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The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

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Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#81

Post by d2vid »

toyg wrote: post #75
mahyarm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against a police style authority. They're a figurehead of what was lost after 9/11. The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and priv…

I wish you didn't use that sneering tone. Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony. Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.

Getting annoyed by airport security has everything to do with class - you need to fly often enough to find it annoying.

We don't talk about stop and frisk over and over again on HN because most of us don't live in areas where we are subjected to that police behavior every time we go out for a walk.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#82

Post by mahyarm »

toyg wrote: post #75
mahyarm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against a police style authority. They're a figurehead of what was lost after 9/11. The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and priv…

I wish you didn't use that sneering tone. Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony. Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.

He was asking why so much media _attention_ was being focused on the TSA vs other government agencies, not how the US compares to the rest of the world, or if it was class warfare.

It's really true that the media uses the upper-middle class as the focus group. The upper class, the %0.1, is too alien, too small, too smart, too international and thus too unrelatable for most Americans, so the upper-middle sets the tone instead.

You also have to separate UCSIS, the scary border organization with teeth and a horrible attitude, and the TSA, the organization that takes your water bottles away.

Also, you need to have money to fly a lot, and that starts around upper-middle class.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#83

Post by InclinedPlane »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur... In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

This is why these hit pieces are completely unfair to the TSA. Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. Government and non-profit are the most obvious but the bureaucracy of for-profit companies and even individual divisions inside of those companies follow the same rules. I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-o…

Predictability is no excuse for malfeasance.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#84

Post by mseebach »

ceejayoz wrote: post #51
ianstallings wrote: post #12

This is true of almost every government entity.

This is true of almost every entity.

Probably, yes. But at least private entities can be (and frequently are) killed by customers starving them of their income - this can happen passively by simply not buying their products anymore. Public sectors ones need politicians to actively invest political capital in not just removing it, but figuring out what it was meant to do in the first place, how to do it better and then setup a new entity that's better - so there's very high friction to take on the task. Obviously, also, anyone who takes on TSA opens himself up to being labeled "soft on national security".

Of course, there are many anemic private companies that are kept alive for various reasons long beyond their reasonable lifetime, but generally this holds. Private companies come and go much faster than public sector ones.

That said, I'm not sure airport security is necessarily a good fit for a private company.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#86

Post by drcube »

toyg wrote: post #75
mahyarm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against a police style authority. They're a figurehead of what was lost after 9/11. The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and priv…

I wish you didn't use that sneering tone. Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony. Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.

Dude, poor people don't fly. It absolutely has to do with class.

The systems set up to serve the poor are significantly worse than the TSA in every way, and I say this as someone who hates the TSA with a white hot passion. But the blogosphere isn't filled with tirades about how stupid, ineffective, wasteful and absurd the process is for obtaining food stamps, for example. Or getting a menial job, or getting adequate legal representation, or fighting slumlords, or getting police protection, or any number of things.

We hear about the TSA much more often because it overwhelmingly affects the wealthy.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#87

Post by geuis »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68
pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

See Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bur... In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

This is why these hit pieces are completely unfair to the TSA. Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. Government and non-profit are the most obvious but the bureaucracy of for-profit companies and even individual divisions inside of those companies follow the same rules. I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-o…

I like most of what you say. However the first sentence about being unfair to the TSA seems out of place. You're right about self preserving organizing but that doesn't mean we're being unfair. TSA is a horrible organization that needs to be dismantled.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#88

Post by drzaiusapelord »

geuis wrote: post #87
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why these hit pieces are completely unfair to the TSA. Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. Government and non-profit are the most obvious but the bureaucracy of for-profit companies and even individual divisions inside of those companies follow the same rules. I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-o…

I like most of what you say. However the first sentence about being unfair to the TSA seems out of place. You're right about self preserving organizing but that doesn't mean we're being unfair. TSA is a horrible organization that needs to be dismantled.

Oh I dislike them, but lets have a holistic view of this stuff. Just picking out the TSA is unfair. They're no different than most bureaucracies.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#89

Post by jonnathanson »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #76
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why these hit pieces are completely unfair to the TSA. Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. Government and non-profit are the most obvious but the bureaucracy of for-profit companies and even individual divisions inside of those companies follow the same rules. I was just looking over the recent Android handsets via tmobile and was shocked at the nightmare of tacked-o…

> Just about every organization becomes self-preserving as its primary function. But when they prioritize self-preservation over their intended goal, that's bad .

I think the real issue arises in organizations where self-preservation is actually at odds with, or at least orthogonal to, the organization's stated goal. Take the TSA, for instance (and many government agencies, departments within large corporations, nonprofits, etc.).

The supposed goal of the TSA is to efficiently and effectively protect travelers and the country from criminal and terrorist actions. In theory, if the TSA is doing its job well, it's actually reducing budgetary needs and slashing fat in favor of efficiency. The TSA should be trying to become clever and nimble, moreso than massive and overhead-burdened.

But the self-preservation mandate suggests the opposite. Self-preservation, for a government agency, means making sure you preserve or grow your budget year over year -- because you're fighting other agencies for it. Every dollar you get is up for grabs by other agencies next fiscal, and vice versa. Accordingly, becoming expensive and inefficient works in favor of self-preservation. As any seasoned bureaucrat knows, not achieving results means asking for more money to throw at the problem. If the TSA demonstrated that it was achieving its goals at current budget levels, it wouldn't receive the same budget next year. Or even face a budgetary reduction.

Re: The TSA's True Focus Isn't Safety - It's Self-Preservation

#90

Post by joshuahedlund »

pmb wrote: post #19

The whole trick of designing institutions is to make sure that when they act for their own self-preservation (as they will and do) they will simultaneously be achieving the goal we want them to be achieving.

How do you design institutions to correct for this, anyway? In general, if you set up an institution to solve a problem, there is an incentive not to actually solve the problem because it would eliminate the need for the institution's existence...
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