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If it was free, I would be more accepting of this answer. Since you have to pay it is just extortion and it incentivizes poor service in the gen pop TSA lanes.

If it was free, I would be more accepting of this answer. Since you have to pay it is just extortion and it incentivizes poor service in the gen pop TSA lanes. Generally you want to avoid incentivizing a public service to be shitty.

xp84 2y ago
So you'd rather that the taxes everyone pays, including the poor, goes to pay the costs of doing the background checks on the business travelers and other upper-class people who fly frequently? There is a cost to administer the program, and the program is useful in that adding a fast lane speeds up the lines for everyone, as the fast lane inherently has more capacity per hour. And it also means fewer people to be screened by the primary lanes, which means more attention can be put toward a group statistically more likely to contain a bad actor (because they have had no background checks). The fee is tiny compared to the costs of a plane ticket. It's $100 for multiple years of validity.
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  > So you'd rather that the taxes everyone pays, including the poor, goes to pay the costs of doing the background checks on the business travelers and other upper-class people who fly frequently? There is a cost to administer the program, The cost to do security checks on people scales with the number of people. There are plenty of taxes and fees already included with plane tickets; whatever "security fee" is actually necessary to fund reasonable security can be tacked onto the cost of tickets that way, and will automatically charge more from people flying more often (and won't penalize people who don't fly at all). The only possible economic benefits separating it out into an optional multi-year subscription service provides for any party are 1) overcharging people who misgauge actually "needing" it when they don't end up flying enough to meet whatever your threshold for judging that is, and 2) actually not fully charging super-frequent fliers for the amount of workload they put on the system.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  We're supposed to be a country of equals. Not one where the well-heeled can buy better public service.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Flying is not a public service. There has never been anything equal about flying.
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      If the government is offering special access privileges, it is. Next up, reading exams for voter registration to boost literacy.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        I also had to pay a fee to the government for my driver’s license to have access to drive and passport to leave the country. Should those also be free?
- TheBicPen 2y ago
  Why shouldn't it be free for frequent travelers then? If it has all these benefits, including lower overall cost, surely it makes sense to not disincentive its use by charging for it.
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    If you are a frequent traveler, you probably have one of the many credit cards that reimburse you. But who is going to keep up with the “frequent travelers”?
- vel0city 2y ago
  How much cost is avoided by having far fewer people in the lines for deeper searches by even more TSA agents every flight?

xp84 2y ago

So you'd rather that the taxes everyone pays, including the poor, goes to pay the costs of doing the background checks on the business travelers and other upper-class people who fly frequently? There is a cost to administer the program, and the program is useful in that adding a fast lane speeds up the lines for everyone, as the fast lane inherently has more capacity per hour. And it also means fewer people to be screened by the primary lanes, which means more attention can be put toward a group statistically more likely to contain a bad actor (because they have had no background checks). The fee is tiny compared to the costs of a plane ticket. It's $100 for multiple years of validity.

jacobgkau 2y ago
> So you'd rather that the taxes everyone pays, including the poor, goes to pay the costs of doing the background checks on the business travelers and other upper-class people who fly frequently? There is a cost to administer the program, The cost to do security checks on people scales with the number of people. There are plenty of taxes and fees already included with plane tickets; whatever "security fee" is actually necessary to fund reasonable security can be tacked onto the cost of tickets that way, and will automatically charge more from people flying more often (and won't penalize people who don't fly at all). The only possible economic benefits separating it out into an optional multi-year subscription service provides for any party are 1) overcharging people who misgauge actually "needing" it when they don't end up flying enough to meet whatever your threshold for judging that is, and 2) actually not fully charging super-frequent fliers for the amount of workload they put on the system.
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
We're supposed to be a country of equals. Not one where the well-heeled can buy better public service.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Flying is not a public service. There has never been anything equal about flying.
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    If the government is offering special access privileges, it is. Next up, reading exams for voter registration to boost literacy.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      I also had to pay a fee to the government for my driver’s license to have access to drive and passport to leave the country. Should those also be free?
TheBicPen 2y ago
Why shouldn't it be free for frequent travelers then? If it has all these benefits, including lower overall cost, surely it makes sense to not disincentive its use by charging for it.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  If you are a frequent traveler, you probably have one of the many credit cards that reimburse you. But who is going to keep up with the “frequent travelers”?
vel0city 2y ago
How much cost is avoided by having far fewer people in the lines for deeper searches by even more TSA agents every flight?