PrepTest 135, Section 1, Question 7
Economist: Government intervention in the free market in(70 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- Awould likely be(9 more words not shown)
- Bhas been shown(8 more words not shown)
- Cis believed unlikely(6 more words not shown)
- Dwould do less(9 more words not shown)
- Eprovides a solution(5 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Trying to help can still cause damage. Imagine a housing policy that makes homes available to some people but also prompts landlords to raise prices. That is a possible unintended effect to consider, not a fact we're told about any actual program.
The economist makes this concern easier to understand by comparing government intervention with medicine. A medicine can help and have harmful side effects. The stated rule isn't “Never use anything harmful.” It is “Use it only when not using it would be significantly more harmful.” We have to compare the two courses of action.
What we’re looking for
Carry that same comparison into the blank: government intervention is justified only when staying out would do more damage than intervening. An intervention's costs matter, but so do the costs of doing nothing. We don't need a new political principle; we need the government version of the medicine rule.
Working the answers
- A
Approval isn't the comparison the author makes. A popular policy could do more harm than inaction, and an unpopular policy could do less. The medicine example asks about harm, not how many people favor the treatment.
- B
Having few harmful effects sounds reassuring, but we still need the comparison with not intervening. Also, the medicine rule allows harmful effects when nonuse would be significantly worse. It does not require that those effects be few or insignificant.
- C
Not making existing problems significantly worse doesn't show that intervention does less damage than staying out. The two options might have the same consequences, for example. C leaves out the comparison the medicine rule requires; changing the topic to what people believe doesn't supply it.
- DCorrect
Intervention must do less damage than the government's not intervening. That carries over the required relationship: the harm from taking the medicine must be lower than the harm from not taking it. The original says the difference must be significant, so it certainly supports this more general requirement that intervention be less damaging.
- E
The medicine example doesn't say treatment must solve a problem that nothing else could solve. There might be other treatments. Likewise, a government policy needn't address an otherwise impossible problem to satisfy the comparison between intervention and nonintervention. E adds an exclusivity requirement the argument never supplies.
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