LSAT 77, Reading Comprehension, Q12

RC Question 12 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Which one of the following most accurately…

DISCUSSION: It’s helpful to glance over the passage before answering this type of question. It has roughly the following form:

• Question: How should corporate crime be punished.
• Answer: Economists say cost-benefit.
• Paragraph 2: community morals aren’t important to economists.
• Paragraph 3: There’s a flaw with the economists’ answer.
• Paragraph 4: Even fixing the flaw won’t work. We need another solution: the author’s.

These are rough summaries. You should have roughly this outline in your head when doing all questions. Otherwise you’ll go slower than you ought to.

___________

1. CORRECT. This matches the description I gave above. “An important aspect” is whether or not economists consider community morals to be important.
2. The end of this is wrong. The criticism is not “rejected”. The author is the one criticizing the economists’ solution, and they agree their criticism is devastating to the economists’ case.
3. Two big problems here: First, the passage starts with a question, not a view. Second, the ethics of the economists are never discussed.
4. There are no “two answers”. There’s just the economists’ view.
   It’s true that later on the author discusses their own answer, in the final paragraph. But that’s not the same as introducing two answers at once, at the start.
5. The author never said what happens if we can’t effectively punish corporate crime.

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