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Damien PP 9-30
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Fourth Branch CP

The United States ought to establish an e-deliberative branch of government that

initiate debates in favor of statutes that provide a basic income funded by a
consumption tax. The Executive Branch should promulgate new regulations that
require binding and genuine consultation with the e-deliberative branch on all law,
including abiding by the outcome of the branch’s debates.

The aff endorses a structure of governmental policy through three branches, which
detaches the public from power, which kills democracy only the creation of a fourth
branch revitalizes it through civic participation.
Papandreou 19 George Andreas Papandreou is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to
2011. He is currently serving as an MP for Movement for Change. [“We Need a Fourth Branch of Government” New York times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/opinion/fourth-branch-of-government.html October 8 2019]//Mberhe

In ancient times, politics was born of the belief that we can be masters of our own fate, and democracy became a continuing,
innovative project to guarantee people a say in public decisions. Today, however, we live in a paradox.
Humanity has created vast wealth and technological know-how that could contribute to solutions for
the global common good, yet immense numbers of people are disempowered, marginalized and suffering from a
deep sense of insecurity. Working together, we have the ability to reshape the world as we know it. Unfortunately, that power rests
in the hands of only a few. The marginalization we see today is rooted in the globalization promoted by policy models such as the
Washington Consensus, which distanced politics and governance from economic power. Companies in the financial, pharmaceutical,
agricultural, oil and tech industries are no longer governed by the laws of a single state — they live in a separate global stratosphere, one
regulated to suit their interests. The consequences of all this are huge disparities in wealth and power. There is, for example, an
overconcentration of money in media and politics, due to lobbying and outright corruption. And in many countries, democratic
institutions have been captured and the will of the people has been compromised. As Nathan Gardels and
Nicolas Berggruen argue in their 2019 book “Renovating Democracy,” the social and technological change wrought by globalization “is so
enormous that individuals and communities alike feel they are drowning in the swell of seemingly anonymous forces.” Serving as prime
minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011, I attempted to improve tax collection in order to cut the huge debt and deficit I inherited. But the efforts
of my government fell far short of collecting what was owed. Investors took advantage of the global financial system to move capital beyond
Greece’s borders, draining the country of money at its most vulnerable moment. This arbitrary power of globalized companies violates a basic
concept of democracy that the ancient Greeks called “isonomia,” or the equality of all before the law. THE MORNING: Make sense of the day’s
news and ideas. David Leonhardt and Times journalists guide you through what’s happening — and why it matters. Sign Up Uncontrolled global
power has fueled nationalist slogans such as the Brexit movement’s “take back control.” Yet as Joseph Stiglitz writes in his new book, “People,
Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent,” “the populist response, namely a retreat from globalized trade through
the protection of markets, is a red herring. … The real conflict is elsewhere. On the one side [you have] workers and consumers — the 99
percent — in both developing and developed countries, versus corporate interests on the other.” For the new global economy to succeed, he
says, we must build new institutions. We have a choice to make. We could embrace reactive politics, elect authoritarian leaders, build walls,
and promote isolationism and racism. This path offers a simple yet illusory way to “take back control,” but in fact accomplishes the opposite: It
gives up control to power-hungry demagogues who divide us, weaken civil society and feed us dead-end solutions. But rather than embrace
those false promises, let us instead reinvent and deepen democratic institutions, in order to empower people, tame
global capitalism, eliminate inequality and assert control over our international techno-society. From my experience, an important step

toward these goals would be to create a fourth branch of government. This new deliberative branch,
in which all citizens — the “demos” — could participate, would sit alongside the executive, legislative
and judicial branches. All laws and decisions would first go through an e-deliberation process before
being debated in our city halls, parliaments or congresses. Inspired by the agora of ideas and debate in ancient Athens,
I set up as prime minister a rudimentary “wiki-law” process for deliberating issues online before laws are voted on. Trusting collective wisdom
brought insightful and invaluable responses. In contrast to how social media works today, a similar platform could develop transparent
algorithms that use artificial intelligence to promote wholesome debate and informed dialogue while fairly aggregating citizens’ positions to
promote consensus building. All
who participate in this public e-agora would appear under their true identities
— real voices, not bots. Eponymous, not anonymous. To facilitate debate, forums of professionals could
give informed opinions on issues of the day. Public television, newspapers, radio and podcasts could
enlighten the conversation. Schools would be encouraged to participate . So-called deliberative polling (again
inspired by ancient Athens and developed for modern society by James Fishkin at Stanford University) could improve decision-making by
leveraging sustained dialogue among polling participants and experts to produce more informed public opinion. The concept was used by the
Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland from 2016 to 2018, a riveting exercise in deliberative democracy that produced breakthroughs on seemingly
intractable issues such as abortion. Today, we are on the verge of momentous global changes, in robotics, A.I., the climate and more. The
world’s citizens must debate the ethical implications of our increasingly godlike technological powers. At the same time, the threat
of
global warming is an opportunity for us to overcome our nationalistic divisions and unite in a fight for
survival and just, sustainable development. We must nurture the citizen-driven core of this new deliberative branch at the local
level, with an overhaul of our education systems. Today’s schools have severed learning from civic participation, critical debate and empathy
for our fellow human beings. To transcend our ethnic, racial and socioeconomic differences, we need classrooms to produce global citizens —
not globe-trotting elites, but students who grasp humanity’s challenges and can deliberate beyond borders. Our newfound powers can be used
to abuse and hurt — the ancients called this “hubris.” Or they can be used to heal, and to include others in a democratic culture that supports
the public and planetary good. This is the democratic challenge of today.

US democratic leadership is key to prevent great power war.

Matthew Kroenig 18. Associate Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown
University and a Senior Fellow in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.
The Democratic Advantage: America’s Edge over Russia and China. Princeton University Press.
9/24/2018. https://www.princeton.edu/politics/graduate/departmental-colloquia/international-
relations/The-Democratic-Advantage-Americas-Edge-over-Russia-and-China.pdf

To answer these questions, we lack a crystal ball, but theory and history can serve as a guide they suggest a clear
answer: democracies enjoy a built-in advantage in long-run geopolitical competitions.¶ The idea that
democracies are better able to accumulate and maintain power in the international system has a
distinguished pedigree. Polybius, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu are among the classical political theorists who argued that republican
forms of government are best able to harness available domestic resources toward national greatness .
And recent social science research concurs. For the past two decades, cutting-edge research in economics and political

science has been obsessed with the issue of whether democracies are different and the consistent finding is that they
perform a number of key functions better than their autocratic counterparts. They have higher long-run
rates of economic growth.13 They are better able to raise debt in international capital markets and
become international financial centers.14 They build stronger and more reliable alliances.15 They are
more effective in international coercive diplomacy.16 They are less likely to fight wars (at least against other
democracies).17 And they are more likely to win the wars that they fight.18¶ This book takes this line of argument a step
further by aggregating these narrower findings into a broader theory about the relative fitness of
democracy and autocracy in great power political competitions. The central argument of this book is that
democracies do better in major power rivalries. After all, it is not much of a logical leap to assume that states that
systematically perform better on these important economic, diplomatic, and military tasks will do better
in long-run geopolitical competitions than those that do not¶ This hunch is supported by the empirical
record. As this book will show, autocrats often put up a good fight, but they fail to ultimately seize lasting
global leadership. Napoleon, Hitler, and the Soviet Union are among the examples of authoritarian
nations that launched campaigns for world domination, but came up short. On the other hand, states with
relatively more open forms of government have often been able to establish themselves as the
international system’s leading state, from Athens and the Roman Republic in the Ancient world to British
Empire and the U nited S tates in more recent times. According to some scholars, the world’s leading state since the
1600s has also been among its most democratic. 19 It is hard to argue with an undefeated record of four
centuries and counting .¶ America’s greatest strength in its coming competition with Russia and China,
therefore, is not its military might or economic strength, but its institutions . For all of its faults,
America’s fundamentals are still better than Russia’s and China’s. There is good reason to believe,
therefore, that the American era will endure and the autocratic challenges posed by China and Russia will

run out of steam .¶ The idea that democracies dominate may seem counterintuitive. After all, throughout history many have argued that
dictators have a foreign policy advantage. 20 Autocrats can be ruthless when necessary, but democracies are constrained by public opinion and
ethical and legal concerns. Autocrats take decisive action, but democracies dither in endless debate. Autocrats strategically plan for the long-
term while democracies cannot see beyond a two or four-year election cycle. Many today laud Russia and China’s autocratic systems for
precisely these reasons. Russians play chess and Chinese play go, but Americans play checkers, as the aphorism has it. ¶ It
is true that
autocracies are better at taking swift and bold action, but impulsive decisions uninformed by vigorous
public debate often result in spectacular failure . Hitler, for example, was able to harness new technology to
create Blitzkrieg warfare and conquer much of Europe, but he also invaded Russia in winter and
needlessly declared war on the U nited S tates. Unfortunately, for autocracies, this story is all too common .
As Machiavelli wrote in his Discourses on Livy in the 16th century: “ Fewer errors will be seen in the people than in the
prince—and those lesser and having greater remedies.”21 “Hence it arises that a republic has greater life and
has good fortune longer than a principality.”22¶ There is good reason to hope that this argument is true because
continued American leadership would be beneficial to the U nited S tates and the rest of the free world. The
decline of American power would certainly be unwelcome for the U nited S tates. Americans have certainly grown
accustomed to the benefits that accrue to the world’s leading power. But billions of others also have a stake in America’s
success . For all of its faults, the U nited S tates has been a fairly benevolent hegemon. While far from perfect, it has gone
to extraordinary lengths to provide security, promote economic development, and nurture democracy
and human rights. The world is certainly safer, richer, and more free today than it was before the dawn
of the American era.¶ There is little reason to believe that Russia and China will be as kind. These
autocratic powers long to establish spheres of influence in their near abroad and they have shown little
concern for the sovereignty or personal freedoms of their own citizens or subjected populations . If readers
doubt these claims, they can simply ask citizens of American allies in Eastern Europe or East Asia whether they desire continued American
leadership, or whether they would prefer to live under the thumb of Moscow and Beijing, respectively. ¶ Even more consequentially for the
globe, however, the
decline of the U nited S tates could very well result in a major war . As noted above,
international relations theory maintains that the decline of one dominant power and the rise of another
often results in great power war.23 According to this telling, World War I and World War II were primarily the
result of the decline of the British empire and the rise of Imperial and then Nazi Germany as a major
competitor on the European continent. Falling powers fight preventive wars in a bid to remain on top
and rising powers launch conflicts to dislodge the reigning power and claim their “place in the
sun.”24Many fear that a power transition between Beijing and Washington would produce a similar
catastrophic result . 25 Continued American leadership , therefore, could forestall this transition and may be
a necessary condition for continued world peace and stability among the great powers.
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States CP

The fifty states and all relevant sub-national actors should provide a basic income
funded by a consumption tax.
Counterplan solves, leads to federal follow-on, and avoids the link to politics
Nolan Downey 22, Staff Attorney for the Legal Impact Network at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law.
Economic Security Project. April 13. "Guaranteed Income: States Lead the Way in Reimagining the Social
Safety Net” https://economicsecurityproject.org/resource/states-lead/ //pipk

Every person deserves to live with dignity and have their basic needs met. After decades of rollbacks and disinvestment, our current
social safety net is insufficient given the economic situation we face. In the United States there is unconscionable and
accelerating wealth inequality,1 wages have been stagnant for 40 years2 and, both before3 and throughout4 the coronavirus
pandemic, many Americans struggle to meet their basic needs. In the richest country on Earth, elimination of deep

poverty is attainable and long overdue . Historically, states have played a critical role in testing concepts to
improve the lives of low-income residents and created a blueprint for anti-poverty measures that can
be implemented nationwide .5 It is time to boldly reimagine and revitalize an eroded social safety net,
and states have an opportunity to lead by example. The devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted mitigation
strategies intended to get cash to people who were impacted. Federal policies such as increased unemployment insurance, an expanded and
fully refundable Child Tax Credit (CTC), and stimulus checks have led to burgeoning support for permanent cash transfer programs like a
guaranteed income. Additionally, stateand local governments added to relief efforts by using federal dollars
provided by both the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to
fund cash transfer programs of their own.6 At the same time, an increasing number of municipalities and
other units of local government across the country are exploring guaranteed income demonstrations in
their community, and states should seize this opportunity to build upon this work . Local guaranteed
income programs, though limited in scope, produce incredibly valuable data to prove the efficacy of
unconditional cash programs, which are critical for states to obtain buy-in from the necessary
stakeholders. One limitation of local programs, however, is that they often aren’t scaled to study the potential for community-level change
or other broader economic impacts. At the federal level, the expanded CTC being debated as part of President Biden’s American Families Plan
represents a form of guaranteed income for 39 million households.7 Unfortunately, federal
conversations around
nationwide cash transfer programs – like an expanded CTC – have been underwhelming. As of December 2021, the
Build Back Better Act does maintain the fully refundable nature of the expanded-CTC, allowing low- and no-income families excluded pre-
pandemic to continue to receive a credit, but only a temporary extension is being considered for the increased amounts families received
during the pandemic. While the Build Back Better Act has not yet passed, the stimulus checks and expanded CTC have moved the needle,
breaking down barriers to moving cash policies at any level of government. We now have a much better sense of what is possible when it
comes to distributing monthly cash payments, and we have data and stories of the impact these policies have in the lives of low- and middle-
income earning families. In light of the current limits at the local and federal level, there is an opportunity for
state governments to explore ambitious, publicly-funded cash transfer policies that: promote dignity and
greatly improve the lives of their low-income residents; add to a growing body of research with
assessments of larger scale positive impacts across geographically and racially diverse areas; utilize the
revenue raising powers of state government; and could be a model for a permanent federal program .
We need a permanent federal guaranteed income, but political gridlock and polarization threaten to frustrate
attempts at a federal program in the immediate term . States have an opportunity to push closer to
that ideal with large scale, publicly funded, permanent programs of their own that will provide
essential data and experience toward the realization of a federal program. This guide seeks to arm state-level
advocates and policymakers with information regarding the choice points in program design, the positive impacts shown by existing research,
and special considerations for states including options for guaranteed income implementation, interactions with existing public benefits
programs, opportunities for public funding, and promoting racial equity.
 1NC – OFF
Settler Colonialism K

The 1AC is a settler process that foregrounds the erasure of indigenous relationalities
and retrenches western hegemony, causing war and planetary murder. Attempting to
increase spending power replaces indigenous epistemology with market
epistemology,
Strakosch 12
(Elizabeth Strakosch is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Queensland, and her research explores
the links between settler colonialism, policy, public administration and political community., Colonial Risk
Management, VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1, 2012, Borderlands, JKS)

Colonial relationships constitute a significant sovereign risk factor . Settler colonial states share similar features, such as the persistent presence of an Indigenous population
identifying as politically different. Recurring colonial challenges include international criticism, weakened internal legitimacy, difficulty mobilising colonised subjects, unpredictable legal decisions, Indigenous re-acquisition of or refusal to relinquish traditional land, visible persistent

it is a well established pattern that Indigenous material disadvantage

Indigenous disadvantage and Aboriginal non-cooperation with policy programs. In Australia,

persists despite government attempts to redress i . There is a high risk that new policies will fail to shift t

visible disadvantage, and such disadvantage constitutes a ‘wicked policy problem’ (APSC 2007). Colonialism also brings recurring challenges to

The ongoing presence of ungoverned, ungovernable or independent Indigenous subjects

the political narrative of state legitimacy.

undermines the settler assertion of absolute territorial authority. Settler colonialism projects a moment
of sovereign completion which is constantly deferred, creating an ongoing gap between the imperative
of sovereign security and the reality of the present ( attempts to close this gap through Moreton-Robinson 2009b; Veracini 2010). Again,

treaty, reconciliation, denial or forcible assimilation have failed to erase Indigenous political difference,
so the risk that new measures will fail is high Indigenous political difference constitutes a wicked . In this sense, also

problem, resistant to intervention unlikely to be resolved in a single policy initiative. Over all
over time and successfully

of these recurring sovereign challenges looms the spectre of colonial failure . Although unlikely in the Australian context, the comprehensive exposure and
dissolution of settler colonial projects can occur (as in the case of Algeria; Veracini 2007). This adds urgency to the settler colonial project and underlines the potential severity of colonial sovereign risk. As Ewald argues, ‘Nothing is a risk in itself, there is no risk in reality. But, on the other

The nature of colonial risk further highlights the fact that risks
hand, anything can be a risk; it all depends on how one analyzes the danger, considers the event’ (1991, p. 199).

are constituted in relation to particular agents. Colonial risk is specific to the desires and goals of
settler colonial institutions. It is presumably not experienced the same way by many Indigenous
political communities By de- neutralising risk, we observe the
—although they may be intimately connected to the settler state and do not necessarily seek its dissolution.

colonising functions of recent Australian Indigenous policy attempts to manage and redistribute colonial
risk. From the mid 1970s until the mid 1990s, federal Governments acted to establish ‘progressive’ systems of self-management and legislative recognition (V. Watson 2004; Murphy 2000; Gibson 1999). The centrepiece of this policy regime was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission (ATSIC). ATSIC operated through an elected regional council structure and thus was positioned as an authentic Indigenous political voice (Murphy 2000). The self-determination approach overlapped with and supported a social ‘reconciliation’ agenda, whereby the

state aimed to reform mainstream attitudes and address past injustices (Gunstone 2007). This policy phase is clearly linked to the political rationality of social
welfarism, which aims to collectivise hardship and to provide state remedies to social problems . Indigenous

It is the responsibility of mainstream Governments to

peoples are positioned as disadvantaged through collective historical exclusion but deserving of full inclusion in the Australian nation-state.

enact this inclusion through legislation, social welfare and support for limited forms of autonomy (Gibson 1999). As

Indigenous disadvantage ‘stems directly from colonisation, dispossession from their

the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation states,

lands and forced marginalisation Indigenous hardships are

, depriving them of the rights and opportunities taken for granted by other citizens’ (Scott 2000, p. 5). Thus

gathered by the state and transformed into a faultless collective responsibility

together the same . More importantly,

process takes place in relation to settler society—no particular institutions or individuals are held
responsible for the circumstances of colonialism. Reconciliation constitutes an attempt to collectivise
colonial risk and distribute it evenly across the national body rather than letting it concentrate in and
overwhelm particular sectors. Only by taking on and insuring individuals against the significant risks of
confronting colonial conflict can all citizens be encouraged to enter upon this difficult task—thus
reconciliation is ‘enfolded’ in mechanisms of security by the state, who also underwrites political
agreements made in the present moment and guarantees that they will endure through time. The state takes on the risks

It therefore becomes the only institution

of future identity change and compensation, for example, by legislating native title rather than allowing common law resolution and by offering a collective apology.

able to stand above and guarantee the process of reconciliation into the future and able to distribute
colonial protections throughout the social body Its sovereign . The state positions itself outside the play of colonial conflicts, and as neutral guarantor of the risks of colonial resolution.

vulnerabilities are erased and colonialism is framed as a social rather than political phenomenon By .

taking on the risks of encounter for both settler and Indigenous peoples, reconciliation and self- determination policy

constitutes them as an abstract unified society engaged upon a ‘common venture ’ (Gordon 1991, p. 39).

Settler colonialism mobilizes temporality itself through liberal narratives of

progressivism that rely upon a vanishing “better world” achieved through the
completion of the modern settler project.
Strakosch and Macoun ’12 [Elizabeth Strakosch and Alissa Macoun; Strakosch is a senior lecturer in
public policy and governance at the University of Queensland, and her work focuses on Indigenous
policy, colonialism, political relationships, bureaucracy and new public management. Her research
explores the connections between political relationships and policy systems in Australia and other
settler contexts. contexts. Alissa Macoun is a Lecturer in the School of Justice at Queensland University
of Technology. She is interested in the politics of race and contemporary colonialism; 8-14-2012; "The
vanishing endpoint of settler colonialism”; https://eprints.qut.edu.au/65339/; accessed 1-4-2022]
Time, decolonization and colonial completion Critical geographers use Foucault’s insights to unsettle modern understandings of space as a fixed
environment in which politics takes place. Instead, they show that political projects construct, naturalize and respond to particular spatial
understandings.30 In relation to Indigenous policy, critical analysts are quick to identify these political deployments of space. SuvendriniPerera,
for example, shows that policy-makers represent remote Indigenous communities as ‘set apart from the body
of the nation, and as the locus of unspeakable violence and abjection’.31 As part of the discourse of the Northern
Territory Intervention, the metaphor of the distant frontier — or vulnerable centre — is pervasive. Remote
Aboriginal communities prescribed for Intervention are para - digmatically referred to in media reports
as ‘remote Aboriginal societies’, ‘this other Australia’, ‘the remote world’ and as ‘a distinct domain’. 32
Unsettling dominant understandings of time is equally important. In his work ‘The End of the Passing Past’, Walters
aims to ‘think about change in ways that refuse the obligation to side with or against continuity… and
resist the temptations of progressivism and reductionism’.33 He draws on Bruno Latour’s examination of the modern
temporal imaginary, and his denat - uralizing of modern political timelines: We have never moved either forward or
backward. We have always actively sorted out elements belonging to different times . We can still sort. It is the
sorting that makes the times, not the times that make the sorting.34 This interrogation is especially useful in relation to
understanding settler colonialism and Indigenous policy-making. Barry Hindess, Elizabeth Povinelli and N. Sheehan, for
example, reflect on Western temporal constructions of Aboriginality and indicate how these relate to liberal political agendas. Barry Hindess
argues that liberalism tends to locate different cultures in its own past, even when they coexist with liberal
societies in the present.35 Indigenous groups, in particular, are located prior to the transformative
moment of sovereign agreement, which in turn is read as an indication of their incapacity to enter into
this superior, rational political future. Norm Sheehan maintains that settler colonialism in Australia is deeply
invested in these kinds of temporal logics: In contrast to previous colonial contexts which tended to focus on constructing
difference based on inherent racial traits the antipodean designation as primitive defines this specific other as non-
other. The antipodean aborigine is by definition from the origin of (all) mankind which positions this primitive as an
earlier and therefore lesser version of European self.36 Elizabeth Povinelli briefly makes a similar point in her analysis of
recent Australian Indigenous policy: [E]ven as liberalism came to accept its fate as a culture among other cultures
it differentiated the tense and orientation of its cultural difference from other cultures. The West as a
general idea would claim the future and claim the potentiality of individuals and assign the past and the
constraint of individuals to others — or, it would recognize that these were the values of non-liberal
cultures.37 She refers to these patterns of political temporal positioning as ‘technologies of temporality’. Drawing together the
work of Walters, Hindess, Sheehan and Povinelli, it becomes apparent that colonialism does not just take place in time. It
constructs narratives of time, in ways that create particular political relationships in the present, and
attempts to move itself through time to a certain political future. In the remainder of this section, we compare the
temporalities of post-colonial and settler-colonial political formations, and argue that both anchor
themselves to some sort of transformative ‘endpoint’. This radical political break separates a
problematic past from a completed future and, in settler-colonial societies, involves a strange
assemblage of ideas about decolonization, revolution, full colonization and sovereign exchange. The term
post-colonial implies ‘the notion of a movement be - yond’;38 ‘the “post” in “post-colonial” suggests “after” the demise of colonialism, it is
imbued, quite apart from its user’s intentions, with an ambiguous spatio-temporality’.39 In a number of former colonies (both extractive, such
as India, and settler, such as Algeria), the formal colonial project has indeed ended. The term postcolonial captures something about the
complex political realities of these nation-states today. A dramatic, and often violent, moment of structural decolonization separates these
state’s colonial pasts from their post-colonial presents. However, even in relation to those nations which have undergone such institutional
transformations, scholars contest the use of the term. Ella Shohat suggests that it erases the ongoing structural imperialisms that persist: ‘How
then does one negotiate sameness and difference within the framework of a “post-colonial” whose “post” emphasizes rupture and
deemphasizes sameness?’40 Some scholars use the term neocolonialism to indicate political continuity, and to contest the understanding that
critical post-colonial work seeks to put out minor spot-fires of inequality left by ‘real’ colonialism.41 If the temporal narrative of post-
colonialism is problematic in relation to former extractive colonies, it is altogether inaccurate when applied to ongoing settler colonies such as
Australia. Yet post-colonial scholarship has dominated international academic [T]he lack of historical specificity in the ‘post’ leads to a collaps -
ing of diverse chronologies … It equates early independence won by settler colonial states, in which Europeans formed their new nation-states
in non-European territories at the expense of Indigenous populations, with that of nationstates whose indigenous populations struggled for
inde - pendence against Europe.42 Australia has not, and most probably will not, undergo the kind of institutional transfer of control to the
Indigenous population that could justify the application of the term post-colonial. And yet it is quite common to see Australia identified as a
post-colonial or decolo nizing nation in cultural studies, literary theory and policy analysis.43 One of the greatest contributions of the emerging
field of settler-colonial studies is the fact that it provides clear conceptual tools to articulate exactly why it is that nations like Australia and
Canada should be understood differently. However, it is important not to overstate the uniqueness of settlercolonial studies in Australian
scholarship. Critical Indigenous the - orists are carrying on their own conversation regarding Australian colonial conditions, and have long
contested the relevance of the term post-colonial. Irene Watson, for example, argues: I understand the contemporary colonial project as one
that has continued unabated from the time of the landing and invasion by the British in 1788 … the Australian state retains a vested interest in
keeping the violence going, and the inequalities and iniquities that are maintained against Aboriginal peoples for the purpose of maintaining
the life and continuity of the state. A question the Australian state is yet to resolve is its own illegitimate foundation and transformation into an
edifice deemed lawful. Within this unanswered questionable structure the Australian state parades as one which has obliterated the ‘founding
violence’ of its ‘illegitimate origins’ and ‘repressed them into a timeless past’.44 Aileen Moreton-Robinson instead uses the term post-
colonizing, capturing the ambiguous and shifting temporal technologies deployed in settler-colonial Australia. These new conceptual models
have grown productively out of the object of our study: the postcolonizing world we inhabit. Our respective geographical locations are framed
by nation states such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand where colonization has not ceased to exist; it has only changed in form
from that which our ancestors encountered.45 While settler-colonial studies proceeds from a conceptual distinction between extractive and
settler colonialism, Indigenous scholarship is based in the lived experiences of ongoing colonization.46 Settlercolonial studies would benefit
from connecting to this existing academic conversation that runs parallel to and intersects with its own ideas in important ways. In particular, it
draws attention to ongoing Indigenous contestation of colonial projects, and counters the tendency towards totalizing, structural accounts of
settler colonialism. As Watson observes: Today our voices are still talking while the colonial project remains entrenched and questions
concerning identity politics, and the ‘authentic native’ are constructed and answered by those who have power.47 Up to this point, we have
been drawing together points made by other scholars. Settler colonialism has an ongoing, structural temporality, which
is generally unacknowledged and contrasts with the linear colonialism–decolonization–post-colonialism
narrative. However, we suggest that the application of a unidirectional, progressive temporality to the settler-
colonial context is not just an analytical mistake, but a ‘technology of temporality’. This conception is taken up
within the settler-colonial project in ways that work towards the consummation of settler sovereignty. The
borrowed notion of a ‘radical break’ is variously located in settler colonialism’s past, present or future.
By harnessing the decolonizing resonances of this concept of colonial transforma - tion, the settler-
colonial project obscures the very different political effects of its own ‘vanishing endpoint’.48 What is this
vanishing endpoint, which seems to lurk in all of our imaginations, our policy projects and our political debates? Instead of the moment
of decolonization, it is the moment of full colonization — or rather, it is both, because in this imagined
moment colonial relationships will dissolve themselves and settler authority will be naturalized. This
transformative event is both an impossible colonial dream, premised on the disappearance of Indigenous
political difference, and a concrete political project that justifies all manner of tactics in the present. But
what are the political con - sequences of such a preoccupation? And do Indigenous participants in the colonial relationship seek the same kind
of resolution and dissolution? Significantly, the
Western colonial narrative of transformational change maps onto
another Western imaginary — the moment of sovereign transformation encapsulated in the social
contract. This is the moment that a group of people transition from collective social ‘status’ into
individualized freedom and contractual person - hood.49 It is also the movement out of a constraining
‘history’ into an atemporal, rational present. As Hindess argues, liberalism con - signs its Indigenous
contemporaries to its own past, and imagines this location in the past to be ‘a kind of moral and
intellectual failure’, revealing the incapacity and disinclination to enter into a social contract and join the
present.50 Therefore, the movement through time, via a radical transformative moment, is also the
developmental movement from incapacity to capacity. An unstable but productive dichotomy emerges
between, on the one hand, Indigenous political difference-incapacity-status-injustice-lack of sovereignty,
and on the other, colonial completion-capacitycontract-freedom-sovereign inclusion. These oppositions
are separated by an image of a single, interchangeable and undefined threshold — the transformative
event. This temporal narrative belongs to both progressive and conservative articulations of the settler-
colonial future; the settler colonial endpoint is variously positioned as an inevitable global trend,51 a past achievement yet to be fully
recognized,52 and a future goal for which Aboriginal people must prepare.53 As Povinelli notes, these conceptions are not only temporal, but
also teleological: [T]hese tenses are in turn articulated to other discourses of time and event such as teleological discourses that apprehend
events ‘as the realization of an already given end or telos and eschatological discourses that wait for ‘extreme’ or ‘ultimate’ moments and
events which immediately precede or accompany ‘the end of history’ and ‘its reversal into eternity’.54 The
transformative event is
positioned as part of an inevitable and inescapable trajectory (although it may be consistently deferred or delayed). In
this way, the eventual legitimacy and stability of the settler-colonial project is always-already assumed.
Through this a priori assumption, settler colonialism is able to entrench and sustain itself on the basis of
its eventual demise. The following section traces the appearance and temporal location of this settler-colonial end - point in recent
Australian Indigenous policy phases.

The Alternative is to embrace an ethic of incommensurability, decolonization must

come first
Tuck, and Yang, 2012 (Eve, State University of New York at New Paltz, K. Wayne, University of
California, San Diego, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 24-28)

An ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims
of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler
normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look
like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the
settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be
answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework. We want to say, first, that decolonization is
not obliged to answer those questions - decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler
futurity . Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity . Still, we acknowledge the questions of
those wary participants in Occupy Oakland and other settlers who want to know what decolonization will require of them. The answers are not fully in view and

can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a
dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers
as we get there, “in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give [decolonization] historical form and content” (Fanon, 1963, p. 36 ). To
fully enact an ethic of incommensurability means relinquishing settler futurity, abandoning the hope
that settlers may one day be commensurable to Native peoples. It means removing the asterisks, periods,
commas, apostrophes, the whereas’s, buts, and conditional clauses that punctuate decolonization and underwrite
settler innocence . The Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone - these are the unwritten possibilities made possible by an ethic
of incommensurability.

“when you take away the punctuation

he says of

lines lifted from the documents about

military-occupied land

its acreage and location

you take away its finality

opening the possibility of other futures “

-Craig Santos Perez, Chamoru scholar and poet (as quoted by Voeltz, 2012) Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based
approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an “and”. It is an elsewhere.
 1NC – OFF

VAT PIC

The United States Federal Government should substantially increase fiscal

redistribution in the United States by providing a basic income funded by
- degrowth-oriented fiscal policy
- deficit spending
Solves the impact to collapse by creating a soft landing.
Mark Diesendorf, 2023, Honorary Associate Professor in the Environment & Society Group, School of
Humanities & Languages at UNSW Sydney. Originally trained as a physicist, he broadened out into
interdisciplinary energy and sustainability research. From 1996 to 2001 he was Professor of
Environmental Science and Founding Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at University of
Technology Sydney, Rod Taylor, “Transforming the Economic System,” Chapter 7, The Path to a
Sustainable Civilization: Technological, Socioeconomic, and Political Change,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0663-5

Planned degrowth is not the same as economic collapse , which can result from an ecological disaster,45 the failure of
neoclassical economics in a financial crisis, war, internal conflict, and poor governance, including economic and political exploitation.46 Planned
degrowth, as conceived by many ecological economics practitioners, is a planned program to reduce the use of energy, materials and land, and

to stabilise population, initially in the rich countries. The goal of planned degrowth is a sustainable, steady-state economy. To be truly
sustainable , planned degrowth must increase human wellbeing while protecting and restoring the
environment, in other words, to foster sustainable prosperity. Social justice demands that low-income countries must grow their
economies and hence consumption. Therefore, high-income countries must undergo plan ned degrowth. In the
saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “The rich must live more simply so that the poor can simply live”. The following definition of planned
degrowth by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel makes these considerations explicit: “Degrowth is a planned reduction in less-necessary
production in rich countries that is socially just and achieved in a democratic manner”.47

We have defined planned degrowth in biophysical terms, because that’s the environmental imperative. Of primary importance is to develop a
strategy to protect our life-support system and facilitate the wellbeing for all people (see Sect. 7.5). The fate of GDP is of secondary importance.
Within a sustainable degrowth program, some industries will expand —for example, renewable energy ,
energy efficiency, electric vehicles , public transport , bicycles, aged care, child care , public health
facilities, housing , medical care , public education and training, the arts, nature conservation , and
plantation forestry in appropriate locations—while others will contract —for example, fossil fuels , road-building,
logging of native forests, high-GHG-emission agriculture , tobacco, armaments for attack rather than
defence , advertising and financial services . The net effect must be to reduce biophysical impacts and this may in turn reduce
GDP. In contrast, green growth would allow GDP and hence net biophysical impacts to increase, albeit not as rapidly as business-as-usual
growth.

To what extent does physical degrowth imply monetary degrowth, that is, a reduction in GDP? In the jargon of economics, to what extent is
there decoupling between monetary economic activity and physical economic activity and hence environmental impact? Several studies have
established that on average GDP and biophysical impact are coupled, although there are exceptions observed over short periods of time in
specific locations for particular environmental impacts.48 Clearly, all economic activity depends on at least some physical activity and hence has
some environmental impact. For example, education in a school requires a building and equipment for teaching and learning. Writing a book
nowadays requires a computer, internet connection and a server. However, the total, life-cycle environmental impacts of school-teaching and
book-writing are generally much less than those of owning and operating a private jet aircraft. Therefore, while shifting to ‘greener’ economic
activities will result in less environmental impact (i.e. relative decoupling), there is no absolute decoupling. Therefore, green growth must be
rejected as insufficient. The Sustainable Civilisation needs both greener economic activities and planned degrowth.

Environmental economist Peter Victor investigated scenarios for no-growth and monetary degrowth of the Canadian economy, defined in
terms of a reduction in GDP. Creating a macroeconomic model, Victor found that, as expected, simply
reducing GDP resulted in
increasing unemployment . However, in scenarios where reducing GDP was combined with other policies—for
example, working time reduction, increased government expenditure on poverty reduction and health care ,
government investment in green infrastructure , ending population growth—an economy with reduced GHG
emissions , reduced unemployment and reduced poverty can be achieved.49
An alternative approach was taken by Graham Turner, using a biophysical method, the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework, to model
physical degrowth in the Australian socio-economy.50 Stocks are quantities of physical items, such as land, livestock, people and buildings at a
point in time. Flows are the rates of change over a period, for example, net addition of agricultural land, new computers, births, deaths and
immigration. Although he used an entirely different method, Turner obtained similar results to Victor’s.

Simone D’Alessandro and colleagues constructed a simulation model for planned degrowth in France that combined environmental and
radical social justice policies, together with a reduction in consumption and exports. The environmental policies included greater
energy efficiency , renewable energy and a carbon tax . The social justice policies comprised a job guarantee ,
working time reduction and a wealth tax . They obtained a viable sustainable economy at the ‘cost’ of substantial levels of
public expenditure.51 While cost may be a political problem for governments that follow the prescriptions of neoclassical economics and
neoliberalism, it is not necessarily an economic problem within the macroeconomics framework of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), as
discussed in the next section.
 1NC – OFF

Politics DA

Iran deal now – that unlocks Saudi-Israel normalization, which stabilizes the Middle
East and curbs China’s regional influence. Biden’s PC is key.
Lazar Berman 9-28. Staff writer, with Jacob Magid and the Times of Israel Staff. 9-28-2023. "Edging
closer to normalisation". Australian Jewish News. 9-28-2023.
https://www.australianjewishnews.com/mbs-every-day-we-get-closer-to-normalisation/
(Times of Israel) – Israeli Tourism Minister Chaim Katz arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for a United Nations conference, becoming the first
Israeli minister to lead a delegation to the kingdom, according to his office.

Katz’s visit comes as Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to edge closer to normalisation , with US President Joe
Biden ’s administration actively engaging Riyadh and Jerusalem to try to broker a deal .

Last week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News that “ every day we get closer ” to his country
normalising ties with Israel , while clarifying that the Palestinian issue is still a “very important” component of the process. As part of
the framework, Saudi Arabia is also asking the US for a major mutual defence pact, significant arms deals and a civilian nuclear program.

Three officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Saudi Arabia is quietly setting aside the Arab Peace
Initiative that it sponsored more than 20 years ago, and is readying for the possibility of normalising
relations with Israel without first securing the establishment of a Palestinian state .
Publicly, Saudi officials continue to stress their support for the 2002 initiative, which offers Israel normalised ties with the entire Arab world
once it reaches a two-state solution. The framework was again touted by Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan’s speech at the UN General
Assembly on Saturday and by the kingdom’s ambassador to the Palestinians during his first visit to Ramallah on Tuesday.

Bin Salman appeared close last week to acknowledging that Riyadh is prepared to normalise ties in
exchange for concessions that fall short of Palestinian statehood.
“We hope it will reach a place that it will ease the life of the Palestinians,” he said, referring to the talks as an opportunity to boost Palestinians’
livelihood, rather than their political sovereignty.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre similarly refrained from talking about Palestinian statehood as the goal of the talks.

A senior Palestinian official said, “The

Saudis have made clear to us that they will not abandon the Palestinian
cause, but it’s true that what is being discussed includes elements that are less than statehood. We’re talking
about a pathway to getting there .”
Palestinian officials have told The Times of Israel they want an agreement to be conditioned on Israel halting unilateral actions in the West
Bank, and the PA is prepared to halt some of its own unilateral actions in exchange.

Israeli actions include settlement construction, military raids in Palestinian cities and settler violence against Palestinians, an official said last
Friday, adding that the PA would be prepared to abandon the investigations it is pursuing against Israel in forums such as the International
Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in exchange. It’s not clear, however, whether the already opened probes into Israel can be
rolled back at this point.

“There should be mutual obligations,” one Palestinian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We need to see the unilateral steps
stop in order to give a political horizon for a future between Israelis and Palestinians. Without one, there’s no telling what could happen
tomorrow.”
The fresh details further highlight that Ramallah is willing to be satisfied with far less than statehood, which has long been seen as its condition
for backing moves by additional Arab countries to normalise ties with Israel.

Both the US and Saudi Arabia have made clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will need to offer
something significant to the Palestinians in order to get the Saudi deal across the finish line .

Peninsula: the Strait of Hormuz , the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait . Those arteries are critical links for
China , a focus of American concern.

The Strait of Hormuz , which links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and more widely the Indian Ocean, is arguably the most
important maritime choke point in the world . About one-third of seaborne petroleum , and a slightly
lower percentage of liquid natural gas, passes through it each year. The overwhelming majority of this
energy goes to Asia , including over 45 percent of China’s annual oil imports.

Suez Canal, which links the Red and Mediterranean Seas and connects Asia, Africa and Europe, is just as significant.
The
Approximately 12 percent of global trade passes through it annually, and China is its biggest user . Chinese
ships account for 10 percent of those passing through the canal. Those ships carry, for example, over 60 percent of the goods China sends to
Europe.

At the other end of the Red Sea, a third key passageway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, controls the
entrance into the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal and is similarly significant to global trade . It’s no
accident that the only overseas Chinese military base is in Djibouti, just 68 miles from Bab el-Mandeb, or that Beijing invested billions of dollars
in that country.

As part of a more aggressive effort to expand its presence along its trade and resource routes, China has
attempted to woo both Saudi Arabia and the U nited A rab E mirates to gain a strategic foothold in the Persian
Gulf, and has been constructing a relatively modest port facility near Abu Dhabi that Washington has
warned could serve military purposes .

For now , China doesn’t have much room to maneuver . The U nited S tates and its partners dominate the
three waterways surrounding the Arabian Peninsula. A deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia could secure
that advantage for decades to come . It would bring the two main U.S. military partners in the Middle
East together in open cooperation , and effectively create an interlocking regional chain consisting of
Saudi Arabia, the U nited A rab E mirates, Bahrain , Israel , Egypt and Jordan , all longstanding friends of
Washington , nearly encircling the Arabian Peninsula.

Moreover, U.S. security guarantees for Riyadh would undoubtedly ensure that Saudi Arabia ’s
increasing flirtation with China never leads to a significant strategic foothold for Beijing in the kingdom, a
line the Saudis have thus far carefully avoided crossing .

If this reinforced network of waterway control were to come to pass, it could allow the U nited S tates to
finally realize its longstanding goal of reducing some of its huge military bases in the Gulf region, including Al
Udeid Air Base in Qatar, that are effectively remnants of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Smaller bases, with the probable exception of the one
in Bahrain, which is home to Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet, could be reconfigured for rapid response s to

local threats in coordination with regional partners.

The Biden administration has been energetically pursuing this triangular deal because it would secure an
invaluable global competitive advantage . What remains unclear is whether Washington has sufficient leverage over the Israeli
government, which appears allergic to the concessions toward the Palestinians that Saudi Arabia reportedly seeks, or whether there is enough
time before the president’s re-election bid to hammer out such a complex arrangement.

It seems that Washington and Riyadh might be ready to overcome their bilateral differences . But without
Israeli participation and Saudi-Israeli normalization, a simpler bilateral agreement won’t give Washington what it needs: a potent network of
friendly states based on a rapprochement between the United States’ two key strategic partners in the Middle East.

The triangular nature of this initiative makes it particularly difficult to achieve. But the vast potential
strategic benefits readily explain why the administration is taking on this huge task now , with potentially
enough time before the election and the seeming receptiveness by the Saudis . Both Israel and Saudi Arabia would
benefit in important and obvious ways, but the United States would be the biggest winner.

Passively expressing support for BI is not the same as actively pushing it in Congress.
BI is an opportunity cost and utilizes precious capital.
Jurgen De Wispelaere, 2015, Senior Research Fellow, Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l'Université
de Montréal (CRÉUM), Université de Montréal, "An Income of One’s Own? The Political Analysis of
Universal Basic Income," Tampere University Press,
https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/98162/978-951-44-9989-0.pdf, KL
The problem of cheap political support

When challenged about the political feasibility of BI , its advocates typically refer to numerous
instances of individual politicians, political parties, social movements or interest groups (e.g. trade unions) who are on
record as being supportive of BI. This response takes the form of a simple numbers game, in which the level of support for BI can be read off
more-or-less directly from the instances of expressed support elicited from such individuals or organisations.

The idea that an increase in expressed support for a BI from a variety of social and political actors is directly
conducive to building a sustained political coalition is flawed , however. The reason is that not all instances of
expressed support for a policy imply a sustained commitment to promoting this policy.4 It is one thing for a social or political agent to
express a sincere preference in favour of BI, but quite a different matter to actively canvass support among
constituents, party members or like-minded associations and groups, build a shared platform across political
factions , utilise scarce political resources (money, time and, above all , political capital ) to further the cause,
bargain and possibly compromise on other political goals, and so on. Expressed support without either the commitment or the capacity
to engage in the necessary political action to build a sustainable coalition around the policy of granting each citizen an unconditional BI is
‘cheap’ in the sense that it seems of little practical value to BI supporters.
Thus, we find much support for BI in individuals or associations that are often marginally positioned in terms of their ability to influence policy.
For instance, Green politicians and parties across Europe typically support BI – it often features prominently in their election manifestos – but,
leaving aside one or two exceptions, European Greens are small protest parties comfortably nestled on the political sidelines, opposing
governing coalitions with little or no direct policy responsibility. Irrespective of the strong correspondence between BI and green values
(Birnbaum, 2009; Van Parijs, 2009), political support from Green political parties offers BI advocates precious little as a genuine political
platform to boost their cause. Occasional support for BI among certain trade unions (Vanderborght, 2006) faces similar obstacles. Here, too, it
appears that those unions who support BI are either comparatively small in terms of membership (and thus political leverage) or else operate in
a political system in which their policy influence is otherwise constrained; by contrast, larger unions who wield genuine power to engage in
policy formation through a variety of corporatist mechanisms appear not to support BI. Trade union support for BI seems to bring BI advocates
precious little bang for their proverbial buck. In short, counting instances of expressed support might boost the morale of those advocating BI,
but it remains to be seen whether it produces any immediate effect beyond that.
One might object to this overly pessimistic analysis on the grounds that expressed support from currently marginalised individuals or groups
should not be so lightly dismissed. For one thing, they keep the issue alive in the public imagination – a point I am happy to concede. In
addition, those groups may one day be in a position to genuinely bring about policy influence, at which point BI support starts paying off in real
terms. However, this argument hinges on the view that political support is ‘sticky’, whereby political factions that have once expressly
supported BI would continue doing so when their power position improves. Unfortunately, there is little reason to think that groups who move
up on the political ladder will necessarily sustain their support for BI. After all, in the absence of policy responsibility one’s support for BI is
‘cheap’ in a second critical sense: there are few political costs associated with supporting BI in an environment in which one is never put in the
position of having to defend one’s support against a sceptical – at times even hostile – political base (Steensland, 2006). This is even
more so when we consider that furthering the case for BI means precious political capital must be
spent at the expense of other political objectives . The political opportunity cost of supporting BI once
one has achieved a position of policy responsibility may simply prove too high to be politically sustainable .5

We can reasonably expect to find the very same parties or politicians who support BI while in opposition suddenly ditching their support when
achieving office, whether as a majority government or as part of a governing coalition.6 We can find a poignant illustration of this dynamic in
the recent controversy surrounding the newly minted radical Spanish party Podemos, which after only a year has surged in the opinion polls
and is heading towards an electoral victory in the upcoming elections.7 Right from the very start, when the party burst onto the political scene,
the leadership declared itself in favour of BI, but much to the consternation of its popular base, the economic policy document released late
November 2014 downgraded BI to a long-term aspiration. A simple explanation is that the Podemos leadership, while being sincere in its
appreciation of BI, is exceedingly aware of the need to reach beyond its grassroots support to secure a firmer voting base. In this sense,
dropping BI from its electoral manifesto constitutes a classic Downsian electoral move.8

We can see examples of cheap support also in the coalition politics of parties already in government. After persistent lobbying efforts from pro-
BI groups such as CORI (Conference of the Religious in Ireland), the Irish government in 2002 committed itself to releasing a Green Paper on
basic income, only to have it comprehensively sidelined soon afterwards (Healy and Reynolds, 2000). This strategy enabled the government,
which at the height of the Celtic Tiger was constrained by social partnership agreements, to have its cake and eat it too by simultaneously
assuaging some of its partners in favour of BI (if only temporarily), while nevertheless not having to face up to any of the costs associated with
promoting the scheme in earnest. Another poignant example is the case of Brazil (Suplicy, 2005). Despite having enacted BI legislation a decade
ago (Law 10.835 or Lei de Renda Básica de Cidadania, enacted in January 2004), a provision stipulating that implementation remains the
budgetary prerogative of the federal executive branch effectively rendered the legislation moot (Lavinas, 2013). Here, too, the split between
legislation and policy allows government to bypass any political costs associated with implementing BI, leading critics such as Lena Lavinas
(2013) to aptly label it the ‘lost road’ to BI.

The fact that cheap political support for BI may not be sufficiently robust to survive a move by its supporters into a position of policy
responsibility is not the only problem, however. Worse still, some instances of political support for BI may even be
counterproductive as support from one particular faction may prevent others from endorsing the same
policy. Because political factions often use identification with policy positions as an instrument to differentiate themselves from their
(internal or external) political competitors (Cox and McCubbins, 2005), support for BI from Faction X may prevent Faction Y from endorsing a
policy that would otherwise naturally fit their political profile. There may exist a ‘first mover disadvantage’ to BI that is associated with a
political faction that is unable to move BI up on the policy agenda, when precisely this association prevents more powerful individuals or groups
from offering valuable support. In this case, express support is ‘noxious’ to the case for BI. In some countries (e.g. Ireland, Namibia) BI is
promoted by groups with a strong religious affiliation, which may well prevent non-confessional social movements or associations from
expressing support. Similarly, BI advocates who adopt an entrepreneurial perspective may find it difficult to
curry favour with factions endorsing strong socialist values . Both the entrepreneur Roland Duchâtelet, billionaire
founder of the Belgian political party Vivant, and Götz Werner, the German owner of the DM-Drogerie Markt drugstore chain, are staunch
promotors of BI (Liebermann, 2012; Vanderborght, 2000). However, advancing the cause from within a distinctive liberal economic perspective,
both have faced repeated opposition from the progressive corners of the BI movement.9 Initial effects of the identification of BI with
one specific faction, combined with the ‘reactive reluctance’ of other factions to support the policy because of such political
identification, may produce a form of path dependency that causes BI to be marginalised by association.

The problem of cheap support, as outlined in this section, poses something of an impasse for BI advocates intent on building a robust political
coalition. On the one hand, many (if not most) current instances of expressed support may be of little practical use, and in some circumstances
could turn ‘noxious’ when support by some factions leads others to oppose BI. On the other hand, future support of any impact is unlikely in a
political environment reluctant to spend political capital on a policy that remains highly divisive, both internally and externally. This makes it
difficult to ascertain whose support to seek, and – lest we forget – at what price. The underlying concern is that the very reason why political
support is relatively easy to come by from ‘marginal’ political individuals or groups is also the reason why such support is of little value to BI
advocates. For advocates intent on building a robust BI coalition, the main challenge is to find ways to get powerful political agents to express
support and simultaneously ensure that such support is no longer cheap in either sense discussed above. This, in turn, implies political support
should be accompanied by real political action to further BI, and for ‘reversals’ of BI support to incur political costs sufficiently high so as to
make their political commitment to the cause more robust and reliable over time (Horn, 1995).10

The deal is key to deter Iran and keep China out of the Middle East.
Harley Lippman 23. Board member of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Partnership for
Peace Fund. "A Saudi-Israel peace treaty is inevitable". Hill. 9-8-2023.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4192700-a-saudi-israel-peace-treaty-is-inevitable/

A regional economic and trade bloc would extend to the sphere of defense and security as well . In February
2023, the U.S. D epartment of H omeland S ecurity announced it was setting up a network of information sharing and

cyber security resilience to promote cybersecurity for Israel and Sunni Gulf States . This is just the start.

Saudi Arabia is seeking to forge a NATO-style security treaty in which the U.S. would be obligated to come to
its defense in the event of an Iranian attack. As part of this treaty, Saudi Arabia would purchase the American T erminal H igh Altitude
A rea D efense antiballistic missile defense system, which could be used to shore up its defenses against
Iran’s growing missile arsenal .

Although Saudi recognition of Israel would complicate Riyadh’s’ efforts to establish détente with Tehran, a security
treaty styled after
NATO could in the future bring together the U.S., Israel , and Sunni States and deter Iranian
aggression . Israel hopes that a U.S. security guarantee to Riyadh could obviate its ambition for a civilian nuclear program monitored and
backed by the U.S. This is due to Israel’s concern of the prospect of a civilian nuclear reactor being converted for military applications.

To this end, Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen reportedly stated that, “[A] defense pledge could reassure Middle Eastern nations, primarily
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.” Moreover, he continued, “this approach would make individual nuclear ambitions unnecessary, bolster
regional stability, and promote the peace and normalization agenda.” Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer went
even further
declaring Israel’s willingness to drop objections to a Saudi civilian nuclear program as part of a peace
agreement with Riyadh .

Israel is well aware that Saudi Arabia can turn to China to develop a nuclear program and would
rather it be developed by the U.S . on its own terms . In 2020, China was advancing its nuclear cooperation
with Saudi Arabia and the UAE . China has renewed its building of a military base in Abu Dhabi as part of China’s People’s Liberal
Army plans to build a global military network. Beijing also assisted Riyadh’s development of its ballistic missile
program and manufacturing its own armed drones.

China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, and China’s Belt Road Initiative is contributing to the Gulf’s digital
transformation. China aims to embed itself in the region’s infrastructure by investing in advanced

technologies such as clean energy, which could be incorporated into Gulf economic diversification efforts.
In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, asserted in March 2023
that the U.S. was “in a race to integrate with our partners before China can fully penetrate the region.”
Kurilla declared, “The People’s Republic of China has chosen to compete in the region. The PRC is aggressively expanding its

diplomatic, informational , military and economic outreach across the region.”

A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would contribute to broader U.S. geopolitical
ambitions of keeping China (and state-connected Chinese firms such as Huawei) out of the Middle East ,
making Saudi Arabia more reliant on U.S. weapons, and preventing Beijing from2 establishing a military base on
Saudi soil.
This will require a coordinated U.S. government strategy approach towards the Middle East. Biden’s appointment of a Special Envoy for the
Abraham Accords is a step in the right direction.

As opposed to China’s approach of offering infrastructure development via its BRI and debt trap
diplomacy in the Middle East, the Biden Administration seeks to advance the sustainable development of
infrastructure in a transparent manner. The U.S. aims to achieve this by fostering healthy interdependency between states via free trade
agreements. The Biden administration’s approach of vertical expansion is to deepen economic benefits to citizens of partnering countries.

The U.S. Development Finance Corporation is also offering loan guarantees to incentivize U.S. companies to invest in developing markets. This
approach is far more transparent than China’s. Development Finance Corporation projects in Asia and Latin America could be
replicated in the Middle East for lower-income countries. This would lead the U.S. to work with partners across the Middle East on projects that
can create prosperity in poorer countries such as Jordan. In
the long run, a common market in the Gulf, coupled with
increased security , defense and intelligence ties across the region could offset Iranian influence.
The momentum toward normalization and ultimately a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not going to be determined by
their respective domestic policies or local concerns. Rather, a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia will emerge from their
continued incremental progress toward normalization to create markets and security frameworks.

This may come together within broader geopolitical concerns, such as U.S.-China competition to
extend influence in the Gulf and across the Middle East.

Iran war escalates.

Dr. Robert Farley 22, PhD from the University of Washington, Professor of Political Science at the
University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy, “5 Places Where World War III Could Erupt In
2022”, https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/01/5-places-where-world-war-iii-could-erupt-in-2022/

5 Places World War III Could Erupt : Iran

Any honest appraisal of US policy towards Iran now recognizes that then-President Donald Trump’s decision to
abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, was a disastrous mistake.

The US effort to increase military and economic coercion against Iran has failed . Iran has stepped up its
nuclear efforts while improving the sophistication of its missile forces and increasing its covert
activities across the region.
Negotiations have thus far failed to restore the status quo, as the United States has stumbled over its inability to commit and Tehran has taken
a tough attitude. If negotiations fail to bring Iran into some kind of a deal , the threat of military action lurks in the
background. While the Biden administration doesn’t seem excited about the prospect of war, US allies in Riyadh and Jerusalem
could try to trigger a confrontation . Similarly, if Iran comes to believe an attack is inevitable , it could pre-
empt with all the tools it has available . Iran lacks committed great power backing, but a conflict in the Middle East
could open opportunities elsewhere for Russia and China .
 1NC – OFF
The United States, through a limited constitutional convention called for by at least
thirty-four of the States and ratified by at least thirty-eight of the States, should
increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by providing a basic income funded
by a consumption tax including adding any recommendations or enforcements
necessary to effectively execute the mandate, including funding and infrastructural
provisions.
Solves and avoids politics.
Elving ’18 [Ron; March 1; Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR; NRP,
“Repeal the Second Amendment? That’s Not So Simple. Here’s What It Would Take,”
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/01/589397317/repeal-the-second-amendment-thats-not-so-simple-here-
s-what-it-would-take]

A new Constitutional Convention ?

If all this seems daunting, as it should, there

is one alternative for changing the Constitution. That is the calling of a
Constitutional Convention. This, too, is found in Article V of the Constitution and allows for a new convention to
bypass Congress and address issues of amendment on its own.

To exist with this authority, the new convention would need to be called for by two-thirds of the state
legislatures.

So if 34 states saw fit, they could convene their delegations and start writing amendments . Some believe such
a convention would have the power to rewrite the entire 1787 Constitution, if it saw fit. Others say it would and should be limited
to specific issues or targets, such as term limits or balancing the budget — or changing the campaign-finance system or restricting the
individual rights of gun owners.

There have been calls for an " Article V convention " from prominent figures on the left as well as the right . But
there are those on both sides of the partisan divide who regard the entire proposition as suspect, if not frightening.

One way or another, any changes made by such a powerful convention would need to be ratified by three-fourths of
the states — just like amendments that might come from Congress.
ON
 Inequality Advantage
1. UBI doesn’t solve inequality.
Anna Coote 19. Principal fellow at the New Economics Foundation and and co-author of Universal
Basic Income: A Union Perspective. “Universal basic income doesn’t work. Let’s boost the public realm
instead” The Guardian. 05-06-19.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-
poverty-inequality

A study published this week sheds doubt on ambitious claims made for universal basic income (UBI), the
scheme that would give everyone regular, unconditional cash payments that are enough to live on. Its
advocates claim it would help to reduce poverty, narrow inequalities and tackle the effects of automation on jobs and
income. Research conducted for Public Services International, a global trade union federation, reviewed for

the first time 16 practical projects that have tested different ways of distributing regular cash payments
to individuals across a range of poor, middle-income and rich countries, as well as copious literature on
the topic. It could find no evidence to suggest that such a scheme could be sustained for all individuals
in any country in the short, medium or longer term – or that this approach could achieve lasting improvements in wellbeing or
equality. The research confirms the importance of generous, non-stigmatising income support, but everything turns on how much money is paid, under what
conditions and with what consequences for the welfare system as a whole. From
Kenya and southern India to Alaska and Finland,
cash payment schemes have been claimed to show that UBI “works”. In fact, what’s been tested in
practice is almost infinitely varied, with cash paid at different levels and intervals , usually well below the poverty line
and mainly to individuals selected because they are severely disadvantaged, with funds provided by charities, corporations and development agencies more often
than by governments. Experiments
in India and Kenya have been funded, respectively, by Unicef and Give Directly, a US charity supported by
Google. They give money to people on very low incomes in selected villages for fixed periods of time. Giving

small amounts of cash to people who have next to nothing is bound to make a difference – and indeed,
these schemes have helped to improve recipients’ health and livelihoods. But nothing is revealed about
their longer-term viability, or how they could be scaled up to serve whole populations. And there is a
democratic deficit: people who get their basic income from charities or aid agencies have no control over how payments are made, to whom, at what level or over
what period of time. The
Alaska Permanent Fund, built from the state’s oil revenues, pays all adults and children a dividend each year – in 2018, it
was $1,600 (£1,230). The scheme is popular and enduring; it has been found to produce some positive impacts on rural indigenous groups, but it makes
no
claim to sufficiency and has done nothing to reduce child poverty or to prevent widening income
inequalities. Helsinki city centre Finland undertook a two-year trial, from January 2017 to December 2018, of modest monthly payments of €560 (£477) to
2,000 unemployed people – but the government has refused to fund further expansion. It told us little about UBI except that, when push comes to shove, elected

politicians may balk at paying for a universal scheme. The cost of a sufficient UBI scheme would be extremely high according to
the International Labour Office, which estimates average costs equivalent to 20-30% of GDP in most countries. Costs can be reduced – and have been in most trials –
by paying smaller amounts to fewer individuals. But there
is no evidence to suggest that a partial or conditional UBI scheme
could do anything to mitigate, let alone reverse, current trends towards worsening poverty , inequality and
labour insecurity. Costs may be offset by raising taxes or shifting expenditure from other kinds of public

expenditure, but either way there are huge and risky trade-offs. Money spent on cash payments cannot be invested elsewhere.
The more generous the payments, the wider the range of recipients, the longer the scheme continues, the less money will be left to build the structures and
systems that are needed to realise UBI’s progressive goals. As this week’s report observes, “ If
cash payments are allowed to take
precedence, there’s a serious risk of crowding out efforts to build collaborative, sustainable services
and infrastructure – and setting a pattern for future development that promotes commodification rather than emancipation.” This may help to explain
why UBI has attracted support from Silicon Valley tycoons, who are more interested in defending

consumer capitalism than in tackling poverty and inequality.

2. Robots won’t displace humans.
Dr. Noah Smith 22, economics PhD from the University of Michigan, finance professor at Stony Brook
University, “Generative AI: autocomplete for everything,”
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/generative-ai-autocomplete-for-everything, cy

To put it bluntly, we think the fear , and the guilt, are probably mostly unwarranted . No one knows, of course, but we suspect that AI is far
more likely to complement and empower human workers than to impoverish them or displace them
onto the welfare rolls. This doesn’t mean we’re starry-eyed Panglossians; we realize that this optimistic perspective is a tough sell, and even if our vision comes true,
there will certainly be some people who lose out. But what we’ve seen so far about how generative AI
works suggests that it’ll largely
behave like the productivity-enhancing, labor-saving tools of past waves of innovation.
AI doesn’t take over jobs, it takes over tasks

If AI causes mass unemployment among the general populace, it will be the first time in history that any
technology has ever done that. Industrial machinery, computer-controlled machine tools, software applications, and industrial robots all
caused panics about human obsolescence , and nothing of the kind ever came to pass; pretty much everyone
who wants a job still has a job. As Noah has written, a wave of recent evidence shows that adoption of industrial robots and
automation technology in general is associated with an increase in employment at the company and industry level.
That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, of course – sometimes technology does totally new and unprecedented things, as when the Industrial Revolution suddenly
allowed humans to escape Malthusian poverty for the first time. But it’s important to realize exactly why the innovations of the past didn’t result in the kind of mass
obsolescence that people feared at the time.

The reason was that instead of replacing people entirely, those technologies simply replaced some of the tasks they did. If, like Noah’s ancestors, you were a
metalworker in the 1700s, a large part of your job consisted of using hand tools to manually bash metal into specific shapes. Two centuries later, after the advent of
machine tools, metalworkers spent much of their time directing machines to do the bashing. It’s a different kind of work, but you can bash a lot more metal with a
machine.

Economists have long realized that it’s important to look at labor markets not at the level of jobs, but at the level of tasks within a job. In their excellent 2018 book
Prediction Machines, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb talk about the prospects for predictive AI – the kind of AI that autocompletes your Google
searches. They offer the possibility that this tech will simply let white-collar workers do their jobs more efficiently, similar to what machine tools did for blue-collar
workers.

Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo have a mathematical model of this (here’s a more technical version), in which they break jobs down into specific tasks. They
find that new production technologies like AI or robots can have several different effects. They can make workers more productive at their existing tasks. They can
shift human labor toward different tasks. And they can create new tasks for people to do. Whether workers get harmed or helped depends on which of these effects
dominates.

In other words, as Noah likes to say, “Dystopia is when robots take half your jobs. Utopia is when robots take half your job.”

Comparative advantage: Why humans will still have jobs

You don’t need a fancy mathematical model, however, to understand the basic principle of comparative advantage. Imagine a venture capitalist (let’s call him
“Marc”) who is an almost inhumanly fast typist. He’ll still hire a secretary to draft letters for him, though, because even if that secretary is a slower typist than him,
Marc can generate more value using his time to do something other than drafting letters. So he ends up paying someone else to do something that he’s actually
better at.

Now think about this in the context of AI. Some people think that the reason previous waves of innovation didn’t make humans obsolete was that there were some
things humans still did better than machines – e.g. writing. The fear is that AI is different, because the holy grail of AI research is something called “general
intelligence” – a machine mind that performs all tasks as well as, or better than, the best humans. But as we saw with the example of Marc and the secretary, just
because you can do everything better doesn’t mean you end up doing everything! Applying the idea of comparative advantage at the level of tasks instead of jobs,
we can see that there will always be something for humans to do, even if AI would do those things better. Just as Marc has a limited number of hours in the day, AI

resources are limited too – as roon likes to say, every time you use any of the most advanced AI applications, you’re “lighting a pile of GPUs on fire”.
Those resource constraints explain why humans who want jobs will find jobs ; AI businesses will just keep expanding and gobbling up more

physical resources until human workers themselves, and the work they do to complement AI , become the scarce
resource.
3. Can’t solve overconsumption—companies will gaslight people into thinking they
need the products and no modelling—CX was embarrassing.

4. Inequality has zero effect on war

Gal Ariely 15, senior lecturer in the Department of Politics & Government, Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev, PhD from the University of Haifa’s School of Political Sciences, “Does National Identification
Always Lead to Chauvinism? A Cross-national Analysis of Contextual Explanations,” Globalizations, 2015,
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/43980028/Ariely_Globalizations_2015.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1515397197&Signature=78lnbbHNRVjhLgOKyRPK
m%2BK8M1o%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename
%3DDoes_National_Identification_Always_Lead.pdf

the effects of income inequality and ethnic diversity are presented in Table 3. Models 3.1 and 3.2
With respect to internal explanations,

indicate that neither directly affects chauvinism . H4 is therefore not supported. The results suggest, however, that both have a
negative effect on the national-identification slopes. Contrary to our expectations, countries with higher
levels of economic and ethnic division appear to exhibit a weaker relation between national identification
and chauvinism . While these findings might seem to contradict H5, the pattern was caused by outliers. After excluding South Africa—the most
unequal and ethnic diverse country in our sample—the effect of ethnic diversity is not even of borderline significance. After excluding Chile—the most

unequal country in our sample— the interaction effects for economic inequality were also far from significant .

The results, therefore, do not support H5.21¶ Conclusions¶ During the historic phone call between President Obama and Iranian President Sheikh Hasan Rouhani in September 2013, the latter
stated that his country’s nuclear program ‘represents Iran’s national dignity’.22 This declaration reflects the common perception that Iran’s nuclear program mobilizes Iranians in support of
resisting further national humiliation at the hands of foreigners (Moshirzadeh, 2007). This reflects the important role national feelings play in the contemporary international arena. Evidence
from other examples—such as the Israeli-Palestine conflict—indicates that national identity serves as a key factor in conflict resolution. The prominence of national feelings is not limited to the
Middle East, their effect on public attitudes towards international issues, and conflicts also being manifest in the West (Billig, 1995; Kinder & Kam, 2010).¶ It is thus hardly surprising that

scholars seeking to develop a better understanding of conflicts adopt a social-psychology perspective,

replacing the deterministic view that identification with one’s in-group necessarily leads to antagonism
towards out-groups with an examination of the broader social context. In line with this approach, the present paper focuses on
the way in which political and social contexts encourage chauvinistic views towards the international arena and how they affect the relation between national identification and chauvinism.¶
Integrating various social and psychological theories, we investigated two external contextual explanations (globalization and conflict) and an internal explanation (social division). Employing
cross-national survey data, we examined the relation between national identification and chauvinism across 33 countries. The findings indicate that a positive relationship exists between
national identification and chauvinism across most of the countries, although the level differs from country to country. Using a multilevel regression analysis, we tested to see whether
globalization, conflict, and social division correlate with this variation. The results indicate that social and political contexts are related to chauvinism and the ways national identifi- cation and
chauvinism are linked. Although a closer relation exists between national identification and chauvinism in more globalized countries, globalization failed to explain the variation in chauvinism
itself. These findings support the notion that globalization highlights the importance of national identity (Calhoun, 2007; Castells, 2011). While those sections of globalized societies that are
attached to their country also tend to resist international cooperation and endorse hostile views, the complexity of the phenomenon—as evinced by the divergent findings of previous studies
(e.g. Jung, 2008; Norris & Inglehart, 2009)—calls for further research of this interpretation. The fact that the current study is cross-sectional must also be taken into account, the findings
adducing the relation but not the causal relations between the variables. In contrast to experimental studies, the present design is similarly limited in its ability to offer a robust control for
alternative explanations.¶ Another external factor found to be relevant—to a certain degree—was conflict. Countries that suffered large numbers of deaths in conflicts and mobilized resources
and personnel exhibited higher levels of chauvinism. When other indices for conflict were used, however, these results were not replicated. A possible explanation for this finding lies in the
inherent limitation in the way in which conflicts are measured across various countries. Measuring international conflicts is a challenging task (Anderton & Carter, 2011). While the ways of
measuring conflict were chosen because they reflect different dimensions of conflict in order to be representative of a wide range of countries, the problem of comparability cannot be
ignored. An alternative explanation may derive from the fact that only deaths from conflict and resources/personnel mobilization are sufficiently significant to contribute to chauvinism. The
limitations of our measurements of conflict and research design mean that this idea must remain speculative, however. In addition, it is important to emphasize that the sample of countries is

also limited as many countries are not involved in conflict and there is also limited variation in the types of conflicts.¶ Contrary to what the divisionary
theory of national mobilization would lead us to expect, neither economic inequality nor ethnic
diversity were related to chauvinism or affected the relation between national identification and
chauvinism . This finding might also be explained by the limitation of the current research design. The number of countries included in the ISSP 2003 National Identity Module being
relatively small and the sample only covering countries with available survey data, the results relate solely to this specific sample of countries. Across another set of countries, social division
might play a far more significant role. Another explanation might be the meaning given to national identification and chauvinism across the countries. While evidence exists for the
comparability of the scales across most of the countries, the divergent meaning probably attributed to them in Germany, the United States, and Israel might form an additional limitation.

5. Cooperation prevails over water wars.

Dr. Jampel Dell’Angelo 18, PhD in international cooperation and sustainable development and
associate professor of water governance and politics at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Paolo D'Odorico,
professor of hydrology and water resources and Chair of the Department of Environmental Science at
the University of California, Berkeley; Dr. Maria Rulli, PhD and associate professor in hydrology at the
Politecnico di Milano, 10/11/2018, “The neglected costs of water peace,” Wires Water, 5(6),
https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1316, pacc

The first argument that “ interstate cooperation on freshwater resources prevails over conflict” is supported by
historical evidence . While there are some analyses indicating that sharing of international rivers might increase the probability of militarized disputes
(Toset, Gleditsch & Hegre, 2000) it has been shown that the majority of water-related interstate conflicts have been resolved in a
cooperative way (Wolf, 2007). The cost of war fare by far would hardly be justified by the appropriation of a resource
that does not directly lead to high profits such as water (Selby, 2005). A systematic search for a water war with
interstate violence produced only one result , pointing at the military conflict of the city-states of Umma and Lagash over the use of
the Tigris river in 2,500 BC E, as the only water war that has ever happened (Gleick, 1993). The solid presence of cooperative
interactions and the clear absence of formal wars over freshwater resources are also supported by the analysis of contemporary times. The relatively large
number of water treaties among countries sharing water bodies can be considered as a compelling
evidence of cooperation (Wolf, 1998). An exhaustive dataset on interactions between two or more states on water resources in the
second half of the 20th century reveals that out of 1,831 interactions, conflictive or cooperative, ~67% were cooperative. Of the

507 more conflictive events, only 43 cases were associated with military acts while 414 were limited to verbal hostility. No
events were categorized as formal war (Wolf, Yoffe, & Giordano, 2003).

6. DoD policies ensure critical infrastructure resiliency.

Evans 20 (Carol, Ph.D. in International Economics and International Political Economy, director of the
Strategic Studies Institute @ US Army War College, “Future Warfare: Weaponizing Critical
Infrastructure,” The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters, Volume 50, Number 2, Article 6,
Summer 2020, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol50/iss2/6, ccm)

Beginning in 2005, the DoD initiated an enterprise-wide Defense Critical Infrastructure Program which
focused on identifying key defense infrastructure assets and developing guidelines and procedures for
their protection

.23 With the launch in 2012 of the Department’s Mission Assurance Strategy, the focus shifted from
protecting defense critical assets toward strengthening the resiliency of DoD missions. Mission
Assurance is “a process to protect or ensure the continued function and resilience of capabilities and
assets —including personnel , equipment , facilities , networks , information and info rmation systems ,
infrastructure , and supply chains — critical to the performance of DoD MEFS [mission essential
functions] in any operating environment or condition.”24 Recognizing over 90 percent of US
infrastructure resides in the private sector , the Mission Assurance Strategy also called for
strengthening DoD partnerships with those commercial infrastructure owners and operators . The
strategy has been augmented by other policy directives that require and provide all services,
departments, and agencies with guidelines for identifying , assessing , managing , and monitoring risks
to strategic missions.25

7. Cyberattacks are alt causes to critical infrastructure failure.

 Harmonization Inequality
1. Concede a VAT stops economic decline through raising business confidence and
inflation
Growth is unsustainable AND innovation can’t solve---shifting away from productivity
through degrowth is key to avoid extinction.
Milena Büchs & Max Koch 17. Milena Büchs is Associate Professor in Sustainability, Economics and Low
Carbon Transitions at the University of Leeds, UK. Max Koch is Professor of Social Policy at Lund
University (School of Social Work), Sweden. 2017. Postgrowth and Wellbeing. Springer International
Publishing. CrossRef, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59903-8.

As the previous chapters have shown, economicgrowth is regarded as a prime policy aim by policy makers and economists
because it is thought to be essential for reducing poverty and generating rising living standards and stable
levels of employment (Ben-Ami 2010: 19–20). More generally, support for economic growth is usually intertwined with
advocating social progress based on scientific rationality and reason and hence with an optimistic view of humans’
ingenuity to solve problems (ibid.: 17, 20, Chap. 5). Growth criticism thus tends to be portrayed as anti-progress and inherently
conservative (ibid.: Chap. 8). While it is important to acknowledge and discuss this view, it needs to be emphasised that growth criticism is
formulated with long-term human welfare in mind which advocates alternative types of social progress (Barry 1998). This chapter first outlines
ecological and social strands of growth critiques and then introduces relevant concepts of and positions within the postgrowth debate.
Ecological Critiques of G rowth Generally speaking, two types of growth criticism can be distinguished: the first focuses on limitations of GDP as
a measure of economic performance; the second goes beyond this by highlighting the inappropriateness of growth as the ultimate goal of
economic activity and its negative implications for environment and society. Since
GDP measures the monetary value of all final
goods and services in an economy, it excludes the environmental costs generated by production. For instance, as long as there
is no cost associated with emitting greenhouse gases , the cost for the environmental and social damage
following from this is not reflected in GDP figures. Worse even, GDP increases as a consequence of some
types of environmental damage: if defo restation and timber trade increase or if natural disasters or
industrial accidents require expenditures for clean-up and reconstruction, GDP figures will rise
(Douthwaite 1999: 18; Leipert 1986). Several critics of GDP as a measure of progress have proposed alternative indicators of welfare such as the
Genuine Progress Indicator, Green GDPs or other approaches which factor in environmental costs (see Chap. 5 for more details), but they do
not necessarily object to economic growth being the primary goal of economic activity (van den Bergh 2011). In contrast, the idea of ecological
limits to growth goes beyond the critique of GDP as a measure of economic performance. Instead, it maintains that economic
growth
should not, and probably cannot , be the main goal of economic activity because it requires increasing

resource inputs , some of which are non-renewable , and generates wastes , including greenhouse
gases, that disturb various ecosystems , severely threatening human and planetary functioning in the
short and long term. 4 CRITIQUES OF GROWTH 41 Resources are regarded as non-renewable if they cannot be naturally replaced at
the rate of consumption (Daly and Farley 2011: 75–76). Examples include fossil fuels, earth minerals and metals, and some nuclear materials
like uranium (Daly and Farley 2011: 77; Meadows et al. 2004: 87–107). Based on work by Georgescu-Roegen (1971), many ecological
economists also assume that non-renewable resources cannot be fully recycled because they become degraded in the process of economic
activity. Historically
speaking, economic growth is a fairly recent phenomenon (Fig. 2.1). Since its onset in the late
seventeenth century in Europe and mid-eighteenth century in the US (Gordon 2012), it
has gone hand in hand with an
exponentially increasing use of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels (Fig. 4.1). While we are not
yet close to running out of non-renewable resources, over time they will become more difficult and
hence more expensive to recover . This idea is captured by the concept of “ energy returned on energy
invested ” ( EROEI ). In relation to oil for instance, it has been shown that the easily recoverable fields have
been targeted first and that therefore greater energy (and hence financial ) inputs will be required to
produce more oil. Over time, the ratio of energy returned on energy invested will decrease , reducing the
financial incentive to invest further in the recovery of these non-renewable resources (Dale et al. 2011; Brandt
et al. 2015: 2). Relevant to this is also the debate about peak oil —a concept coined by Shell Oil geologist Marion King

Hubbert in the 1950s—the

point at which the rate of global conventional oil production reaches its maximum
which is expected to take place roughly once half of global oil reserves have been produced . There is still
controversy about whether global peak oil will occur, and if so when, as it is difficult to predict, or get reliable data on, the rate at which
alternative types of energy will replace oil (if this was to happen fast enough, peak oil might not be reached, if it has not yet occurred), the size
of remaining oil reserves and the future efficiency of oil extraction technologies (Chapman 2014). However, it is plausible to assume that oil
prices will rise in the long term if conventional oil availability diminishes, while global demand for oil
increases with continuing economic and population growth. Since economic growth in the second half
of the twentieth century required increasing inputs of conventional oil, higher oil prices would have a
negative impact on growth unless alternative technologies are developed that can generate equivalent liquid fuels at lower prices
(Murphy and Hall 2011). Some scholars have criticised the focus on physical/energy resource limitations as initially highlighted in the “limits to
growth” debate (Meadows et al. 1972) and state that instead catastrophic climate change is likely to be a more serious and immanent threat to
humanity (Schwartzman 2012). The main arguments here are first that much uncertainty remains about the potential and timing of peak oil,
future availability of other fossil fuels and development of alternative low energy resources, while the impacts of climate change
are already immanent and may accelerate within the very near future . Second, even if peaks in fossil fuel production
occurred in the near future, remaining resources could still be exploited to their maximum. However, this would be
devastating from a climate change perspective as, according to the latest IPCC scenarios, greenhouse gas emissions need to
turn net-zero by the second half of this century for there to be a good chance to limit global warming to
2° Celsius (and ideally, below that) (Anderson and Peters 2016). It is telling that some of the more recent debates about ecological
limits to growth put much more emphasis on environmental impacts of growth, rather than on peak oil or other resource limitations (Dietz and
O’Neill 2013). Differently put, limits of sinks , especially to absorb greenhouse gases, and to the regeneration of vital
ecosystems are now attracting greater concern , compared to limits of resources. Growing economic production generates
increasing pressures on the environment due to pollution of air, water and soil, the destruction of natural habitats and landscapes, for instance,
through deforestation and the extraction of natural resources. Therefore, growth often also threatens the regeneration of renewable
resources such as healthy soil , freshwater and forests , as well as the functioning of vital ecosystem s and
ecosystems services such as the purification of air and water , water absorption and storage and the
related mitigation of droughts and floods , decomposition and detox ification and absorption of waste s,
pollination and pest control (Meadows et al. 2004: 83–84). Recent research on planetary boundaries has started
to identify thresholds of environmental pollution or disturbance of a range of ecosystems services
beyond which the functioning of human life on earth will be put at risk. Rockström and colleagues have identified
nine such “planetary boundaries”—“climate change; rate of biodiversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and
phosphorus cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; global freshwater use; change in land use; chemical pollution; and
atmospheric aerosol loading” (Rockström et al. 2009: 472). They also present evidence according to which three of these boundaries—climate
change, rate of biodiversity loss and the nitrogen cycle—have already reached their limits (Rockström et al. 2009). Of those three thresholds,
climate change has received most attention. The 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014)
concluded that global temperatures have risen by an average of 0.85° since the 1880s (while local temperature increases can be much higher
than that) and that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has reached unprecedented levels over the last 800,000 years—
that of CO2 has now reached 405.6 parts per million (NASA, January 2017, Fig. 4.2), far surpassing the level of 350 ppm which is considered safe
by many scientists (Rockström et al. 2009). The IPCC report also maintained that humans very likely contributed to at least 50% of global
warming that occurred since the 1950s (IPCC 2014: 5). A range of climate change impacts can already be observed, including a 26% increase of
ocean acidification since industrialisation; shrinking of glaciers, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, as well as arctic sea ice; and the rise of sea
levels of 19 cm since 1901. This is projected to increase by an additional 82 cm by the end of this century at current levels of greenhouse gas
emissions (ibid.: 13). Climate change impacts are already felt with increased occurrences of heat waves, heavy rain fall, increased risk of
flooding and impacts on food and water security in a number of regions around the world. It is projected that with a rise of 2° of global
temperatures, 280 million people worldwide (with greatest numbers in China, India and Bangladesh) would be affected by sea level rise,
escalating to a projected 627 million people under a 4° scenario (Strauss et al. 2015: 10). At the 21st Conference of Parties of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in 2015, representatives agreed that action should be taken to limit rise of global
temperatures to 2° and Fig. 4.2 Concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Source NASA, available from
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/. The CO2 levels have been reconstructed from measures of trapped air in polar cap ice
cores 4 CRITIQUES OF GROWTH 45 to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5°. This has been adopted by 196 countries, but immense efforts and very
radical reductions of greenhouse gas emissions will be required to comply with the agreement. Even if net greenhouse gas emissions were
reduced to zero, surface temperatures would remain constant at their increased levels for hundreds of years to come and climate change
impacts such as ocean acidification and rising sea levels would continue for hundreds or even thousands of years once global temperatures are
stabilised; moreover, a range of climate change impacts are deemed irreversible (IPCC 2014: 16). One
controversial question in the
debate about economic growth and environmental impacts has been whether growth can be decoupled
from the damage it causes . Important to this debate is the theory of the E nvironmental K uznets C urve
which applies Simon Kuznets’ hypothesised inverted u-shaped relationship between economic development and income inequality to the
relationship between economic development and environmental degradation. According to this theory, environmental degradation is low in
the early phases of economic development, then rises with increasing development up to a certain point, beyond which it falls again with
advancing development because more resources can be invested to render production and consumption more efficient and less polluting.
Therefore, this theory suggests that it is possible to decouple economic growth (measured in GDP) from its environmental implications. The
counter-argument to this theory is that it does not take into account the difference between relative and
absolute decoupling . Relative decoupling refers to the environmental impacts generated over time per
unit of economic output , for instance CO2 emissions per million of US$. In contrast, absolute decoupling would
examine aggregate environmental impact , compared to total economic output over time. Here it has been
argued that while relative decoupling may be possible as the environmental impact per unit of economic output decreases over time due to
efficiency gains, absolute decoupling is much harder to achieve while growth continues. Indeed, there is no ev idence for absolute
decoupling as total environmental impacts, for instance total global CO2 emissions, are still rising with rising global GDP
(Jackson 2011: 67–86). This is partly due to rebound effects which we discussed in Chap. 2: rising consumption because the increase
in efficiency has made it cheaper to produce/consume (Jackson 2011: 67–86; see also Czech 2013: Chap. 8 criticising “green growth”).
Furthermore, if decoupling is examined at the country level, one would need to take consumptionbased resource use/emissions into account
rather than productionbased impacts. Substantial
environmental impacts related to everything that is consumed in
rich countries occur in developing countries from which goods are imported . A focus on production-
based environmental impacts would hence be misleading as it ignores the [and] environmental impacts
that relate to a country’s living standards and that occur outside of that country . Social Critiques of Growth
Economic growth has not only been criticised from an ecological perspective, but also from an individual and social wellbeing point of view.
Here, we can again distinguish a critique of GDP as a measure of wellbeing and a wider critique which highlights potential negative
consequences of economic growth for human wellbeing. Several scholars have argued that GDP is an inadequate measure of prosperity or
wellbeing because it only includes market transactions and ignores activities of the informal economy in households and the volunteering
sector which make an important contribution to individual and social wellbeing (Stiglitz et al. 2011; van den Bergh 2009; Jackson 2011). It also
excludes the contribution of certain government services that are provided for free (Douthwaite 1999: 14; Stiglitz et al. 2011: 23), and the roles
of capital stocks and of leisure in generating welfare (Costanza et al. 2015: 137). Furthermore, all market transactions make a positive
contribution to GDP, regardless of whether expenditures increase or decrease welfare. Similar to the way in which environmental costs of
growth are either excluded from GDP or even increase it, expenditures that arise from road accidents, divorces, crime, etc., contribute
positively to GDP (ibid.: 133). The focus on market transactions also means that an increasing marketisation (or “commodification”) of an
economy will be reflected in a rise of GDP, which may or may not be related to actual “welfare” outcomes (Stiglitz et al. 2011: 49). It also
implies that GDP is an insufficient cross-national comparator for the quality of life, as it does not take into account the different sizes of the
informal economy across countries (ibid.: 15). Furthermore, GDP does not indicate how income and consumption are distributed in society
(Stiglitz et al. 2011: 44). This implies that a rise of GDP can be consistent with a rise of inequality of income and wealth. 4 CRITIQUES OF
GROWTH 47 However, if greater inequality has negative impacts on social wellbeing (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009), this would be masked by
rising GDP figures (Douthwaite 1999: 17). An even more fundamental criticism of GDP as a measure of wellbeing is that it focuses on the
accumulation of money or wealth and thus on the material aspects of wellbeing. Such a narrow conception of the goals of economic activity
and wellbeing has been criticised early on in the history of economic thought, e.g. by Aristotle’s distinction between oikonomia and
chrematistics. The latter refers to the accumulation of wealth and was regarded by him as an “unnatural” activity which did not contribute to
the generation of use value and wellbeing (Cruz et al. 2009: 2021). The argument that wider conceptions of wellbeing and prosperity are
required has also become relevant for contemporary critiques of economic growth (Jackson 2011; Paech 2013; Schneider et al. 2010) as we will
discuss this in more detail in Chap. 5. Arguments About the Psychological and S ocial Costs of G rowth The broader social critique of economic
growth highlights potential “social limits” to or even negative consequences of economic growth for individual and collective wellbeing. The
term “social limits to growth” was coined by Fred Hirsch (1976). He argued that the benefits of growth are initially exclusive to small elites and
that these benefits disappear as soon as they spread more widely through mass consumption. For instance, only few people can own a
Rembrandt painting; holiday destinations are more enjoyable when they are not overrun by hordes of other tourists; there are only few
leadership positions, etc. From this perspective, there are “social limits” to the extent to which the benefits of growth can be socially expanded
and equally shared. Other scholars have expressed concern about individual and collective social costs of economic growth. First, there is the
argument that the need to keep up with ever-rising living standards and new consumer habits, “keeping up with the Joneses”—a lot of which is
seen to be driven by advertisement and social pressure rather than real needs, for instance fashionable clothing or gadgets—can generate
stress and increase the occurrence of mental disorders (James 2007; Offer 2006; Kasser 2002). 48 M. BÜCHS AND M. KOCH Second, it has been
argued that economic growth can imply wider social costs. For instance, with its emphasis on individual gain, market relations and competition,
and the need that it generates for spatial mobility (e.g. for successful participation in education and labour markets), it is feared to undermine
moral and social capital and put a strain on family and community relations, potentially even leading to increasing divorce and crime rates
(Douthwaite 1999; Daly and Cobb 1989: 50–51; Hirsch 1976). Social costs of technological development and industrialisation also include
industrial workplace and traffic accidents and time lost in traffic jams and for commuting (Czech 2013: Chap. 2; Stiglitz et al. 2011: 24).
Technological innovation which arises from growth can also act as a factor for job losses and increasing job insecurity (Douthwaite 1999),
especially if growth rates are not sufficiently high to compensate gains in productivity. It is often assumed that growth will benefit the many
because of assumed “trickle-down” effects which promise to improve the lot of the poor simply because the “cake” of available wealth is
growing. While progress has been made in reducing extreme global poverty and inequality (Sala-i-Martin 2006; Rougoor and van Marrewijk
2015), the number of people living in poverty across the globe remains high.1 At the same time, income inequality in a range of countries has
been rising and the situation of many of the people living in extreme poverty is not improving which means the fruits of economic growth
remain to be unequally distributed (Collier 2007; Piketty and Saez 2014). The post-development debate goes even further than that in arguing
that not only may growth not have reached the global poor to the extent that had been predicted by neoclassical economists, but that it can
also have negative impacts on indigenous communities in developing countries, especially those who rely on local natural resources for their
livelihoods which often suffer exploitation, pollution or even destruction through the inclusion of local economies into global value chains
(Rahnema and Bawtree 1997). While the distinction between critiques of growth that focus on its problematic ecological and social
consequences is useful for analytic purposes, the two dimensions are of course closely linked. Ecological consequences of growth have the
potential to severely impact or even undermine human wellbeing. Local livelihoods are already affected by current climate change impacts such
as ocean acidification and its impact on marine organisms, draughts, floods and severe weather events, the 4 CRITIQUES OF GROWTH 49
frequency of which has been rising. Accordingly, it is estimated that crop and fish yields are already diminishing in several regions (Stern 2015;
IPCC 2014) and that millions of people are already being displaced and forced to migrate due to climate change and other environmental
impacts (Black et al. 2011). While the overall long-term impacts of climate change and the surpassing of other planetary boundaries are difficult
to predict, they clearly have the potential to substantially undermine human wellbeing. Since
greenhouse gas emissions are
driven by economic growth, the development of alternative economic models that do not depend on
growth is urgent since continued growth “threatens to alter the ability of the Earth to support life” (Daly
and Farley 2011: 12).

Global interdependence enables rapid scale down following economic decline. It’s
preferable to environmental collapse.
Jones ’21 [Aled; 7/21/21; Director of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University,
Ph.D. in Cosmology from the University of Cambridge, M.A. in Natural Science, Theoretical Physics from
the University of Cambridge, Nick King; Visiting Researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, M.Sc. in
Environmental Engineering, Technology, and Environmental Technology from the Imperial College
London; "An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’,"
Sustainability, Volume 13, 8161, p. 1-32]

Note: ‘<’ expanded as ‘less than’ in brackets for readability.

1.2.5. Societal Collapse

Overall, the literature sources summarised in the preceding subsections paint a picture of human civilisation that is in a
perilous state , with large and growing risks developing in multiple spheres of the human endeavour. The
synthesis of the conclusions presented in these myriad studies is that 70 years of the ‘Great Acceleration’ (plus the lesser but
cumulative effects of the preceding approximate 10,000 years) have had indisputable, egregious effects on the functioning
of the totality of the Earth System, and the continued trends and behaviours of the human collective look
highly likely to exacerbate these existing trends. The potential for nonlinearities and other complex
system effects only serve to potentially heighten the risks and consequences.

This can be summarised as [53] “…future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently
believed. The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms — including humanity —is in fact
so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.” This statement effectively sums up the current
situation for humanity and indicates that it may be increasingly likely that the current (and near-future) timeframes
represent a significant inflection point . Changes of varying magnitudes are possible in the coming
years and decades, up to and including the collapse of organised societies . Various scientific and popular literature
sources have explored the concept of societal collapse, with an increase in these descriptions occurring in recent decades as awareness and
concern regarding the global environmental predicament has grown. Table 1 summarises the key features of the most significant of these
conceptual descriptions.

[[TABLE 1 OMITTED]]

1.2.6. Collapse Lifeboats

In line with the studies

that have explored the concept of societal collapse , a number of studies in the scientific and popular
literature have developed the concept of ‘collapse lifeboats’. This generally describes locations that do not
experience the most egregious effects of societal collapses (i.e., as may occur due to the effects of climatic changes) and are
therefore able to maintain significant populations. These studies have considered small, isolated communities [58] in larger
countries including Australia and New Zealand [54]. The concept is therefore an extrapolation of societal collapse, in that it considers events,
features and societal structures that might feasibly develop in the context of a collapse.

Extrapolating the impact of warming due to climate change has been a particular focus for some of these studies. It is possible to explore the
potential economic, social and ecological conditions prevailing in the world at each degree increase in the global average
temperature due to climate change, from 1 to 6 °C. It is within the 5 °C increase scenario that the potential for major
relocations to particular regions of the world can result in a reversal of globalisation [59], which in turn causes economic
depression and shifts in global populations. The British Isles, Scandinavia, Patagonia, Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand are
identified as locations that migrants may seek to relocate to in this scenario. With the global average temperature increased by 4 °C, much of
the land in the tropical and subtropical latitudes may become unproductive and depopulated, and inundated coastlines are common
throughout the world [60] with Scandinavia, the British Isles and New Zealand identified as potential lifeboats. Using the perspective of the Gaia
Hypothesis [6], northern Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, New Zealand and the British Isles (along with mountainous regions at lower latitudes)
may remain habitable through the persistence of agriculture and may therefore act as ‘lifeboats’ for populations of humans.

Alternatively, a protracted ‘energy descent’ following the passing of peak oil, combined with the effects of climate change, can also
lead to different future scenarios including ‘Lifeboats’ [61,62], which is a most pessimistic scenario, describing severe climatic changes
combined with economic collapse leading to general decline in societal complexity, with isolated ,

localised pockets surviving as the indicated ‘lifeboats’, and is the most closely aligned with the scenario posited
in this study. It may be possible to control a ‘ power down ’ of global society as a preferable pathway to
that of economic and environmental collapse [56]. The ‘power down’ would comprise a concerted, global, long-term effort to reduce
per capita energy and resource usage, equitably distribute resources and gradually decrease the global population including the possibility of
‘Building Lifeboats’ through community solidarity and preservation.

1.3. ‘De-Complexification’ and ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’

1.3.1. ‘De-Complexification’

A robust assumption based on historical events and behaviours [28,30] is that future changes
may reduce or reverse certain
fundamental measures of the condition of global civilisation, including (but not limited to) total energy and
resource use , systemic interconnectedness and rate of economic growth . The terminology of (sociopolitical,
societal and technological) complexity [30,31] is a useful framing that summarises the collective state of global human civilisation and allows
the definition of a concept labelled as ‘de-complexification’.

‘De-complexification’ is defined as a condition in which the overall complexity of human societies at global scale
would undergo a large and broad-spectrum (i.e., affecting all parts of societies, technological systems and environments)
reduction. Although this concept is central to this study, it is not defined in detailed terms, nor is it quantified. Instead, it is applied as a
generalised description that captures a slowdown, cessation or reversal of the trends that are characteristic of recent civilisation, notably, the
exponential increases in multiple parameters, i.e., the ‘Great Acceleration’ [2].

At the highest level, the cause underlying such a ‘de-complexification’ is the nexus of trends and phenomena described in Section 1.2. It is not
possible to be more specific about the cause(s) that could potentially result in this occurring, but some possible modes of behaviour for its
occurrence can be described in more general terms. ‘De-complexification’ could feasibly occur as a discrete, short
duration event [12,13]; as a more prolonged, gradual and long-term process [63]; or potentially as a hybrid of both these types of events.
These are described in more detail below:

‘Seneca type’—this would likely result from a discrete initiation event or phase for which there are no
significant signals of the coming disruption and would lead to a rapid and profound ‘de-complexification’
(potentially on the order of [less than] <1 year–years timescales) [12,13].

‘Long descent type’—this would likely result from a combination of factors over a longer time period, and so would not be attributable to a
singular initiation event and would likely be more gradual and incremental in nature (potentially on the order of years–decades timescales)
[63].

A ‘hybrid’ of these might be ‘de-complexification’ with a prolonged, gradual and non-discrete initiation but
which accelerates through the emergence of factors that gain a ‘momentum’ through gradually
strengthening enhancing feedback mechanisms and/or cascading events , leading eventually to an abrupt ‘Seneca
type’ event that results in the loss of remaining complexity.

Any ‘de-complexification process’, whether abrupt in duration or as a result of a more prolonged reduction, would likely be heterogeneous in
its progression. Neither the nature of any such changes, nor the behaviour of human and natural systems during any such period of disruption
can be predicted at any spatial or temporal resolution, but some broad assumptions about possible system behaviours and end states can be
considered. The severity and consequences of this reduction would be highly dependent on multiple complex factors such as the exact starting
conditions at the initiation of ‘de-complexification’. This process can, however, generally be assumed to result in
significant changes to the fundamental extant organising principles of global societies and, likely, the
greatly reduced availability of energy and resources , systemic interconnectivity , mobility and size
and distribution of populations (i.e., up to the severe ‘catastrophe trajectories’ [64]).

Recessions moderate war – upswings enflame them.

Laio ’19 [Jianan; 2019; Shenzhen Nanshan Foreign Language School; International Symposium on Social
Science and Management Innovation, “Business Cycle and War: A Literature Review and Evaluation,”
vol. 68]

Through the comparison of the two views, it can be found that both sides are too vague in the description of the concept of business
cycle. According to economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, the business cycle is divided into four phases: expansion,
crisis, recession, recovery. [12] Although there are discords in the division and naming of business cycle, it is certain that they are
not simply divided into two stages of rise and recession. However, as mentioned above, scholars who discussed the
relationship between business cycle and war often failed to divide the business cycle into four stages in
detail to analyze the relationship.
First, war can occur at any stage of expansion , crisis , recession , recovery , so it is unrealistic to assume
that wars occur at any particular stage of the business cycle. On the one hand, although the domestic economic
problems in the crisis/recession/depression period break out and become prominent in a short time, in fact, such challenge exists
at all stages of the business cycle. When countries cannot manage to solve these problems through conventional approaches,
including fiscal and monetary policies, they may resort to military expansion to achieve their goals, a theory known as Lateral Pressure. [13]
Under such circumstances, even countries in the period of economic expansion are facing downward pressure on the economy and may try to
solve the problem through expansion. On the other hand, although the resources required for foreign wars are huge for
countries in economic depression , the decision to wage wars depends largely on the consideration of the
gain and loss of wars . Even during depression, governments can raise funding for war by issuing bonds. Argentina, for example, was
mired in economic stagflation before the war on the Malvinas islands (also known as the Falkland islands in the UK). In fact, many governments
would dramatically increase their expenditure to stimulate the economy during the recession, and economically war is the same as these
policies, so the claim that a depressed economy cannot support a war is unfounded. In addition, during the crisis period of the business cycle,
which is the early stage of the economic downturn, despite the economic crisis and potential depression, the country still retains the ability to
start wars based on its economic and military power. Based on the above understanding, war has the conditions and reasons for
its outbreak in all stages of the business cycle.

Second, the economic origin for the outbreak of war is downward pressure on the economy rather than optimism or
competition for monopoly capital, which may exist during economic recession or economic prosperity . This is due to
a fact that during economic prosperity, people are also worried about a potential economic recession. Blainey pointed
out that wars often occur in the economic upturn , which is caused by the optimism in people's mind [14],
that is, the confidence to prevail. This interpretation linking optimism and war ignores the strength contrast between the warring
parties. Not all wars are equally comprehensive, and there have always been wars of unequal strength. In such a war, one of the parties tends
to have an absolute advantage, so the expectation of the outcome of the war is not directly related to the economic situation of the country.
Optimism is not a major factor leading to war, but may somewhat serve as stimulation . In addition, Lenin attributed the war
to competition between monopoly capital. This theory may seem plausible, but its scope of application is obviously too narrow. Lenin's theory
of imperialism is only applicable to developed capitalist countries in the late stage of the development capitalism, but in reality, many wars take
place among developing countries whose economies are still at their beginning stages. Therefore, the theory centered on competition among
monopoly capital cannot explain most foreign wars. Moreover, even wars that occur during periods of economic expansion are likely to result
from the potential expectation of economic recession, the "limits of growth" [15] faced during prosperity – a potential deficiency of market
demand. So the downward pressure on the economy is the cause of war.

3. Israel preemption is highly unlikely.

Tom Rogan 20, Journalist, 11-18-2020, Why Israel Won't Bomb Iran's Nuclear Sites Before Trump
Leaves Office, Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-israel-wont-
bomb-irans-nuclear-sites-before-trump-leaves-office

Israel is highly unlikely to launch military strikes against Iran's nuclear program before President Trump leaves
office. Some European officials apparently believe differently. Speaking to Business Insider, three security officials suggest that Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu might view the final two months of Trump's presidency as his last chance to eliminate Iran's nuclear program, with
assurance of U.S. military support in the aftermath. But while it's true that President-elect Joe Biden is likely to be a more
skeptical Israeli partner on Iran than is Trump, Israel won't judge a military strike in its interests . For a start, any
military action would be counter to Israeli interests unless it had a high probability of heavily
degrading Iran's nuclear program for several years . The Israeli military cannot offer Netanyahu and Defense
Minister Benny Gantz this assessment . That's because success would mean destroying the vast majority of
Iranian uranium enrichment sites , research centers, and centrifuge production facilities . And that means
Israel would need to rely on American bunker-buster munitions such as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Trump
administration has not authorized the sale of those weapons . In addition, there is no guarantee that even if
these weapons were sold and then used against Iran's most hardened sites , such as at Natanz, they would
achieve their intended effect . As an extension , destroying Iran's nuclear program would also likely require
a ground force component . Too many of the most sensitive Iranian nuclear sites are now hardened
against air and missile strikes. To truly cripple Iran's nuclear program , Israeli ground forces would have
to gain entry to those facilities. And that would require persistent air cover and air-to-ground support
presence for the duration of the operation. This is something that the Israeli Air Force could not do without U.S.
military support. Put simply, the Israeli Air Force is just too small in its size and range of necessary assets. Then there's the broader Israeli
strategic concern. Namely, that absent American military support , Iran would not be deterred from either
sustained and significant retaliation and reconstructing its nuclear program with a more concerted
emphasis on nuclear weaponization . Considering that Israel is a democracy in which the politicians are ultimately accountable to
the people, neither Netanyahu nor his coalition partner, Gantz, want to be in a situation in which ballistic missiles are raining down on Dimona,
Tel Aviv, Haifa, and West Jerusalem. Especially, that is, if Iran's nuclear program has not been destroyed and much of the world is blaming Israel
for the crisis. The Trump campaign's legal adventures aside, Netanyahu knows that Joe Biden is set to enter office come January. He needs
Biden's positive response to his very legitimate concerns about the condition of Iran's nuclear program and Saudi countermeasures. That's not
going to be easy if Iran is blowing stuff up and Biden blames Bibi. Despite his reputation as a hardliner, Netanyahu is actually fairly
risk averse . He has avoided a major military strike against Iran despite a decade of rumors that he was
on the cusp of authorizing a mission. All of this takes us back to the instrumentality of U.S. military support to any strike. Put simply,
the Israeli government knows that it needs the U.S. president firmly on its side before it undertook a
bombing campaign. The exception here is an Iranian rush to weaponization — which would engender Israeli fears of an imminent
second Holocaust and unilateral preemptive action. Trump has not given Israel that assurance of support and, considering his reaffirmed
interest in ending Middle East wars, whatever the costs, he is highly unlikely to do so. Expect continued Israeli covert action and military strikes
against Iranian positions in Syria and Lebanon. But don't look for strikes on Iran's nuclear program before Jan. 20, 2021.

4. No hegemony impact.
J.M. Mckinney, PhD Candidate @ Nanyang, and Nicholas Butts, CSIS, LLM @ Peking, Msc @ LSE,
MPA @ Harvard, ’19, “Bringing Balance to the Strategic Discourse on China’s Rise”
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/JIPA/journals/Volume-02_Issue-4/McKinney.pdf

One of the most repeated ideas in international affairs discourse today is that after World War II the
United States created a “ free and open international order ” and that this order has been responsible
for keeping the Indo-Pacific “largely peaceful” for the last 80 years .4 China is then typically said to be
promoting a vision “incompatible” with this order—something that should make us worry, as it may
herald the return of violent power politics.5

Michael Lind has summarized the perspective:“in my experience, most members of the U.S. foreign
policy elite sincerely believe that the alternative to perpetual U.S. world domination is chaos and war.”6
It is indeed true that the years since World War II have been peaceful when compared with most of
European history and that violence of all kinds has declined.7 This phenomenon has been dubbed the
“ New Peace ,” and the United States certainly played some role in bringing it about .8

However, there is no consensus among scholars to what extent US actions —or more abstractly, the
supposed “order ”— contributed to the decline in war and violence. Existing academic explanations
stress the role of nuclear weapons restraining states from major war;9 the evolution of territorial norms
(as well as regimes and institutions, like the United Nations);10 the development of globalized markets
and “trading states”;11 the longer-term spread of reason, sympathy, and feminization alongside the rise
of stronger states;12 the settlement of territorial disputes after World War II;13 the spread of
democracies;14 the declining utility of war as a rational instrument of statecraft;15 and hegemonic
stability, which emphasizes (in its liberal form) how the United States helped create global institutions
and shape norms16 and (in its “realist” form) how US power has deterred or compelled rivals to
behave.17 This is not the place to judge between the various explanations, but it should be clear that
they are diverse and the overall explanation is likely multivariate . Only the realist version of hegemonic
stability directly supports the narrative of the free and open international order. Christopher Fettweis
has recently sought to test the theory by looking at the changing pattern of global peace/violence
relative to US military spending, frequency of intervention, and selection of grand strategy across four
presidential administrations (Bush Sr. to Obama). He found no relationship at all. “As it stands,” he
concluded, “the only evidence we have regarding the relationship between US power and international
stability suggests that the two are unrelated.”18 If US officials and strategic pundits are going to claim
that peace is dependent on an abstract order created and maintained by American power, they need
to provide serious evidence for their claims. Until then, while we can be thankful that the United States
contributed to postwar institutions like the United Nations, helped delegitimize colonialism, and did not
abuse its power (as much) as many other states would have, policy makers and scholars should be highly
skeptical of more sweeping claims.

Laying aside the question of how the New Peace came about, another oft repeated notion is that China
is determined to undermine the contemporary international order, according to Friedberg, by
corrupting, subverting, and exploiting it.19 The proof for this claim is generally said to be China’s
“militarization” of the South China Sea (SCS) through “salami-slicing” and “grey-zone tactics,”20 and
occasionally, a retired Chinese official or Global Times commentator is quoted as representative of
China’s official (even if unarticulated) policy and intentions. In the abstract, such claims are alarming—in
context, and in balance, rather humdrum. In fact, the evidence of any Chinese intention to destroy, or
even merely undermine and exploit, the current order is slight. China is certainly using its growing
military power to defend its claims in the SCS and even—on occasion— to coerce its neighbors. It uses
protectionist economic policies to boost the prospects of Chinese companies and reduce competition. It
employs economic statecraft to serve its interests abroad. And it certainly is opposed to America’s policy
of global democracy promotion. However, none of these positions fundamentally challenge the
existing order, none of them radically depart from America’s own actions when it was a rising power
in the nineteenth century, and none of them obviously surpass America’s own contemporary record of
order subversion.

When the United States was a rising power, it took half of Mexico and considered taking the rest, it
colonized the Philippines and Hawaii, and it unilaterally seized the maritime choke points of the
Caribbean (Puerto Rico and Cuba).21 The United States used tariffs—which by 1857 averaged 20
percent22 and by the end of the nineteenth century were “the highest import duties in the industrial
world”23—to protect its industries. It stole intellectual property,24 and it ideologically challenged the
governments of the “Old World.” Today, despite no longer being a rising power, the United States has
launched two disastrous invasions ,
 torture d prisoners, and dispatches drone strikes at a whim with little international legal authority.25
The point is not that two wrongs make a right; it is that international order is much more resilient than
critics seem to realize ,26 and it is utopian to expect any rising Great Power to act in a way that
uniformly satisfies one’s moral scruples, evolving, in Friedberg’s words, “into a mellow, satisfied,
‘responsible’ status quo power.”27

Friedberg or Harris might object that America’s rise took place in the context of a different order. This is
perfectly true, but the more important point is that the long nineteenth century (1815–1914)—the era
of America’s rise—was the first iteration of the New Peace.28 The implication is that relative peace can
and has coexisted with limited wars, property and territorial thefts, acts of coercion, and aggressive
assertions of status. This does not mean any of these are desirable— they are not—but it shows that
they need not be fatal to the system. Insofar as there is a lesson from that first period of relative peace,
it is that Great Power confrontation is the one thing that is fatal . Accepting this does not mean
capitulating in every instance, as implied by some,29 but it does mean rediscovering the rules of Great
Power competition30 alongside the art of strategy.31

Focusing only on areas that China’s rise violates the scruples of the established powers, moreover,
downplays the extent to which China, has, in fact, conformed to the existing order. As a RAND
Corporation report published in 2018 concludes, China has been a supporter—albeit a conditional one—
of the international order: “Since China undertook a policy of international engagement in the 1980s . . .
the level and quality of its participation in the order rivals that of most other states.”32 The way in
which Xi Jinping, following his 2017 Davos speech in defense of globalization, has been heralded as the
most prominent champion of international order and defender of globalization underscores the fact
that there are different elements of this order, and that China supports many, if not most, of them. Even
in places where China is supposedly “altering” the current order, Beijing tends to simultaneously affirm
that order. China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, for instance, actually mirrors existing
structures, and China has intentionally copied elements and “best practices” of the World Bank and
Asian Development Bank . China is playing the same game, even if it is seeking a bigger role within it.33

5. Trade doesn’t stop wars – causes populism and their studies lack causation.
Gonzalez-Vincente ‘20 [Ruben; University Lecturer in Global Political Economy @ Leiden University,
PhD in Geography @ University of Cambridge; “The liberal peace fallacy: violent neoliberalism and the
temporal and spatial traps of state-based approaches to peace,” Territory, Politics, Governance 8.1, p.
100-116; AS]

Yet, decades of neoliberal integration have not brought Fukuyama’s prophecy closer to its realization.
Across the world, liberal market integration has facilitated convivial relations among key countries and paid important dividends to
elites, yet it has also resulted in the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands , rising inequalities within

countries (although not between them) and higher concentration of wealth at the top, and increased risks and
vulnerability as the logic of market competitiveness takes hold of many aspects of our lives (Anand & Segal,
2015; Lynch, 2006). The relation between the U nited S tates and China or the processes of economic integration in
the E uropean U nion are clear examples of these trends. In these places as well as others, inequalities ,
precarization and economic insecurity have given way to a populist
and nationalist momentum
that can be interpreted both as a popular response to the extreme and diverse
forms of violence engendered by processes of market integration, or as a manoeuvre to channel
discontent towards the ‘ other’ in order to protect elite interests (Gonzalez-Vicente & Carroll, 2017). By
prescribing ever more market globalization to counter populist politics and avoid conflict , liberal elites
add fuel to the fire as they sever the very conditions that led to the disfranchisement of significant
segments of the population in the first place. Thereby, it is crucial to understand how the argument for capitalist peace
fails to factor in the crisis-prone and socially destructive tendencies of capitalism , particularly in a
context of unfenced global competitiveness along market lines.2

Two of the underlying problems in the liberal peace argument stand out. The first has to do with the
statistical selection of fixed points in time that suggest correlations between growth in trade and
diminished conflict – while failing to discern mechanisms of causation (Hayes, 2012). A wider temporal
lens is needed to situate the contemporary rise of mercantilist and illiberal politics in the context of
neoliberal globalization, representing the same sort of ‘ counter movement’ that Polanyi had warned of
in his reading of the 19th-century downward spiral towards war – aided in our contemporary case by
the demise of the traditional left (Blyth & Matthijs, 2017; Carroll & Gonzalez-Vicente, 2017). The second problem relates
to liberal international political economy and IRT’s scalar fixation on inter-state matters and hence
their inability to factor in violence in the absence of war . I turn now to these two points.