Basic Downloads

Are you new to speech and debate? The following downloads are for you. They contain introductions to various events that the Monument Membership explores. These downloads are updated every summer to prepare for the new year of competition.

Your Basic Downloads Source Material for Season 22:

File Name	S22-Policy-Stoa-15-AFF-ShermanAct.docx
File Size	75.40 KB
Date added	October 11, 2021
Category	Policy (Stoa)
Author	Vance Trefethen

Resolved: The United States federal government substantially reform the use of Artificial Intelligence technology

Case Summary: You may have heard of Gen. William T. Sherman, whose Union army burned down Atlanta during the Civil War. Gen. Sherman’s brother John Sherman had an illustrious political career, including service as a US Senator from Ohio. In 1890, Sen. Sherman started the process that led to legislation to correct one of the social injustices perceived at the time to be a growing problem in the US economy: Collusion replacing competition among suppliers in the marketplace. That legislation, which is still on the books and actively enforced by the Justice Department today, became known as the “Sherman Antitrust Act,” or simply the “Sherman Act.” It makes it a federal crime for suppliers to communicate with one another in any way that involves agreements to set prices for products they are selling. For example, imagine all the gas station owners in your town have a secret conference and agree on a “price fixing scheme” in which they will all charge $4/gallon for gasoline. Such an agreement to stop competing with each other might be enforced by agreeing further that if any station deviates from the fixed price, all the others will immediately drop theirs to 10c/gallon lower than the deviator’s price to punish the deviator, and raise it back to $4 whenever the deviator gets back on board. Such a collusive conspiracy would be illegal and punishable under the Sherman Act, and you can see why. Consumers in that town are having their pockets picked by the absence of competition in the gasoline market, and they are paying prices substantially higher than a competitive market would have allowed.

The Sherman Act, however, does not prohibit sellers from adjusting their prices in response to other sellers as long as they are not communicating nor colluding with the other sellers. For example, if one seller raises his prices, another seller might raise his to match, instead of keeping prices low to compete. As long as there was no agreement to do so, it’s perfectly legal.

Enter now the world of AI. More and more sellers are making use of AI to set prices dynamically. Times of day, seasons of year, local and global events, all can be taken into account. One AI program looked at another seller and noticed they had lowered their prices… and decided to raise its own prices. The manager thought the AI had gone bonkers until the manager realized that the lower price store had a line out the door and people were getting angry and walking away… to his store, which now had higher prices and was making more money than ever.

The problem arises when two or more sellers who control a substantial amount of a market both use AI to set prices. Experiments have shown that when this occurs, the “competing” AI’s will “learn” to adjust their prices in a way that exactly matches what would happen if the human sellers were on the phone collaborating with each other to set higher prices. And it happens without any communication at all, so it wouldn’t violate the Sherman Act. This plan closes this loophole and adds the protections of the Sherman Act to artificial intelligence pricing that artificially inflates prices even when no literal (communicated) collusion takes place.

Terminology:

“Monopoly” – a market where a single seller dominates, controlling the sales of most or all of a particular product. It’s considered a bad thing because the seller can raise prices higher than would be possible in a freely competitive market.

“Trust” – old-fashioned term for a combination of businesses that combine, collude, or coordinate as they attempt to gain monopoly power. “Antitrust” is the inverse; it’s the attempt by government to stop businesses from doing that.

“Oligopoly” – a market where there are only a few (but more than one) sellers, and they may be tempted to collude with each other to reduce competition and act like a monopoly.

“Cartel” – a group of suppliers who actively collude to avoid competing with each other so that they can set higher than market prices.

Download Your Preseason Documents, too:

You may still access Season 21 downloads here.

All Season 22 Basic Downloads will be updated by August 31, 2021. They will remain available through Season 22.

Easy Entry to the World of Speech and Debate

All Members have access to the digital copy of Easy Entry to the World of Speech and Debate by Chris Jeub. Download it below or order a hard copy.

Season 22 Release Schedule

Monument releases content all year long, from one national tournament to another, in what we call "seasons." We are entering Season 22 (2021-2022). For a list of all Member downloads for Season 21, click here. The following is the general release schedule for Season 22:

End of Season 21 - Officially archived on June 28, 2021. The new Season 22 releases begin July 5, 2021.
July-August - The first Monument Monday releases July 5, 2021. Basic informational material will continue through the summer (e.g. summaries, resolutional articles, etc.).
August 30, 2021 - End of the Pre-season, beginning of the official year of Monument Speech and Debate.
~~Christmas~~ Thanksgiving 2021 (we finished early!) - All foundational downloads are complete! Summaries of all releases are now available.
Through March 2022 - BONUS material released to members on a more as-needed basis using our Coaching Request Form.
April-June, 2022 - Qualifier and Nationals Preparation work is arranged...and Monument Members will be prepared to win!

Season 22 Debate Resolutions

Resolutions for Season 22 are posted here as they are announced by various speech and debate leagues.

Policy (all season):
- NCFCA: "Resolved: The United States Federal Government should significantly reform its policies regarding convicted prisoners under federal jurisdiction."
- NSDA: "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its protection of water resources in the United States."
- NSDA Vote for Season 23 (Due December 15, 2021):
  - OPTION 1 – GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE – Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its support of multilateral greenhouse gas emission reduction regimes.
  - OPTION 2 – GLOBAL GEO-POLITICAL CRISIS: EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES – Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in one or more of the following areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cybersecurity.
- Stoa: "Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reform the use of Artificial Intelligence technology."
Lincoln-Douglas:
- NCFCA (all season): "Resolved: In the context of innovation, the proactionary principle ought to be valued above the precautionary principle."
- NSDA releases six resolutions through the year:
  - Sept/Oct Novice: "Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified."
  - Sept/Oct Varsity: "Resolved: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines."
  - Nov/Dec: "Resolved: A just government ought to recognize an unconditional right of workers to strike."
  - Jan/Feb: "Resolved: The appropriation of outer space by private entities is unjust."
  - Next release is due February 1, 2022.
- Stoa (all season): "Resolved: In the field of biomedical engineering, restraint ought to be prioritized over scientific advancement."
Other Formats:
- Big Questions Debate (all season): "Resolved: On balance, societies benefit from religious belief and practice."
- Public Forum for Sept/Oct: "Resolved: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization should substantially increase its defense commitments to the Baltic states."
- Public Forum for Nov/Dec: "Resolved: Increased United States federal regulation of cryptocurrency transactions and/or assets will produce more benefits than harms."
- Public Forum for January: "Resolved: The United States federal government should legalize all illicit drugs."
- Public Forum's next release is due January 1, 2022.

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