Table of Contents
How to solve RC within 5-7 minutes?
Reading Comprehension Series
Figure out where you stand?
Are you the one who can answer 3-5 questions from a question set of 10
OR
Are you the one who can answer 7-8 questions from a question set of 10
Write your GOAL which you would want to achieve
BE REALISTIC and AVOID PUTTING PRESSURE ON yourself
Avoid committing a common mistake:
Of being in haste and reading the passage immediately.
Read the DIRECTIONS carefully
And look for any changes which may be mentioned
Step 1: Read the questions
Step 2: Note/ highlight the key words mentioned
in the question.
Why knowing the questions helps prior to reading
the passage?
TARGETED reading increases speed; Focused
reading ensures that you are a faster and goal
oriented reader
Who knows what she/he is looking for from the
passage
Remember the RC passage is not for leisure reading
therefore knowing what the questions demands
always helps
Step 3: Kick start your reading; SEARCH for
sentences with the key words in the passage
Step 4: Try to COMPREHEND WHAT the passage wants to convey
As then you will be able to answer the INDIRECT QUESTIONS
Indirect questions include:
Questions on TITLE Intention of the author
Tone of the passage Etc
Always remember:
Your SELECTION is not dependant on SOLVING
ALL the questions
But on leaving the ones which are complex/
complicated/ indirect
Directions:
Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate
answers for the questions that follow.
Soros, we must note, has never been a champion of free market capitalism. He
has followed for nearly all his public life the political ideas of the late Sir Karl
Popper who laid out a rather jumbled case for what he dubbed “the open society”
in his The Open Society and Its Enemies (1953). Such a society is what we
ordinarily call the pragmatic system in which politicians get involved in people’s
lives but without any heavy theoretical machinery to guide them, simply as the ad
hoc parental authorities who are believed to be needed to keep us all on the
straight and narrow. Popper was at one time a Marxist socialist but became
disillusioned with that idea because he came to believe that systematic ideas do
not work in any area of human concern.
The Popperian open society Soros promotes is characterized by a very general
policy of having no firm principles, not even those needed for it to have some
constancy and integrity. This makes the open society a rather wobbly idea, since
even what Popper himself regarded as central to all human thinking, critical
rationalism, may be undermined by the openness of the open society since its
main target is negative: avoid dogmatic thinking, and avoid anything that even
comes close to a set of unbreachable principles. No, the open society is open to
anything at all, at least for experimental purposes. No holds are barred, which, if
you think about it, undermines even that very idea and becomes unworkable.
Accordingly, in a society Soros regards suited to human community living, the
state can manipulate many aspects of human life, including, of course, the
economic behavior of individuals and firms. It can control the money supply,
impose wage and price controls, dabble in demand or supply-side economics, and
do nearly everything a central planning board might -provided it does not settle
into any one policy firmly, unbendingly. That is the gist of Soros’s Popperian
politics.
Soros’ distrusts capitalism in particular, because of the
alleged inadequacy of neoclassical economics, the technical
economic underpinnings of capitalist thinking offered up in
many university economics departments. He, like many
others outside and even inside the economics discipline, finds
the arid reductionism of this social science false to the facts,
and rightly so. But the defense of capitalist free markets does
not rest on this position.
Neo-classical thinking depends in large part on the 18th- and 19th-century belief
that human society operates according to laws, not unlike those that govern the
physical universe. Most of social science embraced that faith, so economics isn’t
unusual in its loyalty to classical mechanics. Nor do all economists take the
deterministic lawfulness of economic science literally – some understand that the
laws begin to operate only once people embark upon economic pursuits. Outside
their commercial ventures, people can follow different principles and priorities,
even if it is undeniable that most of their endeavors have economic features. Yet,
it would be foolish to construe religion or romance or even scientific inquiry as
solely explicable by reference to the laws of economics.
In his criticism of neo-classical economic science, then, George Soros has a point:
the discipline is too dependent on Newtonian physics as the model of science. As
a result, the predictions of economists who look at markets as if they were
machines need to be taken with a grain of salt. Some – for example the school of
Austrian economists – have made exactly that point against the neo-classical.
Soros draws a mistaken inference: if one defense of the market is flawed, the
market lacks defense. This is wrong. If it is true that from A we can infer B, it does
not prove that B can only be inferred from A; C or Z, too, might be a reason for B
Questions:
As per the paragraph, author believes that
1. Free market capitalism can be explained using neo-classical economics.
2. Neo-classical economics does not address the idea of free-market system.
3. Free market capitalism and open society are not different from each other.
4. Free market capitalism and laissez-faire are not different from each other.
5. Technical underpinning of neo-classical economics can address the idea of
laissez-faire.
As per the paragraph, which of the following statements is true?
1. Economic benefits of open society and laissez-faire are same.
2. Soros’ open society means no interference from the government.
3. Free market capitalism means no interference from the government.
4. Laws of economics are not capable of explaining the human nature completely.
5. Laws of economics capture the human nature completely as most of the human
endeavors are economic in nature.
According to the author,
1. George Soros believes in regulated economies.
2. George Soros does not believe in government intervention in state policies.
3. George Soros believes in state intervention provided it does not remain static.
4. George Soros believes that laissez-faire economies perform better than
free-market economies. 5. George Soros believes that free-market economies
perform better than controlled economies.
According to the author which of the following statement could be true about
critical rationalism.
1. Ideas of critical rationalism underpin the foundation of neo-classical economics.
2. Ideas of critical rationalism underpin the foundation of laissez-faire.
3. Ideas of critical rationalism underpin the foundation of open society.
4. Ideas of critical rationalism underpin the foundation of Newtonian physics. 5.
None of the above.
The word deterministic (used in fourth line of fifth paragraph), in the above
passage refers to:
1. An effect can only be caused by a single event.
2. An effect may be produced by many causes.
3. An effect cannot be produced by a cause.
4. Cause(s) of an effect can always be known.
5. Economics does not follow cause and effect relationship.
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