Q1 - Our city made a mistake

[zhangjiwen325]

Surprised to see getting the Q1 wrong.

The conclusion is the first sentence, which states that the city made a mistake. And now I can see B is correct, since if negate AC B, the city cannot raised the parking fee, there would be no mistake, thus destroy the argument.

But I am kinda confused about C. If parking fees should always be handled by the city, could that be a mistake to sold the rights to a private company in the first place?

Any help would be appreciated.

[ohthatpatrick]

Sure thing. Let me put up a complete explanation.

Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Task:
Which answer, if negated, most weakens the argument?

ARGUMENT CORE

conclusion -
Mistake to sell private company rights to assess/collect parking fees
(why?)
evidence -

Private company raised the parking fee and has made more than it spent to get rights.
AND
if city hadn't sold rights, money the private company earned would be city's

ANALYSIS

If we were trying to argue that it WASN'T a mistake to sell the private company the rights, we need to think of ways to argue that the city is in a better position for having sold the rights.

We could argue that private companies are more efficient than cities at many tasks, so even though the private company is turning a profit on the parking fees, the city might not have.

We could argue that the time saved and money acquired through selling off parking rights has actually been a better outcome for the city than had the city retained parking rights. (Maybe we diverted resources from parking fee collection to environmental cleanup and the city is better off as a result, even if not financially)

ANSWER CHOICES

(A) Doesn't make a difference whether the private company we sold the rights to was the ONLY private company who would have bought the rights. We're trying to judge which is a better outcome: "selling the rights, as we did, to THIS private company" or "keeping the rights for ourselves". Eliminate.

(B) If we negate this, it's saying that the city, unlike the private company, could NOT have raised parking fees, completely undermining the notion that "if the city hadn't sold the rights, [the money made by the private company] would have gone to the city." Keep.

(C) "always" is too extreme. He only needs to assume "at least some cases". Eliminate.

(D) Whether the revenue is or isn't the only factor relevant to setting parking fee rates isn't going to help us judge whether the city would be better off having sold the rights or kept them. Eliminate.

(E) This is the opposite of what the author needs to assume. He needs to assume that the city would have done at least as good a job as the private company. Eliminate.

That means that (B) is the correct answer.

Hope this helps.