Critically evaluate the following two pieces of reasoning in terms of their persuasiveness.
Passage 1: School Breakfasts
In my opinion, schools should not provide free breakfasts for all students. After all, nutrition is the parents’ responsibility and who’s to say that the school breakfast will be healthy anyway? Besides, I work hard for my money and make personal sacrifices to provide food for my own kids so why should I subsidise someone else because they squander their money or that they just can’t be bothered to work. To be honest, I’m pretty sick of these people sponging off good honest hard-working people like me. Aside from all of this, I think that the government should focus their efforts on the neediest in society and you can’t do that by providing a school breakfast that’s available to everyone.
Passage 2: Organ Sales
People should be allowed to sell their bodily organs. This is because the only acceptable reason for the government to control your behaviour is to stop you from harming another, but if you sell an organ to someone, you don’t harm them, you help them! Moreover, we don’t stop people giving their organs away, and we don’t stop people giving other people money, and selling organs is just these two things happening together. And whilst it is risky, we allow people such as soldiers, sports people and forestry workers to make money from taking risks to their well-being and safety already. If it’s the way that somebody chooses to make money, why should we stop them?
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