潇湘渌水 @ 2007-03-15 20:00
Argument4 428 words
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The following was posted on an Internet real estate discussion site.
'Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents. In contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch, and included home sales that averaged 8,000, compared to Fitch's 4,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago, I listed my home with Fitch and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams.'
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The argument seems logical by stating that the real estate firm of Adams Realty had more worker and more revenue then the other real estate firm of Fitch Realty and an example of selling home of him (her) to extrapolate the conclusion that you should use Adams to sell your home. However there are several fallacies that the author fails to examine, I will discuss each of the fallacy in turn.
In the first place, something wrong incurred in the reasoning. The argument is based on a false analogy. It is simply assumed that Adams Realty is analogous to Fitch Realty in all aspects, but insufficient evidence is stated that Adams and Fitch are indeed comparable. There may be much dissimilarity between two firms, it is possible that Adams specialized in selling new homes and the Fitch sold various homes ranging from new homes to secondhand homes. It is also likely that the homes sold by Adams are located in the rich part of the town but the homes sold by Fitch are located in the every part of this town. Thus the comparison of the price of the real estate sold by two companies is unconvincing.
Secondly, the author states there are 40 real estate agents in Adams and only 25 in Fitch. However, as we known the fact that how many agents the firm have is one thing, how do they do the work is the other thing. No indiction is presented in the paragraph above that the agents in Fitch might fall short of the client’s expectation of selling the homes quickly and at a good price. In addition, 25 agents in Fitch and that is just part-time work of them, however they can create the half revenue of Adams which has 40 agents in one year. It seems that the employee in Fitch is better than the employee in Adams.
Furthermore, the author commits the fallacy of "all things are equal." The author takes an example about Fitch which is ten years ago, and the example of Adams that just happened last year. It is assumed without justification that background condition has remained the same at different times. Perhaps Fitch Realty was founded ten years ago and after development of this long time, it is a competitive company in this real estate market nowadays.
