Question Type:
Weaken
Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: If more landlords install INDIVIDUAL electricity meters, energy will be conserved.
Evidence: With COLLECTIVE electricity meters, tenants have no financial incentive to conserve electricity.
Answer Anticipation:
LSAT has many times tested the gap between "someone having an INCENTIVE to do a certain thing" and "someone actually doing that thing". Or in this case, "they DON'T have a FINANCIAL INCENTIVE" to conserve energy, so we assume "they don't conserve energy". It's possible that we do something even though we lack incentive for doing it. It's even more likely that we do some things not for FINANCIAL incentive but for some other incentive (moral? environmental? love of efficiency?)
Correct Answer:
C
Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) If anything, this feels like it strengthens. If tenants pay extra rent, they might be more inclined to use electricity (in order "to get their money's worth")
(B) This doesn't seem to apply to our tenants, because they presumably know that they don't pay an electricity bill.
(C) Yes, although I'm surprised this is the correct answer. This weakens if we think that "switching to having tenants pay their own bills wouldn't save energy … even though the tenants would conserve energy more, we'd miss out on having those energy efficient appliances". The problem is that we're adding a lot assumptions to make that story work. First of all, it's unlikely that if a landlord switched to an individual billing system that he would then choose to yank out the energy efficient appliances. Secondly, it's likely that if a tenant had to pay for her own electricity that she would ALSO want to have energy efficient appliances.
Ultimately, though, this is the correct answer. It is strongly worded, "they have a strong incentive", and so it raises the doubt about whether we'd miss out on the energy savings of efficient appliances if landlords were planning to make their tenants pay individual energy bills. Because of the phrasing "the appliances they provide for their tenants", I think we're not allowed to think that tenants would pick energy efficient appliances of their own accord, or that tenants would remove the low-efficiency appliances provided and replace them with more efficient ones.
(D) This argument isn't about whether a change is practical or feasible. It's just about predicting the outcome of a hypothetical world.
(E) Too weak. This gets at the assumption the author makes that "if they don't have a FINANCIAL incentive to conserve energy, then they won't be conserving energy." But since it's only "some", it could be as little as one person, and so it doesn't have much punching power.
Takeaway/Pattern: Often "some" and "many" are too weak to be involved in the correct answer. But, if no other answers weaken, then something that weakens a little is still the answer that "most weakens".
In this case, (C) weakened enough to outshine the weak-sauce power of (E). I'm surprised by this question and would have gotten it wrong. (E) is so clearly going against an assumption the author is making that you would think it would be the right answer.
(C) is appealing to LSAT's broader habit of testing how a plan might backfire.
PLAN: make tenants pay their own bill. GOAL: use less energy.
BACKFIRE: tenants might try harder to conserve energy, but they will be doing so with less energy efficient appliances.
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