Hacker News Reader

Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know where your faith that deregulating and privatizing would help the experience comes from. Here in Europe once they privatized parts of rail travel the experience got markedly worse. I moved to Europe about 20 years ago and it used to be much more of a pleasure taking trains with the EU (mostly talking about long range international trains within Central Europe) even not that long ago.

Specifically in Germany the experience seems to have only gotten worse (both with quality of service and punctuality).

View on HN

True. It's a false idea that privatisation improves anything. Most private good and services are better because of competition, not because of the ownership.

If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good. When it means a limited number of suppliers chosen by an authority, it's almost always worse.

>True. It's a false idea that privatisation improves anything. Most private good and services are better because of competition, not because of the ownership.

Absolutely. So let's have competition with multiple private contractors at every airport, paid by the number of passengers who choose to use a particular contractor to go through security.

That would solve every problem, as the market will optimize for maximum passenger satisfaction at security checkpoints, especially if they can get more people through faster.

What could go wrong? /s

Privatisation has nothing to offer if there is no competition.

If there is no competition possible--and there are so many other situations apart from airport security--then a publicly owned provider is better. There _are_ some things that are a natural monopoly but if there must be a monopoly then it should be a government one.

A private monopoly is the worst of all worlds.

Poe's law[0] strikes again!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

I know you’re being sarcastic but you’re inadvertently correct.

Very quickly “no security airlines” would go out of business as no one would want to risk their life needlessly, especially if the lack of security led to an incident.

However an airline that used nonintrusive, convenient methods for security, fmight find a loyal passenger following.

>I know you’re being sarcastic but you’re inadvertently correct.

I don't think so, as you seem to have misunderstood my "bright idea."

It's not airlines I was talking about. They'd have nothing to do with it. Just as they have zero to do with security checkpoint screening now. Rather, it's multiple, private replacements for TSA, each of which would serve all the airlines/gates at an airport.

What's more, even before the TSA existed, the airlines didn't do the screening. It was a private security contractor hired by the airport.

It's, as you correctly imply, all about incentives.

In my "scenario" these hypothetical "competitive private replacement" security screeners are paid by the numbers of bodies it passes through.

And so I'll ask my sarcastic question again. This time specifically to you:

What could possibly go wrong?

Edit: Clarified prose.

Partial privatization is often (always?) worse than no privatization.

Privatization works only because of market incentives. When you take away some of those incentives then you have the illusion of a free market but free market controls cannot encourage good outcomes.

> If privatisation means opening up a line of business to all comers, it's good.

Not always. Often when this happens, it's just a race to the bottom.

FWIW, in the US an airport doesn't actually have to use the TSA: the government can't actually quite mandate a single vendor like that here; there thereby exist private companies that operate to the TSA specification, and an airport can go with one of them instead. The airport in San Francisco (SFO) is the only one I have ever seen do this, using a vendor named CAS... and while the experience is mandated to suck a lot, it still sucks a lot less than the TSA as the CAS employees seem to get that they are just security technicians, not officers of the state (a distinction the TSA people don't understand, but also applies to them: the police at the airport, for example, have lots of jurisdiction over them, as far as I understand).

I don’t understand though, why upon learning the government does something poorly the first reaction would be to replace it with private contractors rather than demand your government does better? Some things are public services and shouldn’t be profit motivated.

The problem is that such demands for a government that does better often go absolutely nowhere. As a result voters feel like it is easier to replace contractors than it is to replace politicians. Given the very high rate of incumbency, this isn’t entirely unfounded.

And what would you do to force SF to replace the private contractor they use for their airport if you end up not liking it? Your avenue is exactly the same as protesting against a public service.

If SF's contractor got caught killing a dude over bootleg smokes or kneeling on a guy until he died you can bet your ass they'd either be out or they'd be doing everything in their power to make people happy with them going forward.

Try that with a state sponsored security force.

But the article we're talking about isn't about homicide, but about much more pedestrian lack of efficiency and corruption (the price of airport food in NYC).

Because it's generally been borderline impossible to force a large national government to do something better. It's legitimately easier a lot of the time to force a multinational corporation to change than the government.

Since the TSA is generally a federally controlled agency, you'd have to elect a majority of the House/Senate/Executive to change policy there to make it better, and literally no one will run for those offices with even a minor part of their platform being improving the TSA. Even if they had a position you liked about airport security, would you be willing to look past a difference on something like gun laws or school funding or environmental issues to vote for someone who was going to make the TSA more effective? If your answer is no, that's why people have no real hope that the government would improve the TSA.

Which only tells you that the issues with TSA are not politicized (in general). Which is a good thing.

So any government should work on improving the process if enough people are complaining and there are objective improvements to be made.

We don't have to think about which party to vote for to ensure eg. the government cares about improving lives of their citizens: they should all do that!

> Which only tells you that the issues with TSA are not politicized (in general). Which is a good thing.

Do you consider "fundamental to the system" better? I don't.

The government should do as little as possible. That they do a thing poorly is but one reason among many for them to lose the privilege of doing that thing.

No government employee will get fired for enforcing the status quo or coming up with a new regulation that seems to improve safety.

However there is huge career risk to reducing regulation, easing up on "safety" rules, etc. And anyone who does that will be attacked and if possible punished if anything goes wrong.

Literally there is no incentive for bureaucracies to do better.

> the government can't actually quite mandate a single vendor like that here; there thereby exist private companies that operate to the TSA specification, and an airport can go with one of them instead. The airport in San Francisco (SFO) is the only one I have ever seen do this, using a vendor named CAS

The following airports utilize the screening partner program: Atlantic City International Airport, Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport, Dawson Community Airport, Great Falls International Airport, Glacier Park International Airport, Greater Rochester International Airport, Havre City-County Airport, Jackson Hole Airport, Kansas City International Airport, L. M. Clayton Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, Portsmouth International Airport, Punta Gorda Airport, Roswell International Air Center, San Francisco International Airport, Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, Sidney-Richland Municipal Airport, Sioux Falls Regional Airport, Tupelo Regional Airport, Wokal Field/Glasgow International Airport, Yellowstone Airport

Reply on news.ycombinator.com