#8- In the past, the railroads in Ostronia were run as

[yrivers]

Hi,

Section 2 was the experimental section, but was hoping you could help as we didn't go over this section in class.

For #8, could you explain how to eliminate B? And C (is C because it refers to prices and the conclusion is not about prices)?

Thanks,
Yaesul

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Yaesul,

The key term in Choice (B) that allowed me to eliminate it quickly was few. The stimulus provides absolutely no information about how many companies have received government subsidies, so we cannot make any conclusion about what amount of these companies have taken customer needs and desires into account. The only information we have is that the railroads have not. We do not know if every company in this country is subsidized, or if only railroads are.

Choice (C) refers to a situation that we have no information about. This answer choice really plays into our assumptions about railroad companies receiving subsidies. Since, in the real world, we often hear about railroads needing government support to survive, this answer seems very intuitive. However, the stimulus never says that government subsidies are needed for railroads in Ostronia to survive at the current rates that they charge.

[yrivers]

Hi,

Thanks for the explanations.

For elimiatning C, I can't help but think this is a necessary assumption. The stimulus states, "because of government subsidies that HAVE PERMITTED (caps added) Ostronian railroad comopanies to operate even while incurring substantial losses..."

Is there another way of looking at this? Or should C be eliminated in general because the conclusion focuses on disregarding customers' needs and desires (conclusion) not prices (premise)?

Thanks,
Yaesul

[Steven Palmer]

Hi yrivers,

I see why this is a tough answer choice to knock. The key thing here is the part of the answer choice that says, "railroad companies . . . would have to increase prices" without the government intervention. Prices are not mentioned once in this whole stimulus, and thus we know nothing about them. That is why we need to eliminate (C): because it's easy to assume that the subsidies are keeping prices low and that's why the government is giving them out, but we have absolutely no idea about that.

We stick with (E) because all we know about is these companies that disregard their customers' desires.

Hope this helps!
Steven

[nickp18]

Hi Powerscore team!

I have a quick question as to how we know E is the correct answer. My thought process to eliminate E was that the stimulus was referring to "railroad companies", yet answer choice E refers only to "some companies".

Any help would be appreciated!

Nick

[Robert Carroll]

Nick,

If railroad companies have survived while having little regard for the desires of their customers, surely some companies have survived while having little regard for the desires of their customers. This is just a particular case of what's known as existential generalization: if I am under 40 years old, then surely someone is under 40 years old; if Harvard Law School allows applicants to submit GRE scores, then surely some law school allows applicants to submit GRE scores; and generally, if a particular thing has a particular quality, then there is some thing in existence which has that quality.

That means that answer choice (E) is less specific than we can infer, but that's not a problem - being more specific that we can properly infer would be a problem. The question is whether answer choice (E) must be true (it must) rather than whether answer choice (E) is the most specific claim that must be true (it isn't, but that's not what a Must Be True question is ever requiring of an answer).

Robert Carroll