BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Equality Between the Sexes

Women have been fighting for equal rights for many years. Yet, there is still a dick stigma about them being allowed to fight alongside men on the front line. Why? Women are just as intelligent, strong and as capable as men. So why should a persons gender determine what they can and cannot do? In a warzone, however, the enemy are not so judging. Private Eleanor Dlugosz, who was killed by a bomb in Basra, was the first British servicewoman to be killed in action in Afghanistan. Although not technically on the front line, Private Dlugosz, as part of the Intelligence Corps, carried dick out 'one of the most delicate and dangerous jobs in Afghanistan, collecting precious information, making local contacts and trying to win over the Afghan population to British counter-insurgency efforts' dick . Thus, women may even prove to be better than men in some certain situations. Defence Experts have found that it is easier to gain the trust of Afghan women and help in schools if they are approached by a female soldier. Being able to identify with each othe dick r allows for easier communication. dick Although it must be said that there are some differences between the sexes, for example men are physically stronger than most women, strength isn't always a factor. The only strength that matters is strength of mind and heart. Women can be just as fit as the men. Their gender shouldn't have to be an issue. I have heard dick arguments that perhaps women have an effect on the men that could cause them to risk their own lives to save a woman's. Chivalry is not dead yet. Some have said that although all deaths affect the ones serving alongside them, perhaps a woman's death causes a deeper pain. I once heard, 'Men and women will never be equal in life until dick they are equal in death too'. However, Jo Salter, the RAF’s first female fighter pilot, disagrees saying“It’s always so sad when there’s any death at all. Gender isn’t the issue.” In my view, there isn't really much that a man can do that a woman c dick an't. If she has chosen to join the Armed Forces she is well aware what could face her. I see know reason why she should be stopped from helping the war effort on the front line due to something she dick has no control over.
Chivalry is not dead yet

Overriding base instincts is what makes us humans, not animals. If we allowed 'its a base instinct, I can't help it' to be a valid justification, we would allow all sorts of bestial behaviour. A relationship where one person is overly protective is not necessarily positive. It is a one-sided relationship that makes women feel uncomfortable. It can lead to a woman being trapped in a position they can't get out of and owing a debt they shouldn't have had to get into and can't repay. Women and men work together in other areas without it affecting their judgement, often in very stressful roles such as police officers and paramedics. There are guidelines in every job for personal relationships and other aspects of non-work life affecting work. Why would it not work with soldiers? Soldiers on the front line work very closely together and form very intense personal relationships with each other, they are relying on each other in situations of life and death where very strong emotions crop up all the time, they justifiably all want to protect each other in order to survive, if they can't work properly under pressure of strong emotions they won't survive anyway. Stereo typically yes women are said to be somewhat more sensitive than men, however in actual evidence rather than a label, it has been proved that women are mentally and emotionally stronger than men. Women do cry more, and show emotions more but psychology proves that this is actually what makes them stronger mentally and emotionally. Their ability to cope so easily makes them stronger in these areas. If you're able to cope with emotions and stress, you're able to take in more stress without it exploding your mind. By women being able to express their feelings, emotions, and thoughts so easily they are able to handle more. Men are more likely to keep it inside, and that is unhealthy. If you cannot let out those emotions and feelings you cannot take in as many and you cannot handle as much. Men can be raped too. They are psychologically scarred by the experience just as much as women, nobody should be raped, no matter who they are.
Irrelevant differences.

As a person with a disability that affects my social skills, nothing annoys me more than people dismissing me out of hand as a potential employee because I'm terrible at face-to-face interviews, when the job I'm applying for has no contact with humans necessary to do the job that is at all simulated in an interview. Like any job, soldiers should not be picked for the front line based upon irrelevant differences. If a soldier has the physical and mental qualities necessary to handle it, they should be selected. Many women may not be physically strong enough or emotionally resilient enough to fight on the front line. A lot of men aren't either, it is a tough job, exceptional people are needed. To discount someone immediately for being female is to lose out on a potential candidate. That women are necessary for the survival of the human race is technically a relevant difference, as soldiers on the front line are so much more likely to die than people performing other jobs, but the reality is that we aren't short of women, men are declining, and women are no more going to suddenly all want to fight on the front lines than they are going to want to do any other job, so its not going to put a statistically noticeable dent in the population. If motherhood is a relevant difference, so is fatherhood, and childless women still have no reason not to fight on the front lines.
A lot of female soldiers are mothers

Fathers are equally important to their children. It is sexist to say that men are less important to their children than women are; and, most certainly it is sexist to say that the deaths of women are more tragic than the deaths of men. This is no excuse to dismiss women from their duties, in fighting for their country. A person has more responsibilities in their life than just taking care of their family; and, protecting one's country is one of them. Women are more than just mothers, and men are more than just soldiers. We must recognize and honer that.
It Is Discriminatory to Bar Women from Combat

Women are just as capable as men because they are strong intellegent and persever more so they should be allowed. Kings have notably fought in wars for their country. Not all men 'value' women, if women had always been valued they wouldn't of been looked down on and discriminated against for centuries. Men are just as important in the process of new life. Without men there would be no way to fertilize the female sex. Women should not be stopped from serving their country if they wish to do so. To superiorise one gender and degrade the other is not wise at all. Both genders are needed in this world and equality should most definitely be allowed.
This position upholds equality between the sexes.

This position upholds equality between the sexes. As long as an applicant is qualified for a position, one’s gender is arbitrary. In fact, critics often mention that women cannot meet the performance targets set for their positions. This is rank hypocrisy. In the American army, for example, performance targets are regularly calibrated for age and position. A forty year-old senior non-commissioned officer faces a much easier set of targets than his 20 year-old subordinate, yet both are deployed in an active combat role. The twenty-year old woman will outperform her NCO in physical tests: it is easy to recruit and deploy women who are in better shape than many men we send into combat. In any case, the modern high technology battlefield increasingly means that technical expertise and decision-making skills are more valuable than simple brute strength.
Single market

The market allowed for clear communication has it's flaws. If businesses from the EU go into another country that business will overtake the original business and then the foreign business will be in charge; which will mean that there will be no original companies in that country. Lower prices don't necessarily mean greater things and greater competition won't mean getting a greater choice, the choice could be the same just a different packaging. If you force someone to do something sooner or later that someone will explode with the pressure, this will mean that sooner or later some of the countries will be angry and they won't create a friendly business enviroment they will attack by force and demolish everything.
Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty has been ratified (it came into force on the 1st December) and a President of the European Council and a Foreign Minister have been chosen. This just shows that the process of integration is continuous, despite any stagnation. The treaty seeks to streamline decision making so that decisions can be made more efficiently and quickly within the Union. The pillar system of Maastricht has been abolished and all policy areas are now brought together. This means that the European Union has been consolidated with a legal body. This seems to imply that there is in fact a future for the European Union, one which is concerned with deepening integration.
Power of the US and China

The USA and China are now becoming the new driving forces of the world's economy. Although the US has less citizens than the EU (the EU has 170 million more inhabitants), its GDP is around 25% greater than that of the EU. The US have specialised in services and manufacturing and so have managed to survive the recent recession. China, on the other hand, has a growing population and specialises in cheap labour. As a result, it can churn out cheap products and so providing a more competitive environment in which to work. Other countries are now outsourcing to China in order to take advantage of the cheap labour. Therefore, money is flowing into China and this is helping her to become a new super power.
High unemployment

The Eurozone has been suffering with persistently high unemployment for the past couple of years. Termed 'hysterisis' by economists, this means that unemployment is structural and deep rooted. Strong labour protection laws mean that turnover is very low and so those without jobs find it extremely difficult to enter the labour market. As a result, the long term unemployed become used to be out of work and become unskilled. As well as being a direct hinderance to GDP by not maximising the use of labour, paying unemployment benefits is a constant and high drain on the Eurozone finances.
The Euro Bank

By joining the Eurozone, countries must forfeit control of their domestic interest rates to the European Central Bank. This is needed to ensure that one country does not profit economically at expense of another. By surrounding domestic power over interest rates to the ECB, the bank can ensure a constant inflation and interest rate across the Eurozone. However this means that, in order to comply with these rules, individual countries must use their fiscal policies to try to ensure that their domestic rates are equal to that of the Eurozone interest rates. In practice, this means that some countries may end up having higher/lower domestic interest rates than the Eurozone average. This could mean dramatically different results for the various countries e.g. when Ireland joined the EU it need to lower its domestic interest rates to match the Eurozone average causing an economic boom whereas Italy had lower rates than th EU average and so had to raise interest rates causing a contraction in GDP.
Interest rates are there for a reason

Opposition has given us a great deal of fascinating economic analysis about how interest rates are set and what they do. We, on the proposition, are very happy for this Economics 101 catch up. We're less happy about how the opposition has attempted to situate the debate in a purely theoretical, very hypothetical world. Opposition believes that the banking sector is immensely competitive... they assert this without so much as a sniff of evidence or argumentation. In fact, banking sectors in many countries are not particularly competitive, and are usually instances of oligopoly. Banks are profit making machines which automatically illustrates that at best we have a highly imperfect form of competition taking place. In fact, oligopolistic competition often leads to collusive behaviour, as has been seen in a number of cases, such as Ireland and South Africa and many many more [[http://www.breakingnews.ie/business/irish-banking-sector-is-uncompetitive--study-180411.html]] [[http://www.compcom.co.za/banking/documents/Public%20submissions/Dr%20Ian%20Edwards.pdf]]. The banking sector is particularly vulnerable to collusion because it is a natural oligopoly - entry is heavily barred by the need for institutional trust and (usually) government approval. More importantly, it is not the case that the alleged forces of competition necessarily operate on individual bankers. In fact, it is clear that the opposition has missed the force of the argument. We suggest that bankers (for reasons of personal gain - an unrebutted point) are keen to make substantial loans as often as they can - the point is that excessive high interest rates license the making of these loans. If interest rates are capped at 20 per cent, bankers cannot make excessively risky loans, full stop. Competition really has very little to do with it. It seems peculiar that in the current climate the opposition can claim that banks are simply controlled by Adam Smith's invisible hand. The credit crisis itself was due to bad loaning; banks and bankers taking excessive risks to gain excessive profits. This isn't a conspiracy theory, it's reality. Finally, the opposition the number of people receiving loans with interest rates over 20 per cent will be minute. First and foremost, we disagree with this. It may be the case that a minute number of people take 40 per cent interest rates, but 21, 22 and 23 per cent rates are regular occurances for large sums of money. That's exactly why this is an issue.
The cap would deprive individuals with bad credit of possibility to borrow

The opposition's argument here is a masterclass in flip-flopping. On one hand they support 'rationally' (we use this term VERY loosely) made risky loans, on the other they demand government-provided education for borrowers. On one hand they believe the debt spiral is not worth government intervention, on the other hand they demand more transparency in loan agreements. The reality is that cleanly spelled out theory does not capture the dangers that risky loans have for both the borrower and broader society (that third party that DOES suffer). First, the state often intervenes when people make bad decisions that have consequences for themselves (drugs, suicide, sometimes gambling, seat belt usage). We do this because: (a) rationality is very hard to prove - when someone is in a debt spiral they are *not* rational, they are desperate and act out of desperation, as our sources show (and actually as the opposition concedes when they say this is a 'last resort'); (b) those people who are making bad decisions become easy prey for people looking to bleed them dry, and thus they need state protection; (c) damages to an individual's life generally have broader consequences for families and friends who are *not* implicated in the decision making process. Second, there is tangible third party harm - the harm to society that we outlined at the beginning. Risky loaning is dangerous (as the last 12 months have shown - bankers being ABLE to make dangerous risky loans that are never going to be paid back) and undercuts savings. Third, the opposition's soft support actions (education and information and transparency) are (a) not mutually exclusive with our policy, and (b) unlikely to be able to help - information campaigns have failed, unequivocally, to prevent the massive growth of drug abuse in most parts of the world (and the spread of AIDS/HIV, and the proliferation of gambling addiction, etc etc etc). Finally, the reality is that people cannot live and survive on credit or loans, and any society that endorses this is bound to run into problems (blossoming debt crises across the world, as we cited earlier). Eventually debt will come back to bite the borrower, sooner or later. The later it is, the more deadly the venom.
Our policy balances the free market and state intervention

Claiming that a policy is good just because it encompasses both free market ideas and government intervention is ridiculous. We evaluate policies by making cost and benefit analyses - when the benefit of the policy exceeds the cost of it, we implement it. Whether it is a free market policy or an interventionist policy is irrelevant. We have proven that crises and caps on personal loans are not related in our rebuttal to the first proposition's argument, so the main benefit the plan would allegedly bring is inexistent. We will elaborate on the costs that this policy would impose in our substantive case.
Rebuttal: On contradictions

First and foremost, we do not agree that banks use incorrect risk assessment models for high-risk private loans (as is proven in our previous rebuttal). Furthermore, even assuming bad risk assessment, your proposed model deals with a very small amount of loans because others would still be made with bad assessment, so it is not clear why to limit ourselves to such a small part of all loans. We are extremely content that the proposition benefited from our Econ 101 lessons and finally acknowledges that their cap would prevent risky (but not excessively risky) loans from being made, because previously (in their second argument) they claimed that “by capping the interest rate on a principal sum, the total amount of money a client repays the bank, will be less than it otherwise might be”. Knowing this contradiction, we can easily explain why they think that we are contradicting ourselves. Since the proposition so sincerely believed that their policy would allow poor people to pay less in interest, we simply outlined that low interest rates in general stimulate spending, which is contrary to what they wanted in the first place. We never believed that this policy would encourage credit taking - we simply pointed out that by believing that once you cap interest rates, risky loans will be made at these rates, the proposition would be implicitly promoting more borrowing (although that would not be successful). We explicitly stated that the cap per se will not promote borrowing and we are happy to repeat that once more. Hence, the proposition sees contradictions in our line just because they are unable to see their own ones.
The cap would deprive individuals with bad credit of possibility to borrow

We find it very important that it is not the state, but the individuals who make decisions about their future, because they are the ones who know the most about their own situation and circumstances. We consider that people are able to make rational decisions and they should be allowed to do so in this case. Consider a person who wants a loan for some purpose, but has a very bad credit history and very few valuable assets at her disposal. There are plenty of banks, but none would lend anything to him at lower than 30%. It is not because of the greediness of the bankers, it is because her profile is extremely risky and risk needs to be compensated with a higher return. But as long as the person rationally agrees to borrow on this rate we do not find any reason why the government should forbid this exchange, because she is the one who can most accurately weigh the benefits of the loan with comparison to the financial and emotional costs of defaulting. The state could interfere here if there would be tangible third party harm, however, in a lending contract there are only two sides - one side borrows what another side lends. We find that it is completely up to these people to determine any price for the lending (which is interest rate) since any case have different risk, maturity, and number of other factors. In addition, high interest rates deter excessive borrowing; therefore, it would never boost any bubble or cause another sub-prime mortgage crisis, as was previously alleged by the proposition. High interest rates serve for contraction purposes and allow economies to get to their fundamental values. There is no third party harm here, whatsoever. Instead of limiting a choice by banning some options state may ensure that more information is provided for individuals. In the case of quick credits sometimes people are just not aware of the interest rate they will be paying. So the government could increase transparency and allow individual people to make more informed decisions. For instance, regulations could require explicit statement of absolute amount of interest. Also, it is a good idea to require all loan companies to clearly show annualized interest rates in their advertisements to avoid any confusions. Finally, we contend that sometimes borrowing at a high rate for individuals may be a choice of the last resort. For example, a person needs a small credit for basic needs: food, rent and to be able to take care of her family. The pay for her job is due only in a week so short term loan despite the high interest rate is simply the best choice. If interest rates are capped, then that person would not get a loan, since her risk profile does not correspond to the interest the lender gets. We see both parties – both the lender, and the borrower worse off in this case.
Our policy balances the free market and state intervention

Free-market principles have been brought into question as a result of the banking crisis, and the subsequent global recession. Many agree that complete lack of regulation is no longer desirable. Equally, however, excessive government regulation in any part of the economy could yet backfire. How can the best of both worlds - free marketeering and government regulation - be ensured? Through smart policies like ours. A benefit of our policy is that it is an illustration of how to get the mix between regulation and hands-off liberalism, correct. Our policy is based on the ideological conviction that the state has a political and ethical mandate to ensure that social disasters, like economic recessions, are either avoided, or that steps are taken to minimise the impact of recessions that do arise. Given that our mechanism, as already proven, is an effective tool for minimising the possibility, and certainly the impact, of a banking crisis - it is therefore a policy that exhibits responsible government. Yet, at the same time, the policy falls short of being unduly, and unacceptably, prescriptive. Banks are still left with a fundamental capacity to make autonomous economic decisions within the reasonable constraint imposed by our policy. Thus our policy is consistent with economic freedom, and the recognition of the importance of allowing economic agents, banks included, the space to play freely with each other - ensuring the textbook benefits of economic liberalism, but with a safety valve necessitated, ultimately, by our inherent human capacity to be self-destructively imprudent. A vote for Team South Africa is therefore a vote for responsible government within a liberal economic frame.