Get on the damn elevator!

Melanie Scarborough at the Cato Institute recently released an interesting paper, called The Security Pretext, the thesis of which can be partly summed up in past and likely future presidential candidate, Senator John McCain's words, "Get on the damn elevator. Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It's still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up for crying out loud. You're almost certainly going to be ok. And in the unlikely event that you're not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That's not a life worth living is it?"

Scarborough argues that "national security" is being used as an excuse to justify otherwise unsustainable measures and spending "on everything from peanut subsidies to steel protectionism...

For freedom to prevail in the age of terrorism, three things are essential. First, government officials must take a sober look at the potential risk and recognize that there is no reason to panic and act rashly.

Second, Congress must stop federal police agencies from acting arbitrarily. Before imposing costly and restrictive security measures that inconvenience thousands of people, police agencies ought to be required to produce cost-benefit analyses.

Third, government officials must demonstrate courage rather than give in to their fears. Radical Islamic terrorists are not the first enemy that America has faced."

She's being a little unfair on the policing agencies. You can't blame them (or the peanut bureaucrats!) for raising their sails to take advantage of prevailing political winds. I believe it's a function what economists call public goods theory (everyone acts in their own best interests). It's up to each of us as individuals, as well as the politicians and the hard working public servants in these agencies to maintain a sense of perspective and, to paraphrase Senator McCain, get on the damn plane, preferably without having to wait for granny to have her shoes searched.