Argument67[jet小组]第八次作业

cascadeUID: 2454141

67The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a newspaper serving the villages of Castorville and Polluxton.
'Both the villages of Castorville and Polluxton have experienced sharp declines in the numbers of residents who pay property taxes. To save money and improve service, the two villages recently merged their once separate garbage collection departments into a single department located in Castorville, and the new department has reported few complaints about its service. Last year the library in Polluxton had 20 percent fewer users than during the previous year. It follows that we should now further economize and improve service, as we did with garbage collection, by closing the library in Polluxton and using the library in Castorville to serve both villages.'

In this argument, the speaker recommends that in order to futher ecnomize and improves service, we should close Polluxton's library and using the library in Castorville to serve both library. To support his recommendation, the speaker points out that the garbage collection departments merged from the two villages is a succeed example. However, this argument rests on some unreliable assumptions, and therefore the speaker's advice seems unpersuasive.

First, there is no sufficient evidence to show us that the money is saved.  Maybe the money cost are continuous increasing, because the new garbage collection departments  requires more workers both in administration and rubbish collection the total number of which may even above the number all workers who used to work in Castorville and Polluxton's garbage collection departments.  Another important factor the speaker ignores is that the new garbage collection departments locate in Castorville. If it is not near Polluxton, the cost spends on traffic will increase. Moreover, though the new garbage collection departments the speaker refers to receives few complaints, it does not mean the quality of the service has been raised.  It is possible that the people in both villeges originally do not like to complain about the things they are not content with.  

Besides, since the garbage collection departments are different from library, even though we admit the success of the new garbage collection departments, however, the speaker’s suggestion that we should follow its example to close Polluxton's library is still questionable. For one reason, people do not need go to the collection departments to hand their rubbish to the departments, but people are required to go to library to borrow the books. If Polluxton's library is closed, the villagers in Polluxton have to drive to Castorville to borrow the books they need. Undoubtedly, it will impede Polluxton’s villagers’ enthusiasm of borrowing books and may cause the complaints of the library user in polluxton. For another, will it be more economic after we merge the two libraries? With the respect of the extra traffic expense to Castorville the Polluxton’s library users have to pay, it may increase the financial burden of Polluxton’s government.

In addition, by citing the fact that polluxton’s library user decreased 20 percent last year, the speaker’s consideration that it is necessary to further economize and improve service is lack of trust. In the argument, we can easily find the truth that the number of residents who pay property taxes experienced a sharp decline. It is probable that because of the environment there becomes worse and worse, therefore the total residents in both villages are declining which also affects the confidence of people who decide to by houses. If it is so, the speaker’s advice seems useless to solving the problem owing to if there are no people reluctant to live in the two villages, the income the new library get will not fill the gap of the daily expense.

Overall, the speaker fails to establish the necessity of we should put two libraries together.  Before final decision is made, the administrators there should carefully consider the possible alternatives we discussed above.