Comment by lenerdenator
8 days ago
This sort of thing is why the US has turned into a governance-averse society in some pretty bothersome ways.
People suggest some sort of regulation for something, or some social service, often ones that are similar to those in the UK, and people who oppose it will point to things like this and use them to illustrate the slippery slope fallacy.
>the slippery slope fallacy
I see the slippery slope fallacy-fallacy more than the base fallacy.
The US is a "governance-avere" society from conception. The Constitution decrees that the government should only have a few explicitly enumerated responsibilities, and nothing else. The country was set up such that the laws that affected a person were supposed to be from as much of a local level as possible. It was set up such that there wouldn't be some rulers (even if democratically elected) lording over the country, deciding things for everyone. A huge chunk of the founding fathers argued for not having a federal government at all.
The US was literally the people rejecting the UK governance system and starting their own, setting it up in a way so that it would never be the UK governance system. And here you are complaining that people in the US point to government happenings in the UK as something to be wary of, saying that the US has become "governance-averse"? Seriously?
Given that there are some ideas from the UK that could do the US some good, yeah.
I mean, it quite literally is a slippery slope. Its only a fallacy if the causal indicators aren't so obvious.
Well, if you look at the US, similar laws are being enacted at the state level as those you see in the UK, often by the same people who would reject the other features of governance you see in the UK (the NHS, stricter firearms regulations, etc.) because of them being "overbearing".
They are overbearing, this UK-esque "do you have a loisence for that" governance, is exactly why we have a permitting crisis in SF.
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