Petroleumworld`s
Opinion Forum:
viewpoints on issues in energy & international
politics.
Saturday's
Lagniappe
The
Six Faces of the Terrorist; The One Face of Bureaucracy
By
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
It's
not enough that the Transportation Security Administration wastes
hours upon endless hours of time. It's not enough that they
confiscate our Chapstick and toothpaste and claim that it is
for our own protection. It's not enough that we must fork over
our ID at five different checkpoints before boarding a plane,
and have strangers paid with our tax dollars rifle and snoop
through our bags.
No,
that's not enough to keep us secure on our airline flights.
Now we must be careful not to wrinkle our noses, press our lips
together, raise our upper eyelids, or — Heaven forbid
— thrust forward our jaws.
Here
is a graphic from the New York Times that illustrates what the
TSA will now regard as suspicious behavior:
Ah,
yes, the six faces of the terrorist.
How
much more of this will the American people take? Already a stroll
through the airport feels like a step into a dystopian movie.
We are searched, snapped at, and ordered around. People glumly
walk from place to place as the loudspeaker blares: "Report
all suspicious persons to the authorities!"
The
answer is that people will put up with much more and much worse.
As much as people loath the invasions of privacy and the inconvenience,
and as much as people roll their eyes in amazement and frustration,
so long as people grant that there are such things as suspicious
behaviors and real threats — and that the government is
the right party to deal with them — these humiliations
will continue.
And
truly, how can we know when the government has gone too far?
We can understand why the TSA would ban people from carrying
machine guns on planes, but what basis do we have to say that
it can't ban lipstick too, provided it can be shown that a lipstick
container can carry explosives? Aren't we just arguing about
the details of proper management?
One
method we can use to discern whether the government has gone
too far is to imagine what private security officials on private
property might do. In this case, there is a range of issues
to consider, and none yields decisive answers.
Based
on extended experience, banks and jewelry stores are probably
more likely to act on looks and facial expressions than they
are to search people for toothpaste and pocket knives. Who is
to say that the TSA in charge of airline security shouldn't
do the same?
This
is not a defense of the TSA. Far from it. The criticism of the
TSA needs to go beyond merely addressing this or that overreach
or poor management practice. It must get to the heart of the
economic and political motivation behind all these increases
in security measures.
The
core problem concerns institutional intent. Is TSA really trying
to protect us? Surely that defines part of its mission. But
every bureaucracy is self-interested in a way that receives
no discouragement within the public sector.
Yes,
the TSA has stopped some bad guys. But we can't know for sure
whether stopping bad guys is just the excuse it uses to serve
its larger driving mission, which is to bolster its own budget,
public prestige, and power.
Moreover,
even if we could somehow be certain that security was its number
one goal, why should this goal be pursued with complete disregard
to the customer? When the private sector seeks to ferret out
bad guys, it goes overboard to make life wonderful and non-humiliating
for the good guys.
This
is the difference between the public and private sector. The
private sector is always seeking and soliciting the affections
of the people, in the hope that the people will deign to part
with their money in exchange for the good or service the firm
provides. That's not an easy thing to do. You have to be pretty
wonderful in order to get people to voluntarily purchase your
stuff as versus save the money or spend it elsewhere.
Indeed,
it is the private sector that really deserves the name "public
sector" because it constantly seeks input from every source
to serve the public, and constantly tries to accommodate every
public wish.
Disneyland,
for example, seeks to provide its customers a roaring good time.
But in order to do so, it must also provide a secure environment.
Its security, however, can never come at customer expense. It
wants to go about the business of keeping dangerous people under
control in the most inconspicuous way possible. No one feels
stepped on or kicked around or abused when private security
is at work. Its top priority is to distinguish between friend
and foe.
Someone
might object that its is precisely because the private sector
must always make nicey nice with customers that it is not well
equipped to deal with terrorists. In fact, the last thing a
private company wants is for customers to feel threatened for
their lives when boarding an aircraft. No institution has a
higher incentive to protect its property and the lives of its
customers than an airline. The difference is that it faces a
feedback mechanism that informs management how much investigation
and personal discomfort is too much relative to the really existing
risk.
Frankly,
the TSA doesn't care a flip about the passengers in their role
as payers who have to be served. That's why they treat you like
chopped liver, and that's why they have no real interest in
distinguishing good guys from bad guys. Their every incentive
is to treat us all like we are the children of Mohammed Atta
al-Sayed.
Others
may fundamentally object to my claim that the TSA is not primarily
interested in security. The best way to understand this is by
reference to an institution with which we have even more experience:
the welfare state. In the same way, it is not primarily interested
in relieving the plight of the poor.
If
anything, the welfare bureaucracy benefits most by increasing
the number of the poor and keeping them that way for as long
as possible. Only by maximizing the number of poor people who
need assistance can a welfare bureaucracy thrive. The poor are
what provides the welfare state its raison d'être.
So
the welfare state faces perverse incentives. This is one reason
the welfare state didn't work. So it is with the security state.
It only benefits from increasing insecurity and fear. The more
threats there are to security, the better off it is.
Finally,
the money that runs the security state is not a drain on a business's
bottom line, so there is no one setting out to find ways to
reduce the expenditure. Rather, the money comes from the taxpayers
who need to be cajoled into coughing up more, and the best means
of doing that is by scaring people and increasing their sense
of insecurity.
Tyranny, thy name is security: $19
In some way, too — and this is unthinkable — the
security state actually benefits from disastrous mistakes that
result in loss of life. These allow the bureaucracy to say:
we told you so; we should have had more money and power.
Yes,
it's true that the welfare state made some poor people better
off than they might have been otherwise. But it also created
more poor people and extended their plight and sense of dependency.
The welfare state grew and grew, and so did the number of people
it served, but society was worse off as a result. It was a very
bad idea to have ever given the state the responsibility for
the job, since it is institutionally unequipped to achieve the
results it promises.
So
it is with the security state. We give it power, we permit it
to run itself with no oversight, we put up with its excesses,
and we have a hard time imagining what life would be like without
it. Well, it's time we start imagining, because the result of
the security state will be more insecurity, more costs on the
rest of us, and ever more sectors of our society invaded by
these overlords more interested in themselves than the public.
This
is how it must be because the bureaucracy exists and thrives
outside of society and at society's expense. If you don't like
it, and if you believe that the most suspicious persons of all
work for the TSA, you had better furrow your brow in private.
A public display might result in detention.
