Economist Robert Murphy writes at Mises.org on an important topic: the safety vs liberty meme is false. There is no conflict between liberty and safety. In fact, you can’t have any safety if you’ve been stripped of your liberty.
The national furor over the TSA’s new procedures — culminating in yesterday’s “Opt Out Day” — has elicited the typical response from the bureaucracy and its apologists. Why, these invasive scans and “enhanced pat-downs” are only for your good, in order to ensure safe flying. You don’t want another attack, do you?
This is a false tradeoff. Especially in the long run, there is no tension between freedom and safety. If airport security were truly returned to the private sector, air travelers would achieve a much better balance of privacy and legitimate security measures.
The Role of Insurance
Most people who are sympathetic to the free market would endorse the above sentiments, but with one nagging concern: How does the airline take into account the huge damages imposed on others if one of its planes is hijacked?
One possibility is that the legal system would hold airlines strictly accountable for such property damage, and that the airlines would need to purchase massive insurance policies before obtaining permission to send giant steel containers full of jet fuel hurtling over skyscrapers and shopping malls.
I spell out the mechanics of such a system here. For our purposes, let me deal with one possible objection: Someone might say, “But what happens if an airline has lax security, and terrorists use it to cause an enormous amount of damage, wiping out their insurers? That’s why we ultimately need the government in charge of security.”
Yet I could pose the same question: What happens if the TSA screws up, and a major terrorist incident occurs? Will John Pistole and his immediate staff be fired? Will the TSA itself have its budget gutted? And who is to say that even the US federal government could “afford” such a catastrophe?
Once we consider the incentives (and lack of consumer feedback) plaguing the TSA, we realize that not only will it err on the “invasive” side of the spectrum, but that it will do so ineffectively.
This is a false tradeoff. Especially in the long run, there is no tension between freedom and safety. If airport security were truly returned to the private sector, air travelers would achieve a much better balance of privacy and legitimate security measures.
Good points all.OF course the government will not have / admit to real responsibility for its failures. That runs counter to the MO of all government bureaucracies.
Airline security was in the domain of the private sector for years and they were totally ineffective. Prior to 9/11/01, there were any number of hijackings, and the private sector still refused to do a simple thing like buy steel cockpit doors. The private sector had their chance and blew it. If the TSA screws up and there is a major incident, yes, Pistole probably will be fired, and the President as well. At least with the government, there will be an investigation and we as citizens can sue to see the results. A private firm wouldn’t have to release anything.
You are assuming that the TSA’s procedures are more effective than what the private sector has been providing. Buying billions of dollars worth of scanners and groping three-year-olds will not stop the terrorists. All the scanners are doing is making a ton of money for the makers and their investors. Typical American beaurocratic arrogance -you can fix anything if you throw enough money at it. The scanners and gropers will not prevent anything. They are a clear-cut violation of our fourth amendment rights. This is not the first time we have been told that it is okay to violate our rights in the name of national security. In the meantime the terrorists are rejoicing at having accomplished something big – the loss of the freedom and rights that previously belonged to all Americans.
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