填空题

Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.
For most people, shopping is still a matter of wandering down the high street or loading a cart in a shopping mall. Soon, that will change. Electronic commerce is growing fast and will soon bring people more choice. There will, however, be a cost: Protecting the consumer from fraud will be harder. Many governments therefore want to extend high- street regulations to the electronic world. But politicians would be wiser to see cyberspace as a basis for a new era of corporate self-regulation.
Consumers in rich countries have grown used to the idea that the government takes responsibility for everything from the stability of the banks to the safety of the drugs, or their rights to refund (退款) when goods are faulty. But governments cannot enforce national laws on businesses whose only presence in their country is on the screen. Other countries have regulators, but the rules of consumer protection differ, as does enforcement. Even where a clear right to compensation exists, the online catalogue customer in Tokyo, say, can hardly go to New York to extract a refund for a dud purchase.
One answer is for governments to cooperate more: to recognize each other’s rules. But that requires years of work and volumes of detailed rules. And plenty of countries have rules too fanciful for sober states to accept. There is, however, an alternative. Let the electronic businesses do the "regulation" themselves. They do, after all, have self-interest in doing so.
In electronic commerce, a reputation for honest dealing will be a valuable competitive asset. Governments, too, may compete to be trusted. For instance, customers ordering medicines online may prefer to buy from the United States because they trust the rigorous screening of the Food and Drug Administration; or they may decide that the FDA’s rules are too strict, and buy from Switzerland instead.
Consumers will need to use their judgment. But precisely because the technology is new, electronic shoppers are likely for a while to be a lot more cautious than consumers of the normal sort — and the new technology will also make it easier for them to complain noisily when a company lets them down. In this way, at least, the advent of cyberspace may argue for fewer consumer protection laws, not more.
In the author’s view, why do businesses place a high premium on honest dealing in the electronic world

【参考答案】

A good reputation is a great advantage in competition.
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Can we generate the new cultural attitudes required by our technological virtuosity History is not very reassuring here. It has taken centuries to learn how to live (36) in the family, the tribe, the city, the state, and the nation. Each new (37) of human sensitivity and loyalty has taken generations to become firmly (38) in the human mind. And now we are forced into a quantum leap from the mutual suspicion and (39) that have marked the past relations between peoples in a world in which (40) respect and comprehension are necessary. Even events of recent decades provide little basis for (41) . Increasing physical proximity has brought no millennium in human relations. If anything, it has appeared to (42) the divisions among people rather than to create a broader intimacy. Every new (43) in physical distance has made us more painfully aware of the psychic distance that divides people and has increased alarm over real or imagined differences. If today people occasionally choke on what seem to be indigestible differences between rich and poor, male and female, specialist and non-specialist within cultures, what will happen tomorrow when people must assimilate and cope with still greater contrasts in life styles (44) . Time and space have long cushioned intercultural encounters, confining them to touristic exchanges. But this insulation is rapidly wearing thin. (45) . There we will be surrounded by foreigners for long periods of time, working with others in the closest possible relationships. (46) .