Team Policy is Broken, Part 5: Impacts
An ideal debate format doesn’t favor or punish any particular argument class. You should be able to run whatever you like, with no pressure to compromise on the coherence of your case. Team Policy falls short of that standard.
Suggested Reading
Before going further, catch up on these posts:
Similar Strategies
Presumption is the theory that we should default to the minimum level of belief that is required by the available information.
Presumption arguments claim that we should default back to not supporting the resolution. While the logic varies, they have the same strategic effect.
Trichotomy: The aff case isn’t a policy case, so it doesn’t support this policy resolution. We can therefore ignore the entire affirmative plan and default to not supporting the resolution.
Topicality: The plan is not an example of the resolution. We can therefore ignore it and default to not supporting the resolution.
Specification: The plan was not supported in enough detail to be properly evaluated. It’s now too late to do so. So we can ignore it and default to not supporting the resolution.
Objection: The resolution cannot possibly be true, regardless of its current support. So we can ignore the affirmative case and reject the resolution.
Most large-scale kritiks are similar:
Kritik: Something in our opponents’ behavior/the resolution is more important than whether or not the resolution is true. So we can now ignore the affirmative case and the resolution.
Presumption arguments all claim that the Benefits (harms/advantages) don’t matter.
The “No Impact” in the Room
If you argue that something has no impact, you shouldn’t follow that up with an argument that only matters if the argument does have an impact.
This is basic logic that value debaters learn on day one. Example:
Resolved: Texas is better than California.
Aff Value: Low Taxes
Aff C1: Texas has low Taxes
Aff C2: California has high Taxes
Neg Value: Climate
If we stop at this point, we should be able to extrapolate what the negative speaker will say next. They’ll offer at least one reason why Climate is a better value than Low Taxes - meaning the judge shouldn’t use Low Taxes to make a decision. They will then offer two contentions discussing Texas and California’s climates.
The only acceptable negative response to the affirmative contentions at this point will be: “No Impact.” It would be incoherent to argue that Texas has high taxes, or that California’s credits and subsidies outweigh its taxes, or anything else about whether or not the aff contentions are true. If the judge even entertains that response, they have to first throw out the entire negative case.
You shouldn’t mix “No Impact” with other responses.
This is important, but it isn’t advanced. It’s an essential principle for building coherent, persuasive cases. Unfortunately, Team Policy makes this principle effectively impossible to uphold.
Full breakdown coming in the next post.