Resolved: Federal Government Bailouts of Major Corporations Are Just

"In every civilized society, property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great majority of cases, human life and property rights are fundamentally and, in the long run, identical; but when it clearly appears that there is real conflict between them, human life must have the upper hand." -- President Theodore Roosevelt Because I agree with Mr. Roosevelt, former president of the United States, I must affirm today's resolution: Resolved: Federal government bailouts of major corporations are just. Definitions are available upon request. My value for today's round will be that of Human Life. Human life has multiple meanings, from actual life, a beating heart and steady breath and overall health, to the livelihood of an individual and a society. Human life is topical to the resolution because with the just distribution of bailouts, life and livelihood are preserved. As previously stated, when human life and property rights are in conflict, human life must prevail, because obviously if we don't have human life, we are all lifeless and dead. Thus, over all other values and criteria, human life must be protected and preserved. To support my value, I offer the value-criterion of Cost-Benefit Analysis. Tevkik Nas, author of Theory and Application, stated that a cost benefit analysis is completed to determine how well, or how poorly, a planned action will turn out. Cost benefit analyses can be used for almost anything, though they are most commonly used on financial grounds. Since the analysis relies on the addition of the positive factors and then the subtraction of the negative factors in order to determine a net result, this process is often called running the numbers. This is topical to my value and the resolution because when looking at federal government bailouts in a cost benefit analysis, the benefits greatly outnumber the cost: in this example, preservation of human life greatly outnumbers any amount of money. Observation I: Justice is not automatically the superior value. In the possibility that my opponent attempts to convince you, judge, that justice is the only value to be judged, I would present to you the fact that just because the word "just" is used in the resolution does not instantly give the value of justice precedence over all other values. Observation II: The resolution calls for a debate affirming or negating the fact that federal government bailouts are just, and with this, one must realize that the resolution is first not specific to the United States and second does not call for proof or negation of effectiveness of bailouts. Therefore, this debate must look to the economic, sociological, societal, and all-around global effects of bailouts, as well as the just aspect of these bailouts or showing that they are legal, for it to be successful and educational. Any negative case that merely focuses on the current stimulus package and bailout plan of the Obama administration should be heard, but in the end disregarded due to the fact that cases such as these limit the educational value of this round. Contention I: Bailouts Ensure Order Subpoint A: Bailouts Protect Jobs In order to maintain the economic "status quo," we must continue to ensure that every citizen is employed and working, thus keeping the flow of money within the country at a top-notch level. Keeping this in mind, you must affirm that bailouts are just, first because they are in fact legal, as the affirmative definition shows, and second because bailing out these major corporations keeps people working. Karl Marx, within his conflict theory, claimed that if we as a society do not continue to keep jobs open for individuals, then the society has created two huge problems within the status quo. The first of these is that, obviously, people are out of work, and therefore cannot contribute to the status quo, including paying taxes, which is an obvious problem. The second is that when people are jobless, they join a group collectively known as the surplus population, which has been proven to contain the majority of criminals, drug dealers, and deviants, and for the reason that the institution has failed them. Subpoint B: Economic Bailouts Have Worked Before Economic bailouts by the federal government have not only been successful in our own past, but in the recent histories of other countries, as well. We can begin by going back and looking at our own history, only around twenty years after the foundation of our nation, when William Duer caused a market panic by trying to depress the share price of the Bank of New York. Alexander Hamilton had to step in and fix the entire problem by buying government bonds and telling banks to accept them as loan collateral. Then, in the 1970's, in Great Britain, Rolls Royse was bailed out, which led to success. Another example can be found much more recently, when the airline corporations had to be given bailout aid by the American government following the nine-eleven attacks. With all of these successes visible in the history of bailouts, it can easily be cross applied that bailouts can ensure order, and are thus just. Contention II: Bailout Benefits Outweigh Initial Taxpayer Costs, Securing Human Life The first and foremost argument against major corporations receiving federal aid is that taxpayers should not have to pay for the faults of these corporations. On the contrary, the initial costs by Mr. and Mrs. Everyday Taxpayer do not outweigh the preservation of human life, needed and achieved through these bailouts. We can go back and look at Chrysler in Flint, MI in the nineties. This car company was falling behind and losing money. Even though ten years before, Chrysler had received government aid and paid it back one hundred and fifty percent, they were denied further aid in 1996, and because of this, plants were closed across Flint and thousands of men and women lost jobs. In fact, the governor of Michigan stated before last year's MBA playoffs that they had to clean up Flint before the events were held because they had never truly recovered from the devastating job losses in the nineties. If this was just one company, one city, think about the devastation that would be caused if countless banks, insurance and loan, and car companies, failed, and millions upon millions of jobs are lost! Contention III: True Capitalism Harms Human Life in the Long Term CIV or covert institutional violence is a term created by sociologist Alexander Liazos, who made the claim that within a true capitalistic society, the "little man" or the economically inferior individual is continually being injured. To clarify his point, he begins by defining CIV as when people's everyday lives are harmed by an institution, one of his examples being from the seventies. Lee Iacoco (EYE AH COH COH), CEO of Ford Motors, found himself in the midst of a devastating oil crisis. He decided that in order to compete with foreign outsourcers Honda and Mitsubishi, he would create a car that would cost only $2000 from start to finish. He called this car the Ford Pinto. In the midst of building the car, though, it was noted that the fuel tank was far too close to the rear bumper, and in nine out of ten crash tests the Pinto exploded. Ford went back and discovered that with an $11 bumper attached to the rear of the vehicle, the car would be safe; unfortunately, they were already at the $2000 limit. When the numbers were compared, it was deduced that it would cost $137 million to add the bumper, but only $50 million to pay out in deaths, injuries, insurance, and lawsuits if the car were introduced into the market. So, obviously, in true capitalist form, Iacoco put the car on the market and killed thousands of people yearly. Therefore, when looking at capitalism from its CIV effects, true capitalism is actually harmful to the individual unless stringent regulation is put on the institutions within it. I will give my opponent a chance to attack.