THBT social policies should be decided by mini-publics

Youtube Link (Timestamped):HERE

On both sides, people are going to find themselves on the wrong end of decisions made about social policy. In our world, they'll find themselves on the wrong end of mini publics, and in their world, they'll find themselves on the wrong end of a government that they didn't vote for, that they believe is illegitimate, and that they've internalized a ton of political narratives about—how evil they are and how much they want to tear down democracy.
Establishes a symmetry and sneakily adds more characterisation near the end 

I think the margin on that claim that Closing Opp has to show you is why it's comparatively easier to demonize mini publics. And yes, you can make the argument that they are less representative. But equally, losing an election, believing that the deep state lost an election for you, or the struggle that people have to demonize their fellow citizens that actually make these things up—as opposed to politicians who seem more like caricatures to them alongside their supporters—is a very significant difference. And maybe we don't win on this question in the debate, but we don't have to. We have to prove that there's an ability to deflect blame. It is CO's offensive burden to show that the level of trust in democracy decreases, and I think that it's probably broadly similar on both sides—it just affects different groups of people and the blame gets externalized in different ways.

I'm going to do three things. First, I'm going to talk about why our extension wins the round, especially over Opening Government. Then I'm going to take out CO, and then I'm going to weigh over Opening Opposition. First, what does our extension do?

The first thing I want to do is reconcile our characterization with the one that Opening Government mentions in their POI. We agree with Opening Government that there are sets of cases where there are incentives to retreat from social policy and not talk about it in politics. In some cases, to delay change, not implement reforms, whereas citizens would. However, culture wars obviously exist in a significant number of high-impact cases in the debate. The lower-margin cases are probably the ones where it comes out of politics and doesn't matter as much, because often legislative change or certain judicial change will happen in those cases.

But obviously, culture wars happen to a significant degree over these issues, and we agree with Closing Opposition that the quality of discourse over, like, SALT cap relief is not good discourse. But that is not what we are arguing. We are not arguing that in the absence of being able to talk about social issues, that people start talking about the details of tax policy and trade policy at a policy level. We are arguing that people will hold governments to account that are failing on economic issues because they are less able to paper over those failures with promises to put into place—say, gay laws, to ban abortion, and a whole set of other cases. And in some cases, these will fail, and in some cases, the Republicans won't win out. But the point is that governments often are able to distract from poor economic policymaking by importing social policy into political discourse, often in extremely toxic ways.

The link that we fill, next to Opening Government, is why this changes in our world. Opening Government suggests that people might reach reasonable conclusions here, which move social change faster. There are two burdens which are missing. First, why does the discussion happen in good ways? Why are people receptive and why do they listen? And I think Closing Opposition points out that gap relative to Opening Government. And second, what types of policies do they end up with?

We argue that when a politician wins an election, they are heavily incentivized to introduce a comparatively radical and much more zero-sum version of change. You know that the other party will come into power and roll back that change. Your base wants the most radical version of the policy because they've elected you on that basis. And as a consequence, you probably don't initially introduce policy in a moderate way. We saw that in Canada with MAID, where the Liberals felt that they had a mandate to introduce MAID in an extremely aggressive way, which has led the amount of deaths happening by MAID in Canada to rise by 300% year-on-year relative to 2021.

M.A.I.D:Euthanasia in Canada in its legal voluntary form is called Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) and it first became legal along with assisted suicide in June 2016 for those whose death was reasonably foreseeable. In March 2021, the law was further amended by Bill C-7 to include those suffering from a grievous and irremediable condition whose death was not reasonably foreseeable.The planned inclusion of people with mental illnesses is controversial and has been repeatedly delayed. The legality of this postponement to 2027 is being challenged in court.

Our argument, as not engaged by Closing Opposition, was that more moderate versions of policy change—which are more likely to attract support and less likely to be demonized—are more likely to happen. And we agree that there'll be cases where there is confrontation, as there would be in any jury or judge deliberation. But our argument is this: You know, you're sitting next to this person for a couple of weeks or a month. You don't immediately begin with aggression and with anger because you have to face that person. You have to talk to them. But also, they're a person just like you.

I'm not talking about Christian fundamentalists changing their mind on LGBT issues. I'm talking about a normal person wondering about whether they should allow children to transition at a younger age. I'm talking about moderate policies that people disagree on and are far more likely to hear each other out—as compared to political discourse where it's very hard to make first-person arguments that actually appeal to individual people, where arguments are more likely to form caricatures about the other side rather than a real person standing across from you.

POI from Closing: “Politicians are much less likely to pass extreme policies because they'll be punished in the ballot box at election. These juries do not face those accountability measures.”
Yes, but for the reasons you've observed, there's a lot of ideological disagreement within them, which means that it's hard to find a consensus that's extremely radical. Yes, politicians don't want to lose elections, but they are vulnerable to their base. The DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) at Northern Ireland is always going to have to pass socially conservative policy and fulfill that role in this coalition because its base cares about this.

I agree that there are disincentives to do crazy things, and yet they still happen for ideological reasons. And also, it's a comparative debate. And their argument directly relies on the idea—in fact, their extension relies on the idea—that we are not achieving social change. And their POI would seem to be in tension with the outcome that they think is actually going to happen.

Why will social change not amplify? Uh, there are a couple of reasons. First, the discourse about these issues is removed from politics, but critically, it is not removed from the public sphere. Politicians are less incentivized to talk about gay marriage or abortion and so on because the consequence of saying something controversial on this is no longer traded off by the fact that you can win an election using this issue. And as a consequence, it's more likely that activist groups, lawyers, civil society activists still talk about these issues on social media, in news, etc.

We still hear about these issues. And also, you know, people know that they have a neighbor who served on one of these things. They see these issues happening around them. You don't just forget about these issues. The reason why they're activated in politics is that they're very salient and important to people.

Before I go on – Opening POI: “So your comparative is that people will now hold governments more accountable on complex economic policy that they struggle to understand in the status quo? I think the far more likely counterfactual is more attention on mudslinging, cults of personality, which we already use.”
So, potentially, in some cases that happens. Our argument, again, is not that the most technical forms of accountability happen, but rather that when the economy is doing poorly and governments might otherwise be able to save themselves by appealing to social issues—or where voters are presented with a broad and narrow choice where they can't achieve their democratic value of outcome because they have to choose between voting on the economic issues that they want to vote on, or voting for the party that represents them on social issues.

And that's what brings us into engaging with the quasi-principle argument of Closing Opp, which is a lot of rhetoric about a principle but not a proved principle about what is actually unrepresentative. The first thing I want to point out is that existing democracy is extremely unrepresentative. You are bound by the majority anyway. You lose, the other side still dominates you. Yes, there are institutions, but relative to social policy, they can pass things through. Your vote is insignificant in the massive tide of other votes that pushes things through. And moreover, there is significant corruption.

Now I agree, you technically could bribe someone on one of these juries. But here's the thing: lobbying a company is legal, you just have to register. Bribing a member of one of these things is very illegal, and companies that actually do it will get in trouble for doing it, and they will go to jail or face deep fines.

So the point that Reena was making in all the stuff she added to Opening Government about political discourse was that political discourse is in fact falsified, as Closing Opp says, by the power of corporate interest groups and by the power of tons of forces that mean that we don't get progress faster.

1. So what's the end point for our case?
One, we prove that deliberation can actually happen successfully—not in all cases, but in a meaningful set of cases.
2.  We prove that the realm of politics is not technical economic policy, but just holding governments to account for basic economic failures or incompetency or corruption or any other issue.
It doesn't have to be economic on which they are doing a poor job. And we fill in the links about how discourse improves in our world.

For that reason, very proud to win this debate.