Logical Fallacies VI - The Slippery Slope
In a Pay to Play Law Blog response to <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/responding-arguments-against-signific…; target="”_blank”">my
recent blog post</a> on a discussion that had appeared in the Pay to
Play Law Blog, the argument is made that pay-to-play laws that go
beyond disclosure, such as prohibiting campaign contributions from
government contractors, set up a slippery slope toward the undermining
of constitutional rights and toward higher compliance costs by law-abiding companies.
This argument turns out to be a logical fallacy, which allows me to get
back to a series of posts on logical fallacies used in local government
situations, which I abandoned a couple of years ago.<br>
<br>
Here is the quote from <a href="http://www.paytoplaylawblog.com/2011/01/articles/a-thoughtful-response-…; target="”_blank”">the
January 21 Pay to Play Law Blog post:</a><ul>
As many jurisdictions have already learned, once one
embarks down the path of prohibiting contributions by corporations and
their “agents”, one has placed one’s hind-quarters squarely on the
proverbial slippery slope. To prevent circumvention of a law by those
few bad actors determined to gain an advantage, one must legislate
prohibitions against otherwise lawful conduct by a vast array of
potential agents (directors, directors’ spouses, relatives, domestic
partners, etc). As states such as Colorado
have learned, to cast a net wide enough to prevent circumvention one
often does so at the expense of the constitutional rights of innocent
parties and always at the expense of lawful businesses who simply want
to follow the law.</ul>
The slippery slope argument is a logical fallacy, because it is based on the
assumption that we cannot stop, that each new situation will not be
evaluated anew and decided on its merits. Even when the person making
the argument can point to a situation where things went "too far," his
argument assumes that others will do the same and cannot learn from the
problems arising elsewhere. It is, therefore, also an argument against
experimenting with reasonable policies in different jurisdictions to
see what actually will happen.<br>
<br>
It is true that no government ethics rule will totally prevent
circumvention. But all government ethics professionals can accept this
fact. One reason is that they understand that government ethics rules
are minimal in nature. That is, ethics rules are the least that is
expected from government officials and those doing business with
government.<br>
<br>
Another reason that government ethics professionals can accept that
there will be circumvention is that they are very used to not getting
what they want. Rather than living on a slippery slope heading
inevitably downward, they tend to live in a hole where their ethics program and their funding are in constant jeopardy. Then suddenly there is a big
scandal (usually not a government ethics scandal), and suddenly a pile
of earth lands in their hole, and they are on a bit higher ground. It
is never as high ground as everyone says it is, of course, but you work
with what you have and ask for more.<br>
<br>
In other words, the slippery slope is not the reality of the government
ethics world. It is a logical fallacy borrowed from such arguments as
those over euthanasia, abortion, drugs, and gun control.<br>
<br>
Here are my other posts on the use of logical fallacies in local
government:<br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/234" target="”_blank”">The Ad Hominem Attack</a><br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/244" target="”_blank”">The Ad Populum Defense</a><br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/272" target="”_blank”">The Straw Man Wears
Camouflage</a><br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/309" target="”_blank”">Begging the Question and
Appeals to Emotion</a><br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/518" target="”_blank”">Accusations of Hypocrisy
or Inconsistency</a><br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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