End the TSA...

In the wake of a report that an ISIS bomb brought down a Russian Airliner and with a recent expose showing the TSA still fails to spot the majority (95%!!!) of weapons smuggled through airports even after being warned and subsequently re-tested, the White House says it's reviewing options to see if there's a way to "enhance security at airports."

Well...

I have one simple idea, but it will never be considered by the Federal Government because it requires collecting less tax revenue, spending less tax revenue, and giving up some measure of control over its citizens... Three things Government would rather gargle raw sewage than ever even consider.

We should immediately eliminate the TSA and use the money to pay a private company to run airport security. Because here's the truth, it's not hard to predict the Government's response the next time a terrorist attack kills people at an airport or on an airplane... They will say people are dead because we didn't spend enough tax money on security measures. That's what they always say... no matter how much we spend, it's never enough to actually get the job done. What a freakin' racket. And because we're all terrified of being killed by terrorists on an airplane, like suckers, we will all dutifully nod and reach for our checkbooks... again.

No one will get fired. No one will have their budget cut. Nothing will change, except that a river of cash will get dumped onto the problem without actually, y'know, solving a goddamned thing. And we won't hold anyone accountable because on some level we know Government is incompetent and a certain expectation of failure is already baked into our assumptions about everything they do... and too many of us are brainwashed into thinking there's no other viable solution to these kinds of large-scale problems other than a top down Government solution.

But there is. A private sector company would live in absolute terror of losing a billion dollar plus contact and would bend over backwards to make sure not so much as a sharp word gets past their security measures. And if they should fail, they would expect to be fired and forced to make room for the next security firm with the next great idea on how to keep us safe. I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that in the first year after privatization, the percentage of weapons test-smuggled through Airport Security would drop from 95% to a statistical near zero. It would HAVE to, because any private sector company would know that its consumers (you and me) would have zero tolerance for failure even in Year One.

That's the difference between government and the free market. And the longer we continue to embrace government solutions over market solutions, the more we are going to find our lives unnecessarily placed at risk by Bureaucrats who don't care because they fear no consequence in the wake of failure.