6 ms·

The craziest part of the TSA is that if you compare the number+demographics of the people they employ (60,000 employees requiring only a high school diploma equ

The craziest part of the TSA is that if you compare the number+demographics of the people they employ (60,000 employees requiring only a high school diploma equivalent!) against the repeatedly demonstrated lack of any kind of effectiveness in their own testing, it becomes very quickly obvious that the whole thing is just a tax-funded wealth redistribution program (jobs! paid by the US government! for basically anyone!) built to pass under the radar of anti-socially-minded people unable to stomach the idea of giving money to poor people without demanding that they do pointless labor for its own sake in return. Actually, the labor is worse than pointless. The travel productivity cost to society is astronomical. Like, literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all. The current employees would have their time back, the travelers would have their time back, and travel security would be no worse in any statistically meaningful sense. But the US has a huge contingent of people fundamentally opposed to doing things like this even when it would make literally everything better for literally everyone. So here we are.

philwelch 3y ago
> Like, literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all. I don’t think the TSA agents would be better off in that scenario.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Why not?
- flangola7 3y ago
  How did you determine that? People in airports can be extremely abusive.
- yowzadave 3y ago
  Of course they would (much more free time to do actually productive tasks!) unless you’re assuming they will be losing the “dignity of work” or something like that. My question is, why do people only worry about poor people not having the dignity of work? Shouldn’t we be more worried about all the children of the rich who will never need to earn a living? Shouldn’t we make them all do labor, for the good of their own souls?
  - philwelch 3y ago
    If they were capable of doing actually productive tasks, they would get a job somewhere other than the TSA. It’s more a question of structure and routine than “dignity of work”, and the type of person who can have structure and routine in their life without a job has enough agency that they wouldn’t be working for the TSA either. > Shouldn’t we be more worried about all the children of the rich who will never need to earn a living? We should be worried about those people because they tend to die from drug abuse much more frequently than the general population. The same is true for washed up celebrities and lottery winners. In fact, this is something that rich people tend to worry about a lot in regard to their own children.
    - yowzadave 3y ago
      > If they were capable of doing actually productive tasks, they would get a job somewhere other than the TSA This statement seems bonkers to me. People work at the TSA because they need money. Anybody who can hold down a job at the TSA would be entirely capable of doing many productive tasks that may not be remunerative, such as child care, elder care, care for the disabled, any number of home/landscape maintenance tasks, home construction, etc. Not to mention all of the activities that people do to add value to their lives and those around them: contributing the community, making art/music, etc.
      - philwelch 3y ago
        > Anybody who can hold down a job at the TSA would be entirely capable of doing many productive tasks that may not be remunerative, such as child care, elder care, care for the disabled, any number of home/landscape maintenance tasks, home construction, etc. Those are literally all remunerative jobs.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Everyone pretty much assumed the children of the rich will be spoiled and entitled drags on society. But unless you’re proposing to prevent parents from spending their own money on their children, rich children are irrelevant.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ryandrake 3y ago
As fewer people need to be employed to keep going with society's actual work, we're going to see more of these jobs programs. Our culture is obsessed with this idea that "a living" must be earned through toil, despite civilization requiring less and less toil year after year. You're absolutely right. It would be better for everyone if the TSA simply pay these employees to do nothing, but handing money to people is politically impossible, unless those "people" are banks and Too Big To Fail Businesses.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  The demographic cliff happens before the fall in number of required jobs, because location specific manual labor and infrastructure maintenance has not been automated, and may be out 50 or so years due to robotics cost. Just look at the number of help wanted signs in the US.
- kortilla 3y ago
  It’s not clear what you mean by “our culture” but humans in general struggle to have meaningful lives without feeling like they are contributing. The Native populations in America and Iceland have some of the worst suicide rates because their cultures way of producing goods and food was supplanted by government benefits.
  - freeone3000 3y ago
    But there’s no need for them to contribute. The meaningful contributions they make are not going to be compensated, and their compensation is unrelated to labor. The jobs are pointless.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      You can feel like you’re contributing even when you aren’t doing that much. The problem is when they know there is no need for them to contribute. That leads to a sense of pointlessness.
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
snake_doc 3y ago
The effectiveness of a security program cannot solely be measured by penetration tests under controlled circumstances. Aspects of deterrence and standardization required by the program fundamentally changes the threat actors’ calculus. This is the very fundamentals of mixed strategy calculations in game theory.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  It is absolutely bonkers how many otherwise pretty reasonable people miss this glaringly obvious fact.
  - tqi 3y ago
    We are all vulnerable to confirmation bias
  - snake_doc 3y ago
    A common analogy is to think about traffic lights. If you run a penetration test, asking an individual to run a red light. You will achieve near 100% success. However, when the traffic lights change actors’ behaviors to stop (at some probability such that it results in less collisions), most actors will stop according to the traffic lights.
    - RiceRichardJ 3y ago
      That's not a good analogy at all. The incentives and motivations are completely different. Many drivers would at one point or another consider running a red light in order to save some time. I don't think you can say the same about passengers wanting to hijack a flight.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    "Aspects of deterrence and standardization required by the program fundamentally changes the threat actors’ calculus." “By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.” “Oh, how does it work?” “It doesn’t work.” “Uh-huh.” “It’s just a stupid rock.” “Uh-huh.” “But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?” “Lisa, I want to buy your rock.”
puffyblogger 3y ago
[dead]
fblp 3y ago
Also you can pay money for TSA pre-check of CLEAR for faster security clearance. So those who have money to pay for those services are less impacted by TSA bloat.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  If my goal was to get something dangerous on board. Why wouldn't I put the people in that group... It seems insane not absolutely everyone is subjected to same level scrutiny each and every time.
almostnormal 3y ago
> [...] that the whole thing is just a tax-funded wealth redistribution program [...] Aren't they paid by the passenger fee?
- sneak 3y ago
  Yes, it's a tax imposed on air travel, something usually undertaken by the wealthy.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Not to be judgemental, but I don't think of Spirit Airlines' passengers as wealthy. A short haul flight costs < $200, or less than a PlayStation 5, so their customers aren't, like, destitute, but that's a long way from being wealthy.
- cjalmeida 3y ago
  Potato potahto. Society pays for it
qaq 3y ago
It's not so much a contingent of people fundamentally opposed to doing things like this, as it is people in power having a nice chunk of $ for contractors to milk with 0 inconvenience to them as they fly private.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
> Like, literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all. We would also all be better off if we lived in a socialist utopia where everyone helps each other, free housing, free food, unlimited transportation, no money, no jobs, no rich employers, no corporations, no war, famine, etc. But all of that is as likely to happen as an American population giving poor people money to live just because there aren't any jobs that will hire them where they live with their qualifications. So instead we do the hack of a welfare program disguised as a valuable civic service and eat the larger cost to the economy. Every politician knows it's a welfare program, and they love it, because they don't have to call it one.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > it's a welfare program This is a role usually filled by the armed forces. I suppose it’s good to have a few options.
hodgesrm 3y ago
The TSA stats show that they found 6,542 firearms in carry-on luggage at US airports last year. [0] This seems to undermine the argument that they are ineffective, unless you think those weapons should have been been allowed on aircraft. [0] https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/01/17/tsa-breaks-yet-another-record-nationally-firearm-discoveries-2022-0 https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/01/17/tsa-break...
- chiph 3y ago
  How many didn't they find?
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    Zero that were used for hijackings.
- 1123581321 3y ago
  How many crimes were prevented? Thousands of guns per year were accidentally or ignorantly (or even defiantly, but nothing happened) brought on board before 9/11, too. The TSA makes rules and then enforces them. Their ability to enforce their own rules doesn't make them effective.
  - dgrin91 3y ago
    There were a LOT more plane hijackings (with guns and grenades!) pre 9/11.
    - 1123581321 3y ago
      Yes, see the other comment.
  - hodgesrm 3y ago
    Can you cite numbers for that claim?
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dgrin91 3y ago
I really don't understand the sentiment of "literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all". I can understand sentiments like the TSA is inefficient, or bloated, or wasteful, but does literally nothing? Do you really think things would be better if we had no xray scanners for luggage or full body scanners for people? Someone needs to run those machines, and thats the job of the TSA. How can you say we would be better off without those?
- Nullabillity 3y ago
  > I can understand sentiments like the TSA is inefficient, or bloated, or wasteful, but does literally nothing? They're not saying that it has no effect, they're saying that it's harmful. > Do you really think things would be better if we had no xray scanners for luggage or full body scanners for people? Yes, that's the point?
  - dgrin91 3y ago
    > Yes, that's the point? Explain this please? How is it better if I can bring swords or guns onto a plane and no one can even detect it?
    - gaganyaan 3y ago
      If you can't access the cockpit, what are you going to do with either of those? You can kill a passenger, but you can already go out and kill someone before anybody reacts. Most people choose not to do that for some reason.
      - Nullabillity 3y ago
        Adding on to this, you've effectively just moved the chokepoint from the plane to the security queue itself.
      - dgrin91 3y ago
        1. I can blow up a plane and kill 300 people in the air plus more on the ground 2. If there is no scanners run by the TSA I can bring in tools to open the cockpit door. Now I can redo 9/11.
bigstrat2003 3y ago
I agree with your premise overall, but: > But the US has a huge contingent of people fundamentally opposed to doing things like this even when it would make literally everything better for literally everyone. I don't think this is why your idea won't happen. I've talked to many people over the years who are genuinely worried about terrorists and they believe that the TSA protects them. You can cite all the statistics in the world to them, and it won't matter. They are not rational on this topic. They will view "get rid of the TSA" as a huge negative impact to their safety, and will vehemently oppose it with or without the paying agents to stay home. I do think that paying people to stay home instead of doing make-work is relatively unpopular in the US, so that doesn't help. But the biggest problem you will face is just that people don't want to get rid of the TSA no matter how you do it. The TSA is very unpopular in tech/geek circles (and for good reason), but I've found it to be quite popular with normies.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > paying people to stay home instead of doing make-work is relatively unpopular in the US I think that's a significant understatement of the prevailing condition.
ford 3y ago
Do you have more data about why they are useless? Safes are still useful even if they have never tried to be breached, and armed forces are useful even if a country has never been attacked. Perhaps the fact that the TSA exists means fewer crimes are even attempted.
bitcharmer 3y ago
I love how you put it. As born and raised in a communist eastern European country I can attest to how accurately it depicts the inefficiencies and absurdities of centrally planned economy. Seeing this kind of nonsense flourishing in the US of A is irony of the highest order.

philwelch 3y ago

> Like, literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all. I don’t think the TSA agents would be better off in that scenario.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Why not?
flangola7 3y ago
How did you determine that? People in airports can be extremely abusive.
yowzadave 3y ago
Of course they would (much more free time to do actually productive tasks!) unless you’re assuming they will be losing the “dignity of work” or something like that. My question is, why do people only worry about poor people not having the dignity of work? Shouldn’t we be more worried about all the children of the rich who will never need to earn a living? Shouldn’t we make them all do labor, for the good of their own souls?
- philwelch 3y ago
  If they were capable of doing actually productive tasks, they would get a job somewhere other than the TSA. It’s more a question of structure and routine than “dignity of work”, and the type of person who can have structure and routine in their life without a job has enough agency that they wouldn’t be working for the TSA either. > Shouldn’t we be more worried about all the children of the rich who will never need to earn a living? We should be worried about those people because they tend to die from drug abuse much more frequently than the general population. The same is true for washed up celebrities and lottery winners. In fact, this is something that rich people tend to worry about a lot in regard to their own children.
  - yowzadave 3y ago
    > If they were capable of doing actually productive tasks, they would get a job somewhere other than the TSA This statement seems bonkers to me. People work at the TSA because they need money. Anybody who can hold down a job at the TSA would be entirely capable of doing many productive tasks that may not be remunerative, such as child care, elder care, care for the disabled, any number of home/landscape maintenance tasks, home construction, etc. Not to mention all of the activities that people do to add value to their lives and those around them: contributing the community, making art/music, etc.
    - philwelch 3y ago
      > Anybody who can hold down a job at the TSA would be entirely capable of doing many productive tasks that may not be remunerative, such as child care, elder care, care for the disabled, any number of home/landscape maintenance tasks, home construction, etc. Those are literally all remunerative jobs.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Everyone pretty much assumed the children of the rich will be spoiled and entitled drags on society. But unless you’re proposing to prevent parents from spending their own money on their children, rich children are irrelevant.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ryandrake 3y ago

As fewer people need to be employed to keep going with society's actual work, we're going to see more of these jobs programs. Our culture is obsessed with this idea that "a living" must be earned through toil, despite civilization requiring less and less toil year after year. You're absolutely right. It would be better for everyone if the TSA simply pay these employees to do nothing, but handing money to people is politically impossible, unless those "people" are banks and Too Big To Fail Businesses.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
The demographic cliff happens before the fall in number of required jobs, because location specific manual labor and infrastructure maintenance has not been automated, and may be out 50 or so years due to robotics cost. Just look at the number of help wanted signs in the US.
kortilla 3y ago
It’s not clear what you mean by “our culture” but humans in general struggle to have meaningful lives without feeling like they are contributing. The Native populations in America and Iceland have some of the worst suicide rates because their cultures way of producing goods and food was supplanted by government benefits.
- freeone3000 3y ago
  But there’s no need for them to contribute. The meaningful contributions they make are not going to be compensated, and their compensation is unrelated to labor. The jobs are pointless.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    You can feel like you’re contributing even when you aren’t doing that much. The problem is when they know there is no need for them to contribute. That leads to a sense of pointlessness.
- gaganyaan 3y ago

snake_doc 3y ago

The effectiveness of a security program cannot solely be measured by penetration tests under controlled circumstances. Aspects of deterrence and standardization required by the program fundamentally changes the threat actors’ calculus. This is the very fundamentals of mixed strategy calculations in game theory.

ethanbond 3y ago
It is absolutely bonkers how many otherwise pretty reasonable people miss this glaringly obvious fact.
- tqi 3y ago
  We are all vulnerable to confirmation bias
- snake_doc 3y ago
  A common analogy is to think about traffic lights. If you run a penetration test, asking an individual to run a red light. You will achieve near 100% success. However, when the traffic lights change actors’ behaviors to stop (at some probability such that it results in less collisions), most actors will stop according to the traffic lights.
  - RiceRichardJ 3y ago
    That's not a good analogy at all. The incentives and motivations are completely different. Many drivers would at one point or another consider running a red light in order to save some time. I don't think you can say the same about passengers wanting to hijack a flight.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  "Aspects of deterrence and standardization required by the program fundamentally changes the threat actors’ calculus." “By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.” “Oh, how does it work?” “It doesn’t work.” “Uh-huh.” “It’s just a stupid rock.” “Uh-huh.” “But I don’t see any tigers around, do you?” “Lisa, I want to buy your rock.”

puffyblogger 3y ago

[dead]

fblp 3y ago

Also you can pay money for TSA pre-check of CLEAR for faster security clearance. So those who have money to pay for those services are less impacted by TSA bloat.

Ekaros 3y ago
If my goal was to get something dangerous on board. Why wouldn't I put the people in that group... It seems insane not absolutely everyone is subjected to same level scrutiny each and every time.

almostnormal 3y ago

> [...] that the whole thing is just a tax-funded wealth redistribution program [...] Aren't they paid by the passenger fee?

sneak 3y ago
Yes, it's a tax imposed on air travel, something usually undertaken by the wealthy.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Not to be judgemental, but I don't think of Spirit Airlines' passengers as wealthy. A short haul flight costs < $200, or less than a PlayStation 5, so their customers aren't, like, destitute, but that's a long way from being wealthy.
cjalmeida 3y ago
Potato potahto. Society pays for it

qaq 3y ago

It's not so much a contingent of people fundamentally opposed to doing things like this, as it is people in power having a nice chunk of $ for contractors to milk with 0 inconvenience to them as they fly private.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

> Like, literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all. We would also all be better off if we lived in a socialist utopia where everyone helps each other, free housing, free food, unlimited transportation, no money, no jobs, no rich employers, no corporations, no war, famine, etc. But all of that is as likely to happen as an American population giving poor people money to live just because there aren't any jobs that will hire them where they live with their qualifications. So instead we do the hack of a welfare program disguised as a valuable civic service and eat the larger cost to the economy. Every politician knows it's a welfare program, and they love it, because they don't have to call it one.

lostlogin 3y ago
> it's a welfare program This is a role usually filled by the armed forces. I suppose it’s good to have a few options.

hodgesrm 3y ago

The TSA stats show that they found 6,542 firearms in carry-on luggage at US airports last year. [0] This seems to undermine the argument that they are ineffective, unless you think those weapons should have been been allowed on aircraft. [0] https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/01/17/tsa-breaks-yet-another-record-nationally-firearm-discoveries-2022-0 https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/01/17/tsa-break...

chiph 3y ago
How many didn't they find?
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Zero that were used for hijackings.
1123581321 3y ago
How many crimes were prevented? Thousands of guns per year were accidentally or ignorantly (or even defiantly, but nothing happened) brought on board before 9/11, too. The TSA makes rules and then enforces them. Their ability to enforce their own rules doesn't make them effective.
- dgrin91 3y ago
  There were a LOT more plane hijackings (with guns and grenades!) pre 9/11.
  - 1123581321 3y ago
    Yes, see the other comment.
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  Can you cite numbers for that claim?
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dgrin91 3y ago

I really don't understand the sentiment of "literally everyone would be better off if the TSA paid people to just stay home and do absolutely nothing at all". I can understand sentiments like the TSA is inefficient, or bloated, or wasteful, but does literally nothing? Do you really think things would be better if we had no xray scanners for luggage or full body scanners for people? Someone needs to run those machines, and thats the job of the TSA. How can you say we would be better off without those?

Nullabillity 3y ago
> I can understand sentiments like the TSA is inefficient, or bloated, or wasteful, but does literally nothing? They're not saying that it has no effect, they're saying that it's harmful. > Do you really think things would be better if we had no xray scanners for luggage or full body scanners for people? Yes, that's the point?
- dgrin91 3y ago
  > Yes, that's the point? Explain this please? How is it better if I can bring swords or guns onto a plane and no one can even detect it?
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    If you can't access the cockpit, what are you going to do with either of those? You can kill a passenger, but you can already go out and kill someone before anybody reacts. Most people choose not to do that for some reason.
    - Nullabillity 3y ago
      Adding on to this, you've effectively just moved the chokepoint from the plane to the security queue itself.
    - dgrin91 3y ago
      1. I can blow up a plane and kill 300 people in the air plus more on the ground 2. If there is no scanners run by the TSA I can bring in tools to open the cockpit door. Now I can redo 9/11.

bigstrat2003 3y ago

I agree with your premise overall, but: > But the US has a huge contingent of people fundamentally opposed to doing things like this even when it would make literally everything better for literally everyone. I don't think this is why your idea won't happen. I've talked to many people over the years who are genuinely worried about terrorists and they believe that the TSA protects them. You can cite all the statistics in the world to them, and it won't matter. They are not rational on this topic. They will view "get rid of the TSA" as a huge negative impact to their safety, and will vehemently oppose it with or without the paying agents to stay home. I do think that paying people to stay home instead of doing make-work is relatively unpopular in the US, so that doesn't help. But the biggest problem you will face is just that people don't want to get rid of the TSA no matter how you do it. The TSA is very unpopular in tech/geek circles (and for good reason), but I've found it to be quite popular with normies.

sokoloff 3y ago
> paying people to stay home instead of doing make-work is relatively unpopular in the US I think that's a significant understatement of the prevailing condition.

ford 3y ago

Do you have more data about why they are useless? Safes are still useful even if they have never tried to be breached, and armed forces are useful even if a country has never been attacked. Perhaps the fact that the TSA exists means fewer crimes are even attempted.

bitcharmer 3y ago

I love how you put it. As born and raised in a communist eastern European country I can attest to how accurately it depicts the inefficiencies and absurdities of centrally planned economy. Seeing this kind of nonsense flourishing in the US of A is irony of the highest order.