The Real Lesson of the TSA Walkout
By Per Bylund, American Institute For Economic Research’s Daily Economy
The extended partial government shutdown has led to long lines of frustrated passengers at airports nationwide as unpaid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents walk out. Officials even warn that small airports may shut down due to the absences. If we for a moment disregard the Washington Monument syndrome likely also at play, the lesson to be learned here is not the importance of funding government services — but the exact opposite.
The TSA has a long history of failing to such a degree that it could never survive had it not been run by and within the government. Costing taxpayers and travelers $10 billion annually, not counting the inconvenience and time lost, the agency fails even on its own terms. The failure rate in 2015 was over 90 percent. The same in 2017. If these data seem dated, it is because they are. Instead of fixing the problems, the results of the agency’s internal testing were classified. In the absence of data, the only reasonable interpretation is that the agency remains a catastrophic failure to this day.
The recent airport chaos stresses how the security theater has become an unbearable bottleneck. It also stresses how dysfunctional government services become problematic beyond the waste of resources and the inconveniences they cause. The difference between government services and market solutions offered by businesses is stark. A private business that fails to deliver loses customers, and therefore both revenue and market share. Its failure is its own problem, which is a strong incentive to fix it.
As a government agency, the TSA’s failure is not its problem but is instead shifted onto travelers (their “customers,” as it were), who are, in some cases, left waiting six hours in line to get through the security checkpoint. In fact, this failure can easily be construed as a benefit for the TSA, which now — because the government requires all passengers to pass through its bottleneck — has leverage to demand more funding. As a result, the destruction wrought by dysfunctional government becomes an argument for more of it, and taxpayers are left with...(READ THIS FULL COLUMN HERE).