Tired of Safety? Republicans push for abolishment of TSA

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ZenMode said:
Fine with me. TSA employees are no more skilled, capable or intelligent because they work for the government. The government just makes airport security more expensive.
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In 2023 I flew from RDU to Birmingham, Alabama to ride home with my granddaughter after the end of the fall semester. My wife drove me to the airport. We stopped at a convenience store on the way so I could get something to drink. I put the coin change in my pocket. I was in line to go thru security. I put my stuff in the tray and went thru the metal detector. I set the machine off. I had forgotten to take the coins out of my pocket. A security guard came running up to me. I showed him the coins and explained what happened. I put the coins in the tray and went back thru the machine. No problem. It was embarrassing, but it did make me feel secure knowing they were on top of things to that degree. If TSA is privatized, the company in charge will cut corners making flying less safe. It’s been 23 1/2 years since 9/11 and there have been no hijackings since. You really want to put this important safety function, which has prevented another 9/11, at risk by turning it over to a company whose main motivation is making money?
 
lawtig02 said:
Well, 3000 of us didn’t.
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9/11 transformed the country's view of airline security. There's no reason to believe that government run security would have disallowed box cutters before 9/11 and there's no reason to believe that private security wouldn't disallow box cutters after 9/11.
 
I'd also like to see them scale back or eliminate air marshals. Seems like an awful lot of expense for very little deterrence. And these guys are more highly trained and presumably more expensive than the TSA guys at the security checkpoints. Seems like they could put those resources to use somewhere else.

To give an idea of the numbers, every flight has on average one to two Air Marshals domestically although they aren't on every flight. There's an average of four Air Marshals on every international flight. They focus more on US carriers but not exclusively.
 
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Patb78 said:
I If TSA is privatized, the company in charge will cut corners making flying less safe. It’s been 23 1/2 years since 9/11 and there have been no hijackings
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Causation or correlation? There’s also the cockpit door locks…
 
ZenMode said:
IT probably wouldn't get significantly better. Going back to private security would probably just be less expensive, more efficient and would result in eliminating a large government department.
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What is the basis for thinking it will be less expensive?
 
wmheel1287 said:
Im honestly trying to think of one thing in my 47 years on the planet which has been privatized and gotten better, cheaper, and/or more efficient.

Does anyone have examples?
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I’m 70 and I’ll be damned if I can think of one. The problem with comparing government running something and a private company running it is motivation. The government function is to provide a service. Here making air travel as safe as possible. If private business is providing the service then bottom line concerns become part of the equation. I’m not saying they don’t care about making air travel safe, but the underlying profit motive is going to put an emphasis on cutting corners so the company makes money. There are some things business can do better than government. Making air travel as safe as possible isn’t one of them.
The 9/11 plane that crashed in the field has a connection to Randolph County. One of the flight attendants was a young woman who attended Eastern Randolph High. Right inside the gate to their football stadium is a memorial to her. Do we really want to fuck with a system that has worked so well to prevent other such memorials? I personally don’t think we should.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I'd also like to see them scale back or eliminate air marshals. Seems like an awful lot of expense for very little deterrence. And these guys are more highly trained and presumably more expensive than the TSA guys at the security checkpoints. Seems like they could put those resources to use somewhere else.

To give an idea of the numbers, every flight has on average one to two Air Marshals domestically although they aren't on every flight. There's an average of four Air Marshals on every international flight. They focus more on US carriers but not exclusively.
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TIL today.
 
I don't mind asking the question of whether TSA is too expensive for what it delivers. BUT the government would still need to regulate whatever function is provided for security. Whether it is gov folks implementing and executing the actual processes or some private org(s). This regulatory agency would still be a cost. Same with the airlines themselves, they are private but regulated by the FAA for the sake of safety.
 
Three quick comments on this from someone who flies 2+ times per month on average:

1. The idea of doing away with TSA is batshit crazy. Yes, they're annoying at times, but if you know what you're doing, it is WELL worth it to feel more confident I can come home safely to my family. And there's no freaking way I would feel that same confidence if the Jackson, MS airport was responsible for its own security.

2. I have been a little surprised how long it's taken to bring better scanning technology online. It's starting to show up now, but I'm surprised we didn't have scanners 10 years ago that eliminated the need to take off any clothes or take anything out of bags, much less limit the quantities of liquids in carry-ons. I couldn't care less how invasive the imaging is, so maybe that's part of the problem, but that seems like something Musk or someone might have been able to solve if he wasn't so focused on buying votes in Wisconsin.

3. I've only been on one flight in recent years in which someone in the cockpit had to open the door during flight to use the lavatory. The attendants handled it spectacularly. All of them came to the front galley. They then moved a full drink cart across the entrance to the galley. I guess you could theoretically have climbed over it, but they were all standing right behind it. Once they were in place, the cockpit door opened, the pilot (or whoever) came out, did his business, and was back in the locked cockpit within a couple of minutes. The whole crew had clearly been drilled on this well, and it pretty much eliminated the risk of a 9/11-style event as far as I could tell.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I'd also like to see them scale back or eliminate air marshals. Seems like an awful lot of expense for very little deterrence. And these guys are more highly trained and presumably more expensive than the TSA guys at the security checkpoints. Seems like they could put those resources to use somewhere else.

To give an idea of the numbers, every flight has on average one to two Air Marshals domestically although they aren't on every flight. There's an average of four Air Marshals on every international flight. They focus more on US carriers but not exclusively.
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I don't think this is true. You need to cite some authoritative source for these numbers.

Link

"Air marshals don’t protect every flight. In the U.S., less than 5% of flights have an air marshal on board. The Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) can’t cover all 44,000 daily commercial flights across the country. The New York Times also gave an estimate, that only 6% of domestic flights have an air marshal onboard. High-risk flights, especially international routes to and from countries deemed risky, have a higher chance of air marshal presence."

The same article I quoted also says "To give an idea of the numbers, every flight has on average one to two Air Marshals domestically although they aren't on every flight. There's an average of four Air Marshals on every international flight. They focus more on US carriers but not exclusively." You quoted this word for word this without attribution and failed to provide context, which was simply that air marshals never work alone. When air marshals are on flights (maybe 5% of all flights) they work in pairs, or pairs of pairs on international flights.

So did you purposely misrepresent this or did you just Google, find an out of context passage, then plagiarize it and attempt to pass off as fact?
 
One more thing while I'm at it -- the #1 thing that would make flying better would be to ban carry-on roller bags. It will never happen and I know the airlines are responsible for a lot of this with their ridiculous checked bags fees, but those giant bags that people struggle to lift make the boarding and deboarding process at least twice as long as it needs to be.

Actually, that's #2. Number 1 would be designing planes that work like roller coasters, with the entire side opening up to allow boarding by row rather than all through the door at the front of the plane. But that makes too much sense to even hope for.
 
lawtig02 said:
One more thing while I'm at it -- the #1 thing that would make flying better would be to ban carry-on roller bags. It will never happen and I know the airlines are responsible for a lot of this with their ridiculous checked bags fees, but those giant bags that people struggle to lift make the boarding and deboarding process at least twice as long as it needs to be.

Actually, that's #2. Number 1 would be designing planes that work like roller coasters, with the entire side opening up to allow boarding by row rather than all through the door at the front of the plane. But that makes too much sense to even hope for.
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not only do checked bag fees suck but checked bag handling is awful - i absolutely hate having to part with my things because you just don't know that the POS airlines are going to get them to you at your destination. i've had awful, basically trip-ruining experiences with this multiple times.

it does suck when people who can barely lift their own arms over their head let alone a small suitcase are holding up the entire boarding and deboarding process wrestling with their bags, though. i often try to help everyone in my general vicinity.
 
wmheel1287 said:
Im honestly trying to think of one thing in my 47 years on the planet which has been privatized and gotten better, cheaper, and/or more efficient.

Does anyone have examples?
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1. From the US, or from the world? The world is easy. It's also easy to find catastrophic privatizations. On average, privatization has been good globally, I would say. There's a reason why the Washington Consensus formed and is still utilized in developmental economics. People have for some time recognized that the Washington Consensus needs much more attention to context, but the core idea of privatization as promoting efficiency is generally sound.

Of course, in the countries where privatization has worked, it's also true that the government hadn't "organically" grown into its present state. Countries like Mexico and Argentina first nationalized industries by fiat, essentially buying them for well below actual value (when one considers the reparations that are usually paid if the industry was corporate). And the nationalization was generally carried out by corrupt governments, and the nationalization was part of the scheme of corruption. So privatization was a scale-back of ill-gotten power.

2. By contrast, the growth of government in the US has been organic. It's been a century-long process (really longer than a century now) of democratic governments responding to the needs of the citizenry. The New Deal happened during the Depression because it was needed. Medicare/Medicaid happened in the 60s because it was needed. Same with Obamacare. And until fairly recently, administrations from both parties tried to manage the new government powers responsibly, even if they didn't necessarily agree with the original policy. I don't want to exaggerate the bipartisanship, or pretend that the GOP has never before appointed people to head agencies that they want not to exist. But we've never had an actual pro-pollution EPA administrator before Trump.

Point is: government tends to be more efficient in the US because it was designed to be good; people have generally wanted it to work well; and congressional oversight and the IG system -- part of the rule of law, which is often absent in the nationalizing countries -- tries to root out waste or corruption. Also, qui tam laws are not well known but surprisingly effective.

3. And the follow-up point: we don't have many examples of privatization per se, because we never had much to privatize. The best example that comes to mind was the Airline Deregulation Act of Carter's presidency. The airlines weren't nationalized before that, but regulation was very heavy-handed. Lifting that regulation turned out to be a great thing overall.

Lots of health policy people think that Medicare Advantage is a good program, and it's privately administered. I have no real knowledge of it, and have not followed those policy debates at all, so I have nothing to say about it beyond mentioning it.

The growth of Fed Ex and UPS is an example of a successful partial privatization. It was never a law or a discrete policy decision, but the parcel delivery system has fragmented: private carriers dominate in high-value carriage (e.g. overnight), whereas the post office still does most ordinary mail. Until the DeJoy debacle, the service quality from the post office has increased since Fed Ex created more competition. Undoubtedly, Fed Ex does what it does -- i.e. very fast transport -- better than the postal service. It's of course not a fair comparison, since the USPS has a more expansive mandate than Fed Ex, and we don't know how well Fed Ex would support rural areas because it's never really tried.
 
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