Thursday, January 24, 2019

Exactly

Reason Magazine has a good headline.
Shutdown-Induced Bottlenecks at Nation's Airports Shows Folly of Letting the Federal Government Run Things
I concur, and I've long wondered why the airlines let the TSA set the security standards.  For starters, they suck at it.  TSA fails to detect most threats, and basically performs kabuki theater to make the uneducated travelers feel better.  Those of us with security backgrounds know better.

Airline security should be airline-specific and could be used as a marketing tool.   Airline A could have hyper-vigilant security and make that a selling point.  Airline B could have good security, but let people think that flying is an adventure and cater to another market.

But, in the final analysis, the Fed Gov is horrible at most things.  We have a pretty good military, but I consider that the outlier, and mainly because the military has standards.  As a people, we should really limit the role of the Fed.Gov to simply funding the military.  Think how much money we'd save.

4 comments:

Jonathan H said...

I don't think they had a choice when DHS was established. They used to work closely with the FAA when it handled airport security. The FAA also took seriously their other objective of fostering air commerce. The TSA doesn't care about air travel or commerce, or the people they are supposed to be protecting. They make it clear again and again that they only care about their budgets and power.
I have been told that the best way to undermine one's authority is to issue a rule you can't enforce - both DHS and TSA have done this numerous times!

Old NFO said...

Funny how SFO doesn't have TSA. They have private security doing it...

RJ said...

After 9/11 I wrote my alleged representatives opposing nationalizing airport security. Also wrote opposing them being unionized, which was probably the democrats second favorite contribution to the DHS morass.

Termite said...

The Israelis know how to handle airline security. We should hire some to train the TSA workers.