QUESTION TEXT: Trade negotiator: Increasing economic prosperity in a…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify
CONCLUSION: It is morally wrong for a country to use trade policy to significantly slow prosperity growth in another country.
REASONING: Prosperity growth generally brings political freedom.
ANALYSIS: Principle-justify questions are easy, once you learn the secret. For example, take this gibberish situation:
- Conclusion: It is immoral to blurb.
- Reasoning: Blurbing generally causes bloops.
Nonsense, right? To prove the conclusion correct, we need a reason to care. So, if we say “It is immoral to cause bloops”, then we know blurping is wrong. (Even if we don’t know what blurping is.) So, if I say:
- Conclusion: It’s immoral to restrict trade and lower prosperity.
- Reasoning: Lowering prosperity reduces freedom.
You can say “It is immoral to reduce freedom.” Easy, right? You just have to say “The thing in the reasoning is morally wrong.”
___________
- The conclusion was only about whether it’s immoral to restrict trade. It didn’t discuss other policies aimed at freedom.
- That’s nice. But this doesn’t tell us what we should do. On principle/justify questions we usually need a “should” statement.
- This tells us why countries want prosperity, but it doesn’t tell us whether it’s immoral to hinder prosperity.
- CORRECT. Trade policies which harm growth in another country will hinder political freedom in that country. So, this answer tells us not to do that.
- This is a trap answer. The stimulus didn’t talk about reducing the prosperity of a country’s own inhabitants. It talked about lowering the prosperity of another country.
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