Jaywalking and The Slippery Slope

Hello dopers, here’s a question I’ve been pondering lately:

I am living abroad now, in Germany to be precise, and I’m here with a friend from the Uni.

One of his quirks (oh boy, does he has some) is, he won’t cross a one way street in the center of the city, a place that is normally crowded and doesn’t have the zebra pass.
He will walk approx. 100 meter to an underground station to cross the street and then walk to where I was.
He says he does this because he doesn’t like when people break the law, because that leads to people breaking the laws they don’t care about and eventually to social problems like tax evasion and fraud,

So, my question is, is that a Slippery Slope fallacy? I may not change his views, but at least I’d like to clear this up.

I say that laws exist to prevent harm to people or society in general. When there’s no possible way breaking the law could harm anyone or the public good (crossing a street with no car anywhere in sight), I can’t find anything wrong with it.

Jaywalking =/= tax evasion

Depending on the jurisdiction the absence of a crosswalk doesn’t necessarily mean that pedestrian crossing is illegal. Often crossing at any road intersection is allowed, so regardless of the validity of the possible slippery slope, your friend may be going out of his way to avoid doing something that is actually legal anyways.

Well in Britain jaywalking isn’t a crime. When my grandmother visited the USA she nearly got in trouble for jaywalking, being unaware that it was illegal there (a friend was able to explain and she got off with a warning).

I assure you that she’s yet to be arrested for tax evasion or fraud on either side of the pond. =P

ETA Assuming *arguendo *that the example jaywalking is in fact illegal.

I have to admire his effort at consistency. A lot of people would be happy to jaywalk themselves while berating other jaywalkers for being scofflaws. He’s willing to go out of his way to not be part of the problem. Whether or not that actually makes him part of the solution is the interesting question.

At least here in the US there is some evidence that agressive policing of minor crime leads to a significant reduction in major crime. it’s not clear whether it’s the direct effect of the police on the minor defendants or the effect of the lack of minor crime on the innocent citizenry which slows down major crime.

I’d bet both he & you are rather young. My best answer is that he’s logically correct, but sociology & group behavior is squishy enough that he’s making zero difference in the world.

Were he to take that same zeal & get famous, creating some large following of like-minded people, then when enough folks act as he does, there’d be an actual societal change.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving Mothers Against Drunk Driving - Wikipedia changed the attitude of mainstream America towards social drinking followed by driving. It also took them 30+ years & umpteen thousand people & umpteen millions of dollars.
Here’s another way to look at it: The “slippery slope” starts out almost level, with an almost imperceptible tilt. Admittedly, as you go farther along it gets pretty steep. e.g. after your 3rd armed robbery there’s not too much you won’t do.

But at the upper end, where the slope is very slight, there’s also friction. The slope might be slippery, but it isn’t (for psychologically normal people) frictionless. A small transgression doesn’t cause you to pick up speed. It leaves you in the same state looking forward as you were. If I jaywalk I now have that event indelibly in my history. But that need not make me more likely to do it again. I start each day fresh with that decision to make. And I start it from essentially the same place I was before the first jaywalk: aware of the rights and obligations and upsides and downsides of each of my choices.

There’s also the restorative uphill-pulling force of guilt, social pressure, etc. Just because I jaywalk once doesn’t mean I’m doomed to a life of ever-increasing depravity ending in some Silence of the Lambs crescendo. Nor is anyone else.
Overall, I’d say your pal has confused the slippery slope with the frictionless slope. He’s also vastly overestimated his importance in the scheme of things. Without a following his impact on society is so close to zero as to be ignored. Just like leaving one pebble off a truckload of gravel is technically short-changing the customer but will have zero impact on the customer’s satisfaction with the delivery.

I agree with the slippery slope. Laws in the US like prohibition and the 55mph speed limit made criminals out of a large section of the population. Once that distrust of the laws that the government passes comes into play, then you start ignoring the good ones.

e.g. “They say that I need to have my kids buckled up? Bah! They also say that you should only drive 55mph. What do they know?”

You say “without a following…” But he does have a following, of at least one person, namely Kataskopo.

You say “so close to zero as to be ignored”. But the truth is “so close to zero that LSLGuy feels justified in ignoring it.”

You say “leaving one pebble off a truckload of gravel is technically short-changing the customer but will have zero impact on the customer’s satisfaction with the delivery.” I would have said that leaving one pebble off a truckload of gravel will not be noticed by the customer, but it is still technically short-changing him.

My point is that the friend is making a valid statement, and it is merely a matter of opinion how much weight to put into that view.

Does he think that he himself will start committing serious crimes if he “jaywalks”? Or that others will see him doing it and suddenly start committing fraud?

BTW I wouldn’t mind betting that it is perfectly legal to cross a street where there is no formal crossing provided within a reasonable distance.

Sure, it’s slippery slope, but that’s because all logical fallacies assume perfectly logical actors. What is illogical is quite often true.

Consider ad hominem, for example. Logically, you should be able to judge someone entirely on their arguments and not their character. But, in real life, often specific facts are omitted when making an argument, and often the person considering the argument is not knowledgeable to know what was omitted. Whether one has tricked people in the past is thus largely relevant.

No, what really happens with fallacies is that there are unstated premises–and these may or may not be true. His stated premises do not follow, but, with the proper unstated ones, can be 100% true.

With something this logically complicated (so as I’m not even going to try to list all the unstated premises), it is perhaps more useful to use an inductive rather than deductive approach. And apparently there is an experiment mentioned above that his statement may be true. His reasoning is just bad.

First to clear up the technical point of the law: It’s not that jaywalking is forbidden, it’s endangering traffic that’s forbidden. Pedestrians who walk across the street when there’s no zebra crossing or traffic light can cause accidents as the cars brake suddenly.
A pedestrian crossing a street at red light will also be punished.

It does depend on the circumstances though - on a visit to Ulm recently I learned that a previously major street has now been slowed down and pedestrians cross fearlessly because the cars are driving very slowly at this point and know to watch out for them, so no accidents.

Secondly, your friend is using an unusual argument. The usual reminder at street lights is “Nur bei Grün, der Kinder wegen” (Only at green light because of the children) - adults may be able to judge safely that crossing at red now is no danger, but children can’t judge that, so they need to learn that nobody crosses when the light is red, never. Later, they can judge the risks and decide that at 1 am with no cars around, it doesn’t matter (still should avoid cops).

The other factor is usually concern for one’s own safety - the rule for bicylcists is usually given as “it’s no use to be right if you’re in an accident” (e.g. when a car doesn’t see you when turning a corner and cuts you off or crashes you). So if the street is busy but has no intersection, taking a longer walk might be better option.

You could ask your friend if he works with children or other people where rigid following of rules is still important, and has therefore internalized this to his off-times, too.

I think you missed my intro. I think the friend is taking a perfectly valid, legitimate, and honorable stance.

I also think his doing so is irrelevant to his stated goal of influencing society at large. Unless I misinterpreted the OP and he actually meant that the friend was afraid that if the friend started jaywalking, soon he himself would be a fraudulent tax evader or worse.

I think the OP’s actions are a variation of the “Broken Windows” theory:

There has been a great deal of debate surrounding it, but I think it is limited to making physical improvements in a community to reduce crime. I don’t believe it applies to watching another driver drive 55 or a friend cross at an intersection.

In Freakanomics, Levitt provides good reasons to doubt the theory anyway, regardless of how it’s applied.

Quoth Bisected8:

Where in the USA was this? I’ve never seen any police officer ever enforce any law against jaywalking, nor give so much as a stern talking-to to anyone who’s done it.

I saw somebody get ticketed for jaywalking in Washington, DC once.

I do think there’s some validity to the argument that the guy offers in the OP, but I think he comes to the wrong conclusion. That is, I do think there is potential for slippery slope in behavior and I do think that to some extent the behavior of one can affect the behavior of others, but he’s drawn the line WAY WAY to conservatively.

As far as the slippery slope goes, I think he’s just mashed too much into the “breaking the law” concept. For instance, I would agree that stealing $1 from the cash register at work to get a drink from the vending machine is wrong and it’s a slippery slope toward more serious offences, but that’s a slippery slope toward stealing $10, then $100, then $1000. I don’t think it follows that by stealing $1 it might ultimately lead to utter lawlessness and a murderous rampage.

By the same token, I don’t think that the slippery slope of jay walking necessarily leads to anything of substantial consequence except, perhaps making potentially riskier and riskier jaywalks. I just cannot buy that one person might have been perfectly law abiding before becoming a drug lord or something and his first crime was jaywalking, and certainly not with his first jaywalking offense at an adult age.

I also think that jaywalking is a fundamentally different type of crime than theft, rape, or murder. It is impossible to have a theft, rape, or murder without someone being a victim. With a crime jaywalking, it is possible that there is a victim with jaywalking, should it cause an accident or even force someone to slow down or swerve, but it is possible to be technically guilty of it and not have anyone other than the jaywalker affected at all.

But someone who always follows the letter of the law leaves me with a lot of questions about how he might handle more morally ambiguous situations. It’s not so bad to walk a little bit farther, but what if he had to walk a lot farther, would he do it then? Or, more interestingly, what if both the seriousness of the law and the cost involved with upholding it were much higher. For instance, some variation of something like stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family, or whatever strikes a cord with him. Frankly, I have trouble trusting that someone who holds such a solid absolute on a relatively minor thing might be appropriately equipped to handle a situation when the costs are more dire.
And on the single actor part, I do think there’s something to it. There’s certainly some aspects of hive mind or group think or herd mentality or whatever you want to call it, and individuals can have sway over it. The problem is, one will only have sway if one is actually working toward something that others can relate to. So many societal changes have been sparked by just a single act or a small series of acts, but they also tend to be on issues that society is primed for change on and that individuals just need a catalyst to get the ball rolling on change. The problem is, with not jaywalking, not only is it pushing such a small thing, but it’s also doing it in a small way.

That is, one person can cause ripples over an entire lake if he drops a large enough stone from high enough up, but if one is dropping only a pebble from only a few inches above the surface, he’s only fooling himself if he thinks anyone will notice anything. So, in short, he’s deluding himself into thinking he’s doing something to improve society, but it’s just a waste.

This story is not about jaywalking, but it’s still a goodie…

When I was in college (mid-70’s), there was a certain flyer posted on the walls of the dorm which advertised a certain event. I felt that the flyer could be improved on, and I thought nothing of taking out my pencil and “correcting” it. When I did the same thing to a full-size ad plastered on the walls of the NYC subway, a man in blue tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, sir, but that’s graffiti.” He threatened to take me down to the station and arrest me, and I knew he was totally right, so I just took it like a man and he let me off with a warning.

This was me, not an urban legend about a friend of a friend. Busted for graffiti! I still can’t believe it.

Are you really surprised? I’m not. I am curious about what you tried to correct, though.

Wow, thanks for the replies!

Not really, his argument is basically we cannot (or shouldn’t) choose which laws to break, but I think his approach appears sometimes too stiff, he doesn’t consider what do you say:

That’s basically my main problem. I saw other people crossing the street, and the cars were at max. 20 kph (10 mph).
In those cases, I think you can use a little judgement and cross the street. But he says that what you are doing is breaking the law because it bothers me, then in that case i would break the law too because I may think that paying some taxes (like the infamous GEZ) is bothersome, or stealing cable because it’s bothersome for me to sign up for a service.

And someone said that I was a follower, not in the sense of doing the same as him.

I think that if your friend believes jaywalking on Monday will lead him into armed robbery by mid-week then he should definitely keep using the pedestrian routes. :slight_smile:

Is armed-robbery even actually illegal in Germany?