by ohthatpatrick Fri Jul 08, 2016 1:44 pm
The final paragraph of the passage discusses how the author feels about the 1 to 10 ratio.
Starting at line 43, the author says that the economists' approach would look at a 1 to 10 ratio and say "Whatever the corporation made through this sketchy practice, we should penalize them TEN TIMES as much" (that's the whole $6 million vs. $60 million thing).
But the author thinks that $60 million is too big (lines 43-47), since it would likely tank a corporation and leave tons of people jobless.
So she recommends "some other criterion" besides cost/benefit, "such as the assignment of moral weight". (47-50)
PRE-PHRASE:
The author wouldn't be comfortable with penalizing the company TEN TIMES what it made through sketchy practices, but the author would be willing to charge the company more than what it made if the moral weight of the crime seemed to justify a steeper penalty.
(A) "EXACTLY" the profit is extreme and doesn't match our prephrase from the final paragraph.
(B) "slightly higher" is better (because we know the author doesn't want ten times higher), but this lacks any reference to "it depends on the moral weight".
(C) This is better still. Higher than the exact profit ... "enough" higher, meaning we calibrate it based on our moral outrage. The part about "community opinion of the crime" is a callback to lines 13-15. It's an equivalent way of referring to "moral weight" in this passage.
(D) Nope. We knew our author does NOT like the ten times as much plan.
(E) Ditto. The author doesn't like ten times as much because the author does NOT want the corporation out of business.
The correct answer is C.
Hope this helps.