This Case Document is meant to be an example of cases which teams could have run at CNDF Nationals 2024. This document is not intended to be considered the “right” case for any of these motions, many other arguments may exist. The purpose of this document is to help teams who debated at CNDF Nationals 2024 reflect on their performance in the rounds, and use these cases to learn so that they can debate even better in the future. These cases are simply a skeleton for you to build off of, as all the contentions contained within should be run with many additional lines of analysis. This document is intended to be completely free, so you should not have paid for it in any capacity. If you have any thoughts about this resource or would like to reach out with any questions, please feel free to do so at: seedtournaments@gmail.com
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Proposition
Framing:
1: This will attract attention and lead to positive climate action. When eco-vandalism occurs, it will attract a lot of media attention and make it into the news. This action is so shocking that it will get a lot of publicity and make people think about the urgency of the situation. Given that most people are relatively supportive of climate change, this is likely to shock them into donating to green charities or contacting politicians rather than turning them against the movement.
2: This is principally justified because it causes the most harm to the people who are most directly responsible for the climate crisis (i.e. wealthy people and countries in the developing world). Most famous works of art are housed in museums in the developed world where only rich tourists can afford to see and enjoy them. Furthermore, the entire art market is based on rich people buying and selling art and then donating them to museums for tax purposes. The idea that fine art is uniquely valuable or part of the common heritage of humanity is a lie designed to perpetuate this system. Vandalizing this art only harms the wealthy people who buy into the system, who are also the same ones that cause pollution with air travel, fancy cars, and excessive lifestyles, and is therefore principally legitimate.
3: Alternative types of activism would be substantially worse. Given that climate change is such a pressing problem and activists feel so strongly about it, if they do not engage in eco-vandalism, they are likely going to do something worse (ex. eco-terrorism). These activists have already demonstrated that they are willing to ruin millions’ of dollars’ worth of goods and break the law. If they don’t do this to art, they are likely to do it to something else (roads, pipelines, whaling boats, etc.), which will cause more harm to people because it may be violent and is more likely to impact ordinary peoples’ jobs. Any backlash would also be substantially worse as a result.
Opposition
Framing:
1: Eco-vandalism will alienate potential supporters of climate action. It will be presented in a very negative way by the mainstream media because it breaks the law and is seen to damage something that is part of the common heritage of humanity. Even if no art is actually damaged, most people don’t read beyond the headlines and won’t know that. People won’t want to support a dangerous and violent movement and will be deterred from taking action to stop climate change because of this.
2: Other forms of activism would be more effective. This type of activism alienates potential supporters without actually damaging anything that is meaningfully contributing to climate change. If you want to do something shocking, destroy a pipeline and at least also reduce oil consumption. If you want to do something interesting to get peoples’ attention, do something less destructive like creating a new piece of art or staging a peaceful protest (ex. Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for the Future).
Note: This case will be stronger if you pick one alternative and defend that rather than presenting both. Choose depending on what the government team says the goal of this protest is and make sure the rest of your case is compatible with it.
3: This poses a substantial risk to the activists who participate. They are likely to get caught vandalizing the art, and will almost certainly face legal action and potentially jail time. These are serious consequences that will harm members of your movement and deter others from joining and taking part in future activities because they don’t want to suffer the same harms.
Proposition
Framing:
1: When talented athletes leave their birth countries, it stunts the development of those countries' athletic programs. A star player’s participation in a developing program brings sponsorship and training opportunities that the country would not otherwise have. This is more important than any advantages the athlete would get from moving to a different country, since in both cases they are likely to be relatively famous and well paid. These athletes could still make a living wage playing for their national teams.
2: If athletes are required to leave their home countries for training or to compete in the Olympics or other international events, they could face significant stress and mental health challenges. Being surrounded by people who don't speak their language or share their cultural background and being far away from their families can lead to feelings of loneliness and anxiety. This is particularly bad because athletes are already in a very high-pressure environment when they are competing at international competitions, so this could be the tipping point.
3: Most development happens at the club level. Athletes spend most of their time not with their national team (ex. England), but with their club (ex. Aston Villa Football Club). Most of their training, development, and playing occur with their club. Thus, they do not miss out on many development opportunities by being part of an underfunded national program. If they remain with their home team, they can bring the training they received at their big, well-funded western club to their developing country's national program.
Note: this sort of mitigates the first two arguments, so it might not be strategic to include it in an OG case. This could potentially be a good CG case if OG ran the first two arguments.
Opposition
Framing:
1: This encourages acceptance of immigrants. In places where anti-immigrant sentiment and racism are prevalent, allowing immigrants to represent their new countries helps reduce these negative attitudes. For example, when white Canadians look up to Alphonso Davies and white French people look up to Kylian Mbappe, it reinforces the idea that immigrants can make valuable contributions to the country.
2: This encourages the development of sports programs in countries that do not currently have them. When athletes with dual citizenship choose to represent the country with a weaker national team in order to qualify for an event they couldn’t qualify for in the stronger country, it allows that country to be represented in international competition when they otherwise might not be able to qualify. This increases interest in the sport and leads to more kids getting involved in athletics, more sponsorship, and more development programs.
3: Athletes ought to be able to make their own decisions. Athletes who do not play where they wish will not perform to the best of their abilities. An athlete born in one place but raised elsewhere, and forced to play in their birth country will see their performance suffer on their national team because they don’t want to be there and may not feel the same connection to their coach and teammates as they would at home. It is also principally wrong to force athletes to represent countries they may not support (ex. If an LGBTQ athlete flees persecution in their home country, they should not be forced to represent that country at the Olympics).
Proposition
Framing:
1: These executives principally deserve to be fired. Their actions made bailouts necessary and caused significant harm: employees lost their jobs due to austerity and spending cuts, public money had to be spent to bail out the company, shareholders, retirement funds, and retail investors lost income, and customers had to deal with higher prices and worse products due to the spending cuts. As punishment for these harms, the executives should lose their jobs.
2: Firing these executives would make people who suffered as a result of their actions feel better. Employees, customers and shareholders will all feel a sense of satisfaction when they see someone held responsible for the harms they suffered. This could be the tipping point that motivates a former employee to apply for a new job or that encourages a whistleblower to go to the police because now he has confidence in the justice system.
3: Firing these executives prevents future bailouts. Other executives will see this and recognize that they could also be fired if they create financial problems for their company that could require a bailout. To avoid this, they will act more responsibly. Firing these executives also leads to new and better management, as the replacements can be screened to ensure they won't make the same mistakes as their predecessors. These new executives may also be cheaper to hire.
Opposition
Framing:
1: It is principally wrong to fire these executives because, per the framing above, they are innocent and don't deserve to be punished for something they couldn't control. For example, if 100 people behave identically and 1 gets cancer, we don't require that one person to pay for their health care because we recognize that it's out of their control. Instead, we tax everyone and distribute the cost. Similarly, these executives should not be punished for outcomes beyond their control.
2: Firing executives won't prevent future problems. Most executives know they will eventually get fired and negotiate cushy exit packages before agreeing to take the job. The financial burden of firing them is often greater than the cost of keeping them on at regular salaries. Firing executives also means losing experienced leaders who understand the crisis and can guide the company through tough times. Replacement executives will come with high demands and need time to get up to speed, which the company can't afford during a crisis. This will also disincentivize competent individuals from becoming executives and allow the real culprits, the board of directors, to escape accountability by blaming executives and diverting scrutiny away from their own actions.
3: This will lead to some companies refusing bailouts. This is particularly true for companies that are particularly loyal to their founders or where executives control a large proportion of the company’s stock. Workers and ordinary shareholders might not always have a say in the decision to take a bailout or not due to the number of shares they hold and other legal mechanisms favoring the board of directors. If companies reject bailouts, the consequences will be severe: job losses, austerity measures, higher prices, and lower quality products. This not only harms individual employees and consumers but also negatively impacts the broader economy by slowing spending and complicating recovery.
Proposition
1: This encourages people to see their partners as replaceable. This is bad under normal circumstances because it causes both partners to feel less supported within the relationship, but it is particularly bad for women because they are more likely to end up in situations where they are forced to rely on their romantic partner (ex. if a woman gets pregnant and is unable to work or lives in a country where women don’t have a lot of educational opportunities, she may be dependent on her partner to provide for her). When casual romance is normalized, men are more likely to feel comfortable abandoning women in vulnerable situations and will face fewer social consequences for doing so.
2: This could encourage some people to try out relationships before they are ready (ex. using dating apps at a young age). If people get into relationships before they are ready, they will be vulnerable to exploitation and could end up in toxic or unproductive situations that cause them a lot of distress. This is really bad because the fear and trauma this could cause could prevent them from forming meaningful relationships in the future.
3: The popularity of casual romance has led to the creation of dating apps like Tinder and Grindr. These apps are very bad because they monetize peoples’ insecurities and collect massive amounts of sensitive data about peoples’ romantic preferences. This gives dating apps (or anyone who can access their databases) the ability to out LGBTQ people and create very targeted advertising, which can be very harmful to users.
Opposition
1: Casual Romance increases the number of relationships people have, which increases the likelihood they will find good relationships. This gives people more chances to experience different things, so they can figure out what they like and don’t like. They are also more likely to try things they wouldn’t otherwise (ex. relationships with people from a different social or religious background) because the perceived cost of trying these things out is lower.
2: This normalizes people who might have desires for alternative relationships, like non-monogamy. When casual dating is more acceptable, things like polyamorous relationships or non-romantic people are more accepted.
3: This gives women more sexual freedom and autonomy. When casual romance is normalized, there is less pressure for women to get married and engage in more traditional relationships. In some cases, this may also translate to more support for single parents, since casual relationships are more likely to result in single parent families than traditional marriages. All of this gives women more choice and freedom to pursue relationships that are compatible with their goals and more state support in the event that they have children outside of marriage.
Proposition
1: Pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing are all very taxing for women. This process causes hormonal changes that alter who you are, indescribable pain, and hugely reduces your free time. Anti-natalism, highlighting the instrumental value in not having children, presents a more palatable case to those who would otherwise frame women as selfish for not having children. The feminist movement should encourage women to opt out of childbirth.
2: Refusing to have children puts pressure on the patriarchy. Lots of men want to have children and society as a whole needs children in order to keep the population stable and the economy growing. If women refuse to have kids, this gives them leverage over these groups that they can use to ask for feminist policies and better treatment from men.
3: This helps to align the feminist movement with other movements. Lots of other movements, such as the environmental movement, already support anti-natalism. If the feminist movement also supports it, they will be able to access resources and support from other movements.
Opposition
Framing:
1: This alienates women who would have children either way. Many women will have children regardless due to economic and social pressures, a lack of birth control, or simply because they find it meaningful. Anti-natalism will alienate these women, who often need help most.
2: Bodily autonomy includes the right to have children. The feminist movement believes that women should have the right to do what they want with their bodies, and has always supported choice. This is why the feminist movement advocates for access to abortion and birth control. They should also support the decision to have children (or not), and focus on making that choice available rather than discouraging having kids.
3: Feminist women can raise feminist children. If feminists have children, they will teach their sons to respect women and encourage their daughters to break stereotypes. If only people who are not feminists have children, the next generation is unlikely to be very progressive.
Reincarnation is the belief that the non-physical essence of a living being starts a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death and remains on our plane of existence (i.e. on Earth). A belief in the afterlife, on the other hand, specifies that upon death the being moves to another plane of existence (e.g. heaven, hell, etc.).
Proposition
Framing: People on earth don’t have epistemic access to their fate while they are alive. This means this debate is about utility in the afterlife versus utility across reincarnations.
1: Death is a valuable experience for many people. Prior to death people come to accept it, perhaps with open arms if their lives were full of suffering. Reincarnation allows people to properly die, losing epistemic access to their previous life, whereas a transition to the afterlife retains all their memories, traumas, emotions, and identities, which they were ready to give up.
2: Human identities were not built for experiencing the same things for eternity. Torture from boredom functions on this basis, and repeating the same mundane life in an afterlife will vegetate any human that undergoes this process.
3: The ability to reincarnate balances out the average life which souls will experience. This corrects for unfair things like the lottery of birth, which is principally quite valuable (even if the world suffers from inequality, souls are able to achieve a large degree of equality).
Opposition
Framing: Religious conceptions of the afterlife (and non-religious conceptions like Isekai) are grounded in beliefs which cannot be rationally explained. Therefore, this debate should not be modeled under a religious afterlife either, as the only things we can derive from the motion is that it’s in another plane of existence and it’s either eternal or deaths in the afterlife transfer you to an after-afterlife.
1: It isn’t good to experience a bunch of lives because the vast majority of them will be utility-negative. This is because humans suffer under the reigns of oppression and scarcity, where the vast majority of people are made comparatively much worse off than their unachievable dreams. However, even if the average life is utility neutral, reincarnation will have you experience spikes of the best and worst lives ever, with no epistemic access to know things will be better. We prefer to live in the afterlife, where at least you retain memories across experiences, and the experiences are less likely to sit on such extremes.
2: Reincarnation refers to the erasure of all parts of identity minus the soul. While it’s relatively neutral to start from scratch, the afterlife offers a continuation of memories, which add depth and value to any experiences. Additionally, assuming the afterlife isn’t egregiously better nor worse than real life, it is likely still substantially different – which means people would at least derive cool experiences from being there.
3: You could reincarnate as a non-human, which basically confirms that the reincarnation would not be utile. There are plenty of examples of animals which live utility-negative lives, and on a balance of probabilities, you’ll experience more slaughterhouses and ant colony exterminations than weddings and Joe Hisaishi concerts.
In role-playing games (RPGs), stat points denote how proficient a player is in a specific attribute or skill. Examples of attributes include strength, intelligence, and charisma (rizz). Examples of skills include cooking, music, and driving. In this world, stat points correspond to your actual real-world proficiency.
Proposition
Model:
1: This creates a market for efficient distribution of proficiencies, since there are lots of people who have redundant proficiencies due to misaligned interests.
2: People are gifted in different things. Someone desperately poor at playing basketball due to terrible hand-eye-coordination may find it very easy to accumulate an equal “skill unit” in something else, like mathematics. This motion means people are no longer held back by their gifts at birth.
3: This will drive investment into education, because knowledge is substantially more liquid with the existence of this market.
Opposition
Countermodel:
1: Increasing proficiency is reliant on mostly environmental factors, like surrounding people and educational institutions. It is disproportionately easier for wealthier people to obtain skills that are in greatest demand, which further widens the wealth gap. Poorer people don’t become “richer” if their additional assets are proportionally less valuable.
2: Since proficiencies accumulated through these methods are not attached to the memories and emotions that facilitated their existence, both the seller and the buyer experience a loss of identity through this motion. Sellers lose a fragment of their agency, and buyers saturate the rest of their identity. This is a harm which will be overlooked within the transaction, but slowly brings society into dystopia. A good illustration for this is if GothamChess became world champion through buying skill points, there would be a decline in utility for both grandmasters who gave up their life’s work and GothamChess who earned a meaningless title.
3: This motion potentially leads to the creation of a superhuman class. That’s bad because these people would have so much additional agency that existing systems fail to keep them in check. For example, hyper-intelligent or hyper-strong people might avert national defense, earning immunity to the social contract and gaining an incredibly high propensity to oppress. This impact is further scaled by the fact that all the regulations prop might have mentioned in the model can be undermined over time, so superhumans can truly arise in the not-so-distant future.
During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in the cost of living crisis and inflation, corporations in industries such as online retail, energy, transportation, IT, healthcare, finances, reported record-high profits. A windfall tax is a one-off additional tax for companies or sectors on their excess (above average) profit.
Proposition
Framing:
1: Since windfalls are random, companies don’t deserve to profit massively from them, especially if it comes at the expense of others. A windfall is effectively the business equivalent of winning the lottery and isn’t a principally legitimate way to make money. Giving this money to the state instead and using it to offset any consequences of the crisis that caused the windfall or just for the general benefit of the country is a much more legitimate use of this money.
2: This discourages risky business practices. Some companies have an unsustainable business model that relies on windfalls to succeed. These business models are very harmful because if the windfall event that the company is hoping for never occurs (which is the most likely outcome), it is likely to go bankrupt and have to lay off its employees and lose money for investors. If companies know that windfall profits will be taxed away, they will no longer use these types of business models.
3: This is one of the few ways for the state to make money during an economic crisis. The state usually has other options (ex. income tax, general corporate tax, import/export duties), but during a crisis, the state can’t raise any of these other taxes without driving businesses into bankruptcy or seriously harming average citizens. The revenue generated by those taxes is also likely to decrease during a crisis because businesses will be struggling and workers will be earning less income. Any revenue generated by a windfall tax can offset these losses and allow the state to spend enough to get the country out of an economic crisis.
Opposition
Framing:
1: This creates a lot of uncertainty for businesses. It will likely be unclear when profits will be classified as a windfall because it is hard to predict what an economic crisis will look like. Furthermore, in developing countries or states with undemocratic governments, this policy may be used corruptly. The problem with this is that it will deter investment in these places because companies don’t want to have their profits seized, resulting in less economic activity in the places that need it most. Even if companies don’t choose to withdraw completely, this might push them to adopt more conservative business practices than they otherwise would (ex. reducing investment and hiring fewer workers) so that they have reserves to cover the tax if needed. Again, this is bad because it decreases economic activity in a time of crisis.
2: The money generated by windfalls is better spent by businesses than by the state. Any business that has managed to make a profit during an economic crisis is clearly creating a lot of value for the economy. It is better for that business to reinvest its profits and hire more workers/open more stores/expand in any other way than for the government to take that money and spend it. Government spending will be too spread out to meaningfully help the economy and there will be high administrative costs that don’t exist with a private company.
3: This creates an expectation that companies in financial difficulty will receive support during times of crisis. Given that the profits of this tax will likely be used to offset economic crises (use government’s framing against them), this creates a moral hazard and tells companies that they don’t need to plan for economic crises because the government will bail them out.
Liberation theology is a Christian theological approach emphasizing the liberation of the oppressed. Depending on the context, this has been focused on groups such as the poor, the politically disenfranchised, or persons subject to other forms of inequality, like race or caste.
Proposition
Framing:
1: This will convert more people to Catholicism. Liberation theology appeals to the poor and disenfranchised because it promises a reward for their suffering. This will convince the poor to become Catholic and get baptized, which will save their souls.
2: This benefits the poor because it gives them hope and makes them more likely to trust the church and take advantage of services that provide things like food, shelter, and clothing.
3: If the Catholic church doesn’t use liberation theology, another religion will. Catholics currently preaching liberation theology might leave the church if they feel insufficiently supported and join a protestant religion or start their own group. This would be very bad because people who have been baptized and actively leave the group are much more likely than people who were never baptized in the first place to go to hell.
Note: this weighing is slightly tense with the framing given at the start, so don’t run both. This could be a good extension and be used to outweigh the front half.
Opposition
Framing:
1: Liberation theology in Latin America won’t be very effective at converting people. Poor people are generally already quite Catholic, so theology that targets the poor won’t convert many more people. Similarly, most people across the socio-economic spectrum are already Catholic or at least know a lot about Catholicism and have preconceived perceptions of it and aren’t Catholic for a reason, so any attempt to shift these beliefs will be met with a lot of resistance. This is a waste of resources.
2: Resources are better spent elsewhere. The Catholic church could practice liberation theology in a region where there are fewer poor people who are already Catholic (ex. protestant parts of Africa, poor parts of the US, Southeast Asia), invest in converting wealthy people in Latin America who are the least likely to be Catholic and most likely to be able to afford large donations to the church, or spend money on other church priorities like alleviating poverty.
3: This will upset Catholic elites in Latin America. Latin America is a relatively conservative place, and a lot of elites (ex. politicians, businessmen, celebrities, etc.) try to emphasize their connection to the church with donations and other types of support. These people don’t want to see the poor or disenfranchised encouraged to rise up against the government, since this would harm them. If these elites feel threatened by the church’s policy, they will stop donations. This would be bad for the church because it would reduce the resources it has to carry out its mission.
Supports provide utility (heals, protection, aura effects) to aid their carry in fights or assists in getting objectives and win the game. They usually deal the least damage in the game. Carries are meant to win the game for the team by earning resources (gold, items, levels) enough to deal the most damage and 'carry' their team to victory."
Note: It is unclear whether “living as a support or carry” assumes you are already a competent support or carry. Therefore, there are two possible understandings of this motion: one debate about whether we prefer the life-experiences of existing as a support/carry, and the other about whether we prefer to carry the desires of a support or carry.
Proposition
1: Within the understanding that this motion is about wanting to be a support or a carry, it is better to be a support because you are more likely to realize your desires. Carries definitionally depend on multiple supports and must exceed their peers in skills which are often natural-born. Therefore the path to becoming a carry is simply much more competitive, and one working toward it will most likely be disappointed by limited success. Since we derive utility from fulfilling our desires, it is better to have more achievable goals by being a support.
2: Weighing Part 1 – This motion should be understood as the latter definition because supports/carries are blanket identities. An identity should transcend practical limitations, so someone who is a carry does not depend on some level of capacity to fulfill that identity. A good illustration for this is that traits like self-dependence and hunger for success can drive bad players to make carry-like decisions as well.
3: Weighing Part 2 – Even if there’s a deadlock on motion semantics, prop can win by weighing the worst cases in each motion understanding. Under the first definition, the worst case for prop is that supports live inferior to carries and must be somewhat subservient. However, this isn’t that bad because supports aren’t so disappointed by not fulfilling a farfetched pipe dream of being a carry, and supports can find solidarity with other supports in their weakness. However, under the second definition, opp needs to deal with carries never becoming a carry, thus failing to fulfill their lifelong dreams, wasting a ton of time, and failing to reap any of the benefits from being a successful carry.
Opposition
1: Within the understanding that this motion means to experience the lives of a carry or support, it is obviously better to experience the life of a carry. It feels good to be better than others at doing things, and use your skills to garner a pool of supportive followers. Even if there is a pressure to perform, it is good to have autonomy and control over your outcomes.
2: Weighing Part 1 - This motion should be understood as the first definition because identities are socially defined. If carries are “meant to win the game for the team”, then the societal expectation is thus also that carries win games. The first definition of the motion is more accurate as it expects that living as a carry is analogous to being decisive to winning, which cannot occur if “carrying” is only a way of life.
3: Weighing Part 2 - Even if there’s a deadlock on motion semantics, opp can win by weighing the best cases in each motion understanding. Propositions best case in the second understanding is just that supports will be much more satisfied than carries because they are okay with accomplishing very little. Comparatively, not only are carries on opp satisfied, they are also accomplishing much more than supports on proposition. Therefore, given an equal probability for either motion definition, the margin of victory for opposition is greater.
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