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 li

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.