Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

***ECONOMY***

Economy Solves Chinese Freedom of Speech

Economic growth solves freedom of speech in China

Blankenhorn 6 [Dana, business journalist, June 23, http://www.danablankenhorn.com/2006/06/this_weeks_clue_3.html]

There's irony in the fact that I'm saying sharing is the key to defeating what we have long thought of as Communist China. But their economy is entirely built on an industrial, proprietary model. We have to grasp the future in order to win. And here's the bonus. By competing economically, by using open source and the Internet, by forcing economic and technology change, there are no losers. The pressure of our growth will force China to open up its society. Without that pressure, as we've seen the last few years, there is no such pressure. The only way to free China is to beat China, so that China will be forced to free itself.

Economy Turns Disease

Economic decline leads to disease spread
Alexander 9 [Brian, Staff Writer, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29599786]

To most Americans, diseases with names like dengue fever, chikungunya, malaria, Chagas and leishmaniasis might sound like something out of a Victorian explorer’s tales of hacking through African jungles. Yet ongoing epidemics of these diseases are killing millions of people around the world. Now, disease experts are increasingly concerned these and other infections may become as familiar in the United States as West Nile or Lyme disease. Few believe Americans face a killer epidemic from tropical diseases. But scientists who specialize in emerging infectious diseases say such illnesses may become more common here as the economic downturn batters an already weakened public health system, creating environmental conditions conducive to infectious diseases spread by insects or other animals. At the same time, such vector-borne diseases are capable of spreading around the world much more rapidly due to massive south-to-north immigration, rapid transportation, and global trade.

Economic decline causes disease spread
Robertson 9 [Dr Andrew, Physician, June 12th, http://www.physorg.com/news163993567.html]

There are concerns that the financial crisis has already hit tuberculosis control, which has global ramifications, says Robertson.“There are already indications that funding for TB diagnosis and management is decreasing in developing countries and a surge of new cases there may flow onto the US and other countries,” he says.Healthcare in developed countries will also suffer if budgets are cut and incomes fall. Fewer people are accessing private health services in the USA, which will increase the burden on public health services.Resources for disease surveillance are often cut back during difficult economic times, jeopardising the systems we rely on to identify and deal with emerging diseases - including the current swine flu epidemics.The 1995 economic crisis in Mexico led to 27,000 excess deaths in that country alone - but the effect of this far greater, global downturn is currently “impossible to quantify,” according to Robertson.

Economy Turns Democracy

Economic decline causes multiple hotposts of state failure and democratic backsliding
Ferguson 9 [Niall, Professor of History @ Harvard, Harvard Business Review; Jul/Aug2009, Vol. 87 Issue 7/8, p44-53]

Will this financial crisis make the world more dangerous as well as poorer? The answer is almost certainly yes. Apart from the usual trouble spots -- Afghanistan, Congo, Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan -- expect new outbreaks of instability in countries we thought had made it to democracy. In Asia, Thailand may be the most vulnerable. At the end of 2007 it reverted to democracy after a spell of military rule that was supposed to crack down on corruption. Within a year's time the country was in chaos, with protesters blocking Bangkok's streets and the state banning the People's Power Party. In April 2009 the capital descended into anarchy as rival yellow-shirted and red-shirted political factions battled with the military. Expect similar scenes in other emerging markets. Trouble has already begun in Georgia and Moldova. Then there's Ukraine, where economic collapse threatens to trigger political disintegration. While President Viktor Yushchenko leans toward Europe, his ally-turned-rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko favors a Russian orientation. Their differences reflect a widening gap between the country's predominantly Ukrainian west and predominantly Russian east. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Putin talks menacingly of "ridding the Ukrainian people of all sorts of swindlers and bribe-takers." The Crimean peninsula, with its ethnic Russian majority, is the part of the "Near Abroad" (the former Soviet Union) that Putin most covets. January's wrangle over gas supplies to Western Europe may have been the first phase of a Russian bid to destabilize, if not to break up, Ukraine. The world's increasing instability makes the United States seem more attractive not only as a safe haven but also as a global policeman. Many people spent the years from 2001 to 2008 complaining about U.S. interventions overseas. But if the financial crisis turns up the heat in old hot spots and creates new ones at either end of Eurasia, the world may spend the next eight years wishing for more, not fewer, U.S. interventions.
Economic decline collapses democracy

Halperin 5 [Morton, Senior Vice President of the Center for American Progress and Director of the Open Society Policy Center, 2005, The Democracy Advantage, p. 90, Google Books]

This chapter has made the case that economic stagnation is a threat to democratization. Over 70 percent of democratic backtrackers experienced economic stagnation in the years preceding their political contraction. Moreover, democratizers with more prolonged recessions had a greater tendency to revert to authoritarianism. Backtracking under economic duress has been primarily concentrated in parts of Latin America, Africa, and the former Soviet Union. Nonetheless, democracy has amazing staying power. In more than 95 percent of the cases of sustained economic contraction, democratizing states did not backtrack. Furthermore, even for those that eventually did backtrack, 60 percent regained their democratic course after a several-year interval.

Economic Collapse tanks democracy
Petrou 9 [Michael, PhD in History from Oxford, Maclean’s, March 9, Proquest]

History suggests the results will be damaging. Political freedom rarely advances during a worldwide recession. "The current downturn, if it continues for some period of time, is likely to be very unhelpful for hope that democracy will spread around the world," says Benjamin M. Friedman, a Harvard University economist and the author of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, in an interview with Maclean's. Friedman argues that political freedom expands during prolonged periods of prosperity, and contracts during regression or stagnation. It's a thesis echoed by Freedom House's Puddington. "Democracy moves ahead when diings are flush," he says. "The history of democracy in times of real economic pain and crisis- it's not very good. I'm certainly hopeful that we're not going to end up like we did in the late 1920s and 1930s. That was a terrible time for world politics."