Comment Re:The TSA is Ineffective (Score 1) 554
Here's an interesting thought experiment. Through their ridiculous policies, the TSA serves as a disincentive for travelers to fly. It stands to reason then that the TSA is at least somewhat responsible for increased automobile travel within the US. Automobile travel has a significantly higher fatality rate, per mile traveled, than air travel (roughly double). Therefore the TSA would be responsible for an unknown, but almost certainly non-zero, number of increased traffic fatalities since its inception.
It would be very interesting to know just what that number is, and how it compares to lives lost in terrorist attacks on passenger aircraft. Furthermore, it would be interesting to look at the returns to scale. Presumably, TSA policies have decreasing returns to scale, in terms of how much safer they make passengers compared to the amount of hassle they impose on them. So, at the margin, each new TSA policy would provide less safety to aircraft passengers, and push more passengers to auto travel, than the policy before it.