We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “The average American has regular contact with the federal government at three points – the IRS, the post office and the TSA. Start with that fact if you are formulating a unified field theory to explain the public’s current political mood.”
– George Will, writing about airport security and the lovely TSA.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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That’s “T&A”, not TSA.
Don’t get me started about the IRS, whose inspectors are now armed with shotguns and semi-auto rifles, and the U.S. Postal Service, which is no such thing (unless you mean “service” in the livestock sense of the word).
Kim, as far as know, every place I have seen stories about this agency say TSA.
Here is another story. (Link)
No wonder so many people are not flying any more. Hope and change!
JP… its a joke
And a good joke. JP… unusually oblique of you sir!
A thought occurs with respect to the the millimetre wave radar scanners. Is the victim allowed to see their portrait?
I suspect not. If so. Why not? I suspect I know but humour me.
Sorry if this is taking this slightly OT but I’m curious.
This article(Link) suggests that despite the miniscule risk from radiation, given the number of flights per year, the backscatter scanners will kill more people than terrorists.
Add to this the loss of life because people opt for driving which is much less safe than flying, even with a terrorist link.
The post office actually isn’t all that bad, at least in small towns, while UPS, which got its start when the post office was that bad, is now known as United Parcel Smashers….
Sorry, for being terminally obtuse, but the joke about “T&A” as opposed to the “TSA” is an Americanism. “T&A” being an abbreviation for “Tits and Arse”.
The joke being that when a TSA agent does a “pat down search” (i.e. detailed fondling of male and female wobbly bits).
For more details, google “TSA agents are all perverts”
Also sorry about being obtuse, but I don’t have all that many problems with the Post Office.
PersonFromPorlock and jdm,
I live in small town USA and no the local post office isn’t too bad. However, I have a big problem with the fact that the USPS lost $8.5 billion this year and has been a loser for the taxpayers for decades. Time to think about privatizing it?
The one I heard was “Use Purolator, Stupid.”
Although, to be fair, I use UPS regularly and have never had a problem.
I used to work for FedEx, and at 3 AM, you don’t care about the box you’re moving around.
The TSA is criminally stupid. Why the hell didn’t we implement a program for pre-clearing individuals fairly quickly? I’d pay $200 a year to keep my name on a list so I don’t have to get groped by some loser.
Fair enough, but don’t expect miracles from privatisation. Free enterprise isn’t intrinsically more efficient than government, it’s more merciless. Take away the pressure of competition (which is a gimmee any ‘entrepreneur’ starting a private postal service would insist on) and you’ll discover why so many prefer government to monopoly.
Personfromporlock, please extract head from anus. You are not making any sense. How can an enterpreneur insist on monopoly conditions, unless the government outlaws any competition? In what way is the Government postal service merciful, as opposed to merciless business? Please elucidate.
RickC, two comments.
First of all, I have no problem with privatization.
Two, I would mention that part of the reason for the $8.5 billion loss is that the PO is required to fully fund its pensions. And it (supposedly) has to do it on its own; no taxes support it. Link – ignore the statist prattling about how much better this government service is than a private.
I would be very interested to see how a private entity would handle people like me who live 5 miles away a small town. I get great service from the PO at a great rate. I also get great service from UPS and FedEx also at a great rate (eg, Amazon Prime). It’s not an apples and oranges comparison, more like grapefruits and oranges; that said, I would be interested in the option.
ian at November 22, 2010 04:55 PM
One possible complication of either of the types of strip search scanners is that of maintenance and operation. In this country, using any sort of machine on humans that deliberately emits radiation; be it x-ray, CAT scan, flouroscope, MRI, radiation therapy, et. al.; requires the operator to be a trained and licensed x-ray technician, with additional certifications as necessary. You know, I have a funny feeling that there aren’t many such licenses extent in the collection of fugitives from the balconies of XXX theaters that have laid aside their trenchcoats for TSA uniforms. If you are so certified, you can easily make several times the money in much more pleasant conditions, although admittedly fondling an assortment of genitals of men, women, and children against their will is not amongst the perks of an x-ray tech in a hospital.
One of the key functions of a licensed x-ray tech is that they can recognize when the machine has gone stupid. Which they do every so often, emitting radiation in directions, focuses, and strengths not intended. For some reason, probably related to Murphy’s Law; it is never that it is emitting too little radiation.
Similarly, devices designed to irradiate people on purpose have to be inspected and maintained on a frequent and regular basis by specialists. For some reason, I don’t think that the minions of the Transportmittel Sturm-Abteilung are all that strong on foresight and belief in preventive maintenance. And keep in mind that medical x-ray machines operate a few hours a day; not 24/7/365. These machines are going to break far more often, just from usage.
For some reason, the same people in the EPA who are willing to believe that using a cellphone guarantees brain cancer, are perfectly happy with uncontrolled radiation exposure to all and sundry. Because it serves the purposes of the State.
I have much more to say about the TSA, from the perspective of being a retired Peace Officer. Suffice it for now to note that TSA agents are NOT cops. They are not trained. According to their own Human Resources Office, they are not subjected to any psychological testing before hire, and from the way they try to obfuscate the matter I more than suspect that their background check is only a quick search for outstanding warrants and not a full criminal background check for prior convictions. Which means that there is a good chance that the uniformed thug fondling a crying 3 year old girl is on a sex offender registry.
Subotai Bahadur
Here’s something I didn’t know – apparently, the TSA now has a policy of screening all persons entering the country by airplane – even after they have deplaned, after Immigration, after Customs, citizens or not – as a condition of entering the country.
http://noblasters.com/post/1650102322/my-tsa-encounter
I can’t imagine what possible aviation security justification the TSA could possibly advance for screening persons at the end of their flight. I don’t believe they have any right to prevent a citizen from entering the country unmolested.
Anybody else know anything about this?
I’m glad I’m not flying in the US this week – but I hope there’s such a massive disruption that the TSA gets a bloody nose it will not soon forget. I especially hope that there is a massive meltdown of TSA staff – the powers-that-be at the TSA will not yield easily, but it’s hard to impose your will on the people when all your staff has gone AWOL.
As one of my trusted LEO buddies said last night over a cocktail – trying to catch aviation terrorists by screening all passengers is like trying to catch housebreakers by screening everyone that comes in the door at Ace Hardware, including 3-year old girls. Only an arm of the Federal government could actually put this forward as being an effective approach.
llater,
llamas
You could possibly add the hated DMV to that list.
Your comment would be very true, Corey, except that in the US the DMV is a state operation and not a Federal one.
To the folks who’ve not had a bad experience with the U.S. Postal Service, good for you. Sadly, however, the plural of anecdote is not data, and the simple fact is that if the USPS was anything like a decent service, UPS, FedEx et al. wouldn’t exist.
The USPS is owned by its feral union, which demands exorbitant hourly rates for what is essentially menial, unskilled work. This drives up overhead (the reason why the USPS is a perennial money-loser in the absense of a rate hike), and has allowed the private sector to take over the profitable parcel business. Without its mail monopoly, the USPS would have lost the letters business as well — and email’s killing that sector.
Monopoly + Unions + Shrinking Market = Failing Business Model.
Wow: who’d a thunk it?
Ah, and a final word about T&A: the new catchphrase is: Gate Rape.
George will is not always good – but this was good.
I would argue that the average American interacts more frequently with the federally designed and partly funded National Defense Highway System (interstates) more frequently than the TSA.
Obviously, you’re not familiar with the history of cable TV here in America, where ‘entrepreneurs’ negotiated exactly monopoly access to markets with city governments – and then gave bad service with no fear of the consequences. And it’s not that the postal service is merciful, but that the Government is merciful to it, where in private practice it would long since have shaped up or gone under.
Which (I think) was precisely Nuke Gray’s point, PFP. The only situations in which monopolies exist for any extended period of time is when they have governments protecting them. Your observation about American cable TV is an illustration of that rule. The USPS is simply an older one.
OK, I see… you’re conflating privatisation with competition and/or efficiency: I’m saying that these things don’t necessarily go together. ‘Privatisation’ by itself just means a private company serving a market that was formerly served by the government. Maybe in competition with other companies, and maybe efficiently, but those things aren’t intrinsic to the concept.
I’m not against privatisation, but it’s not a slam-dunk that it always improves things. It does sometimes happen that after garbage collection is privatised, for instance, it’s the Mayor’s brother-in-law who gets the contract.
PfP: I think the problem is with the term ‘private’: when a government has a say in the affairs of a company, it can no longer be considered private, in the real (non-new-speak) sense of the word.
Agreed, PFP. But as long as the contracts are bid fairly, and re-bid frequently, you do get the benefit of competition. Whereas if government handles the job you are guaranteed the inefficiency of a monopoly coupled with the heavy hand of governmental coercion.
Well, everyone has done a fine job of answering PFP’s commentary and I’m late in returning so I’ll let it lie. I will add a point though in response to PFP on the example of garbage collection. I live in a small, rural subdivision in Tennessee and there are a least four different garbage collection companies working my neighborhood. Want to guess how much less our fees are than those paid by the local town dwellers who have only one choice for same service?
Actually, I have to add that I don’t buy the premise that a city or town needs to be in the contract business for garbage collection (or any other services) in the first place. See, it’s not really private if government, whether town, city, county, state or federal, still holds the strings and controls who gets to participate and who doesn’t. What you are talking about, PFP, is statist and that’s where the corruption you speak of enters.
OK, admittedly this thread is getting old but I do think many of you think better of business than it deserves. What keeps business efficient is the threat of extinction, and while one way of avoiding that is to do a really good job, another way is to work out a deal with the competition or the government so you can slough off, live well and enjoy your weekends.
That’s why I regard privatisation as a somewhat problematic cure-all. It may work, it may not. The brutal efficiency of the marketplace goads business towards hard work and minimal profit, which is why business tries so hard to avoid it.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with you, PFP. All we’re saying is that while in any individual case privatization may not be an improvement, it’s the only possible avenue toward true competition in these services. If it’s screwed up by venial politicians and greedy businessmen, that’s not an objection to the concept, merely to the implementation. Nothing’s perfect; we just do the best we can.