October 2011 LSAT Section 1 Question 16
The view that every person is concerned exclusively with her or his own self–interest implies that government by cons...
Replies

on April 25, 2020
Hello @Joey77,This is a tricky one, let's see if we can simplify it. It might be helpful to diagram a few of these statements.
Premise: If everyone is exclusively self-interested, then government by consent is impossible.
ESI ---> no GC
Premise: Democracy is not possible without government by consent.
no GC ---> no D
Remember that we accept premises as true, so we can rightly conclude that exclusively self-interested people cannot form a democracy.
ESI ---> no GC ---> no D
However, this is not the conclusion that is made by the author.
Conclusion: Thus, social theorists who believe people are exclusively self-interested must believe that aspiring to democracy is futile.
The error begins when the author tries to conclude what other people believe. We simply cannot say what these social theorists believe. While it might be true that aspiring to democracy is futile in this case, we do not know for certain that the social theorists believe this. They may reject this implication! To answer your first question, you have accurately identified the belief and the implication.
I think that the key to this question is to carefully differentiate premise from conclusion. This is the key to every question, but here it seems especially important.
Joseph on April 26, 2020
Very helpful! Thank you @SamA