{"id":4099,"date":"2013-03-21T07:54:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T12:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4099"},"modified":"2013-03-26T11:25:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T16:25:54","slug":"slippery-coke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4099","title":{"rendered":"Slippery coke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out this \u00c2\u00a0Brian McFaden Comic<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0(at the Daily Kos):*<\/p>\n

\"\"
Slippery slope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seems like your standard slippery slope argument to me (in addition to some poignant commentary on how wasteful this particular argument is). We’ve talked about this a lot here–here’s one by Scott from a few weeks ago<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The question there was what distinguishes the slippery\u00c2\u00a0slope from the\u00c2\u00a0bumpy staircase.<\/p>\n

I think of this whenever I walk through the outdoor area separating the building that houses my office from the rest of campus.\u00c2\u00a0 It used to be that smokers (such as I once was) would occupy tables in this covered area.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the area is off limits to smokers.\u00c2\u00a0 I can see a smoker’s argument going something like this:<\/p>\n

banning smoking outdoors in this one place will lead to banning smoking outdoors in another place, and eventually to the banning of smoking in all public places on campus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is certainly a slippery slope argument, but it doesn’t seem\u00c2\u00a0fallacious to me.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no significant conceptual distinction between the various moves.\u00c2\u00a0 I imagine the justification is that the University has the right to regulate toxic chemicals on campus.\u00c2\u00a0 They only do it piecemeal so as not to shock anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 Full disclosure, I\u00c2\u00a0look forward to the\u00c2\u00a0universal ban.<\/p>\n

Back to\u00c2\u00a0Bloomberg.\u00c2\u00a0 Aside from the general question as to why\u00c2\u00a0start with giant soft drinks, this argument seems to be\u00c2\u00a0like the smoking argument.\u00c2\u00a0 If city government has the power to regulate such things, then there is no conceptual distinction between\u00c2\u00a0various other food-related regulations.\u00c2\u00a0 There seems in other words to be no relevant\u00c2\u00a0difference between the\u00c2\u00a0giant softdrink and the megabaconator.\u00c2\u00a0 Banning the one is just like banning the other.<\/p>\n

*an earlier version mistakenly attributed the comic to Tom Tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out this \u00c2\u00a0Brian McFaden Comic\u00c2\u00a0(at the Daily Kos):* Seems like your standard slippery slope argument to me (in addition to some poignant commentary on how wasteful this particular argument is). We’ve talked about this a lot here–here’s one by Scott from a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 The question there was what distinguishes the slippery\u00c2\u00a0slope from … Continue reading Slippery coke<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1623,1620,1622,1968,1621],"class_list":["post-4099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-brian-mcfaden","tag-mayor-bloomberg","tag-new-york-city","tag-slippery-slope","tag-soft-drink-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4099"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4102,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4099\/revisions\/4102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}