Q14 - Politician: It has been proposed

[LSAT-Chang]

I was down to (B) and (E) on this one, and I ultimately chose (B) for the following reasons:

Okay, so we have a weaken question. The conclusion is that the privatization of the national parks would probably benefit park visitors as well. Why? Because a similar privatization of the telecommunications industry benefited consumers by allowing competition among a variety of telephone companies to improve service and force down prices.

I thought (B) would weaken the conclusion that the privatization WILL NOT benefit park visitors because the similar privatization of the telecommunications led to significantly increased unemployment and economic instability. (E) on the other hand, so what if it provides MUCH less competition? It could still provide enough and be able to benefit the park visitors. Since we are not told HOW MUCH competition is needed, I didn't think (E) necessarily weakened the argument.

Any thoughts???

[noah]

Good question, So - and tough LSAT question! I was down to (B) and (E) as well. I'll explain it, and steal some of your stuff!

"Okay, so we have a weaken question. The conclusion is that the privatization of the national parks would probably benefit park visitors as well. Why? Because a similar privatization of the telecommunications industry benefited consumers by allowing competition among a variety of telephone companies to improve service and force down prices."

What's the gap? Well, to debate this argument, couldn't there be some problem in applying this practice that worked in one industry to another? Aren't parks a whole different can of worms?

It's tempting to think another issue is "couldn't there be a downside to using this policy with parks?" However, the conclusion isn't stating that adopting the policy is the best policy, or something like that. It's just that adopting this policy would probably benefit park visitors.

(E) weakens by showing that applying this policy won't have the same effect. "Much less" gives this answer more punch.

As for the wrong answers:

(A) is out of scope - politically expedient?

(B) is tempting - it tells us that the privatization of telecommunications hasn't been all good. But, we already were told that the privatization benefited consumers, so this is a premise "de-booster." And, we only care about the benefit to consumer - it's sad that the policy led to unemployment, but we don't care.

(C) is about people's awareness, which is out of scope.

(D) is about the number of consumers that will benefit. Another tempting answer. However, the argument concludes that the policy will probably benefit visitors, not a lot of them. So, it's fine if the number is limited. Furthermore, what if the the number of telecommunications consumers that benefited is a huge number, and much less than that is still a lot?

[funner567]

Completely agree with all of your statements in the answer choice review.

Just a quick question of my own. It was already explicitly stated within the stimulus that the privatization had a positive affect on the telecommunications company, but in answer choice "B" we get them weakening the premise, which at times ends up being the right kind of answer choice. I eliminated "B" for a smaller reason, the answer choice specifically deals with our premise and at the end says it lead to "economic instability in that industry"

That phrase to me marks that we are only talking about the telecommunications company, in no way are they comparing it to the parks. Thus, how are we supposed to infer that this will lead to economic instability in the national park industry? We can't really compare....

is my thinking correct?

[noah]

but in answer choice "B" we get them weakening the premise, which at times ends up being the right kind of answer choice.

(B) doesn't actually weaken the premise - the telecommunications privatization still benefited consumers - it just gives us more information about it. When I said it's a "premise de-booster" I was being a bit loose. It just gives us some negative information about the premise.

It's really rare that a weaken answer will straight-up de-bunk a premise. More likely (and still rare) is that we'll get something de-bunking the validity of it, like if it was a study, and then we learn that the study was flawed or limited in some way.

I eliminated "B" for a smaller reason, the answer choice specifically deals with our premise and at the end says it lead to "economic instability in that industry"

That phrase to me marks that we are only talking about the telecommunications company, in no way are they comparing it to the parks. Thus, how are we supposed to infer that this will lead to economic instability in the national park industry? We can't really compare....

is my thinking correct?

I disagree on this part. It makes sense that information about the telecomm industry is about that industry, but that doesn't mean we can't use it to make an argument about another one. The argument is structured as "hey, this is what happened in this industry - so it'll probably happen in this other."

Thanks for the question; I hope my response helped.

[timsportschuetz]

This question is very similar to questions using an analogy to reach a conclusion. Whenever an argument relies on evidence comparing two different situations to reach its' conclusion, you must either point out that those two scenarios are DIFFERENT (which would weaken the conclusion), or, point out that the two scenarios are in fact similar in their application (which would strengthen the conclusion. You will often see this argument structure in Flaw questions...

[coco.wu1993]

Even if E is right, the privatization of the national parks can still bring benefits to visitors, right? Just not as many benefits as what consumers in telecommunication industry get.

So E is right not because it weakens the conclusion. It doesn't. However, it did weaken the applicability of the telecommunication industry's case to national parks. Could anyone please confirm my thought?

[tommywallach]

Hey Coco,

I think you're overthinking it. To weaken the applicability of the one case to the other is to weaken the conclusion, given that the conclusion is based entirely on the relevance of the telecommunications example.

-t

[mornincounselor]

My take on this question was that its potentially flawed in that it offers no evidence that indicates the privatization of national parks would have any of the same effects as the privitiation of the telecommunications companies did. So to weaken it we point out the differences between the two. I was stuck netween A, D and E.

I eliminated A because "political expediency" is irrelevant to the conclusion about benefit to the park visitors, leaving only D and E. I believe, and please correct me if you disagree, that had E not been a choice that D could be a correct anwser to this question. D points out a difference in the two that weakens the connection. E gets more to the heart of the argument though, I mean looking at the two anwsers E is correct but I see D as also weakening. If D is assumed then park visitors get less benefit out of the changes then tc. consumers did and hmm...

On second thought a little benefit is still a benefit, so D actually is probably closer to a strenghtener than a weakener.

[kyuya]

The argument states that we should have private companies managing our national parks.

Why?

Because private companies ran the telecommunications industry and good things happened. So the benefits should also be the same for parks, right?

It is a weaken question, so we can look to weaken this argument. National parks and telecommunications are not the most similar things to compare; perhaps one is better to privatize than the other?

(A) Only speaks about political expedience. We aren't worried about this, we are primary concerned with customer service or benefit to people using the park.

(B)

I picked this question at first and even missed this on blind review! I think what happened here is you see something wrong with the telecommunications and you're brain automatically thinks "AHA! there is a flaw with using private companies!!" but if we look deeper, this is an issue that would not effect national parks (it is specific to the telecommunications field). How would this weaken the argument about National parks being privatized? It doesn't really.. it doesn't do much of anything actually.

(C) this is irrelevant.

(D) This doesn't necessarily weaken the argument. This is because the difference can reasonably be because telecommunications and national parks are not the same industry. Some variance in how well it worked is expected. Furthermore, stating that it would benefit a much smaller number and to a far less extent doesn't necessarily tell us much because we have no gauge of how many / much it benefited the telecommunications industry.

In other words, what if millions of people were helped by telecommunications but only thousands by parks. Yes it is a much smaller number, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a small number. There is no reference point, so do not assume that this is as big as a negative as you may first assume it to be.

(E)

This is the correct answer. This is somewhat similar to (D) but it directly attacks the argument in the stimulus. In the stimulus it states, "..has benefited consumers by allowed competition among a variety of telephone...". So what if this competition (the whole reason it benefited the telecommunications people) was no present when it came to the privatization of parks? Then the argument would be weakened!

[ellylb]

I think this argument can be understood quite simply, as follows:

If we do A then B,
Why?
Because when we did C, we got B

So

A - > B
Because C -> B

So what's the inherent assumption here? The assumption is that C must be like A.
The best way to weaken the conclusion is to prove that C is not in fact like A. (E) suffices to prove this. (B) only states some problems with C but does not suggest it is dissimilar to A.

[NathanB506]

I chose D on this and I'd like an experienced LSAT opinion on something.

The above posts suggest D isn't right because it doesn't say no consumer will benefit, just that few will. Maybe the premise benefitted millions and the conclusion benefits thousands, but it still benefits. But similar logic has been glossed over on E. E doesn't suggest no competition, just less of it, or how much would be required to produce a benefit. By similar logic E is as deficient as D. I chose D because it attacks the conclusion which leaves the least chance that some other effect gets involved.

Then I realized the question wasn't asking to weaken the conclusion, it was asking to weaken the argument. D weakens the conclusion directly, E weakens the argument. My question is, does the LSAT differentiate like this between weakening the argument vs weakening the conclusion? AND if the question had asked to weaken the conclusion would you have chosen D? Thank you

[BarryM800]

On the LSAT, the correct answer choice in Weaken questions always weakens the argument, but not necessarily the conclusion. You have to be constantly mindful of the support the conclusion is getting from the premise(s).

[JeremyK460]

I chose D on this and I'd like an experienced LSAT opinion on something.

The above posts suggest D isn't right because it doesn't say no consumer will benefit, just that few will. Maybe the premise benefitted millions and the conclusion benefits thousands, but it still benefits. But similar logic has been glossed over on E. E doesn't suggest no competition, just less of it, or how much would be required to produce a benefit. By similar logic E is as deficient as D. I chose D because it attacks the conclusion which leaves the least chance that some other effect gets involved.

Then I realized the question wasn't asking to weaken the conclusion, it was asking to weaken the argument. D weakens the conclusion directly, E weakens the argument. My question is, does the LSAT differentiate like this between weakening the argument vs weakening the conclusion? AND if the question had asked to weaken the conclusion would you have chosen D? Thank you

D doesn't weaken the conclusion directly; (d) is too vague to determine that

the argument says that consumers benefit
it never says how many consumers and to what extent they benefited

let's say lots benefited a lot
all (d) says is the amount of people and the amount they benefited was less

nike runs social media campaign 'X' and it benefited a million people: each person received 20 dollars off any nike product

your local mom and pop also runs social media campaign 'X' and it benefited a thousand people: each received 5 dollars off any mom and pop product

nike's reach is way different from your local mom and pop
yet both could be reaching and gifting (let's say) 25 percent of their audience

relatively speaking, campaign 'X' was a success for both nike and local mom and pop