Tournament: VBI Los Angeles | Round: 6 | Opponent: Rohan Rereddy | Judge: Jerry Chen
James Pedersen

Libertarian Negative Case

I negate and value morality because ought implies a moral obligation.

Freedom makes us human. Banach:
http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sartrelecture.htm, , David Banach, head of philosophy at St. Anslemcolledge, explaining Satre’s philosophy.
 Nothing outside of us can determine what we are and what we are good for; we must do it ourselves, from the inside.  What we will be and what will be good for us is a radically individual matter...

However, freedom is bounded by the law. John Locke writes:
 Two Treatises on Government: A Translation into Modern English, ISR/Google Books, 2009, p. 76
“In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority ... consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it. .....

Thus, my standard is protecting freedom within the constraints of the law.

Prefer my standard:

Morality presumes freedom as the starting point for all moral theories since in order to abide by moral rules one must have the capacity to follow ....

Second, liberty is a prerequisite to theorizing about morality, since it is what allows us to make our own decisions about what is morally valuable instead of having those values imposed ....

My first contention is that ensuring food security is inconsistent with the maximum ideal of societal freedom.

Subpoint A.) Food security comes at the price of increased taxes.

Food Security Portal 13:
http://www.foodsecurityportal.org/export-taxation-context-food-crisis
Kazakhstan, Nepal, and Pakistan for wheat. Looking beyond periods of crisis, export restrictions have also been permanently adopted by countries throughout the world. ... results in an expansion of the production volume of the manufacturing sector, to the detriment of the raw commodity (manufacturing).

Subpoint B.) Taxes violate freedom: Nozick:

 Nozick, Robert. "ANARCHY, STATE, AND UTOPIA." (1974).
 Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. ‘Some persons nces and desires make such goods unnecessary for his happiness? Why should the man who prefers seeing a movie (and who has to earn money for a (movie) ticket) be open to the required call to aid the needy, while the person who prefers looking at a sunset (and hence need earn no extra money) is not?

My second contention is that ensuring food security leads to a cycle of enforced slavery.

Ensuring food security results in a cycle of land grabbing, displacing and enslaving the local natives.
The Journal of Ethics and International Affairs writes:
http://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2013/hunger-food-security-and-the-african-land-grab-full-text/
 To prevent the trouble that many see looming on the horizon, several countries are buying up vast tracts in other states to feed their own burgeoning populations. Both India and China—which face the prospect of severe water shortages in the years ahead—are purchasing prime agricultural land in already food-stressed areas in ... farmers and make them plantation laborers on what was once their own land. Studies show that peasant farming, which currently produces at least half of the world’s food supply, can—when it is done right—be even more productive than industrial agriculture.