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Incorporating unintended consequences into arguments is a great way to make them more interesting, relevant, and impacted.  If you can link the affirmative plan to an unintended consequence (aff plan does x which links to y as this card says) you’ve got a great disadvantage right there.  But you don’t have to have a direct link in order to run unintended consequences.  There are plenty of powerful examples that apply to many, if not most, cases.  And any and every unintended consequence can and should be incorporated into your negative philosophy.  At the end of the day you want to have one position as negative, with all your arguments falling under and supporting that position.  An unintended consequence or two will diversify and support your stance.

I’ve grouped unintended consequences into three categories: unintended consequences that are generic philosophies, unintended consequences that impact other arguments, and ones that are arguments themselves.  For each category I’ve given several examples, along with strategy notes explaining how I would run them and some supporting evidence.

1.)    Unintended Consequences Can (i.e. MUST J) be used as the framework for the negative stand

Example: energy regulation.  A card says government fails at regulating the energy market.  Use this as the 1NC opener and negative philosophy.  Branch off of it with reasons the government fails at energy policy (solvency) and several disadvantages.  Ideally the disadvantages would be specific unintended consequences to government involvement, such as increased prices or hurt consumers.  Look for one or two humorous examples of energy policy backfiring to support the DA’s and your stance as a whole.

Congressional meddling in energy ends in a muddle – a perfect venue to spout political rhetoric and harm consumers

Robert Bryce [Managing editor of Energy Tribune, author of multiple books on environmental and energy related issues, a journalist whose articles have appeared in dozens of publications], “Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of ‘Energy Independence’”, Copyright 2008, Published by PublicAffairs [A member of the Perseus Books Group],

http://books.google.com/books?id=UHqh16GO-pgC&pg=PA261&dq=carbon+tax&lr=#v=onepage&q=carbon%20tax&f=false (L.B.)

“This book reflects an ongoing shift in my views on energy policy.  Three or four years ago, I bought into some of the concepts that I debunk in this book.  I used to think that a government-sponsored ‘Manhattan Project’ for energy development was the key to resolving America’s future energy needs.  I have advocated a carbon tax.  I have also written essays that accepted the neoconservatives’ claims that America’s oil needs are directly related to terrorism.  I no longer subscribe to these notions.  Instead, I am increasingly of the view that government needs to quit meddling in the energy market for a simple reason: Each time Congress or the White House gets too involved in the energy business, supplies get tighter or prices increase, or both.  Of course, politicians always want to ‘help’.  And the energy sector provides a perfect venue for demagogues to bash the evils of Big Oil, or Big Coal, or Bad Arabs, or Evil OPEC.  Unfortunately for consumers, history has repeatedly shown that congressional meddling usually ends in a muddle.  It also shows that the less regulation imposed on the energy sector, the better, usually, for consumers.

2.)    They can be used to impact arguments that could otherwise be easily disregarded or outweighed

Example: vague mandates.  One of the best impacts to vague mandates is that the policy is interpreted/enforced differently than originally intended.  The card below could be used in this way, especially if the affirmative plan is creating or tweaking a regulation.  If aff plan is vague, neg can say look your plan is really unclear and that matters because, where it is unclear, it will be interpreted more strictly than aff intends.  If you really wanted to develop this argument, you could impact it further with some generic evidence about strict environmental regulations hurting the economy.

Relatively lax or vague provisions are usually interpreted and applied in a stricter way in order to make the provision more clear

David M. Driesen [J.D., Yale Law School; Professor, Syracuse University College of Law, Affiliate, Maxwell School of Citizenship Center for Environmental Policy and Administration; Adjunct Professor, State University of New York College for Environmental Science and Forestry], “Distributing the Costs of Environmental, Health, and Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Regulatory Reform,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 2005, 32 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 1 (L.B.)

Generally these relatively lax provisions form the first stage of a multi-stage program of increasingly strict regulation. Thus, for example, Congress generally required water pollution sources to meet best practicable control technology standards by 1977 as a prelude to meeting standards governed by the feasibility principle by 1984. Similarly, the Clean Air Act requires stationary sources to meet limits based on reasonably available control technology, but also contemplates that facilities will eventually shut down or meet requirements reflecting the feasibility principle. This may make the vagueness and laxness of these provisions more comprehensible. Congress decided to take a step forward with considerable latitude for agency judgment as a first step toward conformity with the feasibility principle.”

Example: plan advocacy.  A lack of plan advocacy can be impacted without having a specific unintended consequence in mind.  The argument would be something like this: environmental policy is prone to unintended consequences <evidence saying that or an example>.  Having a plan advocate means somebody with expertise in this area has thought through this plan and concluded that it would be an improvement on our current environmental policy.  Without a plan advocate, we have no such assurance.  Policies are most prone to unintended consequences when they are random nice ideas students thought up ;).

Attempts To Save The Environment Are Full of Unintended Consequences

“The Law of Unintended Consequences,” The Economist, October 25th, 2006, http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2006/10/the_law_of_unintended_conseque.cfm [Ethos]

“Economists have another tangential interest in climate change:  the search for solutions is plagued by a common problem in economics, the law of unintended consequences. We at The Economist had this law forcefully brought home to us in the course of naming this blog, which we had originally intended to title the “Economics Exchange”.  That is, until one of our developers pointed out that the URL for a site so named could also be read as “Economic Sex Change”, which could earn us not merely snickers, but a place of honour on corporate spam filters.  This is a lesson that Experts Exchange, a programming site, had already learned; luckily, we were able to profit by their experience. Attempts to save the environment are unfortunately rife with unexpected, and unwanted results.  Elk herds managed privately for the benefit of high-paying hunters often flourish compared with those on public lands; recycling plastic may consume more resources than throwing it away; raising fuel economy standards results in people driving more. John Baden, the Chairman of FREE, a pro-market environmental group, points out the problems with another much-touted pollution solution:  ethanol.”

Jonathan Wiener [Professor @ Duke Law School], June 2000 – Nice long happy list of unintended environmental consequences

Jonathan B. Wiener [Professor at the Duke Law School and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, Former President of the Society for Risk Analysis, University Fellow of Resources for the Future], “Toward Sustainable Governance,” AEI-Brookings Joint Center Policy Matters, June 2000 (L.B.) http://www.aei-brookings.org/policy/page.php?id=58

“The environmental impacts of excessively strong governance are no less worrisome. Like any therapy for what ails us, well-intentioned protective policies can also produce undesirable side effects. Interventions to reduce one risk can create new risks. These “risk-risk tradeoffs” are ubiquitous in health, safety and environmental policy. Mandating powerful airbags in cars can protect adults but put children at risk. High-speed police pursuits can catch fleeing suspects but injure bystanders. Banning asbestos in automobile brake linings can prevent cancers, but increase highway accidents. Banning one pesticide may invite the use of another pesticide, potentially more toxic to consumers or workers than the first. Restricting carbon dioxide emissions alone can yield increased methane emissions, potentially causing a net increase in global warming. Hazardous waste cleanups can protect future generations but add risk for today’s workers and neighbors. Outdoor air pollution rules can lead factories to seal pollution indoors. Posting worst-case scenarios of industrial facility accidents on the Internet can alert the public to seek safer facilities but also invite terrorists to use the information. Reducing urban ozone pollution can protect the lungs but allow more ultraviolet radiation to harm the skin. Building dams can produce electricity and inhibit floods but also harm fisheries and sometimes worsen floods. Suppressing all forest fires can deprive forests of key nutrients and leave dry timber ready to ignite; but “controlled burns” can unleash larger fires that burn out of control.”

Jonathan Wiener [Professor @ Duke Law School], June 2000 – Solution to unintended consequences is to consider and weigh all options before acting

Jonathan B. Wiener [Professor at the Duke Law School and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, Former President of the Society for Risk Analysis, University Fellow of Resources for the Future], “Toward Sustainable Governance,” AEI-Brookings Joint Center Policy Matters, June 2000 (L.B.) http://www.aei-brookings.org/policy/page.php?id=58

The solution to these risk-risk tradeoffs is not inaction — it is action based on a considered judgment of the conflicting risks. As with excessive subsidies, one reason for excessive risk-risk tradeoffs is the political distortions that privilege the beneficiaries of reductions in target risks and neglect the interests of the victims of countervailing risks (be they disenfranchised minorities or the diffuse general public). In addition, even well-intentioned policymakers often confront organizational boundaries, decision-making cultures, and costs of analysis that lead them to overlook important side effects. Reforms to ease and encourage attention to risk-risk tradeoffs and careful weighing of the conflicting risks are essential. These reforms should also promote a persistent search for “risk-superior” solutions that reduce multiple risks in concert.”

3.)    Unintended consequences can be its own argument (typically, solvency or disadvantages)

Usually these arguments take the form of unintended consequences to specific actions.  If you can link the affirmative plan to these actions (some are very specific, others more generic) you can run the unintended consequence and impact it to impair their plan’s solvency or as a disadvantage.

Example: Strict regulation.  This can be used aff or neg.  If either side argues strict environmental regulation hurts the economy because it imposes burdensome standards on businesses, you can turn, or at least mitigate, that argument with the unintended consequence below.

Stricter regulation encourages the use of innovative alternatives because firms have an incentive to avoid the costly substances and choose cleaner, cheaper ones

David M. Driesen [J.D., Yale Law School; Professor, Syracuse University College of Law, Affiliate, Maxwell School of Citizenship Center for Environmental Policy and Administration; Adjunct Professor, State University of New York College for Environmental Science and Forestry], “Distributing the Costs of Environmental, Health, and Safety Protection: The Feasibility Principle, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Regulatory Reform,” Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 2005, 32 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 1 (ETHOS)

“Furthermore, firms can creatively compensate for or avoid costs. Indeed, when environmental regulation has been demanding, firms have often engaged in innovative changes to avoid the cost of regulation. This conforms to the induced innovation hypothesis that economists use to model innovation, which posits that firms will tend to innovate to avoid using scarce and expensive production factors. For years, many industries considered ozone depleting substances essential to their businesses and paid large amounts of money to obtain them. Many of these companies switched to soap and water, saving lots of money, when phase-outs began to raise the price and threaten the future availability of these chemicals. High costs for polluting industries can sometimes improve the business prospects of cleaner competitors, rather than lead to any net losses at all. And emissions trading, even if it does not encourage major innovation as many have argued, makes possible a lot of tweaking to avoid costs. Cost avoidance behavior further reduces the impact of costs upon people’s lives.

Example: use of government.  If you want to get into a more philosophical debate, especially if you are prepared to run a states counter plan, you could contend that our federal environmental policy is encouraging people to view the government as the solution to yet one more thing and why that’s bad.

Jonathan Wiener [Professor @ Duke Law School], June 2000 – NEPA was formed to correct the environmental harms of government actions but now people view gov’t as the solution to all problems

Jonathan B. Wiener [Professor at the Duke Law School and the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, Former President of the Society for Risk Analysis, University Fellow of Resources for the Future], “Toward Sustainable Governance,” AEI-Brookings Joint Center Policy Matters, June 2000 (L.B.) http://www.aei-brookings.org/policy/page.php?id=58

“It is obvious but often forgotten that government is not an exogenous solution to human problems; government is itself a human institution. Like markets, government is an endogenous and imperfect institution. This insight was clear to the drafters of the first major law of the modern environmental era, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which specifically aimed at the environmental harms of government actions; but the insight seems to have been gradually forgotten by environmentalism and environmental policy.”

Dr. William Anderson, January 3, 02 – Energy problems caused by government interference will not be solved by the same

Dr. William L. Anderson [B.S. University of Tennessee, Communications, M.A., Clemson University, Economics, Ph.D., Auburn University, Economics], “The Oil Dependency Myth,” Published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, January 3rd, 2002, http://mises.org/story/861 (PV)

The energy problems that plague this country are government created. From restrictions on drilling to U.S. foreign policy blunders–created in the name of cheap oil–the government has been a veritable “bull in a china shop” when it comes to energy policy. That Feldstein believes another layer of political action would solve our problems makes one wonder how this nation managed to survive his term as the president’s chief economic adviser. One would hope that Reagan did not listen to him, just as we should not listen to him now.”

Example: picking a technology winner.  I really like this one, and it could be useful against alternative energy cases which pick their solution to our energy crisis even though the finished product is rarely available and the details of it are not known.  The problem with this is, since research and development is still in progress, we are picking the future technology of choice before we are fully aware of the alternatives and options that we have.  Some cards and examples…

Wiener Law Journal, 2009 – Governments have a poor record picking the right future technologies

Gary E. Marchant [Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law], “Sustainable Energy: The Intersection of Innovation, Law and Policy: Sustainable Energy Technologies: Ten Lessons from the History of Technology Regulation,” Widener Law Journal, 18 Widener L.J. 831, 2009 (L.B.)

“Probably the most important, and the most generally accepted, lesson from previous attempts to induce technological change is that the government should set the performance goals, but should avoid, as much as possible, picking which specific technologies should be developed to achieve those goals. n14 The historical record is that governments (along with everyone else) have a relatively poor record in picking which future technologies will best succeed in achieving a particular objective. n15 Once scientists, engineers, and companies have been tasked (directly or indirectly) with achieving some performance objective, it is difficult to predict the ingenious and creative innovations they might develop. Accordingly, governments should set the performance objectives they are attempting to achieve and give industry and technologists the broadest possible flexibility in finding the best ways to accomplish those set goals. n16”

Widener Law Journal, 2009 – Policymakers should set goals and design policies open to competition rather than subsidize a specific technology

Gary E. Marchant [Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law], “Sustainable Energy: The Intersection of Innovation, Law and Policy: Sustainable Energy Technologies: Ten Lessons from the History of Technology Regulation,” Widener Law Journal, 18 Widener L.J. 831, 2009 (L.B.)

Policymakers should clearly articulate the goal(s) they wish to achieve and then open the field of competition to any technology that can attain those goals. As the Council on Economic Advisers recently recommended:  The difficulty in promoting technology adoption through subsidies and other tools lies in designing policies that are neutral across all alternative technologies. Weighting the size of a subsidy by the degree to which each technology reduces environmental and security concerns would help to ensure that the Government is not in the position of picking winners.”

Widener Law Journal, 2009 – Example: California ZEV mandate failed because it ‘picked a winner’ rather than set an overall performance goal

Gary E. Marchant [Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law], “Sustainable Energy: The Intersection of Innovation, Law and Policy: Sustainable Energy Technologies: Ten Lessons from the History of Technology Regulation,” Widener Law Journal, 18 Widener L.J. 831, 2009 (L.B.)

At the same time it adopted its aggressive but flexible, and ultimately successful, LEV program, California also imposed a much-less flexible zero emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. n25 This mandate, while framed in neutral terms, was actually a mandate to force vehicle manufacturers to sell battery-powered electric vehicles, the only vehicle technology potentially able to meet the ZEV standard in the timeframe provided by the regulation, which initially required two percent of vehicles to be ZEVs in model year 1998, increasing to ten percent in model year 2003. n26 This program was much less successful (as demonstrated, for example, by the dismal failure to come anywhere near complying with the original mandate), and the failure of this program was largely due to its attempt to “pick a winner” in electric vehicles. n27 For example, California rejected automakers’ suggestion to give partial credits for hybrids in 1994, rejecting hybrids as a technological dead-end, but then reversed course in 2003 and endorsed hybrids as a near-term solution. n28 This type of herky-jerky technology picking is more risky and destined to fail than if California regulators had simply set an overall performance goal and let manufacturers determine the best technologies to meet that goal, as California did successfully with the overall LEV program.”

Example: subsidizing a technology.  Along the same lines as the above (is it too obvious I’ve been researching alternative energies recently?) you can argue that by subsidizing one technology to encourage its production, it will be produced in large quantities but other “complementary” technologies that are needed for the subsidized technology to work won’t be produced.  The alternative to this is an all or nothing approach – either subsidize all the products involved, or none of them.

Widener Law Journal, 2009 – Providing incentives for a primary technology often overlooks the necessary complementary technology

Gary E. Marchant [Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law], “Sustainable Energy: The Intersection of Innovation, Law and Policy: Sustainable Energy Technologies: Ten Lessons from the History of Technology Regulation,” Widener Law Journal, 18 Widener L.J. 831, 2009 (L.B.)

“Many beneficial technologies need related, or “complementary,” technologies to succeed. A different company or entity is usually needed to provide the complementary technology, so a regulatory program that provides incentives or requirements for the primary technology may not succeed if provision is not also made to encourage the complementary technology.”

Widener Law Journal, 2009 – Barring regulatory intervention, a vicious cycle can start where no technology is introduced without the guarantee of complementary technology being available (longish but good)

Gary E. Marchant [Lincoln Professor Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics; Executive Director, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law], “Sustainable Energy: The Intersection of Innovation, Law and Policy: Sustainable Energy Technologies: Ten Lessons from the History of Technology Regulation,” Widener Law Journal, 18 Widener L.J. 831, 2009 (L.B.)

In the absence of any regulatory intervention, there is often a “chicken-and-egg” problem in which no technology provider is willing to commit to the large-scale introduction of its technology, unless it is assured the complementary technology is also available. For example, digital television manufacturers were not prepared to manufacture more expensive digital televisions if content providers were not producing digital television content to play on those digital television sets. n83 Digital content providers were unwilling to commit to providing digital content if there were no network or cable stations with a digital channel that could transmit the digital content. n84 Television networks and cable stations were unwilling to invest in digital signals if there were no digital television sets to receive the signals. n85 Thus, a vicious circle resulted that gridlocked the development of digital television until the government stepped in and mandated that television and cable stations transmit only digital content starting in 2009. n86 This requirement provided the assurance for digital television manufacturers and digital content providers to proceed with their complementary technologies.”

Example: masking disadvantage. The masking disadvantage I wrote for Ethos is based on an economic law that roots itself in an unintended consequence.  The law of opportunity cost says that by investing your time/money/whatever in x, you inadvertently and inevitably spend less time/money/whatever in y.  Apply that to environmental policy and when we focus our resources and attention on saving the whales, saving the trees can fall through the cracks (not exactly literally).  There’s lots of evidence for this in the masking DA file.

These are just a few examples.  There are TONS of unintended consequences related to environmental policy.  And often they are really funny so if you are trying to work on humor and relating to the judge, reading funny cards sure won’t hurt!

The most important thing to keep in mind when running unintended consequences is that they have to be part of your overall strategy.  Don’t run 50 million unrelated points and then be like “oh, I have 30 seconds left.  There’s this really funny unintended consequence I found back at the table…” because that will carry no weight in the round and you will have wasted your time.  Each of the examples I gave, and I’m pretty sure I can say this is true with every example you could possibly find, can easily be a part of the framework from which all your arguments are grounded.

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