Credit card companies justify charging

Answer choices

1. A

   Opposite2% picked this

   School authorities should use student activity funds to pay for student-caused damages to school property since, even though only a few students cause any

   This is a case where just a small subset of a population (the vandalizing students) are causing a problem, but instead of just giving them special treatment, the school is "punishing" everyone, by just finding that money in student activity funds that everyone pays.

   2%
2. B

   Correct61% picked this

   Insurance companies should demand higher insurance rates of drivers of sports cars than of other drivers, since sports car drivers are more likely to

   Why this is right

   This has a subset of a population (drivers of sports cars are a subset of all insured drivers) and we're giving them special (negative) treatment, by charging them higher rates.

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

   61%
3. C

   Weak Trigger Match35% picked this

   Libraries should charge high fines for overdue books, since if they did not do so some people would keep books out indefinitely, risking inconvenience

   This is tempting, since it's essentially charging a late fee, just like the credit card companies were on late payments. But the why part of it doesn't match. Why do credit card companies charge a late fee? Because late-payers expose the companies to more financial risk, and thus they should be the ones who have to pay for it. Why do insurance companies charge higher policy rates for drivers of sports cars? Because drivers of sports cars are more likely to cause accidents and force the insurance company to pay out money (i.e. they increase the financial risk for the insurance companies, so they should be the ones who have to pay for it.) Why do libraries charge a late fee? In order to prevent inconveniencing other potential borrowers. (there's no sense in which the overdue book-holder is exposing the library to more financial risk) When we consider that with credit card and insurance companies, they have the choice to charge all their customers higher-but-similarly, or to charge the offending customers higher than the non-offending customers. That layer doesn't work with the library, since most libraries are free, so no customers are being charged anything (unless they keep a book for too long).

   35%
4. D

   Bad Trigger Match2% picked this

   Cities should impose high fines for littering. The risk of being caught littering is quite low, so the fine for those who are caught

   This is giving special (negative) treatment to the offenders, but it's not because they are exposing someone or something to higher financial risk. Similar to (C), the reason for punishing the rule-breakers is more about deterring that sort of behavior, not about locating the extra financial burden with the principal cause of the extra financial burden.

   2%
5. E

   Opposite1% picked this

   Municipalities should use tax money to pay for the maintenance of municipal roads, since if individuals paid for only those roads they used, some

   This argument involves charging everyone the same, regardless of which parties are more or less responsible for the cost of doing business. If municipalities were following the credit card companies' principle, they would charge higher taxes for the residents whose access roads cost more to maintain.

   1%