Redistributive Justice

This being the final round, I shall simply stick to rebuttals and reconstructions. Rebuttals I believe I have established the importance of the right to property, and my opponent's attempts to divorce that by saying that we somehow don't have ownership over ourselves is weak at best. Somebody owns my arm; it is not an autonomous being, nor is it in control of itself. It is subject to my will and my desires. I may choose to use it; I may choose to sever it and give it away. I cannot do this with something I do not own. Therefore I own it. I have an arm; I do not 'is' nor 'am' an arm. This is not a new rebuttal to my opponent's response, but it is more than sufficient to demonstrate that I have already dismantled P1, and my opponent simply saying 'an entity cannot own itself because an entity cannot have itself' is a tautology. What it is not is sufficient prove to conclusively affirm P1, so the entire syllogism collapses. For my opponent to now turn around and claim that his standards need not apply to reality after using the real world is several scenarios is both contradictory and entirely new, so I ask the voters to disregard this point entirely. If we look at my opponent's 4th source here [1], we see that it is John Rawls, not Singer. So yes, Singer was rebutted. "Con then erroneously asserts that I have failed to show while natural abilities are undeserved. In fact, I did. I said: " To talk about "desert" and what someone deserves is to talk about what they have earned or are entitled to. Since a newborn as not earned anything, it is nonsense to talk about desert in that fashion. A newborn is certainly also not entitled to his talents either because his self-ownership is in doubt." Con then proposes that a newborn is entitled to rights; yes, all people are granted certain rights, but this doesn't actually clash with my assertions." What this argument boils down to, as I said before, is my opponent asserting that natural abilities are undeserved because they are undeserved. The example he provides of the newborn was also successfully refuted. Here my opponent even concedes that a newborn is entitled to rights. This includes the right to property, which is the right I used to construct the majority of my case. So here PRO is conceding the inherent existence of the right to property. This also disproves the argument regarding the lack of desert for a singing voice because, once again, of the right to property. It is also worth noting that my opponent continues the faulty comparison to a building when a building is incapable of ownership due to lack of sentience. As to the second point my opponent again claims I dropped - here it is: "To treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favorable social positions." Or, worded another way, justice requires the redistribution of resources. To achieve justice (herein meaning by providing genuine equality of opportunity), society must redistribute resources to those with fewer assets. This is the resolution. This is not a dropped point. Further, my opponent provides different standards than he did in R1. Look at the R1 rules: "R1: Acceptance R2: Constructives R3: Rebuttals R4: Rebuttals R5: Rebuttals and Closings" Yet in R5, my opponent says: "R2 - Cases R3 - Rebutting Cases R4 - Defending Cases R5 - Rebutting Cases" I consider this manipulative and unfair. The rules in R1 do not say R4 is for reconstruction or defense. It says rebuttals, same as R3 and R5. Contention 1: The Right To Property In my case, I have successfully demonstrated that all people have a right to property. I have demonstrated the various forms that property may take. I have demonstrated the necessity of the right to property in preserving the right to liberty and, most importantly, I have demonstrated how the redistribution of resources is a violation of the right to property. It robs from A to give to B by the same happenstance that may have made B worse off than A (ignoring or perhaps even in spite of the situations where B is directly responsible for his actions), and dressing up this injustice does not make it justice. Contention 2: Absolute Equality Is Unjust Not only was this contention conceded, but so was my argument that absolute equality is the necessary end of the redistribution of resources. To redistribute only a little bit from A to B does not significantly benefit either, and my opponent has already admitted a willingness to go as far as possible. The Book Example I clearly stated last round that G is a better authour than H. That is not necessarily a factor of luck, and by limiting it so, my opponent sidesteps the actual points contained therein - that H was directly responsible for his situation by choosing to pursue a field he knew he lacked the talent to succeed in and by continuing to stick with that field, and that G is somehow responsible for this. Because of the sidestep my opponent makes, I consider these points dropped, and I ask the voters to extend them. The Role Of Contracts This is not a new point - I am simply giving it its own category while using only information provided earlier. When we enter contracts knowingly, as most, if not all of us, have the capability of doing,the outcomes of doing so cannot be called unjust. If we entered it,even if it was unfavourable, we were willing to trade off say, a small bit of liberty, in exchange for something we valued more, the same way many people today trade liberty for safety. The Array of Talent As I have established many times throughout the debate, simply because A is better than B in one thing does not mean A is better than B in all things. B will ALWAYS be better than A in at least one thing. When A and B pursue the same field in which A is better, we cannot then justly punish A for being better. We are discouraging achievement, we are discouraging innovation, and we are discouraging creativity. Negative Rights I cannot really say much here, since most anything I put would be a new argument. My opponent certainly used the round to introduce not only a new argument but new evidence as well. This being the last round, I move that these be dismissed, as to do otherwise would be abusive. In Summary PRO has failed to demonstrate that people do not own themselves. My case from Ingram was dropped entirely, and I have already pointed out the tautology of my opponent's argument. Therefore I extend mine. PRO has already conceded the existence of the right to property, as demonstrated in his existence of the newborns' entitlement to rights. I have sufficiently demonstrated that these rights include the right to property and how the right to property is an essential right in securing the right to liberty. This point is extended. PRO entirely ignores the running self-contradiction in his arguments of unjust acts leading to justice. This point is extended. PRO has entirely failed to rebut the necessary end of redistribution being absolute equality. Regardless of whether or not this argument is found persuasive, PRO has failed to refute it, and so it must be extended. PRO continues placing a BoP on me when I do not have one. I am not obligated to provide an alternative solution. However, even so, I have provided a few examples of steps that could be taken to ease the wealth disparity without violating basic rights. PRO ignored these examples (the charity/non-profit schools, for instance), so I extend them here. PRO alternatively places and divorces his stances from reality in another massive contradiction. He cannot have this cake and eat it too. I ask the voters to take note of this contradiction in their decisions. For My Case I have demonstrated the existence and importance of the right to property. I have demonstrated various applications of that propety, including monetary and physical. I have demonstrated that people merit their natural advantages/disadvantages because of the right to property. I have demonstrated that the redistribution of resources violates the right to property. I have demonstrated that absolute equality is unjust. I have demonstrated that the necessary end of the redistribution of resources is absolutely equality. I have demonstrated that the redistribution of resources unjustly punishes the better-off for no just reason other than that they were born better-off, which is not a just reason. I have demonstrated that the redistribution of resources punishes the less fortunate by creating a cycle of dependence - a point my opponent largely ignores. I extend this point. All in all, this has been a fantastic debate! I would like to thank bsh1 for being an outstanding opponent, and all of the voters for taking the time to read and reflect on this debate. Thank you all, and I urge everyone to vote CON! [1] https://is.cuni.cz...