argument177 时间不够...

lindorUID: 2290025

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: 404          TIME: 0:29:00          DATE: 2007-2-26

In this argument, the arguer's conclusion that Oak City's Civic Club should continue to be restricted to people who live in Oak City (OC) seems logical. Upon close scrutiny, the conclusion is not convincing for several critical flaws.

To begin with, the arguer simply assumes that only can people who live in OC understand the business and politics of the city. There is no direct evidence to support this assumption.  As a common sense, the premise of understanding is intense concern. Perhaps many senior citizens, who lived in OC for many years, show indifference to the business and politics at the time, let alone having profound thoughts on those issues. Contrarily, works who worked in OC pay much attention on the business and relevant politics, which could closely determine their interests. Unless excluding this possibility, the arguer can't firmly draw this assumption that nonresident can’t understand the business and politics of OC.

Furthermore, the arguer’s conclusion rests on a groundless assumption that because only residents pay city taxes thus only they know how to use money in the best way. On the one hand, nonresidents could also make contribution to the city’s revenue, from taxes turned in by their companies, which could occupy a much larger percentage of the revenue. On the other hand, even if it is residents who pay city taxes, it is possible that limited with their energy and knowledge, they know little about how to allocate money to develop a city. Or perhaps, the OC government who has the domain power to decide how to use money earned much trust by citizens, therefore, residents rarely cared about what is the best usage of the money. Without clear evidence of whether only residents pay taxes and whether residents really know how to use money effectively, this assumption would be presumptuous.

Besides, the arguer commits a fallacy of false analogy between OC and Elm City (EC). There would be an essential difference between the two cities of the awareness to local issues of nonresidents. Perhaps the majority of nonresidents who worked in EC do not care about local issues, whereas those in OC do. Therefore, it is in all likelihood that once the club in OC executed an open membership, the percentage of nonresidents would be much higher than 25%. Also, the arguer fails to consider whether the two civic clubs share a same objective. Perhaps the civic club in EC focuses on special local issues like customs and culture, which could attract little nonresidents. But the civic club in OC has a more broad coverage of most local issues, such as the workplace and work time, concerned by both residents and nonresidents. Without concerning those differences, it is arbitrary for the arguer to draw conclusion on the basis of the situation in EC.

Finally, the arguer fails to consider the potential negative effects of restricting nonresidents for the Civic Club. If members of club want to hear more fresh voices from nonresidents and hope nonresidents join them, the restriction would not only hurt nonresidents but also hurt residents, worse, some of them would leave the club. Furthermore, even if the percentage of nonresidents who will join in club would no more higher than 25%, maybe because the total number of nonresidents in OC is very large, the potential members of nonresidents would be large accordingly. Thus, the restriction would cause the club to miss a lot of members.

In general, the conclusion reached in this argument is not logical compelling. To bolster it, the arguer should provide more information on whether the nonresidents are familiar and interest in local issues. In addition, the arguer should provide more clear statistics on the possible members of nonresidents who desire to join the club.