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My question is, how do you get through this passage without loosing your concentration? I'm having trouble maintaining focus... any suggestions? Thanks!

Four legal approaches may be followed in attempting to channel technological development in socially useful direction: specific directives, market incentive modifications, criminal prohibitions, and changes in decision-making structures. Specific directives involve the government’s identifying one or more factors controlling research, development, or implementation of a given technology. Directives affecting such factors may vary from administrative regulation of private activity to government ownership of a technological operation. Market incentive modifications are deliberate alterations of the market within which private decisions regarding the development and implementation of technology are made. Such modifications may consist of imposing taxes to cover the costs to society of a given technology, granting subsidies to pay for social benefits of a technology, creating the right to sue to prevent certain technological development, or easing procedural rules to enable the recovery of damages to compensate for harm caused by destructive technological activity. Criminal prohibitions may modify technological activity in areas impinging on fundamental social values, or they may modify human behavior likely to result from technological applications—for example, the deactivation of automotive pollution control devices in order to improve vehicle performance. Alteration of decision-making structures includes all possible modifications in the authority, constitution, or responsibility of private and public entities deciding questions of technological development and implementation. Such alterations include the addition of public-interest members to corporate boards, the imposition by statute of duties on governmental decision-makers, and the extension of warranties in response to consumer action.

Effective use of these methods to control technology depends on whether or not the goal of regulation is the optimal allocation of resources. When the object is optimal resource allocation, that combination of legal methods should be used that most nearly yields the allocation that would exist if there were no external costs resulting from allocating resources through market activity. There are external costs when the price set by buyers and sellers of goods fails to include some costs, to anyone, that result from the production and use of the goods. Such costs are internalized when buyers pay them.

Air pollution from motor vehicles imposes external costs on all those exposed to it, in the form of soiling, materials damage, and disease: these externalities result from failure to place a price on air, thus making it a free good, common to all. Such externalities lead to nonoptimal resource allocation, because the private net product and the social net product of market activity are not often identical. If all externalities were internalized, transactions would occur until bargaining could no longer improve the situation, thus giving an optimal allocation of resources at a given time.

17. The passage is primarily concerned with describing

(A) objectives and legal method for directing technological development

(B) technical approaches to the problem of controlling market activity

© economic procedures for facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers

(D) reasons for slowing the technological development in light of environmentalist objections

E) technological innovations making it possible to achieve optimum allocation of resources

18. The author cites air pollution from motor vehicles in lines 54-56 in order to

(A) revise cost estimates calculated by including the costs of resources

(B) evaluate legal methods used to prevent technological developments

© give examples of costs not included in buyer-seller bargains

(D) refute hypotheses not made on the basis of monetary exchange values

(E) commend technological research undertaken for the common welfare

19. According to the passage, transactions between private buyers and sellers have effects on society that generally

(A) are harmful when all factors are considered

(B) give rise to ever-increasing resource costs

© reflect an optimal allocation of natural resources

(D) encompass more than the effects on the buyers and sellers alone

(E) are guided by legal controls on the development of technology

20. It can be inferred from the passage that the author does NOT favor which of the following?

(A) Protecting the environment for future use

(B) Changing the balance of power between opposing interests in business

© Intervening in the activity of the free market

(D) Making prices reflect costs to everyone in society

(E) Causing technological development to cease

21. A gasoline-conservation tax on the purchase of large automobiles, with the proceeds of the tax rebated to purchasers of small automobiles, is an example of

(A) a specific directive

(B) a market incentive modification

© an optimal resource allocation

(D) an alteration of a decision-making structure

(E) an external cost

22. If there were no external costs, as they are described in the passage, which of the following would be true?

(A) All technology-control methods would be effective.

(B) Some resource allocations would be illegal.

© Prices would include all costs to members of society.

(D) Some decision-making structures would be altered

(E) The availability of common goods would increase.

23. The author assumes that, in determining what would be an optimal allocation of resources, it would be possible to

(A) assign monetary value to all damage resulting from the use of technology

(B) combine legal methods to yield the theoretical optimum

© convince buyers to bear the burden of damage from technological developments

(D) predict the costs of new technological developments

(E) derive an equation making costs depend on prices

24. On the basis of the passage, it can be inferred that the author would agree with which of the following statements concerning technological development?

(A) The government should own technological operations.

(B) The effect of technological development cannot be controlled.

© Some technological developments are beneficial.

(D) The current state of technological development results in a good allocation of resources.

(E) Applications of technological developments are criminally destructive

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Well i guess it was an OK sort of passage .. not all that difficult and the answers were also pretty straight forward. It had 8 questions. I took abt 10.33 mins. I got only one ans. wrong (and that was a silly mistake )

 

Anyways as for suggestions i feel that u (hunnybee) shd try to form some kind of pattern. Dont just jump onto the passage. Understand the first sentence thoroughly and then only proceed further. The first sentence holds the key as has been repeatedly told in many books (Princeton etc etc). Basically u ll need a lot of practice .. read everything that comes ur way but with the objective that u have to comprehend it. Dont try methods which dont involve comprehension like skimming etc. In my experience they never work .. If u dont understand what the passage is about you surely cant ans. the question. GRE will not have many descriptive questions so try to understand what u read ..

 

One more thing, even i have the tendency to get nervous when doing RC esp when i know that i have to do it within a time limit. Its natural. The only way to get across it is to do practice and practice .. Dont get nervous. Try to read at ur normal pace initially. First concentrate on accuracy. Once u know that u can comfortable do the above kind of passage with abt 6-7 correct out of 8 in abt 12-13 mins u are on the right track. Then go for speed .. and try to employ the techniques tht u come across.

 

This is my advice .. hope it helps ..

And as i said earlier in the forum, keep on putting difficult passages on the forum :-)

 

Take care

Bye

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  • 1 month later...

Skimming actually helps me a lot. I try to understand the questions first and then look at the passage, which unfortunately won't be possible when I take the test on the computer.

I got 100% on this passage but only because I'm an econ major and I knew what they were looking for even without reading the whole passage.

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  • 3 years later...

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