Logical Reasoning

PT132 · S4 · Q14 Politician: It has been proposed

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Politician: It has been proposed that the national parks in our country be managed by private companies rather than the government.

Conclusion

Privatizing national parks would probably benefit park visitors.

Evidence

Privatizing the telecom industry benefited consumers (it allowed competition between telecom companies, which improved service and brought down prices).

Evaluation

Whenever authors make arguments by Comparison, we can weaken them by making the two things being compared seem meaningfully different.

What could be different between privatizing national parks and doing so with telecom problems?

- Would privatizing national parks lead to more competition, improved service, or lower prices? - Is there some way that privatizing national parks would have a bad outcome for customers?

Goal

Look for an important difference between privatizing telecom and national parks, or just something that sounds like a negative repercussion of privatizing national parks.

14.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the politician's argument?

It would not be politically
Out of Scope: politically expedient
The only issue we care about is whether privatizing national parks would benefit park visitors. The political implications are irrelevant.
1% picked this
The privatization of the telecommunications
Irrelevant: not about customers
This is showing that privatizing has had some negative repercussions for the employees and business owners of the telecom industry, but since we are evaluating how privatizing would affect park visitors, we only really care how privatizing affected telecom customers.
19% picked this
The vast majority of people
Out of Scope: unaware
Whether or not people are aware of the potential privatization of national parks doesn't tell us at all whether privatizing would benefit or hurt park visitors, were it to be done.
1% picked this
Privatizing the national parks would
Too Weak
This does suggest a big difference between privatizing telecom and national park, but it still seems to result in a net positive, so the author's conclusion still wins. We need a way to say that this won't be a positive (and saying "it won't be as big a positive" doesn't have much force).
17% picked this
Correct
The privatization of the national
Why this is right
This points out a big difference -- the causal difference-maker that resulted in improved customer experience when we privatized telecom was that increased competition led to improved services and lower prices. If that same causal factor won't be triggered were we to privatize national parks, then we don't have any reason to expect that services would improve or that prices would lower. This is a more powerful difference than the one brought up by (D), since this hurts the comparison much farther upstream, and calls into question whether any positive effects will be felt. (D) only minimized the positive effects that will be felt.
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
62% picked this

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