OFF

1NC---OFF
T – No Fees

Fiscal redistribution requires income tax and transfer

David Coaty and Nghia-Piotr Le, both economists and the IMF, 2020 (“Designing Fiscal Redistribution: The Role of Universal and
Targeted Transfers,” IMF Working Paper)
Although increasing income inequality has been observed in
many countries, the varying experiences across countries, with inequality even decreasing in a sizeable share of countries, suggests that public
policy and institutions play and important role in determining such outcomes.2 In this respect, fiscal
redistribution (i.e., the transfer
of income from higher to lower income households via tax and transfer schemes) has a key role to play
in addressing income inequality. For instance, evidence from studies of fiscal redistribution shows that over threequarters of the
difference in average disposable income inequality between advanced and Latin American countries (with the lowest and highest average
disposable income inequality, respectively) is accounted for by differences in the extent of fiscal redistribution rather than by differences in
market incomes (Bastagli, Coady and Gupta, 2015).

Violation: the aff entails a transaction fee that is redistributed, that is distinct from
tax.
Joseph Bishop-Henchman 13, Vice-president at National Taxpayers Union Foundation, 3/27/2013,
“How Is the Money Use? Federal and State Cases Distinguishing Taxes and Fees”, Tax Foundation,
https://taxfoundation.org/how-money-used-federal-and-state-cases-distinguishing-taxes-and-fees/
#:~:text=Taxes%20are%20imposed%20for%20the,from%20a%20particular%20provided%20service. //KC

Taxes Are Imposed for Revenue Purposes, While Fees Cover the Cost of Providing a Service

Taxes, fees, and penalties are all imposed by government, all raise revenue, and all impose economic
costs. While some may equate a tax to any government action that results in costs of any kind, the general
public and the courts have been careful to distinguish between different forms of government-collection
exactions. The key difference between these different assessments, according to laws and interpretive rules used in nearly every state, is
their purpose.

Taxes are imposed for the primary purpose of raising revenue, with the resultant funds spent on
general government services.

Fees are imposed for the primary purpose of covering the cost of providing a service, with the funds
raised directly from those benefitting from a particular provided service.
 1NC---OFF
Labor Markets DA
US Labor markets have stayed strong past inflationary periods but further spending
trades off -
Rugaber 9/25. (Chris, economic reporter for AP News. “Why the US Job Market Has Defied Rising
Interest Rates and Expectations of High Unemployment.” AP News. AP News. September 25, 2023.
https://apnews.com/article/inflation-jobs-economy-interest-rates-unemployment-recession-
7b94da1534f775b08939d184e53ca635.) // czarcasym
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year’s spike in inflation, to the highest level in four decades, was painful enough for American households. Yet the cure — much higher
interest rates, to cool spending and hiring — was expected to bring even more pain. Grim forecasts from economists had predicted
that as the Federal Reserve jacked up its benchmark rate ever higher, consumers and businesses would
curb spending, companies would slash jobs and unemployment would spike as high as 7% or more — twice
its level when the Fed began tightening credit. Yet so far, to widespread relief, the reality has been anything but: As interest rates have surged,
inflation has tumbled from its peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 3.7%. Yet the unemployment rate, at a still-low 3.8%, has scarcely budged since March 2022, when the
Fed began imposing a series of 11 rate hikes at the fastest pace in decades. If such trends continue, the central bank may achieve a rare and
difficult “soft landing” — the taming of inflation without triggering a deep recession. Such an outcome would be far different from the last time inflation
spiked, in the 1970s and early 1980s. The Fed chair at the time, Paul Volcker, attacked inflation by escalating the central bank’s key short-term rate above 19%. The
result? Unemployment shot to 10.8%, which at the time marked its highest level since World War II. RELATED STORIES Fewer
Americans got jobs in
July than expected. But a steady market suggests US may avoid recession US employers added a solid
187,000 jobs in August in sign of a still-resilient labor market U.S. jobless claims applications fall as labor
market continues to show resiliency A year ago, in a high-profile speech, Chair Jerome Powell warned that the Fed was prepared to be similarly
aggressive, saying its rate hikes would cause “some pain” in the form of higher unemployment. The Fed, Powell said pointedly, would “keep at it,” a play on the title
of Volcker’s autobiography, “Keeping At It.” Over time, as the
job market has displayed surprising resilience, Powell has
adopted a more benign tone. At a news conference last week, he suggested that a soft landing remains a
“possible,” if not guaranteed, outcome. “That’s really what we’ve been seeing,” he said. “Progress without higher
unemployment, for now.” How have the Fed’s rate hikes managed to help substantially slow inflation without also causing dire consequences? And
can the job market and the economy maintain their durability even with the Fed intending to keep borrowing rates at a peak well into 2024? Here are some reasons
for the economy’s unexpected resilience and a look at whether it might endure: REPLENISHED SUPPLIES HAVE HELPED COOL
INFLATION The idea that defeating high inflation would require sharply higher unemployment is based on a long-time economic model that may prove ill-
suited for the post-pandemic episode. Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist, suggested that those who assumed that surging unemployment was a necessary price
to pay for conquering inflation believed that the price spikes of the past 2 1/2 years were driven mostly by overheated demand. Shut-in consumers did ramp up
their spending on patio furniture, exercise bikes and home office equipment as stimulus checks landed in their bank accounts. But
to quell demand-
fueled inflation, the Fed’s policies would have needed to crush spending, causing sales to plunge and forcing
businesses to cut jobs. Yet inflation has cooled even as Americans as as whole have continued to spend freely on shopping, traveling and entertainment. “The fact
that we have the economy healing without unemployment moving up, without consumption slowing a lot — that suggests that really the driver of this was
something else,” said Alan Detmeister, a former Fed economist now at UBS. Detmeister and other economists increasingly think that the supply disruptions of the
pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine played the biggest role in accelerating inflation. Even as spending on goods soared, spending on services declined, leaving
overall demand roughly in line with pre-pandemic trends. This inflationary episode, Detmeister said, may end up more closely resembling the one that occurred
after World War II than the one of the late 1970s and early 1980s. After
World War II, manufacturing output slowed as factories
retooled from wartime production. At the same time, many returning servicemembers moved to the
suburbs, and demand spiked for homes, appliances and furniture. Even so, inflation eased once output
resumed. In a recent study, Mike Konczal, a director at the Roosevelt Institute think tank, found that the prices of nearly three-quarters of goods and services
have declined as quantities have increased. This suggested to him that rising supplies have been the primary reason why inflation has declined. (The figures exclude
volatile food and gas prices in order to capture underlying trends.) It’s
unclear how much longer this trend can continue to help
slow inflation. Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said Friday that the supply rebound has indeed eased inflation in goods. But
the cost of most services, she said, “has yet to show the sustained improvement” that’s needed to bring inflation
Direct cash transfers irreversibly wreck labor markets – Spain proves.
Weidinger, 3-22-2023 (Matt Weidinger, Senior Fellow and Rowe Scholar, "Study Finds Unconditional
Cash Transfers Had “Sizeable And Adverse Employment Effects”," American Enterprise Institute - AEI,
https://www.aei.org/opportunity-social-mobility/study-finds-unconditional-cash-transfers-had-sizeable-
and-adverse-employment-effects/, accessed on 7-1-2023) AB

A little-noticed study titled “The

Employment Effects of Generous and Unconditional Cash Support” was published
in February 2023 by the German-based Institute of Labor Economics. The study reviewed the employment and other
effects of a recent unconditional cash transfer program benefitting low-income families in Spain. That
program is similar in many respects to universal basic income (UBI) programs proposed in Congress and being tested in multiple

locations across the US. It also bears similarities to the unconditional expanded child tax credit payments temporarily made to tens of millions of
households with children in 2021, which President Joe Biden’s latest proposed budget seeks to revive.

Those similarities suggest American policymakers should take heed of the study’s findings, which include that
“the program had sizeable and adverse employment effects on average.” The effects are significant:
“Roughly two years after the start of the program, main recipients in treatment households are 20
percent less likely to work compared to their counterparts in control households.” Households in the cash transfer
program were “14 percent less likely to have at least one member working” compared to the control group. As the study ominously warns,

employment declines persisted even six months after the last benefits were paid, suggesting they
“may be hard to reverse.”

As Jon Baron,
a longtime expert on evidence-based policy, recently described, the findings of the “high-
quality” randomized control trial reflected in the study “suggest a need for caution in the design of anti-
poverty programs, to avoid discouraging work effort.”
Other highlights of the study include:

Goals of the study

While the impacts of unconditional transfer programs in developing countries are well documented, little is known about their effectiveness in higher-income
countries. . . . With this study, we aim to advance the literature on unconditional transfer programs by describing their employment effects in the context of an
advanced welfare state. Our
analysis uses data from a field experiment in Barcelona (Spain), trialing a generous
and unconditional municipal cash transfer program.
Main research question

We address the following main research question: What is the effect of generous and unconditional cash support on adult labor force participation?

Comparison with other studies

To the best of our knowledge, the program we study is the first cash transfer in a developed country that provides subsistence-level assistance without any strings
attached. Moreover, by exploiting a randomized design and collecting social security data next to self-reported information from surveys, we can circumvent
internal validity concerns encountered by earlier studies. Lastly, studying
a temporary program and collecting data post-
treatment allows us to document the persistence of effects after program termination.
Findings of the study

Our findings for overall impacts can be summarized in four parts.

First, we
find strong evidence for sizeable negative labor supply effects. After two years, households
assigned to the cash transfer were 14 percent less likely to have at least one member working compared
to households assigned to the control group; main recipients were 20 percent less likely to work.

Second, negative employment effects persisted until at least six months after the last payment.
Third, we find tentative evidence that effects are mainly driven by households with care responsibilities.

Fourth, there is no evidence of effects on social participation and education-related activities.

Implications of the findings

our results suggest that the adverse labor supply effects of unconditional transfers should not be
In sum,

underestimated. While the negative effects reported in previous studies are usually neglectable or
moderate, our findings suggest sizeable effects.

The negative effects “may be hard to reverse”

Another important finding concerns the persistence of effects. Employment rates in the treatment
group remain lower even six months after the last transfer, indicating that households’ labor supply
decisions may be hard to reverse

down to the Fed’s 2% target. Konczal remains optimistic. Inflation is slowing in many services categories, including restaurants, laundry services and
veterinary care, even without much of a drop in demand. “The disinflation we’re seeing,” he wrote in his study, “is therefore broad and could continue.”

Maintaining strong labor markets is key to prevent cyclical unemployment, crushing

growth & the economy
Oner, 6-1-2018 (Ceyda Oner, Oner is a deputy division chief in the IMF’s Finance Department.,
"Unemployment: The Curse Of Joblessness. The Number Of People At Work Is Generally Closely
Related To Whether An Economy Is Growing At A Reasonable Rate," IMF,
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/32-unemployment.htm, accessed on 7-2-2023) AB

Back in the depths the global financial crisis in 2009, the International Labour Office announced that
global unemployment had reached the highest level on record. More than 200 million people, 7 percent of the global
workforce, were looking for jobs in 2009.

It was not a coincidence that the global economy experienced the most severe case of unemployment
during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Unemployment is highly dependent on
economic activity; in fact, growth and unemployment can be thought of as two sides of the same coin :
when economic activity is high, more production happens overall, and more people are needed to
produce the higher amount of goods and services. And when economic activity is low, firms cut jobs and
unemployment rises. In that sense, unemployment is countercyclical, meaning that it rises when
economic growth is low and vice versa.
But unemployment does not fall in lockstep with an increase in growth. It is more common for businesses to first try to recover from a downturn by having the same
number of employees do more work or turn out more products—that is, to increase their productivity. Only as the recovery takes hold would businesses add
workers. As a consequence, unemployment may start to come down only well after an economic recovery begins. In fact, in the last three recessions, the
unemployment rate continued to rise after the end of the recessions; a phenomenon called “jobless recoveries.”

The phenomenon works in reverse at the start of a downturn, when firms would rather reduce work hours, or impose some pay cuts before they let workers go.
Unemployment starts rising only if the downturn is prolonged. Because unemployment follows growth
with a delay, it is called a lagging indicator of economic activity.

How sensitive is the unemployment rate to economic growth? That depends on several factors, most notably labor
market conditions and regulations. One estimate for the strength of this relationship for the US economy is Okun’s Law (named after the late
economist Arthur Okun), which postulates that a decline in unemployment by 1 percent age point corresponds to a 3

percent rise in output. More recent estimates find that the consequent rise in output may be lower,
possibly between 2 and 3 percent.
Economic decline causes nuclear war and miscalc – outweighs & turns case
Dr. Mathew Maavak 21, PhD in Risk Foresight from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, External
Researcher (PLATBIDAFO) at the Kazimieras Simonavicius University, Expert and Regular Commentator
on Risk-Related Geostrategic Issues at the Russian International Affairs Council, “Horizon 2030: Will
Emerging Risks Unravel Our Global Systems?”, Salus Journal – The Australian Journal for Law
Enforcement, Security and Intelligence Professionals, Volume 9, Number 1, p. 2-8

Various scholars and institutions regard global social instability as the greatest threat facing this decade. The catalyst
has been postulated to be a Second Great Depression which, in turn, will have profound implications
for global security and national integrity. This paper, written from a broad systems perspective, illustrates how emerging risks are
getting more complex and intertwined; blurring boundaries between the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological taxonomy used

by the World Economic Forum for its annual global risk forecasts. Tight couplings in our global systems have also enabled risks

accrued in one area to snowball into a full-blown crisis elsewhere. The COVID-19 pandemic and its socioeconomic fallouts
exemplify this systemic chain-reaction. Onceinexorable forces of globalization are rupturing as the current global system can no longer be sustained due to poor
governance and runaway wealth fractionation. The coronavirus pandemic is also enabling Big Tech to expropriate the levers of governments and mass
communications worldwide. This paper concludes by highlighting how this development poses a dilemma for security professionals. Key Words: Global Systems,
Emergence, VUCA, COVID-9, Social Instability, Big Tech, Great Reset INTRODUCTION The new decade is witnessing rising volatility across global systems. Pick any
random “system” today and chart out its trajectory: Are our education systems becoming more robust and affordable? What about food security? Are our
healthcare systems improving? Are our pension systems sound? Wherever one looks, there are dark clouds gathering on a global horizon marked by volatility,
uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). But what exactly is a global system? Our planet itself is an autonomous and selfsustaining mega-system, marked by
periodic cycles and elemental vagaries. Human activities within however are not system isolates as our banking, utility, farming, healthcare and retail sectors etc.
are increasingly entwined. Risks accrued in one system may cascade into an unforeseen crisis within and/or without (Choo, Smith & McCusker, 2007). Scholars call
this phenomenon “emergence”; one where the behaviour of intersecting systems is determined by complex and largely invisible interactions at the substratum
(Goldstein, 1999; Holland, 1998). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a case in point. While experts remain divided over the source and morphology of the virus, the
contagion has ramified into a global health crisis and supply chain nightmare. It is also tilting the geopolitical balance. China is the largest exporter of intermediate
products, and had generated nearly 20% of global imports in 2015 alone (Cousin, 2020). The pharmaceutical sector is particularly vulnerable. Nearly “85% of
medicines in the U.S. strategic national stockpile” sources components from China (Owens, 2020). An initial run on respiratory masks has now been eclipsed by
rowdy queues at supermarkets and the bankruptcy of small businesses. The entire global population – save for major pockets such as Sweden, Belarus, Taiwan and
Japan – have been subjected to cyclical lockdowns and quarantines. Never before in history have humans faced such a systemic, borderless calamity. COVID-19
represents a classic emergent crisis that necessitates real-time response and adaptivity in a real-time world, particularly since the global Just-in-Time (JIT)
production and delivery system serves as both an enabler and vector for transboundary risks. From a systems thinking perspective, emerging risk management
should therefore address a whole spectrum of activity across the economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological (EEGST) taxonomy. Every
emerging threat can be slotted into this taxonomy – a reason why it is used by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for its annual global risk exercises (Maavak,
2019a). As traditional forces of globalization unravel, security professionals should take cognizance of emerging threats through a systems thinking approach.
METHODOLOGY An EEGST sectional breakdown was adopted to illustrate a sampling of extreme risks facing the world for the 2020-2030 decade. The
transcendental quality of emerging risks, as outlined on Figure 1, below, was primarily informed by the following pillars of systems thinking (Rickards, 2020): •
Diminishing diversity (or increasing homogeneity) of actors in the global system (Boli & Thomas, 1997; Meyer, 2000; Young et al, 2006); • Interconnections in the
global system (Homer-Dixon et al, 2015; Lee & Preston, 2012); • Interactions of actors, events and components in the global system (Buldyrev et al, 2010; Bashan et
al, 2013; Homer-Dixon et al, 2015); and • Adaptive qualities in particular systems (Bodin & Norberg, 2005; Scheffer et al, 2012) Since scholastic material on this topic
remains somewhat inchoate, this paper buttresses many of its contentions through secondary (i.e. news/institutional) sources. ECONOMY According to Professor
Stanislaw Drozdz (2018) of the Polish Academy of Sciences, “a global financial crash of a previously unprecedented scale is highly probable” by the mid- 2020s. This
will lead to a trickle-down meltdown, impacting all areas of human activity. The economist John Mauldin (2018) similarly warns that the “2020s might be the worst
decade in US history” and may lead to a Second Great Depression. Other forecasts are equally alarming. According to the International Institute of Finance, global
debt may have surpassed $255 trillion by 2020 (IIF, 2019). Yet another study revealed that global debts and liabilities amounted to a staggering $2.5 quadrillion
(Ausman, 2018). The reader should note that these figures were tabulated before the COVID-19 outbreak. The IMF singles out widening income inequality as the
trigger for the next Great Depression (Georgieva, 2020). The wealthiest 1% now own more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people (Coffey et al, 2020) and
this chasm is widening with each passing month. COVID-19 had, in fact, boosted global billionaire wealth to an unprecedented $10.2 trillion by July 2020 (UBS-PWC,
2020). Global GDP, worth $88 trillion in 2019, may have contracted by 5.2% in 2020 (World Bank, 2020). As the Greek historian Plutarch warned in the 1st century
AD: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics” (Mauldin, 2014). The stability of a society, as Aristotle argued even
earlier, depends on a robust middle element or middle class. At the rate the global middle class is facing catastrophic debt and unemployment levels, widespread
social disaffection may morph into outright anarchy (Maavak, 2012; DCDC, 2007). Economic
stressors, in transcendent VUCA fashion, may also
induce radical geopolitical realignments. Bullions now carry more weight than NATO’s security
guarantees in Eastern Europe. After Poland repatriated 100 tons of gold from the Bank of England in 2019, Slovakia, Serbia and Hungary quickly
followed suit. According to former Slovak Premier Robert Fico, this erosion in regional trust was based on historical precedents
– in particular the 1938 Munich Agreement which ceded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. As Fico reiterated (Dudik & Tomek, 2019): “You can hardly
trust even the closest allies after the Munich Agreement… I guarantee that if something happens, we won’t see a single gram of this (offshore-held) gold. Let’s do it
(repatriation) as quickly as possible.” (Parenthesis added by author). President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia (a non-NATO nation) justified his central bank’s gold-
repatriation program by hinting at economic headwinds ahead: “We see in which direction the crisis in the world is moving” (Dudik & Tomek, 2019). Indeed, with

two global Titanics – the United States and China – set on a collision course with a quadrillions-denominated iceberg in the middle,
and a viral outbreak on its tip, the seismic ripples will be felt far, wide and for a considerable period. A reality check is
nonetheless needed here: Can additional bullions realistically circumvallate the economies of 80 million plus peoples in these Eastern European nations, worth a
collective $1.8 trillion by purchasing power parity? Gold however is a potent psychological symbol as it represents national sovereignty and economic reassurance in
a potentially hyperinflationary world. The portents are clear: The current global economic system will be weakened by rising nationalism and autarkic demands.
Much uncertainty remains ahead. Mauldin (2018) proposes the introduction of Old Testament-style debt jubilees to facilitate gradual national recoveries. The World
Economic Forum, on the other hand, has long proposed a “Great Reset” by 2030; a socialist utopia where “you’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy” (WEF, 2016). In
the final analysis, COVID-19 is not the root cause of the current global economic turmoil; it is merely an accelerant to a burning house of cards that was left
smouldering since the 2008 Great Recession (Maavak, 2020a). We also see how the four main pillars of systems thinking (diversity, interconnectivity, interactivity
and “adaptivity”) form the mise en scene in a VUCA decade. ENVIRONMENTAL What
happens to the environment when our
economies implode? Think of a debt-laden workforce at sensitive nuclear and chemical plants, along
with a concomitant surge in industrial accidents? Economic stressors, workforce demoralization and rampant profiteering –
rather than manmade climate change – arguably pose the biggest threats to the environment. In a WEF report, Buehler et al (2017) made
the following pre-COVID-19 observation: The ILO estimates that the annual cost to the global economy from accidents and work-related diseases alone is a
staggering $3 trillion. Moreover, a recent report suggests the world’s 3.2 billion workers are increasingly unwell, with the vast majority facing significant economic
insecurity: 77% work in part-time, temporary, “vulnerable” or unpaid jobs. Shouldn’t this phenomenon be better categorized as a societal or economic risk rather
than an environmental one? In line with the systems thinking approach, however, global risks can no longer be boxed into a taxonomical silo. Frazzled workforces
may precipitate another Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Deepwater Horizon (2010) or Flint water crisis (2014). These disasters were notably not the result of
manmade climate change. Neither was the Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) nor the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004). Indeed, the combustion of a long-overlooked
cargo of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had nearly levelled the city of Beirut, Lebanon, on Aug 4 2020. The explosion left 204 dead; 7,500 injured; US$15 billion
in property damages; and an estimated 300,000 people homeless (Urbina, 2020). The environmental costs have yet to be adequately tabulated. Environmental
disasters are more attributable to Black Swan events, systems breakdowns and corporate greed rather than to mundane human activity. Our JIT world aggravates
the cascading potential of risks (Korowicz, 2012). Production and delivery delays, caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, will eventually require industrial
overcompensation. This will further stress senior executives, workers, machines and a variety of computerized systems. The trickle-down effects will likely include
substandard products, contaminated food and a general lowering in health and safety standards (Maavak, 2019a). Unpaid or demoralized sanitation workers may
also resort to indiscriminate waste dumping. Many cities across the United States (and elsewhere in the world) are no longer recycling wastes due to prohibitive
costs in the global corona-economy (Liacko, 2021). Even in good times, strict protocols on waste disposals were routinely ignored. While Sweden championed the
global climate change narrative, its clothing flagship H&M was busy covering up toxic effluences disgorged by vendors along the Citarum River in Java, Indonesia. As
a result, countless children among 14 million Indonesians straddling the “world’s most polluted river” began to suffer from dermatitis, intestinal problems,
developmental disorders, renal failure, chronic bronchitis and cancer (DW, 2020). It is also in cauldrons like the Citarum River where pathogens may mutate with
emergent ramifications. On an equally alarming note, depressed economic conditions have traditionally provided a waste disposal boon for organized crime
elements. Throughout 1980s, the Calabriabased ‘Ndrangheta mafia – in collusion with governments in Europe and North America – began to dump radioactive
wastes along the coast of Somalia. Reeling from pollution and revenue loss, Somali fisherman eventually resorted to mass piracy (Knaup, 2008). The coast of Somalia
is now a maritime hotspot, and exemplifies an entwined form of economic-environmental-geopolitical-societal emergence. In a VUCA world, indiscriminate waste
dumping can unexpectedly morph into a Black Hawk Down incident. The laws of unintended consequences are governed by actors, interconnections, interactions
and adaptations in a system under study – as outlined in the methodology section. Environmentally-devastating industrial sabotages – whether by disgruntled
workers, industrial competitors, ideological maniacs or terrorist groups – cannot be discounted in a VUCA world. Immiserated societies, in stark defiance of climate
change diktats, may resort to dirty coal plants and wood stoves for survival. Interlinked
ecosystems, particularly water resources, may be
hijacked by nationalist sentiments. The environmental fallouts of critical infrastructure (CI) breakdowns loom like a Sword of
Damocles over this decade. GEOPOLITICAL The primary catalyst behind WWII was the Great Depression. Since
history often repeats itself, expect familiar bogeymen to reappear in societies roiling with
impoverishment and ideological clefts. Anti-Semitism – a societal risk on its own – may reach alarming proportions in the West
(Reuters, 2019), possibly forcing Israel to undertake reprisal operations inside allied nations. If that happens, how will

affected nations react? Will security resources be reallocated to protect certain minorities (or the Top 1%) while larger segments of society are
exposed to restive forces? Balloon effects like these present a classic VUCA problematic. Contemporary geopolitical risks

include a possible Iran-Israel war; US-China military confrontation over Taiwan or the South China Sea;
North Korean proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies; an India-Pakistan nuclear war; an
Iranian closure of the Straits of Hormuz; fundamentalist-driven implosion in the Islamic world; or a
nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia. Fears that the Jan 3 2020 assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani might
lead to WWIII were grossly overblown. From a systems perspective, the killing of Soleimani did not fundamentally change the actor-interconnection-interaction
adaptivity equation in the Middle East. Soleimani was simply a cog who got replaced.
 1NC---OFF
Buddhism K
The AFFs fiscal redistribution is stuck in the delusional global economic system of
growth—that delusion causes mass biosphere collapse and widespread climate
change—vote neg for a Buddhist delusion-first analysis of the root-causes of evil.
Loy 13, David. professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. Tons of other qualifications, most
swagged out white boy in Buddhist academia. Special 20th Anniversary Issue Journal of Buddhist Ethics “Why Buddhism and the West Need
Each Other: On the Interdependence of Personal and Social Transformation”. 2013, blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2013/09/Loy-
Why-Buddhism-final.pdf. Accessed 15 July 2023. PP. 413-419 Tiktokbussin15

From the above, one might conclude that contemporary Buddhism simply needs to incorporate a Western concern for social justice. Yet that would overlook the distinctive social
consequences of the Buddhist understanding of dukkha. To draw out some of those implications, let us consider our economic situation today.

economic theory was understood to be part of social philosophy, and in principle (at least) subordinate
Until the modern era,

to religious authority (e.g., Church prohibitions of “usury”). Today the academic profession of economics is concerned to
model itself on the authority of the hard sciences and become a “social science” by discovering the fundamental laws
of economic exchange and development, which are objectively true in the way that Newton’s laws of
motion are.

What this has meant, in practice, is that such a focus tends to rationalize the kind of system we have today, including the increasing gap
between rich and poor. Despite many optimistic new reports about economic recovery—for banks and investors, at least—in the U.S. that disparity is now the greatest it has been since the
great depression of the 1930s. We have become familiar with claims that, for example, the wealthiest four hundred families in America now have the same total wealth as the poorest half of
Americans—over 150 million people.2 If, however, this is happening in accordance with the basic laws of economic science (which curiously echo pre-Axial understandings of social relations as

“natural”), although we may not like this development and may try to limit it in some way, we would still fundamentally need to adapt to big disproportions. In this way such a
disparity is “normalized,” with the implication that it should be accepted.

“But it’s not fair!” In opposition to such efforts to justify the present economic order, there are
movements that call for social justice—in this case, for distributive justice. Why should the wealthy have so much and the poor so
little? It is not difficult to imagine what the Hebrew prophets might say about this situation. For an economic system to be just, its benefits should be distributed much more equitably. And I

the Buddhist emphasis on delusion-vs.- awakening provide an alternative

would not disagree with that. But can

perspective to supplement such a concern for social justice?

I conclude by offering what I believe to be two implications of Buddhist teachings. One of them focuses on our individual predicament— one’s personal role in our economic system—and the
other implication considers the structural or institutional aspect of that system.

What I have to say about our personal economic predicament follows from what is perhaps the most important teaching of the Buddha: the relationship between dukkha and anattā (“not-self”
or “nonself”). Anattā challenges our usual but delusive sense of being a separate self; it is the strange, counterintuitive claim that there is no such self. One way to understand this teaching is
that there is a basic problem with the sense of a “me” inside that is separate from other people, and from the rest of the world, outside. In contemporary terms, this sense of self is a
psychological and social construction. Although the development of a sense of self seems necessary in order to function in the world, Buddhism emphasizes the dukkha associated with it.
Why?

Because the self is a construct, it does not have any svabhāva (“self-existence”), any reality of its own. The sense of self is
composed of mostly habitual ways of thinking, feeling, acting, intending, remembering, and so forth; the ways these processes interact is what creates and sustains it. The important point is

that such a construct is inevitably shadowed by dukkha. Because all those processes are impermanent and insubstantial, the self is not only
ungrounded but is ungroundable and is thus inherently insecure.

the sense of self is usually haunted by a sense of lack: the feeling that something is
One way to express this is to say that

wrong with me, that something is missing or not quite right about my life. Normally, however, we misunderstand the source of our
discomfort, and believe that what we are lacking is something outside ourselves. And this brings us back to our individual economic predicament, because in the “developed”

world we often grow up conditioned to understand ourselves as consumers, and to understand the basic
problematic of our lives as getting more money in order to acquire more things, because this is what will

eventually fill up our sense of lack.

Thus, there is an almost perfect fit between this fundamental sense of lack that unenlightened beings have, according to Buddhism, and our present economic system, which uses advertising

and other devices to condition us into believing that the next thing we buy will make us happy—which it never does, at least not for long. In other words , a consumerist
economy exploits our sense of lack, and often aggravates it, rather than helping us resolve the root
problem. The system generates profits by perpetuating our discontent in a way that leaves us always wanting more.
Such a critique of consumerism is consistent with some recent studies by psychologists, sociologists, and even economists, who have established that once one attains a certain minimum
income—enough food and shelter at a pretty basic level—happiness does not increase in step with increasing wealth or consumerism. Rather, the most important determinate of how happy
people are seems to be the quality of one’s relationships with other people. 3

this Buddhist perspective does not mention distributive justice or any other type of social justice, nor does it
Notice that

offer an ethical evaluation. The basic problem is delusion rather than injustice or immorality. Yet this
approach does not deny the inequities of our economic system, nor is it inconsistent with an Abrahamic
ethical critique. Although an alternative viewpoint has been added, the ideal of social justice remains very important, necessary but not sufficient.
What does this imply about our economic institutions, the structural aspect? The Buddha had little to say about evil per se, but he had a lot to say about the three “roots of evil,” also known as
the (previously mentioned) three poisons: greed, aggression, and delusion. When what we do is motivated by any of these three (and they tend to overlap), we create problems for ourselves
(and often for others too, of course). Given the Buddha’s emphasis on cetanā (“volition”) as the most important factor in generating karma, this may be the key to understanding karma: if you
want to transform the quality of your life—how you experience other people, and how they relate to you—transform your motivations.

We not only have individual senses of self, we also have collective selves: I am a man not a woman, an American not a Chinese, and so forth. Do the problems with the three poisons apply to
collective selves as well? To further complicate the issue, we also have much more powerful institutions than in the time of the Buddha, in which collective selves often assume a life of their

our present economic system can be

own, in the sense that such institutions have their own motivations built into them. Elsewhere I have argued that

understood as institutionalized greed; that our militarism institutionalizes aggression ; and that our (corporate)
media institutionalize delusion, because their primary focus is profiting from advertising and consumerism, rather than educating or informing us about what is really
happening (Loy 2003, 2008).

If greed, aggression and delusion are the main sources of evil, and if today they have been institutionalized in this fashion, you can draw your own conclusions. I finish with a few words on how

our economic system promotes structural dukkha by institutionalizing greed.

What is greed? One definition is “never enough.” On the individual level, it is the next thing one buys that will fill up one’s sense of lack. But greed works just as well to describe what happens
on an institutional level: corporations are never large enough or profitable enough, the value of their shares is never high enough, our national GDP is never big enough. In fact, we cannot
imagine what “big enough” might be. It is built into these systems that they must keep growing, or else they tend to collapse. But why is more always better if it can never be enough?

Consider the stock market, the high temple of the economic process. On the one side are many millions of investors, most of whom are anonymous and unconcerned about the details of the
corporations they invest in except for their profitability and its effects on share prices— that is, the return on their investments. In many cases, investors do not know where their money is
invested, thanks to mutual funds. Such people are not evil, of course: on the contrary, investment is a highly respectable endeavor, something to do if you have some extra money, and
successful investors are highly respected, even idolized (such as Warren Buffet, “the sage of Omaha”).

On the other side of the market, however, the desires and expectations of those millions of investors become transformed into an impersonal and
unremitting pressure for growth and increased profitability that every CEO must respond to, and preferably in the
short run. If a CEO does not maximize profitability, he or she is likely to get into trouble. Consider, for example, the CEO of a large transnational corporation,

who one morning suddenly wakes up to the imminent dangers of climate change and wants to do everything he (it is usually

a he) can to address this challenge. But if what he tries to do threatens corporate profits, he is likely to lose

his job. And if that is true for the CEO, how much more true it is for everyone else further down the corporate hierarchy? Corporations are legally chartered
so that their first responsibility is not to their employees or customers, nor to the members of the
societies they operate within, nor to the ecosystems of the earth, but to the individuals who own them,
who with few exceptions are concerned only about return on investment —a preoccupation, again, that is not only socially
acceptable but socially encouraged.

Who is responsible for this situation in which we have a collective fixation on growth ? The important point is that the
system has attained not only a life of its own but its own cetanā volitions, quite apart from the motivations of the individuals who
work for it and who will be replaced if they do not serve that institutional motivation. And all of us participate in this process in one way or another, as workers, consumers, investors,
pensioners, and so forth, although with very little if any sense of personal responsibility for the collective result. Any awareness of what is actually happening tends to be diffused in the
impersonal anonymity of this economic process. Everyone is just doing their job, playing their role.

any genuine solution to the economic crisis will not simply involve better redistribution of wealth,
In short,

We must also find ways to address the personal dukkha built into the delusions of
necessary as that is.

consumerism, and the structural dukkha built into institutions that have attained a life of their own . It has
become obvious that what is beneficial for those institutions (in the short run) is very different from what is beneficial for

the rest of us and for the biosphere.

 1NC---OFF

Pro-Work CP
The United States federal government should
(if they read carbon tax) -Implement a border-adjusted carbon tax, and
- Engage in targeted investments towards human capital based programs, and
- Issue wage subsidies and limited cash transfers towards unemployed citizens.

That competes - the CP solves with a pro-work agenda fulfilled by targeted benefits
that protect social mobility and ensures proper redistribution
Kearney and Mogstad 2019. (Melissa, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland,
College Park and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Magne, Professor in
Economics at the University of Chicago and a co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy “Universal
Basic Income (UBI) as a Policy Response to Current Challenges.” https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2019/08/UBI-ESG-Memo-082319.pdf.) // czarcasym

a UBI to be a sub-optimal, and possibly harmful, policy response to all three of these challenges. A
We view

UBI in its most basic form would be massively expensive yet do little to reduce inequality or advance
opportunity. Devoting that level of spending to targeted benefits, focusing on the poorest and those hardest hit by ongoing economic forces, and polices dedicated to human capital
development instead of mere redistribution would produce a much greater social return than a UBI.

a UBI is by design not ideal for redistributive purposes. For example, a UBI that paid $10,000 to every U.S.
First, on inequality and redistribution,

Furthermore, by giving money to everyone, there

adult would cost about $2.5 trillion per year, well more than half the current federal annual budget.

would be far fewer resources available to redistribute money and/or invest in the human capital of
those with the most need. In calculations presented below, we show the practical trade-off between giving more money
to a more targeted group of low-income individuals and less money to a more diffuse group including
less needy individuals. We cite work by Hoynes and Rothstein (2019) documenting the loss of
progressivity that would come from replacing our current system of transfer programs with a UBI. We further
argue that programs that are universal do not accomplish as much in terms of generating social benefits as those that are targeted, citing evidence from examples such as child care and early
childhood education programs.

Second, on labor market trends and limited skills, the best long-term policy response is for the
government to pursue a pro-work, pro-skills agenda, and devote resources to investing in the human
capital development of children and economically disadvantaged groups of individuals. Such a policy emphasis would
advance both individual economic security and aggregate productivity. However, it is critical that this long-term
investment strategy be coupled with income support programs that provide wage subsidies for low-
wage workers and limited cash and near-cash benefits for individuals who can’t work or who are
temporarily out of work. This implies a pro-work agenda and targeted redistribution. UBI is neither .
Third, the safety net should not just be about redistribution, but also about investment in human capital and in the next generation. Programs should advance opportunity and economic

Targeted in-kind programs and benefits have been shown to do that, especially when targeted to
mobility.

children. We are sympathetic to the argument that the existing safety net consists of a complicated array of different programs. To some extent, however, this complexity is a
consequence of having different programs deliberately designed to serve different purposes and/or different needs. Even so, we are in favor of taking a holistic view of the panoply of safety

net programs and reforming the entire system to work better in terms of both efficiency (namely, incentives) and equity (specifically, redistribution). Simplifying and
improving the system does not, however, imply a UBI. It would be wholly counterproductive to address the complexity of the current system by
replacing targeted programs that function as investments in human capital – thereby advancing the
productivity of future workers – with an income guarantee that would 4 fail to advance opportunity and
upward mobility. Instead, we should reform current programs to better serve their desired goals.

In summary, for fiscal, efficiency, and equity reasons, the U.S. government should provide targeted
benefits instead of universal benefits. And, it should not just provide cash, but rather invest in human
capital and pursue redistribution through targeted spending on education, child care, health insurance,
food vouchers, and housing assistance programs.
 1NC---OFF
Monero CP

Text: The United State federal government should:

- prohibit issuance of a Central Bank Digital Currency in the United States,
- and adopt a Universal Basic Income funded by transection fees on Monero.
ON
 1NC---Automation
Nice populism impact—we’ll turn it:

Democratic peace studies fail to account for endogeneity and are false causal –
democracy is conflict driving
Chiba and Gartzke, 21 (Dr. Daina Chiba, Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of
Government and Public Administration at the University of Macau, Ph.D. in Political Science from Rice
University, LL.M in Jurisprudence and International Relations from Hitotsubashi University, and Dr. Erik
Gartzke, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, PhD in Political Science
from the University of Iowa, “Make Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: Endogenous Regime
Type and the Democratic Peace”, 2/19/2021, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Make-Two-
Democracies-and-Call-Me-in-the-Morning%3A-Chiba-Gartzke/
801c599c6827fbae5cf0aa86a34a8b3c54050bdb)//babcii

The democratic peace — the observation that democracies are less likely to fight each other than are other pairings of states — is one
of the most widely acknowledged empirical regularities in international relations. Prominent scholars have even characterized
the relationship as an empirical law (Levy 1988; Gleditsch 1992). The discovery of a special peace in liberal dyads stimulated
enormous scholarly debate and led to, or reinforced, a number of policy initiatives by various governments and international organizations.
Although a broad consensus has emerged among researchers regarding the empirical correlation between joint democracy and peace,
disagreement remains as to its logical foundations. Numerous theories have been proposed to account for how democracy produces peace, if
only dyadically (e.g., Russett 1993; Rummel 1996; Doyle 1997; Schultz 2001). At the same time, peace appears likely to foster
or maintain democracy (Thompson 1996; James, Solberg, and Wolfson 1999). A vast swath of research in political science and
economics proposes explanations for the origins of liberal government involving variables such as economic development (Lipset 1959;
Burkhart and Lewis-Beck 1994; Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Epstein et al. 2006) and inequality (Boix 2003), political
interests (Downs 1957; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), power hierarchies (Moore 1966; Lake 2009), third party inducements (Pevehouse 2005)
or impositions (Peceny 1995; Meernik 1996), geography (Gleditsch 2002b), and natural resource endowments (Ross 2001), to list just a few
examples. Each of these putative causes of democracy is also associated with various explanations for
international conflict. Indeed, some as yet poorly defined set of canonical factors may contribute both
to democracy and to peace, making it look as if the two variables are directly related, even if possibly they are
not. We seek to contribute to this literature, not by proposing yet another theory to explain how democracy vanquishes war, but by
estimating the causal effect of joint democracy on the probability of militarized disputes using a quasi-
experimental research design. We begin by noting that some of the common causes of democracy and peace may be unobservable,
generating an endogenous relationship between the two. Theories of democracy and explanations for peace are at a formative state; it is not
possible to utilize detailed, validated and widely accepted models of each of these processes to assess their interaction. Indeed, to a remarkable
degree democracy and peace each remain poorly understood and weakly accounted for empirically, despite their central roles in international
politics. We
address the risk of spurious correlation by applying an instrumental variables approach.
Having taken into account possible endogeneity between democracy and peace, we find that joint
democracy does not have an independent pacifying effect on interstate conflict. Instead, our findings
show that democratic countries are more likely to attack other democracies than are non-democracies.
Our results call into question the large body of theory that has been proposed to account for the apparent pacifism of democratic dyads. This
article proceeds as follows. In the next section we briefly review previous attempts to estimate the effect of democracy on conflict and point
out methodological issues that have plagued these previous efforts. We then introduce our research design and data. After presenting the main
findings, we provide further support for our results with a series of falsification tests to assess the plausibility of the assumptions behind our
empirical strategy. The final section concludes with recommendations for future research.
Democracy causes Nigerian state collapse and civil war
Dr. Moses E. Ochonu 19, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in History and Professor of African History at
Vanderbilt University, PhD and MA in African History from the University of Michigan, BA in History from
Bayero University, Graduate Certificate in Conflict Management from Liscomb University, “Why Liberal
Democracy is a Threat to Nigeria’s Stability”, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture, May 2019,
http://logosjournal.com/2019/liberal-democracy-is-a-threat-to-nigerias-stability/

In 2015, Nigeria, a country of about 190 million, spent $625 million to conduct federal and local elections. By
comparison, India, with a population of 1.2 billion, spent $600 million on its 2015 election, according to figures released by the
Electoral Commission of India (ECI).[1]

In 2019, the election budget of Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) rose to $670 million. This represents about 2.5
percent of Nigeria’s $28.8 billion budget for 2019, a portion of which is being financed through borrowing. To put the electoral
spending in context, more than half of the country subsists on about a dollar a day, and the country recently acquired
the dubious distinction of being named the poverty capital of the world, with more people living in extreme poverty there than in
any other country.[2] Key infrastructures and services such as roads, railway, electricity, water supply, healthcare, and education
are severely inadequate, requiring urgent investments and interventions.

Election-related expenditure is expected to rise in the near future as INEC implements a wider slate of digital technologies to
combat manipulation and improve the integrity of the electoral process. For comparison, Nigeria typically devotes about 7 percent of its budget
to education. And yet Nigeria continues to maintain a four-year election cycle, with smaller by-elections occurring in between. This electoral
calendar guarantees that about $1 billion is spent on elections every four years. As the electoral price tag has grown, democratic dividends have
plummeted.

Nigeria’s predicament is a microcosm of the phenomenon of rising financial costs of elections in Africa and diminishing returns on democracy.
Across the continent, the
cost of electoral democracy is increasing and threatens the delivery of social goods.
As African countries battle myriad socioeconomic challenges, the question needs to posed: is it wise for these countries
to continue to spend a large percentage of their revenue every four or five years on a political ritual with fewer and fewer positive
socioeconomic consequences for their populations? Is this expensive, periodic democratic ritual called election worth its price?

It is not only the monetary cost of elections that now threatens to defeat their purpose and engender
disillusionment and, along with disillusionment, the erosion of trust in the state and its ability to
produce and distribute public goods. The social cost of periodic elections has been arguably greater,
depleting, with each election cycle, the residual stability of the state and the credibility of its
institutions.

Elections conducted in Nigeria since the return of civilian rule in 1999 have brought with them anxiety, tension, death,
violence, and dangerous rhetoric that, taken together, have frayed the national political and social fabric. Elections
have widened fissures and intensified preexisting primordial cleavages.
I can recall no electoral cycle since at least 2003 that was not been accompanied by fears of Nigeria’s disintegration or at the very least the
acceleration of its demise. In 2007 and 2011, post-election violence claimed hundreds of lives in Northern Nigeria as supporters of then
candidate Muhammadu Buhari rioted after his loss. In the 2019 presidential and national assembly elections, at least 46 people were reported
to have died from election-related violence. In the state assembly and governorship elections two weeks later on March 9, 2019, another 10
people died across five states in what the Sunday Tribune newspaper described in its headline as “another bloody election.”[3]

Two riders below the same Sunday Tribune headline encapsulate the turbulent character of Nigerian elections. One was “Thugs, vote buyers,
arsonists take over on election day”; the other was “Nigerians condemn militarization of elections in Rivers, Bayelsa, Kwara, Akwa Ibom,
Benue,” a reference to the government’s deployment of soldiers and other military assets to opposition strongholds before and during the
election. The involvement of soldiers and other military personnel in the election was a brazen violation of Nigeria’s Electoral Act, an action
which many observers interpreted as the incumbent administration’s effort to use its might to manipulate the election in states held by the
opposition.
Every election cycle in Nigeria sees massive, fear-induced demographic mobility as members of different ethnic groups and religions relocate to
areas considered dominated by their kinsmen and co-religionists to await the
conclusion of elections that often degenerate
into communal clashes especially in the volatile north of the country.

Periodic national elections have thus worsened Nigeria’s notoriously frail union and caused apathy and
discontent. The Nigerian people, the major stakeholders in Nigeria’s democracy, have grown weary of being periodically endangered and
rendered pawns in an elaborate elite ritual with little or no consequence for their lives.

Electoral aftermaths have not improved economic conditions or strengthened the capacity of citizens to hold elected leaders accountable.
Moreover, as I shall discuss shortly, the familiar abstract freedoms that democracy, lubricated by periodic elections, can confer on citizens who
participate in such exercises, have eluded Nigerians.

The result has been noticeable apathy represented most poignantly by voter turnout, which declined from a peak of 69.1 percent in 2003 to
46.3 percent in 2015 and to about 35 percent in 2019. In the same 2019 election cycle, turnout declined to less than 20 percent in the
governorship and state assembly elections, with many Nigerians on social media stating that they had lost faith in the electoral process and that
the official results of the presidential elections two weeks earlier had shown that their votes would not count towards the declared outcome.

Voter apathy alone is not an indication of democratic disillusionment but it can portend or indicate something more devastating: diminishing
trust in the state, its institutions, and its processes.

Such a trust deficit exists already and it predated the return of civilian rule in 1999 after about two decades of military dictatorship. However,
by all theoretical formulations, such a cumulative loss of confidence in the transactional sociopolitical contract between the state and citizens
should be corrected by the democratic ideals of voting, representation, and accountability. This has not happened in Nigeria. In fact, the
opposite scenario is visible: a negative correlation between successive electoral cycles and citizens’ trust in the Nigerian state. Therein lay the
paradoxical consequences of democratic practice in Nigeria.

If elections are increasingly burdensome as they have become in Nigeria, the corrective potential of
democracy, broadly speaking, is lost. Citizens consequently lose faith in the state and resort to self-help, including
criminal self-help. That is how states collapse. Nigeria is not far off this possibility.

In Nigeria, recent political realities reveal a blind spot of pro-democracy advocacy: without the modulating effect of decentralization, sustained
economic growth, a growing, secure middle class, and a literate, hopeful poor, liberal democracy can do and has done more damage than good.
Liberal democracy has ironically become both an incubator and protector of mediocrity, corruption, and
bad governance. The overarching casualty has been Nigeria’s very stability.

Nigerian instability escalates to global great power war

Charles A. Ray 21, Member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign
Policy Research Institute, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of
Zimbabwe, “Does Africa Matter to the United States?”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1/11/2021,
https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/01/does-africa-matter-to-the-united-states/

Africa matters in terms of size, population, and rate of population growth. It is the continent currently most
affected by climate change but is also a continent that can have a devastating impact on climate change globally
because of the importance of the Congo Basin rainforest, which is the second-largest absorber of heat
after the Amazon rainforest. The destruction of this important ecosystem could further accelerate global
warming. As residents of the region come into increasing contact with the animals of the rainforest, this region could be the
origin of the world’s next viral pandemic. Violent extremism and terrorism are increasing in Africa, and
while now mostly localized, the danger has the potential to spread beyond the continent. Crises—natural
and man-made—cause massive relocations of populations, both on the continent and abroad, which can have negative economic,
social, and political impacts.
Why Africa Matters
The African continent is the world’s second-largest, with the second-fastest growth rate after Asia. With 54 sovereign countries, four territories, and two de facto independent states with little

international recognition, the continent has a current population of 1.3 billion. By 2050, the continent’s population is predicted to rise to 2.4 billion. By 2100, Nigeria, Africa’s
most populous country, will have a population of one billion, and half the world’s population growth will be in Africa by then.
The population of African countries is also overwhelmingly young. Approximately 40% of Africans are under 15, and, in some countries, over 50% is under 25. By 2050, two of every five
children born in the world will be in Africa, and the continent’s population is expected to triple. These developments have positive and negative potential impacts on the United States and the
rest of the world. Young Africans have, for the most part, completely skipped the analog age and gone directly digital. Comfortable with technology, they form a huge potential consumer and

If, on the other hand, the countries of Africa fail to develop economically and do not create gainful employment for
labor market.

this young population, then there is the risk that they

will become a huge potential source of recruits to extremist and
terrorist movements, which currently target disadvantaged and disenchanted youth.
Lack of economic opportunity, increased urbanization, and climate-fueled disasters will also contribute to movement of people seeking better
lives, which will impact economies and security not only on the continent of Africa, but also the economic and security situations around the
world. Nations,
lacking adequate critical infrastructure, education, and job opportunities are ripe for internal unrest
and radicalization. In particular, inadequate health delivery systems, when coupled with natural disasters, such as droughts or floods
that limit food production, cause famine and mass movements of populations.
The Challenges for U.S. Policy

Prior to World War II, the U.S. policy towards Africa was not as active as it was toward Europe, Asia, or Latin America. During the Cold War, Africa policy was primarily viewed from a perspective of super-power competition. The
end of the Cold War and the rise of international terrorism introduced this as a major component in U.S. Africa policy along with competition with a rising China and increased Chinese engagement in Africa.

Before his first official trip to Kenya, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “Africa had become an idea more than an actual place . . . with the benefit of distance, we engaged Africa in a selective embrace.” This is probably an apt
description of U.S. policy towards African nations despite the bipartisan nature of that policy. The United States, with the many domestic and international issues it has to cope with, can ill afford to continue to ignore Africa. Going
forward, U.S. policy must include a hard-headed look at where Africa fits in policy priorities.

The incoming Biden administration will face a number of important issues and challenges as it develops its Africa policy. The most pressing issues are the following:

Climate Change: Climate change is an existential problem that affects the entire globe, but Africa has probably suffered more from the effects of climate change than other continents—and the problem will only get worse with
time. In an October 2020 article, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said,

Climate change is having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity, population displacement and stress on water resources. In recent months we have seen
devastating floods, an invasion of desert locusts and now face the looming specter of drought because of a La Nina event. The human and economic toll has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Climate change impacts water quality and availability, and millions in Africa will likely face persistent increased water stress due to these impacts. A multi-year drought in parts of South Africa, for instance, threatened total water
failure in several small towns and had livestock farmers facing financial ruin. Another pressing climate-change issue is the need for protection of the Congo Basin rainforest. This 178-million-hectare rainforest is the world’s second
largest after the Amazon and is currently threatened by agricultural activities in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Countries in the Congo
Basin need to address the preservation issue, while also enabling sustainable agricultural activities to ensure food security for the region’s population. In addition to the impact on global climate caused by destruction of the
rainforest, such destruction also brings human populations into closer contact with the region’s animals, creating the risk of future animal-to-human transmission of new and possibly more virulent viruses similar to COVID-19,
which will have a global impact. In a January 2021 CNN report, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who as a researcher helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976, warned of possible new pathogens that could be as infectious as
COVID-19 and as virulent as Ebola.

Rule of Law/Mitigation of Corruption: A key to African development, given the increasing urbanization, population increases, and youthfulness of the continent’s population, will be an increase in domestic and international
investment to build the industries that can provide meaningful employment and improved standards of living. In order for this to be successful, African nations will need to address the issues of rule of law and corruption. Investors
will not risk money if the business climate comes with a level of political risk that is too high. Government leaders throughout Africa need to establish legislation that provides an acceptable level of security for investments and take
action to curb the endemic corruption that currently discourages investment. Corruption in Africa ranges from wholesale political corruption on the scale of General Sani Abachi’s looting of $3-5 billion of state money during his five
years as Nigeria’s military ruler to the bribes paid by businessmen to police and customs officials. The “tradition” of having to pay bribes, or “sweeteners,” drives away domestic investment and scares away foreign investment,
leaving many countries mired in poverty.

Violent Extremism and Terrorism: A number of African nations are currently plagued with rising extremist movements. While primarily a domestic issue, the mass movement of people fleeing violence and the disruption of
economic activity have the potential to negatively impact the rest of the world. African nations need regional responses to curb extremist and terrorist organizations, many of which are supported by international terrorist

Terrorist groups in Africa range from

organizations, such as ISIS and al Qaeda. In addition, the underlying conditions that helped to create these movements must be addressed.

relatively large and dangerous groups, such as Boko Haram, a group in Nigeria that has received support from al Qaeda and that aims to implement
sharia law in the country; Al-Shabab, an al Qaeda affiliate aiming to overthrow the government in Somalia and to punish neighboring countries for their support of the Somali regime; and Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, a
fundamentalist Christian group. Terrorist groups in the fragile political climate of Libya also pose a threat to sub-Saharan Africa.

Great Power Competition: As the world’s second-largest economy, and with its increasing participation in international activities,
China will continue to be a factor in Africa for the foreseeable future. This, however, is more a problem for the nations
of Africa than it is for the rest of the world. The West can compete best by outperforming China in areas of strength by providing those goods
and services that are unquestionably superior, and let African governments decide how to deal with China and its often-predatory lending
practices and the Chinese tendency to import Chinese workers for its projects and investments rather than hiring locals. At the same time,
Russia, which did not completely turn away from Africa at the end of the Cold War as many in the West sometimes believe, must still be
considered a significant factor on the African landscape. In an effort to compensate for Western sanctions and to counter U.S. and Western
influence, Russia is once again increasing its presence on the continent. Russian mercenaries, in exchange for diamond
mining rights, have trained military forces in the Central African Republic, raising concerns about human rights abuses. Of particular concern is
the presence of the Wagner Group, a private military company associated with Yevgeny Progozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir
Putin, who was indicted in the United States for trying to disrupt the 2016 U.S. elections. To date, Russia has, in addition to seeking basing
rights, signed military cooperation agreements with 28 African nations. Russian activity is a combination of military and commercial, with
Progozhin at the center of both. From 2010 to 2018, Russia nearly tripled its trade with African countries. While the activities of both Russia and
China in Africa are of concern, and should be closely monitored, neither is of critical importance to U.S. national security.
With climate change, disease outbreaks, famine, extremism, and inter-ethnic violence, Africa will still experience crises in the foreseeable
future that will be beyond the capacity of most nations on the continent to deal with. Climate change is probably the greatest cause of
humanitarian crises in Africa, but mainstream media outside the continent either fail to notice or under-report them. Some of the crises, like
Ebola or the next viral infection, can impact the rest of the world. These crises will cause starvation, mass movement of people,
and increase internal and regional instability. Africa matters to the United States and the rest of the world. Its impacts
can be felt far beyond the continent’s borders, but if approached as a partner rather than as a patron—with a focus on
assisting African nations to improve governance, build critical infrastructure, boost domestic economies, and provide essential services to all—
then Africa can be a positive contributor on the global stage.

Democracy causes short-termism – extinction

Krznaric, 19 (Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher, former political scientist, and founder of the
world’s first Empathy Museum. He is currently writing a book on the power of long-term thinking, 3-18-
19, accessed on 4-24-2022, bbc, “Why we need to reinvent democracy for the long-term”,
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term)//babcii

Today Hume’s view appears little more than wishful thinking, since
it is so startlingly clear that our political systems have
become a cause of rampant short-termism rather than a cure for it. Many politicians can barely see beyond the next
election, and dance to the tune of the latest opinion poll or tweet. Governments typically prefer quick fixes, such as putting more criminals
behind bars rather than dealing with the deeper social and economic causes of crime. Nations bicker around international conference tables,
focused on their near-term interests, while the planet burns and species disappear . As the 24/7 news media
pumps out the latest twist in the Brexit negotiations or obsesses over a throwaway comment from the US president, the myopia of modern
democratic politics is all too obvious. So is there an antidote to this political presentism that pushes the interests of future generations
permanently beyond the horizon? Let’s start with the nature of the problem. It’s common to claim that today’s short-termism is simply a
product of social media and other digital technologies that have ratcheted up the pace of political life. But the fixation on the now has far
deeper roots. One problem is the electoral cycle, an inherent design flaw of democratic systems that
produces short political time horizons. Politicians might offer enticing tax breaks to woo voters at the
next electoral contest, while ignoring long-term issues out of which they can make little immediate
political capital, such as dealing with ecological breakdown, pension reform or investing in early childhood education.
Back in the 1970s, this form of myopic policy-making was dubbed the “political business cycle”. Add to this
the ability of special interest groups – especially corporations – to use the political system to secure
near-term benefits for themselves while passing the longer-term costs onto the rest of society. Whether
through the funding of electoral campaigns or big-budget lobbying, the corporate hacking of politics is a
global phenomenon that pushes long-term policy making off the agenda. The third and deepest cause
of political presentism is that representative democracy systematically ignores the interests of future
people. The citizens of tomorrow are granted no rights, nor – in the vast majority of countries – are there any bodies to
represent their concerns or potential views on decisions today that will undoubtedly affect their lives . It’s a blind spot so enormous
that we barely notice it: in the decade I spent as a political scientist specialising in democratic governance, it simply never
occurred to me that future generations are disenfranchised in the same way that slaves or
women were in the past. But that is the reality. And that’s why hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren worldwide, inspired
by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, have been striking and marching to get rich nations to reduce their carbon emissions: they have had
enough of democratic systems that render them voiceless and airbrush their futures out of the political picture. The time has come to face an
inconvenient reality: that
modern democracy – especially in wealthy countries – has enabled us to colonise
the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely
dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt , and that we feel at liberty to
plunder as we please. When Britain colonised Australia in the 18th and 19th Century, it drew on the legal doctrine now known as terra nullius –
nobody’s land – to justify its conquest and treat the indigenous population as if they didn’t exist or have any claims on the land. Today our
attitude is one of tempus nullius. The future is an “empty time”, an unclaimed territory that is similarly devoid of inhabitants. Like the distant
realms of empire, it is ours for the taking. The
daunting challenge we face is to reinvent democracy itself to
overcome its inherent short-termism and to address the intergenerational theft that underlies our
colonial domination of the future. How to do so is, I believe, the most urgent political challenge of our times. Some suggest
that democracy is so fundamentally short-sighted that we might be better off with “benign dictators”,
who can take the long view on the multiple crises facing humanity on behalf of us all. Amongst them is the eminent British astronomer Martin

only an
Rees, who has written that on critical long-term challenges such as climate change and the spread of bioweapons, “

enlightened despot could push through the measures needed to navigate the
21st Century safely”. When I recently asked him in a public forum whether he was offering dictatorship as a serious policy
prescription to deal with short-termism, and suggested that perhaps he had been joking, he replied, “actually, I was semi-serious”. He then
gave the example of China as an authoritarian regime that was incredibly successful at long-term
planning, evident in its huge ongoing investment in solar power.

Global instability – concedes COVID thumps. [Newton Reads Green]

Taylor ’20 [Kenneth; 9/1/2020; Assistant Professor of Economics at Villanova University; “The Passing
of Western Civilization,” Futures, Volume 122, p. 102582]
Another relevant issue facing us is the contexts in which humans naturally engage in altruistic behavior. Paleolithic human’s expression of familial or nonfamilial
altruism endures for only a couple generations, with concern for future generations subsequently deteriorating (Dawkins, 1989). The fact is there used to be no
compelling need for longer-term concern. However, such limiting of intergenerational interest leads to a shorter-term policy horizon than that needed to address
today’s global problems. For instance, over
the past half-century, western citizens have endorsed rising public
indebtedness. Citizens thereby enjoy greater consumption than could be provided out of current income. This boosts
positive hedonic sensations (more goods and services consumed today) while reducing negative hedonic sensations (lower
taxes paid today) and is reinforced by the basic human predisposition for immediate gratification. However, at

some point, any debt, even a public one, must be repaid: Public debt is delayed taxation. At that future point we face a set of
conundrums; for as soon as we must repay, we necessarily experience a significant increase in negative hedonic sensations. Given that we dislike losses more than
twice as much we like equal gains, we resist, which merely entrenches the unsustainable trends that eventually
leads to crisis (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). This insight further helps explain the lack of general concern for damage to the biosphere or humankind’s
enduring faith in a “technofix” solution—it is easier to brush off emergent problems if you believe that a necessary fix

will surely be found when needed by some future generation that you are not too concerned about in
the first place. Finally, research reveals that individuals often behave differently in group contexts than they would if acting alone (i.e. crowd psychology).
Within a group setting individuals often take up the group’s identity, ignoring their own conscience, suspending judgment and accountability. The result is that
individuals within groups participate in acts they would never commit separately. Social psychologists say that a participant enters a lower state of self-awareness
called “deindividuation”. The resulting anonymity can have horrifically destructive effects on innocent lives and property, as witnessed during riots, genocides and
wars (Cantril, 2002). Extending these insights, the anonymity associated with group behaviors coupled with limited future concern helps us to understand why
individuals in developed nations can be insensitive to poverty, emigration, environmental destruction, water shortages and excessive debt on the global level. When
one adds human flaws to an increasingly crowded planet, effects become amplified—there are over 7 billion of us all behaving much the same way. 2. Population
Population growth during the past 200 years has had a positive impact on global economic growth and standard of living. Without a doubt, the powerful, pervasive,
and positive effects brought about by Enlightenment thinking and Industrial Revolution propelled civilization to higher states of wealth and welfare. Advances in
public health, medicine and agricultural productivity set off exponential growth in population, reinforcing economic progress within a series of positive feedback
loops. The historical events represent a transformative tsunami, with all dimensions of civilization and Earth changed forevermore. As the 19th century began Earth
was still pristine for humans with their newly minted ideas. There were more unknown places to explore and exploit while human population was low, estimated at
being about one billion globally in 1800. Abundant resources were readily available to support industrialization and upsurge in living standards. New technologies
arising from scientific research, innovation and commercialization drove the entire enterprise forward. Economists would say the potential for both extensive and
intensive economic growth on the global stage was at a maximum back then. Capitalist industries and markets were freer—within the formidable command of
enabling, imperial power—to spread across the planet, bringing more and more places, people and resources into the western economic paradigm. The United
Nations projects a further 45 % increase in human population, a forecast that might well have significant consequences. Specifically, the UN projects that global
population will grow from 7.7 billion today to about 11.2 billion by 2100 with 95 % certainty (2017). Once human population peaks, fertility may begin a gradual fall,
leading to the population growth pattern moving from its current exponential path to one that is logistic. This pattern has already appeared in developed nations
with demographers projecting it to occur in time throughout the less developed world. Human population is estimated to level off between 11–12 billion with every
reason to believe that population decline commences in the 22st century as world-wide fertility rates fall below replacement level. Before we make a sigh of
collective relief, there are three relevant details to consider. First, most additional population growth will occur in the less developed parts of the world, already
struggling to pull themselves out of poverty. Second, before human population begins to decline, we and our planet must get through the next 80 years—or more
like 150 years or so before our numbers return to even today’s level. Third, the projected 3–4 billion surge in global population is forecast to be the largest increase
ever in absolute number during any 80-year period in history. While the average annual rate of population growth is decreasing, the number of people born
increase in total number—because each year the base is larger so a decrease in the growth rate can still result in more people being born. Between these
considerations lie many risks, all to the downside. Already unprecedented numbers of immigrants are trying to move to the richer, more politically stable parts of
the world while sectarian (i.e. tribal) strife within poorer countries becomes more common, with technologically empowered militants and autocrats amplifying
their power. Earth may be able to feed, clothe and house the 7.7 billion people who are presently here—although several billion marginally so. As the next 3–4
billion people arrive the question of whether this represents unsustainable overpopulation becomes significant. Overpopulation is generally defined as a situation
where an organism's numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. The problem is that the 21 st century will witness, and some would say is already
witnessing, a time when Earth—clearly a closed environment—experiences a set of innate and/or human imposed restraints. As limits are reached poorer nations
will find themselves in a condition of "demographic entrapment"—a condition when a nation has a population more than its carrying capacity without the option of
migration, with too little in export earnings to pay for critical imports. The net effect can be localized Malthusian crises with characteristics of mass starvation and
sociopolitical instability. Climate change is already cited as making this tendency more probable in Sub-Saharan Africa. In other words, the low-hanging fruit
sustaining population growth and prosperity these past 200 years has been plucked—or is being horded—by those fortunate to have industrialized and prospered
earlier. The decline of global, westernized civilization as we know it may well be herald by poorer nations fracturing before the crisis spreads to the rest of our global
village (Homer-Dixon, 2006). One final facet is that we are not only a biological force but have become a geological one as well. It is suggested that our numbers are
now so vast, our industry so extensive, that a new geological age has begun: the Anthropocene (Waters et al., 2016). This conjecture is rooted not simply in our
numbers but in our nature as well: We are 7.7 billion individuals with insatiable collective wants on our way to becoming up to 11–13 billion strong, transforming
myriad dimensions of Earth’s hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. One group of scientists has identified limits beyond which we should not push
our planet (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2015). This research suggests we are nearing tipping points into radically different planetary states with unknown
ecosystemic features. Earth systems are frustratingly complex, so the results are tentative yet worrying. The bottom line is that planetary boundaries exist and will
restrain the current trajectory of civilization. Given the UN’s population growth forecast, we may begin hitting some of these fuzzy planetary boundaries soon.
BÁnyai states that environmental regulation has failed, for human behavior is “psychopathological” (2019). Her analysis supports the conclusion made here that
civilization’s decline is inevitable. Even if passing the tipping points move Earth into a still hospitable environment for humans, the transitions involved will magnify
the tensions associated within the climatic stage of civilization. All this is symptomatic of human behavior and numbers, representing distinctive features during this
phase of civilization’s climax. 3. Fall of empires Earlier civilizations followed a similar pattern of development characterized by what Theodor Mommsen defined long
ago as genesis, growth, senescence, collapse and decay (1854-1856). Since Edward Gibbon's extensive work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, scholars
have taken an active interest in what causes the eventual decline of all empires (1776-1788). In the case of Rome, Gibbon suggested decay of the elite was brought
on by the “natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness”. Arnold Toynbee refined Gibbon’s ideas by adding that the political elite became increasingly
parasitic, leading to an increasingly marginalized majority who undermine the integrity of empire in numerous ways (1939). Other macrohistorians, such as Oswald
Spengler, argue for a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations, suggesting we have begun a centuries-long process of decline mirroring that
witnessed in antiquity (1926). Joseph Tainter’s study of Rome identified increased sociopolitical complexity—causing rigidity and fragility while drawing off scarce
resources—as a major cause of its decline, with many suggesting his insights relevant today (1988). For many ancient, albeit smaller, civilizations, Jared Diamond
suggests a quintet of external factors led to decline: environmental degradation, climate change, dependency upon external trade, intensifying levels of internal and
external violence and, finally, societal responses—or lack of response—to all these factors (2005). For modern civilization—and this was likely true for many ancient
ones as well—Mancur Olson argued that special interest groups accumulate around the central power structure,
drawing off resources, impeding the ability of central authorities to respond appropriately to the growing
threats to the integrity of empire (1982). One final point found in all these studies is that leaders essentially failed to deal with developing,
macro-problems, both internal and external, before reaching the threshold of crisis and impending collapse. Galtung and
Inayatullah’s ambitious book, Macrohistory and Macrohistorians: A Theoretical Framework, examines the contributions made by twenty macrohistorians in
understanding multiple facets of the cycles of civilization (1997). A further ambition of this work was to produce a comparative and integrative history of the
patterns and causes of change throughout time. They begin deep in the past with the premodern insights of Ssu-Ma Ch'ien, Augustine and Ibn Khaldun; progressing
to 19th century contributions of such dialectical thinkers as Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx; ending with the more recent thinking of Pitirim Sorokin, Prabhat Sarkar
and contributors to the Gaia hypothesis. This sweeping set of transhistorical and cross-cultural perspectives of social change are then treated comparatively,
resulting in the definition of twelve different "sciences" addressing change in the human condition. These “sciences” reflect diverse pedagogical perspectives on the
study of civilizational change, each focusing on distinct forces, patterns and units of analysis (i.e. vectors of change). Reflecting what has been previously noted,
Galtung and Inayatullah identify “stages and patterns” in the cyclical development of civilizations as a common theme among the macrohistorians reviewed.
Inclusion of non-Western thinkers infuses the work with a rich set of historical experiences and perspectives while providing us with analytical tools to help
understand on multiple levels what is happening within western civilization today. There are further works suggesting that the present course of humanity has
refocused the process of decline of western civilization to distinctive factors (i.e. planetary). From Paul R. Ehrlich’s neo-Malthusian life-long work since he published
The Population Bomb in 1968, to Meadows et al. (1972) ongoing work since introducing the “Limits to Growth” hypothesis in 1972, to Edward O. Wilson’s 2002
concept of HIPPO (Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Human Over-Population, and Overharvesting), many intellectuals have warned that trends
associated with human expansion are unsustainable, pushing today’s civilization into its climatic stage. More recently, the Ehrlichs wrote a piece entitled “Can a
collapse of global civilization be avoided?” (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2013). They begin by stating that “global collapse appears likely” due to overpopulation and
overconsumption with dramatic cultural change necessary to avert catastrophe. Laura Spinny published a summary of additional corroborating research all pointing
to socioeconomic disintegration, concluding that “almost nobody thinks the outlook for the West is good” (New Scientist, 2018). Lastly, Luke Kemp, from the Centre
for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, published a BBC report noting that “collapse may be a normal phenomenon for civilizations,
regardless of their size and technological stage”, and that “our
tightly-coupled, globalized economic system is, if anything, more
likely to make crisis spread” (Kemp, 2019). 4. Questions to ask before climbing into the lifeboat What is the Earth’s carrying capacity for humanity? Is
it 11 billion or some larger or smaller number? Also, what needs to be done to balance the human desire for personal opportunity, physical comfort and liberty with
a sustainable, habitable planet? Further, what have we learned and what do we cherish about our current civilization that we wish to preserve for the future?
Finally, how will we carry our treasurers into the next civilization? These are not easy questions, but they must be asked and answered in the next several decades.
The first question requires that we define what a “sustainable” population size would entail. To many it requires a maintainable level of the physical components
providing a healthy standard of living for all, consistent with viable ecosystemic balance. Such a standard of living would require ready access to the basics of
nutrition, clothing and shelter. In addition, it would require equal entry to the higher reaches of the Maslow hierarchy through provision of a stable environment,
basic health care and education, as well as minimal socioeconomic barriers to advancement within a strong legal system. Providing such would guarantee equal
opportunity to everyone toward achieving aspirations compatible with innate, or acquired, abilities and drive. In other words, the sustainable population size
requires something more than mere survival of our species, since a healthy civilization requires dynamic engagement of, and opportunities for, its members. If the
researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center are correct in stating that Earth will be moving into a profoundly altered state in coming decades, then Earth’s
carrying capacity for humanity at any future time is indeterminable today. This has not stopped prognosticators from making estimates based on our planet’s
current ecosystemic state. Paul Ehrich places the optimal population of the planet between 1.5 and 2 billion people (The Guardian, 2012). Unfortunately, most
research on the subject varies so much as to be currently useless. The reason for such disparate conclusions distills down to the underlying assumptions made by
those doing the research—and this too can become victim of partisan, tribal truth. There are those that believe that human adaptability and ingenuity places no
limit on human population size while others derive a number less than that suggested by Ehrlich. Further research is needed, and, in the end, the sustainable
population range determined requires balancing the carrying capacity of Earth by ecological footprint analysis with some minimum scale required to maintain
humanity’s diversity within a transformed, vibrant civilization design. Many would point to China’s lapsed one-child policy and say it was a failure since it was
illiberal and resulted in an inverted demographic pyramid. The first part is true and, as to the second part, there are implications arising from this multi-decade
policy that will negatively impact China’s future economic growth, which is construed as a bad outcome. This last conclusion arises from the questionable
assumption that aggregate economic growth is something we should always strive for. What really matters is a nation’s “human development” level over time. The
fact is that it’s not bad to experience stagnant or negative GDP growth if real per capita human development, as defined by the United Nations’ Human
Development Index, remains positive (United Nations, 2019). This is the trick public policy makers need investigate and then achieve. Population decline in the
context of robust technologically driven productivity gains is one avenue toward achieving this goal (Frey, 2019). Büchs and Koch have investigated the degrowth
transition, finding that wellbeing need not suffer (2019). However, they note that the psychological transition in expectations will not be easy. Echoing this concern,
Fergnani underscores the difficulty in disentangling the instilled psychological pleasure individuals gain as participants in capitalism (2019). The coordinated cadence
of human effort born of the Industrial Revolution created a psychosocial dynamic that will prove deeply resistant to paradigmatic change. This too requires careful
research, but an inescapable conclusion is that it is crucial to modify our inculcated beliefs concerning economic growth. What do we want to carry into our future
from our current sociocultural fabric beyond fine arts, literature and accumulated STEM knowledge? Thomas Jefferson said in the opening lines of the Declaration of
Independence that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Protection of your person and your family, the freedom to live your life without excessive
social hindrance and the right to pursue happiness, all resonate with basic human nature. James Q. Wilson, among others, have argued that morality has a strong
genetic component, so these new concepts, embodied within the then new democracy, had a strong appeal to humanity’s complex, evolved sense of fairness and
justice. While from an objective perspective these “rights” were anything but “self-evident”, claiming so brought them into the social contract, creating a powerful
motive among citizens to defend and preserve the young nation. The mid-20th century innovation of connecting individual with social rights, enshrined within a
system based on the preeminence of the rule of law, became a potent unifying force and, in many ways, the final socioeconomic achievement the Liberal Tradition
made at the end of western civilization’s colonization stage. There is much here worth preserving for it nurtures collective intelligence networks while preserving
social cohesion. These points need to be reflected upon and expanded through further investigation. Will these issues and questions be addressed in an anticipatory
or reactive manner? With a reactive approach, the path we’re on, we risk the ongoing decline, collapse and subsequent resurrection to be hijacked by those using
tribal truth to create something partisan and potentially devolutionary. While we can imagine governments constructively rising to and addressing the stresses of
civilization’s demise, such thinking has proven misplaced and fruitless. The Ehrlichs, as many others, suggest that “widely based cultural change is required”, which
is also improbable (Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2013). Even where we see awareness of such issues as climate change sculpted into active social policy, the protective hand of
human biases and special interests lie in the shadows. Further, if the problem is rooted in our numbers and behavior, such polices add up to band-aids—they serve
to delay the inevitable. Barring some techno-fix set of miracles, which is possible yet not probable, we must conclude that humanity’s response will continue to be
reactive until crisis and collapse are upon us: We are captive to the cycles of history. At some point before collapse, as awareness grows, an overdue but hopeful
reaction is possible, entailing a focused collective intelligence effort attending these issues and questions. For sake of another name, let’s call this the “Human
Foundation Project” (Taylor, 2012). Parallel to this project, many in the top socioeconomic groups will be building their walls, underwriting their private militias and
fortifying to survive collapse. Their long-term objective will be to create a forthcoming civilization shaped in their image—the one that is now proving unsustainable.
This is a dead-end vision for a viable future, so we must look elsewhere for humanity’s salvation. Ironically, as stated at the beginning of this essay, it’s the global
rich and powerful that will make sure they’re the first to climb into the lifeboats. Most of these people are self-centered yet gained their status through being
intelligent, industrious and adaptive. Among them are a few concerned visionaries—such as Bill Gates—known for his, and his wife’s, generosity through The Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation supporting public health and education initiatives around the world. There are numerous others that could be mentioned—many
well know entrepreneurs, actors and financiers—but the point is that not all the rich are narrowly self-interested: Many put their wealth behind honorable causes. J.
Pierpont Morgan is often cited as single-handedly saving the United States from financial collapse during the panic of 1907 (Chernow, 2010). It has happened before
and can happen again. If we don’t want the self-serving rich and powerful with their private militias emerging from their gated communities, turned personal
bunkers, to reclaim the storyline of tomorrow’s civilization, we need to make a contingency plan to set the stage for something better, encapsulating the
philosophically and socially noble features that emerged from the Enlightenment and evolved Liberal Tradition. Once the financing is in hand, the work of the
Human Foundation will commence. The Human Foundation will design a blueprint of a new civilization to emerge at an appropriate time and place possessing the
most fertile environment for development. Emergence will eventually take place in phases with the ultimate objective of dominating the storyline of civilization’s
reconstruction. It will have a charter and mission statement built upon the following core principles and goals: 1Preserve: Conserve accumulated knowledge related
to STEAM fields. 2Delineate: Define what is worth using from the past in designing our next civilization. This includes study of cultural, political, legal, economic and
social practices. 3Create: Design a new, robust civilization based on the objective of establishing a world order that nurtures ongoing evolution of humanity and life
on earth. 4Sustainability: Emphasize sustainability in all dimensions of institutional design. 5Outreach: Communicate findings with as broad an audience as possible.
6Community: Build a network of individuals and organizations sympathetic with the objectives of the Human Foundation Project. 7Endure and Protect: Create the
physical and socioeconomic mechanisms to sustain the Human Foundation through collapse of western civilization. This includes providing for and protecting those
associated with the foundation. 8Phases: Lay out the necessary steps during and after initiation to make the design a reality. 9Monitor and Assess: Observe and
recalculate prospects and limitations presented to the new design as the collapse of Western civilization progresses. 10Timing: Be prepared to move decisively
when and where opportunity is presented. Soon after its formation the Human Foundation will hold a series of symposiums, bringing visionaries and specialists from
across the spectrum of human knowledge together. Each symposium will be centered on critical themes, such as “Sustainable sociocultural practices best serving
human needs” or “Beginning institutions, rules and laws” or “Balancing planetary and human systems”, etc. Early on a permanent staff will be necessary to focus
collective intelligence on the objectives of the project. Along with gathering and storing that which is to be preserved, while applying foresight intelligence to design
a nascent civilization to come, a vital concern will be to find means to endure civilization’s collapse such that formulated plans remain actionable. Some comments
are required on items #8 to #10 in the mission statement principles and goals. Anticipated
escalation of armed conflict would destroy
the functionality of national sociopolitical institutions in many regions of the world. Besides mass emigration of
displaced citizens, other geopolitical consequences are difficult to predict. Rising seas, more severe weather events and increasing
temperatures might drive those from densely populated coastal regions inland, increasing competition for resources, social tension and, in some cases, the
likelihood of famine. Some nations will disappear (e.g. the Maldives) while others may be relatively untouched (e.g. New Zealand). Global
supply chains
could easily be disrupted and trade impaired, with the overhang of debt and defaults causing financial
market disruption and global GDP to stagnate or turn negative. Public policy initiatives will be
constrained by past excesses. Unmet expectations of citizens in the developed world will probably amplify idiosyncratic social and
political instability. What if nations or terrorist groups turn to the use of weapons of mass destruction to achieve their objectives?
Perhaps there will be nations welcoming the Human Foundation early in the course of collapse, willing to alter their institutions, public policies and legal structures
to accommodate the foundation’s vision. All these possibilities must be monitored and factored into the Human Foundation’s plans for when, where and how to
initiate the first stages of its plan for establishing the next civilization. Researchers at the Human Foundation will need to engage in continuous scenario analysis and
planning. The precise nature of Western civilization’s collapse is unknowable, while the nature and extent of ongoing environmental damage, with its impact on
regional habitability, a further unknown. The key will be to design a robust, adaptable plan within a wide range of hypothetical scenarios as the changing state of the
world is revealed during the final phases of collapse and decay. 5. Next steps on humanities’ journey All so far is premised on the assumption that western
civilization it in decline. To many it certainly doesn’t feel like this is happening: “…people are carrying on as usual, shopping for their next holiday or posing on social
media” (Spinny, 2018). There are two relatively recent developments at work, each having played a role in temporarily counteracting degeneration, sustaining the
stage of senescence. First, the global financial system shifted from a debit to a credit basis in the early 1970s. This has permitted an historic increase of debts
relative to assets. Debt is essentially borrowing against future income, boosting growth and consumption
temporarily in the current region of time. At some point the bills from the past must be repaid, shifting
decline onto an accelerated path in a shorter period than would have otherwise occurred. The Covid-19 epidemic has quickly
revealed the fragility of this credit expansion cycle. Twenty-five central banks had announced quantitative
easing initiatives by mid-April 2020 to mitigate the economic harm inflicted by viral suppression policies. Further, governments
around the world had announced a total of $8 trillion in additional fiscal spending to soften the blow.
These efforts entail pumping liquidity into markets through central bank purchases of various private and
public financial instruments. The net effect is to transfer more of the accelerating debt burden from the
private to public sectors. Along with this, some predict that the United States may run annual fiscal deficits in both 2020 and 2021 of over 3 trillion dollars,
at a rate that may approach 18 % of GDP. This begs the question as to the limitations of this approach to economic

stabilization. BCA Research, the organization that coined the term “debt super-cycle” back in the 1970s to describe this phenomenon, has declared that the
end of the super-cycle began in 2014 and is currently accelerating, ushering in a dangerous period of
insidious developments that will fundamentally alter the global economy and civilization as we know it
(MarketWatch, 2020).

No impact to automation.
Nathan Leys 18, Yale JD candidate, Autonomous Weapon Systems and International Crises,” Strategic
Studies Quarterly, Spring, JSTOR
In this case, the United States would prefer not to launch military action against Russia. Regardless of
the veracity of Russia’s claim of an accidental firing, the United States could call for a diplomatic
resolution short of kinetic force (e.g. international inspections of the system, a withdrawal of air defense
batteries in the area, etc.). Autonomy could afford the United States an off-ramp by
providing a plausible cover: the potentially accidental nature of the violation of an ally’s
sovereignty means a military response is neither legally required nor morally warranted. In
short, AWS could provide a face-saving alternative for leaders trying to de-escalate a crisis.
The technical complexities of AI-enabled weapons and the possibility of malfunction add a new layer of
fog to war. It may not be possible in such situations to determine whether an AWS malfunctioned or
a redline was crossed—more importantly, it may not matter. AWS operating in conditions of
uncertainty make it possible for a first shot to be fired, even if no person fires it. In an interesting twist
on the debate about whom to hold responsible in the event of an AWS’s malfunction, the most life-
saving answer in a crisis may be no one: If there is no one to blame, there is no one to bomb.63 On the
other hand, national leaders may well hold the owners of the AWS system responsible regardless
whether an attack was accidental. In this case, retaliation might seem desirable to maintain credibility.
 1NC---Payments
Interdependence and deterrence check currency wars.
Thompson 17 – Timothy Heath, a senior international defense research analyst at the RAND
Corporation. William R. Thompson, Political Science Professor at Indiana University. [U.S.-China Tensions
Are Unlikely to Lead to War, https://www.rand.org/blog/2017/05/us-china-tensions-are-unlikely-to-
lead-to-war.html]
Graham Allison's April 12 article, “How America and China Could Stumble to War,” explores how misperceptions and bureaucratic dysfunction
could accelerate a militarized crisis involving the United States and China into an unwanted war. However, the article fails to persuade because
it neglects the key political and geostrategic conditions that make war plausible in the first place. Without those conditions in place, the risk
that a crisis could accidentally escalate into war becomes far lower. The U.S.-China relationship today may be trending towards greater tension,
but the relative
stability and overall low level of hostility make the prospect of an accidental escalation to war
extremely unlikely.
In a series of scenarios centered around the South China Sea, Taiwan and the East China Sea, Allison explored how well-established flashpoints
involving China and the United States and its allies could spiral into unwanted war. Allison’s article argues that given the context of strategic
rivalry between a rising power and a status-quo power, organizational and bureaucratic misjudgments increase the likelihood of unintended
escalation. According to Allison, “the underlying stress created by China’s disruptive rise creates conditions in which accidental, otherwise
inconsequential events could trigger a large-scale conflict.” This argument appears persuasive on its surface, in no small part because it evokes
insights from some of Allison’s groundbreaking work on the organizational pathologies that made the Cuban Missile Crisis so dangerous.

However, Allison ultimately fails to persuade because he fails to specify the political and strategic conditions that make war plausible in the first
place. Allison’s analysis implies that the United States and China are in a situation analogous to that of the Soviet Union and the United States in
the early 1960s. In the Cold War example, the two countries faced each other on a near-war footing and engaged in a bitter geostrategic and
ideological struggle for supremacy. The two countries experienced a series of militarized crises and fought each other repeatedly through proxy
wars. It was this broader context that made issues of misjudgment so dangerous in a crisis.

By contrast, the U.S.-China relationship today operates at a much lower level of hostility and threat. China and the United States may be
experiencing an increase in tensions, but the two countries remain far from the bitter, acrimonious rivalry that defined the U.S.-Soviet
relationship in the early 1960s. Neither Washington nor Beijing regards the other as its principal enemy. Today’s
rivals may view each other warily as competitors and threats on some issues, but they also view each other as important trade partners and
partners on some shared concerns, such as North Korea, as the recent summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi
Jinping illustrated. The behavior of their respective militaries underscores the relatively restrained rivalry. The military competition between
China and the United States may be growing, but it operates at a far lower level of intensity than the relentless arms racing that typified the
U.S.-Soviet standoff. And unlike their Cold War counterparts, U.S. and Chinese militaries are not postured to fight each
other in major wars. Moreover, polls show that the people of the two countries regard each other with mixed views—a considerable
contrast from the hostile sentiment expressed by the U.S. and Soviet publics for each other. Lacking both preparations for major
war and a constituency for conflict, leaders and bureaucracies in both countries have less incentive to misjudge
crisis situations in favor of unwarranted escalation.

To the contrary, political

leaders and bureaucracies currently face a strong incentive to find ways of defusing crises in
a manner that avoids unwanted escalation. This inclination manifested itself in the EP-3 airplane collision off Hainan Island in 2001, and
in subsequent incidents involving U.S. and Chinese ships and aircraft, such as the harassment of the USNS Impeccable in 2009. This does not
mean that there is no risk, however. Indeed, the potential for a dangerous militarized crisis may be growing. Moreover, key political and
geostrategic developments could shift the incentives for leaders in favor of more escalatory options in a crisis and thereby make Allison’s
scenarios more plausible. Past precedents offer some insight into the types of developments that would most likely propel the U.S.-China
relationship into a hostile, competitive one featuring an elevated risk of conflict.

The most important driver, as Allison recognizes, would be a growing parity between China and the United States as economic, technological
and geostrategic leaders of the international system. The United States and China feature an increasing parity in the size of their economies,
but the United States retains a considerable lead in virtually every other dimension of national power. The
current U.S.-China rivalry is a regional one centered on the Asia-Pacific region, but it retains the considerable potential of escalating into a
global, systemic competition down the road. A second important driver would be the mobilization of public opinion behind the view that the
other country is a primary source of threat, thereby providing a stronger constituency for escalatory policies. A related development would be
the formal designation by leaders in both capitals of the other country as a primary hostile threat and likely foe. These developments would
most likely be fueled by a growing array of intractable disputes, and further accelerated by a serious militarized crisis. The cumulative effect
would be the exacerbation of an antagonistic competitive rivalry, repeated and volatile militarized crisis, and heightened risk that any flashpoint
could escalate rapidly to war—a relationship that would resemble the U.S.-Soviet relationship in the early 1960s.

Yet even if the relationship evolved towards a more hostile form of rivalry, unique features of the contemporary world suggest lessons drawn
from the past may have limited applicability. Economic interdependence in the twenty-first century is much different and far more
complex than in it was in the past. So is the lethality of weaponry available to the major powers. In the sixteenth century, armies fought with
pikes, swords and primitive guns. In the twenty-first century, it is possible to eliminate all life on the planet in a full-bore nuclear
exchange. These features likely affect the willingness of leaders to escalate in a crisis in a manner far differently than in
past rivalries.

More broadly, Allison’s analysis about the “Thucydides Trap” may be criticized for exaggerating the risks of war. In his claims to identify a high
propensity for war between “rising” and “ruling” countries, he fails to clarify those terms, and does not distinguish the more dangerous from
the less volatile types of rivalries. Contests for supremacy over land regions, for example, have historically proven the
most conflict-prone, while competition for supremacy over maritime regions has, by contrast, tended to be
less lethal. Rivalries also wax and wane over time, with varying levels of risks of war. A more careful review of rivalries and their variety,
duration and patterns of interaction suggests that although most wars involve rivalries, many rivals avoid going to war.

Smart contracts fail---bugs, no dispute mechanism, no contingency planning

Mik 17 (Eliza Mik, Ph.D. in Law from the University of Sydney; “Smart contracts: terminology, technical
limitations and real world complexity;” Law, Innovation and Technology, Vol. 9, 2017, No. 2, Taylor &
Francis, ; Go Green!)
An associated concept is that of ‘tamper-proof’ enforcement, which means that the smart contract
cannot be stopped or modified.37 A tamper-proof smart contract continues to operate irrespective of
external events until its pre-set expiration date. Tamper-proof self-enforcement concerns not only
performance but also other contractual decisions, eg whether to terminate the contract in the event of
breach or whether to enforce collateral in the event of non-payment. Although the idea of technically
guaranteed perfect performance is appealing, smart contracts that are both ‘self-enforcing’ and
‘tamper-proof’ create a cascade of problems.
First, if contractual performance is relegated to code, it becomes paramount to ensure that such code
contains no errors. It must be remembered that in many contexts, smart contracts are not synonymous
with simple blockchain transactions but may involve code running on top of a blockchain. In such
instance, the code of the smart contract would be neither incorruptible nor secure. If, however, self-
enforcement is to guarantee performance and if neither subsequent human intervention nor a
modification of the smart contract are possible then, logically, its code must be perfect. It
is, however, practically impossible to ensure an absence of coding errors (‘bugs’)
because, statistically, each computer program contains such. Perfect performance, implicit in the
concept of self-enforcement, may thus be impossible to guarantee. Tamper-proof self-enforcing smart
contracts may ‘shield’ the transaction from the vagaries of human discretion but they introduce the risk
of performance being affected by coding errors.38 An interesting result follows: as neither party can
interfere with the operation of the smart contract, breach is technically impossible – at least if breach is
associated with an event that is somehow attributable to or within the control of the parties. The smart
contract may, however, execute incorrectly due to a coding error. In such instance, it seems more
appropriate to speak of a malfunction than of breach. Given the practical difficulty of preventing such
malfunctions, it may be necessary to allocate the risk of their occurrence by prior agreement. Multiple
risk allocation scenarios are possible, depending on whether the coding error can be attributed to one of
the contracting parties or to a third party. In sum, as the possibility of computer errors affecting the
manner in which the smart contract operates, cannot be eliminated, it is impossible to claim that self-
enforcement guarantees perfect performance.
Second, it is necessary to ensure that the smart contract self-enforces as intended or as promised, ie
that the code correctly reflects the parties’ agreement. There may,
however, be discrepancies between the original agreement and its implementation, as
reflected in the code of smart contract. If the parties used a smart contract created by a third party,
there may also be a discrepancy between what the parties were told the smart contract would do and
what it actually does. Whoever writes the smart contract may fail to correctly reflect the parties’ original
intent, be it due to a misunderstanding of the underlying agreement or specification (see below) or as a
result of his incompetence or even malice. Whoever makes the smart contract available for use
may incorrectly represent its functionality. If the parties are not programmers themselves, they cannot
verify whether the code accurately reflects their intentions or whether it will do what it was promised to
do. The point is not that the parties may not be able to verify the smart contract (as they can hire a
specialist to do so) but that it might be difficult to establish what takes precedence in the event the
actual code of the smart contract does not match the agreement it purportedly embodies. The problem
is particularly acute given the increasing security concerns surrounding smart contracts.39
Third, a tamper-proof smart contract requires that all possible events that may occur during its
lifetime and affect its operation be anticipated. If a smart contract is to operate over a period of time, no
decisions about its performance can be left to humans and every aspect of its operation must be
encoded upfront. The benefits of self-enforcement would be lost if it was possible
or necessary to revise its code to accommodate future events. It is, however, practically impossible to
create an exhaustive list of events that could affect the operation of a smart contract. A tamper-proof
self-enforcing smart contract would continue to operate irrespective of such events, which could lead to
a situation where it became commercially absurd or even illegal. On a broader level, technical writings
fail to appreciate that contractual relationships are usually flexible and dynamic – even in those
instances when they are based on fixed legal language recorded in formal documents. In traditional
contracts, it is common to amend certain provisions to adapt to external circumstances, such as changes
in the regulatory or commercial landscape. It is also common to tolerate certain deviations from the
agreed performance without formally amending the contract. It could thus be argued that smart
contracts are rigid and can become easily disconnected from the transactional reality in which they
operate because no such adjustments are technically possible. Moreover, in traditional contracts, both
parties retain the ability to decide whether to fulfil their obligations and whether to exercise their
rights.40 Such decisions are often made long after the contract has been formed as there may be a
significant time-lag between the creation and the performance of the contract. If, however, deviations
from performance are technically impossible and if all rights are exercised automatically, the parties lose
the ability to adjust to changed circumstances.41 To elaborate: in traditional contracts, each party can
decide not to perform her obligations. Deliberate non-performance may be frowned upon but is not
illegal or prohibited. Quite the opposite. Legal and economic theory expressly recognise the concept of
efficient breach: a party is allowed to breach a contract and pay damages, if doing so
is more economically efficient than performance.42 Choosing not to deliver the goods because another
buyer is willing to pay a higher price optimises resource allocation and is legally permissible – as long as
the contract breaker compensates the aggrieved party for her loss. Being deprived of the option not to
perform is thus less commercially attractive and legally ‘dangerous’ than commonly assumed. Self-
enforcement may also have drawbacks for the aggrieved party. In the event of breach, the latter can
decide whether (and how) to exercise her rights. In principle, she has the right to claim damages for the
resulting loss (if any) and, on occasion, the right to terminate the contract. Whether this right is
exercised constitutes a fact-specific commercial decision. If, however, the entire contractual relationship
is locked into immutable code, termination occurs automatically and the aggrieved party is deprived of
the option not to exercise [their] her rights.43 It can also be assumed that in practice contractual
performance is rarely perfect and that some breaches are deliberately ignored, be it due to
their commercial insignificance or to preserve an otherwise beneficial relationship. In tamper-
proof self-enforcing transactions, these possibilities disappear: imperfect performance leads to
termination or other predetermined result. In sum: self-enforcement may deprive contractual
relationships of their adaptability and preclude the parties from adjusting their legal and commercial
positions in response to changed circumstances.44