AT “My Side is an Omission”
Neither the resolution nor the converse of the resolution is an omission. We both defend an action
—the negative defends the implementation of current policies and the affirmative defends a shift
in said policies. Unless a side defends absolute stagnation, then no side is an omission.
AT Act Omission Distinction
The act/omission doesn’t exist on such an extreme because it wouldn’t make any sense to say that
standing by the side of a pond while a baby drowned in pond would be permissible. The ability to
have self-control and formulate intentions generates moral responsibility. The only time where
we wouldn’t be responsible for omissions is when you don’t know the consequence of your
omission, and the same applies to action; however, we obviously know the policy harms in this
specific round because I presented them to you.
The act/omission distinction is incoherent with conceptions of human agency rooted in practical
reason because it inevitably leads to paradox.
Persson 04: [Ingmar Persson, “Two Act-Omission Paradoxes,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 104 (2004)]
There are two ways in which the act-omission doctrine, which implies that it may be permissible to let people die or be killed when it is wrong to kill them,
gives rise to a paradox. First, it may be that when you let a victim be killed, you let yourself kill this victim. On
the assumption that, if it would be wrong of you to act in a certain fashion, it would be wrong of you let
yourself act in this fashion, this yields the paradox that it is both permissible and impermissible
to let yourself act in this fashion. Second, you may let yourself kill somebody by letting an action
you have already initiated cause death, e.g., by not lending a helping hand to somebody you have pushed. This,
too, yields the paradox that it is both permissible and impermissible to let yourself kill if you are in a
situation in which killing is impermissible but letting be killed permissible.
Governments don’t have an act-omission distinction
Sunstein 5: [Sunstein, “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs”, 2005]
In our view, any effort to distinguish between acts and omissions goes wrong by overlooking the
distinctive features of government as a moral agent. If correct, this point has broad implications for criminal and civil law. Whatever the general status of
the act/omission distinction as a matter of moral philosophy, the distinction is least impressive when applied to
government, because the most plausible underlying considerations do not apply to official actors . The most fundamental point
is that unlike individuals, governments always and necessarily face a choice between or among possible policies for
regulating third parties. The distinction between acts and omissions may not be intelligible in this context, and even if it is, the distinction does not make a
morally relevant difference. Most generally, government is in the business of creating permissions and prohibitions. When it explicitly or
implicitly authorizes private action, it is not omitting to do anything or refusing to act . Moreover, the distinction between authorized
and unauthorized private action – for example, private killing – becomes obscure when government formally forbids private action but chooses a set of policy instruments that do not
government is fully complicit with any harm it allows, so
adequately or fully discourage it. If there is no act-omission distinction, then
decisions are moral if they minimize harm . All means based and side constraint theories collapse because two violations require aggregation.
The inescapability of agency prohibits acts and omissions form being relevant insofar as we act
for intentions.
Korsgaard 09: [Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, 2009 Oxford Press. Print. Pg. 1]
Human beings are condemned to action. Maybe you think you can avoid it, by resolutely standing still, by
refusing to act. But it’s no use, for that will be something you have chosen to do, and then you will
have acted after all Choosing not to act makes not acting a kind of action. This is not to say you
.
cannot fail to act. Of course you can. You can fall asleep at the wheel, you can faint dead away, you can be paralyzed in terror, you can be
helpless in pain, or grief can turn you to stone. And then you will have failed to act . But you cannot undertake those
conditions—if you did, you’d be faking. And what’s more, you’d be acting, in a wonderfully double sense of the word. So long as you’re in charge, so
long as nothing is there to derail you, you must act. You have no choice but to choose and to act on your choice.
