Nearly every government policy is intended to stop future disaster but does not have the intended effects. Rather these policies are over expensive and cause unintended consequences. Big Government political parties believe policies and regulations can keep us safe from ourselves. Licenses, permits, security checks, public service announcements… It is abundantly clear government aims at controlling our actions instead of holding people responsible for their actions after the fact.
Our courts system or justice system is the traditional means of convincing people to consider whom and what they may damage. Relying on courts and police is certainly a more direct response to perceived threats than pre-checking everyone for dangerous objects and necessary skills before we take any action. We must be licensed to drive or buy a permit to install a Jacuzzi or be admitted to “the bar” in order to handle the legal issues of others, for example. But to punish us for the damage we have done is also appropriate if we cause others damage when we drive or install a Jacuzzi or give bad legal advice.
The attempt to keep people from causing damage while at the same time holding people responsible for their actions is certainly more expensive and very difficult to judge the effectiveness of our two part system. We cannot control the future or stop people from causing damage, either accidental or deliberate. But there are many examples of our attempts to legislate against such future actions which show how expensive and ineffective these things are.
One may study the Transportation Security Agency or TSA for its glaring and expensive and inconvenient ineffectiveness. For every dangerous item of contraband found the TSA searches 350,000 people. And none of the contraband found to date has been intended for terrorism.
TSA’s 95% Failure
From the article “… the TSA is hassling more than 99.99% of passengers to catch 1/20 of the dangerous items, none of which are terrorism-related.
“In fact, since 9/11, there have been only two terrorist attacks on American airplanes, both Al Qaeda-related—Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underpants bomber. In both cases, the flights began abroad (Paris and Amsterdam, respectively), and the men made it through airport screening but were stopped by fellow passengers.”
Big government advocates often argue that saving one life is worth the hassle, expense and effort. Some of us counter that reducing civil rights for the good of everyone must have limits. Reducing accidental death is a praiseworthy goal, but at some point we need to use resources for other things as well. And some of us would enjoy not constantly worrying that what we do might be illegal because of a plethora of growing laws seemingly against just about any action or inaction.
And so we accept that our freedom is limited when relate to certain activities. Usually those limits are rooted in a choice. I don’t have to drive a car, so I willingly reduce my freedom by submitting to the many licensing and insurance requirements to owing and driving a car, using publicly financed roads mitigating any future damage I may cause. I don’t have to enter a plane so if I choose to enter an airplane I submit to the hassle and humiliation of effectively useless TSA indignities.
At some point the entire philosophy will be questioned. If avoiding arrest and prison is not enough deterrent we need to examine why. Most of us who think about the issue believe the problem is unreasonable fear. We see government requirements to relinquish our rights to protect all of us from that rare person intent on causing harm. The joke is we aren’t using those rights for anything important so we won’t miss them.
So making items illegal is not enough, to some people, we must eliminate the possibility that objects can be misused to cause damage. So we all remove our shoes for the TSA, we show IDs before buying alcohol or paint, we submit plans to our City Hall before adding electrical options in our homes, we see a doctor to get antibiotics and we want to remove plans and designs of illegal items from libraries and internet repositories.