A case for privatizing airline security

Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz have a very good article on the subject at USA Today.  It begins:

After the underwear bomber’s attempted mass murder, Americans are losing patience with the airline security system. It is bad enough that our screening process makes innocent people work far too hard to prove that they are not terrorists. It also manages to make it too easy for actual terrorists to be treated as innocent.

President Obama said the security system failed “in a potentially disastrous way.” He’s right. So how can we improve it?

The security process needs several things it is lacking. It needs continuous adaptation, with a strong focus on satisfying customers and improving results. It needs to find new and better methods of meeting the demands of customers who value safety as well as speed and efficiency. It needs to function in a dynamic environment, disciplined by rigorous competitive pressure.

In short, it needs the market.

Kiling and Schulz make great points, anticipate the opposition, and point out that

While most passengers don’t realize this, the TSA itself permits a handful of airports, such as Kansas City and Rochester, to use private security contractors under its Screening Partnership Program.

Read the whole article:

Airline security: Let’s go private: A market-based apparatus might lead to better service and — most important — safer air travel.

Fornication in public parks

Earlier this week I finished reading Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty, a senior editor at Reason magazine.  It’s a great read for anyone interested in the history of the free-market activism in the United States.  Here’s one of my favorite parts.  Nothing deep, but worth noting, from page 585:

Libertarians do enjoy their badboy reputation, especially among conservative ranks, for taking the personal liberty thing as far as it can go. As an old movement joke goes, “You libertarians are the types that would allow fornication in public parks!” What do you mean, public parks?”

And in case you’re wondering, a Google search for “privately owned parks” does return some hits.  The top hit is an article in an economics journal that says

Privately owned parks continue to proliferate worldwide. Their rapid expansion represents an important yet little understood private sector incursion into an activity long dominated by governments.

Photo of private park sign: from an on-line ad for Cookeville Tennesee vacation cabin rentals.

Open space trails: user fees & sponsorship, not taxes

In response to the proposal to charge non-Boulder County residents a user fee for using trails, the Daily Camera published the following in the October 17 2009 edition:

User fees — I call them a good start. Government should not force people to fund open space if they do not use it. User fees reflect this principle. Currently local sales taxes support open space. Some pay the sales tax but hardly use the trails, while others use trails extensively but shop elsewhere.

This is wrong. The City should not force one group of people subsidize the recreation of others. Why not lower the local sales tax rate and extend the fee to all trail users?  Everyone would be treated everyone equally, so no one would feel like an outsider.

Some may argue that the open space and trails are a “common good,” like clean air. Not quite.  Common goods are not “excludable.” For example, it’s difficult to exclude people from the benefits of clean air. However, efficiently collectible user fees are feasible for open space trails.

Others may argue that even those who do not use trails benefit, and hence should fund it.  But just because you benefit from something does not mean others can force you to pay for it.

Regardless of user fees, how about soliciting donations for trail creation, management, and maintenance? The Continental Divide Trail Alliance does this. Its website lists both individual and corporate donors.  Outdoor gear companies REI and Coleman each donated more than $15,000 in 2007.  Saloman and W.L. Gore also donated thousands of dollars. Like the “Adopt-a-Highway” program, signs at trailheads could recognize those whose donations support the trail’s maintenance.

Thanks to Ari Armstrong for suggesting trail sponsorship.

“Cash for clunkers” = votes from plunder

“Cash for clunkers”?  I’d call it “votes from plunder.” This program is a great investment – for politicians seeking reelection. It combines new-car gift cards for consumers, corporate welfare for car manufacturers, and jobs for the politically-powerful United Auto Workers.

“Cash for clunkers” is robbery – not just of our money, but our freedom. One person’s “clunker” is an other’s affordable car. Cars provide freedom to go where you want, when you want. But politicians are using your tax dollars to buy and destroy affordable used cars.

Politicians justify this with seemingly virtuous reasons such as fighting pollution and climate change. But the Associated Press reports that the effect is negligible: equivalent to shutting down “every automobile, every factory, every power plant — for an hour per year.”

Compare this to traffic congestion, which costs each traveler three weeks’ worth of gas annually, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. It also costs each traveler more than $750 in wasted fuel and productivity and “nearly one full work week” in wasted time per year.

Traffic congestion not only pollutes, but it robs us of precious time and resources. To remedy this, politicians should promote market pricing mechanisms such as toll roads, as Drew Carey describes in his on-line video “Gridlock.” Yes, comedian and game show host. Charging more at peak driving times can remedy traffic jams if … “the price is right.”

A version of this was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on August 8, 2009.