Digital SAT Reading and Writing Practice Question #632

Text 1 The swift adoption of the heavy plow in Northern Europe during the 11th century was fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Lords mandated its use to maximize crop yields, driven by the need to support a burgeoning non-agricultural population in growing urban centers. The sheer cost of the heavy plow necessitated communal pooling of oxen, a pragmatic fiscal contrivance designed by the elite to amortize the profound financial risk of capital-intensive farming. Text 2 While the heavy plow undeniably boosted agricultural output, reducing its adoption to mere utilitarianism ignores the deeply entrenched communal traditions of 11th-century Northern European peasant societies. The cooperative husbandry of draft animals was not an ad hoc fiscal palliative dictated by manorial lords. Rather, it was an organic manifestation of extant, deeply intertwined kin-based reciprocal obligations that predated the demographic shifts of the High Middle Ages. Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the assertion in Text 1 that the communal pooling of oxen was "a pragmatic fiscal contrivance"?