Politician: It has been proposed

Answer choices

1. A

   Out of Scope: politically expedient1% picked this

   It would not be politically expedient to privatize the national parks even if doing so would, in the long run, improve service and

   The only issue we care about is whether privatizing national parks would benefit park visitors. The political implications are irrelevant.

   1%
2. B

   Irrelevant: not about customers19% picked this

   The privatization of the telecommunications industry has been problematic in that it has led to significantly increased unemployment and

   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%
3. C

   Out of Scope: unaware1% picked this

   The vast majority of people visiting the national parks are unaware of proposals to privatize the

   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%
4. D

   Too Weak17% picked this

   Privatizing the national parks would benefit a much smaller number of consumers to a much smaller extent than did the

   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%
5. E

   Correct63% picked this

   The privatization of the national parks would produce much less competition between different companies than did the privatization

   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.

   63%