Argu11
The council of Maple County, concerned about the county's becoming overdeveloped, is debating a proposed measure that would prevent the development of existing farmland in the county. But the council is also concerned that such a restriction, by limiting the supply of new housing, could lead to significant increases in the price of housing in the county. Proponents of the measure note that Chestnut County established a similar measure ten years ago, and its housing prices have increased only modestly since. However, opponents of the measure note that Pine County adopted restrictions on the development of new residential housing fifteen years ago, and its housing prices have since more than doubled. The council currently predicts that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple County.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
In this argument, the council predicts that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple Country. To support this conclusion, the proponents point out that Chestnut Country adopt a similar measure ten years ago ,and its housing prices increased slightly, on the contrary, Pine Country has its housing prices double since they take the restrictions on the development of new residential housing fifteen years ago. This argument is well-presented but far-fetched, for several reasons, this argument fails to provide adequate support for the prediction.
In the first place, either the proponents or the opponents commit the fallacy of “false analogy”. The most apparent deficiency is that the argument rests on the assumption that Maple City is analogous to Chestnut Country and Pine Country in all aspects, which is absolutely weak. To start with, the situations cited in the argument, that is, the housing prices of Pine Country increased slightly as well as of Chestnut Country doubled, was happened in different time period. The variation of prices occurred ten years ago in Chestnut while fifteen years ago in Pine. As time going by, there will be differences in many aspects. There is possibility, which might exist rationally, that the housing price of these two counties are all decrease after adopting the measures mentioned above. Secondly, comparison among Maple , Pine and Chestnut is not valid, because we all know that two countries could differ from a large amount of aspects such as locations, weather, natural resources and so on, which may definitely effect not only the economy but the culture here. So taking Chestnut and Pine as references to predict the housing price in Maple is not tenable. Thirdly, the council fails to establish the causal relationship between the prices-increase and measure-adopted. The housing prices in Pine and Chestnut might be low initially, there are many factors that contribute to the price increasing, such as the large amount of external population or some other politic measures leads to the increase. Pursuing this line of reasoning, it seems to be the author’s responsibility to list more evidence to elucidate the similarity of Maple and the two countries mentioned above. If not, no basis exist for the comparison. In the second place, even if the flaws cited above is worked out by some ensuing evidence, a critical problem still remains that the assumption that limitation on house supply could definitely results in the significant increase in housing prices is unreasonable. The society is a whole system, a phenomenon cannot appears only because one factor, well, this is the case with housing price. Local economy development as well as the growth of population can also effect the level of prices. Thus supply is just part of those factors, so we cannot take the relationship between supply and price as causal and result for granted. Other than the author provides some evidence to substantiate that it is the limitation of housing supply that leads to the increasing of housing prices, or we cannot predict that the proposed measure, if passed, will result in a significant increase in housing prices in Maple County.
In a nutshell, it seems precipitous for the author to jump to the conclusion based on a series of problematic premise. This prediction is based on a false analogy, it fails to elucidate that the Maple with Chestnut and Pine is analogous to make comparison. What’s more it only take a little part of effective factors into account and overlooks other crux elements in the variation of housing prices. To make this prediction more plausible, the author should come to grips with the questions mentioned above. Only by enriching the evidence of bolstering the argument could the author put a persuasive prediction.
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