Argument192

TOPIC: ARGUMENT192 - The following is a letter to the editor of the Roseville Gazette.
"Despite opposition from some residents of West Roseville, the arguments in favor of merging the townships of Roseville and West Roseville are overwhelming. First, residents in both townships are confused about which authority to contact when they need a service; for example, the police department in Roseville receives many calls from residents of West Roseville. This sort of confusion would be eliminated with the merger. Second, the savings in administrative costs would be enormous, since services would no longer be duplicated: we would have only one fire chief, one tax department, one mayor, and so on. And no jobs in city government would be lost-employees could simply be reassigned. Most importantly, the merger will undoubtedly attract business investments as it did when the townships of Hamden and North Hamden merged ten years ago."
WORDS: 448 TIME: 00:40:51 DATE: 2008-3-17 21:34:45

At first glance, it seems sound and convincing that the townships of Roseville and West Roseville should merge in light of the speaker's four reasons. However, close scrutiny of evidence unveils that this argument actually suffers from a few critical flaws that undermine the validity. For example, the real reason of residents' confusion is questionable. Besides, outcomes of merging the townships of Roseville and West Roseville may be different from what the arguer imagines. Aside from these two vital flaws, there are still other pitfalls. The aforementioned flaws will be discussed in detail and respectively.

To begin with, the arguer presents that residents in both townships are confused to contact authority when they need a service as a powerful reason. But the arguer fails to show persuasive evidence. As a common sense, the telephone number of all police department is the identical, which may be 911. The only explanation to this people's confusion is that government fails to forward resident's calls to appropriate police department, which has nothing to do with ordinary residents. The arguer must demonstrate that this possibility of technical failure rarely happens before he or she lists residents' confusion as evidence.

Secondly, the speaker deeply believes that the merger will eliminate duplication under current circumstance and that no employee will suffer from the merger. However, the merger will surely conduce towards larger township, nearly doubled population, and also more crimes. As a result, "mayor" of the merged town has much more matters to tackle, which may make case even worse. It is possible that "mayor" fails to put everything in order, therefore efficiency of government will not be ameliorated.

Admittedly, Roseville and West Roseville might be sharply distinct in area and population, which would hardly induce disorders after these two townships are merged. Ironically, this possibility just defends against or disproves the third excuse that the speaker lists. The merger will not attract more investor's eyes since Roseville, for instance, is so relatively paltry that investors do not benefit from the merger. Moreover, it is absurd of the speaker to take the merger of Hamden and North Hamden for example, in respect that ten years' time is so long that everything may take place. Besides, the townships of Hamden and North Hamden may both are glorious ones and thereby residents there benefit from Hamden and North Hamden's merger.

In conclusion, the argument actually has several flaws as discussed above, and is not convincing as it stands. To solidify the argument, the arguer would have to provide evidence that the confusion of residents in Roseville and West Roseville is posed by government, and further show that every outcome of the merger will be positive to society.