Logical Reasoning

PT1 · S3 · Q9 Fines levied against those responsible

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Fines levied against those responsible for certain environmentally damaging accidents are now so high that it costs a company responsible for such an accident more to pay the fine than it would have cost to adopt measures that would have prevented the accident.

Conclusion (Therefore)

Businesses that might have environmentally damaging accidents will now install adequate safeguards.

Evidence (since)

Fines for such accidents are now higher than the cost of the measures that would have prevented them.

Businesses value their profits.

Evaluate

The author's logic is a cost comparison. Prevention is cheaper than the fine. Businesses want to keep their money. So businesses will choose prevention.

How could we argue that "businesses won't install adequate environmental safeguards"? We'd have to try to argue that it is still somehow more cost effective to be environmentally delinquent than to pay for the preventative measures.

The fine is higher than the preventative measures, but are those the only costs we need to consider?

Is the chance of getting fined so low, that over time it's worth gambling on the idea that you won't get fined? (There's a passage in RC that talks about how the penalty for corporate crimes would have to be like 10x the money they save/make from committing those crimes, because there's only like a 10% chance they get caught. You have to factor in that detection ratio when you consider the cost of the fine vs. the cost of compliance.)

Goal

Look for an answer that gives us a way to say that profit-seeking businesses might still skip the safeguards, either by showing how that is still the cheaper route or by showing that they are not deterred by the large fines (because they don't know about them or don't think it'll happen to them).

9.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

  1. Correct

    Businesses generally greatly underestimate the

    Why this is right

    This allows us to say that, "Since a business doesn't think they'll commit an accident, they aren't worried about the exorbitant fine, and thus they choose the cheaper route of failing to adopt preventative measures." Even though the fine costs more than the preventative measures, if you don't actually expect to be fined, then that's not a compelling worry.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    60% picked this

  2. Businesses are as concerned with

    Opposite

    A business that thinks about the long term is more likely to think, "We should just invest in adopting the safety measures so that we never have to pay a giant fine. In the long run, it'll work in our favor". So this strengthens the argument.

    4% picked this

  3. Businesses generally do the environmentally

    Opposite

    This is saying that "if it doesn't make good business sense, then businesses won't adopt preventative measures (i.e. do the environmentally right thing)." But the author is saying it DOES make good business sense, when it comes to these huge fines. So this wouldn't weaken the author, because the author assumes that the trigger doesn't apply. She thinks this IS a case where doing the right thing makes good business sense, so this rule is totally compatible with her view.

    3% picked this

  4. Businesses treat fines that are

    Thin Ice

    It feels like this might strengthen, if anything. The author is thinking that businesses will consider the expense of paying a fine vs. the expense of adopting preventative measures and choose the latter because it is the cheaper expense. It might actually weaken if we said, "Businesses don't think of fines like that. They would never do a cost comparison with some other expense." So by saying they DO think of fines like an ordinary expense, we're fitting the author's story that the company would deem the expense of prevention a cheaper / more palatable route than the expense of fines.

    30% picked this

  5. Businesses are learning to exploit

    No Impact

    Using environmental awareness in marketing is unrelated to whether a business installs safeguards to avoid fines. If anything, a business courting an environmentally aware public has one more reason to adopt preventative measures, which would just help the author make her point.

    3% picked this

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