Make Mine Malthus! Overpopulation panic’s eternal return, a piece in Reason.
For years, Malthus has been my own personal shorthand for illogical arguments taken to idiotic extremes. In high school, there were two kinds of debate: cross-examination (two-person team debate on issues of policy) and Lincoln-Douglas debate (solo debate on issues of value and philosophy). I was an L-D debater, in part because the cross-xers seemed so dedicated to the advancement of stupid arguments.
The most common was Malthus. Malthus, for the non-debaters among us, was a 19th-century economist who wrote a famous essay called “The Principals of Population,” in which he argued that an increase in human population meant certain global doom. He was primarily concerned with food shortages, but he used his food shortages to call for, basically, mass death. Helping poor people was evil, for instance, because keeping them alive will just encourage them to have lots of sex and spawn more poor people, furthering the world’s problems. He was a big fan of famine, plague, and war.
(The money quote: “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased … we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty and yet few be absolutely starved.”)
Anyway, cross-x debate involves building arguments both in favor of and against a given topic. (Last year’s topic: Resolved: That the United States federal government should establish an ocean policy substantially increasing protection of marine natural resources. This year’s: Resolved: That the United States federal government should establish a foreign policy substantially increasing its support of United Nations peacekeeping operations. Wonky shit like that.)
If you were a lame debater who couldn’t come up with a real argument, you could always make up some stupid Malthusian line of “reasoning.” As in:
– “Well, increasing U.N. peacekeeping activities would likely reduce the global threat of war. That would likely save many lives. But Malthus says saving lives is bad because it contributes to global overpopulation. Therefore, we should not increase support for U.N. peacekeeping.”
– “Well, protecting marine natural resources would probably mean improving the quality of seafood stocks in future years. That would mean better continued access to seafood for future generations. Seafood is more likely than many foodstuffs to contain freaky bacteria that can kill an unsuspecting diner. But Malthus says that increased bacterial death is good for dealing with overpopulation. Therefore, we should protect our marine natural resources.”
You get the idea. Malthus is the hack debater’s ultimate fall back. No matter what the topic, anything — increased gum chewing! deforestation in the Pampas! a new “Law & Order” spinoff! — can be twisted into being pro-death and thus pro-Malthus.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a discussion forum for cross-x debaters. Do a search for “Malthus” — at the moment, it generates 324 hits. For the marine natural resources topic, a popular argument appears to have been “whale Malthus,” which claims that there are just too many whales and we need to start nuking them (!) to keep their numbers down, for their own good.
(While it’s not strictly a Malthus argument, I love this attempt: “He also talks about if all whals got together, not even half the whales in the world to exact, could swin in one direction and shift the tides and mess up the climate so how. It is some major stuff!” Killer whales, indeed!)
Anyway, these people are the reason I was a Lincoln-Douglas debater.
9 thoughts on “malthus, cross-x debate”
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I found this commentary on cross-x debate very entertaining, but not corresponding with my own experience as a debater in high school. First of all, I never heard anyone ever use a Malthus argument. And while some people did occasionaly come up with “stupid lines of ‘reasoning'” these were the debaters who just along for the ride, unwilling to do research, and who predictably never won a round.
Sorry you haven’t had the joy of witnessing a Malthus case, but I think those 324 hits at the cross-x discussion forum indicate it’s not an uncommon line.
And actually, that was my problem with cross-x: it seemed to *reward* purposefully obscure (and silly) lines of argument. Many teams when I was in school felt the way to succeed was to come up with an argument so outlandish that the opposing side would not be prepared for it.
And unlike in L-D debate, where you could wax extemporaneous about philosophy and values in response to an unusual argument, cross-x places evidence demands on debaters. In other words, to refute an argument appropriately, you’re supposed to have evidence (in the form of news reports, research, etc.) to support your point. If a case is so silly that it never crosses an opponent’s mind to prepare for it, that’s considered a plus.
I distinctly remember a team making semis of the state tournament on a Malthus (or Malthus-like in its silliness) case. And I remember thinking: That’s why I wouldn’t want to do cross-x. Then again, I was in high school from 1989 to 1993, so it’s been a while.
I once heard that R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” was a mock-up of CX “impacts” arguments–hence the high speed and the Malthusian gloom and doom. Granted, I heard this at a debate camp, and it sounds like an urban myth. But like all good urban myths, it has a certain plausibility.
Thanks for the memories, from a fellow former LD-er.
was it really called cross-examination debate? these days it’s known as policy debate.
(at least, around here it is.)
Back in my day, at least — we’re talking 1989 to 1993 — cross-x, c-x, and policy debate were interchangeable terms. Cross-x and c-x were more common.
I did c-x debate for 4 years in H.S. You failed to touch on what’s an even better reason to hate c-x debate – the “spread” method (not sure where the comes from, but I imagine it has something to do with butt cheeks). When “spreading” one will read as fast as one humanly possible in order that the other team will not be able to respond to your arguments. Some judges (and yes I’ve had them) say that if something is not refuted with evidence, then the other side wins that point. Dumb.
I’d forgotten about spread. A true evil in the universe.
you people have no friends
ill answer your asinine arguments/questions in order
1) malthus may be morally reprehensible, but it makes sense. resources are finite. population grows exponentially. eventually we will come to a point where population growth outstrips resources, when people will die off in droves. death of a few ppl now partially curbs population growth, saving more people in the long term.
2) i heard that thing about REM too. thats the only reason i found this page.
3) silly/obscure arguments do now benefit debaters. you cannot win an argument in front of any good debate judge unless you can explain it well. this explanation allows the other side to attack it as well. besides, you can always leveratge your aff or a general disad versus unknown arguments. topicality arguments also check unknown affs.
4) philosophical arguemnts are stupid. unless they have some implication, wiehging something like ‘justice’ doesnt really mean anything. for example, no rational person would say for instance that they “justice” of the death penalty outweighs a single innocent life lost becuase of a mistake, becuase a life is a tangible thing as opposed to justice where the only impact is in the mind of arch-conservative knuckleheads who can’t stand social progress.
5) spreading is good. it allows you more arguments and helps people make debate for complex, and thsu more fun and interesting. it is not intended to exclude people, becuase if you can’t understand it, you are unexperienced/don’t practice and thus wouldnt win anyway.
6) the evidence claim is false as well. judges (at least good ones on the national cicuit. im not sure about the kooks in missouri and whatnot) will vote on a well reasoned analytical argument. no evidence is needed to disprove soemthing thats obviously untrue.