> Therefore, I wonder the real reason but can't think of any. You shouldn't think of governments as agents with a singular, unified purpose. What you're observ

> Therefore, I wonder the real reason but can't think of any. You shouldn't think of governments as agents with a singular, unified purpose. What you're observing is the effect of many agents with misaligned incentives, and a huge coordination problem. All this leads to a situation where large costs are incurred for no real purpose, because no agent is incentivised to put what you called 'marketing' in doubt. For example, it's a huge cost for a politician to argue that fear of terrorism is overblown. So pretty much none of them do that. TSA have no incentive to reduce their powers. Etc.