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TOPIC: ARGUMENT177 - 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." WORDS: 738 TIME: 01:00:00 DATE: 2007-7-31 17:05:03 In this argument, the author recommends that membership in Oak City (OC)' s Civic Club whose primary objective is to discuss local issues- should continue to be restricted to people who live in OC. To justify the recommendation, the author cites the assumption that people who only work in OC but live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city and only those who pay taxes could understand how the money could best be used to improve the city. Moreover, the author provides the situation that neighboring although Elm City (EM)'s Civic Club has always had an open membership policy, there only one quarter nonresidents have joined EC' club in the last ten years. While this argument has some merits, it suffers from several critical problems. Firstly, the author turns on the assumption that people cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city if they only work but not live in OC. However, there is no evidence offered to substantiate this assumption. It's entirely possible that people who work as political leader in OC, in order to serve for the residents efficiently they must be familiar with the normal politics about welfare system, economic condition and so forth and then reserve the best ones and improve those unreasonable. At the same time, It also may be the case that in order to achieve maximum economic profits, many investors and executives who only work in but not live in OC study how the business and politics operate and then understand them clearly. Without considering and ruling out possibilities such as these, the author's assumption cannot be taken seriously. Secondly, the information that only residents pay city taxes and therefore only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city provides by the author is too vague to be informative. The author indicates that nonresidents do not pay taxes for the OC' s construction, but fails to indicate that they would not concern about the policies used to improve the city. It's entirely possible that those residents who live in OC are concerned more about other things such as diet, fashion, and tourism more than the city policies, because they may think it's the responsibility of politicians. On contrary, people who worked in OC and live elsewhere may pay more attention to the city improvement because they have about 8 hours staying for work in OC and then have considered the consider OC as their another home. At the same time, there would be many advantages came from those nonresidents' suggestion that how to improve city conditions because of their different cities-living experience and broad field of vision. For example, they may provide information about how to improve environmental conditions, establish good welfare and increase the residents' fitness and so on. As it stands, the author's recommendation about the membership qualification is based upon an oversimplified analysis of the issue. Finally, it' s highly doubtful that the facts drawn from EM are applicable to OC. However, differences between these two cities may far outweigh the similarities, thus making the analogy highly suspect. For example, it may be the case that EC is a so small and undeveloped city that lacks of business and people came from other cities. So, it's rational that fewer nonresidents concern about the city issue. Without the remarkable change of people, it maybe the case that many nonresidents have been worked more than 10 years in EM and then joined in EM' s club before ten years but not in the last ten years. On contrary, as a big city filled with many people who came from other places, there would many issues about the relationship between residents and nonresidents, in which not only the residents but also the nonresidents should have the right to participate in discussion. Possibilities such as these present insurmountable obstacle that prevent OC from making a meaningful comparison with EM. In sum, the author fails to validity the recommendation that membership in OC' club should continue to be restricted to people who live in OC. To make it more logically acceptable, the author should demonstrate the legitimacy of the interrelationship between living in city or not and concerning degree. In addition, the author would have to provide more concrete evidence, especially information concerning the different conditions about the two cities, to rule out the abovementioned possibility that would undermine the author's recommendation. | 
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发表于 2007-7-31 18:07:01
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