What are Counterplans?
Counterplans are an alternate proposal to the plan. When counterplans are introduced, the debate becomes a comparison of two worlds: the world of the plan, and the world of the counterplan.
You might be asking, why do negatives get to run a counterplan if their only role is to prove the plan is not a good idea? This is because the negative must win that the counterplan is an opportunity cost to the plan – in other words, by doing the plan, one forgoes the opportunity of something better – the counterplan!
Thus, the negative must prove that the counterplan is more desirable than the plan – if the counterplan is deemed equally desirable to the plan, then the affirmative wins because there is no opportunity cost.
This is something we call competition – the counterplan is competitive if it is an opportunity cost to the plan.
Counterplans can be competitive through two ways:
- Net benefits – essentially a bad thing that the affirmative plan does, which the counterplan avoids.
- Mutual exclusivity – i.e. if the plan is to implement a basic income, while the counterplan bans the basic income.
Counterplans are used strategically in two ways:
- To solve the affirmative’s benefits – this way, the affirmative’s advantages are not unique benefits of the plan. Afterwards, all the counterplan has to do is win some risk that the affirmative plan does some bad thing (the net benefit).
- To provide uniqueness to a DA – this is a bit complex and will be discussed further.