Due to an error in the drafting of the documents, a company that recei

Passage Analysis

Due to an error in the drafting of the documents, a company that received a government loan to pursue research in the wind energy sector is exempt from interest payments for the 20-year life of the loan. The intent had been that the loan would be interest-free only until the cost per watt of wind energy fell below a certain threshold. This would pave the way for the company to generate enough operating revenue to stay solvent on its own. Wind energy prices have now reached that threshold, and the company is effectively earning free money due to its zero-interest loan. When approached by government lawyers about renegotiating the terms of the loan, however, the management of the company balked at the idea, arguing that doing so would violate long-established principles of legal agreements.

The passage states a situation in which the company that could make more profit for an error not of their own rejects the proposition to agree to correcting that error, which will mean less profits for them. They are aware that they are making some unfair money but still prefer to hold on to the legal agreement since even with the error the other party has already technically accepted to follow it . They key part of this passage is that their argument is positioned against violating long established principles of legal agreements

Question Stem:
Which of the following statements best reflects the position of the company’s management?

Essentially we need to make an inference about this position from the scenario.

Option Analysis

a) One should always seize unique opportunities.
INCORRECT- Though may appear relevant, this statement reflects the company's intentions, not their position.

b) People should not make impositions upon others that they would not like to have made upon themselves.
INCORRECT- What the government or government lawyers would want if they were in the benefiting position is irrelevant for this question.

c) Those who possess something have the right to profit from it, even if the thing were unjustly obtained.
INCORRECT- This statement does not completely do justice to the passage as the extra profit was made of an error and not intentional in the first place. Technically it is justifiable because the other partly had already approved to it on paper.

d) Breaking one’s written word is unfair.
CORRECT- This option directly refers to the legal agreement and not wanting to amend it, in the same lines of the company's argument. Hence it is the correct answer.

e) Justice is most satisfying when it is poetic.
INCORRECT- All matters of satisfaction or being poetic is out of the scope of the passage as we are not to deal with the associated emotions here.