[thaumasiotes]

Your examples are unlike each other.

What stops people from speeding more than they already do is enforcement. The law isn't doing anything.

But the TSA isn't a law. The TSA is, notionally, the enforcement. And it doesn't do anything either.

So the TSA really is pointless. If you drive around at 30 mph over the limit, you're going to get a ticket, and this traffic cop presence stops people from speeding "too much". If you smuggle explosives onto an airplane, you may die in the crash, but that would have happened regardless of the TSA. The TSA hasn't added any value.

[brookst]

The examples are similar in that they demonstrate that reducing probability is a reasonable goal, and it is a mistake to say anything imperfect is useless.

Your take on TSA seems to be in the imperfect=useless camp. There are good ROI, efficiency, and philosophical reasons to want to abolish TSA, but it seems naive to say there is zero value and their mere existence has not deterred anyone.

[maxbond]

I think the problem with these examples is that they conflate instrumental goals with terminal goals.

People speed to get to a destination faster or to relieve their frustration on the road (street racers notwithstanding). If the cost of speeding increases they'll speed much less, because they're more interested in their terminal goal. There's a lot of elasticity here.

Attacking a plane is a terminal goal for terrorists. If it gets harder, they'll do it somewhat less or pursue softer targets. But there's much less elasticity here. So it's less clear that more security measures will result in fewer deaths.

That doesn't imply the TSA is useless but I think it might be clarifying to the discussion.

[thaumasiotes]

> There are good ROI, efficiency, and philosophical reasons to want to abolish TSA, but it seems naive to say there is zero value and their mere existence has not deterred anyone.

Are you familiar with the TSA's measured efficiency? It's not naive at all to say that, below a certain detection threshold, the deterrence value is zero.

Compare https://www.loweringthebar.net/2015/06/tsa-successfully-pass... .

You'll notice that what I actually said was "[the TSA doesn't] do anything", which is accurate in a context of accident prevention. I didn't call them imperfect. I called them useless directly. It isn't the case that they do some good work and some bad work. They don't do anything that is useful in any degree.

[adgjlsfhk1]

the problem with TSA is that their effectiveness is near 0. every time there have been tests, ~3/4ths of bombs/guns go straight through. you'd get better accuracy out of a monkey pointing at whoever happens to have a banana in their bag