Your root cause claim is fallacious – just because X and Y exists does not

mean that X causes Y. LARRIVEE 10:

Prof ECONOMICS AT MOUNT ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY – MASTERS FROM THE HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL AND PHD IN ECONOMICS FROM WISCONSIN, 10 [JOHN, A FRAMEWORK FOR THE MORAL
ANALYSIS OF MARKETS, 10/1, http://www.teacheconomicfreedom.org/files/larrivee-paper-1.pdf]

The Second Focal Point: Moral, Social, and Cultural Issues of Capitalism Logical errors abound in critical commentary on
capitalism. Some critics observe a problem and conclude: “I see X in our society.
We have a capitalist economy. Therefore capitalism causes X. ” They draw their conclusion by looking at a phenomenon as it
appears only in one system. Others merely follow a host of popular theories according to which capitalism is particularly bad. 6 The solution to such flawed reasoning is to be comprehensive, to look at the good and bad, in market and non-market
systems. Thus the following section considers a number of issues—greed, selfishness and human relationships, honesty and truth, alienation and work satisfaction, moral decay, and religious participation—that have often been associated with
capitalism, but have also been problematic in other systems and usually in more extreme form. I conclude with some evidence for the view that markets foster (at least some) virtues rather than undermining them. My purpose is not to smear

The critical point is that certain people

communism or to make the simplistic argument that “capitalism isn’t so bad because other systems have problems too.”

thought various social ills resulted from capitalism, and on this basis they took
action to establish alternative economic systems to solve the problems they had
identified. That they failed to solve the problems, and in fact exacerbated
them while also creating new problems, implies that capitalism itself wasn’t the
cause of the problems in the first place , at least not to the degree theorized.
 Impact Turns
TURN: Cap solves war. HARRISON
Harrison ’11 (Mark, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, “Capitalism at War”, Oct 19
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/papers/capitalism.pdf)

Capitalism’s Wars America is the world’s preeminent capitalist power. According to a poll of more than 21,000 citizens of 21 countries in the second half of 2008, people tend on average to evaluate U.S. foreign policy as inferior to that of their own

country in the moral dimension. 4 While this survey does not disaggregate respondents by educational status, many apparently knowledgeable people also seem to believe that , in the modern world, most
wars are caused by America ; this impression is based on my experience of presenting work on the frequency of wars to academic seminars in several European countries.

According to evidence, however, these beliefs are mistaken

the . We are all aware of America’s wars, but they make only a small
contribution to the total. Counting all bilateral conflicts involving at least the show of force from 1870 to 2001, it turns out that the countries that originated them come from all parts of the global income distribution (Harrison and Wolf 2011).

Countries that are rich er, measured by GDP per head, such as America do not tend to start more conflicts , although there is a tendency for countries with larger GDPs
to do so. Ranking countries by the numbers of conflicts they initiated, the United States, with the largest economy, comes only in second place; third place belongs to China. In first place is Russia (the USSR between 1917 and 1991). What do capitalist

institutions contribute to the empirical patterns in the data? Erik Gartzke (2007) has re-examined the hypothesis of the “democratic peace” based on the possibility that, since capitalism and democracy are highly correlated across countries and time,

both democracy and peace might be products of the same underlying cause, the spread of capitalist
institutions . It is a problem that our historical datasets have measured the spread of capitalist property rights and economic freedoms over shorter time spans or on fewer dimensions than political variables. For the period from

Countries that share this attribute

1950 to 1992, Gartzke uses a measure of external financial and trade liberalization as most likely to signal robust markets and a laissez faire policy.

of capitalism above a certain level, he finds, do not fight each other, so there is capitalist peace as well as democratic peace.
Second, economic liberalization (of the less liberalized of the pair of countries) is a more powerful predictor of bilateral peace than democratization, controlling for the level of economic development and measures of political affinity.

TURN: Cap self-corrects exploitation. History proves. AMES:

(Freedom Manifesto: Why Free Markets Are Moral And Big Government Isn’t. Steve Forbes, Publishing Executive. Elizabeth Ames, Former Member of The Texas House Of Representatives. 2012 p. 86-88)

In other words, the fact that people freely choose to enter into open market[s] exchange works to encourage cooperation and
moral behavior. It’s true that sometimes one side may violate the terms of a voluntary transaction—for example, you buy a car tat’s a lemon. That’s why a free market requires a fair and impartial legal system—to enforce the terms of contracts and
mediate disputes. The competition and openness of free market societies also help to curtail too much power and “greed”. Free markets allow newcomers to rise up and challenge major players. The flow of information in an open market society through

institutions like a free press provides additional checks and balances. The self-regulat[ion] power ing of self-interest is demonstrated by historic

examples of truly free markets . Some have functioned for years without interference from government. What happened? People did just fine. William Anderson, economics professor at Frostburg State University and a
scholar at the Mises Institute, recounts, “For about a century after the founding of the United States, business activity faced little or no government regulation, especially compared with the situation in modern times.” America in the nineteenth century is

much of today’s commercial

not the only example of a self-regulating market. In their book, Money, Markets & Sovereignty, Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds write that codified

law comes from merchant law—which arose

was not developed by lawmakers but lex mercatoria—“

spontaneously from merchants who

in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The laws of lex mercatoria evolved the customs and practices of

needed common rules to conduct business of the road beyond their borders. “Even outside the realm of common law systems, commercial practice
has throughout history driven the codification of systems of law, and not vice versa.” Lex mercatoria included principles such as requiring that both parties act according to “good faith” and a general standard of “fair dealings,” in addition to fundamental

These were enforced by

property rights. merchant courts
rules along a system of called Pie Powder courts at merchant fairs

trade routes spontaneous

that were separate from local legal systems. Bruce L. Benson, economics professr at Florida State University, not that lex mercatoria is but one illustration of the

regulation takes place in free markets.

that He explains: “Merchant [law] evolves whenever commerce in medieval Europe were replayed in colonial America,

the Internet is largely

and they are being replayed in Eastern Europe, Eastern Asia, Latin America, and cyberspace. Like the markets of medieval times, today still a

unregulated Yet markets have sprung up to aid consumers and

market. what Benson calls “ for trust”

businesses attempting to establish trust in first-time transactions. He give the example of VeriSign, which provides a “trustmark” that Internet businesses
can display, assuring customers that their personal data is secure. But that’s far from the only example.

TURN: Cap solves warming. WHITMAN

Whitman ’08 (Janet, February 19, pg. http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=317551)

Global warming may get a saviour more effective than Al Gore soon and his doomsday Power-Point presentations:

capitalism. the huge

The former U.S. vice-president, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his work on climate change, is credited with bringing widespread attention to the issue. But

moneymaking opportunity in going green will be the big driver that leads to the
reining in of the greenhouse gasses release of , experts say. Money already is pouring into environmental initiatives and technologies in the United States. Experts expect investment in
the area to explode over the next few years if, as anticipated, the government here imposes restrictions on the release of gases believed to be behind climate change. "Capitalism will drive this," said Vinod Khosla, founding chief executive of Sun

getting consumers to curb

Microsystems and a longtime venture capitalist. Mr. Khosla, speaking on a panel at a recent investment summit on climate change at United Nations headquarters here, said

their energy use has never worked -- unless they've had a financial incentive. "If we
make it economic, it will happen," he said. The expected government-mandated cap on carbon emissions already is fueling innovation. Venture capitalists, for instance, are investing in
new technologies that would make cement -- a major producer of carbon emissions -- actually absorb carbon instead. Cement makers could practically give the product away and reap the financial reward from government carbon credits.
Cap is key to space exploration and development
Blundell ‘4

[John, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, “Mission to Mars must go private to
succeed”, Feb 2, http://news.scotsman.com/marsexploration/Mission-to-Mars-must-
go.2499794.jp]

Bush is not finding the billions himself. Rather the tab will be picked up by US taxpayers in perhaps 20 years’ time. What arrests
me is the unchallenged assumption that space exploration must be a nationalised industry. The Soviet
effort may be stalled but the Chinese seem committed to joining the race. The European Space Agency is a strange combination of
nationalised bodies. NASA is a pure old-fashioned nationalised entity. I argue we
should relinquish the
expectationthat space has to be limited to vast quangos. The mindset we all share is an echo of the rivalry
between the evaporated USSR and the still dynamic US. The first bleeps of the Sputnik galvanised the US into accelerating its space
effort.   What we need is capitalists in space. Capitalism needs property rights, enforcement of
contracts and the rule of law. The ideological tussle does not cease once we are beyond the ionosphere.   With the
exception of Arthur C Clarke, none of us imagined the entertainment potential from satellites .
Geostationary lumps of electronic gadgetry beam us our BSkyB television pictures. I remain in awe that Rupert Murdoch can place a
device in the skies above Brazil that sends a signal to every home in each hemisphere. Who could have foreseen that mobile phones
could keep us chattering without any wiring, or that global position techniques could plot where we all are to within a metre?
These are business applications. Business is already in space.   Markets detect and apply opportunities that
are not envisaged by even the most accomplished technicians. I’m not saying Murdoch has special competences. I imagine he is as
baffled by digital miracles as I am. The point is that companies
define and refine what public bodies cannot
achieve. Lift the veil of course and all those satellite firms are an intricate web of experts supplying ideas
and services. We have an infant space market.   What use will the Moon be? Is there value on Mars other than
the TV rights? The answer is nobody can know. We can only make some guesses. The Spanish ships that set off for the US thought
they would get to India. The Portuguese knew they’d reach China. The English followed them westwards seeking gold. In fact, they
got tobacco. Events always confound expectations.   The arguments for putting men on Mars are expressly vague from President
Bush. Perhaps he was really bidding for votes.   From my reading the best
results may be medical. Zero, or low,
gravity techniques may allow therapies of which we are ignorant. It seems facetious to suggest tourism
may be a big part of space opportunity but as both the North and South poles are over-populated and there is a queue at the top of
Mount Everest, a trip to the Sea of Tranquility may prove a magnet for the wealthy. Instead
of NASA’s grotesque
bureaucracy it may be Thomas Cook will be a greater force for exploration.   NASA could be a
procurement body. It need not design and run all space ventures. It could sub-contract far more extensively. Without specialised
engineering expertise it is not easy to criticise projects such as the shuttle. It seems to be excessively costly and far too fragile.
There are private space entrepreneurs already. They are tiddlers up against the mighty NASA. Yet Dan Goldin,
the NASA leader, says he favours the privatisation of space: "We can’t afford to do solar
system exploration until we turn these activities over to the cutting edge private sector...
"Some may say that commercialising portions of NASA’s functions is heresy. Others may think we are taking a path that will ruin the
wonders of space. I believe that when
NASA can creatively partner, all of humankind will reap the
benefits of access to open space".   Is it possible the Moon has a more noble future than
merely a branch office of NASA? Is it tolerable that Mars could be a subsidiary of the USA?
Could it be nominally a further state of the union? These are not silly questions. In time space
will be defined by lawyers and accountants as property rights will need to be deliberated .   One
possibility may be that both environments are so hostile that Mars and the Moon will never be more than token pockets for
humanity. On the evidence so far it is the orbiting satellites that have made us see the Earth through new eyes. We
can survey
and explore the planet better from 200 miles up than stomping on the surface. The emerging
commercial body of space law is derived from telecommunications law.   It is perplexing and contrary to
our immediate senses. How can you own or exchange something as intangible as digital messages bouncing off satellites? Yet we all
pay our mobile phone bills.   Many of the business results of space exploration are unintended
consequences of NASA’s early adventures. Computer development would probably have been
slower but for the need for instrumentation for Apollo .   Are there prospects for Scottish firms in space? The
prizes will not go to only the mega corporations. Perhaps Dobbies, the Edinburgh garden centre group, can create new roses by
placing pots beyond gravity. Edinburgh University laboratories, or rather their commercial spin offs, could patent
new medicines. Is it possible the genetic magicians at the Bush could hitch a ride into space and extend their discoveries?
NASA is a monopolist. All monopolies are bad for business. They only stunt opportunities. They blunt alternatives.   By opening
space to entrepreneurship we will be starting on what FA Hayek memorably describes as "a
discovery procedure". Science is an open system. So is capitalism. 

(b) Space k2 solve a laundry list of impacts

Pelton ‘3

[Joseph N. Pelton is director of the Space & Advanced Communications Research Institute at
George Washington University and executive director of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation
“COMMENTARY: Why Space? The Top 10 Reasons”, Sept 12,
http://www.space.com/news/commentary_top10_030912.html]

Actually thelack of a space program could get us all killed . I dont mean you or me or my wife or children. I
mean that Homo sapiens as a species are actually endangered. Surprising to some, a well conceived
space program may well be our only hope for long-term survival. The right or wrong decisions about
space research and exploration may be key to the futures of our grandchildren or great-grandchildren or those that
follow.  Arthur C. Clarke, the author and screenplay writer for 2001: A Space Odyssey, put the issue rather starkly some years
back when he said: The dinosaurs are not around today because they did not have a space program. He was, of course,
referring to the fact that we now know a
quite largish meteor crashed into the earth, released
poisonous Iridium chemicals into our atmosphere and created a killer cloud above the Earth
that blocked out the sun for a prolonged period of time.   This could have been foreseen
and averted with a sufficiently advanced space program. But this is only one example of how space
programs, such as NASAs Spaceguard program, help protect our fragile planet. Without a space program we
would not know about the large ozone hole in our atmosphere, the hazards of solar
radiation, the path of killer hurricanes or many other environmental dangers. But this is only a
fraction of the ways that space programs are crucial to our future. Protection against catastrophic planetary accidents: It is
easy to assume that an erratic meteor or comet will not bring destruction to the Earth because the probabilities are low. The
truth is we are bombarded from space daily. The dangers are greatest not from a
cataclysmic collision, but from not knowing enough about solar storms, cosmic radiation
and the ozone layer. An enhanced Spaceguard Program is actually a prudent course that could
save our species in time.

1. Alternative risks Transition wars

Aligica 3 (Paul, 4/21, fellow at the Mercatus Center, Hudson Insitute, “The Great Transition and the Social Limits to Growth: Herman Kahn on
Social Change and Global Economic Development”, April 21, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2827)
Stopping things would mean if not to engage in an experiment to change the human nature, at
least in an equally difficult experiment in altering powerful cultural forces: "We firmly believe
that despite the arguments put forward by people who would like to 'stop the earth and get off,'
it is simply impractical to do so. Propensity to change may not be inherent in human nature, but
it is firmly embedded in most contemporary cultures. People have almost everywhere become
curious, future oriented, and dissatisfied with their conditions. They want more material goods
and covet higher status and greater control of nature. Despite much propaganda to the
contrary, they believe in progress and future" (Kahn, 1976, 164). As regarding the critics of
growth that stressed the issue of the gap between rich and poor countries and the issue of
redistribution, Kahn noted that what most people everywhere want was visible, rapid
improvement in their economic status and living standards, and not a closing of the gap (Kahn,
1976, 165). The people from poor countries have as a basic goal the transition from poor to
middle class. The other implications of social change are secondary for them. Thus a crucial
factor to be taken into account is that while the zero-growth advocates and their followers may
be satisfied to stop at the present point, most others are not. Any serious attempt to frustrate
these expectations or desires of that majority is likely to fail and/or create disastrous counter
reactions. Kahn was convinced that "any concerted attempt to stop or even slow 'progress'
appreciably (that is, to be satisfied with the moment) is catastrophe-prone". At the minimum,
"it would probably require the creation of extraordinarily repressive governments or
movements-and probably a repressive international system" (Kahn, 1976, 165; 1979, 140-153).
The pressures of overpopulation, national security challenges and poverty as well as the
revolution of rising expectations could be solved only in a continuing growth environment.
Kahn rejected the idea that continuous growth would generate political repression and absolute
poverty. On the contrary, it is the limits-to-growth position "which creates low morale, destroys
assurance, undermines the legitimacy of governments everywhere, erodes personal and group
commitment to constructive activities and encourages obstructiveness to reasonable policies
and hopes". Hence this position "increases enormously the costs of creating the resources
needed for expansion, makes more likely misleading debate and misformulation of the issues,
and make less likely constructive and creative lives". Ultimately "it is precisely this position the
one that increases the potential for the kinds of disasters which most at its advocates are trying
to avoid" (Kahn, 1976, 210; 1984).

Capitalism is self-correcting and sustainable – war and environmental

destruction are not profitable and innovation solves their impacts – TAKES OUT
THEIR IMPACT EVIDENCE
Kaletsky ’11 (Anatole, editor-at-large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on economics, politics, and
international relationsand on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit
created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New
Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 19-21)

Democratic capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to

shocks of every kind, to upheavals in technology and economics, to political
revolutions and world wars. Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike communism or socialism
or feudalism, it has an inner dynamic akin to a living thing . It can adapt and refine

itself in response to the changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same
capitalist genus if that is what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, businesses, and pundits forgot about
the astonishing adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views of the world that
extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into the indefinite future. The self-correcting
mechanisms that market economies and democratic societies have evolved
over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of biology
has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. Democratic capitalism’s

equivalent of the biological survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving

social problems and meeting material needs. This capacity stems from the
principle of competition, which drives both democratic politics and capitalist
markets. Because market forces generally reward the creation of wealth rather
than its destruction, they direct the independent efforts and ambitions of
millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these
demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians
for making their lives better and safer, rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs

political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating society’s problems,

even if these solutions sometimes create new problems of their own . Political competition is slower and

less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out
over decades or even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the difference in
timescale, capitalism and democracy have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms that encourage

individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into

finding solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work
very well. If we consider democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very
relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom that prevailed in its aftermath.
Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more.
Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators
were attacked for letting half-dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point
of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose raison d’etre is to devise new
solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem postponed is effectively a problem solved. To be more exact, a
problem whose solution can be deferred long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable
today.Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of
“passing on our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by conservatives or about global warming by
liberals—becomes morally unconvincing. Our grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more
powerful technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf.
Sounder morality, as well as economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr.
Micawber: "Something will turn up."