When in conflict, moral arguments should be valued over practical arguments.

"Morality does sometimes change, I can't argue with that. Unless of course objective morality exists, though I do not personally think it does. Maybe "timeless" was the wrong word, but I happen to like that word. Society has many aspects to it, and changes very rapidly. Morals change over long periods of time. It was immoral for a woman to show her heels, but how long did it take for that to change?" It may have taken a while, but it changed. That's what counted in that argument. "A practical argument for why women should be able to show her ankles might be this: There is a type of dress that is very popular. But if it is too long, women trip over it rather frequently. If it is too short, women's ankles may be revealed. But it is okay, because it has the practical benefit of reducing trippage." In the case you just presented, the practical argument was used over the moral one. "The counter-argument is that even in medieval ages, fashion was changing very quickly. The dress would have gone out of style in around twenty years, and would not longer be relevant. But the idea that ankles should not be shown lasted for hundreds of years. In this sense, moral arguments are much more long-term than practical ones." Slow and steady wins the race... "If ten million people die, that's a relatively small percentage of the population. But what if over a billion people are given the opportunity to fly in aircraft, and travel over long distances very rapidly? Aircraft also allow the rapid transportation of food and other goods across the globe. This benefits billions of people on a daily basis. But if those ten million people had not died, society would not be very different. Aircraft is a practical benefit. Ten million deaths is not." Cleary, ten million deaths could never be seen as a practical benefit. Anyways, aircraft was not an expected benefit. It just happened, and happened to turn out for the great benefit of society. "Thank you for adding a contention." You're welcome. "I have a problem with '[Universal healthcare] is mostly for the people who do less work and do less to improve society'. Meaning lower-income people? Income is not based on how much one contributes to society. Income is based on the education level required for the job and on the demand for the job. There are many jobs which are very important to the functionality of society, but which do not pay well. A job not paying well does not imply that the person with the job is lazy. For example, janitors must work very hard, and are very important, but are not paid well." Income is based on profits of the work. If the job is not profitable, either its wage is lowered or its position is terminated. Otherwise, they would not want them. Also, many people are lazy. Being a janitor is a very small example. Lots of people don't get an education, put no effort in getting a promotion, and expect the same. Others are unemployed, and don't bother to get employed and just live off of welfare. It would remove almost all innovation from creating better medicines, lowering the pay of doctors and other professionals. "It's time for some factual evidence. Let's look at what countries have universal healthcare, and compare them to the quality of life. Below I have a list of the countries with the highest quality of life (based on several factors including freedom, health, economy, and others). Ones with universal healthcare are marked with a 1, and ones without are marked with a 0. Highest quality of life (descending): France 1 Switzerland 1 United States 0 Luxembourg 1 Germany 1 Australia 1 Italy 1 New Zealand 1 Spain 1 Netherlands 1 9 of the top 10 countries with the highest quality of living have free healthcare. So we can conclude that universal healthcare probably is, in fact, beneficial. Quality of living is subjective, of course, but we can still get a sense of the quality of living in different countries." "Quality of Life" is very subjective. In the countries with universal health care, the people get a lot of what they need from the government. They have less innovation, retire earlier, and get less done. Also, their birthrates are going down rapidly, so that countries like Italy are having their population halved every generation. Also, whenever these countries have an epidemic, what do they do? They don't want to have to fix it, so they send to Atlanta where scientists find a cure. When the United States has an epidemic, what do they do? They fix it. If America had universal health care, nobody would want to fix it, and diseases would spread rampantly. It would be, thus, very impractical and bad for society. I got my information from "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It", by Mark Steyn. (http://www.claremont.org......) "If my opponent refutes the above argument to the satisfaction of the judge, my opponent's contention is not necessarily proven. Both my argument about income and my argument about quality of living must be refuted for the contention to stand." Wrong. All I must do is prove a scenario in which the practical argument should be chosen over the moral argument, which I have. I will now add a few more scenarios... SCENARIO ONE: As you are walking down the street, you see a little boy strapped to the wall by duct tape. There is a evil, grinning man who is about to cut off the boy's head with an axe. You are unarmed. The moral choice would be to try to save the boy against all odds. The practical choice would be to run away as fast as you could. Which would you choose? SCENARIO TWO: You and your friend are in the woods. Your friend falls into lake, somehow, hits his head on a rock, and floating there unconscious. There is no other way to get him out besides swimming to him, but you have a lot of heavy equipment that would cause you to drown. You know that if you left it there, it would be captured by the evil monkeys who live in this forest and steal anything unprotected. Without this equipment, you will surely be lost and run out of food and die, for all of the plants, animals, and fungi of these woods are poisonous. The moral choice would be to save your friend, and lose everything. The practical choice would be to continue. Which would you choose? It is clear that in each situation, the practical choice would be the reasonable choice, so moral arguments should not be valued over practical arguments. "Conclusion In my point directly above, I evidenced that the morality of healthcare did not lead to doom, and even improved the quality of life. Before that, I explained how morality is a more long-term standard than practicality. I also elaborated upon why death, in the end, is not very impractical." Conclusion In my points, I evidence that the impracticality of universal healthcare is going to lead to doom, and even hurt the quality of life. How long-term it is is completely irrelevant to the current debate. Death is very impractical. The practical argument at least in many situations is valued over moral arguments, so my opponent's resolution is proven false. In addition, they could be said "equally valuable", in which case I still win. Thank you for reading this debate.