In a previous post I pointed out the slippery slope in accepting government-backed licensing of “crucial” professions. The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they tend not to be rhetorically-compelling to those without a sufficiently cynical, I should say realistic, conception of the state. They are simply not convinced that allowing certain “reasonable” policies now will set a precedent that will lead to unreasonable policies down the road. Our worries are discounted as merely hypothetical possibilities. They are quite content to put off discussion of crossing that bridge when we come to it…if we come to it, as they see things. And, in any case, something needs to be done about the current problem now, dammit! The trouble is, by the time we reach that bridge of unreasonableness (wherever it happens to be for our interlocutor), we have already gathered so much momentum from sliding down the slope that it is difficult, if not impossible, to halt, much less reverse, the slide. Along the way, with each new government intervention, people grow increasingly used to turning to government solutions for every little problem — they lose the ability to even imagine the possibility of private, market solutions — and what was once thought unreasonable no longer seems so.
We libertarians have more than merely consequentialist, slippery slope arguments against government policies, of course, but I still think it is useful to point out dangerous precedents, particularly when our worries are not just theoretical as we are already well on our way down the slide. The acceptance of professional licensing of “crucial” professions has over time been expanded into ever more areas, even to the licensing of florists in my home state of Louisiana and now to calls for the licensing of parents.
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Hugh LaFollette, “Licensing Parents Revisited,” Journal of Applied Philosophy.
The premise of his article is that the legitimacy of professional licensing is well-established and the practice should be expanded to parents.
While one could argue that it doesn’t follow from professional licensing being applied to various professions that it should be expanded to parents, this article is really illustrative of why libertarians should oppose professional licensure outright.
It’s a slippery slope from licensing florists to licensing parents, be it for procreation or raising children after the fact. Once you concede the legitimacy of some licensing, then more outrageous nonsense inevitably follows.
Logical Fallacy or Inevitability?
There’s an inevitability to the march of totalitarian economic control which Austrian School Economists have warned about repeatedly. There’s a tipping point which exists when a state interferes in an economy beyond which a state will invariably enact the same destructive policies which have collapsed the economies of other states which engaged in similar folly. This folly consists of practices such as debasing the currency, running up massive deficits and debt, and excessively regulating economic activity. (Note, of course, that for us anarchists all state regulation of economic activity is excessive; but, for my purposes here, we can limit the purview to the stifling, bureaucratic interferences like housing acts, forced lending to “sub-prime” borrowers, GSEs, mandates by the FDA and FTC and other three-letter economy-killers, etc.) What happens is simply this:
- Some economic “injustice” or “inequity” or “imbalance” (it almost always starts with those keywords, so be on the lookout) exists and is too upsetting to be tolerated.
- The state is used to enforce justice/equity/balance.
- These attempts to overthrow the laws of economics succeed only in creating new problems (“unintended consequences”) which then require further state action to attempt to alleviate.
- A slippery slope comes into play at this point, with each new state interference into the market creating new problems until everything the Austrian School economists warned of comes to pass.
So it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention that the state is now making it very difficult (and painful) for people to escape the country with their assets (link goes to Zero Hedge) :
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