Argument177 【Persistence 小组】第二十四次作业，计时没成功

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177. The following is a letter that recently appeared in the Oak City Gazette, a local newspaper.
"Membership in Oak City's Civic Club—a club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues—should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City. People who work in Oak City but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city. It is important to restrict membership to city residents because only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. At any rate, restricting
membership in this way is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in Oak City, since neighboring Elm City's Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, and only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club in the last ten years."


因为粘贴的时候字体的原因，发现文中Oak City和Ele City总是中间没空格，懒得在这儿一个个改了，记事本是有空格的，说明一下。
In this letter, the author recommends that OakCity's Civic Club (OCCC) should continue to restrict its membership to city residents for the primary objective of the club is to discuss local issues. To support the recommendation, the author cites that only residents can understand the business and politics of the city because they pay city taxes and care about how the money be used to improve the city. In addition, he/she still gives an example of neighboring ElmCity's Civic Club (ECCC) to show that restriction on membership would not disappoint nonresidents employed in OakCity. Close scrutiny of these analysis and example, however, reveals that none of them lend credible support to the recommendation.


First of all, no evidence justify that nonresidents employed in OakCity cannot understand the business and politics of the city and do not care about the local issues. The author unfairlly assumes that people who work in the city but not live there cannot understand the business and politics of the city without giving us any evidence. It is entirely possible that these nonresident care about the work condition or environment of the city and know well about these situations for they have to spend most their daytime for working in the city. For that matter, that nonresidents cannot truly understand the local issues of the city is unsubstantiated.


Secondly, the mere fact that only residents pay city taxes do not necessarily indicate that only the residents have the capabilities to offer proposals for improving the city. Perhaps some residents who have pay the city taxes would take prejudiced attitudes considering selfishness in providing proposals which would eventually undermine not improve the city. For that matter, that only residents are permitted to OCCC would do harm to OakCity.


Furthermore, the author concludes hastily that restriction on membership would not disappoint the nonresidents only according to the example of ECCC. First, there is no information about the total number of nonresidents of ElmCity. If the number is very small and the percentage of nonresidents in ECCC is very high comparing with the population of nonresidents in ElmCity, it is undoubtedly that the nonresidents prefer to engage themselves in city business and policy. Second, no evidence support that the situation of OakCity is similar with ElmCity. It is entirely possible that the nonresidents in OakCity are more sociable than that of ElmCity, and therefore that restriction on membership would not disappoint the nonresidents in OakCity is unsubstantiated.

In sum, the recommendation in the letter relies on scant analysis and evidence which render it unconvincing as it stands. To bolster the recommendation, the author should give more information about the viewpoints of the nonresidents in OakCity and still need more evidence to substantiate that only residents' proposal is enough to improve the city.

[ 本帖最后由 欣馨之火 于 2007-2-23 23:17 编辑 ]