The excessive number of safety regulations

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The excessive number of safety regulations that the federal government has placed on industry poses more serious hardships for big businesses than for small ones. Since large companies do everything on a more massive scale, they must alter more complex operations and spend much more money to meet governmental requirements.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument above?
a) small companies are less likely than large companies to have the capital reserves for improvement.
b) the operation of small companies frequently rely on the same technologies as the operations of large companies.
c) safety regulation codes are uniform established without reference to size of company
d) large companies typically have more of their profits invested in other businesses than do small companies.
e) large companies are in general more likely than small companies to diversify their markets and products

I understand the OA. But B is tempting. Why not B?

OA: A
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by icemanKK » Thu Mar 01, 2012 9:01 pm
Hi,

I am new to CR. But I presume that B is not correct as it does not weaken the position that Large Companies are more likely to be affected.

In fact, in order to weaken the argument we would need to show that Small companies are more likely to be affected than large ones, hence A.

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by killer1387 » Thu Mar 01, 2012 11:06 pm
The excessive number of safety regulations that the federal government has placed on industry poses more serious hardships for big businesses than for small ones. Since large companies do everything on a more massive scale, they must alter more complex operations and spend much more money to meet governmental requirements.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

a) small companies are less likely than large companies to have the capital reserves for improvement. --> it provides evidence that small companies are going to face much hardship than larger ones because of fund crunch. Hence it weakens.

b) the operation of small companies frequently rely on the same technologies as the operations of large companies. --> using same technology doesnt alters the conclusion above that larger ones are going to face more hardship.