Difference between revisions of "Policy"

Link turns, similar to impact turns, generate offense.  However, they are made up of two parts: non-unique and the link turn.  An [[==Advantages|advantage==]] must be “unique,” just meaning that whatever they talk about is not currently happening in the status quo.  For example, if the affirmative has an advantage about rescuing the economy with an impact about economic collapse being bad, they must have a “uniqueness” claim that the economy is doing well now.  Thus, a “non-unique” argument would contest what’s going on in the status quo, staying with the example from above, it would say the economy is doing poorly now.  Though it might seem impossible to have a debate about an objective fact --- the economy cannot be both good and bad at the same time --- these arguments can rely on different criteria for evaluating the health of the economy, e.g. are stocks a good indicator? Is investor confidence? Consumer confidence? GDP?  The link turn then says that the affirmative’s link is the opposite.  So, instead of the plan helping the economy, it actually hurts it.  The negative’s argument becomes: the economy is doing well, but the plan hurts the economy, thus triggering the affirmative’s impact.  It can be illustrated by the following diagram:

NEG: the economy is doing well ---> the plan hurts the economy

Though the non-unique seems extraneous, it is integral to the utility of the link turn.  Absent a non-unique, the link turn does not matter because it does not change the status quo.  For example, if the negative does not win that the economy is doing well instead of poorly, it does not matter whether the plan hurts the economy instead of helping it because it is already doing badly.