One good, one bad, and one piece of trivia that’s about the USA.
The Good.
Recently (actually 2021 and 2023), when I’ve come to my cottage in Minaki, Ontario, I’ve stopped at a large Walmart near the Winnipeg airport to stock up. A large percent of the workers there are either Indian or Pakistani (I’m guessing the former) and they have a great attitude and a great work ethic. They smile and are helpful and in some of them I can almost see the delight they have in their jobs. I’m even less of a fan of Justin Trudeau than I was of his father, but I think Justin is doing something right by letting in more immigrants.
The Bad.
On the eastern side of Winnipeg I stopped at a government liquor store (the Manitoba government still has a monopoly) to buy booze. No longer can you just go in. You get in a line, which was, fortunately, short, probably because it was at about noon on a Thursday, and then someone clicks a switch to let you in a security door. Then you pull out your ID and the person looks at it and compares it to your face. This isn’t about making sure a 72-year old man is old enough to buy booze. The person explained it to me. During the previous year, there were a number of invasions by gangs of young people who would come in, threaten employees, and steal lots of high-priced liquor. This new requirement was the response. It sounded as if I were back in California. My complaint is not about the security measure but about the thugs.
I wonder how a for-profit private company would have handled it. I don’t know for sure but my guess is that the company would figure out a way of letting people in more quickly. The second time I went there, on a late Saturday afternoon after getting back from Montreal, there were 3 people in front of me and it took about 2 minutes per person. It’s hard to get a lot of people in the store with that kind of delay.
The Trivial (kind of).
When I’m at my cottage, I start the day with a crossword puzzle from the Wall Street Journal. I clip about 30 of them through the previous months and bring them to the lake. Here was a clue: “SFO screeners.” The answer that Jesse Goldberg, the author of the puzzle, wanted was “TSA.” That’s incorrect. SFO is one of the few U.S. airports that doesn’t have TSA but, instead, has a private firm. And I do notice little positive differences. David Friedman, some years ago on his blog, Ideas, noticed one big difference in the way the SFO people treated his checked bag versus the way the San Jose TSA people did. I can’t find the URL quickly but it’s worth checking.
READER COMMENTS
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 25 2023 at 9:16am
I remember that post from David Friedman as well! It can be found here.
David Henderson
Jul 25 2023 at 11:56am
Thanks much.
MarkW
Jul 25 2023 at 9:57am
Has any economist calculated how many people the TSA kills and injures every year? At the margin, the inconvenience/delays/unpleasantness of airport security lines pushes some number of people to drive instead of fly, and we know that driving is something like 25 times more deadly per passenger mile than commercial aviation.
Some years back, the FAA did a surprisingly smart thing. They were poised to require infants on aircraft be buckled into car-seats. But then — amazingly — they realized that the cost of an extra seat would push many families into driving rather than flying, thereby putting the infants in greater danger than they would be on the airplane in their parents’ laps, and they canceled the pending regulation.
It’s well past time for the FAA and Homeland Security to apply the same logic to our stupid, time-sucking, privacy-invading, and actually deadly security lines.
Walter Boggs
Jul 25 2023 at 10:56am
I think your suggestion about TSA would be a sure winner for any presidential candidate’s platform. I wonder if they avoid it because it’s nonpartisan and thus useless in today’s environment.
MarkW
Jul 25 2023 at 5:26pm
It might be a natural position for a Libertarian candidate, but not for an R or a D. For Rs it would conflict with their general ‘stranger danger’ approach to the world and their belief that terrorists are still lurking about. For the Ds it would conflict with their love of large government employee unions and large government agencies and programs generally. So I expect our security lines will outlive me if maybe not my still-hypothetical grandchildren.
John Palmer
Jul 25 2023 at 10:57am
Just the past Friday, I had lunch with Ed White (a former student) who lives in Winnipeg. He and his daughter explained exactly the same problem at the liquor stores there. My reaction: Welcome to San Fransisco (referring to groups of shoplifters and the exodus of stores).
Monte
Jul 25 2023 at 12:47pm
Like many now do: Bottle locks, improved electronic surveillance, and the removal of high cost items from publicly accessible store shelves. In order to help compensate business owners for implementing these new loss prevention techniques, consumers may soon paying a crime-spike fee.
Monte
Jul 25 2023 at 9:15pm
BTW, you may (or may not) be aware that Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government is flirting with the idea of surrendering its monopoly on retail liquor:
Mark Brady
Jul 25 2023 at 1:12pm
Your remarks about security at government liquor stores prompted me to Google crime in Winnipeg and it turns out that Winnipeg has long had high levels of gang violence.
Go here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law,_government,_and_crime_in_Winnipeg for the full story. Scroll down to “Gangs and terrorism” and within that “Demographic-based gangs” and you’ll find fuel for those who want to restrict immigration!
Colleen Erickson
Jul 25 2023 at 3:13pm
I wouldn’t be saying its only gang related. There are also thrill-seekers, addicts, jerks and even just plain old idiot followers doing it. More so than gangs.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-nov-7-2019-1.5350104/no-quick-fix-for-what-s-driving-spate-of-winnipeg-liquor-store-thefts-expert-says-1.5351289
Joy Schwabach
Jul 25 2023 at 3:42pm
Love your writing! I think perhaps the David Friedman comment you mention might also be here, not just the one mentioned above.
https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/search?q=tsa
Here’s the relevant pargraph:
“When you travel, TSA agents get to go through luggage which you are not permitted to have locked against them. That gives them an opportunity for vandalism or theft.
There is a simple way in which the agency could reduce that problem. When an agent searches your luggage, he leaves a note telling you that the luggage has been searched. That note could have a code identifying for the agency the agent who made the search, allowing them to identify which agents were responsible for multiple reported complaints. The idea is sufficiently obvious so that the private organization to which security is subcontracted at San Francisco airport does it, as I discovered when my luggage was searched there. TSA does not.”
James Anderson Merritt
Jul 26 2023 at 4:18pm
I have loved Rum Cream for ages, but at one point (and, I think still), it was basically impossible to find “the right stuff” in any liquor store available to me in California. So I started importing a few bottles of my favorite brand every now and then. On one occasion, my shipping box looked pretty banged up, and I noticed that it had official tape on it, saying that customs had inspected the contents to make sure that alcoholic beverages were actually inside and that I wasn’t breaking any law or customs regulation concerning them. (I don’t recall any inspector number being cited, though.) So the government is well-aware of the basic idea, and has apparently long embraced it for customs purposes. I wonder why the TSA didn’t simply adopt that practice, or a similar one based on it? I suspect that the TSA’s decision was deliberate, to avoid liability or other problems for the government, and that if customs enforcement were a newly created function today, instead of being a function of our government from the beginning, when following procedure and due process were more of a priority, Customs might behave similarly.
BS
Jul 25 2023 at 8:00pm
Mosquitos didn’t even rate a mention?
Herb
Jul 28 2023 at 1:34pm
I saw on the news that TSA employees are receiving a pay increase. DHS confirmed this: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/07/27/dhs-implements-new-pay-plan-tsa-workforce
They cite the attrition rate as the need. I wonder how this might change things, or not.
TGGP
Jul 28 2023 at 7:07pm
Why is SFO so unusual? Why don’t other airports replace the TSA?
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