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  3. Because some resources must be allocated at the national level, we have created policies which reflect the aggregated attributes

Because some resources must be allocated at the national level, we have created policies which reflect the aggregated attributes

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问题    Because some resources must be allocated at the national level, we have created policies which reflect the aggregated attributes of our society. The Federal budget determines the proportion of Federal resources to be invested in social welfare programs and how these resources are distributed among competing programs. This budget is arrived at through a reiterative aggregative political process which mediates the claims of groups interested in health, education, welfare, and so on, thus socializing the continuing conflict generated by their separate aspirations, the test of whether it can marshal sufficient legitimacy and consent to provide a basis for cohesion and action. Technical criteria may play a role in the process, but the ultimate criteria are political and social.
   Whether a policy, which is "good" in the aggregate sense, is also "good" for a particular person, however, is a different matter. If everyone had identical attributes, these criteria will always produce different outcomes. Any policy negotiated to attain an aggregate correctness will be wrong for every individual to whom the policy applies. The less a person conforms to the aggregate, the more wrong it will be.
   When a policy is not working, we normally assume that the policy is right in form but wrong in content. It has failed because insufficient intelligence has informed its construction or insufficient energy its implementation. We proceed to replace the old policy by a new one of: the same form. This buys time, since some time must elapse before the new policy can fully display the same set of symptoms of failure as the old. We thus continue to invest our time, energy, and other resources as if every new discovery of a nonworking policy is surprise, and a surprise that can be corrected with some reorganized model. But if policies based on complex, aggregated information are always wrong with respect to the preferences of every person to whom they apply, we should concentrate on limiting such policies to minima or "floors." Rather than trying for better policies, we should try for fewer policies or more limited aggregated ones. Such limitations could be designed to produce policies as spare and minimal as possible, for the resources not consumed in their operation would then be usable in a non-aggregative and person-specific ways--that is, in a disaggregated fashion. This will require more than just strengthened "local" capacity; it will require the development of new procedures, institutions, roles, and expectations.
Which of the following best states the central theme of the passage?
选项 A、Policies designed to meet the needs of a large group of people are inherently imperfect and should be scaled down.
B、Policies created by the democratic process are less effective than policies designed by a single, concentrated body of authority.
C、The effectiveness of a social policy depends more upon the manner in which the policy is administered than upon its initial design.
D、Since policies created on the Federal level are inherently ineffective, all Federal social welfare programs should be discontinued.
答案A
解析 主旨题。在第一段中作者就讲到了集合政策(aggregative policy)，那就是想满足一群人需要的政策。在第二段中，他对此进行了解释，认为这种政策在本质上说是不完美的，因为个人与群体的需要总是不相同的。在最后一段里，他得出结论，我们应该尽少地依赖于那些并不完美的政策。A最能反映这种观点。 B的内容是错误的，因为它模糊了第一段的内容，政策不好并不是民主政治造成的，而是它们针对的是一个群体。C是错误的，因为作者谴责的是政策的design，而不是其实行的过程。D错在两个方面，第一，作者并不是批评Federal level，他在指责aggregative policies；第二，D的内容超越了作者的意图，作者是说尽量少用这些政策，而不是完全取缔它们。
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