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Airports serve as a case study
Posted on: January 18, 2020 at 12:19:49 CT
90Tiger STL
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If you want a picture of the contrast between what Murray Rothbard called power and market — or the state and the private sector — consider what you see at most major airports in this country. You have two structures working side by side: the public sector as represented by the Transportation Safety Administration and the semi-private sector as represented by the airlines.
So you arrive with your luggage, and the TSA is the first to swing into action. And there you have it: the very picture of the bureaucrat: alternatively inattentive and belligerent, completely disregarding of customer well-being, so slow that they seem to exist out of time itself. They laugh amongst themselves as if they experience a real class identity and pay no mind to others. They treat mere citizens as subordinates, and are quick to accuse us mere mortals of wrongdoing.
Most of all, they don't do their job well. They will apply a strict chemical test to a tube of Crest but will let a black ball with fuse in it go right through, unnoticed. They will give a thorough search to a young mother, and think nothing of ripping a baby out of her arms, only because she came up randomly on the list of those to get a thorough check.
Private enterprise could never work this way. If you applied a profit and loss test to such state services, bankruptcy would be a foregone conclusion. Once we get past the TSA, we are greeted with smiles and warmth hitherto unknown in the history of airline travel. They seem very much aware that the travelers have likely gone through hell in dealing with the TSA. Even these unionized employees do all they can to serve others. Somehow we arrive at our destinations in one piece and not suffering total humiliation, but this is not due to the TSA. It is due to the forces of private enterprise that still exist in the airlines.
We can think of this airport scene as a kind of microcosm of the whole economy. It is burdened, vexed, harassed, hampered, and hobbled by the state. But through the miracle of human creativity and determined effort, private enterprise has created a grand and glorious world that has surpassed the most far-flung dreams of the old utopians, a world where food once inaccessible to kings is available to the poorest of the poor, where no one need be without clothing or shelter, where even those we call poor would have been seen as enormously blessed only decades ago.
Edited by 90Tiger at 12:20:19 on 01/18/20
If you want a picture of the contrast between what Murray Rothbard called power and market — or the state and the private sector — consider what you see at most major airports in this country. You have two structures working side by side: the public sector as represented by the Transportation Safety Administration and the semi-private sector as represented by the airlines.
So you arrive with your luggage, and the TSA is the first to swing into action. And there you have it: the very picture of the bureaucrat: alternatively inattentive and belligerent, completely disregarding of customer well-being, so slow that they seem to exist out of time itself. They laugh amongst themselves as if they experience a real class identity and pay no mind to others. They treat mere citizens as subordinates, and are quick to accuse us mere mortals of wrongdoing.
Most of all, they don't do their job well. They will apply a strict chemical test to a tube of Crest but will let a black ball with fuse in it go right through, unnoticed. They will give a thorough search to a young mother, and think nothing of ripping a baby out of her arms, only because she came up randomly on the list of those to get a thorough check.
Private enterprise could never work this way. If you applied a profit and loss test to such state services, bankruptcy would be a foregone conclusion. Once we get past the TSA, we are greeted with smiles and warmth hitherto unknown in the history of airline travel. They seem very much aware that the travelers have likely gone through hell in dealing with the TSA. Even these unionized employees do all they can to serve others. Somehow we arrive at our destinations in one piece and not suffering total humiliation, but this is not due to the TSA. It is due to the forces of private enterprise that still exist in the airlines.
We can think of this airport scene as a kind of microcosm of the whole economy. It is burdened, vexed, harassed, hampered, and hobbled by the state. But through the miracle of human creativity and determined effort, private enterprise has created a grand and glorious world that has surpassed the most far-flung dreams of the old utopians, a world where food once inaccessible to kings is available to the poorest of the poor, where no one need be without clothing or shelter, where even those we call poor would have been seen as enormously blessed only decades ago.
Edited by 90Tiger at 12:20:19 on 01/18/20
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Airports serve as a case study - 90Tiger STL - 1/18 12:19:49