0910G[North America Flying] Argument67 by haunteagle

haunteagleUID: 2609432

TOPIC: ARGUMENT67 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a newspaper serving the villages of Castorville and Polluxton.

"Both the villages of Castorville and Polluxton have experienced sharp declines in the numbers of residents who pay property taxes. To save money and improve service, the two villages recently merged their once separate garbage collection departments into a single department located in Castorville, and the new department has reported few complaints about its service. Last year the library in Polluxton had 20 percent fewer users than during the previous year. It follows that we should now further economize and improve service, as we did with garbage collection, by closing the library in Polluxton and using the library in Castorville to serve both villages."
WORDS: 459
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2009/7/13 23:44:13

The author clearly presented his idea, however some aspects of his argument are questionable. The author exemplify the mergence of garbage collection departments(GCD) to suggest the mergence of library. Also he cites a figure that library in Polluxton had 20% fewer users than previous to substantiate his conclusion. Yet, after srutiny, both evidence is not convincing.

For one thing, the author mentions the mergence of GCD, and assumes the mergence will reduce the cost and improve the service, as its the origin purpose. However, the author fail to provide convincing evidence that the mergence ultimately does filful its origin intention of reducing cost and improving service. It is entirely possible that the emergence has created a higher administration cost and a lower service quality because after all, Casorville and Polluxton are two different villages. They are governed by two groups of people who may have conflict over who should take more responsibility. They are not in the same geographic place, though how near they are, and the emergence will of course result to a increasing fee of garbage collection for the collectors should go further to collect and a lower service quality because the distance.


For another, will the decrease of user in Polluxton lead to a increase in cost or a drop in profit? The conclusion is weaken because the author fail to prove it. Perhaps the library is free to its residents and a drop in user may directly lead to a drop in maintenance, the decrease of cost. Even the drop will lead to a decrease in profit, the author should also substantiate that the drop is permenant. Or, as the author suggests, if the drop is temporary which may be resulted from the bad weather or financial crisis, and the users will rise again, it is unwise to merge the libraries. Also, we do not know whether Castorville is expericing a drop in user, and whether Castroville will agree to merge. The author should also prove so.

For still another, even the mergence of GCD is effective and the drop will reduce the profit, the author should also provide convincing evidence that the success in GCD can be copied to libraries. After all, GCD is different from librariy. The mergence of GCD may help reduce the financial expense by cutting the number of employees, however, from my experience in library, the library may need more employees because the difficulty of managing a library increases exponentially in accordance with the number of books. In short, keeping 2000 books in one library needs more librarians than 1000 in each.

In sum, the author should provide convincing evidence to prove that mergence of GCD is effective, drop in library is unwelcomed and the mergence of libraries is profitable.