Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #571

Text 1 Historians have long argued that medieval European merchant and artisan guilds severely hindered technological innovation. By enforcing strict monopolies, artificially capping production quotas, and rigidly standardizing manufacturing techniques, guilds systematically crushed disruptive competition. If a maverick artisan developed a faster, mechanized way to weave wool, the guild would leverage its legal authority to ban the machine, prioritizing the economic stability of its members over systemic industrial progress. Text 2 While it is undeniably true that medieval guilds fiercely protected their local monopolies, viewing them solely as engines of economic stagnation misses a crucial point. Guilds functioned as the primary mechanism for the intergenerational transfer of complex, tacit knowledge. The notoriously gruelling apprenticeship system ensured that minute, hard-won refinements in metallurgy, masonry, and textiles were meticulously preserved and passed down. Without this highly regulated framework for maintaining foundational expertise, the incremental technological leaps that eventually sparked the Industrial Revolution would have lacked the necessary bedrock of skilled human capital. Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the assertion in Text 1 that guilds "hindered technological innovation"?