argument177 persistence小组作业 欢迎拍砖

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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: 483          TIME: 00:47:44          DATE: 2008-3-7 22:58:16

In this passage, the author suggests to continue to keep people who are not the member of the city away from the club which is a place for its membership to discuss local-issues. In the author' opinion, the policy can play an important role in manage the city. To bolster his opinion, the author claim that the nonresidents do not pay tax to the city and even if the they are admitted to the club, they are not likely to show any interest in it as the neighboring city' precedence. However in my opinion, the author substitutes his assumption in unstable foundations which render it inconvincible.
To the first, the author claims that the people who are not a resident of the Oak City will not understand the business and politics of the city. However, the author overlooks some possibility in at least two aspects. The first is the whether all the people who are not living in the city of Oak City do not care about the business and the politics. No evidence shows that the jobs of these people have nothing to do with business. On the contrary, it quite possible that people who is not living in the city do their business in Oak City and any change in politics could have an effect on their business. If they are not allowed to express their opinion, any decision made in the club could drive them away and hence damages the local economic not to mention the rise of unemployment. Also, if the local people who are likely to give their opinions in the club while they work in another city, the advice may be far-fetch to the reality.
The second has to do with the city of neighboring Elm City' Civic Club. It is true that the neighbor city open their club to the all people in it, does that mean it policy can also work well in Oak City? The author may overlook some different circumstances between the two cites. For instance, if the Elm City is a agriculture-oriented city while Oak City build its foundation on industry then the policy carried in the two cites can totally different. So since no evidence is provided to show the difference, we have reason to doubt the entire conclusion from it.
The third and the most compelling is the author was trapped in thinking dilemma. Assuming all of the assumption mentioned above is justifiable, is there any difference to open or close club to nonresidents since the author claims that they have showed little interest in such local-issues? The last reasonable raised by the author is not tenable in logical aspect.
In conclusion, the author' claim is not acceptable as far as such poor evidence provided. To make a better decision, the author has to provide more details with the information of the nonresidents and a survey is also needed.