Cap Aff SeptOct 2013

8/13/2019 Cap Aff SeptOct 2013

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AC

The standard is maximizing the quality of life.

Prefer it-

1. Aff choice-I set the framework for debate with the first speech and you shoulderr Aff because of time skew.

2. Accessibility checks back offense-every impact can be related back to its effecton quality of life.

3. Better topic education-aff standard as locus of debate allows for greatercontention level debate.

4. Determinism-A. Our actions are predetermined; brain studies indicate our choices are a product

of our brains biological processes, out of our own control.

Harris 12Harris, Sam, Ph.D. In neuroscience from UCLA, CEO of Project Reason, Free Will, 2012

The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brains

motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decidedto move.2Another lab extended thiswork using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): Subjects

were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a clock composed of a random

sequence of letters appearing on a screen.They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other.

The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which buttonsubjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made. 3 More

recently, direct recordings from the cortex showed that the activity of merely 256 neurons wassufficient to predict with 80 percent accuracy a persons decisionto move 700 millisecondsbefore he became aware of it.

B. If our actions are predetermined, then the actions intentions isnt relevant,only the end results matter.

Cost-benefit analysis is feasible. Ignore any util calc indicts.

Hardin, Russell (Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences @ NYU). May 1990. Morality within the Limits of Reason. UniversityOf Chicago Press. pp. 4. ISBN 978-0226316208.

Oneof the cuter charges against utilitarianism is thatit is irrational in the following sense. If I take the time to calculatethe consequences

of various courses of action before me, thenI will ipso facto have chosen the course of action to take, namely, to sit and calculate, because while I am calculating the other coursesof action will cease to be open to me. It should embarrass philosophers that they have ever taken this

objection seriously. Parallel considerations in other realms are dismissedwith eminently good sense. Lord Devlin notes, If the

reasonable man worked to rule by perusing to the point of comprehension every form he was handed, the commercial and administrative life of the country would creep toa standstill.

James March and Herbert Simon escapethe quandary of unending calculationby noting that often we satisfice, we do not maximize: we stop

calculatingand considering when we find a merely adequate choiceof action. When, in principle, one cannot know what

isthe bestchoice, one can nevertheless be sure thatsitting and calculating is not the best choice.But, one may ask, How do youknow that another ten minutes of calculation would not have produced a better choice? And one can only answer, You do not. At some point the quarrel begins to s ound adolescent. It is ironic


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that the pointof the quarrel is almost never at issue in practice(as Devlin implies, we arealmost all too reasonablein practice to

bring the world to a standstill) but only in the principled discuss ions of academics.

Defense-

Even if philosophy in general is good, in a debate setting

1. Weve already received those benefits by having these debates a million times;contention allows for discussion of new issues

2. It has devolved into blippy assertion wars or skep triggers that circumventtalking about the theories in detail. Frameworks are often taken out of context,

making them inadequate representations of the actual arguments.

Ignore permissibility and presumption because moral uncertainty means well always

have a non-zero credence in the existence of morality, so theres always a risk of

offense in favor of one action.


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The neg must defend one unconditional policy option. Conditionality is bad because it

makes the neg a moving target which kills 1AR strategy. Hell kick it if I cover it and

extend it if I undercover it, meaning I have no strategic options. Also, its unreciprocal

because I cant kick the AC.

Aff gets RVIs on I meets and counter-interps because

A. 1AR timeskew means I cant cover theory and still have a fair shot onsubstance.

B. No risk theory would give neg a free source of no risk offense whichallows him to moot the AC.

At least, Gut check against dumb theory. Competing interps creates a race to the

bottom where every round comes down to theory. Intervention is inevitable in blippy

theory debates.

Err towards small schools on theory to account for resource disparity that makes it

harder for me to win.

Thus the plan: The United States Federal government should adopt a system similar to

Australias compulsory voting system. I reserve the right to clarify.

Funding through normal means. I reserve the right to clarify, so no theory violations

until he checks in CX. No legal violations link because affirming means amending the

laws to make the aff world consistent with them.

Plan Focus Debate is good-

1. Promotes Clash-set parameters result in higher quality research and moreindepth arguments

2. Lit checks-Australia is a prevalent example of compulsory voting.3. Policymaking is key to long term education because people in the real world

argue about whether legislation should be passed not whether we act on a

general moral rule.

4. Increases Neg ground-they get access to counterplans that dont have totextually negate.

5. Solves side skew-forces neg to prep out multiple strategies that resolves afftime skew.


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The Contention is Income Inequality

Compulsory voting solves inequal income distribution- it gives economic power back

to the masses Carey and Horiuchi 13John M. Carey and Yusaku Horiuchi, Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality. Prepared forpresentation in a seminar on Latin American Politics in the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs

at Harvard University on April 23, 2013, and a seminar in the Department of Government at Dartmouth

College on April 30, 2013, Updated: April 22, 2013. Quals: Professor in the Social Sciences, Department

of Government, Dartmouth College, Associate Professor and Mitsui Chair in the Study of Japan,

Department of Government, Dartmouth College, respectively.

(http://sites.dartmouth.edu/jcarey/files/2013/04/HoriuchiCarey201304221.pdf).

The first assumption is that when voting is voluntary, wealthier people vote at higher rates than do

poorer ones. This pattern has been found to be empirically robust over time and across most

countries(Jackson, Brown, and Wright 1998; Leighley and Nagler 1992; Singh 2011; Tingsten 1937). 1 The top panel in Figure 1 shows ahypothetical distribution of voters, arrayed from the poor to the rich across the horizontal axis, with the vertical axis representing their utility

from voting. The potential benefits of voting are assumed to be constant across citizens,2 but the costs

are higherand thus, overall utility is lowerfor the poor.These costs can be informational(Downs1957; Matsusaka 1995). For example, since poverty corresponds everywhere with low education levels, the efforts required for voters to gain

information about candidates and policy platforms should be larger for the poor than the rich (Gordon and Segura 1997). The costs can

also be logistical. Poor would-be voters may lack access to transportation to get to the polls, or flexible work schedules, that allowwealthier citizens more easily to cast their ballots. For these reasons, the scatter plot in the top panel, which uses simulated data, posits lower

expected utility of voting for the poor than the rich. The second assumption is that compulsory voting increases voter

turnout. Prior studies have shown that voter turnout is high as long as the compulsory voting law is

properly enforced with substantial punishments for not voting (Fowler 2013; Jackman 2001). In Figure 1, when votingis compulsory, everyone is assumed to vote. When it is voluntary, citizens go to the polls when the net utility is positive above the horizontal

line in the top panel. The third assumption is that the poor prefer more redistribution than the rich do, such

that the poor-rich axis in Figure 1 is a proxy for an ideological space from left to right. It should be no

controversy to assume that the poor support policies that yield disproportional benefits to the poor

vis--vis the rich. Such policies include progressive taxation on incomes and comprehensive taxdeductions for the poor.Perhaps more importantly, given that the economically less advantaged people are more susceptible toeconomic growth (and to job market fluctuation) and more depending on public sector jobs (including jobs created by public works), the poor

vis--vis the rich should have stronger preference over larger government with larger public spending. Under these reasonable

assumptions, how does compulsory voting affect the distribution of policy preferences? If everyone

votes, the distribution of economic status is the one with the shaded area in the bottom panel of

Figure 1. The median voter position is at M. When voting is voluntary, the relatively higher non-voting

rate among poor citizens yields a richer median voter(at M>M). Therefore, compulsory voting, by

diminishing the wealth bias to voluntary non-voting, should shift the redistributive preferences of the

median voter back toward the median in the full population. The fourth assumption is that the elected governmentresponds to the median voters preference. In the literature of American politics, some scholars argue that the U.S. governme nt responds to

the opinions of rich voters (Bartels 2010; Gilens 2005), while others claim that the government is equally responsive to the preferences of the 7

poor and the rich (Soroka and Wlezien 2008).3 This debate is, however, not necessarily relevant to the logic behind Lijpharts proposition. If the

governments responsiveness is biased in favor of the rich (i.e., if the government does not simply respond to the median voters policy

preference), what is theoretically expected under a voluntary voting system is that the government chooses a policy preferred

by a voter at K, which is on the right side of the median voters position at M. If voting is compulsory

and the governments responsiveness is biased in the same way, then the government chooses a

policy preferred by a voter at K, which is again on the right side of the median voters position at M.

As long as K is on theright side of K, then compulsory voting is expected to flatten the after-tax

distribution of income in society.
http://sites.dartmouth.edu/jcarey/files/2013/04/HoriuchiCarey201304221.pdf).http://sites.dartmouth.edu/jcarey/files/2013/04/HoriuchiCarey201304221.pdf).


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My method is bestonly combining social mobilization with political action can unite

large populations and create a political driving forceCallinicos and Nineham 07- *Alex Callinicos, Director of the Centre for European Studies at Kings College London, Editor ofInternational Socialism AND ** Chris Nineham, founding member of the UK Stop the War Coalition, former drummer for the indie pop band The

June Brides, helped mobilize thousands in protests in Genoa

(At an impasse? Anti-capitalism and the social forums today, 2 July 07, in the International Journal of Socialism,

http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=337, IWren)This understanding has to involve an open break with the ideology of autonomous social movements.

Too often the left has taken its stand within the framework of that ideology, whether for tactical

reasons or from principled agreement. But a break is required by an honest appreciation of the

interplay between political parties and social movements.The truth is thatcooperation between the two

actually strengthens both. However much retrospect is coloured by Bertinottis subsequent right turn, the high points of theEuropean movement at Genoa and Florence were informed by this cooperation, involving not merely Rifondazione but also smaller parties of

the radical left such as the LCR and the Socialist Workers Party as well as more radical element s of Italys centre-left Left Democrats. The

same is true at a global level.The peak so far reached by the WSF took place, not at any of the Porto Alegre Forums, but in Mumbaiin January 2004, infused as it was by both a strong anti-imperialist consciousness and the movements of Indias vast poor. But the two key

organisations of the Indian leftthe Communist Party (Marxist) and the Communist Party of Indiaalongside various Maoist organisations,

played a critical role both in making the forum possible and in restraining themselves from trying to dominate the forum or competing too

openly among themselves.An honest reappraisal of the relationship between parties and movements would

allowthe social forums to play to their strengths.The two most successful forumsFlorence and Mumbaiwere ones whereopposition to the war on terror was a dominant theme. Saying this does not mean returning to the tedious and sterile argume nteither the

war or the social question. Opposition to both neoliberalism and war are constitutive themes of the anti-

capitalist movement. But recognition of both the principled significance and the mobilising power of

anti-imperialism needs to be built into how the social forums operate.This was proved by the success of last yearspolycentric WSF in Caracas, Venezuela. It was taken for granted among the tens of thousands of mainly Latin American activists assembled

there that the US poses a real and present threat to the gains being made by movements in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador. President Hugo

Chvez echoed many others when he spoke there of the importance of the movement against the Iraq war in weakening the USs ab ility to act

in what it regards traditionally as its own backyard. Yet the Caracas forum also showed up the limitations of the WSF process. It should have

been possible, for example, to launch a very high profile, high powered campaign from the forum calling on all the movements round the world

to pledge defence of the gains of the Chavista experience so far. Many present were suggesting it. But because of the autonomist principles so

jealously guarded by the WSF leadership, no such centralised initiative was taken. In breaking out of this impasse, it will be necessary to define

precisely what the radical left is within the movement. This is no simple matter. The big Indian Communist parties, despite the very positive role

they played in the Mumbai WSF, participate in neoliberal coalitions at the all-India and state levels: the Left Front government in West Bengal

has violently clashed with workers and peasants in recent months. The sorry record of Rifondazione has already been discussed. A much moreprincipled organisation, the LCR, has kept aloof from the anti-capitalist movement as an organisation, because of its acceptance of a version of

the ideology of autonomous social movements (although individual LCR members such as Christophe Aguiton, Pierre Rousset and Sophie Zafari

have played important roles in the movement at global and/or European levels). Documents of the left within the movement

tend to espouse versions of radical reformism. The Bamako Appeals first plank is, For a multipolar world founded on peace,LAW and negotiation.26 Amins pronouncements are sometimes redolent of nostalgia for the high tide of Third World nationalism between

the 1950s and 1970s: The reconstruction of a front of the countries and peoples of the South is one of the fundamental con ditions for the

emergence of another world not based on imperialist domination.27 Another important figure on the left of the movement, Walden Bello of

Focus on the Global South, shows a similar approach in his calls for deglobalisation.28 Such formulations do not sufficiently address the

reality that confronting imperialism as a system will require global social transformation based on the collective power and organisation of the

oppressed and exploited in the North as well as the South. None of this should prevent cooperation among different

forces on the left seeking to give the anti-capitalist movement a more coherent and strategically

focused direction.Such cooperation is essential. But it needs to be accompanied by open debate about the nature of the enemy that we

are confronted with and of the alternatives that we should be seeking.29 Striking the right balance between disagreementand cooperation once again requires a break with the ideology of autonomous social movements. This

ideology conceives social movements as a neutral space somehow beyond politics. But fighting

neoliberalismand war is necessarily a highly political affair, and nowhere is free of the antagonisms of

wider capitalist society. The development of the movements necessarily generates political

disagreements that cannot be kept separate from party organisations . The emergence of new anti-capitalistpolitical formations that are at least partly the product of movements of resistancePortugals Left Bloc, the Left Party in Germany, Respect in

Britainshows the extent to which activists recognise the need for a political voice as part of the development of opposition to neoliberalism

and war. We believe thatthe concept of the united front, developed by the revolutionary Marxist tradition, provides a
http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=337http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=337


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better guide to building democratic, dynamic movements than does the model that has prevailed so

far. A united front involves the coming together of different forces around a common but limited platform of action. Precisely because theyare different, these forces will have disagreements about political programme; they may also differ over how to pursue the common actions

that have brought them together. But so long as they come together round limited and relatively specific aims, such alliances can be politically

inclusive and maximise the chances of practical campaigning agreement. Because they are focused round action, they can be a testing ground

for different tactics and strategies. This is the way to break movements away from abstract position taking or

sectarian point scoring, so providing a framework in which political debate and practical organisingcan fruitfully interplay. Constructing such united fronts is not easy: it requires initiative and clear leadership on the one hand, and

openness and humility on the other. But at a time when the anger against neoliberalism is growing everywhere

and so many people are reassessing their political loyalties, it seems to us that the anti-capitalist left

needs urgently to try such methods if it is to reach outand connect with its potential audience. There is unlikely to be

agreement between the different tendencies in the movement in the short or medium term over general political alternatives. But we can

reach constructive agreement on the many issuesopposition to neoliberalismand warthat unite a

large spectrum of forces. It is precisely this kind of unity in action that many people are looking for in

the current situation. Through the experience of such campaigning, new political coalitions can

emerge.Moreover, the left within the movement, whether revolutionary or reformist, should working together in order to fight to give themovement a more strategic and focused direction.

Capitalism guarantees runaway climate changecauses extinctionFoster, 11 (John B, Capitalism and Degrowth-An Impossibility Theorem, Monthly Review Vol. 62, Iss. 8; pg. 26, 8 pgs , January 2011,proquest)

In the opening paragraph to his 2009 book, Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen, the world's foremost scientific authority on global

warming, declared: "Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know

and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril. . . .The startling conclusion is that continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth

threatens not only the other millions of species on the planet but also the survival of humanity itself - and the timetable is shorterthan we thought."1 In making this declaration, however, Hansen was only speaking of a part of the global environmental crisis currently

threatening the planet, namely, climate change. Recently, leading scientists (including Hansen) have proposed nine planetary boundaries, which

mark the safe operating space for the planet. Three of these boundaries (climate change, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle) have already

been crossed, while others, such as fresh water use and ocean accidification, are emerging planetary rifts. In ecological terms, the economy has

now grown to a scale and intrusiveness that is both overshooting planetary boundaries and tearing apart the biogeochemical cycles of the

planet.2 Hence, almost four decades after the Club of Rome raised the issue of "the limits to growth," the economic growth idol of modern

society is once again facing a formidable challenge.3 What is known as "degrowth economics," associated with the work of Serge Latouche in

particular, emerged as a major European intellectual movement in 2008 with the historic conference in Paris on "Economic De-Growth for

Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity," and has since inspired a revival of radical Green thought, as epitomized by the 2010 "Degrowth

Declaration" in Barcelona. Ironically, the meteoric rise of degrowth (dcroissance in French) as a concept has coincided over the last three years

with the reappearance of economic crisis and stagnation on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The degrowth concept therefore forces us to

confront the questions: Is degrowth feasible in a capitalist grow-or-die society - and if not, what does this say about the transition to a new

society? According to the Web site of the European degrowth project, "degrowth carries the idea of a voluntary reduction of the size of the

economic system which implies a reduction of the GDP."4 "Voluntary" here points to the emphasis on voluntaristic solutions - though not as

individualistic and unplanned in the European conception as the "voluntary simplicity" movement in the United States, where individuals

(usually well-to-do) simply choose to opt out of the high-consumption market model. For Latouche, the concept of "degrowth" signifies

a major social change: a radical shift from growth as the main objective of the modern economy, toward

its opposite (contraction, downshifting). An underlying premise of this movement is that, in the face of a planetary

ecological emergency, the promise of green technology has proven false. This can be attributed to the Jevons Paradox,

according to which greater efficiency in the use of energy and resources leads not to conservation but to

greater economic growth, and hence more pressureon the environment.5 The unavoidable conclusion - associatedwith a wide variety of political-economic and environmental thinkers, not just those connected directly to the European degrowth project - is

that there needs to be a drastic alteration in the economic trends operative since the Industrial Revolution. As Marxist economist Paul Sweezy

put it more than two decades ago: "Since there is no way to increase the capacity of the environment to bear the

[economic and population] burdens placed on it, it follows that the adjustment must come entirely from the

other side of the equation. And since the disequilibrium has already reached dangerous proportions, it

also follows that what is essential for success is a reversal, not merely a slowing down, of the underlying trendsof the last few centuries."6 Given that wealthy countries are already characterized by ecological overshoot, it is becoming more and more

apparent that there is indeed no alternative, as Sweezy emphasized, but a reversal in the demands placed on the environment by the economy.


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This is consistent with the argument of ecological economist Herman Daly, who has long insisted on the need for a steady-state economy. Daly

traces this perspective to John Stuart Mill's famous discussion of the "stationary state" in his Principles of Political Economy, which argued that

if economic expansion was to level off (as the classical economists expected), the economic goal of society could then shift to the qualitative

aspects of existence, rather than mere quantitative expansion. A century after Mill, Lewis Mumford insisted in his Condition of Man, first

published in 1944, that not only was a stationary state in Mill's sense ecologically necessary, but that it should also be linked to a concept of

"basic communism . . . [that] applies to the whole community the standards of the household," distributing "benefits according to need" (a view

that drew upon Marx). Today this recognition of the need to bring economic growth in overdeveloped economies to a halt, and even to shrink

these economies, is seen as rooted theoretically in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which established

the basis of modern ecological economics.7 Degrowth as such is not viewed, even by its proponents, as a stable solution, but one aimed atreducing the size of the economy to a level of output that can be maintained perpetually at a steady-state. This might mean shrinking the rich

economies by as much as a third from today's levels by a process that would amount to negative investment (since not only would new net

investment cease but also only some, not all, worn-out capital stock would be replaced). A steady-state economy, in contrast, would carry out

replacement investment but would stop short of new net investment. As Daly defines it, "a steady-state economy" is "an economy with

constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance 'throughput,' that is, by the

lowest feasible flows of matter and energy."8 Needless to say, none of this would come easily, given today's capitalist economy. In particular,

Latouche's work, which can be viewed as exemplary of the European degrowth project, is beset with contradictions, resulting not from the

concept of degrowth perse, but from his attempt to skirt the question of capitalism. This can be seen in his 2006 article, "The Globe

Downshifted," where he argues in convoluted form: For some on the far left, the stock answer is that capitalism is the problem, leaving us stuck

in a rut and powerless to move towards a better society. Is economic contraction compatible with capitalism? This is a key question, but one

that it is important to answer without resort to dogma, if the real obstacles are to be understood .... Capitalism would require a

high level of regulation to bring about the reduction of our ecological footprint. The market system, dominated

by huge multinational corporations, will never set off down the virtuous path of eco-capitalism of its own accord .... Mechanisms for

countering power with power, as existed under the Keynes-Fordist regulations of the Social-Democratic era, are conceivable and desirable. But the class struggle seems to have broken down. The

problem is: capital won .... A society based on economic contraction cannot exist under capitalism.Butcapitalism is a deceptively simple word for a long, complex history. Getting rid of the capitalists and banning wage labour, currency and private

ownership of the means of production would plunge society into chaos. It would bring large-scale terrorism. . ..We need to find

another way out of development, economism (a belief in the primacy of economic causes and factors)

and growth: one that does not mean forsaking the social institutions that have been annexed by the

economy (currency, markets, even wages) but reframes them according to different principles.9

The denial of the objective suffering that capitalism produces naturalizes violence and

makes us indifferent toward limitless annihilation and dehumanizationZavarzadeh 94(Mas'Ud, The Stupidity That Consumption Is Just as Productive as Production": In the

Shopping Mall of the Post-al Left," College Literature, Vol. 21, No. 3, The Politics of Teaching Literature 2

(Oct., 1994),pp. 92-114)

What is obscuredin this representation of the non-dialogical is, of course, the violence of the dialogical. I

leave aside here the violence with which these advocates of non-violent conversations attack me in their texts and cartoon. My concern is

with the practices by which the post-al left, through dialogue, naturalizes(and eroticizes) the violence that

keeps capitalist democracy in power. What is violent? Subjecting people to the daily terrorismof

layoffs in order to maintain high rates of profit for the owners of the means of production or redirecting

this violence (which gives annual bonuses, in addition to multi-million-dollar salaries, benefits, and stock

options, to the CEOs of the very corporations that are laying off thousands of workers) against the ruling

class in order to end class societies? What is violent? Keeping millions of people in poverty, hunger,

starvation, and homelessness, and deprived of basic health care, at a time when the forces of production have reached a level that can, in

fact, provide for the needs of all people, or trying to overthrow this system? What is violent? Placing in office, underthe alibi of "free elections," post fascists (Italy) and allies of the ruling class (Major, Clinton, Kohl, Yeltsin) or

struggling to end this farce? What is violent? Reinforcing these practices by "talking" about them in a

"reasonable" fashion (that is, within the rules of the game established by the ruling class for limited reform from "within") or

marking the violence of conversation and its complicity with the status quo, there by breaking the frame

that represents "dialogue" as participation, when in fact it is merely a formal strategy for legitimating

the established order? Any society in which the labor of many is the source of wealth for the few-all

class societies-is a society of violence, and no amount of "talking" is going to change that objective


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fact."Dialogue" and "conversation" are aimed at arriving at a consensus by which this violence is made

more tolerable, justifiable, and naturalized.

No value to life outweighs their impacts

Cerni 7 (Paula, cultural logic electronic collection of Marxist Theory and Practice

independent writer,The Age of Consumer Capitalism, http://clogic.eserver.org/2007/Cerni.pdf)Thus the powerlessness of the consumer vis--vis the production process is experienced as the activetyranny of the finished object as an object-sized moral law. Morality is now restricted to the singleand immediate dimension of is, no longer transcended by means of its negation, ought ( Marcuse, 1991);while reason similarly limits itself to the set of available options. If people very strongly desire what they cannot get, they will be

unhappy; such desires, therefore, are irrational, says Jon Elster (1986: 15). In the age of consumer capitalism, then,morality and reason submit to a reality principle that no longer defers pleasure and accepts pain forthe sake of future achievements, but asserts the pleasure and pain of the actually experienced world.

And so we find the materiality of a there-to-be-consumed world perfectly aligned with the malleableperformances of post-modern reflexivity. Dehumanized things and immaterial meanings are two sidesof one coin, the objective and subjective aspects of social experience under consumer capitalism.19 Thatis why the authority of the given material world co-exists with notions of contemporary society as somehow uniquely cultural,

virtual, even immaterial. It is why unknowable and impenetrable objects end up reflecting our constructeddesires; mere things turn into carriers of social meaning (Douglas and Isherwood, 1996), aesthetic objects (Haug,

1986), or stuff embedded in social narratives (Harr, 2002); people become post-human informational-materialentities (Hayles, 1999: 11); and an economy of physical plenty melts away into intangible flows ofinformation and knowledge.

Capitalism best explains present social and international conflicts

Everest 12Larry Everest, WAR AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM: Money for Jobs Not for War: AmericanChauvinism and Reformist Illusions, Global Research, 5/24/2012,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31024The slogan also promotes the idea that the political powers-that-beif pressured by enough peoplecould scale back their military, stop

attacking other countries, and instead use the money for jobs, education, and other social welfare programs at home. But that s not how the

system actually operates! Wars, invasions, and occupations are not policies of one set of politicians or another,

or arbitrary choices made by this or that president.At this stage in history, capitalism is a global system, with

the U.S. the worlds most dominant capitalist-imperialist power, presiding over a worldwide empire ofexploitation. This empire rests on the domination of the oppressed countries where the vast majority of

humanity lives, and on control of labor, markets, and resources. This entails the violent suppression of

the masses of people in the dominated areasand also entails fighting off challenges from other

imperialists as well as rising forces in those countries that stand in the way. This requires a monstrously

huge militarythat is deployed worldwide, with bases in over 100 countries, and wars when necessary.The

wars for domination in the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere dont interfere with the

functioning of U.S. capitaltheyre absolutely essential to it, and to the U.S.s overall global dominance. This is why

the U.S. rulers are compelledand willing tospend trillions on the military, including during periods of

severe economic and fiscal stress, no matter who happens to sit in the White House or Congress.This

system of global capitalism-imperialism headed by the U.S. is the main source of the horrors that torment so many

across the globefrom the ethnic cleansing and slow genocide of the Palestinian people by the U.S. and

Israel, to the mass incarceration and slow genocide of Black people in the U.S.; from the rape of the

planet to the systematic degradation and violence against womenhere and around the world; from

the extreme deprivation and starvation faced by billions across the planet to the growing poverty and

desperation faced by millions in the U.S.The rulersin these imperial metropoles distribute some of the spoils of

empire to provide a higher standard of living than in the oppressed countries and buy social peace and

loyalty at home(which Money for Jobs, Not For War encourages). People in the U.S. should reject that foul pact! The vast majority inthe U.S. have a profound interest in making common cause with oppressed people worldwide, not in siding with their rulers. That means

fostering a morality that declares: American lives are not more important than other peoples lives! not pandering to American chauvinism,


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which strengthens the system responsible for so much misery. It means people shouldnt appeal to those on the top to spend more on jobs,

but to clearly and unequivocally demand a STOP to the horrors the U.S. is committing around the world.

You should be skeptical of their truth claimscapitalism informs both their goal and

method which channels knowledge through the network of capital only reinforcing its

dominance

Meszaros 95(Istavan, Prof. Emeritus @ U of Sussex, Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, p71)

The capitalsystem isanirrepressibly expansion oriented mode of social metabolic control. Given the innermostdetermination of its nature, the material reproductive and the political functions must be radically separated in it producing thereby the

modern state as the structure of alienation par excellence just as production and control must be radically divorced in it. But

expansionin this system can only mean capital-expansion to which everything else must be subordinated,

and not the development of positive human aspirations and the coordinated provision of the means for their satisfaction. This is why in

the capital system the wholly fetishistic criteria of expansion must impose themselves on society also in

the form of the radical separation and alienation of the power of decision making from everyoneincluding the personificationsof capital whose freedom consists in imposing on others capitals imperatives at all levels of societal

reproduction, from the domain of material production to the highest levels of politics. For once the objectives of social

existence are defined by capitalin its own way, ruthlessly subordinating all human values and aspirations to

the pursuit of capital-expansion, there can be no room for decision making, other than one strictly

concerned with finding the instruments best suited for reaching the predetermined goal.


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Extension for Income Inequality Internal Link

An empirical cross-country analysis of 91 countries during from 1960-2000 shows

compulsory voting significantly improves income distribution. Chong and Olivera 05

Alberto Chong and Mauricio Olivera, On Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality in a Cross-Section ofCountries. Inter-American Development Bank and George Mason University, May 2005.

Table 3 presents the main results when using the benchmark specification described above. Cross-

country robust ordinary least squares regressions are run for the period between 1960 and 2000. In

order to isolate idiosyncratic effects from the two regions where compulsory voting is somewhat

concentrated, dummy variables for Latin America and industrial countries are also included, although

they are not reported.

The control variables, such as the initial gross domestic product, the average

years of education and the proxy for democratic values yield the expected sign. However, average years

of education is the only variable that yields a negative coefficient that is statistically significant for all the

specifications considered.

With regards to the variable of interest, compulsory voting appears to have no

effect on income inequality, as shown in Regression 1 of Table 3. The coefficient of the compulsory

voting variable is unexpectedly positive, but it is statistically insignificant at conventional levels. When a

dummy variable captures the level of enforcement of compulsory voting laws, the result is still

statistically insignificant, although the sign of the coefficient shifts from positive to negative. This is

shown in Regression 2. Finally, when using a dummy variable that captures only strong enforcement of

compulsory voting schemes, the sign of the corresponding coefficient is negative and statistically

significant at conventional levels. This is shown in Regression 3. This finding implies that countries with

strictly enforced compulsory voting laws have, on average, a Gini coefficient 3.7 points lower thancountries without such laws. The model explains 44 percent of cross-country inequality.

Regressions 4 to6 test the same three first specifications as before but use an index of political rights instead of civilliberties. The results are similar. In short, mandatory voting laws that on paper require individuals to

vote, but bear little or no consequence, fail to have a bearing on the distribution of income. This isunsurprising, as the lack of impact may occur either because the increased number of voters, if any, may

not be representative of the voting population, or simply because additional voters do not go to the pollsin significant amounts. On the other hand, compulsory voting laws that carry a penalty for noncomplianceare, indeed, associated with an improvement in the distribution of income, possibly as voter

representation increases. Table 4 repeats the same exercise as above for the case of strongly enforcedcompulsory voting laws but uses income quintiles instead of Gini coefficients as the dependent variable.

While the statistical significance of the variable of interest is not as clear as in the results that use the Giniindex, as expected, strong compulsory voting laws do increase the income share of the bottom quintiles,as the corresponding sign of the three bottom quintiles is positive and statistically significant for the first

and third quintiles. Furthermore, the sign of the corresponding coefficients for the top quintiles is, asexpected, negative. However, they are not statistically significant. In order to further verify the robustness

of these results, the authors expand the benchmark specification by following previous work byBourguignon and Morrisson (1998) and Chong (2003). They include other relatively common variables

used as determinants of income inequality, including the value added of agriculture, the value added ofmanufacturing, the number of physicians, investment as a percentage of gross domestic product, andothers. The results for compulsory voting with strict enforcement are quite robust. In fact, strongly

enforced compulsory voting is statistically significant, with the expected sign in all the regressions. Thisis shown in Table 5.