PT1 - Weaken Question #help

errrrr1452

Fines levied against those responsible for certain environmentally damaging accidents are now so high that it costs a company responsible for such an accident more to pay the fine than it would have cost to adopt measures that would have prevented the accident. Therefore, since businesses value their profits, those that might have such accidents will now install adequate environmental safeguards.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

A) Businesses generally greatly underestimate the risk of future accidents.
B ) Businesses are as concerned with long-term as they are with short-term strategies for maximizing profits.
C) Businesses generally do the environmentally “right” thing only if doing so makes good business sense.
D) Businesses treat fines that are levied against them as an ordinary business expense.
E) Businesses are learning to exploit the public’s environmental awareness in promoting themselves.

I am not 100% certain in understanding why A is correct and why D is incorrect.

Thank you.

jmarmaduke96

Hello!

The gap between the premises and the conclusion in this argument is that it is being assumed that the businesses know, at least in general terms, what the risk of a future accident is. If this were not the case, then it seems very strange to draw the conclusion that they will be installing safeguards against costly environmental accidents that they do not believe are going to take place. Answer choice A calls out this assumption directly, and therefore drastically weakens the argument.

On the other hand, D just gives us some information about how the costs of the accidents are tabulated. The test is baiting you to make an assumption, which is that if something is counted as an ordinary business cost then it must be something that can be not only accounted for, but weathered by the business. This is not the case though, there are many things that are counted as ordinary business costs that could be disastrous for a business if they were to spiral out of control. For example, for a restaurant like McDonalds, purchasing frozen french fries is an ordinary business expense. However, what if suddenly there was a sudden scarcity and the price of potatoes soared. Everyone knows that McDonalds has to sell french fries in stay in business, so all of a sudden something that was tabulated as an ordinary business expense would be nearly bankrupting a multi-billion dollar franchise. That is obviously an extreme example to illustrate a point, but I hope you get the idea.

Since we cannot make that assumption about answer choice D, all that we are actually being told is that businesses tabulate fines in a certain way. As long as we still assume the main assumption that we are being baited to make and that answer choice A calls out, the argument has not been weakened at all. I hope that helps, let me know if I can clarify something?