Cost arguments

Just thought I'd share this user profile - read the bio:
http://www.edeb8.com/profile/Bifurcations/

What do you think about the use of cost as a prime focus of a debate argument?

admin: I think it is significant. Here we talk about real things, and economy is part of the real world. If we ignore economy, we are ignoring part of the reality. We s shouldn't discuss just the economic aspect, because this isn't an economy website. However we should analyse every implication, being economics one of them.

the aim of each debate improving the standard of an individuals debating skills.

Well that's not written anywhere her. I mean, there are many aims for a debate, like developing knowledge, or just having some fun.


I feel that when discussing about a topic one must analyse every impact of it, and every aspect of it. Ignoring economy is ignoring a big part of the picture.

condeelmaster: We don't need to ignore the economy I think you can make an argument that says either that whatever the costs the resources can be put into something more helpful or that the economic situation in general is pretty bad therefore people are not going to support spending a large amount of money on policy x which leads to other bad things.

I just don't believe it is useful or persuasive to have an argument that is the policy costs X we should get this money from X budget or raising taxes because then the debate becomes about the efficiency of moving money around in a budget or raising taxes etc. Think if this type of argument is considered good then every debate can and would revert back to that analysis which is why every debate would become the same. We accept different topics surely because we want to discuss those topics.

Yes I know that there isn't anything written here about losing which is why I say I am happy to keep loosing debates on that ground. However I really do believe that it should be written down because the site is set up to help people improve and it is one of the reason cited for people preferring this site to DDO.

We can have realistic and enjoyable debates on a variety of topics and we don't need to argument about a price tag.

Cost is a small part of economics and this does not in any way exclude people from making economic arguments.

In the UK this is an unspoken rule we gravitated towards when the arguments of cost got really annoying and pointless.

That's just my opinion anyway.

admin: Thanks for sharing this

One thing I was always taught is that cost is a decent support argument, but will rarely carry as substantive.

The main reason why is because of one of two things:
1. Either the opposition can deny the significance of the cost (the "worth" of money being a "small price to pay"), which allows them to refocus the narrative of the debate on their own material.
2. Or, more commonly, the opposition can just deny the cost. They can say "nope, I think it's only going to cost half that" and that moots the entire point.
To me it's not that the point is unoriginal - many points are! Look at how many debates are set in western liberal democracies to see what I mean. It's just a nice phrase to describe a common setting. Some years ago saying the phrase self-actualization was a fad. That's also great because it sounds smart, everyone likes it, and nobody knows what it means. Unoriginal points that work well are often fine. The reason cost is uncommon at higher levels of debate (but does in fact come up from time to time) is that it's USUALLY very easy to either rebut or dismiss.

That's not to say cost cannot be used effectively in an argument. There's one obvious case where it's extremely helpful and that's as one of the quick canned points you can use when doing a straight negative. I often find myself saying that cost is an incidental negative externality to the affirmative's model, along with a few other things, and then all you need to do is shut down whatever benefits the affirmative proposed. Naturally, this doesn't work in tournaments where straight negatives are banned.

I wouldn't base a principle in a debate on it, but cost alone rarely wins or loses debates anyway.

Bifurcations: I 100% agree here.