Argument17 [清凉夏日2小组] 第一次作业

PsychocandyUID: 171159

17 The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Walnut Grove town newspaper.

"Walnut Grove's town council has advocated switching from EZ Disposal (which has had the contract for trash collection services in Walnut Grove for the past ten years) to ABC Waste, because EZ recently raised its monthly fee from $2,000 to $2,500 a month, whereas ABC's fee is still $2,000. But the town council is mistaken; we should continue using EZ. EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ—which, like ABC, currently has a fleet of 20 trucks—has ordered additional trucks. Finally, EZ provides exceptional service: 80 percent of respondents to last year's town survey agreed that they were 'satisfied' with EZ's performance."


The author concludes that Walnut Gove town council’s switching from EZ to ABC is mistaken and he argues that the council should continue using EZ disposal. But in this argument, there are questionable underlying assumptions and the evidence that the author uses in its reasoning is not very strong.

Most importantly, the author’s assumption that the town council advocates switching from EZ to ABC simply because of ABC’s comparatively lower service fee price is groundless and not credible. In fact, it is possible that the price of the service fee is not the most important factor to be considered during the council’s process of making the decision on which company they will choose to use. So price is the author’s own version of the reason for the town council’s decision. The author fails to consider other possible reasons why the town council choose EZ over ABC. For example, it is possible ABC’s work is more environmentally friendly than EZ’s, and it is mostly because of this that Walnut Grove town council switch from EZ to ABC.

In addition, the author gives several reasons why EZ is superior to ABC. First, he gives the reason that EZ collects trash twice a week whereas ABC collects only once, but this is not sufficient evidence to prove EZ is better than ABC at collecting trash. It is possible that Walnut Grove’s residents and industries produce very limited amount of trash and once a week is a frequency that is sufficiently high for colleting the trash. The argument fails to rule out this possibility.

Second, the author points out that EZ has ordered additional trucks and will have more trucks than ABC does. Although an increasing number of trucks can make EZ better equipped than before, this does not mean EZ will have the ability to provide better service than ABC does or than it used to do. It is possible that ABC has already been equipped with better trucks than EZ has or that ABC has trucks that have larger capacity.

Finally, the author uses the result of the survey carried out last year in the town as his evidence to prove that EZ provides exceptional services. In the survey, 80 percent of respondents agreed that they were ‘satisfied’ with EZ’s performance. However, even though we concede that the survey could represent Walnut Grove’s people’s overall attitude toward EZ’s service and people are really satisfied, it does not necessarily follows that EZ is better than ABC. In fact, people have only experienced EZ’s service, and they do not understand what ABC’s service is like and cannot make a comparison between the two firms. Hence, the survey cannot be evidence to prove that EZ is better than ABC and therefore Walnut Grove should continue using it.

To sum up, the author’s conclusion that Walnut Grove should continue using EZ is not convincing. The author should have a better understanding of how the town council makes the choice and should make a thorough comparison between ABC’s service and EZ’s before drawing his conclusion.

[ 本帖最后由 Psychocandy 于 2006-7-18 01:17 编辑 ]