"Famer's debate tourney, Skepsikyma VS Buddamoose Round#1"

Thread: http://debate.org... Alright, I will be arguing that it is both more useful and more desirable to live a life with no friends and money than it is to live a life with many friends and no money. I will be doing this by contrasting the situations which each of these scenarios would necessitate. In doing so I will at once support my own case and undermine my opponents due to the nature of the resolution and thus support the pro side. My primary argument will deal with the fact that the state which I am arguing against, that of possessing many friends but no money, entails many situations which are less useful and desirable than the proposed alternative. The first of these is the inability to pay taxes and fees, as they are collected in monetary form and the inability to possess money makes it impossible to pay them. This means that a person may not own land or a home, which are subjected to property taxes. They may not own a car, which is subject to inspection and registration fees. They may not own a phone, or subscribe to any service such as electricity, running water, heat, internet, and cable/satellite television. Furthermore, any debts incurred would never be paid and soon all credit would be denied to this individual. This closes the door would be closed for a college education. In fact, this person would rely on two things for every aspect of their survival: bartering, and the kindness of their friends. This brings me to my second point. Since it has been established that anyone living under a condition which precludes money must survive on either barter or charity for their survival, it ought to be noted that much time will be consumed by their friends. Certainly it is apparent that the maintaining of friendships requires an investment of time. One must then ask oneself: “Is it possible to survive entirely on the barter system while maintaining such friendships?” Seeing the bounds of the resolution specify that the person in question must have many friends and no money, I stress that the time required to maintain friendships must be invested. When one takes into account the amount of time invested to live by the barter system it becomes evident that it is impossible to exist by it alone. One must make, by hand, vast amounts of goods and then seek out those with whom to exchange them. Since wage labor is prohibited, one does not have access to the capital used in mass production unless one purchases it themselves, which cannot be done due to the ban on the possession of money. I therefore hold that such a person would be dependent on their friends for survival. My final point is that, while friendship has been shown to have a positive effect of the happiness of both parties involved, the relationship only provides such benefits when it is free of dependency. If a person is dependent on their friends for self-esteem the relationship can lead to depressive symptoms. Friendship contingent self-esteem (FCSE) was studied recently and the following conclusions were reached: “In Study 1, the authors developed a measure of FCSE. Both FCSE and others’ approval correlated with self-esteem and depressive symptoms, but when entered simultaneously in a regression equation, only FCSE significantly predicted self-esteem and depressive symptoms.” [1] Studies of dependent friendships in African American female friendships found that such relationships create “untenable dynamics which endanger the friendship and threaten to inhibit the women’s growth.” [2] I argue that the condition of possessing “many friends but no money” is vastly inferior to the condition of possessing “no friends with money” due to the chronic over dependency and dismal standard of living implicit in the former circumstance. While the preclusion of friends is not a good circumstance to find oneself in, it does not preclude acquaintances who may fulfill some similar functions quite handily: “Using network data obtained in the 1985 General Social Survey, expressions of happiness are shown to increase with the size of a person's discussion network and decrease with the prevalence of strangers in the network. The density of especially close relations in the network has no direct effect on happiness. It is the negative impact of strangers rather than the positive impact of close relations that determines expressions of happiness. The network size and stranger effects remain strong even after respondent differences in socioeconomic status, age, sex, race, and domestic situation are held constant.” [3]. This research shows that a large network of loose associations can provide a degree of happiness roughly on par with that provided by several close friends. The fact that a person with “no friends with money” will be able to live a life replete with many of the comforts denied to the alternative, without the toxic dependency which their position necessitates, makes them the better choice, overall, for such a life is surely more useful and more desirable. [1] http://psp.sagepub.com... [2] http://www.tandfonline.com... [3] http://www.sciencedirect.com...