6.25 Argu109 欢迎拍文作文修改小组

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TOPIC: ARGUMENT109 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Maple City newspaper.

"Twenty years ago Pine City established strict laws designed to limit the number of new buildings that could be constructed in the city. Since that time the average housing prices in Pine City have increased considerably. Chestnut City, which is about the same size as Pine City, has over the past twenty years experienced an increase in average housing prices similar to Pine City, but Chestnut City never established any laws that limit new building construction. So it is clear that laws limiting new construction have no effect on average housing prices. So if Maple City were to establish strict laws that limit new building construction, these laws will have no effect on average housing prices."



     The arguer claims that if the Maple City(MC) were to establish strict laws that limit new building construction, the law will not affect the average housing price. To make this argument more substantial, the arguer points out that the Pine City(PC)'s average housing price have increased considerably since it established the law 20 years ago while the Chestnut City(CC),which is about the same size as PC, experienced similar raising of average housing price but did not promulgate any similar law. However the statement suffers from several logical flaws.
  Firstly,t he arguer's conclusion is based on dubious a assumption. It's understandable to conclude that the law about the limitation of new building has no effect on average housing price since whether one city establishes this law or not, its average housing price always experiencing similar increase. However, it's very likely that PC and the CC are different in all aspects except their size. The definition of a city is comprised of many things, such as the employment rate, the average salary, the number of skyscrapers and so forth. Thus it's unrepresentative to label a city with just a single factor---its size. For example, a city in China and a city in the U.S can be very different though they share the same size. Perhaps the latter's average housing price is much lower than the formers due to it's relatively low density of population. It's also possible that there lies huge gap between their consumption levels and thus people in the city whose consumption level is much higher than the other's would like to spend much more money on buying a house. Without ruling out these factors, it's arbitrary to assume that two cities are similar, thus, are comparable.
  Secondly, the arguer makes a false analogy. Even we accepted the arguer's assumption we discuss above, it's also susceptible to assert that this law will also have no effect on the MC's average housing price once MC establishes it. Different cities have different backgrounds and it stands a good chance that the same law will have different effects on them. Perhaps inhabitants in MC generally have a strong legal consciousness and thus the law will deed affect the average housing price and maybe the PC and the CC are cities with large population ,thus the real state is somewhat rare and people are willing to buy houses in spite of whether the houses are new or old while the MC, with relative low population, is affected greatly by the law because people have got multiple choices.
   In sum, the statement is not persuasive as it stands. To make it more logical acceptable, to arguer must prove that PC and CC are comparable by pointing out more details besides their size. In addition, similar work should be done to demonstrate that MC share similar parallel background with the CC and the PC.