Test Prep TOEFL-Reading-Comprehension

Most economists in the United States seem captivated by spell of the free market. Consequently, nothing seems good or normal that does not accord with the requirements of the free market.

A price that is determined by the seller or for that matter, established by anyone other than the aggregate of consumers seems pernicious, accordingly, it requires a major act of will to think of price – fixing (the determination of prices by the seller) as both "normal" and having a valuable economic function. In fact, price-fixing is normal in all industrialized societies because the industrial system itself provides, as an effortless consequence of its own development, the price-fixing that requires, Modern industrial planning requires and rewards great size. Hence a comparatively small number of large firms will be competing for the same group of consumers. That each large firm will act with consideration of its own needs and thus avoid selling its products for more than its competitors charge is commonly recognized by advocates of free-markets economic theories. But each large firm will also act with full consideration of the needs that it has in common with the other large firms competing for the same customers. Each large firm will thus avoid significant price cutting, because price cutting would be prejudicial to the common interest in a stable demand for products. Most economists do not see price-fixing when it occurs because they expect it to be brought about by a number of explicit agreements among large firms; it is not.

More over those economists who argue that allowing the free market to operate without interference is the most efficient method of establishing prices have not considered the economies of non socialist countries other than the United States. These economies employ intentional price-fixing usually in an overt fashion.

Formal price fixing by cartel and informal price fixing by agreements covering the members of an industry are common place. Were there something peculiarly efficient about the free market and inefficient about price fixing, the countries that have avoided the first and used the second would have suffered drastically in their economic development. There is no indication that they have.

Socialist industry also works within a frame work of controlled prices. In early 1970s, the Soviet Union began to give firms and industries some of the flexibility in adjusting prices that a more informal evolution has accorded the capitalist system. Economists in the United States have hailed the change as a return to the free market. But Soviet firms are no more subject to prices established by free market over which they exercise little influenced than are capitalist firms.

It can be inferred from the author's argument that a price fixed by the seller "seems pernicious" because

In strongly territorial birds such as the indigo bunting, song is the main mechanism for securing g, defining, and defending an adequate breeding are. When population density is high, only the strongest males can retain a suitable are. The weakest males do not breed or are forced to nest on poor or marginal territories.

During the breeding season, the male indigo bunting sings in his territory; each song lasts two or three seconds with a very short pause between songs, Melodic and rhythmic characteristics are produced by rapid changes in sound frequency and some regularity of silent periods between sounds. These modulated sounds form recognizable units, called figures, each of which is reproduced again and again with remarkable consistency. Despite the large frequency range of these sounds and the rapid frequency changes that the birds makes, the n umber of figures is very limited. Further, although we found some unique figures in different geographical populations, more than 90 percent of all Indigo bunting figures are extremely stable on the geographic basis . In our studies of isolated buntings we found that male indigo buntings are capable of singing many more types of figures than they usually do. Thus, it would seem that they copy their figures from other buntings they hear signing.

Realizing that the ability to distinguish the songs of one species from those of another could be an important factor in the volition of the figures, we tested species recognition of a song. When we played a tape recording of a lazuli bunting or a painted bunting, male indigo bunting did not respond; Even when a dummy of male indigo bunting was placed near the tape recorder. Playing an indigo bunting song, however, usually brought an immediate response, making it clear that a male indigo bunting can readily distinguished songs of its own species from those of other species.

The role of the songs figures in interspecies recognition was then examined. We created experimental songs composed of new figures by playing a normal song backwards, which changed the detailed forms of the figures without altering frequency ranges or gross temporal features. Since the male indigos gave almost a full response to the backward song, we concluded that a wide range of figures shapes can evoke positive responses. It seems likely, therefore, that a specific configuration is not essential for interspecies recognition, but it is clear that song figures must confirm to a particular frequency range, must be within narrow limits of duration, and must be spaced at particular intervals.

There is evident that new figures may arise within a population through a slow process of change and selection. This variety is probably a valuable adaptation for survival: if every bird sang only a few types of figures, in dense woods or underbrush a female might have difficulty recognizing her mates song and a male might not be able to distinguish a neighbor from a stranger. Our studies led us to conclude that there must be a balance between song stability and conservatism, which lead to clear-cut species recognition, and song variation, which leads to individual recognition.

It can be inferred that the investigation that determined the similarly among more than 90 percent of all the figures produced by birds living in different regions was undertaken to answer which of the following questions?

I. How much variations, if any, is there in the figure types produced by indigo buntings in different locales?

II. Do local populations of indigo buntings develop their own dialects of figure types?

III. Do figure similarities among indigo buntings decline with increasing geographic separation?

Those examples of poetic justice that occur in medieval and Elizabethan literature, and that seem so satisfying, have encouraged a whole school of twentieth- century scholars to "find" further examples. In fact, these scholars have merely forced victimized character into a moral framework by which the injustices inflicted on them are, somehow or other, justified. Such scholars deny that the sufferers in a tragedy are innocent; they blame the victims themselves for their tragic fates.

Any misdoing is enough to subject a character to critical whips. Thus, there are long essays about the misdemeanors of Websters Duchess of Malfi, who defined her brothers, and he behavior of Shakespeares Desdemona, who disobeyed her father.

Yet it should be remembered that the Renaissance writer Matteo Bandello strongly protests the injustice of the severe penalties issued to women for acts of disobedience that men could, and did, commit with virtual impunity. And Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Webster often enlist their readers on the side of their tragic heroines by describing injustices so cruel that readers cannot but join in protest. By portraying Griselda, in the Clerks Tale, as a meek, gentle victim who does not criticize, much less rebel against the prosecutor, her husband Walter, Chaucer incites readers to espouse Griseldas cause against Walters oppression. Thus, efforts to supply historical and theological rationalization for Walters persecutions tend to turn Chaucers fable upside down, to deny its most obvious effect on readers sympathies. Similarly, to assert that Websters Duchess deserved torture and death because she chose to marry the man she loved and to bear their children is, in effect to join forces with her tyrannical brothers, and so to confound the operation of poetic justice, of which readers should approve, with precisely those examples of social injustice that Webster does everything in his power to make readers condemn. Indeed. Webster has his heroin so heroically lead the resistance to tyranny that she may well in spire members of the audience to imaginatively join forces with her against the cruelty and hypocritical morality of her brothers.

Thus Chaucer and Webster, in their different ways, attack injustice, argue on behalf of the victims, and prosecute the persecutors. Their readers serve them as a court of appeal that remains free to rule, as the evidence requires, and as common humanity requires, in favour of the innocent and injured parties. For, to paraphrase the noted eighteenth-century scholar, Samuel Johnson, despite all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, it is by the common sense and compassion of readers who are uncorrupted by the characters and situations in mereval and Elizabethan literature, as in any other literature, can best be judged.

The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman share certain beliefs. Common to all these writers is their humanistic perspective. Its basic premises are that humans are the spiritual center of the universe and that in them alone is the clue of the nature, history and ultimately the cosmos itself. Without denying outright the existenced either of a deity or of brute matter, this perspective nevertheless rejects them as exclusive principles of interpretation and prefers to explain humans and the world in terms of humanity itself. This preference is expressed most clearly in the Transcendentalist principle that the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self: therefore, all knowledge begins with self-knowledge.

This common perspective is almost always universalized. Its emphasis is not upon the individual as a particular European or American, but upon the human as universal, freed from the accidents of time, space, birth and talent. Thus, for Emerson, the "American Scholar" turns out to be simply "Main Tinking"; while, for

Whitman, the "Song of Myself" merges imperceptibly into a song of all the "children of Adam:," where "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." Also common to all five writers is the belief that individual virtue and happiness depends upon the self-realization, which, in turn, depend upon the harmonious reconciliation of two universal psychological tendencies: first, the self-asserting impulse of the individual to withdraw; to remain unique and separate, and to be responsible only to himself or herself, and second, the self-transcending impulse of the individual to embrace the whole world in the experience of a single moment and to know and become one with that world. These conflicting impulses can be seen in the democratic ethic. Democracy advocates individualism, he preservation of the individuals freedom and self-expression. But the democratic self is torn between the duty to self, which is implied by the concept of liberty, and the duty to society, which is implied by the concept of equality and fraternity.

A third assumption common to the five writers is that intuition and imagination offer a surer road to truth than does abstract logic or scientific method. It is illustrated by their emphasis upon the introspection-their belief that the clue to external nature is to be found in the inner world of individual psychology and by their interpretation of experience as, in essence, symbolic. Both these stresses presume an organic relationship between the self and the cosmos of which only intuition and imagination can properly take account. These writers faith in the imagination and in themselves as practitioners of imagination led them conceive of the writer as a seer and enabled them to achieve supreme confidence in their own moral and metaphysical insights.

The author's discussion of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman is primarily concerned with explaining.

Recent years have brought minority-owned businesses in the United States unprecedented opportunities-as well as new and significant risks. Civil rights activists have long argued that one of the principal reasons why Blacks, Hispanics and the other minority groups have difficulty establishing themselves in business is that they lack access to the sizable orders and subcontracts that are generated by large companies. Now congress, in apparent agreement, has required by law that businesses awarded federal contracts of more than $500,000 do their best to find minority subcontractors and record their efforts to do so on forms field with the government. Indeed, some federal and local agencies have gone so far as to set specific percentage goals for apportioning parts of public works contracts to minority enterprises.

Corporate response appears to have been substantial. According to figures collected in 1977, the total of corporate contracts with minority business rose from $77 to $1. 1 billion in 1977. The projected total of corporate contracts with minority business for the early 1980s is estimated to be over $3 billion per year with no letup anticipated in the next decade. Promising as it is for minority businesses, this increased patronage poses dangers for them, too. First, minority firms risk expanding too fast and overextending themselves financially, since most are small concerns and, unlike large businesses they often need to make substantial investments in new plants, staff, equipment, and the like in order to perform work subcontracted to them. If, thereafter, their subcontracts are for some reason reduced, such firms can face potentially crippling fixed expenses. The world of corporate purchasing can be frustrating for small entrepreneurs who get requests for elaborate formal estimates and bids. Both consume valuable time and resources and a small companys efforts must soon result in orders, or both the morale and the financial health of the business will suffer.

A second risk is that White-owned companies may-seek to cash inon the increasing apportionments through formation of joint ventures with minority-owned concerns, of course, in many instances there are legitimate reasons for joint ventures; clearly, white and minority enterprises can team up to acquire business that neither could Third, a minority enterprise that secures the business of one large corporate customer often runs the danger of becoming and remaining dependent. Even in the best of circumstances, fierce competition from larger, more established companies makes it difficult for small concerns to broaden their customer bases; when such firms have nearly guaranteed orders from a single corporate benefactor, they may truly have to struggle against complacency arising from their current success.

The passage supplies information that would answer which of the following questions?