TOPIC: ARGUMENT67 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a newspaper serving the villages of Castorville and Polluxton. "Both the villages of Castorville and Polluxton have experienced sharp declines in the numbers of residents who pay property taxes. To save money and improve service, the two villages recently merged their once separate garbage collection departments into a single department located in Castorville, and the new department has reported few complaints about its service. Last year the library in Polluxton had 20 percent fewer users than during the previous year. It follows that we should now further economize and improve service, as we did with garbage collection, by closing the library in Polluxton and using the library in Castorville to serve both villages." WORDS: 418 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2008/8/8 下午 10:32:35 In the letter to the editor, the speaker asserts that the library in Polluxton should be closed and people can use the library in Castorville. He uses the change of the garbage collection in these two towns as his supporting points. He claims that by merging the once separate two garbage collection departments into one, money was saved and complaints became fewer. Therefore, the same method can be applied to the library to save resources. I find the statement problematic. First, the speaker proposes that after the way to collect garbage changed, the new department has reported fewer complaints than before. Since the department is a business company, it is reasonable to doubt that the company could choose not to report some of the complaints to make the service seem good. A policy will fail if too many citizens are not satisfied with it. The governments and the department could work together to hide some complaints to make the policy seemingly perfect. The government should make the investigation by asking how people feel, rather than make the conclusion according to the number of complaints reported by the department alone. Second, the speaker says that the number of library users in Polluxton declined last year and that to economize, the library should be closed. I do not agree. We have no idea about how far it is for people in Polluxton to go to Castorville. What if it takes several hours? In this way, people in Polluxton will not be willing to read because of the inconvenience. The government sets the library not because it can make profit or it can save money, but because it is the fundamental element of the life of its people. I recommend that the government should spend more resources in Polluxton to encourage people there to read, rather than close it. Thirdly, we are not warranted that the service of the library in Castorville is good enough, or even better than the one in Polluxton. There is no relevant information about the degree to which people are satisfied with the services in the Castorville library. People in Castorville could feel worse about the service their library than people in Polluxton do. If so, the change can only worsen the situation. In brief, the case of the garbage collection department does not contain much relevant information enough to prove that the change is right. In addition, it is not convincing to apply the case to persuade people in believing that we should close one library to save resources and improve service. --

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