2. 外语
  3. Read the article below about the real intentions of customers and the questions on the opposite page. For each question(13-1

Read the article below about the real intentions of customers and the questions on the opposite page. For each question(13-1

admin2015-04-23  51
问题     Read the article below about the real intentions of customers and the questions on the opposite page.
    For each question(13-18), mark one letter(A, B, C or D)on your Answer Sheet.
                    Turning Consumers into Customers
    The expression "supply and demand" was first coined as "demand and supply", by James Denham-Steuart in An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, written in 1767. In his Inquiry, Denham-Steuart says of demand, "It must constantly appear reciprocal. If I demand a pair of shoes, the shoemaker either demands money, or something else for his own use," adding, "The nature of demand is to encourage industry." Nine years later, in The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote, "The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence."
    It helps to revisit these elementary lessons because we’ve been ignoring them on the Web—at the cost of billions of dollars in lost opportunities for businesses other than those driven by advertising and " big data" farming.
    To see what I mean, consider this fact: you are not a customer of Facebook or Twitter. Nor of Google’s search, mail, and other free services. The actual customers of those companies are advertisers, not you. In fact, you and I are the products being sold to advertisers. No matter how well those companies serve us with free goodies, the fact remains that these companies’ consumers and customers are different populations, and we are among the former, and not the latter, because we pay them nothing. In Adam Smith’s terms, we do not employ them.
    And, because we are merely consumers of these services, our concerns tend to be dismissed when they are in conflict with the ambitions of those services’ customers, the advertisers. This is why websites, advertisers and third parties take liberties with our personal data, our privacy, and our tolerance for "personalisation" of messages that still fail 99% of the time. This causes two problems. One is abuse of consumers. The other is a lack of what we could bring to the market’s table—besides money—if we were full-fledged customers.
    On the consumer protection front, the Tracking Protection Working Group of the W3C(the leading Web standards organisation)is meeting this week in Washington, as reported in an NPR story titled ’ Do Not Track’ Web Browser Option Gains Steam. Regulators and lawmakers in Washington are also on the case. Last year Sen. Jay Rockefeller introduced the Do-Not-Track Online Act. In February of this year, the White House published a Privacy Bill of Rights.
    An excellent source of ongoing documentation of consumer abuse is The Wall Street Journal’s What They Know, a series of reports begun on July 31, 2010. And, since journalism alone has proven insufficient for reversing the tide of abuse, Julia Angwin and the WTK team are convening Data Transparency Weekend starting this Friday in New York. The purpose is to "build free Web tools that promote data transparency and control". This is a strong move toward giving consumers the powers of customers, whether or not they pay anything.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith points out that
选项 A、customers restrain workmen’s business manner to a certain extent.
B、customers use industry discipline to regularise workmen’s business manner.
C、a workman’s negligence is corrected by customers.
D、customers and workmen are dependent on each other in the product purchase.
答案A
解析 题目意为：“在《国富论》中，亚当·斯密指出……”，定位词为The Wealth of Nations。第一段中作者指出:…in The Wealth of Nations，Adam Smith wrote，“The real andeffectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers…”即：在《国富论》中，亚当·斯密写道，凌驾于工人之上的真正有效的规则是由他的顾客说了算。A项意为“消费者能在某种程度上制约工人的工作行为”，为正确答案。B项逻辑错误，顾客无法使用行业规则去管理工人的工作态度；C项错误，顾客没有职责去指出工人工作中的疏忽；D项在原文中涉及亚当·斯密及其书时没有提及。
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