Argument67 Spring-第5次作业

lifeng_913UID: 2397925

TOPIC: ARGUMENT67 - The 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."
WORDS: 615          TIME: 00:56:02          DATE: 2007-11-22 0:08:44
Merely based on unfounded assumption and dubious evidence, the arguer recommends that the library in Polluxton should be merged into the library in Castorville to increase the users. To substantiate the conclusion, the arguer points out that the garbage collection departments have reduced the number of complaint through combine two separate garbage collection departments in Polluxton and Castorville. In addition, the arguer reasons that the way of merging the two libraries will be also effective to attract more users and readers and serve better. Although the argument appears plausible, I find the arguer's reasoning weak, for three reasons.
First of all, the arguer assumes that the sharp declines in the number of residents, who pay property taxes, result from the service problem of the garbage collection departments. Without providing any evidence to support the causal relationship between the declines of the property taxes and the service of the garbage collection departments, it is entirely possibly that other factors might contribute to the problem, such as more and more people in Castorville and Polluxton moved to other cities, which are more modern or available to more job opportunities. The decline of the population led to the decline of the resident, who pays property taxes. Without considering and ruling out other alternate possibilities, the arguer cannot confidently get the basic assumption that it is because the service problem of the garbage collection departments that caused the decline of the number of residents, who pay property taxes.
In the second place, the arguer asserts that the way of saving money and improve service is effective because the number of complaint has decreased. However, the arguer provides no enough evidence that the decrease of the complaint means the increase of the residents, who pay the property taxes. The mere fact that the complaints received by the garbage collection departments went down does not necessarily account for improve the amount of property tax. Perhaps, the actual complaints do not decrease, but people do not know the new garbage collection department because of the recent mergence. It would be hard to analyze whether the number of resents, who pay property taxes, has increased, if the arguer could not provide the later condition of the property tax.
In the third place, the arguer simply states that the way of mergence is also adapt to the libraries in Castorville and Polluxton but he does not provide any indeed comparable evidence. This assumption is based on a problematic analogy for the fact that it is obviously that the two utter different departments are not similar enough to justify the analogical deduction. Actually, there exist fundamental differences between the two situations. For instance, though the library in Polluxton had fewer users, the other one in Castorville had more users. Then the problem of fewer readers belongs to Polluxton alone. Furthermore, the decline of the library users possibly resulted from the dated facility and books. The best way to solve the problem is to enlarge and update the Polluxion library. Thus, it is unfairly assume that the two departments, the garbage collection department and the library, are the same to solve the similar problem of fewer clients.
In sum, though the argument seems reasonable, in fact it is neither substantial nor persuasive. It not only leaves out the above key issue, but also cites in the analysis the evidence, which does not lend strong support to what the arguer claims. To strength it the arguer must provide more convincing evidence that there is causal relationship between the declines of the property taxes and the service of the garbage collection departments. If the argument includes the given discussed above, it would have been more thorough and adequate.