Alt Fails

Resource Allocation
Only the market can allocate resourcesits just a
question of how much state regulation makes it effective
Financial Express, Indian Business Newspaper, 2013 (The Financial
Express, Role of market and state in resource allocation, July 18 th, 2013,
proquest, accessed 8-5-14)
market cannot function fruitfully unless property rights are resolved by
the state through enacting laws and enforcing contracts by courts and police. The
state, in turn, is dependent on market for cost-effective resource generation . In the
For example,

words of the authors, "Thus, no economy of any contemporary significance operates without the state and the market.

Differences in economic systems reflect a difference in the way in which the

state and the market are combined, i.e. which aspects of economic activities the state is in charge of,
which aspects are left to the market, and how strongly and widely market activities are controlled by the state's

The question here is what

combination of these two organisations would optimise the growth of
developing economies." The orthodoxy of economics, from Adam Smith and the English Classical School to
administrative organisation - the government. It is a matter of degree.

the neoclassical school, considered competition in a free market as the basis of socially optimum allocation of resources.
Under these conditions, there should be no need of government interventions. Pareto optimum prevails and efficiency in
resource allocation augers well under the aegis of 'invisible hand,' division of labour, or persuasion of personal interests.
By and large, efficiency in resource allocation under market economy dominates deliberations of development economists

Nobel
laureate economist Amartya Sen lamented that the focus in assessing market
mechanism has tended to be on the results it ultimately generates, such as the
incomes or the utilities yielded by the markets. "That is not a negligible issue. But the more immediate case
for the freedom of market transactions lies in the basic importance of that
freedom itself. To deny that freedom in general would be in itself a major failing of a society." So much market
- including that of the authors this writer referred to earlier. However, in the book Development as Freedom,

matters as a field of freedom that Amartya Sen adduced the fall of socialism in economic inefficiency of the communist
system as well as to the denial of freedom in a system where markets were ruled out. Despite allocative efficiency and the
freedom fetched from market, market mechanism had been severely subject to criticisms on many grounds. Yujiro and
Youhihisa present a few of them. First, market failure emerges in the supply of public goods where property rights are not
specified to result in 'free riders.' Second, some private goods such as automobile could be 'public bad' because of air
pollution, and market mechanism overlooks the social costs. Third, asymmetric information results in monopolistic
competition, and finally, the market is the mechanism to promote economic efficiency but not to improve income
distribution. Further, J. E. Stiglitz pointed to new market failures embracing costly information, transaction costs, and the
absence of futures markets that extend the range of market failures beyond the earlier attention to public goods and

After World War II, as we all know, the governments of Asia and Africa
turned to economists in the US or the UK for a recipe to realise economic
independence. At that time, grand models of development strategies that involved structural transformation and
externality.

an extensive role of government, with an eye on raising the per capita income, lay at the heart of the approach. The

state sector on
the heels of pervasive market failures that underdeveloped countries are faced
with. To correct or avoid market failure, they advocated central coordination of
the allocation of resources. The newly expanding subject of welfare economics also provided considerable
rationale for government action for facing market failures. Thus, the state emerged as the major
agent of economic change to the first generation of development advisers in the wake of an unreliable
suggested models and hypotheses, from the western advisers, highlighted the role of a strong

price system, limited entrepreneurship, and the need for large structural adjustments to put developing countries on an
even keel. They had the faith in the government in the spheres of promoting capital accumulation, utilising surplus labour,
undertaking policies for industrialisation, relaxing foreign exchange constraint via import substitution, and coordinating
the allocation of resources through programming and planning.

"Regulated capitalism" Best

Regulated capitalism is most productiveit helps cure the
ills of capitalism, while ensuring a competitive US
economy.
Melancon 11--history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University[Glenn,
Concentrated Power: Why We Need Regulated Capitalism, NOVEMBER 23,
2011, http://www.glennmelancon.com/?p=94\]RMT
Before the Great Depression the federal government let corporations grow
relatively unchecked. It was a free market paradise. No minimum wage. No workers compensation
plans. No unemployment tax. No bookkeeping rules. No environmental laws. No safety regulations. If the
free market myth were true, then this era should have been the greatest time
in American history. It wasnt. The Great Depression and the New Deal brought this
corporate paradise to end. President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew unregulated
capitalism hurts average Americans. He decided to limit the power of
corporations. They had to open their books to investors. Companies had to deal
honestly with labor unions. They had to pay taxes. Businesses had to pay their
workers better. Did the American economy crash? No. In fact regulated capitalism laid the
foundation for the post war economic boom . After World War Two the federal
government took an even larger role in the economy . It provided veterans
with housing, education and health benefits. The federal government built the
interstate highway system. It invested in aerospace, nuclear and computer
technologies. Federal regulations required the automobile industry to improve
safety and fuel efficiency. Industries were forced to stop polluting our air and
water. The free marketeers screamed in protest. Liberals were destroying America. Socialists were

Capitalists would go on strike and bring the economy to a

standstill. Luckily, no one listened to these Chicken Littles. The sky didnt fall. In fact regulated
capitalism produced the worlds largest middle class . Unfortunately, the oil
crisis of the 1970s opened the door for the Chicken Littles to gain power . Slowly
and methodically the corporation elite reasserted their hold on political power. The
geniuses on Wall Street started selling snake oil again-Free Trade, electricity
deregulation and the grand daddy of them all, banking deregulation. They told us that
the market would regulate itself and no one would be hurt. Boy, were they wrong.
American jobs moved overseas. Electricity prices went through the roof. In 2008
American families lost $11 trillion worth of assets, setting them back by four years. Now
punishing the successful.

what do we do? Do we turn to the arsonist and say, Are you an expert firefighter too? No, we dont. Can

We need
to return to sensible regulations that check excessive corporate power. There
is overwhelming bi-partisan support for this approach. Trade deals need to be
fair, protecting American workers and the environment. We need affordable consumer
technology to produce energy locally and allow for greater efficiency .
Healthcare insurance needs to be affordable for all Americans. Stockholders
need a greater say in executive pay and long-term planning . Finally, hedge
the free market and more deregulation magically fix the current financial mess? No, it cant.

funds need to disclose their secret deals that threaten us all . Change will not
be easy. It never is. Chicken Little will be screaming the whole time. The sky will not fall . Were
Americans. Weve been in situations like this before . If we learn from our past
successes and failures, we can effectively limit corporate excess and create
sustained economic growth. Our founding fathers would be proud that we too learned
the lesson that concentrated power hurts society and that we found a way
to dilute it.

Status quo collapses allow a shift to an effective middle

ground between socialism and capitalismanything else
guarantees a failed transition from forced policies that
decimates US leadership.
Newman 12--author of Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback to
Success and the co-author of two other books. [Rick Newman, Why the
Tension Between Socialism and Capitalism Will Intensify, Dec 6, 2012,
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/12/06/why-thetension-between-socialism-and-capitalism-will-intensify]RMT
This year's presidential election included many bastardized references to both economic systems, which
have been broadly mischaracterized for a long time. Many defenders of capitalism argue that the nation's

America hasn't had pure

capitalism in well over a century. And when it did have a raw form of capitalism ,
the consequences were often disastrous for significant chunks of the population,
which is why public support grew for the kind of regulated capitalism we have
now. In the 1800s, the federal government largely stayed out of the economy, with
nothing like the regulatory apparatus we have now . That's one reason people
like Andrew Carnegie, John Jacob Astor, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan built
vast fortunes often from monopolies or cartels--that still exist in various forms today.
But unregulated capitalism also generated speculative bubbles, financial panics
and destitution much more frequently than those things have occurred over the last 70 years. Public
economic system was more pure a decade ago (or two, or three), but

pressure led to a long series of reforms that morphed into the regulated free-market economy we have

Teddy Roosevelt started to break up some of the allpowerful monopolies that enriched a few while overcharging the masses.
Congress created the Federal Reserve and the income tax in 1913 . A slew of
regulatory agencies grew out of the Great Depression. During the 20th century,
presidents of both parties signed legislation creating new agencies to oversee
food, medicine, the environment and Wall Street (ahem). We still have a capitalist
system centered on private ownership and prices set by the free market, but it's layered
today. In the early 1900s,

with rules meant to prevent abuses. Some Americans obviously feel there are too many rules, with a vocal
set of critics claiming that Obama in particular has ushered in a system that's more like socialism than

Obama's new healthcare plan obviously will involve a lot

more government involvement in the delivery of health care. But that
happened because the prior system (which was itself governed by a dense
thicket of insurance-company rules) failed to keep medical costs at
affordable levels or make healthcare available to everybody. As in the past,
public pressure for something better led to government intervention . Anybody
capitalism. That's hyperbole.

familiar with real socialism ought to know that it's not what we have in America today. If it were, the
government would control most industries and own most of the property, and most Americans would be
paid similar wages determined by government bureaucrats. In reality ,

84 percent of American

workers are employed in the private sector, with just 16 percent employed in
government. Most people's pay is determined by what they're able to convince a company or a group
of customers to pay them, with no upper limit. Anybody who has the money to buy private
property can. More than 60 percent of American families own the home they live
in. Still, the ideological battle between the forces of socialism and
capitalism is far from over, and probably likely to intensify in coming years. For much of
the time following World War II, the United States was characterized by "an economy
of abundance and a psychology of scarcity," as the historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
has noted. In general, a booming economy provided more than relatively humble Americans expected. But

thanks to globalization, declining U.S. competitiveness and a swollen

social-safety net, we may have an economy of scarcity and a psychology of
abundance. Many Americans expect a better standard of living than they're
likely to get. During the next decade or two, the U.S. government is going to have to
stop living on borrowed money. The mushrooming cost of entitlement
programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is going to force some tough
choices: Either working Americans will have to pay way more than prior
generations to support seniors and the underprivileged , or those dependent
upon government will get much thinner benefits. One approach is socialistic,
transferring an increasing amount of wealth from one group to another. The
now,

other is capitalistic, in that it requires far greater self-reliance and provides less of a safety net for those

The ultimate outcome will be somewhere between

pure capitalism and true socialism, which is where the U.S. economy always has always
who can't fend for themselves.

ended up. But it could be much closer to either extreme than it is now. Keep your dictionary handy.

Regulated capitalism solves all their impacts progressive

policies solve inequality, ecological practices, and
economic growth.
Hindrey Jr, 8

(Leo, Leo Hindery, Jr. chairs the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New
America Foundation, and is managing partner of a New York-based media industry private
equity fund. Previously, he was CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecessor, TeleCommunications, Inc. (TCI). He is the author of "It Takes a CEO: It's Time to Lead With Integrity"
(Free Press, 2005), Senator McCain, Regulated Capitalism is Not Socialism,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-hindery-jr/senator-mccain-regulated_b_139736.html, AS)

Senator Obama's economic policies, however you want to describe them,

would be the very best thing right now for American businesses, American
workers and the American economy. His particular economic prescription
would give us back vibrant, thoughtfully regulated capitalism of the sort that
we know with certainty promotes and fosters economic growth from the
bottom up. Growth which will give us back full employment, a pathway to
ending poverty, and progress toward solving the problems associated with
our current health care, education, trade, taxation and ecology practices. The
very best thing for America -- workers and businesses alike -- is and has
always been a vibrant middle class that grows from the bottom up. And

Senator Obama reminds us of this in almost every speech. From vigorously

enforcing our domestic labor laws to enabling all workers to have an
unrestricted ability to join a union, a President Obama would provide all
workers, but especially lower-wage workers, with the opportunities and the
tools and the policies they need to realize again the American Dreams that,
lately, have been torn from their futures. Barack Obama's economic policies
have the needed incentives for American companies to create and retain
high-quality jobs that can't be offshored -- jobs in industries such as
renewable energy, clean technology, and biotech that will comprise the next
frontier of American economic growth. He will end tax breaks for companies
which ship jobs overseas. And his elimination of all capital gains taxes on
start-ups and small businesses will further spur innovation and job creation.
When it comes to trade agreements, Senator Obama will implement policies
that better open up foreign markets to American exports and that eliminate
the illegal subsidies and currency manipulations which have benefited foreign
companies and governments at the expense of American companies and
workers. And he'll use our trade agreements to encourage strong labor and
environmental standards around the globe. And last but certainly not least as
we try to restore our economy, are Senator Obama's progressive tax policies,
which would bring immediate benefit to 95% of American taxpayers, on the
order of $1,000 per working family and also by eliminating income taxes
entirely for seniors making less than $50,000 per year. No individual making
less than $200,000 and no family making less than $250,000 will see a nickel
or a dime of tax increase, and even the wealthiest Americans will not see
their taxes increase beyond Clinton-era levels. Senator Obama's economic
policies and his restoration of fairness and progressivity to the individual
income tax are vital to getting our economy back on track and to getting
back our own moral standing with American workers. And none of it, my dear
friend Senator McCain, can or should ever be called "socialism", which you
know is true, because when you really were "straight talking", you said so
yourself.

Regulated capitalism avoids the problems of capitalism

Foster 9 Nathan Foster SEPTEMBER 14, 2009
Regulated Capitalism
vs. Socialism
http://open.salon.com/blog/nathan_foster/2009/09/14/regulated_capitalism_vs
_socialism
On the other hand, there is at least a hair-thin distinction between socialism and regulated capitalism.
Regulated capitalism, as I envision it, allows for the private ownership of capital, but regulates its use.
I'll allow for progressive taxationthe rich can be taxed more than the poor, which is justified based on
the idea that the rich really don't have anything important to do with 30% of their money anyway. I'll
also allow for trust-busting, as this is a form of regulation.
The only possible argument that regulated capitalism is in fact socialism rests on the assumption that any law or regulation
reflects a degree of public control, and therefore, in a sense, regulated capitalism is really some degree of public control of capital.
But I think this argument falls apart because I'm speaking of laws which protect the safety of the public, not direct control of

capital, and every nation on earth, no matter what system of government or socio-economic system you choose to identify it with,
has laws to protect the safety of the public. You therefore can't use such laws to discriminate between different socio-economic
systems or systems of government.
That said, I prefer regulated capitalism to socialism for a couple of reasons.
1) Having money and influence is just sweet. I know this sounds silly, but the idea should not be discarded. I think there is real
public benefit to having a class of people who have more money than they know what to do with. It shows just how good life gets,
and motivates the public to improve their position. It is also, obviously, beneficial to those people who have the money. They get
to enjoy life, and I think that's good for everybody.

2) Strict regulation should be enough to prevent abuses of capital. You don't

have to resort to public ownership to prevent these abuses

Serial Policy Success

Generic Human Good

The past 10 years were awesome disproves the K.
Kenny, 10 (Charles, author of Getting Better: Why Global Development is
Succeeding Aug 16, 2010 and contributor to Foreign Policy, Best. Decade.
Ever. The first 10 years of the 21st century were humanity's finest -- even
for the world's bottom billion,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/best_decade_ever?
page=full)
The past 10 years have gotten a bad rap as the "Naughty Aughties" -- and
deservedly so, it seems, for a decade that began with 9/11 and the Enron
scandal and closed with the global financial crisis and the Haiti earthquake. In
between, we witnessed the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, SARS and
swine flu, not to mention vicious fighting in Sudan and Congo, Afghanistan
and, oh yes, Iraq. Given that our brains seem hard-wired to remember
singular tragedy over incremental success, it's a hard sell to convince anyone
that the past 10 years are worthy of praise. But these horrific events, though
mortal and economic catastrophes for many millions, don't sum up the
decade as experienced by most of the planet's 6-billion-plus people. For all its
problems, the first 10 years of the 21st century were in fact humanity's finest,
a time when more people lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more
prosperous lives than ever before. Consider that in 1990, roughly half the
global population lived on less than $1 a day; by 2007, the proportion had
shrunk to 28 percent -- and it will be lower still by the close of 2010. That's
because, though the financial crisis briefly stalled progress on income growth,
it was just a hiccup in the decade's relentless GDP climb. Indeed, average
worldwide incomes are at their highest levels ever, at roughly $10,600 a year
-- and have risen by as much as a quarter since 2000. Some 1.3 billion people
now live on more than $10 a day, suggesting the continued expansion of the
global middle class. Even better news is that growth has been faster in poor
places like sub-Saharan Africa than across the world as a whole. There are
still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal
prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That,
alongside continued income growth, is why the proportion of the developing
world's population classified as "undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970
to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike in food prices.
Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal
yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the
developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as
Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -each day. We're also winning the global battle against infectious disease. The
2009 swine flu has killed more than 18,000 people so far, according to the
World Health Organization. But its impact has been far less severe than the
apocalyptic forecasts of a few years ago, fueled by nightmare scenarios of
drug-resistant, Airbus-hopping viruses overwhelming a hot, flat, and crowded
world. The truth is that pandemics are on the wane. Between 1999 and 2005,

thanks to the spread of vaccinations, the number of children who died

annually from measles dropped 60 percent. The proportion of the world's
infants vaccinated against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus has
climbed from less than half to 82 percent between 1985 and 2008. There are
dark spots still, not least the continuing tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
But though the 15 countries with the highest HIV prevalence still see life
expectancies more than three years lower than their 1990 peak, at least the
trend has started ticking back up in the last decade. The overwhelming global
picture is of better health: From 2000 to 2008, child mortality dropped more
than 17 percent, and the average person added another two years to his or
her life expectancy, now just one shy of the biblical standard of three score
and 10. We can thank improved literacy, which has played a role in spreading
vital knowledge in low-income societies, for some of these health gains. More
than four-fifths of the world's population can now read and write -- including
more than two-thirds of Africans. The proportion of the world's young people
who go on to university climbed from below one-fifth to above a quarter from
2000 to 2007 alone. And progress in education has been particularly rapid for
women, one sign of growing gender equity. Although no one would argue the
struggle is complete, the gains are striking -- the worldwide proportion of
women parliamentarians, for instance, increased from 11 percent in 1997 to
19 percent in 2009. Even the wars of the last 10 years, tragic as they have
been, are minor compared with the violence and destruction of decades and
centuries past. The number of armed conflicts -- and their death toll -- has
continued to fall since the end of the Cold War. Worldwide, combat casualties
fell 40 percent from 2000 to 2008. In sub-Saharan Africa, some 46,000 people
died in battle in 2000. By 2008, that number had dropped to 6,000. Military
expenditures as a percentage of global GDP are about half of their 1990 level.
In Europe, so recently divided into two armed camps, annual military budgets
fell from $744 billion in 1988 to $424 billion in 2009. The statistical record
doesn't go back far enough for us to know with absolute certainty whether
this was the most peaceful decade ever in terms of violent deaths per capita,
but it certainly ranks as the lowest in the last 50 years. On the other hand,
humanity's malignant effect on the environment has accelerated the rate of
extinction for plants and animals, which now reaches perhaps 50,000 species
a year. But even here there was some good news. We reversed our first
anthropogenic global atmospheric crisis by banning chlorofluorocarbons -- by
2015, the Antarctic ozone hole will have shrunk by nearly 400,000 square
miles. Stopping climate change has been a slower process. Nonetheless, in
2008, the G-8 did commit to halving carbon emissions by 2050. And a range
of technological advances -- from hydrogen fuel cells to compact fluorescent
bulbs -- suggests that a low-carbon future need not require surrendering a
high quality of life. Technology has done more than improve energy
efficiency. Today, there are more than 4 billion mobile-phone subscribers,
compared with only 750 million at the decade's start. Cell phones are being
used to provide financial services in the Philippines, monitor real-time
commodity futures prices in Vietnam, and teach literacy in Niger. And
streaming video means that fans can watch cricket even in benighted

countries that don't broadcast it -- or upload citizen reports from security

crackdowns in Tehran. Perhaps technology also helps account for the striking
disconnect between the reality of worldwide progress and the perception of
global decline. We're more able than ever to witness the tragedy of millions
of our fellow humans on television or online. And, rightly so, we're more
outraged than ever that suffering continues in a world of such technological
wonder and economic plenty. Nonetheless, if you had to choose a decade in
history in which to be alive, the first of the 21st century would undoubtedly
be it. More people lived lives of greater freedom, security, longevity, and
wealth than ever before. And now, billions of them can tweet the good news.
Bring on the 'Teenies.

Human life is improving in every aspect.

Brinsmead, 4 (Robert D., author, horticulturist, and local government
politician Tweed Times, THE CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL OPTIMISM,
http://www.bobbrinsmead.com/e_The_Case_for_Environmental_Optimism_ind
exed.html)

It is estimated that the 6.1 billion people now living represent about 10% of
all the people that have ever lived on the earth. In terms of all the indicators
of human well-being, humankind has never had it so good. In The Skeptical
Environmentalist, the Bjorn Lomberg backs up this optimistic assessment with
a mass of statistical data: In the last 100 years, the average human life
span has more than doubled for both the developed and the undeveloped
world. Human health has improved correspondingly. There are less
infectious diseases. Better sanitation and water has played a huge part in
reducing millions of premature deaths and illnesses. With food production
outstripping population growth, world food prices have fallen to 1/3rd of what
they were in 1957. More than 90% of people in the world now have more food
and are better nourished. The race is becoming stronger and taller.
People in the first world are 8 times wealthier than they were in 1800 and the
real wealth of developing countries has tripled in the last 50 years. Most
people in the world are better educated now than they have ever been
throughout history, and they enjoy much more leisure time. Average working
hours have halved in the last 120 years. People today have access to travel,
communications, culture, entertainment and information undreamed of by
people in the past. In the developed world the average person uses energy
that is equivalent to having 150 servants. Even the average Indian uses the
equivalent energy of 15 servants. In the last 200 years, human life has
vastly improved for most of the world in non-material ways such as in
ordinary human freedoms (political, religious and economic), in liberal
democracy, in less racial or gender discrimination and in a vast range of
human rights. Julian Simon summed up the evidence this way: The material
conditions of life will continue to improve, in most countries, most of the time,

indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be
at or above todays Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that
many people will continue to think and to say that the conditions of life are
getting worse.

Climate Change
Excluding middle-ground adaption strategies like the aff
makes climate change worse- empirics prove action has
prevented past apocalyptic predictions
Ridley, British Science Writer and Doctorate in Zoology from University of
Oxford, 2012
(Matt, Rational Optimist, Apocalypse Not, August 19th, 2012,
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not.aspx, accessed 8/4/14
bh@ddi)
none of our threatened eco-pocalypses have played out as
predicted. Some came partly true; some were averted by action; some were wholly
Over the past half century,

chimerical. This raises a question that many find discomforting: With a track record like this, why should
people accept the cataclysmic claims now being made about climate change? After all, 2012 marks the
apocalyptic deadline of not just the Mayans but also a prominent figure in our own time: Rajendra
Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who said in 2007 that "if there's no
action before 2012, that's too late This is the defining moment." So, should we worry or not about the

The lesson of failed past predictions of

ecological apocalypse is not that nothing was happening but that the middleground possibilities were too frequently excluded from consideration . In the
warming climate? It is far too binary a question.

climate debate, we hear a lot from those who think disaster is inexorable if not inevitable, and a lot from

We hardly ever allow the moderate "lukewarmers" a

voice: those who suspect that the net positive feedbacks from water vapor in the atmosphere
those who think it is all a hoax.

are low, so that we face only 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming this century; that the Greenland ice sheet
may melt but no faster than its current rate of less than 1 percent per century; that net increases in rainfall
(and carbon dioxide concentration) may improve agricultural productivity; that ecosystems have survived

adaptation to gradual change may be both

cheaper and less ecologically damaging than a rapid and brutal decision to
give up fossil fuels cold turkey. We've already seen some evidence that
humans can forestall warming-related catastrophes. A good example is malaria,
which was once widely predicted to get worse as a result of climate change. Yet
in the 20th century, malaria retreated from large parts of the world, including
sudden temperature lurches before; and that

North America and Russia, even as the world warmed. Malaria-specific mortality plummeted in the first

The weather may well have

grown more hospitable to mosquitoes during that time. But any effects of warming
were more than counteracted by pesticides, new antimalarial drugs, better
drainage, and economic development. Experts such as Peter Gething at Oxford argue that
these trends will continue, whatever the weather. Just as policy can make the climate crisis
worse-mandating biofuels has not only encouraged rain forest destruction, releasing carbon, but driven
millions into poverty and hunger-technology can make it better. If plant breeders boost rice
decade of the current century by an astonishing 25 percent.

yields, then people may get richer and afford better protection against extreme weather. If nuclear
engineers make fusion (or thorium fission) cost-effective, then carbon emissions may suddenly fall. If gas
replaces coal because of horizontal drilling, then carbon emissions may rise more slowly. Humanity is a

We will combat our ecological threats in the future by

innovating to meet them as they arise, not through the mass fear stoked by
worst-case scenarios.
fast-moving target.

Economy
Theres been serial policy success economic
restructuring has led to the best year in decades proves
the potential of regulated capitalism.
Altman, 13 (Roger, writer for TIME Magazine, Aug 12, 2013, Why the
Economy Could... Pop!
Housing is coming back. Banks are lending again. Energy is booming. A
prominent Democrat argues that the U.S. economy is finally coming back to
life, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,21486254,00.html)

It is easy to imagine that because Washington is mired in political gridlock, the rest of the country is stuck
too. This may explain why surveys show deep pessimism over the nation's Economic Outlook. Such
sentiment made sense after the scary financial collapse of 2008, but it doesn't anymore. In fact, after five
years of struggling against headwinds triggered by that collapse, the U.S. is making a surprisingly strong
comeback. It's the great untold story of the summer of 2013: a combination of cyclical recovery forces and

The U.S. economic outlook is as strong

as it has been in more than a decade .
uniquely American strengths are revving up growth.

Yes, too many Americans are out of work and have been that way for too long. And yes, household incomes,

adjusted for inflation, are still below 2007 levels. Indeed, this is the country's biggest job--to repair labor markets and get incomes moving up again. The U.S. needs growth in order to make that happen, and that's
where the news is good. Confounding so many skeptics, the U.S. is actually shifting into higher gear. Growth for this year's second quarter, just reported at 1.7%, beat expectations but is well below the rate we

the
country will likely see two to three more years of good growth, which would
produce millions of new jobs and begin to raise incomes . This is one reason the
U.S. stock market recently reached all-time highs.
should see at this time next year. Indeed, the Federal Reserve Board, not known for going out on a limb, recently raised its 2014 forecast for real growth to the 3%-to-3.5% range. And

The U.S. is the only developed country with a story like this to tell. Europe,

unfortunately, is facing a long period of economic stagnation. Its financial crisis came later, and southern Europe is laboring under the burdens of sick banks and weak competitiveness. Meanwhile, Japan, where the
population is falling, hasn't seen meaningful growth in years and isn't likely to see it now. What is allowing the U.S. to rev up when others cannot? For one thing, the 2008 financial collapse and the deep slump that

the
U.S. has restructured dramatically. Households have shed debt and are now
ready to use their credit cards again. The banking system and the auto
industry have been completely revamped. American business has become
more efficient, and cost differentials with China are narrowing. U.S.
manufacturing has stopped shrinking and is actually beginning to expand.
followed forced this country to make big changes. A severe financial crisis, whether at a corner grocery store, a multinational corporation or an entire nation, always leads to some restructuring. But

At the

same time, the U.S. continues to enjoy built-in advantages that other nations lack: a growing population and the prospect of further immigration, big and flexible housing and stock markets, the most dynamic
energy sector in the world, a huge and resilient consumer market and unparalleled technology leadership. Now, five years after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American economy is
gathering steam. Over the medium term, Americans are going to see growing job opportunities, higher wages and better asset values. To understand how this economic rebirth will unfold, it's important to
understand the five big factors driving it. FACTOR NO. 1 HOW HOUSING CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD A big driver of this Economic comeback will be the housing market, which is now entering a powerful,
multiyear upswing. Housing works like a trampoline. When it is pushed down far enough and long enough, it will eventually snap upward very powerfully. That move is happening now. You can see this in prices,
which are 12% higher than they were a year ago, according to CoreLogic, an analytics and data-services firm. Each of the 20 largest metropolitan markets is registering year-over-year gains, something that hasn't
happened since 2005. New housing construction and renovations don't just generate construction and related jobs. They also boost the manufacturing of appliances, pipes, wiring and other goods. And they drive

, the housing rebound alone can

add a half-point of annual GDP growth. And it could produce more than half a million
new jobs
services, including plumbing, electrical work, trucking and mortgage lending. This is why, according to Goldman Sachs

a year over the next few years, according to Ameriprise Financial. It was the depth of housing's fall that laid the foundation for this upturn. Single-family housing starts, for example,

averaged 1.5 million from 2000 to 2004, before the bubble. After the bust, housing starts plunged to an annual rate of about 500,000 for nearly three years. New-home sales fell to a third of what they had been
before the collapse. In relative terms, housing hadn't been so weak since the 1930s. Now

the tide has turned.

On the supply side, the massive post-2008 overhang of unsold

homes, which depressed prices and new housing construction, has finally been resolved. The number of homes for sale is back to its long-term average of about 2 million nationwide. It's true that there remains a
big inventory of foreclosed units that have not been maintained, but that number is falling too and isn't relevant to most buyers. In other words, the excess supply is gone

also helping goose the market.

Demand is

Census Bureau data implies that the U.S. population will grow roughly 8% over the next decade, faster than either Europe's or Japan's.

And the household-formation rate (people deciding to rent or buy for the first time) is snapping back. After dropping during the crisis, it has more than doubled from its nadir and is rising steadily. Pent-up formation
may push it above the long-term average for some time. This means that residential investment may grow 15% to 20% annually over the next four years. The ripples of that will be felt through the entire economy.
FACTOR NO. 2 THE UNEXPECTED GOLD RUSH This is the big story that no one saw coming: the U.S. oil-and-gas sector has staged an unexpected and stunning revival--a boom, really--that carries uniformly
positive implications for growth, jobs, trade and capital flows. The U.S. has always been a major oil producer, but output had been declining steadily for decades. Production peaked in 1970 and fell to a 62-year low
of 5 million barrels a day in 2008. But that decline curve has reversed. Seemingly overnight, production rebounded to nearly 7 million barrels a day and is projected to reach the astonishing level of 9 million to 10
million by 2020. The natural-gas story is equally dramatic. Traditional gas fields were in long-term decline, and production had fallen to 48 billion cubic feet per day in 2006. Last year, the U.S. produced 65 billion
cubic feet per day. Even more important, the U.S. is now believed to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, and prices have fallen sharply, from $13 per million BTUs in 2008 to less than $4 now. What explains
this phenomenon? The answer is uniquely American technology--a breakthrough in horizontal drilling combined with advanced forms of hydraulic fracturing and seismic exploration. The ability to drill horizontally
means that one traditional vertical drilling site can generate additional wells drilled horizontally and at great depth. Together with modern forms of fracturing, this has allowed oil and gas trapped in tight rock
formations to be extracted cheaply at huge volumes for the first time. To date, the U.S. is the only nation taking full advantage of this technology. Consider North Dakota: this quiet and often ignored state has seen
its oil production skyrocket from 100,000 barrels a day only five years ago to 800,000 today. That makes it the second biggest oil-producing state in the U.S., behind only Texas. This output is coming from the
Bakken Shale formation underneath the northern plains, which the U.S. Geological Survey has described as the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever seen. The result is that North Dakota now has the
lowest unemployment rate in the nation (3.2%) and a $1.7 billion budget surplus. The national implications are profound too. According to the consulting firm IHS, unconventional oil and gas production currently
supports more than 1.7 million jobs in the U.S., and that number will nearly double by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, these new gas reserves are pushing down the price Americans pay for energy to among the
lowest in the world. Cheap natural gas is a big stimulus to petrochemical production and a meaningful one for all U.S. manufacturing. And it will provide something like a tax cut for households. As utilities convert
from coal-fired power to gas power--and they are steadily doing so--household electrical bills will fall. Indeed, in a few years, average retail utility bills may be $1,000 per year lower than current levels. Finally, the
energy turnaround reduces energy imports, lowering trade deficits and generating large amounts of tax revenue for government at all levels. After decades of U.S. dependence, our oil imports have already dropped

from 12 million barrels a day to 8 million and should continue to fall toward 6 million, which would be the lowest import total since 1987. FACTOR NO. 3 THE SLEEPING GIANT STIRS About 70% of U.S. Economic
activity comes the old-fashioned way: from consumer spending, on everything from autos to apparel to food. The consumer's mood and pocketbook have big impact on the whole country's growth and jobs. And that
pocketbook took a tremendous hit in 2008, so much so that it has taken five long years for American households, in aggregate, to recover from the financial damage. Americans conserved cash to pay down debt,
and this process pushed down their spending even further. It's hard to exaggerate the financial damage inflicted on consumers during the recession. Total net worth fell by $13 trillion, or 20%, from its level in
2007--a staggering loss. That hit came at a vulnerable moment when U.S. households were highly leveraged. When the bottom fell out, consumer debt had reached a remarkable 138% of income, a 35-year peak.
Within a few months in 2008, household finances were crushed as asset values fell, millions of jobs were lost, countless credit cards were canceled and thousands of homes were foreclosed on. As the financial
pressure on families reached acute levels, they had no choice but to cut spending and pay off debt. Five years on, households have finally repaired their balance sheets. According to the International Monetary
Fund, household debt has now fallen back to 105% of household income, a ratio near historical averages. Further, Federal Reserve data shows that U.S. households spent only 10.5% of their after-tax income on debt

lower levels of debt itself, given

pay-downs, and lower interest rates on remaining debt , especially mortgages. The rise
of the stock market has also helped, as has the turnaround in home prices. Other Federal Reserve
payments in the early part of this year, the smallest portion since the Fed began keeping track in 1980. This reflects both

data shows that household net worth recently topped $70 trillion, a record high, which means that the
financial losses of 2008, as a whole, have been recovered. (Achieving this recovery in household asset
values has been a primary goal of the Federal Reserve's hyperaggressive monetary policy for the simple

Americans are
starting to open their wallets. Retail sales grew 5.7% in June compared with the same period
reason that families need to feel financially healed before they will spend normally.)

last year. The consumer price index also strengthened in June, which suggests that demand is growing as

consumer confidence is near a five-

Americans feel more optimistic about the economy. And

and-a-half-year high.

FACTOR NO. 4 BANKS (WITH LOTS OF HELP) BOUNCED BACK In September 2008 the overleveraged and undermanaged U.S. banking system suffered a

terrifying collapse. And that, in turn, nearly took the whole country down. Short-term, wholesale lending came to a stop, including from one bank to another. (Keep in mind that the core business of banking is to
borrow at one rate, including through deposits, and lend at a higher rate. If banks can't borrow, they can't function.) So when banks got into trouble, lending to businesses and consumers essentially stopped and the
whole economy cratered. Federal authorities mounted a huge and heroic intervention. The Federal Reserve's support for the credit markets reached $13 trillion at its peak, according to Bloomberg. The FDIC
provided billions of dollars in federal guarantees on new, long-term borrowings by banks and finance companies. Congress rushed through legislation that established TARP, which invested another $475 billion in

the regulators initiated

a sweeping restructuring of the industry . Capital and liquidity levels were
raised through wide-scale divestitures of assets and sales of new stock at low prices. Balance
sheets were further cleansed through aggressive write-downs of poor-quality loans
and other assets. Improved disclosure practices were also imposed . Old leaders lost
their jobs, and new management teams were put in place. It was probably the most
successful rescue of private enterprise ever conducted. Today, most large U.S. banks
new stock issued by these financial institutions. The rescue worked. Slowly and, at first, unsteadily, banks began to borrow again on their own. Then

have the kind of clean balance sheets we last saw 10 years ago. They are again generating large profits,
and almost all have resumed paying dividends. Overall,

system in the world,

this is now the healthiest banking

and it is lending strongly again. Total outstanding bank loans to business, according to the Federal Reserve, have reached $1.54 trillion, up 30% from their

post-2008 low and just below their historical peak. Consumer loans already have surpassed their previous high and are growing at a robust 8% rate so far in 2013. A continuing soft spot is loans to small businesses,
which is still $40 billion below the prior high. But overall, the lending recovery is boosting growth. Nevertheless,

American regulators have not

finished turning the screws, nor should they. Some banks remain too big to fail, and that's why there are
ongoing regulatory efforts to shrink them. In fact, a set of even tighter capital requirements for
banks was approved by the Federal Reserve on July 2. FACTOR NO. 5 TECHNOLOGY IS STILL OUR BEST
FRIEND Not only has the U.S. retained its edge in technology, but its advantage has widened in several
categories. According to Battelle, the U.S. contributed 29% of global R&D spending in 2012, compared with
nearly 14% for China, the next largest contributor. And absolute levels of R&D have grown impressively
over the past five years, despite the recession. Also,

is near an all-time high,

the rate of patenting by U.S. inventors

according to the Brookings Institution. The value of such patents appears to be rising, based on how often these patents are cited or referenced by

other patents. Most important, the primacy of the U.S.'s research-focused universities remains unchallenged. According to most rankings, 25 to 27 of the world's 30 leading universities are in the U.S. Despite
claims that more engineering degrees are being awarded elsewhere, the quality of most overseas degrees is lower than that of their American counterparts. It's true, however, that U.S. junior and senior high
schools must be strengthened for this technology edge to continue over the long term. For the time being, the U.S. can readily afford the investments to maintain its top technology ranking. By one measure,

the U.S.'s fiscal condition actually is improving. The Congressional Budget Office now
estimates that the 2013 budget deficit will come in at about $640 billion. This is still too large, but it

Higher tax revenue from an

improving economy, a slower rise in health care costs and three separate
stabs at deficit reduction since 2011 are helping clean up our balance sheet . By
another metric, cash levels in the U.S. corporate sector are at historical highs. That's one
represents only 4% of GDP, down from more than 10% in 2009.

reason tech firms are pouring cash into R&D budgets. Microsoft spent $9.8 billion last year, Intel spent
$10.1 billion, IBM spent $6.3 billion, and Google spent $6.8 billion. These are four of the five largest tech
budgets in the world.

Environment
The human condition is improving every measurable
indicator proves all environmental problems are getting
better.
Brinsmead, 4 (Robert D., author, horticulturist, and local government
politician Tweed Times, THE CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL OPTIMISM,
http://www.bobbrinsmead.com/e_The_Case_for_Environmental_Optimism_ind
exed.html)

THE HUMAN CONDITION IS GENERALLY IMPROVING Bjorn Lomberg (The Skeptical

Environmentalist) is more comfortable wearing the label of an environmental realist than an environmental
optimist. The aim of his book is to look at the state of environment across the world and to call the score
after looking objectively at all the data. He doesnt try to look at the world through the rose-coloured
glasses of an incurable optimist. He knows only too well that there are environmental problems to deal
with, whether in world population trends, cutting down the tropical rain forests, saving agricultural land,
global warming, air pollution, water pollution, world poverty, hunger, and so on. Only a fool could look out
on the world and say there were no serious environmental problems. But Lomberg looks at all the available
1. In the first place, the data
does not support the pessimistic assessments that say everything is getting
alarmingly worse. The over-all trend is toward improvement on almost every
front. 2. The environmental problems facing society are not only solvable, but in the
developed world at least, they are well on the way to being solved. For instance, within the lifetime of

statistics and finds that Julian Simon was right in the following ways:

many still living, 64,000 people per year used to die from Londons polluted air. Today the air in London is

There have been enormous strides in

cleaning up the water resources in most of the developed countries. The forests too are
expanding considerably. The developed world is well on top of such problems as
acid rain, the ozone layer and pesticide residues in food. The progress has been so
astounding that Greenpeace was forced to admit, The truth is that many environmental
issues that we fought for ten years back are as good as solved. Even so, the strategy continues
to focus on the assumption that everything is going to hell. (Verdens Gang, 19/3/1998) 3. In
practically every measurable indicator, humankind s lot has improved and
continues to improve. In terms of longevity, infant mortality, nutrition, the cost of food, health and
the cleanest it has been since the Middle Ages.

safety, education, leisure time and wealth, most human beings on the planet are better off now than they
have ever been in the history of the earth. The human race is even becoming taller. 4. The major
environmental problems of the world like over-population, air and water pollution, loss of forests, poverty,
lack of education, nutrition and adequate food call for critical concern only in developing countries, but
even here the progress is impressive. In 1970 the number of people in the world who didnt get
enough to eat was 35%. By 1996 it had dropped by half, and by 2010 the UN expects the figure to drop to
12%. In 1970 only 30% of people in the developing countries had access to good drinking water. In 2000
this figure had risen to 80%. Since 1950 developing countries have tripled their real per capita incomes.
They now have the same infant mortality rate and longevity as the developed world had in 1950. There
remains, of course, an urgent need to further reduce human misery on all these fronts, but enormous
improvements being made give us room for optimism on the basis that

rather than worse.

things are getting better

Capitalism is the ONLY solution to the environment.

Brinsmead, 4 (Robert D., author, horticulturist, and local government
politician Tweed Times, THE CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL OPTIMISM,
http://www.bobbrinsmead.com/e_The_Case_for_Environmental_Optimism_ind
exed.html)

The environmental doomsayers regard economic growth, the pursuit of

prosperity, technology and capitalism as the enemy of the environment. The
only way to save the planet, they say, is to lower income expectations, cut
back on consumption, return to a more primal way of life and get rid of
capitalism. Many of the participants in the deep green movement were
refugees from the collapse of world-socialism. They found another expression
for their far-Left leanings in environmental politics. There is no doubt that
much of their doom and gloom was inspired as much by their desire to dance
on the grave of capitalism as by their desire to save the planet. The ecopessimists have got it all wrong. More recent environmental research has
been able to demonstrate quite conclusively that there is a direct correlation
between a given countrys level of wealth on the one hand, and the
investment it makes in the environment on the other. That is to say,
development and the environment are not inimical as the eco-pessimists
would have us believe, but they are complimentary and mutually supportive.
This has been shown in two ways: Firstly, both economists and
environmentalists have been able to show that there is a direct link between
a peoples income level and the condition of their environment. The greater
the wealth, the better the level of environmental care. On the other hand
poor societies put environmental concerns very low on their list priorities, if at
all. It is only when people reach a certain level of affluence, that they can
afford to start worrying about the environment. The second strand of
evidence is derived from comparing the state of the environment in the
developed world with the state of the environment in the developing world.
The four greatest environmental issues are air pollution, water pollution, deafforestation and population growth. The developed world is well on top of
controlling these problems. The air of its cities is improving. It does not lose
millions of children every year to polluted water, nor just as many to dung
smoke and wood smoke as the developing world does. The forests of most of
the developed world have expanded enormously over the last 50 years, but
de-afforestation continues to be of concern in the developing world.
Population has stabilized in the developed world, but remains a concern in
the developing world. The conclusion from all this is inescapable: the only
way to rid the world of its greatest environmental problems is to get rid of
poverty by promoting development and economic growth.

Environment/Human Well-Being
Economic development is good for the environment.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/best_decade_ever?
page=full Goklany, 7 (Indur M, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007,
Better Lives?, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63023/indur-mgoklany/better-lives)

I am pleased that in his review of my book The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer,
Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet ("Better and Better," July/August 2007), James
Surowiecki agrees that from a historical perspective the state of the world has improved. However, I am
disappointed that he missed some of my most important points -- as evidenced in particular by his claim
that I believe progress is "inevitable." Nothing could be further from my views. I note on page 110 of my
book, "Because economic growth and technological change are not inevitable, environmental cleanup and
environmental transitions are, likewise, not a foregone conclusion." I reemphasize this point at other

we also need economic

development. Although there are no guarantees, acting together, they -- more than anything else -places, and the book ends with these words: "But technology is not enough;

offer the best hope for technological progress, without which we cannot expand current limits to growth."
Surowiecki also claims that under my environmental transition hypothesis, environmental cleanup happens
"naturally." He argues that such cleanup is not the "inevitable product of a strong economy" and may not
occur without "a strong state that is accountable to its citizens." I say as much in my exposition of the
hypothesis. I note that one reason for the environmental transition that leads to cleanup is that " a

democratic society, because it has the political means to do so, will translate its
desire for a cleaner environment into laws , either because cleanup is not voluntary or rapid
enough, or because of sheer symbolism. The wealthier such a society, the more affordable
-- and more demanding -- its laws." Surowiecki also declares that my own evidence shows that
emissions of many air pollutants peaked around 1970, after that year's Clean Air Act was passed, and that
afterward rivers and lakes became more swimmable and fishable. But this law was enacted after major
gains in reducing the public health impacts of air and water pollution had already been secured; these laws
did not accelerate improvements in environmental quality. Moreover, emissions are not the best measure
of the impacts of air pollution, especially with regard to public health. That is why the Environmental
Protection Agency's national ambient air quality standards, which specify whether outdoor air quality is in
the healthy range, are measured in terms of concentrations of pollutants in the outdoor air, rather than
emissions. Long-term data indicate that for the most significant pollutants, major improvements in outdoor

federal
laws did indeed improve fishability and swimmability, but deaths due to water-related
diseases had been reduced by 98-100 percent between 1900 and 1970, before the enactment of the
and indoor air quality preceded the 1970 Clean Air Act. Regarding water pollution, I note that

Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Although the 1970s environmental laws
did bring some benefits, some of the most significant cleanup had occurred before they took effect, and
their "command-and-control" regulatory approach cost more than more flexible approaches (such as
emissions trading or environmental taxes) would have. Finally, I would dispute Surowiecki's
characterization of me as a "wide-eyed" optimist. I am no more convinced than he is about the inevitability

Economic and technological progress are valuable because they

advance environmental and human well-being . Unfortunately, they are not inevitable.
of progress.

Tech
21st century tech advances in medicine and governance
reduce poverty, disease, war, growth and quality of life
Beauchamp, B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown
University and an M.Sc in International Relations from the London School of
Economics, 2013 (Zack, ThinkProgress, 5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The
Best Year In Human History, 12/11/2013,
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/12/11/3036671/2013-certainly-yearhuman-history/, accessed 8/4/14 bh@ddi)
The greatest story in recent human history is the simplest: were winning the fight against death. There

is not a
single country in the world where infant or child mortality today is not lower
than it was in 1950, writes Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist who works on global health issues. The most
up-to-date numbers on global health, the 2013 World Health Organization (WHO) statistical compendium, confirm
Deatons estimation. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of children who died before their fifth birthday dropped by

Measles deaths declined by 71 percent, and both tuberculosis and

maternal deaths by half again. HIV, that modern plague, is also being held back, with
deaths from AIDS-related illnesses down by 24 percent since 2005. In short, fewer people are
almost half.

dying untimely deaths. And thats not only true in rich countries: life expectancy has gone up between 1990 and 2011 in
every WHO income bracket. The gains are even more dramatic if you take the long view: global life expectancy was 47 in
the early 1950s, but had risen to 70 a 50 percent jump by 2011. For even more perspective, the average Briton in
1850 when the British Empire had reached its apex was 40. The average person today should expect to live almost
twice as long as the average citizen of the worlds wealthiest and most powerful country in 1850. In real terms, this means
millions of fewer dead adults and children a year, millions fewer people who spend their lives suffering the pains and
unfreedoms imposed by illness, and millions more people spending their twilight years with loved ones. And the trends are
all positive progress has accelerated in recent years in many countries with the highest rates of mortality, as the

Whats going on? Obviously, its fairly complicated, but the most
important drivers have been technological and political innovation. The
WHO rather bloodlessly put it.

Enlightenment-era advances in the scientific method got people doing high-quality research, which brought us modern
medicine and the information technologies that allow us to spread medical breakthroughs around the world at increasingly

Scientific discoveries also fueled the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern capitalism,
giving us more resources to devote to large-scale application of live-saving technologies. And the
faster rates.

global spread of liberal democracy made governments accountable to citizens, forcing them to attend to their health
needs or pay the electoral price. Well see the enormously beneficial impact of these two forces, technology and
democracy, repeatedly throughout this list, which should tell you something about the foundations of human progress. But
when talking about improvements in health, we shouldnt neglect foreign aid. Nations donating huge amounts of money
out of an altruistic interest in the welfare of foreigners is historically unprecedented, and while not all aid has been helpful,
health aid has been a huge boon. Even Deaton, who wrote one of 2013s harshest assessments of foreign aid, believes
the case for assistance to fight disease such as HIV/AIDS or smallpox is strong. Thats because these programs have
demonstrably saved lives the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a 2003 program pushed by
President Bush, paid for anti-retroviral treatment for over 5.1 million people in the poor countries hardest-hit by the AIDS
epidemic. So were outracing the Four Horseman, extending our lives faster than pestilence, war, famine, and death can
take them. That alone should be enough to say the world is getting better. 2. Fewer people suffer from extreme poverty,

There are fewer

people in abject penury than at any other point in human history, and middle
class people enjoy their highest standard of living ever. We havent come
close to solving poverty: a number of African countries in particular have chronic problems generating
growth, a nut foreign aid hasnt yet cracked. So this isnt a call for complacency about poverty
any more than acknowledging victories over disease is an argument against tackling malaria. But make no mistake: as a
whole, the world is much richer in 2013 than it was before. 721 million fewer people
lived in extreme poverty ($1.25 a day) in 2010 than in 1981, according to a new World Bank study
and the world is getting happier. APTOPIX India Maha Kumbh CREDIT: SAURABH DAS/AP PHOTO

from October. Thats astounding a decline from 40 to about 14 percent of the worlds population suffering from abject
want. And poverty rates are declining in every national income bracket: even in low income countries, the percentage of
people living in extreme poverty ($1.25 a day in 2005 dollars) a day gone down from 63 in 1981 to 44 in 2010. We can be
fairly confident that these trends are continuing. For one thing, they survived the Great Recession in 2008. For another,
the decline in poverty has been fueled by global economic growth, which looks to be continuing: global GDP grew by 2.3
percent in 2012, a number thatll rise to 2.9 percent in 2013 according to IMF projections. The bulk of the recent decline in
poverty comes form India and China about 80 percent from China *alone*. Chinese economic and social reform, a
delayed reaction to the mass slaughter and starvation of Maos Cultural Revolution, has been the engine of povertys
global decline. If you subtract China, there are actually more poor people today than there were in 1981 (population
growth trumping the percentage declines in poverty). But we shouldnt discount China. If what we care about is fewer
people suffering the misery of poverty, then it shouldnt matter what nation the less-poor people call home. Chinese
growth should be celebrated, not shunted aside. The poor havent been the only people benefitting from global growth.
Middle class people have access to an ever-greater stock of life-improving goods. Televisions and refrigerators, once
luxury goods, are now comparatively cheap and commonplace. Thats why large-percentage improvements in a nations
GDP appear to correlate strongly with higher levels of happiness among the nations citizens; people like having things

Global economic growth in the past five

decades has dramatically reduced poverty and made people around the world happier. Once
again, were better off. 3. War is becoming rarer and less deadly . APTOPIX Mideast Libya CREDIT: AP
that make their lives easier and more worry-free.

PHOTO/ MANU BRABO Another massive conflict could overturn the global progress against disease and poverty. But it
appears war, too, may be losing its fangs. Steven Pinkers 2011 book The Better Angels Of Our Nature is the gold standard
in this debate. Pinker brought a treasure trove of data to bear on the question of whether the world has gotten more
peaceful, and found that, in the long arc of human history, both war and other forms of violence (the death penalty, for
instance) are on a centuries-long downward slope. Pinker summarizes his argument here if you dont own the book. Most
eye-popping are the numbers for the past 50 years; Pinker finds that the worldwide rate of death from interstate and civil
war combined has juddered downwardfrom almost 300 per 100,000 world population during World War II, to almost 30
during the Korean War, to the low teens during the era of the Vietnam War, to single digits in the 1970s and 1980s, to less
than 1 in the twenty-first century. Heres what that looks like graphed: Pinker CREDIT: STEVEN PINKER/THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL So it looks like

the smallest percentage of humans alive since World War II , and

in all likelihood in human history, are living through the horrors of war. Did 2013 give us any reason
to believe that Pinker and the other scholars who agree with him have been proven wrong? Probably not. The academic
debate over the decline of war really exploded in 2013, but the declinist thesis has fared pretty well. Challenges to
Pinkers conclusion that battle deaths have gone down over time have not withstood scrutiny. The most compelling
critique, a new paper by Bear F. Braumoeller, argues that if you control for the larger number of countries in the last 50
years, war happens at roughly the same rates as it has historically. There are lots of things you might say about
Braumoellers argument, and Ive asked Pinker for his two cents (update: Pinkers response here). But most importantly, if
battle deaths per 100,000 people really has declined, then his argument doesnt mean very much. If (percentage-wise)
fewer people are dying from war, then what we call war now is a lot less deadly than war used to be. Braumoeller
suggests population growth and improvements in battle medicine explain the decline, but thats not convincing: tell me
with a straight face that the only differences in deadliness between World War II, Vietnam, and the wars you see today is

we see many
more civil wars than we do wars between nations. The former tend to be less
deadly than the latter. Thats why the other major challenge to Pinkers thesis in 2013, the deepening of the
that there are more people and better doctors. Theres a more rigorous way of putting that: today,

Syrian civil war, isnt likely to upset the overall trend. Syrias war is an unimaginable tragedy, one responsible for the rare,
depressing increase in battle deaths from 2011 to 2012. However, the overall 2011-2012 trend fits well with the
observed long-term decline in battle deaths, according to researchers at the authoritative Uppsala Conflict Data Program,
because the uptick is not enough to suggest an overall change in trend. We should expect something similar when the
2013 numbers are published. Why are smaller and smaller percentages of people being exposed to the horrors of war?
There are lots of reasons one could point to, but two of the biggest ones are the spread of democracy and humans
getting, for lack of a better word, better. That democracies never, or almost never, go to war with each other is not
seriously in dispute: the statistical evidence is ridiculously strong. While some argue that the democratic peace, as its
called, is caused by things other than democracy itself, theres good experimental evidence that democratic leaders and
citizens just dont want to fight each other. Since 1950, democracy has spread around the world like wildfire. There were
only a handful of democracies after World War II, but that grew to roughly 40 percent of all by the end of the Cold War.
Today, a comfortable majority about 60 percent of all states are democracies. This freer world is also a safer one.
Second and this is Pinkers preferred explanation people have developed strategies for dealing with wars causes and
consequences. Human ingenuity and experience have gradually been brought to bear, Pinker writes, just as they have
chipped away at hunger and disease. A series of human inventions, things like U.N. peacekeeping operations, which
nowadays are very successful at reducing violence, have given us a set of social tools increasingly well suited to reducing
the harm caused by armed conflict. Wars decline isnt accidental, in other words. Its by design. 4. Rates
of murder and other violent crimes are in free-fall. Britain Unrest CREDIT: AKIRA SUEMORI/AP PHOTOS Pinkers trend
against violence isnt limited just to war. It seems likes crimes, both of the sort states commit against their citizens and
citizens commit against each other, are also on the decline. Take a few examples. Slavery, once commonly sanctioned by

The use of torture as legal punishment has gone

down dramatically. The European murder rate fell 35-fold from the Middle
Ages to the beginning of the 20th century (check out this amazing 2003 paper from Michael Eisner, who dredged up
governments, is illegal everywhere on earth.

medieval records to estimate European homicide rates in the swords-and-chivalry era, if you dont believe me). The
decline has been especially marked in recent years. Though

homicide crime rates climbed back up from their

have
collapsed worldwide in the 21st century. 557,000 people were murdered in 2001 almost three
historic lows between the 1970s and 1990s, reversing progress made since the late 19th century, they

times as many as were killed in war that year. In 2008, that number was 289,000, and the homicide rate has been
declining in 75 percent of nations since then.

AT MS Globalization from
Below
Empirically, globalization reduces inequality - countries
rejecting economic integration are the cause of inequality
Dollar 14 David Dollar, Former World Bank Country Director, China and
Mongolia 2014
Making Globalization Work for the Poor http://live.worldbank.org/makingglobalization-work-poor
It is true that corporations everywhere focus on maximizing profits. It is important to have a strong
framework of laws and regulations if that profit-seeking is to produce social benefits. I do not accept
that the tendency of globalization is to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. The fastest growing
incomes in the world are in the developing countries, indicating that integration can be a powerful force
for development that reduces worldwide inequality. The tendency toward inequality in the world today
comes from the fact that about half of the developing world population lives in countries that are
successfully integrating and catching up with the rich world, while half of the population lives in
countries that are largely outside of globalization. Does the poor performance of Argentina, much of
Sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Myanmar, and other countries result from their integration with the world
economy or from their own poor governance? I think the evidence supports the latter.

Globalization increases environmental protection

Dollar 14 David Dollar, Former World Bank Country Director, China and
Mongolia 2014
Making Globalization Work for the Poor http://live.worldbank.org/makingglobalization-work-poor
The most successful developing countries in the era of globalization - China, India, Chile, Uganda,
Morocco, to name a few in different parts of the world - have not reduced environmental standards.
Actually, most of them have increased environmental regulation over the past decade. There is no
evidence that investment is attracted to dirty, polluted places - just the opposite. Integration can increase
the economic pressure to deplete resources such as forests and fisheries, so it is important to
complement openness with strong environmental regulation. The most globalized countries in the world
(Netherlands, Singapore) have strong environmental regulation so clearly there is no necessary
contradiction.

Globalization reduces poverty and does not increase

inequality
Dollar 14 David Dollar, Former World Bank Country Director, China and
Mongolia 2014
Making Globalization Work for the Poor http://live.worldbank.org/makingglobalization-work-poor
Globalization is about economic and social integration among countries. In the past 20 years the
developing countries that have integrated the most with the global economy have seen the fastest
growth rates and poverty reduction. Vietnam is a good example - it cut poverty in half in a decade.
Integration raised the prices for the products of poor farmers - rice, fish, cashews - and also created
large numbers of factory jobs in footwear and garments, jobs that paid a lot more than existing
opportunities in Vietnam. It is not true in general that globalization leads to increased inequality within
countries. In Vietnam there was no change is the distribution of income during its opening. There are
countries where inequality has gone up, but also ones where it has gone down. While integration creates
potential opportunities, poor people cannot take advantage of these unless they have education and
access to assets such as land and credit. Many poor people are left out of globalization because their
governments are not providing these basic services.

Bottom up destroys the environment the poor are so

economically desperate that they don't care about the
environment; economic growth is the solution
Nangammbi 7 Dianah Nangammbi, Cilla CSIR 3/05/2007
Conservation Biologuy POVERTY INFLUENCES ENVIRONMENTAL
DEGRADATION http://bcb706.blogspot.com/2007/03/poverty-influencesenvironmental.html
Poverty is considered as a great influence of environmental degradation. In many regions of the world,
regional overgrazing has resulted in destruction of grazing lands, forest and soil. Air and water have
been degraded [5]. The carrying capacity of the natural environment has been reduced. As the people
become poorer, they destroy the resources faster [5]. They tend to overuse the natural resources because
they dont have anything to eat or any means of getting money except through the natural resources,
they start to depend more on natural resources.
Poor people harvest natural resources for their survival or in order to meet their basic needs such as
firewood, agricultural productions (such as maize), and water and wild plants for their medicine. All
people regardless of being poor or rich depend on natural resources; the concern with poor people is
that they are utilizing the resources directly. The rich people do depend on these resource but they do
not go to the forest directly and harvest the resources.
Due to the lack of sufficient income people start to use and overuse every resource available to them
when their survival is at stake. As desperate hunger leads to desperate strategies for survival, many trees
are harvested for fire wood, timber and art craft. Most of the poor people use this fire wood as their
source of income by selling them, and art craft products are also used for income generation. The roots
of the trees are dug out for medicinal purpose. This leaves the soil exposed as the grasses are also
grazed by animals and also collected for roofing the houses. When it rains the entire top and good soil
are eroded which makes it difficult for that soil to produce better agricultural products.

Poor people often lack sufficient income and education to afford higher quality life where they can use
electricity and also buy electric appliances to ease their domestic life. Instead of cutting trees for fire
wood they can use electric stoves for cooking. They can also use electric heaters to warm themselves
during winter month. Electricity can also slow down the firewood business as most people will no
longer be relying on firewood as it takes time to prepare the fire using wood than just switching on the
electricity. The use of electricity will make their lives simpler because it will save time, they wont go to
the field to fetch wood. The chances of been bitten by a snake or get injured are high when they are in
field.
They have no quality drinking water as they pollute the rivers by washing inside them and by also using
a river as a dumping site for the bins. The lack of education also prohibits them from practicing
environmentally sustainable agriculture; protect natural resources against degradation or rehabilitate
degraded resources like rivers [6]
In the poorest regions it is estimated that one in five children will not live to see the fifth birthday due to
environment-related diseases [7]. Statistics show that almost four million children are dying each year
because of acute respiratory infection linked to indoor and out-door air pollution [7]. Other
environment-related diseases killing the children are diarrhoea caused by lack of clean water and
sanitation and also cholera, malaria and asthma [7].
The better solution which can rescue both the environment and poor people is through the government
by increasing the rate of job creation for poor people. If they have jobs they can afford higher quality
life which includes affording electricity, they can also afford nice roofing materials instead of using
grasses and they can have somewhere to wake up to instead of harvesting the natural resources
everyday. Many of poor people are very skilled in a way that a government can build a huge art and
craft and timber structures where these people can be employed and still practice their art but in a
professional way where the harvesting of plants can be done sustainably.
The government can export these products to other countries where a lot of money can be generated.
Some can also work in guarding the natural environment from culprits. Others can be employed only
for harvesting the natural resources for different purposes like medicinal, art and craft, timber, fire wood
etc under the supervision of ecologists. This can help in keeping the poor people busy, they will be
earning a stable and reliable salary which will keep them away from the natural resources, and after all
it will be difficult to access the resources as a close eye will always be kept on them.

Growth Good

Poverty
Poverty happens because of low economic growth not
unequal wealth distribution
Lingle, Global Strategist for eConoLytics.com and author of The Rise and
Decline of the Asian Century and writer for Economic Times , 2002
(Christopher, Centre for Civil Society, Blame it all on socialism, April 2nd,
2002,http://ccs.in/blame-it-all-socialism, accessed 8/5/14 bh@ddi)
The truth is that India's greatest problems arise from a political culture guided by socialist instincts. Diehard socialists

A presumed merit of socialism is that it aims

to nurture a greater sense of collective identity by suppressing the narrow selfinterest of individuals. However, this aspect of socialism lies at the heart of its failure both as
a political tool as well as the basis for economic policy . This is because socialism provides the political
proclaim that their dogma reinforces certain civic virtues.

mechanism for and legitimacy by which people identify themselves as members of groups. While it may suit the socialist
agenda to create 'them-and-us' scenarios relating to workers and capitalists or peasants and urban dwellers, this logic is
readily converted to other types of divisions. Asserting group rights over individual rights can lead to various injustices. In
the case of India's socialist state, competition for power has increasingly become identified with religiosity or ethnicity.
Political parties based upon religion are inevitably exclusionary. These narrow concepts of identity work against nation
building since such political arrangement cannot accommodate universalist values. Socialism also sets the stage for
populist promises of taking from one group to support another. And so it is that socialist ideology provided the beginnings
of a political culture that has evolved into a sectarian populism that have wrought cycles of communal violence. Populism
with its solicitations of political patronage, whether based upon nationalism or some other ploy, is also open to corruption.
Like its evil twin populism, socialism creates false expectations among the poor that cannot be fulfilled. Suggestions that
poverty can be decreased or that social justice served by taking away from the rich or by passing laws to raise wages
misleads the poor into believing that their condition can and should be legislated away. In response, the poor demand to

By promoting the misleading idea that

income and wealth redistribution can reduce poverty, socialism ignores the
fact that poverty arises from low economic growth and insufficient capital
formation. As in most emerging market economies, India has too many policies that hinder private investments. One
of the lessons of the global economy is that only private initiatives can create sustainable
economic growth and employment. Long-term investments by entrepreneurs are stunted by capricious
be given ever more as a right arising from group identity.

actions of governments. Instead of listening to socialist denunciations of globalisation, poverty-stricken citizens around the
world should realise that their economies suffer from failures of governance. Poor policy decisions are being made within a
defective 'institutional infrastructure'. At issue is nothing less than the role of the state. Should the Indian state be used as
a mechanism to protect the freedoms and rights of individuals living under a general law with shared allegiance to a
secular state? Or should the state be a vehicle for groups to gain power who use it to further their own narrow ends? It
should be clear the latter approach would lead to the destruction of India's democracy while the former will allow it to
survive. It is undeniable that public policy based upon socialism has promoted divisions that contributed to social
instability and economic destruction. This dangerous game has only served the narrow interests of those who seek to

Socialism has wrought slower economic growth that

harmed the poor and unskilled who lost access to economic opportunities . It
capture or preserve political power.

also introduced forces that are destroying India's hard-earned democracy. A paradigm shift in the nature of Indian politics
is needed whereby the state ceases serving as a mechanism for groups to gain power and becomes an instrument to
secure rights and freedoms for individuals.

Environment
Economic growth solves the environmentits not just
about consumerism, but maintaining wellness factors like
a healthy environment
Kloor, freelance journalist and professor of journalism @ NYU , 2012
(Kieth, Discover Magazine, The Limits to Environmentalism, April 27th, 2012,
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/04/27/the-limits-toenvironmentalism/#.U-F-ivldUoO, accessed 8-5-14 bh@ddi)
the green modernist has emerged in recent years to
remake environmentalism: Strip it of
outdated mythologies and dogmas, make it less apocalyptic and more
optimistic, broaden its constituency. In this vision, the Anthropocene is not something to rail
against, but to embrace. It is about welcoming that world, not dreading it. It is about creating a future that
Pro-technology, pro-city, pro-growth,

advance an alternative vision for the future. His mission is to

environmentalists will help shape for the better. The piece seemed to strike a chord. It was pinged around a lot on Twitter
and generated some heated micro-conversations. A number of people said it was a breath of fresh air. Plenty others were
critical. Some complained that I set up a false dichotomy, that I painted a simplistic, cartoonish picture of the green
traditionalist, and that it was unfair to the many grassroots greens working at a local level, who have embraced
technological and pro-market solutions. I cant speak to that last charge, since my post was written on a large canvass,
with environmentalisms representative voicesthe leading writers, scientists, and big NGOsin mind. Collectively, these
are the driving forces that shape attitudes, public discourse, green politics and policy. If you pay close enough attention to
media stories, what is said by mainstream green groups, and of course to big splashy reports put out by esteemed
institutions like the Royal Society, you will notice that the beating heart of environmentalism belongs to the traditionalist,
as I have characterized him/her. For example, lets look at Worldwatch Institutes 2012 State of the Earth, in a chapter
titled, The path to degrowth in overdeveloped countries. Im assuming this path is suggested for nations such as the
United States, whose citizens are fond of big cars, big box stores, and Big Gulps at the 7/11. Though Americans are still
recovering from the worldwide economic meltdown, heres how the Worldwatch Institute aims to win them over: The
rapidly warming Earth and the collapse of ecosystem services show that economic degrowth in overdeveloped countries
is essential and urgent. Degrowth is the intentional contraction of overly inflated economies and the dispelling of the myth

mainstream
greens are actually running on a platform of intentional economic contraction .
Now, you might say, well, thats just one environmental group. Fair enough . Lets go to this
that perpetual pursuit of growth is good for economies or the societies of which they are a part. Yes,

manifesto by James Gustave Speth, in a recent issue of Orion magazine. Speth has been a leading American
environmentalist for decades. He is the founder of the World Resources Institute, a co-founder of the Natural Resources
Defense Council and currently on the faculty at Vermont law school. In his Orion essay, he writes: Economic growth may
be the worlds secular religion, but for much of the world it is a god that is failingunderperforming for most of the worlds
people and, for those in affluent societies, now creating more problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow
the overall U.S. economy undermines families and communities; it is leading us to environmental calamity; it fuels a
ruthless international search for energy and other resources; it fails at generating the needed jobs; and it rests on a
manufactured consumerism that is not meeting our deepest human needs. To understand why this is a pinched view of
economic growth that also conflates a number of legitimate issues, read this piece by Robert Reich. In truth, he writes,
economic

growth isnt just about more stuff. Growth is different from

consumerism. Growth is really about the capacity of a nation to produce
everything thats wanted and needed by its inhabitants. That includes better
stewardship of the environment as well as improved public health and better
schools. (The Gross Domestic Product is a crude way of gauging this but its a guide. Nations with high and growing
GDPs have more overall capacity; those with low or slowing GDPs have less.) Poor countries tend to be
more polluted than richer ones, Reich says, because they dont have the capacity
both to keep their people fed and clothed and also to keep their land, air and
water clean. Oh, and by the way, Reich is a longtime liberal luminary and currently a professor of public policy at
the University of California, Berkley.

Environmental harm is only solved by regulated markets

the alternative to unenforced property rights in the
tragedy of the commons
DiLorenzo, economics professor at Loyola University Maryland, 1992
(Thomas J., Foundation of Economic Education, Why Socialism Causes
Pollution, March 1, 1992,

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/why-socialism-causespollution, accessed 8-5-2014 bh@ddi)

The last refuge of those who advocate socialistic solutions to environmental pollution is the claim that it is the lack of
democratic processes that prevents the Communist nations from truly serving the public interest. If this theory is correct,
then the public sector of an established democracy such as the United States should be one of the best examples of

U.S. government agencies are among the most cavalier

when it comes to environmental stewardship. There is much evidence to
dispute the theory that only private businesses pollute. In the United States, we need look
environmental responsibility. But

no further than our own government agencies. These public sector institutions, such as the Department of Defense (DOD),
are among the worst offenders. DOD now generates more than 400,000 tons of hazardous waste a year more than is

To make matters worse, the

Environmental Protection Agency lacks the enforcement power over the
public sector that it possesses over the private sector. The lax situation uncovered by the
produced by the five largest chemical companies combined.

General Accounting Office (GAO) at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma is typical of the way in which many Federal
agencies respond to the EPAs directives. "Although DOD policy calls for the military services to implement EPAs
hazardous waste management regulations, we found that Tinker has been sellingwaste oil, fuels, and solvents rather
than recycling," reported the GAO. One of the worlds most poisonous spots lies about 10 miles northeast of Denver in the
Armys Rocky Mountain Arsenal. Nerve gas, mustard shells, the anti-crop spray TX, and incendiary devices have been
dumped into pits there over the past 40 years. Dealing with only one "basin" of this dump cost $40 million. Six hundred
thousand cubic yards of contaminated soil and sludge had to be scraped and entombed in a 16-acre, double-lined waste
pile. There are plenty of other examples of Defense Department facilities that need major cleanup. In fact, total costs of
along-term Pentagon cleanup are hard to get a handle on. Some officials have conceded that the price tag could

Government-owned power plants are another example of

public-sector pollution. These plants are a large source of sulfur dioxide emissions. The federal
eventually exceed $20 billion.

governments Tennessee Valley Authority operates 59 coal-fired power plants in the Southeast, where it has had major
legal confrontations with state governments who want the Federal agency to comply with state governments who want
the Federal agency to comply with state environmental regulations. The TVA has fought the state governments for years
over compliance with their clean air standards. It won a major Supreme Court victory when the Court ruled that, as a
federal government enterprise, it could be exempt from environmental regulations with which private sector and local

Federal agricultural policy also has been a large

source of pollution, in the past encouraging over utilization of land subject to erosion. Powerful farm lobbies
government power plants must comply.

have protected "non-point" sources of pollution from the heavy hand of regulation places on other private industries. III.
Policy Implications These examples of environmental degradation throughout the world suggest some valuable lessons.

it is not free enterprise per se that causes environmental harm; if so, the
The heart of the problem lies with the failure
of our legal institutions, not the free enterprise system. Specifically, American laws were weakened more
First,

socialist world would be environmentally pristine.

than a century ago by Progressive Era courts that believed economic progress was in the public interest and should
therefore supersede individual rights. The English common law tradition of the protection of private property rights

many environmental
problems are not caused by "market failure" but by governments failure to
enforce property rights. It is a travesty of justice when downstream residents, for example, cannot hold an
upstream polluter responsible for damaging their properties. The common law tradition must be
revived if we are to enjoy a healthy market economy and a cleaner
environment. Potential polluters must know in advance that they will be held
responsible for their actions. The second lesson is that the plundering of the environment in the socialist
world is a grand example of the tragedy of the commons. Under communal property ownership ,
where no one owns or is responsible for a natural resource, the inclination is for each individual to
including the right to be free from pollution was slowly overturned. In other words,

abuse or deplete the resource before someone else does. Common examples of this
"tragedy" are how people litter public streets and parks much more than their own
yards; private housing is much better maintained than public lands but maintain lush pastures on their own property;
the national forests are carelessly over-logged, but private forests are carefully managed and reforested by lumber
companies with "super trees"; and game fish are habitually overfished in public waterways but thrive in private lakes and
streams. The tragedy of the commons is a lesson for those who believe that further nationalization and governmental

These two pillars of free

enterprise sound liability laws that hold people responsible for actions and
the enforcement of private property rights are important stepping stones
to environmental protection.
control of natural resources is a solution to our environmental problems.

Market economies can identify who is responsible for

environmental harm and incentivize changethe answer
is regulation not rejection
Gongol, WHO Radio of Des Moines, IA and entrepreneur, 2006
(Brain, Gogol.com, Is socialism good for the environement?, 2-5-2006,
http://www.gongol.com/research/economics/socialismandtheenvironment/,
accessed 8/5/14 bh@ddi)
It is sometimes claimed that free markets inevitably corrupt and destroy the environment and that the only way to protect
the natural environment is to adopt a socialist economy. However earnest, the argument is categorically wrong. #1.
Socialism Has Consistently Failed to Protect the Environment The argument that "socialism protects the environment"

Many of the world's worst and most visible

ecological failures happened under socialist , Marxist, or Communist governments. To wit:
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the catastrophic air pollution of Eastern
Europe's "Black Triangle," and the destruction of the Aral Sea each were
specifically caused by socialism and took place under socialist government
supervision. #2. Socialism Ignores the Role of Property Rights Market economies depend upon
property rights; clear title to land, resources, and ideas makes it possible to
efficiently and easily transfer goods and services between the people who create them and the
ignores the titanic failure of the evidence.

people who want them. Property rights also make it possible to assign responsibility to individuals for the good and bad
results of the things they create. A smokestack, for instance, belongs to someone -- whether a single individual or many
individuals who together own a corporation which in turn owns the smokestack. If the smokestack bellows out pollution,
private property rights make it very clear that the owners of the smokestack are also the "owners" of the pollution.
Socialism suggests that the institution of private ownership is to blame for creating the pollution, rather than identifying
that all productive activity creates some form of waste, regardless of the economic or political system in which it takes
place.

Campfire smoke, automobile exhaust, and even the waste heat

generated by factory workers' bodies are all examples of pollutants that
happen regardless of the economic system; market economies, though, insist
that the ownership of those "pollutants" belongs to someone. #3. Socialism Lacks the
Market Feedback that Discourages Waste Market economies rely on an infinitely complex system of
signals and feedback that combine to form the intersection of supply and demand .
One set of signals from the supply side is the cost of producing goods and services. Since a producer generally
wants to make the most profit from the least amount of work at the lowest possible expense, it is to
the producer's advantage to waste as little as possible. This is why paper
companies plant new trees soon after they harvest forests and why trucking
companies care about fuel efficiency. Under socialism, the feedback system is disrupted and
distorted. #4. Socialist Planning is Plainly Inefficient Planning to produce enough Stuff Socialism assumes that someone or
some group of people has the ability to predict and plan for the needs of the many. This kind of omniscience is plainly
impossible. Pretend, for instance, that everything that people might need or want can be lumped together in a single
category, called "Stuff." In any given planning period, the planner must determine how much Stuff people will want and

how much Stuff must be produced. But there will inevitably be some difference between what the planner expects supply
and demand for Stuff to be and what actually emerges. Even if the planner is occasionally correct, every deviation from
the actual demand for Stuff causes waste -- when too little Stuff is produced to meet demand, people needlessly suffer.
When too much Stuff is produced to meet demand, all that extra Stuff represents waste. Even a really, really good planner
will be unable to accurately predict the vast fluctuations in day-to-day demand for Stuff, leading to huge amounts of either
waste or suffering. Yet this planning function is routinely achieved with great efficiency by the feedback systems of a
market economy, in which freely-moving prices effectively tell everyone in the market whether too much or too little of
anything is being produced. #5. Socialism Doesn't Encourage the Production of Pollution-Reducing Technologies Just as

market economies offer signals about the

demand for pollution-reducing technologies. If people want cleaner air,
markets reveal that preference by signalling demand for things like hybridfuel vehicles, wind power, and HEPA air filters. The market rewards those who can deliver
they offer signals about demand for every other good,

clean-air technologies, since they profit from selling what people demand. Socialist economies, on the other hand, aren't
known for rewarding those who create pollution-reducing technologies; China, for instance, is trying to curb pollution by
mandate, but with limited success. Simultaneously, because the socialist government there can do whatever it wants, it is
ejecting 1.2 million people from their homes in order to build a massive dam. Socialism Isn't the Answer to Environmental

Pollution is an inevitable byproduct of human activity; limiting the

harm, however, is best done not by shutting down markets, but rather by fixing those occasional
market-related problems with light government regulation or incentives.
Problems

Rejecting market economies because of environmental problems not only throws the baby out with the bathwater, it
ignores the plain fact that socialism and other alternatives to markets are categorical environmental failures in their own
right.

Permutation
The permutation solves even if the aff is neoliberal,
economic engagement can be repurposed to create new
social relations the permutation turns neoliberal
techniques against themselves to create social justice
Ferguson, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford, 11
(The Uses of Neoliberalism, Antipode, Vol. 41, No. S1, pp 166184)

If we are seeking, as this special issue of Antipode aspires to do, to link our
critical analyses to the world of grounded political strugglenot only to
interpret the world in various ways, but also to change itthen there is much
to be said for focusing, as I have here, on mundane, real- world debates
around policy and politics, even if doing so inevitably puts us on the
compromised and reformist terrain of the possible, rather than the seductive
high ground of revolutionary ideals and utopian desires. But I would also
insist that there is more at stake in the examples I have discussed here than
simply a slightly better way to ameliorate the miseries of the chronically poor,
or a technically superior method for relieving the suffering of famine victims.
My point in discussing the South African BIG campaign, for instance, is not
really to argue for its implementation. There is much in the campaign that is
appealing, to be sure. But one can just as easily identify a series of worries
that would bring the whole proposal into doubt. Does not, for instance, the
decoupling of the question of assistance from the issue of labor, and the
associated valorization of the informal, help provide a kind of alibi for the
failures of the South African regime to pursue policies that would do more to
create jobs? Would not the creation of a basic income benefit tied to national
citizenship simply exacerbate the vicious xenophobia that already divides the
South African poor, in a context where many of the poorest are not citizens,
and would thus not be eligible for the BIG? Perhaps even more fundamentally,
is the idea of basic income really capable of commanding the mass support
that alone could make it a central pillar of a new approach to distribution?
The record to date gives powerful reasons to doubt it. So far, the technocrats
dreams of relieving poverty through efficient cash transfers have attracted
little support from actual poor people, who seem to find that vision a bit pale
and washed out, compared with the vivid (if vague) populist promises of jobs
and personalistic social inclusion long offered by the ANC patronage machine,
and lately personified by Jacob Zuma (Ferguson forthcoming). My real
interest in the policy proposals discussed here, in fact, has little to do with the
narrow policy questions to which they seek to provide answers. For what is
most significant, for my purposes, is not whether or not these are good
policies, but the way that they illustrate a process through which specific

governmental devices and modes of reasoning that we have become used to

associating with a very particular (and conservative) political agenda
(neoliberalism) may be in the process of being peeled away from that
agenda, and put to very different uses. Any progressive who takes seriously
the challenge I pointed to at the start of this essay, the challenge of
developing new progressive arts of government, ought to find this turn of
events of considerable interest. As Steven Collier (2005) has recently pointed
out, it is important to question the assumption that there is, or must be, a
neat or automatic fit between a hegemonic neoliberal political-economic
project (however that might be characterized), on the one hand, and specific
neoliberal techniques, on the other. Close attention to particular techniques
(such as the use of quantitative calculation, free choice, and price driven by
supply and demand) in particular settings (in Colliers case, fiscal and
budgetary reform in post-Soviet Russia) shows that the relationship between
the technical and the political-economic is much more polymorphous and
unstable than is assumed in much critical geographical work, and that
neoliberal technical mechanisms are in fact deployed in relation to diverse
political projects and social norms (2005:2). As I suggested in referencing
the role of statistics and techniques for pooling risk in the creation of social
democratic welfare states, social technologies need not have any essential or
eternal loyalty to the political formations within which they were first
developed. Insurance rationality at the end of the nineteenth century had no
essential vocation to provide security and solidarity to the working class; it
was turned to that purpose (in some substantial measure) because it was
available, in the right place at the right time, to be appropriated for that use.
Specific ways of solving or posing governmental problems, specific
institutional and intellectual mechanisms, can be combined in an almost
infinite variety of ways, to accomplish different social ends. With social, as
with any other sort of technology, it is not the machines or the mechanisms
that decide what they will be used to do. Foucault (2008:94) concluded his
discussion of socialist government- ality by insisting that the answers to the
Lefts governmental problems require not yet another search through our
sacred texts, but a process of conceptual and institutional innovation. [I]f
there is a really socialist governmentality, then it is not hidden within
socialism and its texts. It cannot be deduced from them. It must be
invented. But invention in the domain of governmental technique is rarely
something worked up out of whole cloth. More often, it involves a kind of
bricolage (Le vi- Strauss 1966), a piecing together of something new out of
scavenged parts originally intended for some other purpose. As we pursue
such a process of improvisatory invention, we might begin by making an
inventory of the parts available for such tinkering, keeping all the while an
open mind about how different mechanisms might be put to work, and what
kinds of purposes they might serve. If we can go beyond seeing in
neoliberalism an evil essence or an automatic unity, and instead learn to
see a field of specific governmental techniques, we may be surprised to find
that some of them can be repurposed, and put to work in the service of
political projects very different from those usually associated with that word.

If so, we may find that the cabinet of governmental arts available to us is a

bit less bare than first appeared, and that some rather useful little
mechanisms may be nearer to hand than we thought.

War Stops Transition

Economic collapse causes global transition wars and
xenophobiadestroys any transition
Panzner 8 Michael J. Panzner, faculty at the New York Institute of Finance,
25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and currency markets who has
worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner
Bank, and JPMorgan Chase, 2008, Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future
from Economic Collapse, Revised and Updated Edition, p. 136-138

Many will wonder whether the United States might renege on some of its financial obligations or even declare an outright default on its
once AAA securities. Likely adding to a widespread sense of panic will be the exodus from an array of global fiat currencies into gold,
silver, property, and other tangible assets, which can hold their value in a world of government finances run amok. Needless to say,

systemic financial pressures and domino-like bank failures will make

preservation of capital the utmost concern.
Rising angst will also wreak havoc with links among markets, financial systems, economies,
and countries. Many people could find themselves subject to stricter government controls or even find avenues closed off as a
result of attempts to stem contagion effects. The widespread urge to withdraw will feed rising
xenophobia, already inflamed by illegal immigration, unfair trade practices, and leaking borders. Playing to populist
sentiment, politicians around the country will respond enthusiastically to calls for restrictions on foreigners. This will feed a brain drain, as
scientists, students, and other temporary visa holders are left with little choice but to uproot and go elsewhere, further sapping America's
economic resiliency.

calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States
protectionist legislation like the notorious Smoot-Hawley bill.
Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series of tit-for-tat economic responses,
which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged
and devastating global disaster, But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been
long forgotten during the next collapse . Eventually, fed by a mood of desperation and growing public
Continuing

and other nations to spew forth

anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify.
Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may
even call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other
countries exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies,
they will introduce controls on foreign exchange, foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American infrastructure
assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the (heap thanks to a rapidly depreciating dollar, will be stymied by limits on
investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies and markets, disrupting global payment,
settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to undermine business confidence and consumer spending.
In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfoliobased risk management, or that allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife, or that
otherwise facilitates unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly.

The rise in isolationism and protectionism will bring about ever more heated
arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key
commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations.
Whether involving raw materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such
as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take
increasing precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over
the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the environment and natural
resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will
give rise to full-scale military encounters, often with minimal provocation.

economic conditions will serve as a convenient pretext for conflicts

that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may
look to divert attention away from domestic problems by channeling
frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures. Enabled by cheap technology and the
waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the frequency and scale
of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level.
In some instances,

aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue

nations running amok. Age-old clashes will also take on a new, more healed sense of urgency. China will likely
assume an increasingly belligerent posture toward Taiwan, while Iran may
embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part, may
look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of
conflicts. Some observers, like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an
Turbulent conditions will encourage

"intense confrontation" between the United States and China is "inevitable" at some point.
More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and religious differences will be transformed from

Long-simmering resentments could also degenerate

quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering genocidal acts. Terrorists
employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional
forces using jets, cruise missiles, and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will
interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and Western societies as the beginnings of a new world
war.
wars of words to battles soaked in blood.

Transition from neolib causes massive violence counterrevolutionary interventions

Anderson 84
professor of sociology UCLA,
(Perry, In the tracks of historical materialism, p. 102-103)

That background also indicates, however, what is essentially missing from his
work. How are we to get from where we are today to where he point us to
tomorrow? There is no answer to this question in Nove. His halting discussion of
transition tails away into apprehensive admonitions to moderation to the British
Labor Party, and pleas for proper compensation to capitalist owners of major
industries, if these are to be nationalized. Nowhere is there any sense of what a
titanic political change would have to occur, with what fierceness of social
struggle, for the economic model of socialism he advocates ever to materialize.
Between the radicalism of the future end-state he envisages, and the
conservatism of the present measures he is prepared to countenance, there is an
unbridgeable abyss. How could private ownership of the means of production ever
be abolished by policies less disrespectful of capital than those of Allende or a
Benn, which he reproves? What has disappeared from the pages of The Economics
of Feasible Socialism is virtually all attention to the historical dynamics of any
serious conflict over the control of the means of production, as the record of the
20th century demonstrates them. If capital could visit such destruction on even so
poor and small an outlying province of its empire in Vietnam, to prevent its loss, is
it likely that it would suffer its extinction meekly in its own homeland? The lessons
of the past sixty-five years or so are in this respect without ambiguity or exception,

there is no case, from Russia to China, from Vietnam to Cuba, from Chile to
Nicaragua, where the existence of capitalism has been challenged, and the furies
of intervention, blockade and civil strife have not descended in response. Any
viable transition to socialism in the West must seek to curtail that pattern: but to
shrink from or to ignore it is to depart from the world of the possible altogether. In
the same way, to construct an economic model of socialism in one advanced
country is a legitimate exercise: but to extract it from any computable relationship
with a surrounding, and necessarily opposing, capitalist environmentas this work
doesis to locate it in thin air.

Turn: Attempting to move away from capitalism will cause

transitional conflicts that will end in increased domination
and unsustainable exploitation.
Mark Avrum Gubrud @ the Center for Superconductivity Research, 1997,
Nanotechnology and International Security, a/online

With molecular manufacturing, international trade in both raw materials and

finished goods can be replaced by decentralized production for local
consumption, using locally available materials. The decline of international
trade will undermine a powerful source of common interest. Further, artificial
intelligence will displace skilled as well as unskilled labor. A world system
based on wage labor, transnational capitalism and global markets will
necessarily give way. We imagine that a golden age is possible, but we dont
know how to organize one. As global capitalism retreats, it will

leave behind a world dominated by politics, and possibly

feudal concentrations of wealth and power. Economic
insecurity, and fears for the material and moral future of humankind may
lead to the rise of demagogic and intemperate national leaders.
With almost two hundred sovereign nations, each struggling to create a new
economic and social order, perhaps the most predictable outcome is
chaos: shifting alignments, displaced populations, power
struggles, ethnic conflicts inflamed by demagogues, class
conflicts, land disputes, etc. Small and underdeveloped nations will be

more than ever dependent on the major powers for access to

technology, and more than ever vulnerable to sophisticated
forms of control or subversion, or to outright domination.
Competition among the leading technological powers for the political loyalty
of clients might imply reversion to some form of nationalistic imperialism.

Rebelling against neoliberalism inevitably leads to a

violent struggle characterized by the struggle to meet
basic needs.
Cecea, Professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico,
2009(Ana Esther, National Autonomous University of Mexico; Director of the
ObservatorioLatinoamericano de Geopoltica and active in the Americas
Demilitarisation Campaign, Postneoliberalism and its bifurcations

Development Dialogue Issue 51, http://rosaluxeuropa.info/userfiles/file/DD51.pdf#page=35)//CS

Both things have happened after 30 years of neoliberalism. The voraciousness of the market
took the appropriation of nature and the dispossession of human beings to the extreme.
Territories were ravaged by desertification and their inhabitants driven out. People revolted,
and ecological catastrophe, which had reached an extreme point of irreversibility, started to
manifest itself in a violent way. People rebelled against the advance of capitalism,

blocking the ways that were taking it towards even greater appropriation.
Armed insurgencies impeded access to the rainforest; civil revolts put an end
to the building of dams, to intensive mining, to the construction of heavy-load
roads, to the privatisation of oil and gas, and to the monopolisation of water.
The market, by itself, was not able to defeat those people who were already
out of its reach because they had been expelled; and from there, from the
non-market, they were struggling for human and natural life, for lifes
essential elements, for another relationship with nature, for an end to the
pillaging. The end of neoliberalism begins when the extent of dispossession
arouses the fury of the people and compels them to burst onto the scene.

Ken Strange Addendum

Permutation do the plan and reject capitalism in all other instances. Only the
perm guanantees the affirmative advantages. A floating PIC is abusive.

Violent backlash precludes the alt

Alexander 12, [Dr. Samuel Alexander is co-director of the Simplicity
Institute and a lecturer in Consumerism and Sustainability at the Office for
Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne. Aug 6, 2012 Degrowth,
Expensive Oil, and the New Economics of Energy
http://simplicitycollective.com/degrowth-expensive-oil-and-the-neweconomics-of-energy]
Needless to say, the powers that be are not willing even to entertain this degrowth diagnosis or
its radical implications, for it implies establishing fundamentally new economic systems that
operate on much lower energy inputs. Empire, we can be sure, will not contemplate selfannihilation; it will struggle for existence all the way down. In much the same vein, consumerist
cultures are very unlikely to accept any proposal to voluntarily reduce levels of consumption.
Overcoming or dealing with these forms of resistance is the near impossible task that lies before
those of us who seek a radically alternative, post-carbon economy (Trainer, 2010b; Heinberg and
Leach, 2010; Alexander, 2011c).

Market economies are the only way to effectively allocate

resources -- the alternative means mass suffering from
resource shortages
Gongol 9owner Gongol.com[Brian, Is Socialism Good for the
Environment?,http://www.gongol.com/research/economics/socialismandtheenvironment/]RMT

Socialism assumes that someone or some group of people has the ability to predict and plan for the
needs of the many. This kind of omniscience is plainly impossible. Pretend, for instance, that everything that
people might need or want can be lumped together in a single category, called "Stuff." In any given planning period, the
planner must determine how much Stuff people will want and how much Stuff must be produced. But
there will inevitably be some difference between what the planner expects supply and demand for Stuff
to be and what actually emerges. Even if the planner is occasionally correct, every deviation from the actual
demand for Stuff causes waste -- when too little Stuff is produced to meet demand, people needlessly
suffer. When too much Stuff is produced to meet demand, all that extra Stuff represents waste. Even a
really, really good planner will be unable to accurately predict the vast fluctuations in day-to-day
demand for Stuff, leading to huge amounts of either waste or suffering. Yet this planning function is
routinely achieved with great efficiency by the feedback systems of a market economy, in which freelymoving prices effectively tell everyone in the market whether too much or too little of anything is being
produced.

Their indictment of pure capitalism is irrelevant the

political process guarantees regulated capitalism which
avoids all of the problems the K claims
Newman 12, Rick Newman, author of Rebounders: How Winners Pivot
From Setback To Success. December 6, 2012
USNEWS.com HEADLINE:
Why the Tension Between Socialism and Capitalism Will Intensify lexis
This year's presidential election included many bastardized references to both economic systems, which
have been broadly mischaracterized for a long time. Many defenders of capitalism argue that the
nation's economic system was more pure a decade ago (or two, or three), but America hasn't had pure
capitalism in well over a century. And when it did have a raw form of capitalism, the consequences
were often disastrous for significant chunks of the population, which is why public support grew for the
kind of [ENJOY: Political Cartoons on the Republican Party] In the 1800s, the federal government
largely stayed out of the economy, with nothing like the regulatory apparatus we have now. That's one
reason people like Andrew Carnegie, John Jacob Astor, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and
J.P. Morgan built vast fortunes -- often from monopolies or cartels--that still exist in various forms
today. But unregulated capitalism also generated speculative bubbles, financial panics and destitution
much more frequently than those things have occurred over the last 70 years. Public pressure led to a
long series of reforms that morphed into the regulated free-market economy we have today. In the early
1900s, Teddy Roosevelt started to break up some of the all-powerful monopolies that enriched a few
while overcharging the masses. Congress created the Federal Reserve and the income tax in 1913. A
slew of regulatory agencies grew out of the Great Depression. During the 20th century, presidents of
both parties signed legislation creating new agencies to oversee food, medicine, the environment and
Wall Street (ahem). We still have a capitalist system centered on private ownership and prices set
by the free market, but it's layered with rules meant to prevent abuses.

NEXT ARGUMENT IS OPTIONAL

Regulated capitalism LIKE THE PLAN --avoids the
problems of capitalism
Foster 9 Nathan Foster SEPTEMBER 14, 2009
Regulated Capitalism
vs. Socialism
http://open.salon.com/blog/nathan_foster/2009/09/14/regulated_capitalism_vs
_socialism
On the other hand, there is at least a hair-thin distinction between socialism and regulated capitalism.
Regulated capitalism, as I envision it, allows for the private ownership of capital, but regulates its use.
I'll allow for progressive taxationthe rich can be taxed more than the poor, which is justified based on
the idea that the rich really don't have anything important to do with 30% of their money anyway. I'll
also allow for trust-busting, as this is a form of regulation.
The only possible argument that regulated capitalism is in fact socialism rests on the assumption that
any law or regulation reflects a degree of public control, and therefore, in a sense, regulated capitalism
is really some degree of public control of capital. But I think this argument falls apart because I'm
speaking of laws which protect the safety of the public, not direct control of capital, and every nation on

earth, no matter what system of government or socio-economic system you choose to identify it with,
has laws to protect the safety of the public. You therefore can't use such laws to discriminate between
different socio-economic systems or systems of government.
That said, I prefer regulated capitalism to socialism for a couple of reasons.
1) Having money and influence is just sweet. I know this sounds silly, but the idea should not be discarded. I think there is real
public benefit to having a class of people who have more money than they know what to do with. It shows just how good life gets,
and motivates the public to improve their position. It is also, obviously, beneficial to those people who have the money. They get
to enjoy life, and I think that's good for everybody.

2) Strict regulation should be enough to prevent abuses of capital. You don't have to resort to public
ownership to prevent these abuses.

Regulated capitalism means serial policy success

Brinsmead 11 gender paraphrased

Robert D. Brinsmead The

Environmental Optimist A Series of 20 Short Essays 4-25-11
http://www.greatnewstory.com/home/sustainability/economic/the-environmentaloptimist-robert-brinsmead/
3. In practically every measurable indicator, [hu] mankinds lot has improved and continues to improve.
In terms of longevity, infant mortality, nutrition, the cost of food, health and safety, education, leisure
time and wealth, most human beings on the planet are better off now than they have ever been in the
history of the earth. The human race is even becoming taller.
4. The major environmental problems of the world, like over-population, air and water pollution, loss of
forests, poverty, lack of education, poor nutrition and inadequate food, call for critical concern only in
developing countries, but even here the progress is impressive. In 1970 the number of people in the
world who didnt get enough to eat was 35%. By 1996 it had dropped by half, and by 2010 the UN
expects the figure to drop to 12%. In 1970 only 30% of people in the developing countries had access
to good drinking water. In 2000 this figure had risen to 80%. Since 1950 developing countries have
tripled their real per capita incomes. They now have the same infant mortality rate and longevity as the
developed world had in 1950. There remains, of course, an urgent need to further reduce human misery
on all these fronts, but enormous improvements being made give us room for optimism on the basis that
things are getting better rather than worse.

Studies proves that capitalism reduces war the alt

makes war 14 times more likely
Gartzke, 5 Erik Gartzke, Associate Professor of Political Science at
Columbia University, and a member of the SaltzmanInstitute of War and
Peace Studies. 2005
Chapter 2: Economic Freedom and Peace
Economic Freedom of the
World: 2005 Annual Report
http://www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2005/efw2005-2.pdf

The substantive effects of Economic Freedom and the Democracy Score on international disputes can
be seen in Figures 2.1 and 2.2, respectively. In both figures, the horizontal axis lists the ordinal scales
for the respective explanatory variable (either the Index of Economic Freedom or the Polity Democracy
Index), while the vertical axis reports the probability of a MID in a given year for states with a given
level of either of the two explanatory variables. The solid line sloping down and to the right in Figure
2.1 is the relationship between Economic Freedom and militarized disputes, as estimated by the
regression in Table 2.1. In Figure 2.2, the effect of the Democracy Score variable on conflict also
appears as a solid line, which slopes slightly down and to the right. In Figure 2.1, the two light dashed
lines that appear to run in parallel above and below the line for Economic Freedom represent
confidence intervals. Ninety-five percent of all the solid lines estimated from regressions on similar data
would be contained within the interval bounded by the two dashed lines. In other words, the
relationship depicted in the figure between Economic Freedom and an absence of militarized violence is
very likely to be at least approximately correct.
As can be seen from the figure, the impact of free markets and limited government is substantial. The
least free states have about a 7% chance of experiencing a dispute, while the freest states experience
disputes in only about half of 1% of the years examined. Making economies freer translates into making
countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as
the most free.

Empirically, capitalism reduces absolute poverty

Klein 12 Joe Klein Dec. 03, 2012 Time Magazine Campaign 2012: The
Report Card
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2129804,00.html
I checked the dictionary. And socialism languishes there, just as it always has: "a system or condition of
society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state." Is that what 49% of
young people favor? I don't think so. If it is, count me on Bennett's team. That sort of socialism has
been an utter failure, and regulated capitalism has been the greatest eradicator of poverty in the
history of the world. But I suspect--and this would be wonderfully ironic, if true--that all those blacks
and young people got their definition of socialism from Rush Limbaugh and the other wing-nut
foghorns: socialism is when the government helps people out.
What we've decided in this election is that most people are comfortable with a regulated free-enterprise
system in which the government helps provide education and health care for everyone and financial
support for those who need it most, especially the elderly. What we'll continue to debate is how
extensive those regulations and supports should be. But there is no question--except in the minds of the
deluded--that any of our truly basic freedoms, especially the freedom to make money, are threatened in
any significant way. In the real world, there is less drama to all this than meets the eye. Lessons have
been learned. I remain optimistic that the professional politicians who lead the Republican Party will
find a way to close a budget deal long before we reach a cliff, since they know they'll be blamed by a
voting majority of Americans for any impasse.

Empirically, globalization reduces inequality - countries

rejecting capitalism are the cause of inequality
Dollar 14 David Dollar, Former World Bank Country Director, China and
Mongolia 2014

Making Globalization Work for the Poor http://live.worldbank.org/makingglobalization-work-poor

It is true that corporations everywhere focus on maximizing profits. It is
important to have a strong framework of laws and regulations if that profitseeking is to produce social benefits. I do not accept that the tendency of
globalization is to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. The fastest
growing incomes in the world are in the developing countries, indicating that
integration can be a powerful force for development that reduces worldwide
inequality. The tendency toward inequality in the world today comes from the
fact that about half of the developing world population lives in countries that
are successfully integrating and catching up with the rich world, while half of
the population lives in countries that are largely outside of globalization. Does
the poor performance of Argentina, much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan,
Myanmar, and other countries result from their integration with the world
economy or from their own poor governance? I think the evidence supports
the

Empirically, capitalism is better for the environment

Gongol 6
Brian Gongol 2.5.2006
Is Socialism Good for the
Environment?
http://www.gongol.com/research/economics/socialismandtheenvironment/
It is sometimes claimed that free markets inevitably corrupt and destroy the
environment and that the only way to protect the natural environment is to
adopt a socialist economy. However earnest, the argument is categorically wrong.
#1. Socialism Has Consistently Failed to Protect the Environment
The argument that "socialism protects the environment" ignores the titanic
failure of the evidence. Many of the world's worst and most visible ecological
failures happened under socialist, Marxist, or Communist governments. To wit:
The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the catastrophic air pollution of Eastern Europe's "Black Triangle," and the
destruction of the Aral Sea each were specifically caused by socialism and took place under socialist
government supervision.

Capitalism's economic growth is key to environmentalism

Taylor 3 Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies at the Cato
Institute. April 23, 2003
Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism This article was published in the New
York Sun, April 22, 2003.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?
pub_id=3073

Earth Day (April 22) is traditionally a day for the Left -- a celebration of
government's ability to deliver the environmental goods and for threats about
the parade of horribles that will descend upon us lest we rededicate ourselves
to federal regulators and public land managers. This is unfortunate because
it's businessmen -- not bureaucrats or environmental activists -- who deserve
most of the credit for the environmental gains over the past century and who
represent the best hope for a Greener tomorrow.
Indeed, we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for
capitalism. Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -like much of the Third World today -- had no environmental movement to
speak of until living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our
attention from simply

Market mechanisms promote environmentalism

Adler 5 - JONATHAN ADLER Prof. of environmental law at Case Western,
writes for the Case research series: [Back to the Future of Conservation:
Changing Perceptions of Property Rights & Environmental Protection Case
Research Paper Series in Legal Studies Working Paper 05-16, July 2005]
The problem with the dominant approach to environmental policy is its
reliance upon centralized political mechanisms. The limitations of such
mechanisms-whether regulations, fiscal instruments, or direct management
of environmental resources-hamper the effectiveness of existing
environmental programs. As environmental problems become ever more
complex, these limitations will only become more severe. The answer is not
greater government control or manipulation of the marketplace, but a greater
reliance upon property rights and voluntary arrangements. By encouraging a
more efficient use of resources, responsible stewardship, and technological
innovation, property rights in environmental resources provide a sounder
foundation for the advancement of environmental values than the modem
regulatory state. Property-based environmental protection- commonly
referred to as "free market environmentalism" 60 or "FME"- rejects the
"market failure" model. "Rather than viewing the world in terms of market
failure, we should view the problem of externalities as a failure to permit
markets and create markets where they do not yet - or no longer - exist." 61
Where environmental problems are most severe it is typically a lack of
markets, in particular a lack of enforceable and exchangeable property rights,
that is to blame. Resources that are privately owned or managed and
therefore are incorporated into market institutions are typically wellmaintained. Environmental problems, therefore, are "essentially property
rights problems" which are solved by the extension, definition, and defense of
property rights in environmental resources. 62 Resources that are unowned
or politically controlled, on the other hand, are more apt to be inadequately
managed. In his seminal essay on the [a] "tragedy of the commons," Garrett

Hardin gave an illustration of this principle, stating that there is no incentive

for any individual to protect the commonly owned grazing pasture in a rural
village. Indeed, it is in every shepherd's self-interest to have his herd
overgraze the pasture and before any other herd. Every shepherd who
acquires additional livestock gains the benefits of a larger herd, while the cost
of overusing the pasture is spread across all members of the village. The
benefits of increased use are concentrated, while the costs are dispersed.
Inevitably, the consequence is an overgrazed pasture, and everyone loses.
The shepherd with foresight, who anticipates that the pasture will become
barren in the future, will not exercise forbearance. Quite the opposite: he will
have the added incentive to overgraze now to capture gains that otherwise
would be lost. Refusing to add another animal to one's own herd does not
change the incentive of every other shepherd to do so. The world's fisheries
offer a[n] contemporary example of the tragedy of the commons. Because
oceans are unowned, nofishing fleet has an incentive to conserve or replenish
the fish it takes, but each has every incentive to take as many fish as possible
lest the benefits of a larger catch go to someone else.64 Efforts to control
access through prescriptive regulations do relatively little to change this
equation.0 Shorten the fishing season, and the fishing merely becomes more
intense. Limit the use of certain gear, and fishermen will simply employ more
hands to maximize the catch. Private ownership overcomes the commons
problem because owners can prevent overuse by controlling access to the
resource. As Hardin noted, "The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is
averted by private property, or something formally like it."66 In the case of
fisheries, the creation of property rights, whether in fisheries themselves or
portions of a given catch, promotes sustainable fishing practices.' With
property rights, the incentives faced by fishing fleets are aligned with the
long-term sustainability of the underlying resource. As conservation scholar
R.J. Smith explains: Wherever we have exclusive private ownership, whether
it is organized around a profit-seeking or nonprofit undertaking, there are
incentives for the private owners to preserve the resource.... [P]rivate
ownership allows the owner to capture the full capital value of the resource,
and self-interest and economic incentive drive the owner to maintain its longterm capital value.0 For incentives to work, the property right to a resource
must be definable, defendable, and divestible. Where property rights are
insecure, owners are less likely to invest in improving or protecting a
resource. In many tropical nations, for example, the lack of secure property
rights encourages deforestation as there is no incentive to maintain forest
land, let alone invest in replanting. 69 Where existing environmental
regulations undermine the security of property rights, they discourage
conservation. The foremost example of this is the ESA, which effectively
punishes private landowners for owning habitat of endangered species by
restricting land-use. As Sam Hamilton, former Fish and Wildlife Service
administrator for the State of Texas, noted, "The incentives are wrong here. If
I have a rare metal on my property, its value goes up. But if a rare bird
occupies the land, its value disappears."" This economic reality creates a
powerful incentive for landowners to destroy present or potential habitat on

private land. Thus, in North Carolina, timber owners are dramatically

shortening their cutting rotations and cutting trees at a much younger age-at
significant economic cost-so as to avoid regulatory proscriptions that could
force them to lose their investments altogether.'

Bottom up politics will destroy the environment the poor

are so economically desperate that they don't care about
the environment; economic growth is the solution to
environmental problems
Nangammbi 7 Dianah Nangammbi, Cilla CSIR 3/05/2007
Conservation Biologuy POVERTY INFLUENCES ENVIRONMENTAL
DEGRADATION http://bcb706.blogspot.com/2007/03/poverty-influencesenvironmental.html
Poverty is considered as a great influence of environmental degradation. In many regions of the world,
regional overgrazing has resulted in destruction of grazing lands, forest and soil. Air and water have
been degraded [5]. The carrying capacity of the natural environment has been reduced. As the people
become poorer, they destroy the resources faster [5]. They tend to overuse the natural resources because
they dont have anything to eat or any means of getting money except through the natural resources,
they start to depend more on natural resources.
Poor people harvest natural resources for their survival or in order to meet their basic needs such as
firewood, agricultural productions (such as maize), and water and wild plants for their medicine. All
people regardless of being poor or rich depend on natural resources; the concern with poor people is
that they are utilizing the resources directly. The rich people do depend on these resource but they do
not go to the forest directly and harvest the resources.
Due to the lack of sufficient income people start to use and overuse every resource available to them
when their survival is at stake. As desperate hunger leads to desperate strategies for survival, many trees
are harvested for fire wood, timber and art craft. Most of the poor people use this fire wood as their
source of income by selling them, and art craft products are also used for income generation. The roots
of the trees are dug out for medicinal purpose. This leaves the soil exposed as the grasses are also
grazed by animals and also collected for roofing the houses. When it rains the entire top and good soil
are eroded which makes it difficult for that soil to produce better agricultural products.
Poor people often lack sufficient income and education to afford higher quality life where they can use
electricity and also buy electric appliances to ease their domestic life. Instead of cutting trees for fire
wood they can use electric stoves for cooking. They can also use electric heaters to warm themselves
during winter month. Electricity can also slow down the firewood business as most people will no
longer be relying on firewood as it takes time to prepare the fire using wood than just switching on the
electricity. The use of electricity will make their lives simpler because it will save time, they wont go to
the field to fetch wood. The chances of been bitten by a snake or get injured are high when they are in
field.
They have no quality drinking water as they pollute the rivers by washing inside them and by also using
a river as a dumping site for the bins. The lack of education also prohibits them from practicing
environmentally sustainable agriculture; protect natural resources against degradation or rehabilitate
degraded resources like rivers [6]

In the poorest regions it is estimated that one in five children will not live to see the fifth birthday due to
environment-related diseases [7]. Statistics show that almost four million children are dying each year
because of acute respiratory infection linked to indoor and out-door air pollution [7]. Other
environment-related diseases killing the children are diarrhoea caused by lack of clean water and
sanitation and also cholera, malaria and asthma [7].
The better solution which can rescue both the environment and poor people is through the government
by increasing the rate of job creation for poor people. If they have jobs they can afford higher quality
life which includes affording electricity, they can also afford nice roofing materials instead of using
grasses and they can have somewhere to wake up to instead of harvesting the natural resources
everyday. Many of poor people are very skilled in a way that a government can build a huge art and
craft and timber structures where these people can be employed and still practice their art but in a
professional way where the harvesting of plants can be done sustainably.
The government can export these products to other countries where a lot of money can be generated.
Some can also work in guarding the natural environment from culprits. Others can be employed only
for harvesting the natural resources for different purposes like medicinal, art and craft, timber, fire wood
etc under the supervision of ecologists. This can help in keeping the poor people busy, they will be
earning a stable and reliable salary which will keep them away from the natural resources, and after all
it will be difficult to access the resources as a close eye will always be kept on them.