Q12

[ahn2014]

Can anybody explain why answer (C) is wrong?

Passage A reports on a subculture(i.e transaction in online game), Passage B discusses the difficulty of policing(i.e. taxation) that culture.


Thanks

[maryadkins]

So this question is about both passages, which means the description of each one needs to be accurate.

If we're pre-phrasing, we might say that Passage A is about this economist, Castronova, who discovers that online games have this crazy feature he didn't know about. Passage B reads as the introduction to a scholarly article making an argument about how these same online games should be treated by tax law (see in particular line 44—"This article will argue that...").

Answer choice (A) immediately looks pretty good. Passage A is about the (unanticipated) fact that online currency sometimes translates to real currency. Passage B is about how that should be dealt with by the law.

(B) is incorrect because Passage A is not about an economic theory. Furthermore, Passage B ultimately is about proposing a solution, not just introducing a problem.

(C) misses the solution aspect of Passage B. It's not just about how difficult it is to police the games—see lines 44 to the end, which actually explain just how they should be policed.

(D) pits the two passages against each other, but they are not, in fact, opposed.

(E) misrepresents Passage B as well. It's not solely about theoretical consequences but about how the law can and should deal with those consequences.

Hope this helps.

[andrewgong01]

This is more of a general question but what does theoretical consequences (as used in Choice E) mean on the LSAT? I think I have also seen this phrase on LR and a few other RC passages but never quite sure what it means to be a "theoretical" consequence. In this passage I did not choose "E" cause I thought it was a practical (i.e. "real life") issue and not something that is only outlined in like abstract textbook theory not applicable to the real world but not sure if this is what we mean by theoretical consequences

Also was video games ultimately considered a subculture in this question because it was never stated directly in the passage or hints at a much larger culture aside from Passage B saying its leisure

[ohthatpatrick]

I think it's fair to call the millions of people worldwide who play online games a 'subculture', especially given the context that it seems to have its own norms and even its own economy.

"theoretical" is basically a logical foil for "practical". So it's as you described: abstract or real-world.

You may have read the RC passage on the paradox of omnipotence. It shifts from speaking about it as a theoretical problem "Doesn't omnipotence contradict itself, since you don't have the power to limit your own power?" to speaking about it as a practical problem "Creditors don't believe that omnipotent monarchs will pay them back, so they lend money and really crappy interest rates".