The whole point of the TSA groping-and-fondling measures is to train and condition us, the cattle, into accepting the authority of the government class. The point is to train people to respond to the assertion of “national security” with reflexive and total submission.

The “war” is not on some mysterious and unidentified THEM. The war is on us, and always has been. The target is us.

How many fingers am I holding up?

Home of the brave, remember?

Also, as the passengers of Flight 93 proved, the “take over the plane to crash it into a target” strategy stopped working within hours of it being used successfully. The horror of 9/11 wasn’t that planes were crashed, the horror was that they were crashed into targets with devastating effectiveness. But that was defeated once people knew it was possible.

You need to be careful about sarcasm quotes on a blog like this.

They can make ALL the difference sometimes.

Oh, wait, actually…

…at the time box cutters—the apparent weapons of choice for the hijackers—were FAA approved, so it would have been illegal for the airline security agents to have confiscated them.

Prices and revenues (and money generally) are really just information. Every person acts with a view toward improving his quality of life, but everyone’s idea of what constitutes improvement is different, people have different time preferences, and there is always a scarcity of just about every resource one may use to pursue it (there’s always a scarcity of time, if nothing else).

In other words, motivation toward improvement is a constant across all of humanity — we are all motivated to achieve some goal, which is always some form of improvement, even if that goal is merely leisure, or the desire to maintain a preferred status quo. It’s information that tells each of us which behaviors lead to subjective improvement, and which do not.

In that sense, I think Misesian economics is highly compatible with the psychological theories of Alfred Adler — he posited that everyone has a goal, and it is subjectively defined — an idea about some state of affairs that would constitute an improvement in your life. His theory was that troubled or self-destructive people are not consciously aware of what their true goal is. They may have repressed it, and be pursuing it unconsciously, but they still have a goal, and it still motivates and guides their choices. Even people who, on the surface appear to be pursuing sub-optimal or even self-destructive behaviors are, at base, pursuing a goal which they subjectively consider to be an improvement of their status quo. Even though most people would see a self-destructive goal as a detriment, not an improvement, the self-destructive person sees it as offering some perverse benefit.

So, let’s consider the motivations and information available to a government agent. This person (whether a TSA agent, or managerial bureaucrat, or cabinet member) has just as much motivation to improve his life and pursue his goal (however it is subjectively defined) as anyone else, but he has no access to information that will tell him which behaviors lead to this “improvement.” From his perspective, the only information he receives tells him that it’s beneficial to him if he:(a) talks up the problem the agency supposedly exists to solve, and (b) keeps the internal squabbling to a minimum. Almost zero information flows to him from the airline passengers.

That informational vacuum (lack of paying customers) is filled instead with political information. It means that the TSA responds to every economic choice by making political calculations — every personnel problem becomes a union problem, and every inconvenience is transferred to the person with the least power to compalain. None of those decisions increases or decreases the TSA’s profit by one red cent, because the TSA has no profit. (Profit is just the market price for the entrepreneur’s portion of the revenues, and government has no entrepreneurs.)

Your “take” is quite correct–but so is Art Carden’s. There are things governments do that are poorly done or unsuccessful for primarily economic reasons, though they may be entirely in accordance with existing law. There are things governments may do which are entirely viable from an economic point of view but which are illegal intrusions (tyrannical inroads) on the rights of citizens, even according to the existing law of the particular government itself.

In this case, it seems we have a set of government procedures and behaviors that is bad on both accounts (which should not surprise, though few are quite so intrusive on so very many).

Actually, though I appreciate your love of liberty (it’s similar to my own), I would actually argue that, in one certain sense, Mr. Carden’s is the more universal argument. The Constitution is, after all, the “scrap of paper” that the enemies of liberty despise because it stands in the way of their assumption of various powers: it is changeable–entirely legally–by the process of amendment (even though you and I and many others might insist that the first ten amendments–the “Bill of Roghts”–are essentially inviolable and that to change even a single one would render a very different society than that we have by inheritance).). That is to say that the law you cite can be changed if the enemies of liberty muster sufficient support; no amount of support, though, however extensive, can nullify the simple economic law underlying Mr. Carden’s thesis.

The risk of dying in an airplane is much less, even with terror attacks. The only reason that we have this “security theater” is that career federal bureaucrats now have careers based on making us “safe” no matter what the cost or indignity.

Surly there should be some level of anti-terrorist security. There is a good case that this security should concentrate on police work rather than underwear searches.

Schneier.com – The Comparative Risk of Terrorism
- – schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparative.html

Schneier.com – Beyond Security Theater
- – schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html

Imagine if the people at your local garage slashed your tires and vandalized your car instead of fixing it. Could they get away with it? If they had competitors, no. If they were a monopoly, yes. Making your car worse than it was before is not just ONE way of increasing their revenue, it is the ONLY way that a monopoly can do so.

The problem is not one of “imperfect knowledge” at all. It happens that the government doesn’t know how to satisfy its citizens – but that doesn’t matter one bit. Even if they had the knowledge, they would have no motivation to satisfy the public and therefore they will not do so.

The real TSA problem is that they are criminals– directly violating the legal rights & freedoms of millions each day.

The American rule-of-law has been lost.

Trivia over specific TSA search procedures ignores the HUGE fact that any government ‘Search’ of an individual & his property is an absolute crime (absent a judicial warrant and/or specific probable-cause). This is fundamental United States constitutional & statutory law since founding of the Republic. Such loss of basic legal rights isn’t even noticed by most– and even cheered by many, who falsely believe they are safer.

The primary purpose of the 4th Amendment was precisely to prohibit the government from exercising such general Stop/Search Authority against the public. A general stop/search authority is extremely dangerous & unreasonable to the liberty of a free citizenry.

“General” reasons for searching anyone-or-everyone … like ‘general crime-prevention’ -OR-’general anti-terrorism’ efforts are PROHIBITED by the 4th Amendment. General or even ‘random’ searches are direct violations of Constitutional law.

Many foolish Americans accept the outrageous government excuse… that citizens automatically waive their Constitutional rights and consent to illegal search when they travel, especially on commercial airlines. That excuse is absurd; freedom of movement & travel is the most fundamental definition of liberty & freedom. The 9th & 10th Amendments to the Constitution most assuredly protect that basic freedom to travel unmolested by government agents.

Nationwide criminal organizations should be vigorously prosecuted and eliminated.