Bifurcations

The argument is about whether it is useful to include arguments on the price tag of a policy in these debates. I would say not.

My rational is this: 

1. This site focusses on short debates with the aim of each debate improving the standard of an individuals debating skills. To me this means your ability to explore, present and defend principled ideas in a comparative way. I don't believe discussions on policy price tags is a useful development technique because each and every debate would be the same if the defence of policy cost was important. 

Prop: We want to enact policy x and it would cost £X. 

Opp: Cost £X is too much to justify spending on this policy.

That discussion does not help some one defend, present and explore the principles of a debate. 

2. These debates are an important tool in allowing someone to develop an understanding and opinion on controversial topics. Not everyone will select a debate or a side in that debate because of their own beliefs but rather because they want to understand how they feel about a topic and a debate is a brilliant way of doing that. This is shown in the fact that we have secret topics. By avoiding arguments on costing we can explore the core principles of the topic much easier. As a community who are here to presumably discuss and learn it is in everyones best interests that this is the main focus of a debate because we learn more about the topic and its principled arguments therefore how we relate to the issue. 

3. These debates are pretty short. Most debates on here are about 3/4 rounds with 10,000 character word limits. This is actually quite a small amount of words to explore interesting concepts. This means that all the time we are using to argue over price tags cannot be spent strengthening core debate arguments. This for me means the quality of the debate is lower than what it potentially should have been. 

For every debate I am in on this site as with every debate I have done at university comps I will assume that if a policy is being discussed then the Government has the money to enact it. My job is then to prove that it is worthwhile (or not) spending that money to enact that policy. 

I will always be happy to continue to engage in debates and loose on the justification that I have not argued about the cost of the policy because I think it is more important to defend what I believe is a better quality of debate on this site.

I'll conclude with the words of Jessie J:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMxX-QOV9tI