Fines levied against those responsible for certain environmentally damaging accidents are now so high that it costs a...
mprezzyApril 19, 2020
...weaken, how exactly?
I am having a hard time understanding how A weakens the argument. I understand why the other choices are not the correct answer but the difficulty I have with A is it is providing something that is being overlooked. The business could have way more accidents than they can safeguard against but how exactly does that weaken the conclusion? In my mind, that shows a lack of consideration but how is that translating into weaken. Please help.
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Thanks for the question! First, let’s take a look at what the argument is telling us. We know that there are super high fines for businesses that damage the environment, so high that it’s more expensive to pay those fines than to adopt measures that’ll prevent the accident. The argument then concludes that since businesses care about profits, they’ll now install environmental safeguards if they might otherwise cause environmental accidents.
Now we’re looking for something that weakens this argument. Let’s take a look at (A), which tells us that businesses generally greatly underestimate the risk of future accidents. Well, if this is true, then they might not think of themselves as needing the safeguards because they don’t think they’ll cause an accident, even if they do actually have a higher risk. So they might not install the safeguards. Notice that in these cases, the businesses have to actually think they’re at risk of causing one of these accidents before they install the safeguards.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
