Logical Reasoning

PT144 · S2 · Q26 If a corporation obtains funds

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If a corporation obtains funds fraudulently, then the penalty should take into account the corporation's use of those funds during the time it held them.

Principle

If a corporation obtains money by fraud, then when we punish that corporation, we need to figure out how much they profited off that fraud-money so that our penalty is at least that large financially.

Evaluate

The question stem isn't saying to conform to the Principle cited above, rather the principle illustrated above, which indicates that LSAT wants us to do some abstraction.

What was this principle basically saying?

It was saying that thieves shouldn't be able to profit off stolen money. If we're penalizing these thieves, we should make sure they don't come out with a net financial gain (i.e. if a company steals $10 million and invests it, making $2 million, then our penalty to that company must be to get the $10 million back as well as at least the $2 million they made off that money)

Goal

Let's get slightly more general with our pre-phrase:

If you're punishing someone who did something wrong, the punishment should cancel out whatever gain that person attained by doing the wrong-thing.

26.

Which one of the following conforms most closely to the principle illustrated above?

  1. If a driver causes an

    Trap

    Bad Trigger Match (No Gain from Wrongdoing) The driver who was in the wrong didn't gain anything from his wrongdoing, so there's no way to match up the principle.

    3% picked this

  2. If a factory is found

    Trap

    Bad Trigger Match (No Gain from Wrongdoing) The factory who was in the wrong didn't gain anything (explicitly) from its wrongdoing, so there's no way to match up the principle. Common sense would tell us that the factory probably saves some money by not complying with environmental code, but we need to explicitly talk about the money-saved, and then hear that the punishment is not just compliance but also "cancel out all that money they saved when they weren't complying".

    24% picked this

  3. If someone is sentenced to

    Trap

    Bad Trigger Match (No Gain from Wrongdoing) This goes straight to the punishment, but we need to know about the characteristics of the offense. Did the wrongdoer gain anything from their misdeed? The punishment here is about benefiting the community, but in the principle the punishment is about negating any benefit that was obtained by the wrongdoer.

    5% picked this

  4. If an athlete is found

    Trap

    Bad Conclusion Match (No Gain from Wrongdoing) Again, the athlete isn't identified to have gained from this wrongdoing, so we can't complete the principle's instructions to make sure that the penalty cancels out this illicit gain.

    6% picked this

  5. Correct

    If a convicted criminal writes

    Why this is right

    Here we have a wrongdoer who stands to profit in some way from the crime (wrote a memoir about it, which might make the criminal author some publishing revenue), and the punishment is designed to cancel out that illicit gain. Any money the author would make off this book (and thus off his crime) will not go to him. The fact that it's going to a charity is immaterial filler. The principle just wants us to make sure that the punished person doesn't profit from their wrongdoing. It doesn't matter where the money does go, as long as it's not to the benefit of that wrongdoer.

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

    62% picked this

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