Aff Economics K 2 - Michigan7 2013

ECONOMICS
GOOD
FINANCIAL ECONOMICS

Financial economics are empirically correcteven weaker models work with
economic rationality
Cowen 01 (Tyler, Department of Economics George Mason University, How Do
Economists Think About Rationality?;
http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/Tyler/rationality.pdf, [JJ])

Financial economics has one of the most extreme methods in economic theory, and increasingly
one of the most prestigious . Finance concerns the pricing of market securities, the determinants of market returns,
the operating of trading systems, the valuation of corporations, and the financial policies of corporations, among other topics.
Specialists in finance can command very high salaries in the private sector and have helped design many financial markets and
instruments. To many economists, this ability to "meet a market test" suggests that financial economists are doing
something right . Depending on one's interpretation, the theory of finance makes either minimal or extreme
assumptions about rationality. Let us consider the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH), which holds the status of a central core for
finance, though without commanding universal assent. Like most economic claims, EMH comes in many forms, some weaker,
others stronger. The weaker versions typically claim that deliberate stock picking does not on average outperform selecting stocks
randomly, such as by throwing darts at the financial page. The market already incorporates information about
the value of companies into the stock prices, and no one individual can beat this information,
other than by random luck, or perhaps by outright insider trading. Note that the weak version of
EMH requires few assumptions about rationality. Many market participants may be grossly irrational or
systematically biased in a variety of ways. It must be the case, however, that their irrationalities are unpredictable to the remaining
rational investors. If the irrationalities were predictable, rational investors could make systematic extra-normal profits with some
trading rule. The data, however, suggest that it is very hard for rational investors to outperform the market averages. This suggests
that extant irrationalities are either very small, or very hard to predict, two verydifferent conclusions. The commitment that one of
these conclusions must be true does not involve much of a substantive position on the rationality front.

TEXBOOK ECONOMICS

Textbook economics work best-solve economic problems
Jacobides and Winter 10 (Michael G Jacobides London Business School
mjacobides@london.edu Sidney G Winter The Wharton School, U of Penn
winter@wharton.upenn.edu; June 2010; UNDERSTANDING CAPABILITIES: STRUCTURE,
AGENCY AND EVOLUTION;
http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=501809&cf=43, [JJ])

An important theoretical question posed by such examples is whether they are usefully thought of As manifestations of economic
rationality. They certainly do involve agency or intentionality. They certainly draw on the energy of pecuniary motivation,
otherwise known as profit seeking. Although these attributes would suffice for many people to establish the affirmative answer
on economic rationality, there is a need for caution here. The formal rationality that is expounded in the
textbooks and explored in the research efforts of many disciplines is essentially a story about
getting the right answer to a given, sharply defined problem. In contexts where the
actors specific objectives might be unknown (e.g., attitudes toward risk might be unknown,
even if the profit seeking motive can safely be assumed), it basically becomes a story about the
internal consistency of the different answers to a hypothetical set of related problems. Discard that
consistency meaning, fundamentally, the transitivity relation on preferences and you throw away rationality itself, as it is
defined in economics and in other fields devoted to the practice of rational actor theorizing.

LENS
They have it backwards a strong economy is a perquisite to security the
capitalist system is key national influence
Zarate 12 senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes (Juan C. Zarate, 5 January 2012, Needed: A national economic security lens, CBS News,
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-215_162-57353278/needed-a-national-economic-security-lens/)//KP
The United States is unprepared to play this new geo-economic game. Our current approach to economic security abroad
reflects a reticence to meld political and economic interests, something Secretary of State Clinton has begun to
highlight. This underscores a long-standing structural divide between national security policies and
the role of the U.S. private sector in the international commercial and financial system. The most
egregious examples are in Iraq and Afghanistan. American blood and treasure have been spent to establish security and functioning economies, but
American companies and interests are often left on the sidelines as Chinese, Russian, and other
countries' companies profit from oil, mineral, and other sectors. U.S. economic reach and influence has
been taken for granted as a function of the free trade paradigm that the United States helped
establish and the competitive advantages of U.S. companies against foreign competitors. This
is now in jeopardy , with not only economic advantage but international influence at risk. As the Venn diagram of economic and
national security overlaps ever more exactly, the United States should craft a deliberate strategy that aligns
economic strength with national security interests. Needed: National economic security lens The intelligence community
should prioritize collection and analysis to focus on the global landscape through this national economic security lens. Our homeland security
enterprise should be focused less on defending against specific actors and more principally on protecting and building redundancies in the key
infrastructure and digital systems essential for national survival. Law enforcement and regulators should have access to beneficial ownership
information for investments and companies formed in the United States. International alliances should be recast to ensure key resource and supply
redundancy, while trade deals should be crafted to create new opportunities for influence and
economic advantage. The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord endorsed by President Obama is a major step in the right
direction. We should reconsider doctrines of deterrence - to account for the challenges of attribution in cyberspace as well as the opportunities of
entanglement in a globalized environment that would make it patently unwise for countries to try to weaken the United States. We should view
the relationship between government agencies - like the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and US AID - and the
private sector as core to the promotion of U.S. interests, creating alliances based not just on trade and development but
on shared economic vulnerabilities and opportunities. In doing this, we must reaffirm our core principles. We are neither
China nor Russia, nor should we create structures that move us toward a state authoritarian
model. On the contrary, we should remain the vanguard of the global free trade, capitalist
system, while preserving the independence of the private sector and promoting ethical
American business practices. We should not retreat from the globalized environment we helped
shape but instead take full advantage of the innovation and international appeal and reach of
American business and technology. In the 21st century, economic security underpins the
nation's ability to project its power and influence. The United States must remain true to
its values but start playing a new, deliberate game of geo-economics to ensure its security and
take advantage of rapidly emerging vulnerabilities and opportunities.
US ECON
Collapsing economic order breads conflict not the other way around
Shuman and Harvey 93 Director of the Institute for Policy Studies; founder and President of the Energy Foundation
(Michael H. Shuman; Hal Harvey, October 1993, Security Without War: A Post-Cold War Foreign Policy, Westview Press)//KP
U.S. security planners understood at the beginning of the Cold War that sound economic policies could
prevent war. They remembered Versailles, where a $33 billion reparations bill was imposed on Germany after World War I and brought to
power a popular demagogue who promised to repudiate these humiliating debts Adolf Hitler. John Maynard Keynes resigned in protest from the
British negotiating team at Versailles presciently predicting that [b]y aiming at the destruction of the economic life of Germany, [the Treaty] threatens
the health and prosperity of the Allies themselves. U.S. security planners were determined not to make the same mistake after World War II.
Through the stewardship of General Douglas MacArthur and the generosity of the Marshall Plan, the United States
helped rebuild the economies of Japan and Western Europe and, in doing so, created a prosperous
economic order. But that order was built upon the global primacy of the U.S. economy. Today, Pax
Americana is breaking down, and the absence of a new economic order to replace the old one is causing
resentment, conflict, and disorder. Outraged by Tokyos restrictions on imports of U.S. auto parts, computers, and rice, Americans
have demanded retaliatory trade barriers and demolished Japanese cars with sledgehammers. The crushing burden of foreign debt is destabilizing
young democratic governments in Latin America. The lure of quick profit is drawing thousands of companies into the arms trade and sowing the seeds
for new conflicts. U.S. security planners must now examine all these connections between economics and war, and devise new
policies at home and abroad that increase the chances for peace. Todays economic order must be
strengthened with a package of debt relief for the Third World, a corporate code of conduct, a regime of fair trade, and a
new approach to development assistance. And economic conversion of arms factories and military institutions must move
forward on a planetary scale.

ECONOMIC RATIONALITY
BAD
1NC

Economic rationality cant be applied to human behavior or the political realm-
false presumptions
Kaplan 08 (Jonathan Kaplan, Associate Professor at Oregon State University, Philosophy of
Biology, Philosophy of Science and Political Philosophy; Economic Rationality and Explaining
Human Behavior: An Adaptationist Program?; THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES, VOLUME 3, NUMBER 7, 2008,
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~kaplanj/Econ&Adapt.pdf,[JJ])

The application of economic models to human behavior in non-market arenas (and indeed, to individual
decision-making in some markets) has long been criticized for both the assumptions these applications make about the
causes of human behaviors and for the methodologies employedinthe models attempts to explain human
behaviors.Varoufakis, for example, has criticized these applications of economic rationality on the grounds
that consistency between the explanation given by economic rationality and actual behaviors
should not count as good grounds for assuming that those explanations are correct (1998); Rosenberg(1979)suggests a similar
criticism, noting that the consistency between a formal theory and a particular data set is not evidence for the theorys explanatory
power if the theory was designed to fit that data set. Dupr has criticized these attempts to explain human
behavior for their focus on individual behaviors and acts, as well as for the way in which any
predictions that fail to be supported by empirical research can be (and often are) explained
away by changing the assumptions made about, for example, the preferences and beliefs of the
actors (1987, 1998a). Sen has criticized the use of rational choice theory for both its assumption that
a single utility function even could guide choices in many different arenas (1977) and for
depending upon the idea that individual actions can be considered apart from the broader
contexts in which they occur (1997). Green and Shapiro have argued that the application of rational
choice theory to the political realm has been broadly unsuccessful , claiming (in
part) that the reason these applications have been unsuccessful is that the explanations for
behaviors are created posthoc; they complain that it is assumed that actions are guided by rational
choice, and the preference and reasoning required to fit the action to the model are then derived (1994, see also Shapiro 2000
for a popular account of this critique which extends it to other domains). Taken together, these and similar sorts of
critiques (which, of course, have themselves been attacked by supporters of economic rationality) point towards a
number of questionable assumptions made and methodological practices employed when
economic rationality is used in attempts to explain human behaviors. Critics accuse practitioners of
making (at least) the following assumptions about human behaviors: 1. Human activities can be usefully considered to be
assemblages of separate actions; these individual actions can be usefully considered to have been undertaken more or less
independently of each other; 2. Human rationality is powerful enough, and the constraints on its action
limited enough, that these actions can be assumed to be the result of agents rationally aiming
towards some end; that is,it can be assumed thatthe actions are utilitymaximizing for the agent. Critics further accuse
attempts at using economic rationality to explain human behaviors of employing the following
questionable methodologicalpractices: 1. Consistency between an observed action (or pattern of actions) and a
particular story which accounts for its rationality with respect to the agents preferences, beliefs, and goals is considered to be
sufficient for accepting (at least preliminarily) the hypothesis that the behavior in question is in fact the result of a rational
decision (whether conscious or unconscious). 2. Any failure of a particular story about the rationality of a
particular behavior (an observed in consistency) leads immediately to the search for another account of
the behavior which makes it out to be (economically) rational (rather than anexplorationof alternate accountsof
thebehavior in question); 3. Any failure of a particular action to be optimal from the standpoint of the agents local preferences and
utility is accounted for by evoking trade-offs with other preferences; these claimed preferences are rarely subject to rigorous
testing. These assumptions and methodological practices resemble the assumptions and methodological practicesthatGould
andLewontin criticized as constituting the adaptationist program in their classic The Spandrels of San Marco and Panglossian
Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme (see Box 1).This should not, in one sense, be surprising; both
adaptationism and the above interpretation of economic rationality in microeconomic theoryrely on extremal principles that
is, in each case it is assumed that there is some (one) thing that is being maximized by the system
described by that theory (see Rosenberg 1979). Adaptationists assumed that natural selection worked on the phenotypes
of members of populations to maximize fitness, and that other influences on the average phenotypes of
thepopulationsinquestionwerenegligible;similarly, microeconomic theory supposes that people aim to maximize the satisfaction of
their preferences (their utility) and that other influences on their actions are negligible. In the case of microeconomic
practice, the style of reasoning that these assumptions and methodological practices generate
are most stark in works which attempt to apply rational choice theory to arenas of human
behavior that are not traditionally thought of as market-oriented.However, these same assumptions
and methodological practices can be seen used in more traditional accounts of market
behavior, such as those found in basic text books in microeconomics, as well. Again, there is a striking
parallel to adaptationist reasoning here.Adaptationism first came under sustained attack when its techniques were applied to human
behaviors (see Pigliucci and Kaplan 2000, Lewontin 1979), but recognitionof theproblematicnatureof the adaptationist
assumptionsinthese less-traditional cases(human behaviors) led to the realization that those assumptionswerewide-spread and too
often ill-defended in more traditional cases(ordinary phenotypic traits). While the application of assumptions and techniques of
economic rationality to human behaviors in nonmarket arenas has been controversial,the application of these assumptionsto
traditional market arenas has generally not been. However, as will become clear below, the problematic nature of the assumptions
in non-market arenashasbeguntoinspire the re-evaluation of the models even in more traditional market arenas turning first
towards the kinds of assumptions that appear in traditional microeconomic texts, the introduction ofKrebssA Course in
Microeconomic Theory (1990) states that the actor chooses from some specified set of options, selecting the option that
maximizessomeobjective function, thatis,that consumers have preferences that are represented by a utility function, and they
choose in a way that maximizestheirutilitysubjecttoabudget constraint (Krebs 1990 4, emphasis in original).

GOOD
2AC
Economic rationality is the best way to evaluate peoples decisionstheir cards still
assume rationality at its simplest forms
Montero 13 - DPhil, University of Oxford (Tiago Montero, Starlings uphold principles of
economic rationality for delay and probability of reward, February 8, 2013,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23390098, JL)

We argue that rationality principles, understood as the demand for logical consistency in preferences,
should remain an integral and indispensable feature of predictive theoretical
models of behaviour both because they support the logic of the models and because our data
show that they do hold in the demanding tests we describe. This can be expanded to assert that, for a given state of a
decisionmaker and its environment, predictive models can safely include the assumption that
choices will display properties such as transitivity. If either the subjects or their environments are not held constant, then
rationality is not being tested. Some recent theoretical contributions consistent with this view have not made this defence of
rationality explicit. For instance, it has been shown that intransitivity in preference between food sources may
be adaptive if the subject is driven by the experimental procedure to infer differences in the state of the world
when presented with different choices [31,35]. However, such differences in preferences still express rationality
(i.e. transitivity) in terms of the subjects maximand (i.e. Darwinian fitness) and are in fact expressions of state-
dependent rationality once the information driving the agents behaviour is included, as it should, in the description of its state. In
our view, reports that both human and non-human decision-makers systematically breach rationality
principles ([1,2,18], but see also [20] for an alternative view) should not promote the demise of Homo economicus or non-human
equivalents, but be instead used to explore and illustrate how the rationality/optimality approach
used by both theoretical economists and behavioural ecologists applies to real-life agents. In a
parametric series of quantitative tests, we corroborated that the behaviour of captive starlings actually does fit the demands of well-
established economic rationality principles [9,12]. Starlings choices between multiple options differing in either delay to or
probability of a food reward complied with strong stochastic transitivity and with the principle of independence from irrelevant
alternatives, regardless of the added options richness relative to a target option pair. We did not use alternatives differing in more
than one dimension simultaneously. Such tests are complicated because the scaling of utility (or preference) to physical dimensions
probably includes nonlinearities when different properties are traded against each other [1,3,6,18,32]. Demonstrations of full
rationality in unidimensional choices such as those shown here and results obtained in transitive inference experiments across
multiple species that are consistent with these results [4248] suggest that rational choice, rather than its opposites, is widespread,
and should be the foundation from which to interpret observations of logically inconsistent behaviour. Our view is that most
reports of apparent violations of logical decision principles in non-human studies result from
failing to follow preconditions for their validity, such as constancy of the agents physiological or
informational state, or lack of satiety effects from the commodity [10,27,2931,35,36]. Variations in preference following
variations in subjects energetic reserves, or when the testing conditions allow subjects to infer differences in their circumstances,
are perfectly consistent with evolutionarily normative, rationality-based theoriesas is clear from
Houston et al. [31] and Houston [26]. This matters because if it were convincingly shown that when necessary conditions are
controlled, logical principles do not apply to decision processes, the foundation of normative modelling in behavioural biology would
melt away. This is relevant to decision-making across multiple taxa, including humans, and
highlights the value of integrating decision research across economics, psychology and biology.

Critiques of rationality fail humans economize and are rational even if their
psychological motives arent economic rationality is distinct and can be observed
Foldvary 1/21/13 lecturer in economics at Santa Clara University California, research fellow at The Independent
Institute, commentator and senior editor for The Progress Report, and associate editor of Econ Journal Watch (Fred E. Foldvary, 21
January 2013, Economic Rationality, The Progress Report, http://www.progress.org/2013/fold804.htm)//KP
The concept of rational action is a frontier of economic theory. The new field of behavioral
economics combines economics and psychology to analyze actions that seem to be irrational. For
example, people value health and long life, yet they smoke and eat unhealthy food. A related field, behavioral finance, examines
psychological and emotional traits that prevent people from making wise investments. Perverse
psychological biases include anchoring to past prices and facts, the bias of weighing recent events too highly relative to the more distant past, being
overly confident in ones abilities, and following the herd to a cliff. Neoclassical economics often assumes that people are purely self-interested and
always seek financial gain, and that therefore altruism is irrational, whereas as Adam Smith and Henry George wrote, human beings have two
motivations: self interest and sympathy for others. Since people get satisfaction from serving others, it is incorrect to label altruism or actions based on
subjective views of justice as irrational. The Austrian school of economic thought has a different perspective on rationality. The Austrian economist
Ludwig von Mises envisioned human action as inherently rational. A person has unlimited desires
and scarce resources. Human beings economize, seeking maximum benefits for a given cost, or
minimizing costs for a given benefit. At any moment in time, a person ranks his goals, ranging from most to least important. He
chooses the resources to achieve the most important goal at some moment, then the second most, and so on, until his gains from trade have become
exhausted. This is the inherent rationality of human action. The process of satisfying ones ends involves exchange,
trades with others as well as trade-offs among ones own resources. For example, if your goal is to eat delicious food, you trade the
money you value less highly for food you value more highly. Economizing man seeks to maximize the utility, i.e. the importance and satisfaction gained,
from ones resources. Note that economic rationality involves means rather than ends or goals. If a person chooses to
drink so much vodka that he gets drunk and then gets sick, there was a reason for doing so, and at that time, he believed that this would maximize his
utility. Utility theory does not pass judgment on peoples goals. Utility theory analyzes the means to an end, whatever
that end may be. The man who gets drunk may later regret his action, but rationality has to be based on human action at the moment it occurs. At that
moment, his knowledge, emotions, and desires lead him to make a particular choice. At a later moment, he may have different knowledge, emotions,
and desires -- too bad, because we cant go back in time. The action was utility maximizing at that time, even if it turns out to be bad in the future.
Rationality in economics is different from rationality in psychology . A psychologist may judge
getting drunk as an irrational desire, but an Austrian-school economist recognizes that values are purely subjective, and he takes any
particular desire as just data, and economic rationality does not apply to data. Economic rationality has three criteria: 1. A
rational person has a sound functioning mind. He generally observes and understands reality. We all have
incomplete knowledge, and many people hold false beliefs, and rational people may have differing
interpretations of observations. But people substantially out of touch with reality, such as due to drugs or dementia, are beyond the
domain of economic analysis. 2. Rational people economize. Economic theory is based on maximizing benefits and minimizing costs.
Economics does not claim that all people necessarily economize, but if they do not do so, they are not rational, and we send them to the Department of
Psychology to analyze, since economic theory can only analyze rational action. 3. The preferences of rational persons are
consistent. For example, if one prefers an apple to a banana, and a banana to a cantaloupe slice, consistent preference implies that one prefer an
apple to a cantaloupe slice. If not, then that person is irrational, and economists send him to abnormal psychology for analysis, since economic theory
does not apply to inconsistent preferences. Given that meaning of economic rationality, what about the perverse psychological
biases? Overconfidence is consistent with rationality, since the person is not directly observing
what is not there, but interpreting and misjudging his ability as more potent that it turns out to be. A
rational person may believe that a black cat brings bad luck, without any evidence, but the rational person does not see himself surrounded by black
cats which dont exist. We call religious belief a faith because it is not based on verified evidence, but religious people are nevertheless rational.
Merely believing in what is not observed does not imply irrationality. Behavioral economists sometimes use the
term quasi-rationality for action that is objectively sub-optimal, but to an economizing man, the future is always uncertain, knowledge is always
incomplete, and beliefs cannot all be based on personal evidence, so action is quasi-rational only with hindsight, and not at the moment of choice.
Likewise, with recency bias and anchoring, people weigh some facts and events too much, but again,
this is a matter of interpretation rather than direct observation. Suppose somebody buys a financial asset for $50
and the price later falls to $40, and he does not want to sell, because he does not want to experience a loss. In fact, he has already lost $10 per share,
and the optimal financial decision has to ignore what he paid, and focus only on expected future risks and yields, but the person anchored to a past
price is also weighing in the emotional trauma of acknowledging a loss, so he is still rationally maximizing utility even when keeping a share of stock
that is going ever lower. Likewise the smoker is rational in, at the moment of choice, choosing the immediate pleasure (or avoiding the pain of
withdrawing from smoking), over the long-run desire for good health. There are tradeoffs between short-term pleasure
and long-term goals, and choosing the short-term pleasure is not irrational, because ones subjective value at
that time is for the pleasure. Economic psychology has also analyzed the mental process of choice, concluding
that much of what we think of as reasoned choice is really induced by subconscious feelings. Much of what we do is based on habit. But even with
complete determinism, it is still the case that, at every moment in time, a person thinks and feels that he is
weighing costs and benefits to optimize utility, and that state of mind constitutes free will and rational action. Therefore
the claim of behavioral economics and behavioral finance that people do not act
rationally is based on a psychological rather than economic meaning of
rationality. So long as people can generally observe and believe reality, and they economize to
achieve ends, and their preferences are consistent, they are rational, even if they do what they later realize was
foolish. We can well call destructive government policy irrational, but that is a different meaning of
rationality than what applies to a choice made by an individual person. The paradox of humanity
is that our actions are based on reason, and that human action is rational, yet collectively human beings
engage in war, environmental destruction, and economic waste that is inconsistent with the desire of most to live
peaceful, prosperous, happy lives.

Rational models are the best falsifiability and empirical success
Moffatt 11 Assistant Professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business (Mike Moffatt, 4
September 20122, Behavioural Ecnomics and the Rationality Assumption in Economics,
Worthwhile Canadian Imitative,
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2011/09/behavioural-economics-
and-the-rationality-assumption-in-economics.html)//KP

There is a temptation for non-economists to answer any question that puzzles economists by
simply declaring "people are irrational!" "Why are prices so much higher in Canada?" "PEOPLE ARE IRRATIONAL!" "What
explains the equity premium puzzle?" "PEOPLE ARE IRRATIONAL!" etc. There are two reasons why the rationality
assumption is popular in economic modelling: It works an awful lot of the time, in that
it is a good predictor of human behaviour. It provides models which are
falsifiable . I will explain with the use of an example. Suppose consumers are choosing between five options: A,
B, C, D, E. Given what we know about consumer preferences, costs, and benefits, we predict that consumers should always choose A. However, it turns
out only 80% of the time they are choosing A, and 20% of the time they are choosing B. If we assume
consumers are rational, then there must be some cost to choosing A or some benefit to choosing B that we
have not accounted for. We can find candidates for that cost/benefit and test if it makes a
difference. If we believe there's a factor X that is a hidden cost to choosing A, we can compare situations where factor X exists and where it
doesn't. If our theory is correct, we should expect to see consumers choose A when the factor is not in play, but choose B to a much greater degree when
it is in play. This provides the falsifiability we need - we can actually test our theory. We can use a
number of methods - we can run laboratory experiments or we can collect data from real-world
situations where the cost is both present and not present. Contrast this with simply saying
"people are irrational!". There's no insight, plus there is no falsifiability - it "explains"
everything. If we want to introduce non-rational behaviour, we need to be specific and we need
our explanation to be falsifiable. In our A, B, C, D, E example, there could be explanations such as: The number of
options overwhelm consumers, and causes them to make a mistake. One or more of C, D, E is providing some
form of framing effect that makes B appear more attractive than it actually is. If we have a framing effect, replacing one of 'C', 'D'
or 'E' with 'F' should reduce the frequency of people choosing 'B'. If this is not occuring, then we can conclude
that it is not a framing effect. We could then try removing one of 'C', 'D', or 'E' and see what that does to the frequency of people
choosing 'B'. This provides us with the falsifiability we require. We also have discovered not just that
people are irrational, but something about the ways people make a decision. Caveat: I happen to agree with
my former Professor Jeff Smith when he states: Fourth, it irritates me when people equate rational behavior with an assumption of costless information
processing. It seems to me that the correct way to proceed is to incorporate a cognitive budget constraint into the optimization problem. It is hardly
rational to spend huge amounts of costly cognitive resources to solve some problem when a quick, cheap but slightly wrong heuristic is available Our
models should reflect this and, more broadly, we should not treat clearly irrational behavior as the benchmark of rationality. This requires learning a bit
of psychology and/or neuroscience in order to get the budget constraint right. A fair bit of what might be classified as
'irrational' behaviour is simply useful heuristics that occasionally fail. As such, I think the border between
rational behaviour and irrational behaviour is very blurry. When building our models, the distinction between
rational and irrational is irrelevant. What matters is that are models are a good predictor of
human behaviour and they are falsifiable.

Economic rationality works --- its inevitable and key to policymaking
McKenzie 10 (Richard B., Professor Emeritus of Enterprise and Society School of Business
at the University of California, Irvine, Predictably Rational?: In Search of Defenses for Rational
Behavior in Economics, Chapter 9, SpringerLink, Deech)

Nevertheless, there can be a rationality of a sort and an economics of a sort so far as wants
are determined and to the extent that people can and do contemplate the relative merits of
alternative courses of production and consumption. Behavioral psychologists and economists
have more recently documented many imperfections in human rationality, and its derivatives,
decision making, and behaviors (see Chap. 6), but neoclassical economists should neither
consider such findings unexpected nor deny them. Oddly, as will be seen in Chaps. 10 and 11, the
behaviorals findings should even be welcomed as a reason dtre for the economics as a
course of study and method for thinking and deducing insights about real-world human
behavior. The standard defense of perfect rationality in economics is Milton Friedmans
statement: In order to make testable predictions, we must abstract from the real world the
models of behavior. Assuming complex forms of rationality, or just less than perfect rationality,
can complicate thinking with no necessary improvement in the fruitfulness of the theory.
There are four other major lines of defense for continued use of rationality as a theoretical tool
of analysis. First, economics or, for that matter, any other discipline necessarily provides a
partial view of life because of the sheer complexity of life especially, at the sophisticated levels of
modern humans with the great diversity of human motivations and with their enormous
opportunities for self-improvements. Second, in matters of drawing up contracts and
constitutions, an assumption of perfect rationality on the part of people or an assumption of
people leading lives of homo economics can provide institutional protections against some
peoples worst inclinations. Third, the premise of perfect rationality can be productively used
as a means of improving business and consumer decision making. Fourth, because peoples
thinking and rational decision making are less than perfect as well as complex, the premise of
perfect rationality makes economic analysis possible.
POLICYMAKING
Economic rationality is key to effective policymaking
Behavior in Economics, pg. 1-20, SpringerLink, Deech)

Third, rationality is a means by which rules for maximization of utility or profit can be
deduced. Rationality functions as instruction on how people who are, perhaps, innately
inclined to be less than fully or perfectly rational can become more rational; they can make
decisions more efficiently (but not with perfectly efficiency), or can better (not perfectly)
advance their utility and profit interests. Thus, rationality has, in this regard, a strictly
normative intent; it advises people (students, consumers, and business managers and owners)
on what they should do or how they should act in competitive market settings where their
decisions can affect their costs and revenue through time, their market survival, and their assets
long-term value. This function of rationality helps explain why economists spend so much time
laying out the axioms of rationality, and their implications, to their students and why their
lectures and writings take on a tone of advocacy for the adoption of the economic way of
thinking. (If people, including economics students, were as rational as economists assume, there
would be no need for economics instruction, an issue discussed with greater care in Chap. 11).
Fourth, rationality confined to maximization of self-interest narrowly defined (without regard
for the welfare of others) is a means by which institutions and policies can be devised to
promote the general societal welfare, with the intent of protecting people from the others
narrow self-interest-directed behavior. (This is a perspective on rationality developed at greater
length in Chap. 5, drawing on the work of Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan [1985]). For
example, markets grounded on enforced property rights can be seen as institutional settings for
directing the energies of self-interested individuals toward the promotion of societal welfare.
Constraints on governments (the majority decision-making rule, for example) can be used to
protect people generally from the self-interest-directed efforts of political operatives misuse of
government power. Likewise, terms of private contracts can be used to protect people from
others exclusively self-interest-directed, opportunistic behavior.
PREDICTIONS
Economic rationality is critical to effective predictions --- enables good
policymaking

First, rationality permits the conceptualization of precise and unique equilibriums which are a
cornerstone of testable predictions primarily regarding the directional changes (but not their
magnitudes) in market outcomes with the possible intent of recommending policy controls (or
decontrols) of institutional (most often, market) settings. In this regard, rationality allows
economists to do science, with the predictions made about very narrowly defined behavioral
outcomes involving production and consumption decisions about specified goods, not just the
broad outlines of patterns of outcomes within which the content of the patterns is left undefined
or ill-defined. A key issue here in assessing the value of rationality lies with the extent to which
predictions regarding directional changes are confirmed or rejected with empirical evidence,
often requiring sophisticated statistical techniques to be deemed compelling. This use of
rationality leads to strictly positive (or what is) economics, which offers economists
opportunities to comment on the alignment of consequences of specific existing or proposed
policies with their backers professed intentions. Second, the concept of rationality permits
economists to discuss choices as a process by which economic opportunities are exploited in
movements toward equilibrium. A key issue from this perspective is the extent to which group
dynamics, market imperfections, and institutional and policy constraints prevent or encourage
the exploitation of economic opportunities and lead to welfare enhancements or detriments. In
this way, rationality serves to explain how improvements are realized (as in discussions of
trade flows that follow the law of comparative advantage), but can also lead to testable
predictions (for example, the assignment of property rights can boost incomes through improvements in the creation, care, and
maintenance of resources).Third, rationality is a means by which rules for maximization of utility or profit can be deduced.
Rationality functions as instruction on how people who are, perhaps, innately inclined to be less than fully or perfectly rational can
become more rational; they can make decisions more efficiently (but not with perfectly efficiency), or can better (not perfectly)
advance their utility and profit interests. Thus, rationality has, in this regard, a strictly normative intent; it advises people (students,
consumers, and business managers and owners) on what they should do or how they should act in competitive market settings
where their decisions can affect their costs and revenue through time, their market survival, and their assets long-term value. This
function of rationality helps explain why economists spend so much time laying out the axioms of rationality, and their implications,
to their students and why their lectures and writings take on a tone of advocacy for the adoption of the economic way of thinking. (If
people, including economics students, were as rational as economists assume, there would be no need for economics instruction, an
issue discussed with greater care in Chap. 11). Fourth, rationality confined to maximization of self-interest narrowly defined (without
regard for the welfare of others) is a means by which institutions and policies can be devised to promote the general societal welfare,
with the intent of protecting people from the others narrow self-interest-directed behavior. (This is a perspective on rationality
developed at greater length in Chap. 5, drawing on the work of Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan [1985]). For example,
markets grounded on enforced property rights can be seen as institutional settings for directing the energies of self-interested
individuals toward the promotion of societal welfare. Constraints on governments (the majority decision-making rule, for example)
can be used to protect people generally from the self-interest-directed efforts of political operatives misuse of government power.
Likewise, terms of private contracts can be used to protect people from others exclusively self-interest-directed, opportunistic
behavior.
Fifth, rationality can be used for deducing what Friedrich Hayek (1967, pp. 1718) characterized
as patterns of outcomes or ranges of possibilities within which the detailed content
(for example, the exact goods consumed) would not and, for that matter, could not be known:
Although such theories do not tell us precisely what to expect, it will still make the world
around us a more familiar world in which we can move with greater confidence, that we will
not be disappointed because we can at least exclude certain eventualities. It makes it a more
orderly world in which events make sense because we can say in general terms how they hang
together or are able to form a coherent picture of them (Hayek, 1967, p. 18). The details of the
content of these patterns are unknown because economic values have subjective foundations
and because outcomes must emerge from a multitude of people interacting in ways that can be
known only to the people doing the interacting who themselves do not always know what they
want until they see how others are acting and responding to the interactions. Besides, economic
actors do not seek to maximize the goods bought and sold in market places, which can have
objective, measurable dimensions, but rather, the more elusive and subjective ends, subjectively
evaluated goals that require goods as inputs.
And --- even if we dont win humans are rational, treating them like they are
enables effective predictions

Friedman seems comfortable with the assumption of given and fixed wants on several grounds,
two of which can be mentioned briefly here (a longer treatment of Friedmans defense of
conventional neoclassical methodology will be reserved for Chap. 9). First, Friedman believes in
the benefits of disciplinary specialization, with economists being narrowly concerned with and
achieving disciplinary research economies from limiting their analytical efforts to tracing out
the consequences of any given sets of wants, along with the consequences of changes in
external, environmental constraints on choices, principally changes in the prices and costs of the
goods, as well as changes in peoples incomes and wealth (1962, p. 13). Never mind if people are
not as fully or perfectly rational as economists assume. Friedman posits, as a matter of scientific
necessity, that the legitimacy of and justification for this abstraction (that people maximize or
act fully rationally) must rest ultimately, as with any other abstraction, on the light shed and
the power to predict what is yielded by the abstraction (1962, p. 13). While hardly matching
Stiglers and Beckers enthusiasm for human rationality, Friedmans view of economic science
exhibits an element of an irrational passion for dispassionate rationality, at least partially
because he does not consider analytically internal, evolutionary or neurobiological constraints
on peoples ability to act rationally, other than to dismiss, or not be sidetracked by, such
constraints. But then Friedmans view of the best scientific method must itself be grounded in
some form of actual rational, maximizing behavior on the part of real-world people. Otherwise,
his focus on as if behavior would appear to be arbitrary and to disconnect any testable
hypotheses from any real human motivation. If we can assume that people have some rational
capacity, Friedman argues that economists might as well use a simple, precise, and well-
understood behavioral premise, or one that can be construed as sufficiently good
approximations of human behavior, when it works for the purpose at hand rather than a
more imprecise and complex one that might not improve predictions even when the complexity
adds considerable analytical costs (1962, p. 15). Besides, science is a process of first deducing a
hypothesis and testing it. If the hypothesis is not rejected by evidence (hypotheses can never be
proved), then it is accepted until some better hypothesis is put forward. As Friedman explains in
his Nobel lecture (in his discussion of the initial acceptance of the Phillips curve hypothesis and
its eventual rejection), [T]he body of positive knowledge grows by the failure of a tentative
hypothesis to predict phenomena the hypothesis professes to explain; by patching up of that
hypothesis until someone suggests a new hypothesis that more elegantly or simply embodies the
troublesome phenomena, and so on ad infinitum (Friedman, 1976, p. 267).
Rationality key to making predictions
*We do not endorse the use of gendered language

Marshall felt justified in assuming narrow human motivations partially because he understood
that economics was, at its core, a partial view of human life17 and because he repeatedly stressed
how economics, for the most part, narrowly focused a study of men as they live and move and think in
the ordinary business of life and chiefly concerned with those motives which affect, most powerfully and most steadily, man's
conduct in the business part of his life (1890, Sect. I.II.1), with those revealed actions that most readily yield to monetary
measurements,18 and with those classes of people business people (mainly men) most likely to be deliberate in their
calculations of courses of action, not to the unbusiness-like classes (1890, Sect. I.II.1 and P.4). While Marshall never uses the
modern terms of rational, rationality, or rational behavior, his analysis, which focuses on people equating at the margin to
maximize their net gain, had all the markings of modern neoclassical static analysis. However, it is equally clear that Marshall
stands, in time and analytical approaches, astride the motivational methods of Smith and contemporary neoclassical economists
who adhere with fervor to rational precepts. He was clearly willing to narrow the human motivations in his analytics. At the same
time, his self-interest-directed analytics was constrained on all sides. The subjects maximizing behavior was constrained not only by
the forces of competition, but also by nonself-interest motivations. Clearly, Marshall was Smithian in another important regard:
Marshall insisted that as the analysis moved away from the study of commercial dealings and into the study of small groups and
personal relationships, the potential contributions of economics would likely break down, partially because the underlying
assumption of maximization of personal gain would dissipate and partially because behaviors would become less regular and
money dealings among people less prominent. Hence, economic predictions, based on the force of motives, would be less subject
to testing, robbing the discipline of its claims to being a science (1890, Sects. P.3, I.III. 4, III.III.18, V.V.9). At every step, Marshall
insisted that although economics was a science, it should not be compared with physical sciences
such as physics or astronomy that allowed, because of the law of gravity, very exacting
predictions that could be tested with equal empirical exactness. Rather, the laws of economics
should be compared with those governing the tides, where predictions of the daily rises and
falls are inexact, but tolerably acceptable, and subject to improvement with refinements in
theory and statistical tests.19
FALSIFIABILITY
Any alternative to economic rationality is non-falsifiable

Maximizing behavior must, to modern economists who use the phrase, be largely comparable to
(although not necessarily exactly the same as) rational behavior (which implies some optimum
organization of behavior). If one is not able to choose consistently among known and ordered
wants, then it is hard to see how maximum and optimum have meaning. Both rational
behavior and maximizing behavior mean that people cannot have everything they want, which
means that more is preferred to less of things that have positive value and less is preferred to
more of things that have negative values. Thus, rational/maximizing behavior implies that
people make conscious choices emerging from deliberations over the values and relative benefits
of alternatives, deliberations that typically have been more or less completed when economists
commence tracing out the consequences of any given set of wants. This position suggests,
again, that what is often of central concern to economists in the Friedman, Stigler, and Becker
methodological traditions are the testable predictions involved in the directional changes in
equilibrium. From this perspective, rationality is useful as a tool of analysis for thinking
through how and why people get to equilibrium and then, when constraints change, how they
reestablish equilibrium in a predictable and testable manner. In moving to equilibrium, cost
benefit analysis is essential and unavoidable. To economists, the cost of doing, buying or
consuming one thing, A, is the value of the alternative, B, which would have been taken had A
not been available. Rational behavior, then, implies that the value of the alternative taken is
always greater than the cost, until equilibrium is reached. At that point, the marginal cost of the
last unit produced equals (or comes as close as possible to equaling) its marginal value.6 Given
that cost is defined as the value of the highest valued option not taken, then to say that the value
of A is greater than its cost can be restated to mean that the value of A is greater than the value
of B.7 If the value of A is truly known to be more than the value of B, with both subjective
assessments at the volition of the chooser, and A and B are the only two goods available, it is
hard to imagine circumstances under which B would be chosen.
INEVITABLE
Economic rationality is biologically engrained ---
A) Evolution

As it is argued in Chaps. 7 and 8, discussions of rationality are often focused on the appropriate
choices of methodologies, as if peoples and economists choices over such matters are
unconstrained. Actually, as will be seen, evolutionary forces of long ago have seriously
constrained our methodological choices for understanding human behavior as well as the
alternatives that we consider viable choices. The human brain now may very well be structured
so that we (individual actors in market and nonmarket settings and economists who study
people in such settings) seek to find some semblance of order amid the pervasive apparent
disorder or nonorder, if not chaos, of everyday life. Through evolution, human beings may have
developed the presumption of rational/maximizing behavior as one method to ferret out a sense
of order from all the behavioral noise we observe, with the methods having fitness and survival
value. After all, we can detect ourselves often making the kinds of costbenefit/maximizing
decisions that the actors in economic models are assumed to make. In earlier evolutionary
epochs, people did not have computers or the statistical and laboratory methods by which to
undertake meaningful inductive, scientific research to determine how and why people do, what
they do, and nor did they have the time to undertake such studies. Deductive, rationality-based
reasoning was then far more cost-effective, and rationality may have developed as an effective
heuristic by which people could develop a sense of order to behavior.
B) Animals

Experimental economics does strongly suggest that animals, even rats and pigeons, will tend to
consume preferred goods over less preferred goods.8 Field evidence has shown that ants and
termites appear capable of minimizing and maximizing behavior, within their limited
capabilities. Although scout ants might search for food in something of a random pattern as
they seek to discover food sources, the following ants going to and from any discovered food
source tend to make the path as straight as practical, cutting corners and taking short-cuts when
they can detect at a distance the chemical trails on the routes to the food sources (Tullock, 1994).
Self-interest inevitable

Perhaps, taking a more charitable view of his economic modeling, Ricardo dropped Smiths
expansive view of human nature for the same reason Frederic Bastiat (18011850), a French
classical economist and satirist, gave for narrowing his analytical focus to the force of self-
interest. Bastiat acknowledged that people could be motivated by religious sentiments,
paternal and maternal affection, filial devotion, love, friendship, patriotism, and politeness, but
relegated the study of such motivations to the moral realm. Political economy, Bastiat
insisted, was narrowly focused on the cold domain of self-interest (1850, Sect. 2.19): This
fact is unfairly forgotten when we reproach political economy with lacking the charm and grace
of moral philosophy. How could it be otherwise? Let us challenge the right of political economy
to exist as a science, but let us not force it to pretend to be what it is not. If human transactions
whose object is wealth are vast enough and complicated enough to constitute a special science,
let us grant it its own special appeal, and not reduce it to talking of self-interest in the language
of sentiment. I am personally convinced that recently we have done it no service by demanding
from it a tone of enthusiastic sentimentality that from its lips can sound only like hollow
declamation (1850, Sect. 2.19). Without material damage to his argument, Bastiat felt he could
exclude from consideration the nonself-interest motivations, because in the main the discipline
he sought to develop was concerned with the interactions of people who stood at an emotional,
social, and geographical distance from one another. As Smith had argued, to seek the
cooperation of others at a distance (the butcher, the brewer, or the baker), people had to enlist
the only motivation that would work cost effectively, self-interest. In Bastiats words, What
does it (political economy) deal with? With transactions carried on between people who do not
know each other, who owe each other nothing beyond simple justice, who are defending and
seeking to advance their own self-interest. It deals with claims that are restricted and limited by
other claims, where self-sacrifice and unselfish dedication have no place. Take up the poet's lyre,
then, to speak of these things. I would as soon see Lamartine consult a table of logarithms to
sing his odes (1850, Sect. 2.19).
Even if rationality isnt true, people will strive to be economically rational
Schnellenbach 5 (Jan, Model uncertainty and the rationality of economic policy: An
evolutionary approach, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 15(1), pg. 101-116, March,
Proquest, Deech)
*We do not endorse the use of gendered language

Most of the assumptions made regarding individual behaviour stem from a cognitive-
evolutionary theory of economic policy-making, developed by Alfred Meier and associate
researchers.9 Under conditions of model uncertainty, it is natural to assume not maximising
behaviour in the strict neoclassical sense, but something closer to satiscing behaviour, as
was introduced by Simon (1957). The point is that the individuals objectives still call for
maximisation of their goal variable in the sense that a higher degree of goal-attainment, if
deemed possible, would be preferred over a lower degree. But under uncertainty, we cannot
expect economic agents to invest in knowledge-gathering activities until they are in a position
resembling the omniscient, welfare-economic observer. Instead, we have to assume that the
individual builds a subjective model of the causal relationships governing those parts of the
economy that are relevant for his decision problem. If the decision that follows from such a
model does not disappoint his expectations, then he will stick to this model. If, on the other
hand, the results are utterly disappointing, then he will revise his model and look for superior
problem-solving routines or, alternatively, he may come to the conclusion that his earlier level
of aspiration was unattainably high and needs to be lowered.

AT BEHAVIORAL APPROACH

Behavioral approach doesnt challenge economic rationality and marginalizes the
rationality model
Strauss 08 (Kendra-Oxford University Centre for the Enviroment,Banking on property for
retirement? Attitudes to housing wealth and pensions;
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/transformations/wpapers/wpg08-04.pdf, [JJ])

There is growing body of literature on pensions that documents seeming deviations from the strong model of economic rationality
(which underpins rational choice theory)(see, for example, Choi et al. 2001; Choi et al. 2003; the edited collection by Mitchell and
Utkus 2004; and Strauss 2008c for a summary). Much of the work in this area builds on the research carried out by Daniel
Kahneman and Amos Tversky on decision-making under conditions of uncertainty; they identified such traits as risk
aversion, inconsistency in discount functions, susceptibility to framing effects, and inefficiency
in the use of information as norms in their studies of economic decision-making (Clark and Strauss
Kendra Strauss Draft 8 2007). Although the behavioural program of research into housing decisions is less well developed, the
work of Brunnermeier and Julliard (2006) analysed the role of the money illusion in fuelling house price run-
ups, documenting the associated psychological biases of framing, anchoring, and forms of
mental accounting in which people keep track of, and respond to, gains and losses in different
ways. Shiller (2007) has gone further, developing a theory of the recent boom in house prices in the US that rests on a
psychological model in which a feedback mechanism or social epidemic encourages the widespread perception that owner-
occupied housing represents an important form an investment. As I have argued elsewhere (Clark and Strauss 2007; Strauss
2008c), there are two principal limitations inherent in these behavioural approaches: they do not
fundamentally challenge the normative model of rationality that underpins approaches to
economic decision-making, and they marginalise the role of context. In other words,
individuals are still fundamentally cast as autonomous, utility maximising agents rather than
people with complex identities who experience and perform multiple forms of social and
cultural embeddedness. This perpetrates an ontological separation between the spheres of economy and culture/society.
The constraints that these limitations impose on the theorisation and interpretation of research relating to attitudes and
behaviours associated with economic decision-making are, I would suggest, evident in quantitative approaches
to understanding how individuals understand owner-occupied housing in relation to
retirement savings. These constraints and limitations need to be acknowledged if the desired
goal of close dialogue between economic and social, quantitative and qualitative research is to
be achieved in the context of the evolving body of research on housing.

ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS
GOOD
2AC
The failed predictions of recent years was a result of bad political policies and
ideologies economic theories had the answers
Krugman 1/6/13 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of
Economics, and op-ed columnist for The New York Times (Paul Krugman, 6 January 2013, The Big Fail, The New York Times,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/opinion/krugman-the-big-fail.html?_r=3&)//KP
Its that time again: the annual meeting of the American Economic Association and affiliates, a sort of medieval fair that serves as a marketplace for
bodies (newly minted Ph.D.s in search of jobs), books and ideas. And this year, as in past meetings, there is one theme dominating
discussion: the ongoing economic crisis. This isnt how things were supposed to be. If you had polled the
economists attending this meeting three years ago, most of them would surely have predicted that by
now wed be talking about how the great slump ended, not why it still continues. So what went
wrong? The answer , mainly, is the triumph of bad ideas . Its tempting to argue that the
economic failures of recent years prove that economists dont have the answers. But the truth is actually
worse: in reality, standard economics offered good answers, but political leader s and all
too many economists chose to forget or ignore what they should have known. The story, at this point,
is fairly straightforward. The financial crisis led, through several channels, to a sharp fall in private spending: residential investment plunged as the
housing bubble burst; consumers began saving more as the illusory wealth created by the bubble vanished, while the mortgage debt remained. And this
fall in private spending led, inevitably, to a global recession. For an economy is not like a household. A family can decide to spend less and try to earn
more. But in the economy as a whole, spending and earning go together: my spending is your income; your spending is my income. If everyone
tries to slash spending at the same time, incomes will fall and unemployment will soar. So what
can be done? A smaller financial shock, like the dot-com bust at the end of the 1990s, can be met by cutting interest rates. But the crisis of 2008 was far
bigger, and even cutting rates all the way to zero wasnt nearly enough. At that point governments needed to step in, spending
to support their economies while the private sector regained its balance. And to some extent that did happen:
revenue dropped sharply in the slump, but spending actually rose as programs like unemployment insurance expanded and temporary economic
stimulus went into effect. Budget deficits rose, but this was actually a good thing, probably the most important reason
we didnt have a full replay of the Great Depression. But it all went wrong in 2010. The crisis in
Greece was taken, wrongly, as a sign that all governments had better slash spending and deficits right
away. Austerity became the order of the day, and supposed experts who should have known better cheered the
process on, while the warnings of some (but not enough) economists that austerity would derail
recovery were ignored. For example, the president of the European Central Bank confidently asserted that the idea that austerity
measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect. Well, someone was incorrect, all right. Of the papers presented at this meeting, probably the
biggest flash came from one by Olivier Blanchard and Daniel Leigh of the International Monetary
Fund. Formally, the paper represents the views only of the authors; but Mr. Blanchard, the I.M.F.s chief economist, isnt an ordinary researcher,
and the paper has been widely taken as a sign that the fund has had a major rethinking of
economic policy. For what the paper concludes is not just that austerity has a depressing effect on weak
economies, but that the adverse effect is much stronger than previously believed. The premature turn to
austerity, it turns out, was a terrible mistake. Ive seen some reporting describing the paper as an admission from
the I.M.F. that it doesnt know what its doing. That misses the point; the fund was actually less enthusiastic about austerity
than other major players. To the extent that it says it was wrong, its also saying that everyone else (except those skeptical economists) was even more
wrong. And it deserves credit for being willing to rethink its position in the light of evidence. The really bad news is how few other
players are doing the same. European leaders, having created Depression-level suffering in debtor countries without restoring financial
confidence, still insist that the answer is even more pain. The current British government, which killed a promising recovery by turning to austerity,
completely refuses to consider the possibility that it made a mistake. And here in America, Republicans insist that theyll use a
confrontation over the debt ceiling a deeply illegitimate action in itself to demand spending cuts that would drive us
back into recession. The truth is that weve just experienced a colossal failure of economic policy
and far too many of those responsible for that failure both retain power and refuse to learn
from experience.

Economic predictions are accuratethey are also improving as times go on
Douglas w. Hands 84 (Department of Economics University of Puget Sound, What
Economics Is Not: An Economist's Response to Rosenberg Source: Philosophy of Science, Vol.
51, No. 3 (Sep., 1984), pp. 495-503 http://www.jstor.org/stable/187496,JL)

1. Economic Predictions. Much of Rosenberg's discussion is directed toward explaining the "predictive weakness" (p. 297)
of modem economics and the discipline's inability (or lack of desire) to "improve its predictive
content" (p. 301). This failure to generate successful predictions and to improve the few
predictions which are made is taken as an empirical fact about even the most applied economic theories. No evidence is
provided, or even suggested, to support this empirical claim. Rosenberg certainly needs to provide evidence
for the ubiquitous predictive failure of applied economic theory. Such criticism is by no means "well known" or
"standard" in the literature on economic methodology. It is "standard" to argue that economic theories are
insulated from direct falsification that they are built on inadequate behavioral foundations and that in their most abstract form they
fail to yield predictions or even to systematically connect up with applied theories which might yield predictions. But
systematic predictive failure is not a standard methodological criticism of applied economic
theory. The reason why such predictive failure is not a standard criticism is quite simple: Rosenberg
has exaggerated the extent of this failure. Predictive failure is simply not the ubiquitous fact of
modem economic theory which Rosenberg assumes. While nowhere near the standards of the best natural science,
applied economic theories (both micro and macro) do generate an ocean of successful
predictions , on everything from the impact of trucking deregulation to the demand for
consumer credit. Rosenberg's claim that economic predictions have not "improved" (p. 301) with time
is also exaggerated. While there is always room for more improvement, modem macro
econometric models provide extraordinary accuracy relative to pre-World War I1 business cycle
models. Where substantial errors do occur, such as the inability to predict the inflationary
impact of the OPEC induced supply-side shock, the models are improved so that failures of the
same type are less likely to reoccur.3 Rosenberg even goes so far as to argue that more predictively successful
alternatives currently exist (at least in the micro domain) and are neglected, ostensibly because of an
irrational professional attraction to intentional and extremal views of human behavior. He tells us
that even if a more predictive theory were available: "it is not likely to actually deflect practicing
economists from their intentional extremal research program . . . the reason is that they are not
really much interested in questions. Readers of earlier drafts of this paper noted that while Rosenberg is faulted for not
providing specific examples of "failure," the above discussion does not provide specific examples of
"success." Examples of success abound in any copy of an applied economics journal, a Federal
Reserve Bulletin, or any other publication specializing in applied economics.
FALSIFIABLE
Economic theories are falsifiable and grounded within empirical data
Gradwohl and Shmaya 13 (RONEN GRADWOHL & ERAN SHMAYA are Professors at
the Kellog School of Management @ Northwestern University; Tractable Falsifiability;
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/1564.pdf, [JJ])

Popper's notion of falsifiability is a foundational concept in philosophy of science that has been
influential in economic theory . According to Popper, a theory is scientific something could
potentially occur that would contradict the theory's assertions. That is, if a theory is false, then
there is some observation that conflicts with a prediction of the theory. The scientific assertions of a theory
are then those that, if wrong, can be demonstrated as such. The concept of falsi ability is illustrated in the following quote of Albert
Einstein: \No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." What does it mean for
an experiment to prove Einstein wrong? Such an experiment produces an outcome that is incompatible with some prediction of
Einstein's theory. Note, however, that theories are rarely formulated as collections of predictions, but by a set of laws which possibly
include some unspeci ed parameters, from which the predictions of the theory can be derived. Thus, to prove Einstein wrong, i.e. to
falsify his theory, one has to provide an experimental outcome and an argument that shows that
the theory predicts that this outcome should not have occurred. In this paper we propose an additional
desideratum to Popper's notion of falsi - ability: If a theory is wrong, then there should be an experiment or
an observation that demonstrates this incorrectness by means of a \short" proof. Without this
additional requirement, it could be that there exists a false theory and experiments whose conclusions con ict with the theory, but
such that these conclusions cannot be shown to contradict the theory in a reasonably short amount of time. We call a theory
that satisfies Popper's notion and our additional requirement tractably falsifiable. A good analogy to
bear in mind is that of a court of law. Imagine a plainti claiming that some theory is wrong. The burden of proof is on the
plaintiff , and he must produce some body of evidence against the theory. This evidence includes
observations from the world and an argument that these observations contradict the theory. The
court, in turn, has a protocol specifying the procedure for viewing evidence and examining arguments, after which it issues a verdict.
Our main point is that the court is bounded in the amount of time it can allocate to the case. Therefore, any protocol specifying
procedures must terminate in a \short" time: We rule out a situation in which the plainti 's argument that the evidence contradicts
the theory and the court's evaluation of this argument will only terminate after the universe no longer exists.

Economic theories are the only falsifiable method
Gradwohl and Shmaya 13 (RONEN GRADWOHL & ERAN SHMAYA are Professors at
the Kellog School of Management @ Northwestern University; Tractable Falsifiability;
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/1564.pdf, [JJ])

Our definition of a theory identifies a theory with its predictions. This approach, which is already
strongly influenced by Popper's falsifiability stipulation, takes observable objects as primitive.
Different theories make different predictions about relationships between these same
observables, as in the examples of rational choice and choice by multiple rationales mentioned above.
Economic theories t this framework well, since the observables, such as choices and prices, have
(or at least are assumed to have by economic theorists) a well-defined meaning independent of
the economic theory. In contrast, this approach is not suitable for formalizing physical theories since \physical observables"
are such as weight, time, electric current are already theory laden: they change their meaning from one physical theory to another, a
point which is central in Pierre Duhem's (1954) argument. Our paper is related to a recent paper of Chambers et al. (2010). They call
a theory \completely falsifiable" if, whenever the theory is incorrect, there exists some data set that falsifies it. Chambers et al.
(2010) emphasize the requirement that the data set that falsifies a theory be finite. A typical example is the
theory that the choice of an agent can be rationalized by a real-valued utility function, as opposed to
a linear order. In this case, if the underlying set of alternatives is infinite, it may be that observed
preference will admit no such rationalization but no finite data set will reveal this. Our notion of
tractable falsifiability is more restrictive: Not only do we require that the data set that falsifies a
theory be finite, we also require that the plaintiff be able to prove the falsification quickly. Consider
again the theory that an agent's choice can be rationalized by two linear orders. This theory is completely falsi able in the sense of
Chambers et al. (2010): Even if the domain of alternatives is in nite, for every choice function that cannot be
rationalized by a pair of linear orders over alternatives there is always a finite set of choices that
cannot be rationalized. However, as we already mentioned, this theory is not tractably falsi able, since it may be the case
that there is no short proof that this data set has no rationalization: The plaintiff can produce evidence (a nite data set),
but he has no quick way to show that this evidence is indeed inconsistent with the theory's
predictions.

CRISIS RHETORIC K
LINK
ETHICAL CRISIS
No link and turn - they critique crisis manipulation our affirmative
is an example of an ethical crisis our rhetoric is key to public
legitimacy and leadership
Kiewe 98 Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Syracuse University, and editor of The Modern Presidency and
Crisis Rhetoric (Amos Kiewe, The Crisis Tool in American Political Discourse, Politically Speaking: A worldwide Examination of
Language Used in the Public Sphere, Praeger Publishers 1998, p.88-89)//KP
IMPLICATIONS Crises are not alike. The inception of crises varies, their topicality is diverse, and their management attests to the rhetorical
and political skills of a given president. For presidential scholars, the important consideration is the rhetorical nature of crises. A crisis come to
life discursively by the participants in a public drama, whether they include the president, the
public, and/or the press. Crises are communicative entities because the very term implies a perception of extraordinary events. The
definitions of crises are rhetorical screens or lenses through which certain events are articulated.
Crises are special events, distinct from the routine. The modern presidency, save for few exceptions, has transported the crisis tool into a convenient
means instead of an end to be confronted. As illustrated in this chapter, some presidents take advantage of a crisis situation and exemplify superb
leadership qualities, whereas others fail to respond properly to a critical situation. Some can find an opportunity in a crisis situation, and others
manufacture a crisis. All situations and issues that presidents confront are conceivably prone to crisis
manipulation. Because crisis rhetoric is not altogether different from routine rhetoric , a
generic configuration that divides crises into categories would do little in comprehending crisis situations. The distinction to be made,
and thus the more proper test for assessing the viability and strategic use of presidential crisis
rhetoric, is the ethical one. Regardless of the varied nature of the many crises that presidents confront, the essential
question to ask is whether or not the crisis in question is ethical. In an ethical crisis, the
nations viability is clearly threatened , the consequences are detrimental, immediate
actions are called for, urgency is clearly needed, the situations gain quick public legitimacy, and
presidential leadership is acute. A manufactured crisis lacks these qualities because it smacks of opportunism of various sorts.
Precisely for this reason the perception of urgency and drama and the growing reliance on rhetorical
means the modern presidency has found crisis rhetoric an attractive formula for leadership. Like
the analogy of the boy who cried wolf, too many wolf crises will blunt the nations ability to recognize a real crisis when it arrives.
GOOD
CHANGE
Effective crisis rhetoric creates the impetus for structural reform and de-
institutionalizes harmful policies
Hart* and Tindall 9** *Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University, Professor of Public
Administration at Utrecht University, adjunct professor at the Australia New Zealand School of Government; **Ph.D. candidate at
the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University (Paul t Hart; Karen Tindall, Understanding crisis
exploitation: leadership, rhetoric and framing contests in response to the economic meltdown, Framing the global economic
downturn: Crisis rhetoric and the politics of recessions, The Austrian National University Press 2009, p. 21-23)//KP
Dramatic episodes in the life of a polity such as financial crises and major recessions can cast long shadows on the polities
in which they occur (Birkland 1997, 2006; Baumgartner and Jones 1993, 2002; Lomborg 2004; Posner 2004).1 The sense of
threat and uncertainty they induce can profoundly impact peoples understanding of the world around
them. The occurrence of a large-scale emergency or the widespread use of the emotive labels such as crisis, scandal or
fiasco to denote a particular state of affairs or trend in the public domain implies a dislocation of hitherto dominant social,
political or administrative discourses (Wagner-Pacifici 1986, 1994; Howarth et al. 2000). When a crisis de-legitimises the
power and authority relationships that these discourses underpin, structural change is desired
and expected by many (t Hart 1993). Such change can happen, but not necessarily so. In fact, the dynamics and outcomes of crisis
episodes are hard to predict. For example, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schrder miraculously emerged as the winner of the national elections
after his well-performed role as the nations symbolic crisis manager during the riverine floods in 2002, yet the Spanish Prime Minister suffered a
stunning electoral loss in the immediate aftermath of the Madrid train bombings of 2004. Former US President George W. Bush saw his hitherto
modest approval ratings soar in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but an already unpopular Bush Administration lost further prestige in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. Likewise, public institutions can be affected quite differently in the aftermath of critical events: some take
a public beating and are forced to reform (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] after the Challenger and
Columbia shuttle disasters); some weather the political storm (the Belgian gendarmerie after its spectacular failure to effectively
police the 1985 European Cup Final at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels); others become symbolic of heroic public service (the
New York City Fire Department after 9/11). The same goes for public policies and programs. Gun-control policy in Australia was rapidly and drastically
tightened after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania. Legislation banning dangerous dogs was rapidly enacted in the United Kingdom after a
few fatal biting incidents (Lodge and Hood 2002). And 9/11 produced a worldwide cascade of national policy reforms in areas such as policing,
immigration, data protection and criminal lawfor good or bad (cf. Klein 2007; Wolf 2007). In other cases, however, big
emergencies can trigger big investigations and temporarily jolt political agendas but in the end
do not result in major policy changes. What explains these different outcomes? Most scholars writing about the nexus between
crises, disasters and public policy note their potential agenda-setting effects, but have not developed explanations for their contingent nature and their
variable impacts (Primo and Cobb 2003; Birkland 2006). The emerging literature on blame management has only just begun to address the
mechanisms determining the fate of office-holders in the wake of major disturbances and scandals (Hood et al. 2007). This literature suggests that
the process of crisis exploitation could help to explain the variance in outcomes. Disruptions of
societal routines and expectations open up two types of space for actors inside and outside government. First, crises
can be used as political weapons. Crises mobilise the mass media, which will put an intense spotlight on the issues and actors
involved. To the extent that they generate victims, damage and/or community stress, the government of the day is challenged to
step in and show it can muster an effective, compassionate, sensible response. At the same time, it might
face critical questions about its role in the very occurrence of the crisis. Why did it not prevent the crisis from happening?
How well prepared was it for this type of contingency? Was it asleep at the wheel or simply overpowered by overwhelming forces outside its sphere of
influence? In political terms, crises challenge actors inside and outside government to weave persuasive narratives about what is happening and what is
at stake, why it is happening, how they have acted in the lead-up to the present crisis and how they propose we should deal with and learn from the
crisis moving forward. Those whose narratives are considered persuasive stand to gain prestige and support;
those who are found wanting can end up as scapegoats. Second, crises help de-institutionalise
hitherto taken-for-granted policy beliefs and practices (Boin and t Hart 2003). The more severe a current
crisis is perceived to be, and the more it appears to be caused by foreseeable and avoidable
problems in the design or implementation of the policy itself, the bigger is the opportunity space for critical
reconsideration of current policies and the successful advancement of (radical) reform proposals
(Keeler 1993; Birkland 2006; Klein 2007). By their very occurrence (provided they are widely felt and labelled as such), crises tend to
benefit critics of the status quo: experts, ideologues and advocacy groups already on record as challenging established but now
compromised policies. They also present particular opportunities to newly incumbent office-holders, who cannot be blamed for present messes but
who can use these messes to highlight the need for policy changes they might have been seeking to pursue anyway. The key currency of
crisis management in the political and policy arenas is persuasion. More specifically, this study presumes that
crises can be usefully understood in terms of framing contestsbattles between competing definitions of the
situationbetween the various actors that seek to contain or exploit crisis-induced opportunity space for political posturing and policy change (cf. Alink
et al. 2001). 2
CREDIBLITY
Rhetoric isnt key, timing is crisis communication is key to maintaining
credibility
Hart* and Tindall 9** *Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University, Professor of Public
Administration at Utrecht University, adjunct professor at the Australia New Zealand School of Government; **Ph.D. candidate at
the Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University (Paul t Hart; Karen Tindall, Chapter 1. From market
correction to global catastrophe: framing the economic downturn, Framing the global economic downturn: Crisis rhetoric and the
politics of recessions, The Austrian National University Press 2009, p. 3-4)//KP
These are questions in which issues of fact, speculation, values and interests are intimately intertwined.
Policymakers will grapple with these problems in their own minds, particularly when situations are fast moving, uncertain, ambiguous or when
different bodies of evidence and advice seem to pull them in different directions. At the same time, however, policymakers can seldom
afford to wait until they really know whats going on before communicating about it publicly. In
the case of economic turbulence, for example, markets, media and mass audiences will be talking
about the issues constantly, and if the voices of key leaders are absent from those debates,
governments will be on the back foot and will in effect lose credibility. Risk and crisis communication is a tricky
business in any sectorwitness the recent dilemmas regarding the global swine flu outbreak: how should one respond to and talk to the public about a
virus with ominous potential but whose current manifestations are quite mild? Such communication is especially tricky in the world of finance and
economics. If, as is often observed, economics is essentially about psychology, then the ill-considered use of
terms such as crisis, recession or depression by authority figures can generate self-fulfilling
prophecies. That is a scary thought in an age when truly massive capital flows can be redirected across the world in a matter of seconds. If,
however, key economic or political elites maintain an upbeat, business-as-usual facade when public
sentiment is already heading south, they might look out of touch, inept or impotentwhich will
create a backlash in markets in a different way. Talking up the economy makes sense for public
leaders only when there is at least some basis in fact and when the intended audience has not
already made up its mind in the other direction. Timing and the tone of conveying both good and bad news about the
economy in an overall climate of uncertainty and anxiety are, therefore, crucial.
PREVENTION
Crisis rhetoric needed to prevent economic turbulence from spiraling downward
08 recession proves
Boin 9 associate professor at the Public Administration Institute, Louisiana State University (Arjen Boin, Crisis leadership in
terra incognita: why meaning making is not enough, Framing the global economic downturn: Crisis rhetoric and the politics of
recessions, The Austrian National University Press 2009, p. 310-311)//KP
How did leaders fare during the global financial crisis? Surprisingly, perhaps, most survived the period under study; there were a few changes in the
ruling party following elections held during the crisis, but it is not clear how the electoral outcomes relate to the actual management of the crisis. The
lasting impression that emerges from this book, however, is of a group of leaders that stumbled and fumbled in
their pursuit of an ever-escalating crisis. The starting position of all leaders was similar: they
downplayed or denied that there was a crisis. They thus placed the burden on those who sought to convince the public that
there was a crisis. This initial defensive position would greatly limit their room for rhetorical manoeuvring. In their subsequent
descriptions of the evolving crisis, the leaders under study used very similar wordings: they pointed to outside forces and
spoke of very challenging, unprecedented timesthe worst since the Great Depression. They admonished
people not to panic: we are well placed to manage these times, much better than other countries, as the fundamentals of our economy are
strong. And, of course, they promised that we will come out better than we were. They also displayed a strong
tendency to moralise: many could not resist the temptation to blame the US system (US leaders, in turn, could not hide a hint of satisfaction when the
European economies took a nosedive). When more and more financial institutions disclosed their toxic assets, the blame quickly shifted
to greedy banks and their bankers. The leaders seemed constantly behind the curve: by the time they
recognised that there was a crisis, it had already spun out of control. After they failed to talk up
the economy, they failed to talk down the crisis. When they were finally ready to admit that the situation was bad, they
were forced to emphasise how strong the fundamentals were in fear of adding fuel to the fire. An intriguing observation of this book is that the selected
media apparently showed little interest in the speech acts of these leaders. The newspapers, in other words, did not recognise any news value in the
meaning-making efforts of political leaders. This could mean that leaders make meaning through different medialocal media, television and the
Internetor in different venues (parliamentary debates, informal conversations, op-ed pieces). It could also mean that leaders were not
trying very hard to offer a distinct interpretation of eventsone that would deviate from the tired rhetoric described
above and would therefore generate news. A reading of the chapters suggests that leaders were caught in a prisoners
dilemma. If all leaders are trying to make meaning of the same event, it becomes dangerous to
offer radically different interpretations (especially if everyone is aware that their statements can directly affect the process of
crisis escalation). Timely and realistic assessments of existing vulnerabilities, evolving problems and escalating downturns can, after all, chase away
investors, drive down the currency and sink the stock markets.
URGENCY
Crisis rhetoric good encourages decisiveness and expediency
Kiewe 98 Associate Professor of Speech Communication at Syracuse University, and editor of The Modern Presidency and
Crisis Rhetoric (Amos Kiewe, The Crisis Tool in American Political Discourse, Politically Speaking: A worldwide Examination of
Language Used in the Public Sphere, Praeger Publishers 1998, p.80-81)//KP
The president is the symbolic embodiment of the nation, and his role is that of chief communicator. In the age of image-
executive, the president is seen continuously addressing constituencies at locations where the scene has become an integral part of the governing
process. Because the visual and the visceral have become the main vehicles for political action, the political process has become an unfolding drama
whose primary features are persona and narrative (Jamieson, 1992: 15 22). One area that significantly illustrates the acute function of discourse in
presidential politics is crisis situations. In crisis situations, the discursive in presidential politics is magnified,
both in its presence and absence. Crises are sociorhetorical constructs that call for extraordinary
action and resources. A crisis situation frames an issue, an event, or an occurrence as urgent,
unusual, and in need of a quick solution for the resumption of normality. Crises are
communicative entities because they require adherents for a given perception to prevail and to
legitimate action. Crises can be real or manufactured, believable or not, serious for some and not-so-serious for others.
The presidency might need to confront political crises of various sorts, including social, religious, economic, constitutional, and international. Crises
have no limitation on subject matter, nor do they fall neatly into categories. An international crisis is not
necessarily the opposite of a domestic crisis, as one can aid or obviate the other. An economic crisis can turn into a leadership
crisis, and an insoluble or difficult process can reach a quicker solution if a situation
is defined as critical , whereby routine processes are replaced by the expedient and the
decisive. A survey of presidential crisis rhetoric since World War II reveals a preference for crises defined by the president and an aversion to crises
defined by others (Kiewe, 1994). Presidents do well when they are in control of the crisis definition. They do not like to react to crisis definitions
constructed by others, such as the opposition, the media, or the public. Presidents have been known to construe crises as political tools used
manipulatively as the means for other ends (e.g., Lyndon B. Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Richard Nixon and his many crises). When
crises are defined by others than the president (President Bush and the recession of 1990 1992), presidents often
confront legitimate issues and warranted concerns. Yet, reacting to crises is a position that takes the initiative and the
active role away from the president. Different categories of crisis rhetoric do not necessarily translate into specific types of presidential behavior.
Indeed, attempts to categorize crisis rhetoric into international or domestic, ceremonial or deliberative, consummatory or justificatory (Cherwitz and
Zagacki, 1980 Dow, 1989; Windt, 1973), suffer from strict adherence to generic orthodoxy that leaves no room for the more varied, flexible, and fluid
nature of crisis rhetoric. I go so far as to claim that crisis rhetoric is not altogether different from
routine rhetoric except for the element of urgency inserted into the situation.

AGAMBEN

AT EXCEPTION
Agamben fails at explaining why this exception is happening now and what to do
about it any alternative fails
Colatrella 11 teaches Government at University of Maryland University College, Europe (Steven Colatrella, May 11, Nothing
Exceptional: Against Agamben, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, http://www.jceps.com/PDFs/09-1-
05.pdf)//KP
Agamben therefore seeks to explain the present danger to civil liberties, the risk of special powers
being taken over by governments declaring states of emergency, the increasingly common turn to delegated
democracy through authoritarian methods by only formally elected leaders and the risk of physical
repression by state power even in liberal democratic countries. Despite its insight, however, I think
that this way of understanding is disastrously mistaken. For the test of theories of this sort should be simple and twofold:
1) does the theory tell us why this is happening when it does and where it does? 2) And does it tell us what to
do about it? I think Agambens analysis fails utterly on both counts and therein lies the danger in its growing influence
as a way of understanding the undoubted rise in political repression and authoritarianism around the world. Part of the appeal of a theory
like Agambens to radical intellectuals is its sophistication. That Agemben is erudite is undoubted, as his extensive knowledge of arcane facts
of Roman legal history indicate. But while he has added dimensions that no less talented thinker, certainly myself included, could have come up with,
originality, despite its undoubted academic virtues, is not a reason for a theory or explanation to be
convincing to others. Rather an explanation of historical or political phenomena must address the
first question I pose: why? Why now and not later or before? Why in this place and not the other? Why the
differences in degree between places or times? Why is this group under attack and not another one? 7 Missing in
Agambens work and by extension given his influences, in Arendt, Schmitt, Foucault and Nietzsche and their varying approaches to the
autonomy of the political is any understanding of the relationship between politics and economics, or of
class forces in historical outcomes, and any link between civil liberties and guarantees to and control over
livelihood. This failure leads to the great weakness of any analysis based on the autonomy of
politics its total inability to explain why something is happening rather than to show us that it is. The failure, in other words, to
explain the timing of political and social changes, and therefore to explain them in any way that is useful. Why are some
people being reduced to homo sacer now? And why those particular people? Why is there a state of exception being declared
in this country but not that one, and why now and not later, or why once but not now, or why potentially but not in reality? Why is a
discourse of biopolitics, or of changing methods of social discipline and control emerging in a given century instead of in another? If it is the result of
modernity or the Enlightenment, how do we explain these in turn? I believe that asking such questions in what has presented itself over the
past few decades as a rich era of theoretical innovation, leads us to see that there has instead been an
impoverishment of historical and theoretical imagination and explanatory power. Further, I believe that
it can be shown that the idea of the autonomy of politics is at the heart of this impoverishment,
stemming from reliance on Nietzsche, Arendt, and worst of all Schmitt as theoretical influences. If democracy and
liberation lack appropriate theoreticians and theories it is our job to produce these, not to go
looking for the possibility of an intellectual detournement of the categories of misanthropic, Nazi or even in the more benign case of Arendt liberal
elitist approaches to understanding the modern world. Ones boredom with the relative superficiality or lack of sophistication of say, Rousseau,
Condorcet, or even Jefferson, and ones desperation to escape the straight-jacket of an orthodox Marxism or the stifling dialectic of Hegel does not
excuse the damage done when we come to disastrous conclusions through mistaken analysis of the most vital political processes. Instead, we have
a responsibility to provide the best explanation we can for why something is happening, in the
interests not only of better understanding it, always valuable for its own sake, but also to answer that second question I pose the
one that goes beyond the merely academic or intellectual what can we do about it? This question, which moves us from theory
to practical action in the world, shows us the further value of the first question and the importance of answering it well. It is
true that a bad explanation could still result by luck or through our good political experience or common sense individually
or collectively in an adequate response in action. But a good explanation is at worst going to do us no harm in
enhancing our own understanding of what we are faced with and we ourselves are doing in response, but may in fact
help us in formulating strategy together so that we can maximize our effect and even turn the
situation to our advantage.

Agamben fails to understand inherent class struggle his own
paradigmatic examples collapse in on themselves ensuring liberty
and democracy is key to avoiding the homo sacer and state power
Colatrella 11 teaches Government at University of Maryland University College, Europe (Steven Colatrella, May 11,
Nothing Exceptional: Against Agamben, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1,
http://www.jceps.com/PDFs/09-1-05.pdf)//KP
In failing to take into account the expropriation of the slave, the enclosure of the commons, the
expropriation of the peasantry and the burning of the witch, the occupation of the colonizeds lands, the IMF
Structural Adjustment Program and the repression needed to impose it against resistance, hasnt Agamben also failed to provide
his own theoretical framework with the tools needed to explain the survival or death of the Jew
in the Nazi camp, his own paradigmatic example? If we find, as Isabella Clough-Marinaro has, that the camps for Roma in
Italy today are classic examples of homo sacer, right down to publicly exposed showers on concrete enclosures surrounded by barbed wire, neednt we
try to understand what these new horrors have to do with the rolling back of the welfare state in Europe?; with the attack on employment and wages?;
with the intensified exploitation that includes that of the undocumented immigrants and the public discourses demonizing them?; with the increased
law and order regimes, campaigns against crime that criminalize the Roma, the undocumented and other minorities that have allowed the Italian
military to be deployed in the streets to keep an eye on the population; with the creation of such scapegoats to divide the working class exactly at such a
time of attack on hard-won social gains? Agamben, as Clough-Marinaro demonstrates, is indispensable to help analyze the
camps in the first place, but I would argue that he is of nearly no help at all to help us strategize about
what to do about them, because he doesnt understand what any of it has to do with class
relations, relations of expropriation, exploitation and class struggle against these. And that means he
cant understand what the latter has already accomplished and what it has yet to accomplish. To
understand this, we need to understand the welfare state itself as it has developed. To do that we need
to understand democracy, which in turn requires us to think about the state, as Agamben calls on us to do,
but to do so in a way that goes beyond the drama of the state of exception to include the
historical accomplishments of the class struggle, particularly those other two categories, democracy and the welfare state.
While this is not the place to enter into a full discussion of these issues, which I address elsewhere35, a brief summary of my argument on democracy is
useful to make clear my differences with Agambens approach. Modern democracy is part of what Polanyi calls the double
movement36 of expropriation and the establishment of the self-regulating market and the efforts
by society to defend itself from this process. Modern democracy is born from the English and French
Revolutions37, from the anti-slavery movement in the US, and from the labor and socialist movements in
Europe38. Mass democratic movements that have furthered this process have been fought either to retard the
separation of the people from the land and access to means of production and subsistence, or to provide new guarantees of meeting
these needs and providing livelihood to those already expropriated and now exploited. Put differently, the commitment
of ordinary people to democracy comes from their need and desire to use it to do something;
democracy is an instrument of popular classes to defend and extend their interests. If, as I have argued, citing various authors work to the point, the
protection of individual rights, avoidance of becoming homo sacer, and prevention of the state
of exception required material foundations, those material foundations have, in modern times,
required political protection. The modern democratic class struggle, the establishment of democracy and its
extension, remain, along with defending or reestablishing control of subsistence and means of production directly in the hands of the people (the
commons), the best means of avoiding the fate that Agamben warns us about. This means that the too-
facile dismissal of all legal, democratic or constitutional protections, hard-won by generations of struggle, that
appear in his analysis that the state of exception is already unexceptional but rather the rule, disarms the very efforts needed to
protect us from the state power. The democratic movements have broken down the sterile and false separation between the oikos and
the polis argued for by Hannah Arendt40, and the similar separations between everyday life and social reproduction and public life, between zoe and
bios. This is not by chance: slave plantations were private homes; the family enterprise studied by Marx was considered virtually an extension of the
owners household; the needs of working families for subsistence or health care, or the infant mortality rate, unwanted pregnancies and their impact on
womens lives and the mortality rate of women in childbirth were all considered private affairs, not public or political ones. It was the
accomplishment of the modern workers and womens movements, of modern democracy, to
change this state of affairs. Agamben sneeringly dismisses, indeed scarily demonizes this accomplishment as
biopolitics: What comes to light in order to be exposed apud Westminster is, once again, the body of homo sacer, which is to
say, bare life. This is modern democracys strength, and at the same time, its inner contradiction: modern democracy does not abolish sacred life
but rather shatters it and disseminates it into every individual body, making it into what is at stake in political conflict. And the root of modern
democracys secret biopolitical calling lies here: he who will later appear as the bearer of rights, and according to a curious oxymoron, as the new
sovereign subjectcan only be constituted as such through the repetition of the sovereign exception and the isolation of corpus, bare life, in himself. If
it is true that law needs a body in order to be in force, and if one can speak, in this sense, of laws desire to have a body,
democracy responds to this desire by compelling law to assume the care of this body.41 Agamben
goes on to argue, incredibly, that the very right of habeas corpus by requiring the sheriff to exhibit
the body of the accused undermines the liberty of the accused, an interpretation unique in the
thousand-year history of habeas corpus rights whose defense has quite rightly underpinned many oppositions
to Bush administration tactics in the War on Terror, and whose history has recently been provided a radical defense and
materialist interpretation by Linebaugh already cited.

BIFO
1NC

Economics are not rationalthe theory of economic rationality is based in
neoliberal economics that encourage profitability over sustainabilitythat triggers
economic collapse and transition wars
Bifo 11 (Franco Berardi is an is Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist
tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology
within post-industrial capitalism, After the Future , 09/20/11,
http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/AfterFuture.pdf, [JJ])

More than ever, economic rationality is at odds with social rationality. Economic science is not part
of the solution to the crisis: it is the source of the problem. On July 18th 2009 the headline of The Economist
read: What went wrong with economics? The text is an attempt to downplay the crisis of the Economics profession, and of
economic knowledge. For neoliberal economists the central dogma of growth, profit and competition
cannot be questioned, because it is identified with the perfect mathematical rationality of the
market. And belief in the intrinsic rationality of the market is crucial in the economic theology of
neoliberalism. But the reduction of social life to the rational exchange of economic values is an
obsession that has nothing to do with science. Its a political strategy aimed to identify humans
as calculating machines, aimed to shape behavior and perception in such a way that money
becomes the only motivation of social action. But it is not accurate as a description of social
dynamics, and the conflicts, pathologies, and irrationality of human relationships. Rather, it is an attempt at creating
the anthropological brand of homo calculans that Foucault (2008) has described in his seminar of
1979/80, published with the title The Birth of Biopolitics. This attempt to identify human beings with
calculating devices has produced cultural devastation, and has finally been showed to have been based
upon flawed assumptions. Human beings do calculate, but their calculation is not perfectly
rational, because the value of goods is not determined by objective reasons, and because decisions are influenced by what Keynes
named animal spirits. We will never really understand important economic events unless we
confront the fact that their causes are largely mental in nature, say Akerlof and Shiller (2009: 1) in their
book Animal Spirits, echoing Keyness assumption that the rationality of the market is not perfect in itself.
Akerlof and Shiller are avowing the crisis of neoliberal thought, but their critique is not radical enough, and does not touch the
legitimacy of the economic episteme. Animal Spirits is the title of an other book, by Matteo Pasquinelli (2008). Pasquinellis book
deals with bodies and digits, and parasites, and goes much deeper in its understanding of the roots of the crisis than its eponymous
publication: Cognitive capitalism emerges in the form of a parasite: it subjects social knowledge and inhibits its emancipatory
potential (Pasquinelli 2008: 93). Beyond the computer screen, precarious workers and freelancers experience how Free Labor
and competition are increasingly devouring their everyday life (Pasquinelli 2008: 15). Pasquinelli goes to the core of the problem:
the virtualization of social production has acted as the proliferation of a parasite, destroying the prerequisites of living
relationships, absorbing and neutralizing the living energies of cognitive workers. The economic recession is not only
the effect of financial craziness, but also the effect of the de-vitalization of the social field. This is
why the collapse of the economic system is also the collapse of economic epistemology that has
guided the direction of politics in the last two centuries. Economics cannot understand the depth of the crisis, because
below the crisis of financial exchange there is the crisis of symbolic exchange. I mean the
psychotic boom of panic, depression, and suicide, the general decline of desire and social
empathy. The question that rises from the collapse is so radical that the answer cannot be found in the
economic conceptual framework. Furthermore, one must ask if economics really is a science? If the word science
means the creation of concepts for the understanding and description of an object, economics is not a science. Its object does not
exist. The economic object (scarcity, salaried labor, and profit) is not an object that exists before and outside the performative
action of the economic episteme. Production, consumption, and daily life become part of the economic
discourse when labor is detached and opposed to human activity, when it falls under the
domination of capitalist rule. The economic object does not pre-exist conceptual activity, and economic description is in
fact a normative action. In this sense Economics is a technique, a process of semiotization of the world, and also a mythology,
a narration. Economics is a suggestion and a categorical imperative: Money makes things happen. It is the source of
action in the world and perhaps the only power we invest in. Life seems to depend on it. Everything within us would like
to say that it does not, that this cannot be. But the Almighty Dollar has taken command. The more it is denied the
more it shows itself as Almighty. Perhaps in every other respect, in every other value, bankruptcy has been declared, giving money
the power of some sacred deity, demanding to be recognized. Economics no longer persuades money to behave.
Numbers cannot make the beast lie down and be quiet or sit up and do tricks. At best, economics is a neurosis of money, a symptom
contrived to hold the beast in abeyance. Thus economics shares the language of psychopathology
inflation, depression, lows and highs, slumps and peaks, investments and losses. (Sordello 1983)
From the age of the enclosures in England the economic process has been a process of production of scarcity (scarcification). The
enclosures were intended to scarcify the land, and the basic means of survival, so that people
who so far had been able to cultivate food for their family were forced to become proletarians,
then salaried industrial workers. Capitalism is based on the artificial creation of need, and
economic science is essentially a technique of scarcification of time, life and food. Inside the condition
of scarcity human beings are subjected to exploitation and to the domain of profit-oriented activity. After scarcifying the land
(enclosures) capitalism has scarcified time itself, forcing people who dont have property other than
their own life and body, to lend their life-time to capital. Now the capitalist obsession for growth is making
scarce both water and air. Economic science is not the science of prediction: it is the technique of producing,
implementing, and pushing scarcity and need. This is why Marx did not speak of economy, but of political economy. The technique
of economic scarcification is based on a mythology, a narration that identifies richness as property and acquisition, and subjugates
the possibility of living to the lending of time and to the transformation of human activity into salaried work. In recent decades,
technological change has slowly eroded the very foundations of economic science. Shifting from the
sphere of production of material objects to the semiocapitalist production of immaterial goods, the Economic concepts are
losing their foundation and legitimacy. The basic categories of Economics are becoming totally artificial. The
theoretical justification of private property, as you read in the writings of John Locke, is based on the need of exclusive
consumption. An apple must be privatized, if you want to avoid the danger that someone else eats your apple. But what happens
when goods are immaterial, infinitely replicable without cost? Thanks to digitalization and immaterialization of
the production process, the economic nomos of private property loses its ground, its raison
detre, and it can be imposed only by force. Furthermore, the very foundation of salary, the relationship between
time needed for production and value of the product, is vanishing. The immaterialization and cognitivization of production makes
it almost impossible to quantify the average time needed to produce value. Time and value become
incommensurable, and violence becomes the only law able to determine price and salary. The
neoliberal school, which has opened the way to the worldwide deregulation of social production, has fostered the mythology of
rational expectations in economic exchange, and has touted the idea of a selfregulation of the market, first of all the labor-market.
But self-regulation is a lie. In order to increase exploitation, and to destroy social welfare, global
capitalism has used political institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World
Trade Organization, not to mention the military enforcement of the political decisions of these
institutions. Far from being self-regulated, the market is militarily regulated. The mythology of free individuals
loyally competing on the base of perfect knowledge of the market is a lie, too. Real human beings are not perfect
rational calculating machines. And the myth of rational expectations has finally crashed after the explosion of the real
estate mortgage bubble. The theory of rational expectation is crucial in neoliberal thought: the economic agents are supposed to be
free to choose in a perfectly rational way the best deal in selling and buying. The fraud perpetrated by the investment
agencies has destroyed the lives of millions of Americans, and has exposed the theoretical
swindle. Economic exchange cannot be described as a rational game, because irrational factors
play a crucial role in social life in general. Trickery, misleading information, and psychic manipulation are not
exceptions, but the professional tools of advertisers, financial agents, and economic consultants. The idea that social
relationships can be described in mathematical terms has the force of myth, but it is not science,
and it has nothing to do with natural law. Notwithstanding the failure of the theory, neoliberal
politics are still in control of the global machine, because the criminal class that has seized
power has no intention of stepping down, and because the social brain is unable to recompose
and find the way of self-organization. I read in the New York Times on September 6th 2009: After the mortgage
business imploded last year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make
money. They think they may have found one. The bankers plan to buy life settlements, life insurance policies that ill and
elderly people sell for cash, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to securitize
these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds of thousands together into bonds. They will then resell
those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the
policyholder dies, the bigger the return, though if people live longer than expected investors could get poor returns or even lose
money. Imagine that I buy an insurance policy on my life (something I would absolutely not do). My insurer of course will wish me
a long life, so Ill pay the fee for a long time, while he should pay lots of money to my family if I 113die. But some enlightened
finance guru has the brilliant idea of insuring the insurer. He buys the risk, and he invests on the hope that I die soon. You dont
need the imagination of Philip K. Dick to guess the follow up of the story: financial agents will be motivated to kill me overnight.
The talk of recovery is based on necronomy , the economy of death. Its not new, as
capitalism has always profited from wars, slaughters and genocides . But now the
equation becomes unequivocal. Death is the promise, death is the investment and the hope. Death is the
best future that capitalism may secure. The logic of speculation is different from the logic of spectacle that was
dominant in late-modern times. Spectacle is the mirrorization of life, the transfer of life in the mirror of
spectacular accumulation. Speculation is the subjugation of the future to its financial mirror, the
substitution of present life with future money that will never come, because death will come
before. The lesson that we must learn from the first year of the global recession is sad: neoliberal folly is not going away, the
financial plungers will not stop their speculation, and corporations will not stop their exploitation, and the political class, largely
controlled by the corporate lobbies, is unwilling or unable to protect society from the final assault. In 1996 J. G. Ballard (1996: 188)
wrote: the most perfect crime of all when the victims are either willing, or arent aware that
they are victims. Democracy seems unable to stop the criminal class that has seized control of the economy, because the
decisions are no longer made in the sphere of political opinion, but in the inaccessible sphere of
economic automatism. The economy has been declared the basic standard of decision, and the
economists have systematically identified Economy with the capitalist obsession of growth. No
room for political choice has been left, as the corporate principles have been embedded in the
technical fabric of language and imagination.

Vote negative to reject the economic rationality of the 1ACThe affs
unsustainable neoliberalism causes wars in Latin America-turns the
case
Bifo 11 (Franco Berardi is an is Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist
tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology
within post-industrial capitalism, After the Future , 09/20/11,
http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/AfterFuture.pdf, [JJ])

Activism has generally conceived the process of subjectivation in terms of resistance. In his book dedicated to Foucault, Gilles
Deleuze speaks about subjectivity, and identifies processes of subjectivation and resistance: Is not life this capacity to
resist force? (Deleuze 1988: 77). I think that it is time to ask: what if society can no more resist the
destroying effects of unbounded capitalism? What if society can no more resist the devastating
power of financial accumulation? The identification of the subject with resistance is dangerous in a certain sense.
Deleuze himself has written that when we escape we are not only escaping, but also looking for a new weapon. We have to
disentangle autonomy from resistance. And if we want to do it we have to disentangle desire from
energy. The prevailing focus of modern capitalism has been energy, the ability to produce, to
compete, to dominate. A sort of Energolatria has dominated the cultural scene of the West since Faust
to the Futurists. The ever growing availability of energy has been its dogma. Now we know that energy is not boundless. In
the social psyche of the West, energy is fading away. I think that we should reframe the concept and the practice of autonomy from
this point of view. The social body has become unable to reaffirm its rights against the wild
assertiveness of capital, because the pursuit of rights can never be dissociated from the exercise
of force. When workers were strong in the 1960s and 70s they did not restrict themselves to asking for their rights, to peaceful
demonstrations of their will. They acted in solidarity, refusing to work, redistributing wealth, sharing things, services and spaces.
Capitalists, on their side, do not merely ask or demonstrate, they do not simply declare their wish, they enact if. They make things
happen, they invest, disinvest, displace, they destroy and they build. Only force makes autonomy possible in the
relation between capital and society. But what is force? What is force nowadays? The identification of desire with
energy has produced the identification of force with violence that turned out so badly for the Italian movement in the 1970s and
80s. We have to distinguish energy and desire. Energy is falling, desire has to be saved
nevertheless. Similarly, we have to distinguish force from violence. Fighting power with violence is suicidal or
useless, nowadays. How can we think of activists going against professional organizations of killers in the mold of Blackwater,
Haliburton, secret services, mafias? Only suicide has proved to be efficient in the struggle against power. And actually suicide has
become decisive in the history of our time. The dark side of the multitude meets here the loneliness of death. Activist culture
should avoid the danger of becoming a culture of resentment. Acknowledging the irreversibility of the
catastrophic trends that capitalism has inscribed in the history of society does not mean to renounce it. On the contrary, we have
today a new cultural task: to live the inevitable with a relaxed soul. To call forth a big wave of withdrawal, of massive
dissociation, of desertion from the scene of the economy, of non-participation in the fake show of politics. The crucial focus
of social transformation is creative singularity. The existence of singularities is not to be
conceived as a personal way to salvation, they may become a contagious force. Yes we can, the
headline of the campaign of Barack Obama, the three words that mobilized the hope and political energies of the American people
in 2008, have a disturbing echo just one year after the victory of the democratic candidate. These words sound like an exorcism
much more than like a promise. Yes we can may be read as a lapse in the Freudian sense, a sign coming from the collective
subconscious, a diversion from the hidden intuition that we can no more. The mantra of Barack Obama has gathered the energies
of the best part of the American people, and collected the best of the American cultural legacy. But what about the results? So far
Obama has been unable to deal with the global environmental threats, the effects of the geopolitical disaster produced by Cheney-
Bush, the effects of the powerful lobbies imposing the interest of the corporations (for instance, of the private health insurers).
When we think of the ecological catastrophe, of geopolitical threats, of economic collapse
provoked by the financial politics of neoliberalism, its hard to dispel the feeling that irreversible
trends are already at work inside the world machine. Political will seems paralyzed in the face of the economic
power of the criminal class. The age of modern social civilization seems on the brink of dissolution, and it
is hard to imagine how society will be able to react. Modern civilization was based on the convergence and
integration of the capitalist exploitation of labor force and the political regulation of social conflict. The regulator State, the heir of
Enlightenment and Socialism has been the guarantor of human rights and the negotiator of social balance. When, at the end of a
ferocious classstruggle between work and capital but also inside the capitalist class itself the financial class has seized
power by destroying the legal regulation and transforming the social composition, the entire
edifice of modern civilization has begun to crumble. Social Darwinist ideology has legitimized
the violent imposition of the law of the strongest, and the very foundations of democracy have
been reduced to rubble. This accelerated destruction of tolerance, culture and human feelings
has given an unprecedented impulse to the process of accumulation and has increased the velocity and the
extent of economic growth throughout the last two decades of the 20th century. But all this has also created the
premises of a war against human society that is underway in the new century. The war against
society is waged at two different levels: at the economic level it is known under the name of privatization, and
it is based on the idea that every fragment and every cell of the biological, affective linguistic spheres have to be turned into profit
machines. The effect of this privatization is the impoverishment of daily life, the loss of sensibility in the
fields of sex, communication, and human relationships, and also the increasing inequality between
hyper-rich minority and a majority of dispossessed. At the social level this war is waged in terms of
criminalization and in-securization of the territory and of economic life. In large areas of the planet, that are growing
and growing in extent, production and exchange have become the ground of violent confrontation
between military groups and criminal organization. Slavery, blackmail, extortion, murder are
integral parts of the lexicon of Economy. Scattered insurrections will take place in the coming years, but we should
not expect much from them. Theyll be unable to touch the real centers of power because of the militarization of metropolitan
space, and they will not be able to gain much in terms of material wealth or political power. As the long wave of counter-
globalization moral protests could not destroy neoliberal power, so the insurrections will not find a solution, not
unless a new consciousness and a new sensibility surfaces and spreads , changing
everyday life, and creating Non-Temporary Autonomous Zones rooted in the culture and consciousness of the global network.
Full employment is over. The world does not need so much labor and so much exploitation. A radical reduction of labor-time is
necessary. Basic income has to be affirmed as a right to life independent of employment and disjoined from the lending of labor-
time. Competence, knowledge, and skills have to be separated from the economic context of exchange value, and rethought in
terms of free social activity. We should not look at the current recession only from an economic point of view. We must see it
essentially as an anthropological turning point that is going to change the distribution of world resources and world power.
Europe is doomed to lose its economic privilege, as 500 years of colonialism are ending. The debt
that Western people have accumulated is not only economic but also moral: the debt of oppression, violence and
genocide has to be paid now, and its not going to be easy. A large part of the European population is not
prepared to accept the redistribution of wealth that the recession will impose. Europe, stormed by waves of migration, is going to
face a growing racist threat. Ethnic war will be difficult to avoid. In the US, the victory of Barack Obama marks the
beginning of the end of the Western domination that was the premise of the modern capitalist system. A wave of non-
identitarian indigenous Renaissance is rising, especially in Latin America. The privatization of
basic needs (housing, transportation, food) and social services is based on the cultural identification of wealth and wellbeing with
the amount of private property owned. In the anthropology of modern capitalism, wellbeing has been equated with acquisition,
never with enjoyment. In the course of the social turmoil we are going to live through in the coming years, the identification of
wellbeing with property has to be questioned. Its a political task, but above all it is a cultural task, and a psychotherapeutic one
too. When it comes to semiotic products private property becomes irrelevant, and in fact it is more and more difficult to enforce it.
The campaigns against piracy are paradoxical because the real pirates are the corporations that are desperately trying to privatize
the product of the collective intelligence, and artificially trying to impose a tax on the community of producers. The products of
collective intelligence are immanently common because knowledge can neither be fragmented nor privately owned. A new
brand of communism was already springing from the technological transformations of
digital networks, when the collapse of the financial markets and neoliberal ideology exposed the
frailty of the foundations of hyper-capitalism. Now we can predict a new wave of transformation from the current
collapse of growth and debt, and of private consumption as wellbeing. Because of these three forces commonality of knowledge,
ideological crisis of private ownership, mandatory communalisation of need a new horizon is visible and a new
landscape is going to surface. Communism is coming back . The old face of communism, based on the
Will and voluntarism of an avantgarde, and on the paranoid expectations of a new totality was defeated at the end of the 20th
century and will not be resurrected. A totally new brand of communism is going to surface as a form
of necessity, the inevitable outcome of the stormy collapse of the capitalist system. The communism
of capital is a barbarian necessity. We must put freedom in this necessity, we need to make of this necessity a conscious organised
choice. Communism is back, but we should name it in a different way because historical memory identified this particular form of
social organization with the political tyranny of a religion. The historical communism of the 20th century was based on the idea of
the primacy of totality over singularity. But the dialectical framework that defined the communist movement of the 20th century
has been completely abandoned and nobody will resurrect it. The Hegelian ascendance played a major role in the formation of that
kind of religious belief that was labeled historicism. The Aufhebung (abolition of the real in favor of the realization of the Idea) is
the paranoid background of the whole conceptualization of communism. Inside that dialectical framework, communism was
viewed as an all encompassing totality expected to abolish and follow the capitalist all encompassing totality. The subject (the will
and action of the working class) was viewed as the instrument for the abolition of the old and the instauration of the new. The
industrial working class, being external to the production of concepts, could only identify with the mythology of abolition and
totalization, but the general intellect cannot do that. The general intellect does not need an expressive subject, such as was the
Leninist Party in the 20th century. The political expression of the general intellect is at one with its action of knowing, creating,
and producing signs. We have abandoned the ground of dialectics in favour of the plural grounds of the dynamic of singularization
and the multilayered co-evolution of singularities. Capitalism is over, but it is not going to disappear. The creation of Non-
Temporary Autonomous Zones is not going to give birth to any totalization. We are not going to witness a cathartic event of
revolution, well not see the sudden breakdown of state power. In the following years well witness a sort of revolution without a
subject. In order to subjectivate this revolution we have to proliferate singularities. This, in my
humble opinion, is our cultural and political task. After abandoning the field of the dialectics of abolition and
totalization, we are now trying to build a theory of the dynamics of recombination and
singularization, a concept that is clearly drawn from the works of Flix Guattari, particularly from his last book, Chaosmosis.
By the word singularity I mean the expression of a never seen before concatenation. The actor of this expression can
be an individual, a collective but also an event. We call it singularity if this actor recombines the
multiple flows traversing its field of existence following a principle that is not repetitive and
referring to any preexisting form of subjected subjectivity. By the world singularity, I mean an
agency that does not follow any rule of conformity and repetition, and is not framed in any
historical necessity. Singularity is a process that is not necessary, because it is notimplied in the
consequentiality of history neither logically nor materially. It is the emerging of a self-creative
process. Rather than a swift change in the social landscape, we should expect the slow surfacing
of new trends: communities abandoning the field the crumbling ruling economies, more and
more individuals giving up their search for a job and creating their own networks of services.
The dismantling of industry is unstoppable for the simple reason that social life does not need industrial labor anymore. The myth
of growth is going to be abandoned and people will look for new modes of wealth distribution. Singular communities will
transform the very perception of wellbeing and wealth in the sense of frugality and freedom. The cultural revolution that we need
in this transition leads from the perception of wealth as the private ownership of a growing amount of goods that we cannot enjoy
because we are too busy purchasing the money needed for acquisition, to the perception of wealth as the enjoyment of an essential
amount of things that we can share with other people. The de-privatization of services and goods will be made
possible by this much needed cultural revolution. This will not happen in a planned and
uniformed way, this will rather be the effect of the withdrawal of singular individuals and
communities, and the result of the creation of an economy of shared use of common goods and
services and the liberation of time for culture, pleasure and affection. While this process expands at the
margins of society, the criminal class will hang on to its power and enforce more and more repressive legislation, the majority of
people will be increasingly aggressive and desperate. Ethnic civil war will spread all over Europe, wrecking the very fabric of civil
life. The proliferation of singularities (the withdrawal and building of NonTemporary Autonomous Zones) will be a pacific process,
but the conformist majority will react violently, and this is already happening. The conformist majority is frightened by the fleeing
away of intelligent energy and simultaneously is attacking the expression of intelligent activity. The situation can be described as a
fight between the mass ignorance produced by mediatotalitarianism and the shared intelligence of the general intellect. We cannot
predict what the outcome of this process will be. Our task is to extend and protect the field of autonomy, and
to avoid as much as possible any violent contact with the field of aggressive mass ignorance. This
strategy of non-confrontational withdrawal will not always succeed. Sometimes confrontation will be made inevitable by racism
and fascism. It is impossible to predict what has to be done in the case of unwanted conflict. Non-violent reaction is obviously the
best choice, but it will not always be possible. The identification of wellbeing with private property is so deeply rooted that a
barbarization of the human environment cannot be completely ruled out. But the task of the general intellect is exactly this: fleeing
from paranoia, creating zones of human resistance, experimenting autonomous forms of production based on high-tech-low-
energy production whilst avoiding confrontation with the criminal class and the conformist population. Politics and therapy will
be one and the same activity in the coming time. People will feel hopeless and depressed and panicking, because they are unable to
deal with the post-growth economy, and because they will miss the dissolving modern identity. Our cultural task will be attending
to those people and taking care of their insanity, showing them the way of a happy adaptation at hand. Our task will be the creation
of social zones of human resistance that act like zones of therapeutic contagion. The process of autonomization has not to be seen
as Aufhebung, but as therapy. In this sense it is not totalizing and intended to destroy and abolish the past. Like
psychoanalytic therapy it is rather to be considered as an unending process.
2AC

Alt cant solveeconomic rationality is inevitable and is inherent in
decisionmaking
Murrel 91 (Peter, Dept of Econ @ Univ of Maryland; Can Neoclassical Economics Underpin the Reform of Centrally
Planned Economies?; Journal of Economic Perspectives- Volume 5, Number 4-Fall 1991 -Pages 59-76;
http://econweb.umd.edu/~murrell/articles/Can%20Neoclassical%20Economics%20Underpin%20the%20Economic%20Reform.p
df, [JJ])

Unless one maintains the assumption of a complete set of Arrow-Debreu futures and risk markets, the use of neoclassical
rationality leads to violation of the assumption of informational decentralization that is most often used to propound the
virtues of markets. To understand the merits of decentralization, there is no choice but to assume
that agents' decisions are based on less than thorough-going rationality. Decision-making
under bounded rationality seems to be inherent in entry and exit decisions . There is
simply no theory of the comparative properties of different economic systems under
conditions of bounded rationality. Nelson (198 1) makes this point forcefully in his discussion of the relevance of
neoclassical welfare economics to an assessment of the strengths of private enterprise.

Rational choice goodpredictions prove
Green 02 (Steven L., Professor of Economics and Statistics Chair, Department of Economics Baylor University; Rational
Choice Theory: An Overview; Prepared for the
Baylor University Faculty Development Seminar on Rational Choice Theory, May
2002,business.baylor.edu/stevegreen/green1.doc ; [JJ])

Defenders of the rational choice approach e.g., Becker (1976) -- argue that the approach is useful because it
tends to generate non-tautological predictions. Suppose a scholar wants to account for some observed phenomenon P. For
example, P might be the fact that wage rates paid to workers (after adjustment for inflation) tend to rise during good economic times [expansions] and
fall during bad economic times [recessions]. It is generally quite easy to develop a theory T that predicts P, especially for someone who has studied P
carefully. In fact, many such theories can be constructed. Importantly, however, it is generally not good scientific practice
to use the same data to both formulate and test a hypothesis or theory. If so, all theories would
be confirmed. Instead, good methodology will develop a theory T that not only predicts P, but that also has other predictions Q1, Q2, Q3,
Ideally, many of these predictions will be observable that is, one should be able to determine if Q1, Q2, Q3 . do or do not in
fact occur. If these predictions are not observed say not Q1 (~Q1) is observed rather than Q1 the theory may be judged inadequate and either revised
or discarded. If I may be allowed a lapse into imprecise language, a theory can never be right if there is not at least some possibility in the first place for
it to be wrong. This is not to say that rational choice theorists are pristine with respect to this requirement. The history of economic
thought is no doubt full of bad theories (bad in the sense that one or more key predictions are not consistent with the data) that
have been saved by ad hoc modifications. It is to say that proponents of the rational choice approach contend that ad hoc
theorizing and the resulting empty tautologies may be less prevalent with their approach than
with other approaches. I certainly agree that the rational choice method does in fact tend to generate
many testable predictions, and in Sections 4 and 5 below I discuss several illustrative examples. Despite the fact that advocates of
rational choice theory justify their approach in this way, I know of no study that explicitly compares methodologies along these lines. Is it really the case
that rational choice models have more non-tautological implications than the models implied by other approaches? I am not sure anyone has examined
this issue carefully. I believe the rational choice methodology is gaining in popularity not just because it tends to generate
lots of observable predictions, but also because it tends to generate novel predictions. This is an
extension of the idea of novel confirmation.

Philosophy cant explain economic rationality
Cowen 01 (Tyler, Department of Economics George Mason University, How Do Economists Think About Rationality?;

Philosophers , on the other hand, commonly believe that economic logic focuses on instrumental
rationality, as exemplified by a Humean ends-means logic. That is, economics focuses on how to use means to achieve given
ends, but cannot judge the quality or rationality of those ends. Philosophers have put forth alternative
notions of rationality, including practical reasoning, procedural rationality (do our mental processes for forming values
make sense?), and expressive rationality (do we have the right ends or values?). From a philosophic perspective, economic
rationality is only one very small part of rationality, and for this reason economics appears radically incomplete as a "final theory of
the world," whatever its other virtues may be.3 I approach the rationality postulate from a differing
perspective. In particular, I stress that there is no single, monolithic economic method or approach
to rationality. Labor economists, finance theorists, experimental economists, and
macroeconomists, among others, all think of rationality, and use the rationality postulate, in
different ways. I explicate modern economic method by searching out and identifying the
differences across fields, rather than forcing everything into an account of the underlying
unities.

Economic rationality is falsifiable and the best explanation of the
economy
Cowen 01 (Tyler, Department of Economics George Mason University, How Do Economists Think About Rationality?;

1. Description In this view the rationality postulate describes individual behavior and has definite empirical
implications. These implications are in principle falsifiable . For the time being, and
perhaps forever, the rationality postulate best describes economic behavior. Note that this view
may attach varying substantive meanings to the empirical content of the rationality concept.4 2. Transitivity only Some
economists believe that rationality requires only the postulate of transitivity of preference. Transitivity, in this context,
stipulates that if A is preferred to B, and B is preferred to C, then A is preferred to C. In other words, preferences can be
represented by a global rank ordering. Typically it is left open whether transitivity must always be satisfied, or if we
require only that transitivity is true "often enough." Note that the transitivity only view can be a special
case of the first "descriptive" view, at least if we interpret transitivity as an empirical
property rather than a logical one. 3. Tautology Any and all behavior can be described as rational, provided
we are willing to manipulate the theory enough to avoid any testable implications. The rationality postulate
therefore involves no substantive commitment to any empirical claims. A strong version of
this view postulates that rationality is a useful tautology, while a weaker view postulates that it is an arbitrary use of
terms offering no particular advantage. 4. Pragmatic, or useful organizing category This view rejects foundationalist
approaches to rationality. We do not necessarily know exactly what the rationality postulate
does or means. Nonetheless economists who use the rationality postulate come up with
better work and better ideas than those who do not. It is a useful heuristic for the economist. The
rationality postulate is part of a research strategy for generating new ideas, regardless of its descriptive or logical status.
5. Normative Individuals are not always rational, but rationality is an ideal that we should strive to achieve.
Economic theory can be used to improve the quality of decision-making. Note that this
approach can be combined with any number of more substantive commitments to what rationality means.
STEIGLER
2AC
No truth-value to any of Stieglers argumentsNo alt solvencyno outline as to
what action needs to be taken.
Gratton 10 Assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego (Peter
Gratton, Taking Care of Youth and the Generations, August 4, 2010,
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24441-taking-care-of-youth-and-the-generations/, JL)

But I stop short when Stiegler argues we are creating a generation of "I-don't-give-a-damners." Isn't this complaint the same as it
ever was? Newspapers, mass paperbacks, radio, television, the Internet, and so on, were all going
to turn us into a pack of hedonists incapable of doing anything other than making the next purchase.
Stiegler repeats these age-old attacks almost verbatim, seeming to have missed an entire era of media
studies since Marcuse and Adorno were last seen shaking their fists at the "culture industry." This is not to suggest that Stiegler
is incorrect about the pernicious shaping of human desires -- marketers who aren't creating desires don't last long. But neither the
culture industry nor its consumers are as homogeneous as Stiegler suggests. Heidegger's analysis of
everydayness takes one only so far. To argue that those going online are becoming passive and pacified, all but unconscious beings,
is a claim strange to be found in the work of one who writes about the pharmakon (the poison and cure) of writing and then assumes
newer technologies could be doing nothing but poisoning the minds of the young. This brings me to the politics of the book. Since
Stiegler is calling for a "reenchanting" of this video-televisual world, just what "enchanted"
world is he referencing? On what basis could he begin to presume such masses are not caring, not "giving a damn," about
their lives and the lives of others? The "battle for intelligence," which he calls "noopolitics," must be won
lest, he says, there be the "liquidation of 'democratic maturity' and 'democratic responsibility,'
that is, populism" (53). If the people aren't paying attention, he warns, "a few will always think for themselves," citing Kant
approvingly, and these few will be responsible for "spread[ing] the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for
each person's calling to think for himself" (40). With rampant "technologies of stupidity," there is a threat that "it might become
literally impossible to (re)educate those organologically conditioned brains that have become prone to incivility and delinquency"
(35). Time, he literally argues, is running out (182-3). What, then, is to be done? Stiegler's answer is
unapologetically a return and reinvigoration of the institutions of the third Republic: bourgeois
families (one wonders, though he doesn't say, who will be caring for all those children no longer attached to their gaming
devices), reading-focused schools, and a republican form of government anchored in a united
Europe. The "work of forming attention undertaken by the family, the school, the totality of teaching and cultural institutions,
and all the apparatuses of 'spiritual value' (beginning with academic apparatuses)" will in turn be supported by a new political
economy outlined in his other works (184). Failing to demarcate republicanism and democratic theory (he
claims Kant as a proponent of the latter[6]), Stiegler walks haphazardly into the whole problem of
political representation. Depicting the "people" as a mass of attention-deficit addled
"immature" non-citizens duped by the mass media, incapable of Kantian-style enlightenment
and thus unable to govern themselves, he seems not to have considered what or who is to be
given such rights of "taking care." From Plato to Heidegger and beyond, it's time to attend to another image of the
people than as in thrall to Sophistic doxa and media imagery. In other words, isn't there something strange about a
book that talks about "caring for the youth" that robs those very youth of any autonomy, of any
thought, as Stiegler defines those terms? Taking Care is notably silent on just what they/we think of the changes being wrought
during their/our lifetime; don't worry, he suggests, they'll take care of you.

Stieglers argument is methodologically flawedno evidence for his assertions
about technology and capitalism
Gratton 10 Assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego (Peter
Gratton, Taking Care of Youth and the Generations, August 4, 2010,
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24441-taking-care-of-youth-and-the-generations/, JL)

For those whose attention is waning, Internet consumers that you are, let me cut to the chase: Stiegler is right to attend to the need
to reinvigorate "deep attention," but this work itself shows superficial attention to the myriad issues under discussion. For
example, he argues, "the United States suffers massively from attention deficit disorder," which both sets up
much of his analysis and is demonstrably wrong .[2] He also cites several times the number of
hours of media the average American consumes, and then simply presumes that this results in lowered "attention"
spans.[3] Following the chain of argument, he then claims that such inattentiveness inexorably leads to rising levels of
"juvenile" delinquency. Thus, the future is dim indeed, as I suppose these "incivil," "restless" masses have their own children, and
the script of Mike Judge's film Idiocracy (2006) plays itself out. Yet rates of such "delinquency" in Western Europe and the
United States are down precipitously over the last twenty years (definitional claims aside),[4] while at the same time literacy rates
continue to go up (not of minor pertinence here),[5] just as the threshold has been crossed, according to Stiegler, between
televisual technologies (movies and TV) and "numerical" programming (computers, cell phones, etc.). Perhaps the main victim
here of televisual culture is Stiegler himself, who seems to have simply taken for granted media reports about AD/HD,
showing little evidence for any research on his own, which I suppose has the upshot of providing an
indirect proof for the problem he describes. He rehashes truisms about the rising levels of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder (AD/HD) without noting the vast differences among the many "attention deficit" disorders, or that it involves neurological
processes besides those related to temporal retention; nor does he seem to have spent time with sufferers of AD/HD, who would
quickly belie a number of his assumptions. He seems not to have thought at all about the historicity of "mental" illnesses and the
question of when they could ever be said to arise, not a small point when claiming that AD/HD is wholly contemporary (190).
Moreover, Stiegler seems not to have considered that there may be anything other than technological
reasons for the rise of AD/HD, not least that we are paying more attention to attention: isn't this attention paid to attention
problems itself a sign that, perhaps, "our" civilization is not wholly inattentive yet? That perhaps our problem, given the amount of
drugs dispensed for AD/HD, is precisely because we continue, at all costs, to want to fit children into the disciplinary modes he
argues Foucault had wrongly focused on, or simply for the reasons of creating a market, thus literally paying attention? That
perhaps, for these reasons, we are paying too much attention to attention, to having our kids and adults sit still and face foreword in
the types of classrooms Stiegler argues for? At the least, in a book that admonishes the masses, the "I don't-give-a-damners,"
for not performing Enlightenment self-critique, these questions should be addressed.

No Alt solvencyanalysis of the libidinal economy is wrong
Morin 11 - Professor of Philosophy, University of Alberta (Marie-Eve Morin, Bernard
Stiegler, For a New Critique of Political Economy, December 10, 2011, http://www.c-
scp.org/en/2011/12/10/bernard-stiegler-for-a-new-critique-of-political-economy.html,JL)

So after claiming that his predecessors have ignored the problems of political economy, Stiegler lays claim to
their work on libidinal economy as political economy (he also neglects the debates and contributions of the
Frankfurt School, the Situationists, and the Autonomia group, among others). Given this inconsistency, it seems that Stieglers
only clear objection is that they speak as if nothing new had happened in political economy since 1945. This would
explain his tendency to utilise and incessantly repeat buzzwords that suggest analogies between
economics and his pharmacology of desirelike toxicity, commerce, credit, investment or bearish
tendenciesthough they obscure his analysis rather than clarify it. Whatever his take on French philosophy, the
value of his critique of political economy rises or falls on its treatment of Marx and Marxist categories. First, he argues
that grammatisation is a condition of proletarianisation. On Stieglers account, Plato is the first philosopher of proletarianisation,
insofar as he shows (in the Phaedrus) that the exteriorization of memory is a loss of memory and knowledge. (29) Grammatisation
results from techniques of breaking down memory and knowledge into discrete grains that are isolated from the continuum of
cognitive retention and protention. These techniques make possible the capture of desires and processes of individuation
and transindividuation (collective subjectification) by the culture industry, which, Stiegler argues, turns these desires and
processes toward short-term investment (libininal and economic) rather than long-term investment. Grammatisation, he
argues, proletarianises human activity because it produces short-circuits in the transindividuation process, by orienting our
desires and activities around ever shorter and more discrete horizons. (35) As we know from Marxs Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844, proletarianisation cannot be equated simply with exteriorisation. Invoking The German Ideology, Stiegler
argues that exteriorisation (as grammatisation) is the root of the technical question, that is, the question of this production of self
by self in which the human consists (30), but he does not address Marxs crucial distinction between objectification
(Vergegenstndlichung) and alienation or externalisation (Entfremdung or Entuerung). For Marx, objectification is the result of
human practices, which mediate human needs, social relations, and the social metabolism of natural environments, while alienation
is the result of specific historical social relations determined within capitalism. Without this distinction, it is possible to jump from
the techniques of externalisation of writing to digital techniques of memory storage as if these transformations were determined by
an unbroken historical continuum. One can make epochal claims, for instance, about cellular phonesThe spread of industrial
hypomnesic apparatuses causes our memories to pass into machines, in such a way that, for example, we no longer know the
telephone numbers of those close to usas if before them nobody had ever used address books. (30; compare this to Agambens
comments in What is an Apparatus?, Stanford University Press, 2009, 16) More importantly, Marxs distinction between
objectification and alienation allows us to grasp what is specific about social relations within capitalism, as well as the role of class
struggle within these relations. Class struggle is entirely absent in Stieglers discussion of proletarianisation and his theory of crises.
Drawing on Marxs analyses about the stultification and tediousness of industrial work, Stiegler argues, on the basis of the
proliferation of techniques of grammatisation, that today all aspects of social life are captured by processes of proletarianisation.
(39) Certainly we can accept the claim that technological innovation transforms social relations and functions to immiserate workers
rather than liberate them, but Stiegler explicitly empties his concept of proletarianisation of any class content; it becomes a
problem of techniques of memory and knowledge, for producers, consumers, and all other sociological groups (he defines the
proletariat as those economic actors who are without knowledge because they are without memory: their memory has passed into
the machine that reproduces gestures that the proletariat no longer needs to know). (35) Stiegler never answers the question of how
the critique of techniques of memory and knowledge tell us anything about proletarianisation as a process of expropriation of
surplus-value and accumulation by dispossession. He does, however, wax nostalgic about the charms of the petty bourgeoisie, who
unlike the working classcould emancipate itself from the pure necessity of reproducing its labor power, and can therefore liberate
itself from pure negotium, that is, from completely calculable exchange. (6465) With such pleasures, who needs to speak of
liberating the working class? If Stiegler can manage to empty proletarianisation of its class content, we should not be
surprised that his account of the recent crisis prioritises technological and moral solutions rather than political
ones: technics becomes the central stakes of political economy, which in turn becomes a question of sociotherapy. (36)
On his account, the financialisation of capital is the most recent of techniques, like the pharmakon of writing, that can short-
circuit living and anamnesic memory. (79) Stiegler attempts to show, in one of those moments when his analogies obstruct a clear
analysis, how the struggle against the tendential fall in the rate of profit thus induces a tendential fall in libidinal energy, which
reinforces the speculative tendency of capital, that is, its disinvestment. (89) He argues that consumerism, the first sustained
solution to the tendential fall in the rate of profit, produces the fall in libidinal energy, short-circuiting the long-term investments of
desire. A widespread dictatorship of short-termism is the result. (57) The cause of the crisis, then, is carelessness (incurie),
brought on by short-term thinking, when one scoffs at the economic as well as social consequences of profitable decisions. (80)
Given that he reduces structural crises to motivations such as carelessness (85), it should come as no surprise that
Stiegler is a reformist in the last instance, calling for a sociotherapy to cultivate long-term horizons in
transindividual relations and for laws and regulations to prevent the more harmful aspects of capital accumulation. (99101 and
108) Stiegler is emblematic of a conservative French republicanism masquerading as radical theory:
political questions, on his account, are subordinated to technological questions, and reformism replaces popular struggle. In
sum, for Stiegler, the system carries risks, but these can be corrected if we just care enough, that is, if we create
the proper institutions to handle our investments, libidinal and otherwise. When Stiegler argues that new apparatuses
of production of libidinal energy must be conceived and instituted his examples are, embarrassingly enough, the
ecclesiastical institution and its care-ful [curieux] inhabitant, the cur [and] the school and its master, the teacher. (108) If
this is a new critique of political economy, then long live the old critique! Combating capitalism today requires analysing
how neoliberalism is a project of re-entrenching capitalist class power, as well as conceptualising how the techniques of this project
(expropriation, privatisation, financialisation, accumulation by dispossession, and the uneven deployment of production across the
global north and south) serve to reinforce that goal. For this task, there are more tools in Marxs contributions than in Stieglers.
Their impacts are inevitablethe media age has transformed our brains making
alt solvency impossibleIts Steiglers argument
Iveson 12 - PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths (Richard Iveson,
Rewiring the Brain or, Why our Children are not Human, October 2012, Parallax, Vol. 18, No.
4, p. 121-125)

Psychotechnological systems, argues Stiegler, are the key technologies of hyperindustrial societies of control. Hence,
whereas for Stiegler the key question centres upon education leading to maturity, the media world by contrast is fixated
upon gaining control of youth's psychic and social apparatuses from the youngest age (p.132). Such systems of control
serve only to short-circuit the psychic system, however, resulting in the explosion of attention-
deficit disorder, infant hyperactivity, and cognitive-overflow-syndrome we see today. Ultimately,
maintains Stiegler, desire itself collapses (p.42). In this way, attention is reduced to retention, a regression of intelligence for which
the programming industries and mass media are to blame. Television in particular, writes Stiegler, has irresistibly ruined the public
education systems instituted in the 1880s along Aufklrung ideals, to the extent that democracy in the West has now been subsumed
by a telecracy, which, with the programming industries as its armed wing, seeks only to control social behaviour by adapting it to
immediate market needs (p.58). Moreover, this process has been accelerated by the emergence of new media, leading to the
hypersolicitation of attention (p.94). This control process serves to remove individuals from participation in the critical process of
collective intelligence, a removal characteristic of what Stiegler, after Marx, terms proletarianization. Psychotechnologies, in
other words, eliminate the very thing that defines the human, that of critical consciousness. As a result, the new short-
term state of attention without consciousness they inaugurate necessarily constitutes an entirely different form of being. Stiegler
refers to this as a state of vigilance, a form of being characteristic of wild animals (p.78). The programming industries, in short,
rewire the human, purging it of its exceptional cerebral plasticity so as to produce instead an animalistic nervous system forever
enclosed within strict neurological limits (pp.968). The post-human, therefore, is a (psycho)technologically produced animal,
subject only to the short-term satisfaction of drives without desire. This, suggests Stiegler, is the future, and that future is
(almost) now, consciousness having being reduced to a grammatized stream by the transformation of formalized
machinic processes, as well as by devices recording and manipulating the information stream (p.147). This rewiring,
moreover, is no simple metaphor. Television and new media, Stiegler insists, irrevocably restructure the
synaptogenetic circuits of children subjected to them at an early age. The evidence invoked to back up
this claim is, however, very thin. Nevertheless, Stiegler takes it as proven that such rewiring inevitably results in an
irreversible inability to attain maturity at the neurological level (pp.747). The herd that is the next
generation, in short, will thus be physiologically unable to heed Stiegler's warning and to take responsibility.
Rather, by the time today's children grow up, it will already be too late. For Stiegler, signs of this process are everywhere. In
place of the social formation of intelligence, we find only the most minimal human subject, which increasingly delegates its
attention to automata that then become its captors, meters, gauges, warning signals, alarms, and so on (pp.1001). While, on the
one hand, we can no longer recall our own telephone numbers or how to do simple arithmetic, on the other we transfer control of all
our financial, military and medical decisions to various software applications. As a result, there can be no singular internalization of
the collective and social memories of humanity, and thus no possibility of creating new long circuits of transindividuation. Instead,
machines calculate us: attention engines take the place of attention itself, and thus substitute for the subject (p.100). There is,
however, something of a hysterical edge to Stiegler's stricture regarding the toxicity of television and new media,
which recalls similar apocalyptic warnings that have accompanied the emergence of every new media
form, not excluding the printed book. It is an attack moreover, as John Hutnyk points out in a recent article, Proletarianization
or Cretinization, which depends upon a largely undifferentiated concept of the long-circuit that takes no account of
the specificities of place. Moreover, Stiegler appears not to consider the possibility that, what for him is only
ever a delinquency of youth in need of correction, might instead constitute a basis for resistance and struggle against
market controls. Thus, writes Hutnyk, whereas Stiegler's diagnosis tends all too readily to render the masses a passive object of
capture, perhaps instead we need more delinquents, civil unrest, a revolutionary call to attention in the constitution of a dialectic in
which the distraction of attention may actually be a refined and critical inattention'.2 Stupidity too, insists Hutnyk, can be
pharmacological.

The Alt get co-opted by the rightjustify eugenics and use stieglers
policies as a disciplinary tactic
Richard Iveson 12, PhD from the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of
London, October 2012, Rewiring the Brain or, Why our Children are not Human, Parallax,
Vol. 18, No. 4, p. 121-125

According to Stiegler, we are forever engaged in a battle of intelligence for maturity, a battle concomitant with the history of
humanity (p.29). Today, however, this battle has been transformed into the life or death struggle of humanity itself. Unless things
change rapidly, Stiegler insists, humanity as we know it will be destroyed, displaced by a dystopian, posthuman
future whose inhabitants would be incapable not only of heeding Stiegler's warning, but of even reading it. Proclaiming himself thus
a prophet of and from potentially the last generation of mature adults, Stiegler seeks to hastily recall us to rational critique
before the new media has its way and irretrievably restructures the connections which constitute intelligence so as to render such
constitution impossible (p.33). To instaurate critique, however, is no easy matter. It is not simply a question of educational
reform, but of a revolution that impacts upon every level of society and beyond, intervening
ceaselessly even at the neurological level. Moreover, a revolution by its very nature offers no guarantees. As Stiegler
admits, the remedy he prescribes might also turn out to be the worst kind of poison. Indeed, one can all too
easily envisage the appropriation of his discourse in the service of a right-wing defence of family values, and
even in a renewed eugenicist discourse which (by way of A Clockwork Orange) deems synaptic rewiring a remedy
for delinquency within a regime of enforced care.

Making universal care the foundation of politics causes mass violence
Michael Dillon 5, Professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at
Lancaster University, May 2005, Cared to Death: The Biopoliticised Time of Your Life,
Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 37-46

The key point of dispute with Ojakangas concerns the self-immolating logic of biopolitics. Not bare life that is exposed to an
unconditional threat of death, he says in the introduction to his paper, but the care of all living is the
foundation of biopower . (emphasis in the original). Ojakangas says: Foucaults biopower has nothing to do with
that [Agamben] kind of bare life. I agree. Foucaults biopolitics concerns an historically biologised life whose biologisation
continues to mutate as the life sciences themselves offer changing interpretations and technical determinations of life. This
biologised life of biopolitics nonetheless also raises the stake for Foucault of a life that is not a biologised life. So it does for Agamben,
but differently and in a different way. 24 For Foucault, the biologised life of biopolitics also raises the issue of a
life threatened in supremely violent and novel ways. So it does for Agamben, but again differently
and for the same complex of reasons. 25 In contesting Agamben in the ways that he does, Ojakangas marks an important difference,
then, between Foucault and Agamben. That done, perhaps the difference needs however to be both marked differently and
interrogated differently. I have argued that there is a certain betrayal in the way Agamben reworks Foucault. There is however much
more going on in this betrayal than misconstruction and misinterpretation. There is a value in it. Exploring that value requires
another ethic of reading in addition to that of the exegesis required to mark it out. For Agambens loathing of biopolitics is I think
more true to the burgeoning suspicion and fear that progressively marked Foucaults reflections on it than Ojakangas account can
give credit for, since he concentrates on providing the exegetical audit required to mark it out rather than evaluate it. In posing
an intrinsic and unique threat to life through the very ways in which it promotes, protects
and invests life, care for all living threatens life in its own distinctive ways. Massacres have
become vital. The threshold of modernity is reached when the life of the species is wagered on its
own (bio) political strategies. Biopolitics must and does recuperate the death function. It does teach us how to punish and
who to kill.26 Power over life must adjudicate punishment and death as it distributes live across terrains of value that the life
sciences constantly revise in the cause of lifes very promotion. It has to. That is also why we now have a biopolitics gone
geopolitically global in humanitarian wars of intervention and martial doctrines of virtuous war. 27 Here, also, is the reason why the
modernising developmental politics of biopolitics go racist: So you can understand the importance I almost said the vital
importance of racism to such an exercise of power. 28 In racism, Foucault insists: We are dealing with a mechanism that allows
biopower to work. 29 But: The specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with mentalities,
ideologies or the lies of power. It is bound up with the techniques of power, with the technology of power.30 In thus threatening
life, biopolitics prompts a revision of the question of life and especially of the life of a politics that is not exhaustively biologised;
comprehensively subject to biopolitical governance in such a way that life shows up as nothing but the material required for
biopolitical governance, whether in terms posed by Foucault or Agamben. Emphasising care for all living - the
promotion, protection and investment of the life of individuals and populations elides the
issue of being cared to death. Being cared to death poses the issue of the life that is presupposed,
nomologically for Agamben and biologically for Foucault, in biopolitics. Each foregrounds the self-immolating
logic that ineluctably applies in a politics of life that understands life biologically, in the way that
Foucault documents for us, or nomologically, in the way that Agambens bare life contends. When recalling the significance of the
Christian pastorate to biopolitics, Ojakangas seems to emphasize a line of succession rather than of radical dissociation. One,
moreover, which threatens to elide the intrinsic violence of biopolitics and its essential relation with correction and death.

Society wont abandon growththeir alternative fails
Richard Douglas 10 Peer-reviewed climate scholar (published essays on the philosophy
and politics of climate change denial, Future Ethics, pg. 206,JL)

In the case of environmentalism the need for a readymade replacement paradigm to be available before the existing dominant
paradigm is abandoned would seem to be especially important. This is because the core principle of environmentalism, that there
are limits to growth, implies certain lessons, regarding the limitations of technological power and ultimately human mortality, such
that it naturally provokes a strong response of denial and wishful thinking. Without an adequate replacement world-
view which is able to successfully address such concerns, to make sense of and offer consolation
for them, it is simply inconceivable that society as a whole will reject the paradigm of unending
economic growth which environmentalism attacks. So it is that, while in the last four decades
environmentalism has won a significant popular acceptance for the idea that there are severe
problems with this paradigm, it has made relatively slow progress in transforming political and
economic organization: the replacement ideas it offers are not adequate for the job they have to
do.

Economic rationality is ethical self-interest motivates individuals toproduce
security and protect the rights of otherssolves war and environmental collapse
Dag Aasland 9 Proffesor of Economics at the university of Agder (Ethics and Economy:
After Levinas, pgs. 65-66,JL)

Business ethics, in the sense of ethics for business, illustrates this: its perspective is that of an
enlightened self-interest where the constraints that are put on the individual, thanks to the
ability to see the unfortunate consequences for oneself, postpone the war, in a direct or
metaphoric sense of the word (ibid.: 70-71). This enlightened self-interest forms the base not
only of the market economy, but also of a social organization and manifestation of human rights,
and even of some ethical theories. It is a calculated and voluntary renunciation of ones own freedom in order to obtain in return
security and other common goals (ibid.: 72). The fact that economic, political and legal theories appeal to
enlightened self-interest does not imply, however, that we should discard them. Nor should we reject
proclamations of human rights, legal constraints of individual freedom and, for that matter, business ethics, even if they are based
on an enlightened self-interest. It is rather the opposite: such institutions and knowledge are
indispensable because the primary quality of the enlightened self-interest is that it restricts
egocentricity. Our practical reason (which was Kants words for the reason that governs our acts, where the moral law is
embedded as a principle) includes the knowledge that it can be rational to lay certain restrictions on individual freedom. In this
way practical reason may postpone (for an indefinite time) violence and murder among people.
This has primarily been the raison-dtre of politics and the state, but it is today taken over more
and more by corporate organizations, as expressed in the new term for business ethics, as corporate social responsibility and
corporate citizenship (see chapter 2). Thanks to this postponement of violence provided by politics and
economic rationality, people may unfold their freedom within the laws and regulations set up by society
(Burggraeve, 2003: 77).

Technocracy is good is benefits consumers towards efficient outcomes and
maximizes utility
Andreas Chai 5 - Evolutionary Economics Unit at the Max Planck Institute for Research into
Economic Systems (Mengers theory of imaginary goods and the
historical emergence of British medical experts, http://www.tagung05.uni-
bonn.de/Papers/Chai.pdf,JL)

For Menger, all things are subject to the laws of cause and effect (Menger 1950:51). But which cause and which effect? A
fundamental prerequisite to understanding why people consume certain things is to first comprehend how they learn to associate
these things to certain consequences, and how the strength of such associations change over time. Rather than define a good as
anything that is exchanged on a market, he defined a good as anything that can be causally associated with the servicing of human
wants (Menger 1950:2). In this way, what is and what is not a good is not constant or set over time, rather things can loose their
goods characteristics according to what consumers know, learn and do (Menger, 1950:56). Acts of consumption can
become complex since a thing does not need to serve a human want directly in order to be
considered a good, rather it can become a indirect good by serving as a input into a transformation process which results in
the production of final goods (Menger, 1950). This is problematic because whether or not such a indirect good is used successfully
depends on not only its objective characteristics but on the consumers ability to use and transform it as well as the other higher
order goods that are simultaneously used in the transformation. For example, a consumer may know how to operate a mobile
telephone which may be in perfect working order, but if she is outside the networks range, the phone is useless to the consumer.
Similarly, if the consumer does not have the adequate knowledge to engage in a mobile phone contract, the phone will remain a
thing rather than a good. Menger also recognized that the duration it takes to consume is not just a costly input, but also
complicates the act of discerning what the causal associations are between goods and observed effects (Menger, 1950:68). Hence,
complexity increases the possibility of consumers making errors and mistakes in their decisions.
In this way, the degree of complexity which the consumer faces exponentially increases the more goods she uses and the more
knowledge and command these require, as well as the time taken between engaging in a transformation and observing its results.
Juxtaposing his approach to both the neoclassical and institutional methods of studying consumption change, there are
simultaneously some interesting similarities and notable differences to observe. Both Lancaster (Lancaster, 1966) as well as Stigler
and Becker (Stigler and Becker, 1977) make an important start in capturing the transformative nature of consumption by specifying
that utility is not a direct function of market goods consumed, but rather a function of final goods which are produced from market
goods. This enables scholars to study how consumption patterns change with the introduction of new goods (Bianchi, 2002).
However some problems still exist. While a transformation does occur, it is not one that addresses how a thing becomes a good,
since the model starts with specifying given goods that can be changed with full certainty into final goods (Ruprecht, 2002).
Furthermore, these models do not fully take into account the impact of increasing complexity that results from an increase in the
number of inputs used. Other than perhaps affecting how much time it takes to consume, the actual number of inputs used, their
complexity and how they relate to each other are not explicitly accounted for. Indeed the way such models treat time as just another
input is itself questionable (Steedman, 2001). In this sense Menger seriously challenges economists to study consumption as a
phenomena that is not just related to price and income effects, but also related to how consumer actually learn to consume and make
associations between goods and their effects. In comparison to institutionalist approaches, Mengers systematic examination of
consumption via the law of cause and effect bring into question their tendency to simply rely on social influences to explain the
nature of consumer behavior (Trigg, 2001). Yet at the same time, Menger does recognize that certain institutions
do play an important role in guiding consumer behavior. Specifically, he suggests that the
scientific knowledge that comes with economic development improves consumers welfare by
promoting those consumption technologies which are in some sense relatively more objectively
accurate(Menger, 1950:53). Such progress will essentially wipe out those goods that are
consumed on pretenses that are essentially false, such as aphrodisiacs, love potions and amulets.
These he labeled imaginary goods and argued that they occur when 1) attributes are erroneously ascribed to things
that do not really posses them, or 2) when non-existent human needs are mistakenly thought to exist. Notably, in the first category
he mentions the majority of medicines administered to the sick by peoples of early civilization and in the second category he
mentions medicines for diseases that do not actually exist (Menger 1950:53). Without doubt, experts play an important
role in influencing contemporary consumption patterns. Studying how consumers react to information from
other consumers and experts has been widely explored both in the optimizing framework (Akerlof, 1980;Banerjee,
1993;Bikhchandani et al., 1992;Conlisk, 1980;Nelson, 1970;Rosen, 1981) as well as from a more heterodox perspective (Cowan et al.,
1997;Mokyr, 2002;Morlacchi, 2004;Rogers, 1962). Beyond economics, many scholars point out that how agents coordinate learning
is not only vital to understanding economic behavior, but also to accounting for how civilizations evolve and function in general
(Bandura, 1986;Richerson and Boyd, 2004). Continuing Mengers concern for how consumers cope in increasingly complex
environments, it has been postulated that the growing predominance of service industries reflects a greater role for experts in
forming low level consumption preferences (Earl and Potts, 2004). Consequently such conditions have been argued to both
stimulate and require greater coordination between supply and demand (Langlois and Cosgel, 1998;Scitovsky, 1976).
Stiegler cant measure individual emotional reactionsdata cant be generalized
Paul Saurette 6 Associate Proffessor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa (You
dissin me? Humiliation and post 9/11 global politics, Review of International Studies (2006),
32, 495522)

Investigating the role of humiliation in global politics is not, however, an easy task, and it is important to note a number of potential
methodological challenges and solutions. For even if we do not accept the arid behaviouralist model of the social sciences,
attempts to study and explore the influence of emotions and other psychological factors of
interpersonal dynamics and interactions do face significant difficulties. It is not easy, even theoretically, to
isolate specific emotions or other psychological considerations from one another. The emotional
realm is, as it were, fuzzy. People are rarely self-conscious of the full slate of factors that are
driving their thinking, their decision-making and their actions. In particular, individuals rarely explicitly monitor the precise
emotions they feel and are perhaps even less able to accurately analyse their impact. Moreover, even if they are able to
monitor and accurately analyse the impact of their emotions, they often do not want to openly
express their influence. These difficulties are multiplied when we try to examine not only individual or
interpersonal dynamics, but instead much more complex intergroup dynamics. For then we need to overcome not only
the difficulties of understanding multiple individuals. We also need to consider the ways in which groups might also be said
to experience and embody these emotional dynamics in ways that are more than simply the sum of
its individual parts. And this situation is complicated even further when the situation is overtly
political and thus individuals and groups have many reasons not to reveal the real impact of certain
emotional and psychological elements even if they were able to correctly analyse them in a group setting.

ECONOMIC SECURITY
GENERAL
AT NEOCLEUS
Neocleous uses a generalizing ahistorical approach thats in itself formulated in
the name of security
Dayan 9 Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the New School for Social Research, lecturer at Amsterdam University College (Hilla
Dayan, Critique of Security: Review, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Volume 24, Number 2, Project Muse)//KP
The book's main grievance is that the fetish of securityvery broadly defined to include security both in the
economic and in the political senseis the root of anti-democratic measures, massive
repression, and socio-economic injustice. In chapter 3, which deals with the relationship between social and national security,
the overriding argument is that liberal democracies are, almost by definition, security states in the worst possible sense. The United States in
particular is held responsible, given examples such as the New Deal and the Marshall Plan, for enforcing economic security
intertwined with political and military interests on "the whole world, [which] was to be inclded
in this new, 'secure' global liberal order" (p. 103). In this account, the desire to sustain a capitalist socio-economic order is
portrayed as not much different from either the security obsessions of, for example, Israel and the apartheid regime of South Africa (p. 63) or the
policies of any European welfare state. This is a strikingly ahistorical approach that bundles up highly complex
social, economic, and political systems into a generic straitjacket. Because of this overly
generalizing line of argument, Critique of Security does not add much to the insights of critical
theory dating back to the 1970s, which has already dealt extensively with authoritarian practices and tendencies of liberal-capitalist orders.2
Moreover, it curiously ignores the fact that earlier post- or neo-Marxist critiques of the liberal-capitalist
order have been formulated primarily in the name of securitythe demand to secure and
protect the status of workers, women, minorities, and the environment, for example.3 Especially
under the current conditions of insecurity generated by a global financial crisis, Neocleous'
attack on welfare security seems misplaced or incomplete. The interesting tension between popular and
progressive demands for security from the ravages of capitalism, on the one hand, and security as a
project of protecting the capitalist order, on the other hand, is not dealt with at all. Instead, the author
pleads with us to simply eliminate the desire for security from our lives, or, in other words, to
[End Page 291] throw the baby out with the bathwater. Still, Critique of Security serves as a useful reminder that demands for
collective protection from the conditions generated by the systemic failures of the capitalist system must be accompanied by a sober re-evaluation of the
limits and responsibilities of the state and its capacity to abuse power, especially in times of economic and political crisis and insecurity. It is atimely
contribution that raises questions about the current responses by states to the global economic crisis. Now that all state resources are pulled and
stretched to put capitalism back on track, whose security is really protected?
Neocleous critique is too radical its counterproductive and undermines its
political capacity - only the perm solves
Nunes 12 Research Fellow at the department of Politics and International studies of the University of Warwick (Joo Nunes,
August 2012, Reclaiming the political: Emancipation and critique in security studies, Security Dialogue Vol. 43 No. 4, Sage
Journals)//KP
Meanwhile, the problematization of securitizing practices is seen to confirm a wider malaise with the very idea of security. The continuum between the
critique of securitization (in specific cases) and the critique of security (in itself) is present in a recent statement by Ole Wver, in which he highlights
the inevitable effects of any securitization in the form of a logic of necessity, the narrowing of choice, the empowerment of a smaller elite (2011: 469),
before arguing that the concept of security is Schmittian, because it defines security in terms of exception, emergency and a decision (2011: 478,
emphasis in original). In fact, a profound distrust towards security is present in the work of Michael Dillon, who understands security
as a generative principle of formation (1996: 127), a register of meaning that entails a politics of
calculability, closure, exclusion and violence. Dillon (1996: 130) identifies within Western thought a metaphysical politics of
security that makes politics a matter of command; membership of a political community a matter
of obedience; love synonymous with a policing order; order a function of discipline; and identity
a narcissistic paranoia. Similar concerns are present in the work of Didier Bigo, for whom security is a liberal political register that strives
to make the world calculable, makes a fantasy of homogeneity and seeks the end of any resistances or struggles (2008: 109). Mark
Neocleous (2011: 186) takes these concerns in a more radical direction by linking
security to fascism. In the works of these authors, one can identify a tendency to see security as
inherently connected to exclusion, totalization and even violence. The idea of a logic of security is now widely
present in the critical security studies literature. Claudia Aradau (2008: 72), for example, writes of an exclusionary logic of security underpinning and
legitimizing forms of domination. Rens van Munster (2007: 239) assumes a logic of security, predicated upon a political organization on the
exclusionary basis of fear. Laura Shepherd (2008: 70) also identifies a liberal and highly problematic organizational logic in security. Although there
would probably be disagreement over the degree to which this logic is inescapable, it is symptomatic of an overwhelmingly
pessimistic outlook that a great number of critical scholars are now making the case for moving away from security. The normative
preference for desecuritization has been picked up in attempts to contest, resist and unmake
security (Aradau, 2004; Huysmans, 2006; Bigo, 2007). For these contributions, security cannot be reconstructed
and political transformation can only be brought about when security and its logic are removed
from the equation (Aradau, 2008; Van Munster, 2009; Peoples, 2011). This tendency in the literature is problematic for the
critique of security in at least three ways. First, it constitutes a blind spot in the effort of politicization. The
assumption of an exclusionary, totalizing or violent logic of security can be seen as an
essentialization and a moment of closure. To be faithful to itself, the politicization of security would need to recognize that there is nothing
natural or necessary about security and that security as a paradigm of thought or a register of meaning is also a construction that depends upon its
reproduction and performance through practice. The exclusionary and violent meanings that have been attached to security
are themselves the result of social and historical processes, and can thus be changed. Second, the
institution of this apolitical realm runs counter to the purposes of critique by foreclosing an
engagement with the different ways in which security may be constructed. As Matt McDonald (2012) has
argued, because security means different things for different people, one must always understand it in context. Assuming from the start
that security implies the narrowing of choice and the empowerment of an elite forecloses the
acknowledgment of security claims that may seek to achieve exactly the opposite: alternative possibilities
in an already narrow debate and the contestation of elite power.5 In connection to this, the claims to insecurity put forward by individuals
and groups run the risk of being neglected if the desire to be more secure is identified with a
compulsion towards totalization, and if aspirations to a life with a degree of predictability are
identified with violence. Finally, this tendency blunts critical security studies as a resource for
practical politics. By overlooking the possibility of reconsidering security from within opting
instead for its replacement with other ideals the critical field weakens its capacity to confront
head-on the exceptionalist connotations that security has acquired in policymaking circles. Critical
scholars run the risk of playing into this agenda when they tie security to exclusionary and violent practices, thereby failing to question security actors
as they take those views for granted and act as if they were inevitable. Overall, security is just too important both as a concept and as a political
instrument to be simply abandoned by critical scholars. As McDonald (2012: 163) has put it, If security is politically powerful, is the foundation of
political legitimacy for a range of actors, and involves the articulation of our core values and the means of their protection, we cannot afford
to allow dominant discourses of security to be confused with the essence of security itself. In sum,
the trajectory that critical security studies has taken in recent years has significant limitations. The
politicization of security has made extraordinary progress in problematizing predominant security ideas and practices; however, it has paradoxically
resulted in a depoliticization of the meaning of security itself. By foreclosing the possibility of alternative notions of
security, this imbalanced politicization weakens the analytical capacity of critical
security studies, undermines its ability to function as a political resource and runs
the risk of being politically counterproductive . Seeking to address these limitations, the next section revisits
emancipatory understandings of security
The alternative fails to change the institution its just wishful thinking
Kobzar 9 member of the faculty in the Department of Social Science at York University (Olena Kobzar, September/October
2009, The canon is the solution, Radical Philosophy, Reviews Section, p. 58)//KP
Had Neocleous chosen to engage directly this debate about the legacies of the pre-capitalist state system, it is unlikely he would have been so
quick to identify the modern security discourse so unequivocally with what he posits as some rather abstract requirements of capitalism. Still, his own
counsel of how we should respond to this security discourse is certainly worth considering. In his conclusion, he calls on us to be bold
enough to be open to debate, to be brave enough to accept that insecurity is part of the human
condition and to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and insecurities that come with being human. What we need to do, he
avows, is to fight for an alternative political language and to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of
society we want. One is tempted in the circumstances to remind Neocleous of the oft-cited line from Marxs
Theses on Feuerbach where he chided the so-called Young Hegelians for the practical inadequacy of their contemplative materialism:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in a various ways; the point is to change it.
This particular charge follows upon an earlier admonition Marx has penned as he tried to come to terms with his own intellectual forbearers in A
Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: The weapon of criticism cannot in any case replace the
criticism of weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force. Perhaps it is a telling
symptom of just how entrenched the liberal discourse of security has become that so eloquent a
Marxist censor of the capitalist order as Neocleous no longer imagined it possible to identify the
social forces that might oppose it but instead fastens on the strategy of critique and normative
wish as the way forward

The alternative fails to change the institution its just wishful thinking
Kobzar 9 member of the faculty in the Department of Social Science at York University (Olena Kobzar, September/October
2009, The canon is the solution, Radical Philosophy, Reviews Section, p. 58)//KP
Had Neocleous chosen to engage directly this debate about the legacies of the pre-capitalist state system, it is unlikely he would have been so
quick to identify the modern security discourse so unequivocally with what he posits as some rather abstract requirements of capitalism. Still, his own
counsel of how we should respond to this security discourse is certainly worth considering. In his conclusion, he calls on us to be bold
enough to be open to debate, to be brave enough to accept that insecurity is part of the human
condition and to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and insecurities that come with being human. What we need to do, he
avows, is to fight for an alternative political language and to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of
society we want. One is tempted in the circumstances to remind Neocleous of the oft-cited line from Marxs
Theses on Feuerbach where he chided the so-called Young Hegelians for the practical inadequacy of their contemplative materialism:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in a various ways; the point is to change it.
This particular charge follows upon an earlier admonition Marx has penned as he tried to come to terms with his own intellectual forbearers in A
Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: The weapon of criticism cannot in any case replace the
criticism of weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force. Perhaps it is a telling
symptom of just how entrenched the liberal discourse of security has become that so eloquent a
Marxist censor of the capitalist order as Neocleous no longer imagined it possible to identify the
social forces that might oppose it but instead fastens on the strategy of critique and normative
wish as the way forward
LINK
NO LINK
No link they critique history of economic diplomacy security measures are no
longer dictated by economics
Zoellick 12 former World Bank president, senior fellow at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and distinguished visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (Robert Zoellick, November 2012,
The Currency of Power, Foreign Policy,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/08/the_currency_of_power?page=0,0)//KP
Earlier this year, Bob Carr, Australia's foreign minister and a longtime friend of the United States, observed with Aussie clarity: "The United States is
one budget deal away from restoring its global preeminence." He added a caution: "There are powers in the Asia-Pacific that are whispering that this
time the United States will not get its act together, so others had best attend to them." Carr's insight -- that the connection between
economics and security will determine America's future -- is sound and persuasive. Yet ever since the rise of
"national security" as a concept at the start of the Cold War, economics has become the
unappreciated subordinate of U.S. foreign policy. Today, the power of deficits, debt, and economic trend lines to shape
security is staring the United States in the face. Others see it, even if America does not. Carr, a student of U.S. history, would probably not be surprised
to learn that his warning echoes words drafted by Alexander Hamilton, America's first Treasury secretary, for President George Washington's farewell
address: The new nation, Hamilton urged, must "cherish credit as a means of strength and security." Ironically, it took an admiral -- Mike Mullen, then
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff -- to recall Hamilton's warning about the link between credit and security. Mullen seized attention not by
pointing out a danger to the fleet, but by telling CNN, "The most significant threat to our national security is our debt." Mullen's observation should not
come as a surprise, because strategists in uniform often look to history as their laboratory. They also have to match
means and capabilities to achieve ends. Officers at staff colleges may be inspired by the exciting chapters on Napoleon Bonaparte's bold campaigns, but
the astute also discover that the key to Britain's victory in the Napoleonic Wars is found in the dry accounts of the budgets of William Pitt the Younger,
the chancellor of the Exchequer and prime minister. By restoring Britain's credit after its costly imbroglio with the American colonies, Pitt enabled his
country to fight a long war -- and even repeatedly finance coalition partners -- without choking Britain's economy. In contrast, consider the
foreign-policy debates of this U.S. election year. Journalists and commentators expound about wars and
rumors of wars, political leaders and upheavals, human rights and duties to intervene, missiles and their defense.
All serious and important topics. But how about a question on the eurozone crisis that threatens the
integration of Europe, one of the 20th century's greatest security-policy achievements and America's closest ally and partner?
What about America's connections to growth in East Asia, where economics is the coin of the realm? The reply is that these topics
concern economics, not foreign policy! America's security strategists seem to have lost the ability
to integrate the two. Their perspectives on economics do not extend much beyond sanctions policies
and paying for defense budgets. At best, the role of economics is assumed, not analyzed. We scarcely
understand its effects on power, influence, diplomacy, ideas, and human rights. At worst,
economic problems have become a justification for a "come home, America" isolationism. And
economists -- absorbed with mathematical models and debates about quantitative easing and stimulus policies -- are content to
operate in their separate universe. Some, on the left and the right, disparage the role of economics in foreign policy as crass
commercialism, narrow business interests, or, worse, affording undue influence to bankers. Others view international economics and trade policy as
narrow specialties involving technical negotiations that just aggravate domestic constituencies. Yet this separation of economics
from U.S. foreign policy and security policy reflects a shift from earlier American experience.
For its first 150 years, the American foreign-policy tradition was deeply infused with economic
logic. Unfortunately, thinking about international political economy has become a lost art in the
United States. How did this happen?
AT IMPACT TURNS
Securitization empirically succeeds methods are in need of constant evolution
Caldwell and Williams 12 Professor of political science at Pepperdine University; associate professor of political
science at Pepperdine University (Dan Caldwell; Robert E. Williams Jr., Seeking Security in an Insecure World: Second Edition,
Rowaman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2012, p.258-260 )//KP
Ken Booths 1979 book entitled Strategy and Ethnocentrism noted the failure of most security analysts to take
adequate account 0f differences among cultures. In the Cold War context in which Booth was writing, the
Western emphasis on rationality as the foundation 0f nuclear deterrence theory was an especially
striking example of this problem. Almost a decade later, however, scholars were still noting the pitfalls of ethnocentrism due to
American dominance of the eld. However much Western policy makers and scholars may have become sensitive to the problems posed by the
difficulty of seeing beyond their own cultural constructs, we suspect that ethnocentrism may be an even greater problem
today, in the middle of an ongoing struggle against mostly Muslim terrorist organizations, than it
was during the Cold War. If our conclusions to this point have been correct that seeking security today requires countering
threats from nonstate actors, recognizing threats that are transnational and, consequently, indivisible in
character, dealing with the problems of unintended consequences, and operating in parts of the world that
are especially unfamiliar to most of us in the West then the ability to understand and even to empathize with
those in other cultures is more important than ever before. What policy makers, analysts, and even entire societies
understand by security varies more than we ordinarily acknowledge, with the variations relating to political, social, technological, and other
circumstances. The meaning of security differs across cultures, but within a culture it is also subject to change over time. This
is so because political and social differences affect what societies desire to protect, because technological
advances alter the types of threats that must be protected against, and, most importantly, because the very subjectivity
of the concept of security ensures that individuals in different situations will value social goods
and assess threats differently. The concept of security, to put it simply, is socially constructed. To the extent
that security studies" has some common content that transcends political and cultural differences in the world, the inuence of the privileged elites in
the world must be credited. Certainly, the fears of male defense intellectuals discussing security at an arms control seminar in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in the early 1960s were quite different from the fears of Congolese women living through revolution and ethnic conict in that same
period. Not surprisingly, security studies in that era paid little attention to threats facing women in Africa. Circumstances, in large measure (but with
some input from psychological factors), determine what we fear. Many feminists, noting the greater vulnerability of women to acts of sexual violence
and physical abuse, have suggested that feminine conceptions of security differ from masculine conceptions as a consequence. Because men are
generally free from the fear of sexual violence and physical abuse, male-formulated notions of security manifest no concern for security as freedom
from fear of sexual assault. Similarly, security as dened by academics and strategists living and working in liberal democracies has tended to ignore
the possibility that the state may generate fear among its own citizens. As we noted in chapter 11, since World War II, developing
states have been the scenes of most of the world's violent conflict. Much of that conflict has been intrastate and
interethnic. This in itself should alert us to the divergence between our ethnocentric concern with insecurity dened in terms of external threats and the
form of insecurity that most of the world actually experiences. As Mohammed Ayoob has observed, the primary security concerns of
weak states are internal in character" and are characteristic of the early stages of stale matting? A sophisticated understanding
of security must take such considerations into account, particularly if concern for human welfare characteristic of human security or concern for
complementary strategies characteristic of cooperative security is part of the mix. Perhaps even more important than our ability to understand the
impact of different circumstances on the way security is dened is the ability to assess our own circumstances accurately. The long litany of threats
described in this book or in the threat assessments produced by many governments around the world may suggest not only that we live in an insecure
world but that the problems we face are insoluble. In fact, on many fronts there are reasons for optimism. In many parts of
the world, including Europe, where the two most destructive wars in history occurred within a span of thirty years,
war has become unthinkable. Conicts between democracies are routinely resolved without
resort to force. While intrastate war continues to claim tens of thousands of lives each year in the developing world,
elsewhere humankind seems to have achieved some success in understanding and addressing the
causes of war. There are, today, fewer nuclear weapons stockpiled in the worlds arsenals than at any time in the last
half-century. The United States and Russia continue to acknowledge a shared responsibility to reduce and, more importantly, secure their stockpiles of
weapons and fissile material. The vast majority of the world's states have pledged that they will never
attempt to acquire nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; many are active in efforts to deny
the troublesome minority of statesand all nonstate actorsthe ability to acquire weapons of
mass destruction. There has been signicant progress in the light against infectious diseases. The spread of HIV/AIDS has slowed. The
eradication of malaria appears to be a real possibility. States, international governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations are
working together to prevent and treat diseases among people who have never witnessed a vaccination program or visited a medical clinic. There is
cause for optimism, but not for complacency. Seeking security in an insecure world has always
been an extraordinary challenge. Threats evolve, sometimes very rapidly; measures devised to enhance
security will, in time, become ineffective. Think of the impact of the invention of gunpowder on castles and city walls, or of the
appearance of drug-resistant diseases on vaccination programs. The natureand numberof the threats we face is part
of the challenge, but so is our interdependence. More than ever, the security of people all over
the world is intertwined. This fact compels us to think creatively about security.
IMPACT TURNS
AMERICA GOOD
Engaging Latin America and promoting our economic institutions is the only
ethical option all others break conflict and insecurity
Goldgeier and Volker 13 Dean of the School of International Service at American University; Executive Director of the
McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University *Goldeier and Volker were the co-chairs of the bipartisan
task force that created this report, other individuals contributed to the report (James Goldeier; Kurt Volker, March 2013, Setting
Priorities for American Leadership: A New National Security Strategy for the United States, Project for a United and Strong
America, http://www.nationalsecuritystrategy.org/pdf/pusa-report-march-2013.pdf)//KP
I. Americas Role in the World A nation of unique capacity and responsibility The United States remains the single greatest
economic, military, and political power in the world. It has a unique ability to mobilize actions
by allies and friends and to project force and influence on a global scale. Through its own commitment to democratic
values, its protection of human rights, freedom, economic opportunity, and justice, and its capacity for adaptation and renewal, the United States continues to inspire efforts to
realize these values in societies around the world. For years to come, no other nation can play this role. The world is not a
passive and neutral playing field, but one in which competing views and interests are constantly
being pressed. US interests are continually being challenged. The United States is often a
principal target of other nations and groups grievances and a global reference point around which some organize their own actions. In other cases, events are
driven purely by local and regional dynamics having nothing to do with the United States, yet nonetheless, have a significant impact on US values and interests. In this
environment, a lack of active US leadership can lead to a steady erosion of US interests. The United
States not only has the unique ability to lead, but an imperative to do sofor the protection of its
own national interests and values, as well as for the advancement of democratic values, human
development, and security around the world. The protection of these values in turn reinforces the long-term security and well-being of the
United States. While no other nation can exercise such global leadership, the United States is by no means the only global actor, nor
does it have unlimited resources. The United States must apply its considerable capacities in ways that mobilize and complement the efforts of others, creating a sustainable
long-term approach that both confronts short-term crises and shifts the broader playing field in the direction of US interests and values. With the enormous financial pressures
facing the United States and its allies, there is a strong temptation to scale back Americas role in the world. But in
view of the challenges to US values and interests around the world, any short-term savings
would come at significant long-term cost. The imperative is to engage strategically and proactively. Enduring values and interests The United
States has enduring national security interests that have shaped the countrys role in the world throughout its history. These interests include: the security of the United
States and its citizens, as well as its allies and partners; and the economic vitality of the United States and the global economy. But the distinguishing feature of Americas
global role since its founding has been its broad-based conception of national security the belief that the advancement of an open, rules-based international order that
promotes universal values of liberty, democracy, human dignity, and economic freedom is essential to the security and economic vitality of the United States. Indeed, the
benefits for the United States would more than compensate for the potential loss of relative power that might result in such a world. In the long term,
Americas aim must be a strong and vibrant nation, leading a world of peaceful, democratic
states working cooperatively to establish a more secure, just, and prosperous global community.
II. The Strategic Environment A world with serious and disparate challenges More people today live under systems that are democratic, market-driven, and respect human
freedom than in any previous period in human history. Millions have been lifted out of poverty, and the number of people dying in conflicts worldwide is at a historic low. In
these crucial respects, human living conditions have improved, and the United States remains in an extraordinarily strong position globally. Nevertheless, the
challenges confronting US interests and values in the world remain substantial and complex.
These challenges range from a full spectrum of security threats to economic, environmental,
ideological, political, and humanitarian challenges. Actors who seek to undermine a cooperative
international systemfrom ideologically driven extremists to corrupt authoritarian leaderschallenge the efforts of states
seeking to expand liberal norms and values. In addition, the widespread perception of a war weary and economically weakened United States
increases the propensity of those with alternative agendas to pursue such agendas aggressively. Three fundamental shifts are serving to transform the geopolitical landscape:
Impacts of globalization. The age of the internet has ushered in an unprecedented empowerment of individuals and small actors. Whereas in the past, power was concentrated in
the hands of governments, militaries, and large corporations, today power is dispersed among individuals, startups,
movements, NGOs, groups, and rising powers. Increased movement of people, information, and resources has empowered transnational
organizations seeking to gain power in weak and failing states. These new actors, interconnected on a national and global level, can often mobilize faster and have greater impact
than traditional actors. This massive redistribution of relative power has great potential for good, but has simultaneously introduced unprecedented risk. The unfolding legacy
of the Arab Spring. Developments in the Arab world are among the most significant geopolitical changes since the fall of the Soviet Union. The demand for change has unleashed
a historic struggle: authoritarian dictators seeking to cling to domination; militant and extremist groups seeking to replace democratic systems of law with their own ideological
tyranny; and a new generation of Arab citizens demanding greater freedom, justice, and accountability in the face of these two unpalatable alternatives. The results of this
struggle will have a profound effect on regional and global security, on democracy and human development in the Arab world, and on US values and interests for generations.
The rise of Asia. Both in terms of its increasing economic influence and its nexus of important strategic challenges, the rise of Asia constitutes a fundamental global shift. Global
trade and economic flows are increasingly growing with respect to Asia. Hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and now drive Asias burgeoning middle
class societies. But while Chinas embrace of market-oriented capitalism has propelled its economic rise, its autocratic regime and increasingly assertive military posture have
raised consternation across the region. Indias dynamic and growing middle class holds great promise, while a nucleararmed North Korea continues to fuel regional tensions. At
the same time, the United States faces a broad and diffuse set of strategic challenges that include: A
full spectrum of security threats: ideological extremists, including terrorists operating out of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, often with
regional or global ambitions; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to state and non-state actors; cybersecurity threats from
major powers and networked groups and individuals; fragile and failed states creating conditions for threats to American interests and humanitarian
crises; and drug-fueled crime and violence in Latin America. Political violence and suppression of
human rights. Despite positive long-term trends, democratization efforts have suffered real setbacks in recent years, and regimes around the world continue to abuse
human rights with little accountability. This includes the many still functioning dictatorships (in open conflict, as in Syria) or in the tyranny of armed groups acting in largely
ungoverned territories (such as in parts of Africa and Asia). This repression of basic rights sows the seeds for future instability and conflict and for further challenges to
American long-term values and interests. Fragilities and disparities in the international economic order. While the United
States faces mounting fiscal debt challenges and an uncertain economic recovery, Americas allies in Europe and Asia are also struggling from their own serious economic
problems. Economic power is shifting rapidly to Asia, including to non-democratic societies and stateowned mega-enterprises. The
growing global economy has produced an unprecedented demand for scarce resources including
water, energy, and certain raw materials. New technologies contribute to major movements in productivity, jobs, and wealth. The ability of the
major democratic, market economies to sustain a level, rules-based global economic playing field is under strain. Energy and climate. The growing
global economy has also led to massive growth in energy consumption. One consequence is that increasing CO2
emissions, particularly among developing countries, far outweigh any potential for moderation in emissions in Europe and the United States. Clean energy
technologies are currently unable to compete effectively against low-cost, high-emission fuels. The prospect of long-
term changes in climate that this can introduce has the potential to significantly increase global economic
and security challenges and undermine the stability of some governments and societies. In addition, growing demand for fossil
fuels has empowered hostile regimes in Iran, Venezuela, and elsewhere. III. Core Principles Navigating this strategic environment, the
United States should be guided by three core principles: 1) A foundation of American strength To
be effective in exercising a global leadership role in support of a liberal, democratic world order, the United States must maintain its own core strength. In the first instance,
this means strengthening its national economy so it can play a leading role in promoting a
liberal global economic order through rules-based institutions. In parallel, this also means maintaining the worlds most capable military and national
security apparatus. It means consciously working to maintain effective, interoperable capacities with allies and partners around the world. Finally, it means using our limited
resources wisely and to the greatest effect, by choosing where and how to expend them, and in leveraging the complementary resources of allies and partners. 2) A
proactive US global leadership role Because of its unique capabilities, global interests, and influence on the actions and expectations of others,
the United States must play an active, day-to-day role in shaping events, consistent with long-term values and
strategy. It is not sufficient only to react to events as they emerge. The United States must work with other like-minded nations to shape
common action on a global agenda. It must be prepared to commit resources behind common action, and focus
on implementation of policy, while urging others to do the same. The United States must also
seek to work with those with whom it disagrees to advance long-term values and interests, even if
those nations or groups in the end choose not to support common efforts. 3) The advancement of universal values The United
States must actively work to advance a liberal, democratic world order. This means a world in which people choose
their own governments, and in which those governments in turn are accountable to their people, committed to the protection of human rights and freedom, the rule of law, and
free market economics. It is a world in which nations engage in trade and investment on a level playing
field and resolve their differences peacefully. Often we sacrifice the advancement of this kind of
world order in favor of other perceived, short-term interests. The result perpetuates problems,
rather than resolves them and raises the cost of resolving them even higher in the long-term.
Advancing such a liberal, democratic world order requires rhetorical support, to be sure, but also tangible and
sustained actions. It includes supporting pro-democracy groups, assisting emerging democracies, protecting and working together with long-standing democratic
allies, pressing international institutions to insist on democratic values, and in extraordinary cases, using military force to stop grave human rights abuses. IV. Investing in Core
Capacities In order to maintain a foundation of American strength and pursue a robust leadership role, the United
States must organize its economic, military, and diplomatic resources in more strategic ways. Over
the past two decades, annual US expenditures on national security (including defense, foreign assistance, and diplomacy) have consistently been in the range of three to five
percent of GDP. While we do not advocate any change from these basic levels, what we do advocate is a more strategic use of these resources. Core, long-term national
investments should focus on five key pillars: A. Economic Vitality A strong economic foundation is the prerequisite for
sustaining American global leadership. Part of this requires tackling Americas mounting debt levels. As stated by a former chairman of the
Joints Chiefs of Staff, the single-biggest threat to our national security is our debt. American dependence on foreign governments that hold large amounts of US debt, including
China, only reinforces the importance of this challenge. In the immediate term, a more robust economy would put us on a more fiscally sustainable track. But sustaining the
resource commitments that advance our long-term national security interests will require a serious bipartisan effort to reduce the national debt. A second key component is
competitiveness. As other nations join the rising global economy, they are investing in education, infrastructure, technology and more. The United States still retains core
advantages, most importantly in the areas of governance, innovation, rule of law, higher education, and entrepreneurship. Other nations, even those currently enjoying rising
prosperity, may eventually encounter obstacles relating to business climate, corruption, aging populations, and the rising demands of an educated middle class. Nonetheless,
the United States must do better in investing in its own productivity and competitiveness. Finally, the
third component of economic vitality is the global environment in which the United States competes. A competitive US economy requires a
level playing field in order to generate long-term success for American citizens and, ultimately, to sustain the investments
necessary for advancing national security. This should include continued efforts to expand free
trade through bilateral, regional, and global arrangements. B. Preeminent Military Capabilities Maintaining the US militarys global preeminence is vital to both protecting American values and interests and providing the
infrastructure for integrating the efforts of other allies and partners. Clearly, the United States pays disproportionately for this global security structure. US defense spending is triple that of our European allies combined and six times that of China. Yet a strong
military is necessary for the pursuit of US interests with respect to allies and adversaries alike. As the United States brings its deficits and debt under control in order to assure economic vitality, it will need to absorb some reductions in defense spending. The defense
establishment itself can be far more efficient; though reductions that are too severe and lack a clear strategy risk undermining Americas military preeminence. US defense cuts should go hand-in-hand with a strategy for strengthening Americas defense capabilities
in the long-term. To defend American security interests and ensure the widest range of strategic policy options, US military forces must maintai n the ability to: deter any potential military rival and defeat any potential adversary by maintaining a significant
qualitative military superiority; retain a US presence overseas sufficient to anchor regional stability, partner with allied military forces, and serve as hubs for contingency operations; protect the global commons, including the maritime, air, and space domains,
as well as cyberspace; conduct counterterrorism operations around the globe as necessary; curb nuclear proliferation; conduct operations, when necessary, to prevent mass atrocities and halt abuses by predatory states, carry out disaster response,
emergency evacuation, crisis management, and postconflict stabilization. When necessary to conduct military operations, the United States should seek to act in concert with allies, while preserving the capacity to conduct successful operations on its own, anywhere
in the world. At the same time, the United States should help expand the capabilities of allies and partners by providing equipment and training, and through joint exercises and capacity-building activities. C. Strong Allies and Partners It is
essential to the United States that our allies and partners have strong, healthy economies and defense
capacities, giving them the means to contribute to addressing global challenges. Europe remains crucial to our common efforts to manage global challenges. NATO is the
principal vehicle for structuring US security relations with Europe, as well as other non-European partners taking part in common operations. Ensuring its continued vitality
should remain a top priority for American leaders. Likewise, the United States should continue to invest in strengthening the US-EU relationship, particularly in areas where EU
members have delegated responsibility to collective EU institutions. The United States should also continue to give priority to alliance relationships in the Asia-Pacific region,
where support for our security partnerships is at an all-time high and much could be done to integrate our capabilities bilaterally using NATO standards as a guide. Similar
efforts are needed with our security partnerships in the Middle East, particularly given the threat from Iran. And the United States must sustain a comprehensive upgrade in our
partnerships with democracies rising in power and influence, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey. The United States should also
continue to support efforts to enhance the capacity of regional organizations, such as the
Organization of American States, the African Union, and ASEAN, to address regional challenges. Finally, the United States should continue to engage
major powers through inclusive institutions including the UN. Given the veto power and frequent intransigence of Russia and China, the UN Security Council will continue to
pose serious challenges for advancing core values but it remains an important forum for pursuing cooperative action. The G-20 has proven useful for discussing key economic
issues, though it often lacks the like-mindedness necessary for concerted action. At the same time, the United States will need to look to complementary venues for engaging
likeminded nations to advance democratic values and shared interests. It must also enhance partnerships with non-state actors, including NGOs and private sector entities that
are influential and that support goals consistent with US interests and values. D. Effective US Foreign Assistance US foreign assistance has been a
core element in advancing American values and national security interests for decades. Although often the target of budget
critiques, foreign assistance can be more cost effective than other means for advancing American
values and interests. When applied effectively and in concert with public and private partners, it can prevent crises and avoid the need
for more costly humanitarian interventions at a later stage. For this potential to be realized, foreign assistance must be closely
aligned with and reinforced by broader US goals and strategies. Foreign aid should include humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, security
assistance and training that expands the capabilities of allies and partners, training aimed at preventing human rights abuses and harm to civilians, and
assistance for democracy development. Such aid should prioritize sustainable models of economic growth, and not merely provide relief. As with
the goals of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, such aid should reinforce good governance, local ownership, private sector development, and investment in citizens. US
government-funded support should be viewed as only one source of economic engagement that can be effectively leveraged. Private sector trade and investment flows dwarf
government-sponsored assistance efforts. The United States should actively work to partner with the private sector, foreign donors,
charitable organizations and others in order to increase coherence in economic engagement and to generate
sustainable, multiplier effects. E. Effective Global Public Engagement With the distribution of power and information that characterizes the internet age, foreign governments are but one group of interlocutors
that the United States will need to influence, support, and, in some cases, oppose. Internet and social media users, global and local TV, radio, print, and internet media, NGOs, civic activists and organizers, and business leaders are all critical to the advancement of
democratic values, to the process of change and development in societies, and to the shaping of global political, economic, and security developments. Activists in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have fostered more change in the Middle East in three years than
governments have in fifty. The United States must invest in the tools necessary to exercise influence within this broadening of global participation. The objective should be to reinforce the broader aims of US national security strategy as a whole, i ncluding the
advancement of liberty, democracy, human dignity, tolerance; economic freedom; and the rule of law. This requires continuous, active messaging in multiple venues and contexts in order to build support for core values. Yet messaging itself does not go far enough:
the United States must counter disinformation, offer recognition and support to those who support core democratic values, and push back on those who seek to limit freedom of expression and communication.
V. Challenges and Opportunities On the basis of these core principles and investments in core capacities, the United States should choose carefully where and when to invest its efforts
abroad. The United States does not have the resources or ability to solve every crisis that emerges. A steady focus on long-term prioritiesshaping of the global environment;
promoting democratic development and a free, fair, and open global economic system; and maintaining strong security structures anchored on relationships with regional allies
should underpin US national security. Such investments have the greatest potential to build long-term global security and well being, benefiting all nations including the
United States, while also ensuring capacities sufficient to deal with crises as they emerge. Crisis management should be a subset of these larger goals. Nevertheless, crises
often push their way to the top of the foreign policy agenda regardless of strategic designs. They have the potential to cause great human
harm, to reshape regional and global development in unpredictable ways, to realign power
relationships, and to derail even the best laid strategies. It is imperative, therefore, for the United
States to contend with crises as they emerge, deciding whether and how to address them in ways consistent with its long-term objectives.
Too much engagement can tie down resources without strategic gain; too little engagement can allow crises to upend years of strategic progress within a short period of time.
With these considerations in mind, national security issues can be categorized in two ways: challenges that the United States has no choice but to address, and opportunities the
United States chooses to pursue because of their long-term potential for positive impact. Many issues will have an element of both an immediate crisis that must be addressed,
but also an opportunity for long-term strategic advancement. Near-Term Challenges The United States currently faces a wide range of
serious challenges. From managing difficult relations with Russia and China, to countering
narcotics cartels in Mexico, to advancing prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, US
policymakers have a long list of issues on which they will need to be prepared to engage. But there are a handful of
immediate crises and challenges that require near-term and high-level focus. These include: 1. Preventing Iran from
achieving a nuclear capability. Preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power must remain at the top of Americas national security agenda.
Even without nuclear weapons, Iran has supported terrorist and other extremist groups, threatened neighboring states, attacked American interests, threatened Israel, and is
both undermining Iraqs fragile democracy and supporting Bashar al-Assads brutal effort to remain in power in Syria. A nuclear-armed Iran could be emboldened in its pursuit
of all of these actions, feeling it can deter international efforts to push back vigorously on Iranian policies. Diplomacy, globally applied sanctions, and further international
pressure on Iran to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon all remain the essential, immediate courses of action. That said, the use of force must remain on the table as a last
resort. 2. Preventing reversals in Afghanistan stability. Since 2001, US goals for security in Afghanistan and for curtailing the impact of
extremists in Afghanistan, and more broadly, northern Pakistan, have depended principally upon US led military and intelligence activities. Despite major remaining challenges
from corruption to governance to domestic security, this effort has been successful to some degree. The effort to enhance Afghan capacities and leadership is critical to
withdrawing US and other coalition forces. The full transfer to Afghan leadership and significant reduction in US and other military forces by the end of 2014, by definition,
entails certain risks, both in terms of security and human rights, including the rights of women and girls. No matter what form this residual international presence takes in
Afghanistan beyond 2014, it will be essential for the United States to give full support to these arrangements and to the financing and function of the Afghan government. The
United States will also need to retain tactical flexibility, including the possibility of increasing assistance or the US presence in response to threats and challenges as they emerge.
3. Rebuilding cooperation with a moderate, civilian-led Pakistan. Pakistan faces extraordinary internal challenges and
divisions that both threaten the stability of the country and create dangers for the broader region. Extremists based in Pakistan could pose an even greater threat should they
regain a stronghold in Afghanistan. The risk that such groups could spark conflict with India remains high. All of this is made more dangerous by the fact that Pakistan is armed
with nuclear weapons. The United States depends upon Pakistan in its efforts to bring about stability in Afghanistan, yet remains threatened by Pakistans own instabilities and
the support by at least some elements of the Pakistani security establishment for extremist organizations. As intractable as these problems appear, it is essential for the United
States to develop a strategy for improving cooperation with Pakistan while seeking to diminish the threats emanating from Pakistani territory. This should include strengthening
the development of Pakistans civilian institutions, supporting regional and global trade links to help support a growing entrepreneurial middle class, and actively cooperating
with the Pakistani military. The United States should use its economic and military assistance to incentivize cooperation and oppose efforts made against US interests and
values. The US policy of drone strikes in Pakistani territory needs to be far better coordinated with these broad goals in order to avoid undermining US interests in a moderate
and responsible Pakistan. 4. Countering terrorist threats posed by al Qaeda and similar organizations. Preventing
an attack on the United States, US allies, and US interests abroad remains a top priority. While al Qaedas capacities have been diminished, the fall of Arab dictators has
provided greater operational freedom for affiliate groups in areas such as Syria, Yemen, the horn of Africa, the Sahel, and the Maghreb. Preventing al Qaeda and similar groups
from toppling weak governments in Africa and establishing bases for unfettered training and operations in ungoverned areas is of paramount importance. The United States
must continue to carry out direct attacks against such groups, together with allies, while working over the long-term to strengthen governance and economic development and
help steer disaffected youth away from violent extremism. 5. Halting the killing, rebuilding a post-Assad Syria, and
stabilizing its neighborhood. The crisis in Syria has presented an appalling humanitarian catastrophe, strengthened radicalized groups within Syria, and
risked a wider clash between Iranian-sponsored militias and al Qaeda-affiliated extremists. The potential for regional spillover is serious, and governments and populations in
Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, and Lebanon could be at risk. Together with European and Arab allies, the United States must consider more assertive optionsincluding potential
military optionsto stop the killing, provide humanitarian relief, ease the removal of Assad from power, prevent a descent into civil war, and help the Syrian people rebuild
stability and governance. 6. Supporting the EUs efforts to stabilize the Euro-zone. If Eurozone markets should destabilize, the
United States as well as Europe would suffer serious financial and economic consequences. Ultimately, only the members of the EU, and especially the member nations of the
Eurozone, can set the terms and provide the resources required to maintain stable markets and banking systems in Europe. That said, the United States has a vital role to play in
encouraging decisive European steps to resolve the crisis, and in contributing to financial market confidence as such steps are taken. The United States should support and
contribute to an IMF role as part of a wider, European-led, sustainable process. 7. Reversing North Koreas nuclear program. Armed with
nuclear weapons, the totalitarian regime in North Korea constitutes a major source of regional tensions that could escalate very quickly. Pyongyang has threatened and indeed
taken steps to transfer its nuclear technologies and is developing ballistic missile systems aimed at Japan and eventually the United States. The leakage of nuclear weapons or
fissile material in the event of a crisis on the peninsula would be potentially catastrophic. Diplomacy has produced few results with Pyongyang, but cooperation with allies in
Northeast Asia and prioritization of the issue with China is essential if North Korean nuclear capabilities are to be contained and eventually rolled back. Strategic Investments
and Opportunities While seeking to manage immediate crises, the United States should prioritize strategic investments in several
areas that will contribute to shaping a global environment that supports US values and interests. Pursuing these opportunities is a long-term proposition that requires solid
foundations including broad bipartisan backing, multi-agency coordination, steady funding streams, cooperation with allies, partnerships with the private sector and
nongovernment actors, and active engagement with civil society. The most important of such investments include: 1. Bolstering the rules-based
global market economy. At a time when the established, developed economies are suffering from weak economies and fiscal imbalances, it is
imperative to invest in the institutions and structures of a rules-based global, liberal, market
economy. This should include pursuit of free trade and open market initiatives, such as the TransPacific
Partnership and a Trans-Atlantic single market. Such US led regional initiatives could help shift momentum toward
more open trade globally. The United States should also work to strengthen and creatively use the key institutions underpinning global economic
governance, including the G-20, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. There must be a clear focus and determination to use
both carrots and sticks in encouraging rising powers to play by the rules, rather than to seek unilateral advantage
through privileged arrangements and neo-mercantilist behavior. 2. Advancing energy security and alternative technologies. The
United States should launch a major, integrated domestic and foreign policy initiative to bolster relative energy independence for itself and allies; expand free-market trading of
energy supplies; reduce energy costs in the US economy; gradually reduce the funds that extractive energy sales provide to nondemocratic and/or hostile powers; and invest in
alternative energy technology development so that such technologies ultimately become cost competitive with respect to traditional hydrocarbon based fuels. This initiative
should include developing environmentally sustainable North American based energy resources, particularly shale gas and oil sands for both domestic and export markets, while
simultaneously investing in research and development of new technologies. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions through improved efficiency, alternative
technologies, and international efforts to reduce such emissions should be a priority, consistent
with the need to sustain US economic growth. The United States should play a leading role in encouraging emerging economies to adopt
lower emission power production, while recognizing that market forces will primarily determine fuel consumption patterns. 3. Supporting democratic
transitions, tolerance, and human development in the broader Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring represents an
unprecedented and irreversible change in the broader Middle Eastone where ordinary citizens are demanding a middle path between authoritarianism and extremism. This
period of transition presents extraordinary short-term dangers, from civil war to radical Islamists imposing their politicized version of religion to attacks on US citizens at home
and abroad. Promoting more just, representative, tolerant, and economically growing societies presents the best chance for moving beyond the decades of repression, conflict,
and radicalization that have plagued the region for decades. The United States needs to continue mitigating short-term security risks, while increasing its support for civil society
institutions and long-term democratic reforms. An essential part of this investment is womens education and empowerment in society, as well as religious freedom and
dialogue. Such an approach should set forth an overarching framework of development in the region, integrating public sector, private sector, and NGO initiatives. 4. Addressing
Chinas rising power. While the United States will remain the worlds largest single economy and dominant global actor for decades to come, China represents the most
significant rising economic force in the world. Fundamental differences between the United States and China on issues of democracy, human rights, regional security, and
certain aspects of global market economics persist. US policy should incorporate a strategic blend of engagement, balancing, and deterrence. Engagement measures should focus
on increased trade and investment, student exchanges, language training, research and development, energy and climate, and regional cooperation. At the same time, the United
States must prioritize pressing for greater political and religious freedom within China. In addition, reducing the potential for future conflict will also require bolstering security
partnerships with key allies in the Asia-Pacific region and maintaining our forward military presence in the region. The United States should seek to forge new partnerships with
important regional powers such as Indonesia and Vietnam and foster trade and economic ties that help to produce a trans-Pacific institutional architecture aimed at advancing
open markets and liberal norms. 5. Bolstering a strategic partnership with India. The consolidation of a wide-ranging strategic partnership with India can bolster long-term
prosperity and security for both the United States and India. Our two nations share a convergence of strategic interests, agree on the fundamentals of democracy and human
rights, and have a growing economic partnership. Yet India still struggles with its legacy of non-alignment and statist economic management. The United States should continue
to deepen relations centered around a strong, global, liberal economic order, while working to create a preponderance of democratic power and values in Asia with the US-India
partnership increasingly at its core. 6. Establishing an Africa-focused prosperity initiative. Despite persistent poverty, disease, and conflict in major parts of Africa, the continent
is experiencing new economic growth and modernization, as well as burgeoning and globally connected middle class societies. While assistance programs should continue to
remain a crucial part of US engagement, the United States should launch a new framework to expand free trade, entrepreneurship, and private-sector investment, all of which
can help provide the economic underpinnings necessary to advance sustainable growth, reduce poverty, and expand educational and economic opportunities. Such an initiative
should recognize that aid-driven development is no longer preeminent, and the successful deployment of US government resources will depend on the extent to which it
mobilizes private investment and private sector led growth. 7. Promoting a prosperous, secure, and democratic Western
Hemisphere. The United States should place renewed priority on working with democratic,
market oriented governments in Latin America to bolster prosperity, expand economic
participation, and improve social integration. This should include efforts to expand trade and
investment, while assisting governments in their efforts to combat narcotics trafficking,
terrorism, and the erosion of democratic societies. Ultimately, while security assistance remains essential, broad societal
participation in new economic growth is the most powerful tool in overcoming the systemic
challenges that produce crime, violence, drugs, and migration. VI. Conclusion There are a myriad of other important issues
on which the United States must remain engaged beyond those discussed above. What is essential is that facing limited resources, the United States must
make choices and engage strategically. The issues identified above represent either those crisis areas where the United States has no choice but to
engage, or alternatively, where it can make strategic investments to help shape the global playing field long into the future. A national security strategy
that focuses on these critical challenges and investmentswhile based on the core principles of
advancing a liberal democratic order and a proactive American global leadership roleoffers the
best opportunity to assure the long-term security and prosperity of the United States, its
citizens, and the global democratic community.

RE-SHAPING GOOD
Turn the U.S. must reshape the plastic economic order to attain lasting peace
and leadership
Indyk and Kagan 1/17/13 Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution; senior fellow in
the Center on the United States and Europe in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution (Martin Indyk; Robert Kagan, 17 January
2013, Big Bet: A Plastic Moment to Mold a Liberal Global Order, The Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2013/1/big%20bets%20black%20swans/a%20plastic%20moment%20
to%20mold%20a%20liberal%20global%20order.pdf)//KP
As you enter your second term, the state of the world is remarkably unsettled. The leading powers are beset
with economic crises or are in various states of political transition or gridlock. The Middle East is in a state of
political upheaval. Tensions are rising in East Asia. The worlds institutions, whether the United Nations, the
G-20, or the European Union, are weakened and dysfunctional, and seem to be pulling apart in the absence of concerted leadership. The
liberal world order established after the Second World War characterized by a free, open international
economy, the spread of liberal democracy, and the deepening of liberal, peaceful norms of
international behavior is fraying at the edges. It is a time of uncertainty and instability for the
world, and for the United States; but it is also a moment of opportunity. Almost a century ago, when the United States entered the
First World War, the philosopher John Dewey observed that the world was at a plastic juncture. He and many other progressives believed that the
unsettled world of their day offered the United States and the other democratic powers a chance to remold the international system into something
better. Americans walked away from that challenge and would embrace it only after a second catastrophic breakdown of world order. Today, we are
at another plastic juncture. Will America turn inward and away from an increasingly messy world? Or will we
launch a new effort to strengthen and extend, both geographically and temporally, the liberal world order
from which Americans and so many others around the world have benefited? The answer depends very
much on how you choose to make use of your next four years in office. Unfortunately, there is not a lot to show for your first four years. In many
respects, this is understandable. The economic crisis that you inherited made steady concentration on foreign policy more challenging. The two wars
you inherited in the Greater Middle East had been bungled by your predecessor and cost the United States dearly, both materially and in terms of
reputation. You began to restore that reputation through your own global appeal and the efforts of your Secretary of State. You have done especially
well in raising Americas profile and deepening our engagement in East Asia. However, so far it is hard to list many durable accomplishments. Most of
the major challenges are much as you found them when you took office, or worse: from the stalled Middle East peace process and turmoil in the Arab
world to Irans continuing march toward a nuclear weapons capability to Chinas increasing assertiveness in East Asia. Your understandable
preoccupation with reelection has left much of the world wondering: Where is the United States? For all the talk of American decline from certain
quarters, the United States is actually well-positioned for a new era of global leadership. If you can strike the
difficult but necessary compromise with Congress that begins to address Americas fiscal crisis, the United States could well emerge
as among the worlds most successful and dynamic economies. America enjoys unique
advantages in the international economic system: a natural gas revolution that promises soon to make it a net-exporter of energy,
a superior university education system and an open and innovative economy that continues to attract the
worlds best and most creative young minds. On the international stage, the United States remains the only world power
with global reach, uniquely capable of organizing concerted international action and serving as a
source of security and stability to nations and peoples facing threatening neighbors. Recommendations: How then to take
advantage of this plastic moment to mold the changing global order to best serve the United States and humankind? We believe that in the next
four years you will have a unique opportunity to shape a multilateral global order that will
continue to reflect American liberal values and progressive ideals. This will require your sustained attention,
personal engagement, and direction of the national security agencies of the U.S. government. The reward could be a
transformational and lasting impact on the international system, which will redound to the
benefit of future generations. In the security realm, your primary big bet must be to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons
capability. It is hard to imagine a bigger blow to the international security order than the collapse of the nonproliferation regime that would follow
Irans successful acquisition of nuclear weapons. Conversely, if you can succeed in achieving meaningful curbs on Irans nuclear weapons aspirations
and reinforce this by negotiating another nuclear arms reduction agreement with Moscow, you will do much to strengthen non-proliferation and
nuclear disarmament as a fundamental pillar of the new liberal global order. In East Asia, your primary big bet should be on promoting a regional order
that encourages China to develop in a peaceful and productive direction. You have already formulated a credible strategy; now you will need to
encourage Chinas new leadership away from greater reliance on military power in favor of continued economic and political development at home and
increasing economic and political integration abroad. This will mean continuing to deepen Americas Asian alliances, especially with the new
leaderships in Tokyo and Seoul; building new partnerships with the nations of the region; and playing a major role in supporting regional cooperation.
You should ensure that the rebalancing effort in East Asia goes beyond the military to include all aspects of American power. With India, the worlds
largest democracy and the other major rising power in Asia, you have laid a strong foundation but the next four years will be critical in building a
partnership that can serve as another pillar of the emerging liberal geopolitical order. Strengthening the liberal economic order
needs to be a higher priority in your second term. Concluding free trade agreements with the AsiaPacific region and
Europe would boost U.S. exports and global economic recovery while promoting a broader
consensus on the necessary standards to promote free trade and investment in the global
economy. Building the infrastructure and putting in place the policies necessary to export American natural gas to key allies and partners,
especially in Europe and Asia, will help reduce their dependence on Russia and Iran. Leveraging Americas hydrocarbon
bonanza to encourage more effective efforts to counter climate change can help promote a
greener global order. Strengthening the liberal political order will require increased efforts to
enlist the support of emerging democracies. Nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey have become
increasingly influential economically. But they are struggling to find their identity as democratic powers on the international stage and, in some cases,
are punching below their weight. Some are drifting toward a worldview that actually undermines the liberal
nature of the global order. At the same time, powerful autocracies like Russia have staked out positions at
the United Nations and elsewhere that are antithetical to liberal values on the issue of Syria, for instance.
These autocratic powers need to understand that if they continue their obstructionism, the
democratic international community will increasingly move on without them and they will be
isolated. In your first term, you were reluctant to make democracy a centerpiece of your foreign policy. However, with revolutions in
the Arab world and political changes in Burma that you have supported, it is time to place the United
States once again at the vanguard of the global democracy movement. This is not only because democracy is
consonant with American values. In the Middle East, in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, just as in Burma and the rest of Asia, the United
States has strategic, political and economic interests in the spread of stable, liberal democracies.
Although democracies can be fractious, and in times of transition unstable, in the end they are more
reliable supporters of the liberal world order which Americans seek. The United States needs to do more in support of the difficult
struggle for democracy in the Arab world too, including holding the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood government to democratic standards, and more
actively leading the effort to shape a positive democratic outcome in Syria and preventing it from descending into chaos or becoming a haven for
jihadists and Iranian proxies. Americas relationship with Russia needs to be shaped by strategic arms agreements as well as by respect for the desires
and aspirations of the Russian people. You should work to steer Russia in a positive direction, strengthening where you can those forces in Russian
society that favor economic and political modernization. Finally, the United States needs a global strategy. It cannot focus on
one critical region to the detriment of others. While you were absolutely right to increase American attention to the vital region of the Asia-Pacific, the
United States cannot and should not reduce its involvement in the Middle East or in Europe. Since the end of the Second World
War, the United States has played the key security role in all three regions at once; there is no
safe alternative to that. This is particularly true in the Middle East, where many nations look to the United States for both protection and
assistance. But even Europe deserves continued American attention and involvement. Everything the United States wants to accomplish in the world
can be better accomplished with the help and cooperation of its European allies. Conclusion: At the end of World War II, the
United States led the way in shaping an international political, economic, and security order
which, for all its flaws, served the American people, and much of the world, remarkably well.
Much is changing in todays world, but the basic requirements of American foreign policy have not. Your
great challenge is to seize this plastic moment and apply your leadership to the preservation and extension of the liberal global order for future
generations.
Foreign policy must be re-connected with economic interests its key to re-
inventing capitalism and restoring peace
PHASE 3: Globalization's Promise and Perils The end of the Cold War reunited Europe. The European Community became a
deeper, wider union and launched its own currency. Just as importantly, China, India, and other developing countries
moved from planned socialism and import-substitution schemes to market competition. Over a decade, the number of
people engaged in or actively affected by the world market economy surged from about 1 billion to four or five times that.
Information technology swept ahead. Capital raced around the globe. Rather than the world economy of Bretton Woods, the earlier
era of globalization before World War I -- with its large movements of capital, trade, and people, spurred by new technologies in transport and
communication -- seemed to offer a closer parallel. Yet the adaptation to markets on a truly global scale, integrating developed and
developing countries alike, was bound to be complicated and disjointed. It was. In the late 1990s, countries in
East Asia and Latin America faced harsh financial blows and painful restructurings. Almost all
are now stronger for the experience. But the recovery strategies of some developing countries planted the
seeds of a new problem: "imbalances" -- whether of savings, reserves, trade accounts, or other dimensions. Developing economies
in East Asia saved and exported more, and the United States and some European countries increased borrowing,
consumption, and imports. Interventions to lessen the value of Asian currencies constrained
their imports and expanded exports. Some economists maintain that the low prices of goods available from new suppliers led
central bankers to persist in easy monetary policies for too long, risking widespread asset-price inflation, especially in real estate markets. Then
the bubbles burst. The institutions of the international economic system adapted incrementally, often with difficulty. The economic
firefighting of the IMF and World Bank made them principal targets of an anti-globalization movement in the 1990s. The continuing boom almost put
the IMF out of business. Unfortunately, neither international nor domestic supervisors of financial markets kept up with the innovations -- or the
frauds and foolishness that inevitably come with long boom periods. The WTO added many new members. The trading system even withstood terrorist
attacks -- and fears of more. But the travails of the WTO's Doha Round of trade negotiations, launched in 2001, signaled a new challenge. The
traditional developed economies wanted the middle-income countries -- China, Brazil, India, and others -- to assume more responsibility for lowering
barriers to trade, while all would offer special treatment for Africa and the poorest. The major developing economies, in turn, pointed to their large
numbers of poor people and wanted to maintain the privileges of what WTO practice refers to as "special and differential treatment." This debate
reverberates not only in trade, but in monetary affairs, investment, development, energy, and the environment. The 9/11 attacks
concentrated America's attention on terrorism, homeland security, and the long wars that
followed. Yet the connections of economics to the new security threats are also strong. When al
Qaeda targeted the United States, it aimed for the World Trade Center -- its twin towers the symbols of
American capitalism -- as well as Washington. In addition to shock and destruction, the terrorists wanted to strangle
economic and political freedom. As Osama bin Laden boasted in 2004, his aim was "bleeding
America to the point of bankruptcy." Even as America fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and against terrorist
threats around the globe, other forces of history did not stand still. China, India, and other emerging economies began
to change the landscape of power. The failed political and stunted economic systems of North Africa and the Middle East sparked
upheavals that will shake the region for a generation. PHASE 4: After the Crash The crash of 2008 has ushered in a fourth phase of the post-World War
II economic experience. Global financial capitalism now faces a new crisis -- of credit, conduct, and even
confidence. After harsh blows, the advanced economies are struggling to reduce debt and revive jobs
and productivity through structural reforms. Unemployment is up. Confidence is down. Protectionism is rising. Publics are
anxious. Politicians are struggling. Conflicts and tensions within and between countries are building. Developing economies have
been hit too, though many have fared relatively better. In a profound shift, the 60-year leadership of developed economies is in question. Will the
eurozone and the historic success of Europe's peaceful integration survive -- and with it, Europe's influence in the world? Will the high-growth
developing countries overcome the so-called "middle-income trap" to become high-income countries and "responsible stakeholders" in an international
system that has benefited them -- but that they did not design? Will the poorest -- the "bottom billion" -- have an opportunity to prosper too, or will
they be breeding grounds for transnational insecurities? Will the new political systems of the Middle East and North Africa lead to new economic
policies for inclusive growth and peaceful integration into the world economy? Will the United States show leadership -- at home
and internationally -- in reviving its core economic strength while simultaneously leveraging those
capabilities through an activist economic diplomacy? Will the United States connect its foreign
economic policy with security interests in freedom of the seas, open skies, and protection of
cyberspace? FOREIGN MINISTER CARR'S warning about America's need to resolve its budget mess is correct: The United States must restore
its credit, both for its own health and to enable it to lead. But the United States does not need just any budget deal. It
needs one that rebuilds the fundamentals of long-term growth. It needs to limit government spending. It needs
to encourage private-sector innovation and productivity. It needs inclusive growth that empowers all its citizens to
fulfill their potential. It needs to revive a free trade agenda that has stalled in recent years. It needs to favor
makers over takers. By restoring America's credit and reviving growth, the next president and Congress would add to the country's power and influence
in reinforcing ways. Strong, sustainable growth would boost public and private resources, while disciplining the
debt would halt the burdening of future generations to pay for current excesses. Greater public resources would pay -- not borrow --
for vital purposes, starting with national defense, but also including the public goods of education,
research, infrastructure, and the environment. A comprehensive budget and growth deal would also remove the weight of
costly uncertainty from the private sector. Success at home would strengthen America's standing around the
world as a can-do country with the means, ideas, and willpower to reinvent capitalism yet again.
In his classic study, The World in Depression, 1929-1939, the economist Charles Kindleberger argued that it was critical for
one major power to take the lead in shaping an international economic system. This power could
not dictate, but instead needed to invest in encouraging a shared approach to trade, capital flows,
currencies, and reliance on markets. Kindleberger described how during the Great Depression, the United States had the means
but not the will to lead, while Britain had the will but no longer the means. If the United States does not lead now, who will?
ECONOMIC FOCUS GOOD
No link and turn the Cold War prioritized military might reconciling this
different is key to conflict resolution and leadership
This race through U.S. foreign economic policy is not intended to suggest that the American
system was all about peaceful commerce. To the contrary, even if the connection was driven by
interests and not explicit planning, the economic and security policies worked hand in hand.
These interests were infused with a healthy dose of what those generations called spreading
"civilization," and what we call "values." With trade and the flag came missionaries and their schools. After the
defeat of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the United States pragmatically used its share of the indemnity imposed on China -- which the United States had
opposed -- to found Tsinghua University in Beijing and fund scholarships for Chinese students to attend universities in the United States. As the United
States settled its home continent around the opening of the 20th century, a debate arose about expansion to territories beyond U.S. shores. Some
wanted markets or coaling stations, and others sought to carry "civilization" to foreign peoples.
Some simply wanted to keep strategic places out of the hands of others. But "imperialism" did not sit well with
many Americans, who proudly recalled that their new nation had freed itself from old empires. The U.S. war with Spain in 1898, precipitated by
conflicts over Cuba, led the United States to acquire the Philippines (for $20 million) to keep the islands from being grabbed by others whose fleets
were hovering -- but the United States did not take Cuba. President Theodore Roosevelt stirred up a revolt in Panama so he could build a canal that
linked the two great oceans, commerce, and fleets of the U.S. Navy. America's foreign economic policy also helped spur
early interest in international law -- what we now call "rules-based systems" -- to resolve disputes. The United States was
an active participant in the 1899 Hague Conference and lent its support to a convention to resolve disputes peacefully through third-party mediation,
international commissions, and a Permanent Court of Arbitration. Secretary of State Elihu Root negotiated arbitration treaties with 25 countries early
in the 20th century. The decades that followed continued the pattern of melding U.S. economic
interests with foreign policy and security policy. "Dollar diplomacy," as historians have dubbed the strategy,
sought to support U.S. enterprises in Latin America and East Asia through what we now call transnational actors -- but in
those days were railroad and mining engineers, bankers, and merchants. In World War I, Britain shrewdly played on the U.S. commitment to neutral
rights on the seas to draw President Woodrow Wilson to its side against Germany and its U-boats. After the war, reacting against what the United
States viewed as the old European politics of perpetuated hostilities, America withdrew from European military security. Yet even during the
1920s and 1930s, the United States relied on banker-statesmen to negotiate debt and
reparations to revive broken economies. To secure peaceful seas, the United States even
launched the idea of global naval arms control in the 1920s. Reeling from the Great Depression,
however, America withdrew from the world economy, enacting the Smoot-Hawley tariff wall to block imports and subverting a
last-gasp effort for international economic cooperation at the 1933 World Economic Conference. Political-military isolationism
followed. Then came 1941, and the United States again learned, through harsh experience, that economics
and security were linked. The United States had imposed embargoes on the sale of petroleum
and scrap iron to Japan in response to Japan's invasion of China and its threats to Southeast Asia. Imperial Japan
responded with a surprise attack, in part to secure its sources of oil and raw materials. The United States, caught
unprepared, paid a terrible price. WORLD WAR II AND the opening of the Cold War led to a sharp break in
the American foreign-policy tradition. At least that is the impression left by the masters of mid-20th-century security studies. In
their narrative, the dawn of the nuclear age and the face-off between communism and the West
required a new approach: a national security strategy. The traditional aims of amity and
commerce seemed quaint and outdated in a world of superpower confrontation and containment. For the
first time, the United States maintained a large conventional army, a significant part based in Europe, with hundreds of thousands of other troops
fighting in Asia over decades. Instead of Milton Friedman's idea that economic freedom is an end in itself and an indispensable means toward achieving
political freedom, economics became a resource factor -- and the handmaiden of the strategic policy process. The U.S. National
Security Act of 1947 is full of references to new offices to mobilize people and resources for total war. Yet the act did not even make the Treasury
secretary a statutory member of the new National Security Council. Ever since, the U.S. government has struggled to integrate economics into its
national security strategies. The transformation of U.S. foreign-policy priorities signaled a change in the
training of the stewards of American foreign policy. The new specialties were Soviet studies, political-military affairs,
defense policy, and eventually Middle East policy. Short of homegrown talent on the central front, America even outsourced security strategy to
immigrants from continental Europe --Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski -- who had grown up in a world of threat and the complications of
balancing power in Eurasia. Now, we need to rewrite economics back into the narrative of the Cold War
and all that follows. We need a fuller appreciation of the links between economics and security
to match the times. The world continues to struggle through a global economic crisis that began in the
United States. Fears, fragilities, and failures fuel tensions within and among countries. Leaders are under protectionist and
nationalist pressures -- in trade, but also regarding currencies, investments, resources, and the oceans. These frictions risk a
downward economic spiral and even conflict. Because the United States has not faced up to its
economic problems at home, its voice on international economics does not carry, its power has waned, and its strategic designs
drift with the currents of the day's news. Without healthy economic growth, the United States will be unable to
lead. Just as dangerously, it will lose its identity on the global stage if it loses its economic dynamism.
America's unique strength is the ability to reinvent itself
SOLVES FAILING STATES
Turn economic engagement and security is key to stop escalation from failing
states and terrorism
Rowaman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2012, p. 219-223 )//KP
Due in part to the vestiges of colonialism, developing states at the present time face a number of threats so
daunting than they can result in collapse. Failed states, in tum, can pose a signicant threat to the
United States. In fact, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States, the George W. Bush
administration argued that for the rst time in history, weak states posed more of a threat to the
United States than strong states. The conclusion of a study cosponsored by the Association of the U.S. Anny and the Center for
Strategic and International Studies states: One of the principal lessons of the events of September 11 is that failed states matter not just for
humanitarian reasons but also for national security as well. If left unattended, such states can become sanctuaries for
terrorist networks with a global reach, not to mention interactional organized crime and drug traffickers
who also exploit the dysfunctional environment. As such, failed states can pose a direct threat to the national interests of the United States and to the
stability of entire regions. What causes state failure? First and foremost is poverty and the need for economic
development. As former State Department advisor Meghan OSullivan has noted, Poor socioeconomic conditions are seen not just as being of
humanitarian concern but also as having security implications that extend beyond a single countrys borders. Second, many developing states suffer
from an absence of national unity. Colonial powers often set boundaries solely on the basis of natural barriers, such as rivers and mountain ranges, with
little or no consideration of social groupings. Thus, Nigeria contains the Muslim Hausas in the north and the Christian Ibos in the south; these groups
fought a vicious and bloody civil war in the l970s. Similarly, Rwanda was populated principally by two tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsi; the killing sprees
that resulted have been described in chapter I I. This problem is not limited to Africa. Yugoslavia contained three main ethnic groups, Croats, Serbs and
Bosniaks. Modern Iraq must contend with both ethnic and religious divisions: ethnic Kurds occupy the north. Sunni Muslims dominate the central
part, and Shia Muslims are a majority in southern Iraq. The degree to which these three groups can get along will be an important factor shaping Iraq's
future. A third problem of developing states concerns industrialization, urbanization, and secularization. As the eminent British historian Sir Michael
Howard has noted, in developing states industrialization has led to urbanization, with the resulting breakdown of traditional authority and the
destruction of cultures rooted in tribal rule and land tenure? The resulting loss of identity and instability can have signicant effects on a country and
the surrounding region. There are also the related problems of overpopulation, hunger, and public health. One of the principal dangers
of failed states is that they can become sanctuaries for the opponents of international order. United
Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has argued that the events of September 11, 2001, were a wakeup call, [that caused many people] to realize that
even small countries, far away, like Afghanistan cannot be left to sink to the depths to which Afghanistan has sunk." Failed states can serve, and have
served, as bases of operation for terrorist groups; this was the case with both Sudan and Afghanistan for Al Qaeda. The area of the world with the
greatest number of actual or potential failed states is Africa, and the threat from African failed states is very real. As Professor Lisa Cook has observed,
Given the long-established pattern in which extremist groups, including Islamic militants, prey on impoverished
economies and failed states, Africa seems a natural breeding ground for terrorism." The United States and, more broadly, developed
Western states can respond to this threat in several ways. First, African leaders who assist their citizens and the war against terrorism should be
supported. Second, efforts to reduce poverty and strengthen the economies of African countries should be
continued and strengthened; the African Growth and Opportunity Act and the Millennium Challenge Account are two recent efforts to
do this. Third, HIV and AIDS are crippling African countries, and efforts must be continued and strengthened to address this modern-day plague. In
2009, 1.3 million people died of AIDS; 1.8 million new HIV infections occurred in sub-Saharan Africa." The dislocations caused by this disease, as well
as by malaria, tuberculosis, and other infections, contribute to societal instability. Fourth, Africa is already unstable; there is a great need to maintain
peacekeeping forces in a number of conicts, most notably Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. The 9/11 Commission commented
on the importance of failed states: "In the twentieth century, strategists focused on the worlds great industrial heartlands In the twenty-first
century, the focus is in the opposite direction, toward remote regions and failing states. PROSPECTS FOR
INCREASING ECONOMIC SECURITY For decades at least, people in developed states have recognized the need to
assist developing countries for both altruistic and self-interested reasons. As Joseph Nye has argued, Investments [in economic
development] are a clear case of coincidence between self-interest and charity." Developing countries have also recognized their need for development.
In I955, twenty-nine Asian and African countries met in Bandung, Indonesia, and declared that they were not aligned with either of the Cold Wars two
superpowers, the United States or the Soviet Union. In I964, seventy-seven states called for the creation of the UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD). This development caucus within the UN is still known as the Group of 77" even though its membership has grown to 131
states. Two so-called South Summits of the Group of 77 have occurred, the rst in 2000 in Havana, Cuba, and the second in 2005 in Doha, Qatar.
Among the principal objectives of the Group of 77 are trade, monetary and institutional reforms, economic modernization, greater freedom for labor
migration, the elimination of economic coercion, development aid, and debt relief. Developed states can attempt in several
deferent ways to prevent developing states from failing and thereby posing a greater threat. First, developed
states can invest directly in developing countries. In the 1990s, Western banks invested a great
deal of money in Latin America, and it was not unusual for prots to be in the double digits. Such direct foreign investment could also
be risky, however. When questions were raised in 1994 about the stability of' the Mexican economy and government, foreign investors called in their
loans and withdrew their money. This led to a serious economic crisis. The United States and the International Monetary
Fund came up with a fifty-billion-dollar bailout package (including twenty billion dollars from the United States). The
Mexican bailout proved to be a great success story; Mexico paid the United States back ahead of
schedule, and the U.S. Treasury made five hundred million dollars in interest. Importantly from the
American perspective, the government of Mexico did not collapse, an event that would have had profound and serious security consequences for the
United States had it occurred. A second initiative that the developed world can take to prevent the failure of states is economic aid.
Such aid can be measured in absolute or relative terms. Using the former measure, the United States leads the world as the country that grants the most
aid in dollars28.3 billion dollars in 2009. However, if aid is measured as a percentage of the donor countrys gross national product (GNP), the
picture changes dramatically. At the Monterrey Financing for Development Conference in 2002, the world's economically developed states promised to
move toward the goal of donating 0.7 percent of their gross national incomes to economic aid. Only ve countries in the world have met this target:
Sweden (1.12 percent), Norway (1.06 percent), Luxembourg (1.01 percent), Denmark (0.88 percent), and the Netherlands (0.82 percent). The
United States currently devotes 0.2 percent of its gross national income to economic aid, one of the
lowest percentages of any advanced industrial state. The United States has traditionally allocated aid primarily on political rather than on humanitarian
grounds. In keeping with this political orientation, the United States allocated most of its economic aid in the 1960s to South Vietnam; after the I979
Camp David peace accords, more than 50 percent of U.S. aid went to Israel and Egypt; most recently, large shares of U.S. development assistance have
been going to Iraq and Afghanistan. Joseph Nye has called attention to the self-interested rationale for providing economic aid to developing countries:
"There are many reasons for development assistance by wealthy countries, but one is to deprive terrorist leaders of such arguments by showing that
our policies are aligned with the long-term aspirations of the poor?"
SOLVES COOP SECURITY
No link and turn the aff focuses on human and cooperative security thats key
to addressing terrorism, conflict, and environmental problems
Rowaman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2012, p. 256-258 )//KP
As we have noted throughout this book, the traditional view of security centers on the state. The perspective that
puts national security front and center considers the central threats in the international system
(and therefore the principal concerns of security studies) to be threats to the sovereignty, the territorial integrity, and
the political and economic systems of the state. It is also state centered in that it views states as the primary sources of
threats. Seeking security in the twenty-first century requires attending to national security, because
state-based threats to states still exist. We have just noted the concerns raised by the People's Republic of China. North
Korea poses a serious threat to the stability of East Asia due to its economic instability coupled with its ongoing nuclear
program. Failed states, as we noted in chapters 10 and 11, pose a different kind of state-based problem, but one
that is nonetheless very serious. Because the traditional paradigm does not adequately address
the various security threats that we have examined, it is important to go beyond national security. Our
conclusions lead us to suggest that human security and cooperative security must be part of any
comprehensive approach to security in the century ahead. The concept of human security emerged in the early 1990s
to bring together several distinct efforts to widen the traditional security agenda. Unlike national security, human security focuses on the individual
human being rather than the state. It also includes a range of threats to human welfare that go well beyond the traditional focus on defense against
aggression. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, described human security in these terms: Human security, in its broadest sense,
embraces far more than the absence of violent conict. It encompasses human rights, good
governance, access to education and health care and ensuring that each individual has
opportunities and choices to fulll his or her potential. Every step in this direction is also a step
towards reducing poverty, achieving economic growth and preventing conict. Freedom from
want, freedom from fear, and the freedom of future generations to inherit a healthy natural
environmentthese are the interrelated building blocks of hn1nanand therefore national
security. Human security has its conceptual roots in international humanitarian law, international human rights, the concept of humanitarian
intervention, and the dual concepts of economic development and human development. As with human rights, the adjective human signals a move
not only toward thinking about the individual but toward concern for humankind as well. Human security, in other words, is
simultaneously individual security and universal security. The structure of the international system complicates
efforts to address many of the most serious problems we have discussed in this book. Sovereignty means that each of the two
hundred states in the system is free to address (or to ignore) global warming or human
trafficking or terrorism, as it sees fit. This feature of the international system makes
transnational threats particularly difcult to address. The failure of one state to reduce
HIV/AIDS infection rates poses a threat to other states. The failure of one state to curb
greenhouse gas emissions or to stop the destruction of rainforests has a negative impact on all
states that are attempting to address global warming. Furthermore, nonstate actorsterrorists, arms traffickers,
nuclear scientists willing to sell their services to the highest bidder exploit differences among
states and operate in the gaps of the international system. These facts argue strongly for seeking security through the
methods presented in the cooperative security paradigm. Cooperative security, as we noted earlier, seeks to bring states
together in ways that address the weaknesses of the international system as it is currently
constituted. It approaches security as something to which all states are entitled and that can only be gained by mutual efforts. By treating
security as a public good, it establishes the understanding that all states have a common interest
in promoting a shared system of security and that free riders must be brought into a
cooperative framework. Cooperative security requires a degree of multilateralism that was absent from
U.S. foreign policy during the administration of George W. Bush. President Obama has moved the U.S. toward more
cooperative approaches in international affairs, but a variety of factors, including domestic political pressures and fiscal
constraints, have limited the degree to which the U.S. can pursue an active multilateral agenda.

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