argument177 By KloseChou 时间好紧呐 完全没时间想自己在说什么

zhoumaye425UID: 2262458

"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: 500          TIME: 00:32:11          DATE: 2007-7-21 20:28:47

By considering that people who work in Oak City (OC) but who live elsewhere cannot truly understand the business and politics of the city, and only residents understand how the money could best be used to improve the city because they pay city taxes, the arguer arrives the conclusion that membership in Oak City's Civic Club(OCCC) should be restricted to people who live in OC. What is more, the arguer gives the result of a survey that only twenty-five nonresidents have joined Elm City's Club (ECC) in the last ten years. Ostensibly reasonable as the argument may seem, it still suffer from several flaws.

In the first place, the arguer maintains that people who work in OC but not live here cannot understand the business and politics of the city. In my view, however, the people actually keeping the track of the business are those who have an insightful awareness of economics, and those people knowing politics well also have relevant knowledge. As the arguer giving no information that what kind of job the vast majority of nonresidents do, I have enough reasons to believe that the nonresidents are all people who engage in business and politics, while residents seldom do that. Therefore, it is obviously that nonresidents are keeping a more clear understanding of business and politics than residents, which can be a compelling argument in favor of the participating of nonresidents.

In the second place, as the arguer claims, residents know the best way to use the money to improve their city only because of the taxes they pay. As a matter of fact, nonresidents, as people who come from outside, know more about how to improve the traffic between OC and cities nearby and how to give wealth to attract workers outside than residents, which is the very purpose of the improving of the city.

In the third place, the arguer unfairly generalizes the conclusion that it is unlikely to disappoint many of the nonresidents employed in OC simply from a survey carried out in EC. Although EC is a nearby city, the situation in EC and OC can be significantly different. As the total number of members in ECCC was not given, it is hard to say that nonresidents do not play a vital role in ECCC. If the total number is fifty, then the influence of nonresidents can not be neglected. Moreover, even assuming that nonresidents in EC do not reluctant to join the club, it still can not be followed that nonresidents in OC do not want. The way to express ideas on the local issues might be various in EC, while the OCCC is the only way in OC. Therefore, nonresidents in OC, of course, would like to join the club to make their thoughts heard.

In sum, the argument is based on too many ungrounded reason that makes its logic vulnerable to doubt. To draw a generalization that membership in OCCC should be restricted to residents in OC, more convincing evidences should be provided.