Another Debate on Profit

I was quite disappointed on KatPoop’s performance in my previous debate as well as the format of the site, so I’ve decided to open a new one on a different site and leave it as an open challenge. Fortunately someone took it and we’re now on the third round of it.

I believe it’s much more interesting and well argued, giving ample opportunity for both sides to make their case. I am a bit restrained by the 8000 chars limit as my opponent has put forth 4 arguments that require extensive refutation:

• The Time Value of Money.
• The “Waiting” theory of profit.
• The Risk theory of profit.
• The Creative Genius thory of profit.

I’ve countered 3 out of 4 in this site already but unfortunately I am now called to do the same thing for all of them together within 8k characters. It would have been far more useful to debate each of these arguments on it own rather than all three together but alas, this is what we have now. Still, the debate format really pushes me to articulate my defence in the most concise way and I think I’m doing pretty well for my first attempt.

So head over and take a look. You won’t be able to vote without “confirming you identity” via SMS which is a silly way to prevent multiple votes, since it basically excludes most people in the world. You can still leave a comment though and argue with the pro-capitalists residents over there.

I generally like the Debate.org site. It’s giving you a very nice layout to hold a debate, the voting system is not a simple “I agree/I don’t agree) type but asks you to actually rate people both on their argument as well as their conduct, sources and argumentation. So even though you may agree with someone when the debate starts and not change your opinion, you may still vote the other side on argumentation strength and conduct. It’s an interesting twist, pushing both sides to be civil and stick to the point.

Unfortunately, the site as US middle-class oriented has way too many pro-capitalists around. I even checked the “Anarchist” tag and noticed that 90% percent of those claiming to be Anarchists are in truth pro-capitalist “Libertarians”.

Nevertheless, I think the debate style is an important part in argumentation so if I get again into an impasse with someone, I’ll probably challenge them to a debate to allow a third party consensus to decide.