Consumer activist: By Support allowing major airlines to abandon, as they promptly did, all but their most profitable routes, Conclusion the government’s decision to cease regulation of the airline industry has worked to the disadvantage of everyone who lacks access to a large metropolitan airport.
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The consumer activist concludes that the government's deregulation of airlines caused a disadvantage to anyone far from a large metropolitan airport. How do we know? Because the deregulation allowed large airlines to drop their less-profitable routes, which they in fact did.
The consumer activist is making an argument about cause and effect: that the government's deregulation caused the effect of disadvantaging regional travellers. But there are a number of gaps where the activist doesn't explicitly spell out what's going on, and each gap requires an assumption. For example, the activist needs to assume that the airlines' most profitable routes weren't in smaller regional airports. The activist must also assume that losing major airline routes actually disadvantages consumers.
The industry representative concludes that the consumer activist is wrong—the regulatory change did not disadvantage non-metropolitan travelers. How could this be? Because regional airlines have replaced major airlines at smaller airports. This has brought even more flights to most smaller airports than there were before.
However, the industry representative only relies on the number of flights available to back up a conclusion about the total (dis)advantage to regional travelers. For this to work, the representative has to assume that there aren't other repercussions which would, on net, disadvantage consumers. For instance, what if all these new flights are much more expensive?
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ████████████ ████████ ████████
Before the recent ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████ █████ ███ ██ █████████ ██ ██████ ████ ██████ ██ █ █████ ████████████ ████████
Whether or not there was previously an advantage for urban travellers doesn't make a difference; the activist only needs to establish that deregulation caused a disadvantage for regional travellers. The starting point could have been even or uneven; the activist doesn't need to assume either way.
When any sizable █████ ██ █████████ ██ █████████ █████████████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████ ████ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████
The activist's argument is limited to the cause-and-effect relationship at play and doesn't involve any recommendations about what should be done. Because recommendations are beyond the scope of the argument, it's not necessary to make any assumptions about them.
Government regulation of ████████ ██████ ██████ █████ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ██████████
The typical impacts of regulation don't determine the impacts in any specific case, and for airline deregulation to harm consumers it's not necessary that regulation is usually advantageous.
At the time ██ ███ ██████████ ███████ ███ █████ ████████ ████ ███████████ █████ ████ ██████████ ██████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ███████ ██ ██████████ █████████████
In other words, deregulation actually played a causal role in the change in airline routes. This must be true for the argument to work, even though it's not something we predicted. If the airlines' maintenance of regional routes was unrelated to deregulation, then the argument that the government caused the disadvantage falls apart.
Regional airlines lack ███ █████████ ██ ███████ █████████ ████ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ██ ████ ████████ ██ ███ █████ █████████
(E) might look promising because it strengthens the argument, but upon closer examination it's not truly necessary. (E) gives one reason that regional airlines aren't a good enough replacement, but it's not the only possible way to prove that point. Maybe regional airlines have resources, but they also prefer to focus on more profitable routes—then (E) could be false, but the argument would still stand.
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