Comment by CaptSpify
10 years ago
I do often think that we should get rid of special treatment for "important" people going through these types of systems. If politicians, executives, etc had to go through the same thing, I think a lot of the inefficiencies would get fixed. As they stand now, there's no reason to make them efficient, because anyone who has the power to do so bypasses the system entirely.
Imagine how fast things would change if the president had to go through the TSA.
> Imagine how fast things would change if the president had to go through the TSA.
I don't think they would change at all.
30 minutes or an hour of time is inconsequential compared to the political (and non-political...) calculations that are made by someone in an office like that. People tend to be far more conservative when given actual decision-making power, and care much more about the big picture calculations than about their personal annoyances.
More-over, lots of congress people do fly commercial and yet support the TSA (either politically or actually).
More-over, lots of congress people do fly commercial and yet support the TSA (either politically or actually).
Because they use pre-check. And congresspeople get access to the top of the tiered justice system in America so they don't care about the liberty implications of Pre-Check.
This suggests that the inefficiencies would not be fixed, but instead explicitly codified exceptions -- with a high cost to the average user but little cost to political and economic elite -- would be created.