
raw materials for domestic industries. At issue is China's dominance in the mining, processing, and export of a class of minerals known as rare earths, which are used
in everything from computer monitors to missile guidance systems. China controls more than 85 percent of the global market, down from 97 percent a few years ago.
Once a relatively obscure, if not geologically rare, group of minerals with exotic names such as neodymium and yttrium, rare earths became increasingly important in
recent years due to the massive growth of consumer electronics, advanced defense applications, and clean-energy products. Each advanced wind turbine today, for
example, uses about 650 kilograms of neodymium; the roller-coaster in supply and demand for neodymium has sent prices skyrocketing and reeling in recent years.
The WTO ruled today on complaints filed by the United States, European Union, and Japan in 2012. The complaints alleged that Chinese export duties and export
China
had argued that it was entitled, under WTO rules, to limit the production and export of rare earths
on environmental grounds and in order to preserve a limited resource. Not so, said the WTO, which ruled
that "China's export quotas were designed to achieve industrial policy goals rather than
conservation." China's Ministry of Commerce, in a statement emailed to a variety of Western news organizations, said it was "currently assessing the panel
quotas amounted to unfair trading practices by essentially subsidizing Chinese manufacturers at the expense of American, European, and Japanese rivals.
report and will follow the WTO dispute settlement procedures to settle this dispute." According to WTO rules, Beijing has 60 days to decide if it wants to proceed
with an appeal. The Obama administration, by contrast, was quick to cheer the ruling. Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative, said Washington "will continue
to defend American manufacturers and workers, especially when it comes to leveling the playing field and ensuring that American manufacturers can get the materials
The trade organization ruled that
countries cannot restrict the export of globally-important commodities, especially if that
involves a deliberate policy of making life easier for domestic firms that rely on those materials while
they need at a fair market price." The White House might want to hold off on the champagne, though.
disadvantaging foreign rivals. In the Chinese rare earths case, the WTO found that "the overall effect of the foreign and domestic restrictions is to encourage domestic
extraction and secure preferential use of those materials by Chinese manufacturers," in apparent violation of Article XX(g) of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs
That could be a double-edged sword for the U.S. Substitute
"natural gas" for rare earth minerals, and "U.S. manufacturers" for Chinese
manufacturers, and Washington's could find itself subject to trade complaints of its own,
and with a weakened ability to go after trading partners that break the rules. Under current U.S. law,
and Trade, the precursor to the trade organization.
companies seeking to export natural gas to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement require several layers of government approval,
Manufacturers who benefit from cheap
and abundant supplies of natural gas at home, notably Dow Chemical, have lobbied against exports.
a cumbersome and time-consuming process that limits the potential scope of gas exports.
Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed to the Chinese trade dispute to underscore that export restrictions fall afoul of the United
States' traditional free-trade stance. "In the last two years, the United States has challenged Chinese restrictions on raw materials exports at the WTO," he told a House
If the United States were to block exports,
or restrict them only to friends or NATO allies, that would undermine its ability to challenge other
countries' restrictions and to uphold a global, open trading system."
foreign affairs panel examining the geopolitical implications of U.S. energy exports. "
US hyprocracy guarantees a plurilateral world.
Vezirgiannidou, 13 - Lecturer in International Organizations, University of Birmingham (SEVASTIELENI, “The United States and rising powers in a post-hegemonic global order,” International Affairs,
May, Wiley Online)
The current US approach to rising powers, which engages them as equals in informal forums with little ‘hard’ law
capabilities, while being passive or hesitant in reforming international institutions where it has a primary
role (and a veto), exemplifies its own commitment to sovereignty and freedom of action in international
politics. The US is just as reluctant as the BRICS to be bound by hard law commitments. It
also indicates a lukewarm commitment to sharing its power with rising powers in hard law institutions. Some of this reluctance may be
attributable to the constraints of congressional politics (and American exemptionalism); its strength can also depend on who sits in the White
House and who his advisers are.118 Irrespective of the cause, this reluctance
to share power formally while
promoting multilateralism in informal settings is likely to have transformative implications
on global order if it continues.¶ Specifically, the resulting order will become more plurilateral
than multilateral, with the exclusion of minor powers and most decision-making moving into forums like the G20. It will also shift to
more ‘soft law’ policy­making, as informal institutions will be less intrusive on sovereignty but also less able to move far beyond political
declarations followed up on a voluntary basis. Finally, it
is also likely to be more fragmented, as each power
establishes a ‘sphere of influence’ in its region. This kind of order will not necessarily be
more unstable, but even in such an order the US will have to accept some limits to its exercise of power abroad; it will not, though, be
limited in its domestic policies, thus satisfying the exemptionalists in Congress. However, US policy-makers should be aware of the direction in
which their current choices are moving global order; if they do not desire such an order, they should question their strategy towards both rising
and minor powers and should show more leadership in the reform of formal institutions.
1NR
Impact
TPA turns trade
Adam Behsudi 1-2, trade reporter for POLITICO Pro, former reporter on international trade policy for
Inside U.S. Trade, “Trade's big breakout”, 1-2-15, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/trade-outlook2015-113793.html
Trade supporters consider the bill vital to ushering the Asia-Pacific trade talks toward
their conclusion because it would give other countries the confidence to resolve major
outstanding issues — such as access to medicines in developing nations, environmental protections and Japanese agricultural and U.S.
auto tariffs — without having to worry that any hard-won concessions could be picked apart by
congressional amendment.¶ Bilateral talks between the U.S. and Japan on the tariffs issue have proved particularly troublesome
for the larger deal. In a breakthrough last month, Tokyo proposed more meaningful tariff cuts on U.S. beef, pork and dairy products, but the
negotiations have since stalled again over the United States’ refusal to meet Japan’s demands for lower auto parts tariffs. ¶ “They’re
kind
of stuck because nobody’s sure where the U nited S tates ’ bottom lines are ,” Miller said. “I think that’s
the reason to get TPA, so all our trading partners know where the Congress’ bottom line is,
and at that point you conclude pretty quickly .Ӧ The first six months of the year will be a
critical window for finishing up the talks given the tight timeline, officials from the TPP countries have
said. Even if the pact gets signed, it will still have to go through a legal scrubbing and translation before a bill to ratify the deal can be
introduced.¶ That could mean that the implementing legislation would have to be drafted over the August recess with a view to getting the bill to
a vote before Thanksgiving, a former Senate Democratic aide speculated. ¶ “If
people are motivated to finish, they could
do it really, really quickly assuming they got the votes,” the former aide said, adding that “the timing that the
administration and others are talking about strikes me as incredibly aggressive, but maybe not impossible.” ¶ In 2011, the House and Senate were
able to pass bills ratifying the deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama in a single day, the aide noted. But those agreements had been
concluded in 2006 and 2007 under President George W. Bush’s administration and had a number of provisions renegotiated before the Obama
administration brought them to Congress for a vote.¶ Aside from infusing the Asia-Pacific talks with new momentum, the
fast-track
legislation could serve as a vehicle for packaging other trade bills that have languished on
their own.¶ A “trade omnibus” could include a renewal of the Generalized System of Preferences, which cut tariffs on goods from
developing countries and expired in July 2013, and the Miscellaneous Tariff Bill, which would provide manufacturers with duty-free access to
parts and supplies as long as domestic industry isn’t opposed and is considered an earmark by some Republicans. ¶ Business groups also would
like a broader trade package to include legislation to overhaul customs procedures. ¶ “ TPA
is the big vehicle ,” said the former Senate
aide. “It’s clear to me that they want to try to do it really early in the new Congress and the
question is whether they can come together on a deal.”
UQ
Acting now to get both parties fast
Needham, 2/4/15 (Vicki, “Ryan predicts passage of bipartisan trade promotion authority bill,”
http://thehill.com/policy/finance/231809-ryan-predicts-passage-of-bipartisan-trade-promotion-authoritybill, JMP)
A top Republican said Wednesday that he expects Congress to pass trade promotion authority (TPA) legislation this
spring.
Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters that, with President Obama’s
help, the House and the Senate can pass a TPA measure with bipartisan support.
To that end, Ryan and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio), chairman of the Subcommittee on Trade, praised
the White House’s ramped up efforts to generate more support among Democrats .
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul
"These are enormous issues that speak to the future of our country and I do believe it's good for the political system that we deliver some
common ground and we get some things done," he said.
Ryan said he "wouldn’t begin to try" to pass TPA with just Republicans votes because "I want it to be bipartisan."
For their part, the two lawmakers plan to build up support within the Republican caucus
for TPA.
They will hold what Ryan called "listening sessions" — similar to the dozens he held while chairman of the Budget committee — to educate their
caucus and clear out any misconceptions about trade.
Tiberi said that he wants to squash the idea that with fast-track Congress would be giving the president the authority to do something that he
doesn’t already have the power to do.
"What we are doing is putting the congressional stamp on what the White House already has the ability to do, negotiate trade deals," he said.
As far as timing, Ryan wouldn't provide specifics of when a fast-track bill would be ready to debut.
But said he is
well aware of the constraints of the calendar with TPA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) now moving along similar timing tracks.
"It going to happen soon, and we’ve got to get moving,” Ryan said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has expressed a similar eagerness to
get a TPA bill introduced soon, and he has said legislation could be ready sometime after
the Presidents Day recess later this month.
Quick passage likely
Reuters 2/19/15 (“U.S. lawmaker sees fast-track trade power soon in step towards trade pact,”
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-lawmaker-sees-fast-track-trade-power-soon-in-step-towards-tradepact-2015-2, NAR)
The chairman of a U.S. congressional committee responsible for trade said on Thursday he expects passage of
legislation to fast-track trade deals soon, a vital step towards a Pacific trade pact covering a large chunk of the global economy.
Negotiators from 12 Pacific nations hope to conclude talks on a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) within months, and House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said legislation known as trade promotion authority ( TPA)
should pass soon , easing a major
hurdle. "We're very close, we're in the 11th hour of negotiating the final pieces of TPA ," Ryan, in Tokyo with
a Congressional delegation for negotiations, told a news conference ahead of a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. " Once
those negotiations are wrapped up we anticipate moving ... fairly quickly , and that's really this spring," he said.
Will pass – GOP on board and Obama using PC to secure centrist Democrats –
results in TPP and TTIP passage
Hadar, The Business Times Singapore, 2-18-15 (Leon, former research fellow with the Cato
Institute, contributing editor for The American Conservative and a regular contributor to Chronicles and
Reason and a regular blogger on the Huffington Post, Ph.D. from the School of International Service
(SIS) at American University, “Obama faces battle over trade deals,” lexis)
DEBATE over US global trade policy make for strange political bedfellows. So as Washington prepares for another of those debates - this time
over the proposed trade deals with 11 Asia-Pacific countries and the 28-nation European Union (EU) - the political and legislative showdown is
not going to be between the two long-time bitter foes, Democratic President Barack Obama and the Republican congressional leaders. Instead,
in the coming clash over whether to give the green light to President Obama to conclude
negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), leading
the fight against more free trade would be an axis of left-wing protectionists and right-wing
populists who say that these deals only advance the interests of America's political and economic elites and hurt most Americans. This
alliance of progressive Democrats and Tea-Party Republicans would face off a powerful
pro-free trade coalition consisting of the White House and the Republican Party
establishment that agree that deals with the economies that account for about two-thirds of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) will
help advance America's global economic interests and create new and well-paying American jobs. Hence, the president and his
new GOP pals are expected to mobilise their enormous resources to ensure that Congress
would approve the TPP and the TTIP before the end of 2015. Indeed, President Obama and his
top aides have joined forces with Republican leaders - like the new Republican chairman of the powerful House of
Representatives' Ways and Means Committee, Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin - to launch a major legislative
campaign aimed at winning the support of the majority of lawmakers in both houses for
the passage of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) aka "fast track" as soon as possible. If lawmakers refuse to grant
President Obama the TPA, which gives Congress an up-and-down vote on any trade deal, the White House would
not be able to complete the trade pacts with the Asia-Pacific nations and the EU since the US trade
partners recognise that without a "fast track" they could end up negotiating those deals
with every member of the House and the Senate. At the same time, if the majority of lawmakers
do agree to pass the TPA in the coming weeks or months, that would mean that not only will the
White House be able to conclude the negotiations over the TPP and the TTIP, but that
those two accords would in all likelihood be approved by Congress. Or to put it another way, a
lawmaker who votes for the TPA is expected to vote for the TPP and the TTIP. The
conventional wisdom until recently has been that with the support of the pro-business
Republicans who now control both the House and the Senate, President Obama would be able
to overcome the main obstacle to his global trade agenda: The majority of the members of
his own party in Congress. Reflecting the interests of their allies in the labour unions and the environmental movement and
committed to their common anti-globalisation ideology, these Democrats have made it clear that they would oppose the two proposed largest
free-trade accords in history that they contend will make it easier to send US jobs to countries with deficient labour and environment standards.
They want to see the enactment of "fair trade" legislation that would force these countries to change their labour and environmental laws. But
the White House and the Republican leadership have growing concerns that a large
number of Republicans of the Tea Party persuasion - like Walter Jones from North Carolina and Duncan Hunter
from California - are not going to support granting the TPA and cede Congress' constitutional
authority over trade to their despised "socialist" adversary occupying the White House. They
just don't trust him and aren't going to give him more power. So these Republicans are now working together with the Democrats, hoping that
they would be able to muster the 218 votes in the House they need to kill the fast-track legislation, which is expected to be introduced in a few
the main goal of President Obama should now be to persuade enough members of his
own party to join a majority of Republicans to pass the TPA . The White House and
Republican leaders are quite confident that a clear majority of Republicans and centrist
Democrats would support the TPA in the Senate, but are not so sure about the legislative
weeks. So
balance of power in the House. As of now, 16 Republicans in the House have stated that
they would vote against approving the TPA. But supporters of "fast track" believe that they
could win the backing of between 25 and 50 centrist Democrats in the House which could
help neutralise the votes of Republican opponents . The White House, led by United State Trade
Representative Michael Froman, has been trying to persuade wavering Democrats that the TPP
includes provisions aimed at raising labour and environmental standards in the AsiaPacific region and will create a powerful regional trade bloc that would provide
Washington with more leverage during future trade negotiations with China (which will not be a
member of the TPP).
Their ev just quotes a couple vocal holdouts—we assume it
Behsudi, 1/20/15 (Adam, “Left, right mobilize against Obama's trade push,”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/obama-trade-push-criticism-114346.html, JMP)
of the rhetoric against Obama’s trade agenda has come largely from the most
liberal members of the Democratic Caucus.
Still, most
On Jan. 8, DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Ellison (D-Minn.) led a group of liberal Democrats in launching what they claim is the largest coalition of
labor, environmental and other left-leaning groups ever to mobilize against a trade bill. Stopping the fast-track measure would derail the TPP
agreement, which they say would cause jobs to hemorrhage and the trade deficit to balloon as manufacturers shift to cheaper production in
developing nations, they say.
“There is no way in the world I can support fast track abdicating my responsibility, my authority as a member of Congress without being very
clear on every single comma in the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Ellison, who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said at the rally.
Meanwhile, 19 conservative Republicans warned their party leadership in a letter last month against trying to pass the legislation in the lame-duck
session, saying at least 60 lawmakers wouldn’t be returning to Congress and therefore wouldn’t be accountable to the public for their votes. The
group, which now numbers 16 following three retirements at the end of the last Congress, signaled their permanent ideological opposition to the
bill and “habitual abuses of power of this President.”
“It is evident from the outcome of this month’s elections that any efforts to grant TPA to the President during a Lame Duck session would be
harmful to the trust that the American people just put in us at the ballot box,” the letter said.
Despite their vocal opposition, it’s unclear whether the liberals and tea party conservatives
will be able to squeak by with a defeat of the legislation.
“When you take an honest, sober look at the numbers, there really isn’t a credible way to
argue that TPA opponents will have much success in blocking this effort,” one U.S. official
told POLITICO. “That said, trade supporters are taking nothing for granted.”
Influential conservative groups like the Club for Growth and Heritage Action back most of the White House’s trade plans, and some tea party
darlings have already voiced support for the trade agenda.
“I am a full-throated advocate of free trade,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters this month. “Free trade benefits America, produces jobs,
produces economic growth and it is good for our country.”
Trade proponents across the aisle say they’re are counting on support from 25 to 40 of the
188 House Democrats, mostly from the moderate, 46-member New Democrat Coalition.
Said one Democratic aide: “The important thing is, this is a fringe group of legislators coming out and saying
this right now. The bigger question is, what is the impact this is all having?”
The answer so far seems to be not much. The same day that DeLauro and her 16 fellow
Democrats announced their efforts to kill the trade legislation, House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi said her party’s stance on trade is not a foregone conclusion.
“I don’t know that most people in our caucus have made up their minds,” the California Democrat
said when asked about the legislation at a press conference. “Many have, yeah, but what they have made up their minds to
is that they want to see transparency. They want to see consultation. They want to see
fairness. They want to see what this means to the American paycheck.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told New Democrats in a closed-door meeting earlier
this month that Pelosi has occasionally backed trade, and that her support shouldn’t be out
of the question this time around, a Democratic aide said.
To that end, the administration is giving members its best environmental and labor pitch,
saying new standards under the deal will be fully enforceable — something that Pelosi has fought for in past
agreements.
“TPP will be the most progressive trade agreement in history, breaking new ground on labor and environmental protections,” a USTR spokesman
said. “We are going to be making that case to Congress and the American people.”
artners in the negotiation,” he said.
Link
Plan requires a fight with Dems --- Adelson is employing a bipartisan campaign to
fight online gambling
Hamburger, 14 (5/8/2014, Tom, The Washington Post, “ Bipartisan campaign gives boost to
Adelson,” Factiva, JMP)
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, waging a new campaign to ban Internet gambling, is
deploying a state-level political network he has been quietly developing over the past few
years.
Adelson became a political force in 2012 when he poured more than $90 million into Republican
presidential campaigns.
But less noted at the time was Adelson's largesse in Florida, where he contributed hundreds of thousands
of dollars to political committees supportive of Gov. Rick Scott (R). Adelson also gave $2 million to the
Republican Governors Association and directed millions more to candidates for attorney general and
other state-level offices across the country.
Many of the beneficiaries of Adelson's state donations are now siding with the billionaire as
he seeks to outlaw a practice he views as a threat to the economic health of the casino industry on which
he built his fortune.
Scott, who is facing a competitive reelection campaign this year, sent a letter late last month to
congressional leaders at Adelson's request calling on lawmakers to prevent states from
legalizing Internet betting, saying the practice lets gambling "invade the homes of every American
family, and be piped in to our dens, living rooms, workplaces and even our kids bedrooms and dorm
rooms."
The efforts by Adelson, who has vowed to play a big role in boosting another Republican for the White
House in 2016, reveal the unusual role being played by the GOP mega-donor as he balances a largely
conservative ideological agenda with his business interests. In doing so, he has triggered what may
become one of the costliest lobbying battles of the year, in Washington and state capitals, as he combats
rival gambling companies favoring a move to the Internet.
The expanding debate has prompted Adelson to add Democrats to his orbit of influence.
In recent months, he hired two well-connected California Democrats - former state House
speaker Fabian Núñez and longtime party strategist Chris Lehane - as he opposes a bill in
Sacramento that would legalize Internet gambling. They join other prominent Democrats
on Adelson's payroll, including former senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and former Denver mayor
Wellington Webb.
The bipartisan coalition is designed to help Adelson, who controls Las Vegas Sands Corp., resist
a push by rivals such as MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment to sell state
legislators and governors on the expansion of gambling online as a potentially lucrative source
of tax revenue. Adelson and his team are shaping an aggressive counteroffensive, with
television ads and high-priced lobbyists, to argue that Web-based gambling would hurt
children, invite criminal activity and produce little actual revenue for the states.
Adelson is "playing three levels of chess," Lehane said in an e-mail, including "mapping the
terrain to determine who are the key players; assembling the right team that is purple in
terms of overall blend; and focused on the disciplined bi-partisan/non-partisan message of
kids safety."
The letter sent last month by Scott was a blow to Internet gambling proponents, who see Florida as a
potentially large market for the industry and had begun talks with some lawmakers about pushing
legislation in Tallahassee.
But Adelson, who has expressed interest in opening a large casino in Miami, forged a rapport with Scott.
Between 2010 and 2012, Adelson contributed $750,000 to committees supporting Scott and his political
agenda, according to Florida campaign finance records. That included a $250,000 contribution to the
Republican Governors Association PAC in Florida, made in September 2010, just before Scott's election,
and two additional $250,000 contributions in June 2012 - one to the Republican Party of Florida and the
other to Let's Get to Work, Scott's independent political action committee.
A spokesman for Scott declined to comment on his relationship with Adelson.
The same phrasing used in Scott's letter appeared word for word in letters signed a few weeks earlier by
two other Republican governors, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas.
More support came in a newspaper op-ed written earlier this year by Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.), who helped
lead the RGA when Adelson made his $2 million donation to the group.
Then, last week, Gov. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) formally expressed his opposition. Like Jindal and Perry,
Pence has received Adelson's financial support - at least indirectly - in the past, and he might be after it
again. All three are contemplating running for president in 2016.
"A federal prohibition of Internet gambling is necessary," Pence wrote in a letter to the Indiana
congressional delegation last week. "Otherwise the ability of states like Indiana to prevent and control
Internet gambling within its borders, despite our best efforts, will be greatly diminished."
Legalization advocates, who argue that technological safeguards can protect children and ensure an
aboveboard industry, have established their own well-funded organization in Washington, the Coalition
for Consumer and Online Protection. The group hired former House Financial Services chairman Michael
G. Oxley (R-Ohio) and former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina as consultants. One offshore
betting site, PokerStars, has hired former House Democratic leader Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) to lobby.
Three states - New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware - have authorized online betting.
Casino executives generally applauded in April 2011 when the Justice Department cracked down on the
online poker market, closing three offshore sites in connection with allegations that they had violated the
2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.
More recently, though, amid a decline in revenues for U.S. casinos and an increase in global interest in
online betting, the old consensus among the leading casinos has crumbled.
But Adelson, 80, is single-handedly funding the opposition, both by hiring lobbyists and
tapping into political relationships forged through time and donations .
The federal legislation to effectively ban Internet gambling is being sponsored by an
Adelson beneficiary, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
Graham raised nearly $31,000 since 2009 from Adelson family members and Las Vegas Sands
employees, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records. Adelson and his wife also
hosted a fundraiser in Las Vegas last year for Graham.
The measure, introduced in March by Graham, was initially drafted by a Las Vegas Sands attorney,
Darryl Nirenberg, then with the Washington firm of Patton Boggs.
Graham, in a recent appearance, did not shy away from his relationship with the casino magnate, but he
rejected the idea that he came to this issue this election year because of Adelson.
"I would say that Sheldon has allied himself with most Baptists in South Carolina," Graham told reporters
recently. "The fact that Sheldon is on board is a good thing - but I am doing this because this is what my
governor, my attorney general suggested I do."
Adelson is also expanding his network to include influential religious groups whose constituencies tend to
be anti-gambling.
His coalition now includes about a dozen state chapters of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a national
alliance of Christian conservatives headed by Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian
Coalition.
Adelson has hired two former Faith and Freedom officials, including Gary Marx, a former executive
director of the organization. Marx helped build support for legislation that would outlaw Internet
gambling.
Reed gained notice for his earlier work on gambling matters during the scandal around disgraced lobbyist
Jack Abramoff. At the time, documents showed that Reed worked with Abramoff to block a proposed ban
on Internet gambling, receiving funds indirectly from eLottery, a firm marketing online lottery ticket
sales.
Reed declined to comment. Adelson advisers and a spokesman for Reed's group said Reed was not
personally involved in signing up his state affiliates.
Much of Adelson's focus is in state capitals, where his team is showcasing bipartisan bona fides not
traditionally associated with the work of a GOP billionaire.
During recent testimony before a California legislative committee in Sacramento, Adelson's top adviser,
Andy Abboud, took pains to note his agreement on the issue with one of the state's most prominent
Democrats, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She has signed on to the legislation sponsored by Graham.
"If Sheldon Adelson and Dianne Feinstein can agree on something, it's time for people to
pay attention," Abboud told the lawmakers.
In Lehane, the California-based Democratic strategist, Adelson has hired a pugnacious
advocate with deep ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton and other high-level Democrats across
the country. As a staffer in the Clinton White House, Lehane authored a famous dossier laying out the
"vast right-wing conspiracy" that had mobilized to undermine the administration.
AT Thumpers
Top priority – quick passage coming
Mauldin 2-20-15 (William, “Top Senate, House Lawmakers Nearing Deal on Trade Promotion
Authority,” http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-senate-house-lawmakers-nearing-deal-on-trade-promotionauthority-1424467559, CMR)
House and Senate negotiators are converging on a deal to ease the passage of trade agreements, a key step
in putting the divisive issue before the full Congress as the White House pursues a sweeping trade pact in Asia. The legislation,
known as trade promotion authority or fast track, comes as the Obama administration is seeking to conclude negotiations on a 12-nation Pacific
trade deal—the economic centerpiece of the president’s rebalancing of U.S. policy toward Asia. Fast track allows Congress to set negotiating
priorities for the administration and provide input, while ensuring a deal struck overseas would get a congressional vote with no amendments or
procedural delays. Fast track is popular with Republicans but has many Democratic critics. Business groups and other backers of trade
agreements say the legislation is critical to assure trading partners they won’t be asked for deeper concessions on Capitol Hill after negotiations
are complete. Aides
to congressional committee leaders Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Rep.
Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) have settled most disagreements over the legislation, say people familiar with the talks. One remaining
issue—a technical but crucial element—is how Congress would be able to remove an unacceptable trade deal from the fast track process, these
people say. Complications on that issue or others could still delay or unravel any agreement, they say. A
deal to introduce the
legislation could be reached in days , observers say, after Mr. Ryan returns from a trade-focused trip to Asia. “I’m optimistic that
it’s going to be concluded next week ,” said Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade
Council, a group backing the legislation.
2. Immigration, Keystone, and Wallstreet are already harshly divided and Dems
don’t like them, our link story swamps this because it alienates the dems working
with him now
AT Gambling Thumper
Volz is about the Wire Act and is about action in the opposite direction of our link
Dustin Volz, National Journal, 2/4/15, Congress Revives Sheldon Adelson-backed Plot to Kill Online
Gambling, www.nationaljournal.com/tech/congress-revives-sheldon-adelson-backed-plot-to-kill-onlinegambling-20150204
House lawmakers Wednesday are reintroducing a bill that would effectively ban betting sites in the U.S.
The Restoration of America's Wire Act, spearheaded by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, would "restore" a
decades-old federal ban on some gambling operations by extending it to include Internet gaming.
Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, is introducing the bill with six GOP cosponsors and the backing of one
Democrat, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. The three-page measure is the same as the one Chaffetz
introduced last year. An aide for Sen. Lindsey Graham confirmed that the South Carolina Republican also
intends to reintroduce a version of the bill, though he said a timetable was unclear. The companion bills
debuted last spring but never gained much traction. The House reintroduction renews a long-standing
fight between Internet gambling sites, brick-and-mortar casino owners, and family-values advocates.
Chaffetz told reporters Wednesday that online gambling presents a troubling family-values threat because
of the ease with which players can sign up and start betting. "Putting an app on every phone that allows
people to gamble wherever they are is not a good idea," Chaffetz said. He warned that minors can sign up
and start placing bets without their parents even noticing, calling it an "important moral argument."
Among the online ban's most influential backers is Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who—
via massive campaign contributions—wields considerable clout among Republicans. Adelson has been
vocally pushing the morality argument for years. In late 2013, the octogenarian began the Coalition to
Stop Internet Gambling, a lobbying group that formed as a growing number of statehouses across the
country were lowering restrictions on online betting. But Adelson's detractors argue that the wealthy
political donor—whose financing kept Newt Gingrich's 2012 presidential campaign afloat for months
before Adelson threw his support behind eventual GOP nominee Mitt Romney—is singularly motivated
by a desire to protect his brick-and-mortar casino empire from digital competitors. "Mr. Adelson, who is
perhaps best known for using his enormous wealth to advance a pro-war foreign policy, is now using his
political influence to turn his online competitors into criminals," former Rep. Ron Paul wrote in an op-ed
last November. Pro-gambling groups have also clashed with Adelson, accusing him of single-handedly
propping up an unpopular legislative campaign. Adelson has vowed to "spend whatever it takes" to stop
online gambling, calling it a "societal train wreck waiting to happen." Ads from his group have attempted
to link online gambling to funding terrorism.