argument185也是最后一篇了，明天得住到考场边去了

limaotouUID: 158350

The following appeared in a letter from the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment building to its manager.

"One month ago, all the showerheads on the first five floors of Sunnyside Towers were modified to restrict the water flow to approximately 1/3 of its original force. Although actual readings of water usage before and after the adjustment are not yet available, the change will obviously result in a considerable savings for Sunnyside Corporation, since the corporation must pay for water each month. Except for a few complaints about low water pressure, no problems with showers have been reported since the adjustment. Clearly, restricting water flow throughout all the 20 floors of Sunnyside Towers will increase our profits further."


In the letter the owner of the Sunnyside Towers apartment building concludes that restricting water flow throughout the 20 floors of Sunnyside Towers will increase their profits. To substantiate this conclusion, the owner points out that they have modified to restrict the water flow to about 1/3 of its original force, and this action have not yet receive any report about problems. This argument is actually problematic in several critical respects.

First of all, the owner relies on the assumption that the total amount of water that would be used will greatly decrease. However, he fails to provide any evidence to support this assumption. Although the water flow has been restricted to approximately 1/3 of its original force, the total time that will last in using waters will probably increase, say, three times as before. If this is the case, the total amount of water will not vary at all. And this reasonable possibility would seriously undermine the owner's optimistic conclusion that the readings of water usage would be greatly declined.

In addition, the owner also points out that there were only a few complaints about low water pressure. But he fails to place enough attention about these complaints. It is possible that these complaints are representative of many more consumers. If so, they adjustment of water show would have actually caused a rather severe problem. Or it is possible that more people have enough patience to wait for the apartment to solve this problem, but if this problem lasts for a longer time than they could bear, they might voice their dissatisfaction in time. And even worse it might be a sign of less popularity of the apartment--consumers just choose not to live in Sunnyside Towers and if that is the case, of course few would complain about its problems. Without ruling these possibilities, the credibility of this argument would also be weakened.

Finally, even if the adjustment of water force will indeed save water usage and cause no negative influence on consumers, it does not necessarily ensure greater profits. In fact, there are many other factors that might influence the profits of an apartment such as the season, the whole economy situation and the price and expenses of the apartment. Furthermore, common sense tells us that the spending on waters takes a rather small portion of the total expense of an apartment, and therefore the change of water usage really has little influence on the profits of this apartment.

In sum, this argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To strengthen it, the owner of the apartment needs to convince us that the adjustment indeed lowers the water usage and few consumers are annoyed about this adjustment. As for greater profits, the owner has to consider about more features of his apartment and try to make an overall improvement of those aspects for making more profits.