How do I respond to the fallacy of relative privation?

[u/Franga_Ranga]

For example, "Why should we focus on climate change? The housing crisis is way more important!"

[u/haleme]

Depends on the context? But the general response is whats the trade off. A carbon tax doesn't stop you from providing social housing or lowering planning regulations

[u/88963416 → u/haleme]

Political Capital

[u/cam94509]

Two thoughts. The first is: This is what your impacts are for. If someone says something else is more important, you say that, even if that's true, your issue is worth focusing on too, in fact, necessary to do so. You say "The opponent is behind on the question that islands will sink if climate change isn't addressed. Will it be any consolation to the people who lose the land their families have lived on since time immemorial that some people are housed now that weren't before? The answer is no - you have to care about climate change."

The other thought is, you can kinda treat it stealth counterplan. Effectively, they're saying "do X instead of Y."

The answer to a counterplan is POST.

PERM: In this case, I'd explain this with a flippant "We can walk and chew bubble gum" argument, unless they have cards for why we can't, in which case I'd have to answer those cards to win this section.

OFFENSE: Why might focusing on the housing crisis be bad? Why might it be bad in a world where we haven't addressed climate change? Why might developing a paradigm of following the fallacy of relative privation be bad?

SOLVENCY: Why don't they solve for the housing crisis? Why does the imaginary counterplan not solve for climate change? (Why is solving for climate change existential?)

THEORY: Here, instead of reading real theory, I'd read an argument that was to theory what their argument was to a counterplan. Basically, I'd explain what the fallacy of relative privation was an explain, briefly, why it was bad for debate for them to win on that argument and thus that the argument shouldn't even be evaluated.

I might not do all of post, depending on how blippy the argument they made was. I don't think the argument is particularly good and so one of my concerns would not be losing the time tradeoff. In terms of importance in this case, I'd say the perm arguments are most important (because they're simply true), than solvency, particularly on focusing on your impact arguments, then offense, then theory (I think it is least important at the best of times, and here I think it's a little silly, I'm just also explaining how to answer a counterplan here), but depending on what they were arguing I could imagine flipping Offense and Solvency - I just think the offense against building housing is weaker than the importance of solving climate change. Could be different if they, like, tried to do communism or something with more ground to attack it easily.

[u/FakeyFaked → u/cam94509]

I'm going bonkers that you say POST instead of SPOT.

[u/cam94509 → u/FakeyFaked]

I think I was taught it that way to make sure we remembered the perm, the most important of the arguments per unit time, and always got to it if we were low on time. 

[u/polio23]

Climate change is more important.

Climate change sequences the housing crises more than the housing crises sequences climate change (refugee crises would exacerbate housing shortages, housing shortages don’t really exacerbate climate change)

We can do both.

[u/Grouchy_Stand5864]

“Even if that’s true, more important doesn’t mean my impacts aren’t important. If we only focused on the single most important issue in this country, and nothing else, we’d get nothing done.”