20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

You probably would have to ban entities like corporations, partnerships, and non-profits from endorsing a candidate. It would essentially extend and make permanent the concept of Purdah to those entities. Purdah is the state of affairs during the pre-election period in the UK where entities like local governments and the Civil Service can't say anything that might prejudice the outcome of an election, though I can't argue that it wouldn't be a very draconian policy and doing something completely different to the original intention of the concept.

I don't think having very strict rules about the relationships between corporations/non-profits and politicians is necessarily a bad thing in itself, in fact many would see it as a good thing that further protects democracy from manipulation by private interests. However, I do see the other side of the argument in that it would probably open its own can of worms especially in areas like freedom of speech. The whole idea does start to unravel if your conception of free speech applies to entities like corporations as well as individuals. Unsurprisingly I lean towards the idea that it doesn't, but I can also see some very valid arguments for the opposite as well.

It could well be a moot point however, I'm not sure how well these "not-parties" would do once society had got used to a few elections without parties and experienced the relief that would come from making politics much less adversarial (I suspect arguments between friends and family would be less common without the tribal labels backed by billions of dollars of "enrangement is engagement" for example). We can probably get some idea by looking at extant "not-party" political entities like charities, NGOs, and lobby groups to see how effectively they influence elections today.

yup travelling to the US from Canada just to see a comedy show i needed to tell them how much money i have in my bank account and what i do and how much i make... what on earth... they couldn't understand why i would only stay one night...

>The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

Are they?

Complaints about post-9/11 "security" have mostly been about the ineffectiveness of steps that are clearly security theater, or the boondoggles of things like the x-ray scanners. Input from security experts was widely ignored in favor of, well, dumb ideas.

The COVID remediation steps we've been asked to take -- masks in public, social distancing, taking the vaccine once it's available -- are exactly what epidemiologists would've said were the right steps if asked about a hypothetical pandemic 25, 50, 75, or 100 years ago. They're directly in line with expert advice, and provably effective.

> improve mental health

I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues?

https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm

CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation.

How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?

> Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs, and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior...

> Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these stresses develops a mood disorder — in fact, most do not — stress plays an important role in depression.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-causes-dep...

This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug addiction/gun violence/suicide are symptoms and not causes.

My 2 rambling cents.

There's a dynamic aspect to this that's difficult to capture in terms of straight up mortality risk.

For starters, we're more interested in the marginal average reduction of mortality per dollar invested rather than point in time risk. Like, the risk of flying on airplanes is fairly low relative to driving. But that's, in part, because we've already invested a huge amount into making air travel safe. It might not make sense to funnel future dollars into making air travel safe as opposed to cars. But if we were to lower that investment going forward, mortality would presumably go up. Because people aren't that irrational: Zooming through the air a mile in the sky, absent safety precautions, really is inherently less safe than driving on the ground.

That's extra true for something like security, where you're dealing with responsive opponents. The odds of a plane blowing up in a terrorist attack are low, but if the bad guys had a 100% successful method for blowing up a plane, they'd probably take it and the odds would go up.

Plus the odds also vary quite a bit based on the denominator too. For instance, the odds of death by flying are lower over the last X years. But if you were looking only at mortality risk from flying on the 737 Max in 2019, maybe that's different.

And then there's the non-mortality cost. Eating healthier food would reduce mortality quite a bit. But people like eating unhealthy things -- at some point, the extra life gained isn't worth it.

None of this is to say that the current degree of security theatre is worth it. Only that relative mortality is probably insufficient a measure.