AA018 my fourth AA

时间下来了,差不多30分钟,质量是越来越差了.唉.

18．The following is an excerpt from a memo written by the head of a governmental department.
“Neither stronger ethics regulations nor stronger enforcement mechanisms are necessary to ensure ethical behavior by companies doing business with this department. We already have a code of ethics that companies doing business with this department are urged to abide by, and virtually all of these companies have agreed to follow it. We also know that the code is relevant to the current business environment because it was approved within the last year, and in direct response to specific violations committed by companies with which we were then working — not in abstract anticipation of potential violations, as so many such codes are.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

In this passage, the head of a governmental department recommends that neither stronger ethics regulations nor stronger enforcement mechanisms are necessary to ensure ethical behavior by companies doing business with the department. To support the recommendation, the evidence is there is a code of ethics available for the companies and the companies have agreed to follow it. And the code is believed by the author to be relevant to the current business environment because it was approved within the last year and in direct response to specific violations committed by companies the department were doing business with. The argument is not convincing as it suffers from several flaws in several respects.

Firstly, the author assumes that no stronger enforcement is needed because the companies involved have agreed to follow the code of ethics. This assumption is not reliable. We can depend on the oral agreement only on the condition that there are no possibilities for the companies lie to the department. The assumption can not be depended on without information given on that.

Secondly, the author claims that the code is relevant to the current business as it was approved within the last year and in response to the specific violations. At first glance, the claim seems right, however,the author fails to understand the nature of a code. A code not only needs to be relevant with the current business but also needs to foresee the possible change in the future. As a code needs to be complied with in the coming years, if a code can not include the respects of possible violations in the future, the code is outdated and ineffective.

个人觉得好象对code的要求太高了呵呵。我觉得是只要根据现时情况制订并且不断调整就好了。这里的逻辑错误似乎应该是code符合去年的情况不一定符合今年和以后的情况。

In conclusion, the argument is fallacious due to the above mentioned flaws. To strengthen this argument, the author should rule out the possibility of the dishonesty of the concerned companies. Moreover, the author should make sure that current code includes the regulation aiming for the potential violations.