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Season 5 - Episode 6
Security, efficiency, and liberty

David Inserra is a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. He has written for The Hill, the Washington Times, and the National Interest, and is a regular guest on radio and television stations including Fox News and NPR. He has testified before Congress and participates in public debates and events to discuss national security issues facing the United States.

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The world changed when New York’s World Trade Center was brought down by terrorists. The United States government responded, among other things, by taking over airport security. David Inserra, in this enlightening interview, argues that the time has come to re-examine the American model—and privatize the Transportation Security Administration.

We are never going to get 100% security, because our resources are limited, and because we care about other things, not least of which is our liberty. The question then becomes how to get as much security as we reasonably can, as cost-effectively as we can. That’s where the private sector can help. “The private sector is better at managing labour issues, managing personnel, than the government is,” says David Inserra. “These private sector companies are in the business of doing it. If they do it poorly, they get fired, they don’t make any money.”

The government, on the other hand, doesn’t have that same incentive to make sure it does a good job. This lack of accountability may be why the American model is not more widely copied. “Almost all the airports in Europe, for example, use a private model where the airport provides security and the government regulates the airport or the contractor. In Canada, they have another similar model.”

The United States is safer than it was before 9/11, according to David Inserra. But it can do better still, and save money too, by relying on the private provision of airport security to protect itself from those who would threaten the American way of life.

Links of interest

David Inserra | Time to Privatize the TSA

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