Don’t Buy the Slippery-Slope Argument on Guns

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- In 1991, the economist AlbertHirschman published a biting, funny and subversive book, “TheRhetoric of Reaction,” whose principal goal was to provide akind of reader’s guide to conservative objections to socialreform. Hirschman wanted to demonstrate that such objections arepervasive, mechanical, routinized and often unconvincing.

Hirschman used the words “perversity” and “futility” todescribe his best examples of reactionary rhetoric.Conservatives often object that reforms will turn out to beperverse, because they will have the opposite of their intendedeffect. For example, those who oppose increases in the minimumwage contend that such increases will worsen unemployment andthus hurt the very people they are intended to help -- a clearexample of perversity.