Inherency

Inherency is a stock issue that concerns whether the Affirmative's plan is necessary to solve their harms. Examples of inherency arguments include "the problem is going away by itself", "another law that will solve the problem has just been passed", or even "their specific plan is already being implemented."

Affirmative cases often include an explicit Inherency section, but it may be covered more implicitly, or terms like "facts of the status quo" or "background" may be used instead of "inherency".

Types of inherency
John Prager identifies four ways of supporting the inherency of a plan, using the example of aiding people in poverty:


 * "Structural inherency ... A structural analysis suggests that a law, or rule, or fact of life is causing the harms. For example, the Affirmative may argue that people who do not get a good education have low productivity, and thus earn low wages, and thus are condemned to poverty. The causal link of poor education to low income is based on economic facts. Similarly, the government rule that people who have given up looking for jobs are not counted as "unemployed" means that the unemployment figures underestimate the number of people in need of work; a law demonstrates structural inherency.


 * Gap inherency ... The Affirmative notes that the present system has identified a problem and is taking steps against it, but those steps fall short of curing the harms. There is a gap between the solution now in existence and the harm that needs to be cured. For example, federal welfare payments are designed to relieve poverty, but the money a family receives from welfare is too little to raise it above the poverty line a gap exists.


 * Attitudinal inherency claims that the problems are caused by people's beliefs, feelings, or opinions. For example, racial prejudice an attitudinal problem prevents many blacks from getting good-paying jobs, thus causing poverty to strike at the African-American family more often than the white family. Another example is that people find it humiliating to ask for charity (an attitude), and so many poor people refuse out of pride to participate in welfare and food stamp programs, and thus suffer poverty and malnutrition (the harm).


 * [E]xistential inherency argues that, since there's a problem, something must be causing it ...and leaves the question at that point. The Affirmative claims that the mere existence of a problem is enough; we don't have to worry about causes."

Definitional controversy
There is some disagreement over the best definition of "inherency". Many debaters assume that inherency consists only of the question, "has the plan been passed yet?" This makes inherency virtually the same thing as significance; both concern whether a problem exists in the status quo. Traditionally, however, inherency concerns a much broader set of issues about whether the plan is necessary to solve the problem. According to Dr. Doyle Srader:

Back in the day, significance, inherency and solvency were all tightly woven together, and inherency was the issue that linked significance to solvency. Inherency asked, "What is the root cause of this problem? What is it about this problem that resists solution?" . ..

Think of going to see a doctor. You tell the doctor that you have a headache that hasn’t gone away for six months. The doctor says “Have you tried aspirin?” Yes, you have. “Have you tried Tylenol?” Yes, you have. “Advil?” Yes. “Aleve?” Yes. “Oxycontin?” No, you haven’t tried Oxycontin. “Well, there you go!” says the doctor, and writes out a prescription for Oxycontin. “We’ve found a plan that hasn’t been adopted yet, so Oxycontin it is.”

What’s wrong with that picture?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the doctor had examined you, run some tests, and actually attempted a diagnosis? Wouldn’t you expect the doctor to figure out what’s wrong with you, and explain to you what’s happening, to explain why you had this headache? If, for example, your headache is caused by a brain tumor, wouldn’t chemotherapy be a better solution than a pain reliever? But absent a diagnosis, chemotherapy would obviously be a really, really bad idea.