argument192 0806Gstrive小组第二次作业

sharkliverUID: 2308154

192. The following is a letter to the editor of the Roseville Gazette.

"Despite opposition from some residents of West Roseville, the arguments in favor of merging the townships of Roseville and West Roseville are overwhelming. First, residents in both townships are confused about which authority to contact when they need a service; for example, the police department in Roseville receives many calls from residents of West Roseville. This sort of confusion would be eliminated with the merger. Second, the savings in administrative costs would be enormous, since services would no longer be duplicated: we would have only one fire chief, one tax department, one mayor, and so on. And no jobs in city government would be lost-employees could simply be reassigned. Most importantly, the merger will undoubtedly attract business investments as it did when the townships of Hamden and North Hamden merged ten years ago."

In this analysis the arguer attempts to convince us that the merger of West Roseville(WR) and Roseville(R) will be a reasonable measure for several reasons. First, the merger would eliminate confusion among residents in both township about which one to contact when seeking service. Second, the adminastative costs would be saved considrably after the merger. Finally, more potential business investments will be available on account of the merger. This argument is fraught with vague, oversimplified and unwarranted assumptions.

To begin with, the example that the police department in R recieves many calls from residents in the other region is not persuasive enough to prove the residents are confused. It is entirely possible that residents in WR contact the police department of R because they are confronting troubles in the region of R, or they just want to know about the road condition of R to prepare for a trip. Also there might be circumstances when the residents realized that WR’s local police department are not able to handle their affairs and thereby they turn to contact the other one. The author fails to rule out the possibilities I enumerated above to confirm the existence of confusion. Without this premise, to talk about the elimnation after the merger would be meaningless.

Apart from that, the author’s explanation does not lend strong support to the assumption that the savings in administrative costs would be enoumous. Apparently the merged governments are in charge of all the affairs in both WR and R, the total amount jobs does not decrease. Thus the cost can hardly be pared. Furthermore, although simply reassigning emplyees will not lead to job lost, it will undoubtedly contribute to the enlarging of the scale of institution. Consequently, the efficiency is impaired and administrative costs rise. In a word, the evidences given in the letter do not substantiate, or even do harm to the author’s conclusion.

Considering Hamden’s example given by the editor, there lies a gratuitous assumption that the merger of Hamden region is in a casual relationship with the subsequently increasing business investments. As a matter of fact, other reasons such as improvement of enviroments and preferential policies might also be considered. The absence of such information would overthrow the casual relationship established by the author.

In addition, granted that merger of Hamden directly causes the increasing business investments, the author falls into the mistake of false analogy between the merger of Hamden region and that of Roseville region. the two regions are not similar enough to justify the analogical deduction. For example, Hamden has well-established transportation lines and economic infrastructures, which make investments feasible and profitable. On the contrary, Roseville locates in the remote area with mountains around and weak economic infrastructures. If it was the case, the enforcement of merging would do little help to the attaction for investments.

To sum up, the suggestion of merging R and WR is far from being sound. To solidify this assertion, the author must validate the neccessity and potential benefits of merging by presentiing more logically tenable evidences.

[ 本帖最后由 sharkliver 于 2008-2-24 12:27 编辑 ]