There is no slippery slope | Hacker News Reader

There is no slippery slope

theincidentaleconomist.com

18 pointsgronkie11 comments

Seems like a stretch. The argument he's making is that "A is on the slippery slope to B" is equivalent to "A and B are both motivated and caused by common factors and influences", so B could just as easily have proceeded A. That's true for some A's and B's, but not always.

After the kittens on top of HN yesterday, I guess we'll find out just how slippery that particular slope is ...

Color me unconvinced, too. He brings up the example of the income tax as why the slippery slope argument fails, but it's actually a pretty convincing case study of the merits of the slippery slope argument. The income tax was originally pushed through in 1894 with the argument that a small income tax (only on the very richest, of course) would allow for tariff reductions. Several years later, tariffs were increased again with no corresponding decrease in the income tax. When the sixteenth amendment was being debated, arguments were made for a clause that would limit the tax to at most 10% of income, but the clause was abandoned because no one thought the income tax could or should get that high.

I'm sure he's fundamentally wrong. His logic depends in part on the idea that the "Action B" shares common motivations with Action A. But there's no reason that this should be so.

For example, thus far the federal government has been unable to pass legislation mandating a federal law for seatbelt usage. We know they're interested because they do try to cause the same end effect, by tying it to State highway funding.

Their interest isn't motivated by insurance costs (we know this because thus far the federal government has no direct interest in health insurance costs), but (presumably) by a direct interest in avoiding injuries in accidents.

However, if the slipper slope is opened up by allowing the Interstate Commerce Clause to refer to mandating an activity (wearing seatbelts), then it's a fair bet that the federal government will abandon their arm-twisting (viz conditioning based on highway funding) and legislate seatbelt usage nationally.

This might be a good thing; that's not the question. The real question is whether taking this first step is likely to precipitate further steps that, today, are understood to be forbidden.

One place where Koppelman (and presumably Frakt) is mistaken:

"...any slippery slope argument depends on a prediction that doing the right thing in the instant case will in fact increase the likelihood of doing the wrong thing..."

For the person arguing against doing A by invoking the slippery slope, A is NOT the "right thing" to do. The point of a slippery slope argument is to warn against making a concession. The person who is opposed to an income tax in principle would likely use the slippery slope to sway those who tend to agree with them, but are willing abandon the principle for the sake of compromise. If A was simply the "right thing" from the start, it would not likely face argument, slippery slope or otherwise.

"For instance, the federal taxing power theoretically empowers the government to tax incomes at 100%, thereby wrecking the economy. But there’s no slippery slope, because there is no incentive to do this, so it won’t happen."

Through the history of the income tax, top rates reached 94% in 1944, exceeded 90% for 16 years, and exceeded 50% for 54 years. It's still over 30%, and you'll notice our economy isn't doing too well.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...

Just because the bottom of the slope wasn't hit doesn't mean it wasn't slippery.

Please also notice that the economy was growing at a fantastic rate for most of the period that the top marginal tax rates were over 90%; and the last time they dropped as low as Reagan-to-now was the period directly leading to the Great Depression.

The slope may not tilt in the direction you think it does.

This annoys me as well.

"Let's not do perfectly reasonable action A because it could lead to completely irrational event B."

How about we just do A, but not B?

The problem is rational people disagree over whether B is irrational, and whether A is rational.

If it were that easy, we would.

The problem is that in a lot of "slippery slope" type activities doing A will make it much more likely that you won't be able to avoid B, or that someone else will use the fact that you did A to do B.

Purely anecdotally, I have a very hard time limiting portions for foods I like, especially cookies. If there are cookies available, I find it very hard not to take 3 or even more if I take the first one. it is easier to never take the first one.

What's the point of having a Constitution that sets limits on the powers of government?

Frederick Schauer [link] showed over 25 years ago that any slippery slope argument depends on a prediction that doing the right thing in the instant case will in fact increase the likelihood of doing the wrong thing in the danger case. If there is in fact no danger, then the fact that there logically could be has no weight. For instance, the federal taxing power theoretically empowers the government to tax incomes at 100%, thereby wrecking the economy. But there’s no slippery slope, because there is no incentive to do this, so it won’t happen.

Oh, so that explains why we stopped at 91%, during the Eisenhower administration.

The slippery slope argument may be a logical fallacy, but humans are not logical creatures. Hence the author is guilty of illogic, himself.

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