Tenants who do not have to pay

Answer choices

1. A

   Irrelevant to Plan17% picked this

   Tenants who do not have to pay their own electricity bills generally must compensate by

   In the plan-world we're trying to analyze, tenants would be paying their own electricity bills, so this is totally irrelevant to that world. The only possible weakening effect this might seem to have would be undermining the author's premise, suggesting that "tenants who don't have to pay their electricity bills do have a financial incentive, because the less they use electricity, the less their rent would be?" That last connection is far too tenuous to use. We know landlords aren't updating rent from month to month based on how much energy their tenants used.

   17%
2. B

   Strengthens, if anything2% picked this

   Many initiatives have been implemented to educate people about how much money they can save

   This is a broad, weak idea and it would have no particular effect on Current World vs. Plan World. If we were forcing it to be relevant, it would potentially make it seem like people have been exposed to the idea of saving money through energy conservation. So that would make it somewhat more likely that if they suddenly had to pay for their own energy, then would conserve.

   2%
3. C

   Correct57% picked this

   Landlords who pay for their tenants' electricity have a strong incentive to make sure that the appliances they provide for

   Why this is right

   This is trying to suggest an important difference about Plan World vs. Current World. In our current world, these landlords pay for the electricity, and so they usually would install energy efficient appliances (like the fridge / the washer / the dryer). This correct answer wants us to think that if landlords were no longer paying for tenants' electricity, then they wouldn't have strong incentive to install energy efficient appliances, and so they wouldn't install them. If apartments that had individual energy meters also had old-school energy wasting appliances, then even if tenants were trying to conserve energy, the more wasteful appliances would end up annulling that difference. It's a pretty obnoxious correct answer in terms of what it's asking us to assume in order for it to have impact. We need to use our outside knowledge a little bit to think about how energy efficient appliances tend to be more expensive (otherwise, why wouldn't landlords continue to buy them, even if landlords aren't paying everyone's energy bill).

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

   57%
4. D

   No Impact6% picked this

   Some tenant dwellings can only support individual electricity meters if the dwellings are rewired, which

   This idea would potentially be fighting the trigger and saying, "Hey, author, landlords aren't going to be able to switch to having individuals pay their own electricity, because the necessary rewiring would be prohibitively pricey." But with conditional conclusions, we just go along with the trigger as an accepted constraint of the argument. We can't strengthen a conditional conclusion by making the trigger seem more likely to be true or weaken it by making the trigger seem less likely. (and even if we could, the "some" would be way to weak to undermine the trigger)

   6%
5. E

   Too Weak17% picked this

   Some people conserve energy for reasons that are not related to

   The word "Some" means "at least one". Answers with the strength of "at least one data point is X" are almost never correct on Strengthen, Weaken, or Paradox. Does it hurt the argument if we say "at least one person conserves energy for non-financial reasons"? Not much. We would need to know that so many people are already conserving energy that if more landlords switched to this individual pay system, there wouldn't be anyone who starts using less energy. i.e., even if 90% of apartment dwellers already conserve as much energy as they can for environmental reasons, the 10% who don't might conserve more energy if they had to start paying for it, and as long as "energy will be conserved as a result", the author wins his conclusion.

   17%