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So you're saying that the airport security theater that terrorizes so many of us is necessary because it reassures some other people? And that the emotional nee
by guelo 13y ago
So you're saying that the airport security theater that terrorizes so many of us is necessary because it reassures some other people? And that the emotional needs of those people, who are not rational, must be catered to while the emotional needs of the rational people must be suppressed and ignored?
- saraid216 13y agoIf you're a utilitarian, you should start counting and get actual numbers of both these classes of people.
- baddox 13y agoYou would also need to quantify the difference in disutility between a passenger and his/her children being forcefully groped by security and a passenger being startled by a smoke bomb.
- Zigurd 13y agoSecurity theater has gone way beyond a cost justifiable by placating the ignorant. Where is the utilitarian argument?
- saraid216 13y agoYou just made one. An unfounded one because you pulled the numbers out of your ass, but you're making the claim that the utility provided by security theater is outweighed by the disutility it creates. So, less ass-pull, more numbers.
- Zigurd 13y agoNo, I asked a question. Maybe an implicit one: What value would you ascribe to placating the ignorant? Or, more fundamentally, is there any utility at all in that? Or, if there is nothing to the placating, do we have to reach lower still, to asking about the utility of providing sinecures to the self-important and otherwise unproductive? The cost numbers are in the federal budget. What do you think the numbers are for the value of "placating?"
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- glenra 13y agoSOME of the cost numbers are in the federal budget. But there are other costs that dwarf that. The real costs also include people missing their flights, people wasting time unproductively at the airport because they had to leave two hours earlier, people wasting extra time on the freeway or needlessly dying on the freeway. Not to mention the "deadweight loss" from every time somebody is dissuaded from taking a trip at all that they would otherwise have taken due to the extra cost (in time AND money AND stress) of dealing with the idiot brigade.
- hsod 13y agoThose people have just as much a right to feel placated by airport security as you do to feel terrorized by it.