Robert recently posted the fifth in a loose series of articles on the topic of airport security in the wake of 9/11. His common thesis is that, as we do it now, security at U.S. airports is laughably bad, and that the Federal government is to blame. Robert suggests seven steps that, he believes, will solve the problem. Here they are, in brief:
- Fire the TSA. Make the airports individually and completely responsible for their own security.
- Provide one-time federal grants to the airports to upgrade their security systems on a crash-priority basis, paid for by a ticket surcharge.
- Extend inspections to all baggage, using the funds referenced above to automate the process.
- Require positive identification and national database screening of all passengers prior to boarding.
- Tie all bags and personal effects to passengers using RFID tags or similar technology. Arrange for real-time tracking, in the air, of same.
- Arm all air crews and train them in self-defense techniques.
- Require all airport personnel to take random, unannounced flights on aircraft affected by their security measures.
I think this is a good program. A little rough, perhaps, particularly on the technology side, where Robert waxes somewhat optimistic about the difficulty of integrating new items like face-recognition technology in short weeks or months... but forgivable from a gent who punched his last line of programming code into a paper card. Even so, I commend this outline as a recipe for success, if not in the very short term, then surely by the medium one.
The event that spurred Robert's most recent article was a New York Times report on a confidential study prepared over the past year, at the request of Congress, by the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. The report being a confidential one—and let's not get started on that—the NYT's coverage of its content was rather thin. Even so, given that such leaks happen for a reason, one would naturally expect the NYT's sources to hit the high points. If they did, then it seems a year of critical thinking at DHS has more or less gone to waste.
Briefly, the report dwells on the quick fix—longer inspection tables, more baggage sniffers, actually locking doors with locks on them—rather than examining transformative reengineering of a system that has been broken from the start. Given that this report was likely produced at a cost ranging well into seven figures—what year-long Federal study is not?—Robert took a few cheap shots at the bureaucracy. Fair enough.
Enter Torgerson.
On the general principal of attacking any idea—good or otherwise—not generated by his own intellectual elite, Torgerson managed to agree with nearly every point in Robert's article before dismissing it entirely. Go figure. Of particular interest to me, though, was this nugget:
Consider your recommendation that airport security be taken out of the hands of government and placed where you feel it belongs - with the airport managers. Actually, I think that's a good point. But considering that most all airports are run by governmental authorities, you are proposing that responsibility for airport security be transferred from one part of government to another.
Dulles and Reagan airports are run by an authority that reports to Congress and Virginia. BWI is run by the state of Maryland. O'Hare and Midway are run by the City of Chicago. And on and on. So you are saying that airport seurity is better run by scores of separate government bureaucracies, rather than just one. Maybe a good move, but I don't think that's the point you were trying to make.
It's hard not to draw the conclusion here that Torgerson sees no distinction between federal, state, and city government. All part of the same parcel, right?
Well, no.
In fact, the second-bloodiest war in American history—though not by much—was fought over precisely that distinction. Many of the milestone cases decided in the Supreme Court have addressed the topic of states' rights, thus precisely articulating that distinction... and the current bloat of the Federal government stands testament to the nearly successful campaign by Franklin Delano Roosevelt—arguably the closest thing America has ever had to a despot, benign or otherwise—to erase that distinction.
James Madison made this point powerfully in the 46th of the Fereralist Papers:
The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes.
In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis invented the metaphor of states as “laboratories of democracy.” Though Brandeis himself was a progressive Democrat, this metaphor is often invoked by supporters of conservative Federalism, as well as by his own ideological descendants.
And why not? It's a good metaphor, and a powerful economic argument for cascading as much power as possible down to state and local governments, away from the Federal level.
Think in market terms. The Federal government is like a monopoly: it has no competition. Whatever it does, it does globally... until it does something else, at which point it does that globally, too. If people don't like what the Federal government does, they can suck it up and wait for a series of elections to go their way, or they can agitate for change—slowly, from within—but the one thing they can't do, short of renouncing their citizenship, is to vote with their feet.
Besides, there really isn't anyplace better to go.
If people don't like what their state is doing, on the other hand, they can move to another state. We see this in business all the time: there are very solid reasons why so many U.S. companies, regrdless of the address on their letterhead, choose to incorporate in Delaware and Nevada.
What has all this to do with airport security? Simple: by firing the TSA and putting locals in charge of their own airport security—whether the “locals” in question are private or otherwise—we open up the “airport security market” to competition. I live in Chicago. Currently, whether I fly out of Midway or O'Hare is entirely a matter of convenience... but what if those two airports began to compete for my business on the basis of which were more prepared to ensure my arrival, alive and intact, at my destination? I'd pay a little more for a ticket that included that kind of life insurance.
Market forces like this are the reason why gasoline prices are so stable—typically to within only a few cents—from one end of a city to another. They are also the reason why, when the market shifts, prices react almost instantaneously, everywhere at once. Think gas station owners from Evanston to Countryside are spending their evenings on the phone, fixing prices? Nah. That's just how market dynamics work.
Open airline security up to competition, and you'll see the same effect. As airports and airlines compete for your business on the basis of security, they will rapidly converge to a set of optimal security solutions that will react quickly and dynamically to a fluid security landscape. Putting the Feds in charge of airport security is no different than granting Ma Bell a nationwide monopoly on phone service: a guarantee of lackluster performance and stagnancy in the face of evolving technology and changing conditions.
Social security? Same answer: fire the Federal government and put the states in charge of it, for better or for worse. What's going to happen if 50 million Californians discover that they do social security better than the Feds did? They'll soon number 60 million, with all the economic growth and prosperity that implies.
Fat chance.
What if Californians discover that their new universal health care, free prescription drugs, and age-fifty retirement cost them more than they're worth? They'll move to Nevada, or New Hampshire, or Alaska, and take their economy with them. Make no mistake: after a few years of such competitive pressure, most states will rapidly converge to a set of Social Security solutions that make sense.
Fine. And what has all this to do with job security?
Only this: As a “financial planner” who quite clearly hasn't the faintest idea how markets work, I'm continually astonished that Richard Torgerson actually has any.