Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Observer that in the real world, food and clothing is provided by the market, and no one goes hungry or naked, but A truly 'white bread' commentary. -- The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. Edmund Burke (1784) The Armadillo Group ,::;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'/ ``::/|/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com.', `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
-- On 25 Oct 2001, at 0:00, Sampo Syreeni wrote: A bare one objection to comprehensive market based security: a market needs private property, and other civil rights, in order to function efficiently, as predicted. Protection is what guarantees those rights. If you place protection on the market, you no longer have a guarantee that the market itself can function as originally intended. On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And if we place food on the market, we no longer have a guarantee that anyone will be able to eat :-) On 26 Oct 2001, at 0:18, Sampo Syreeni wrote: Of course. The point is, the market can work perfectly well in the absence of sufficient nutrition for all of the participants. But the market, unlike those wise benevolent folk who consider themselves morally superior to the market, DOES provide sufficient nutrition for all the participants, whereas whenever the wise and good have set themselves in charge of providing nutrition for all, or X for all, they have usually failed no matter what the value of X. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG uzxAd0pvJ5PX1jXw2p1edtML+I4VCxipiT4j/VrF 4V36lFs1xXlyoMvT6s5LYzy9iPrB3N+ruHLpuZfID
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
-- On 25 Oct 2001, at 0:00, Sampo Syreeni wrote: A bare one objection to comprehensive market based security: a market needs private property, and other civil rights, in order to function efficiently, as predicted. Protection is what guarantees those rights. If you place protection on the market, you no longer have a guarantee that the market itself can function as originally intended. And if we place food on the market, we no longer have a guarantee that anyone will be able to eat :-) Observer that in the real world, food and clothing is provided by the market, and no one goes hungry or naked, but school and protection is provided by the government, which theoretically spends the same money protecting and educating the poor as the rich, and many people are not educated or protected. In America today many do not get an education. In North Korea today many do not get to eat. That is because in America, the state guarantees education, in North Korea, it guarantees food. If the state guaranteed sand for all in the sahara, there would soon be sand shortage. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 4fljdbeLLWox+IazJXkc65l3GbGVxFV5SIJVIO5l 4L7J488MYZF8SAQaJj89qjSWZfvLtOyMr+SHwugf4
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Thu, 25 Oct 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And if we place food on the market, we no longer have a guarantee that anyone will be able to eat :-) Of course. The point is, the market can work perfectly well in the absence of sufficient nutrition for all of the participants. This does not hold when property rights are violated. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Tim May wrote: I don't have time to respond in depth to the points Tim makes here, so I have snipped a lot of them. I intend to come back and comment in more detail later. Largely, I am in agreement. However, in the paragraphs I've quoted below, Tim touches on a counter-argument and dismisses it. I'll like to expand upon that a bit. * one size does _not_ fit all. Not all passengers are equally likely to be security risks. This is common sense, but the civil libertarians call it racial profiling. True civil libertarians know that owners of property (e.g. United Airlines) are free to implement security procedures as they see fit. If ABX Airlines wants to implement full body searches of passengers and XYZ Airlines wants to implement no security at all, to first order this should be a market decision. (There are interesting issues of danger to others. Friedman the Younger covers this in his recent book on economics. Law's Order. To wit, XYZ Airlines, with no security procedures, might be denied use of various airports, etc. A standard tort issue. The outcome is not precisely known, but a move toward market competition for security measures would flesh out many of these issues and outcomes.) I think that this danger to others issue will lead us right back where we started. It would not simply be an issue of various airports denying use, but also communities denying airspace rights. And you can bet that, in a world where airlines were permitted to have no security procedures, XYZ Airlines would also have to abide by no-fly zones set up by the larger, more security-conscious cities, enforceable by SAMs. There would probably be places in the mid-west that permitted such airlines to operate their services. But the market would surely kill them swiftly if they were denied the ability to fly or land in any popular area. Customers would go elsewhere, not because of the lax security, but because of the limited service offerings. If planes didn't bring down office buildings, if there were no issue of airline policies posing a danger to others, perhaps this would be different. -MW-
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Wednesday, October 24, 2001, at 11:33 AM, Meyer Wolfsheim wrote: Largely, I am in agreement. However, in the paragraphs I've quoted below, Tim touches on a counter-argument and dismisses it. I'll like to expand upon that a bit. I didn't dismiss it. In fact, I wrote more about this issue, which I haven't seen brought up by anyone else here, than 95% of all posts to Cypherpunks have in their entire amount of original material! (There are interesting issues of danger to others. Friedman the Younger covers this in his recent book on economics. Law's Order. To wit, XYZ Airlines, with no security procedures, might be denied use of various airports, etc. A standard tort issue. The outcome is not precisely known, but a move toward market competition for security measures would flesh out many of these issues and outcomes.) I think that this danger to others issue will lead us right back where we started. It would not simply be an issue of various airports denying use, but also communities denying airspace rights. And you can bet that, in a world where airlines were permitted to have no security procedures, XYZ Airlines would also have to abide by no-fly zones set up by the larger, more security-conscious cities, enforceable by SAMs. I never claimed that a stable end-state is that of some airlines have no security procedures. Such was not the case before 911, so it is even less likely today. I don't know what the evolution will look like. The ecology of the security measures will probably, if allowed to by regulators, have a few hyper-conscious players like El Al, a few cattle car playes like People Express, and a bunch of players in between. I was not dismissing this issue of collateral damage, of tort damage. I said Friedman explores such things in great detail. However, the current system does not allow the positive effects I described. Any airline in the U.S. (or many other countries) which attempted some obvious security measures would face lawsuits by discriminated against customers. This is a more pressing problem than some extremely unlikely scenario wherein some carrier adopted a no security procedures policy. There would probably be places in the mid-west that permitted such airlines to operate their services. But the market would surely kill them swiftly if they were denied the ability to fly or land in any popular area. Customers would go elsewhere, not because of the lax security, but because of the limited service offerings. You are making my point, not arguing against it. I never claimed that a spectrum of security measures would be a stable, or even a short-term, state. May's Law: The longer the essay, the more complaints there are that it was not detailed enough. --Tim May That government is best which governs not at all. --Henry David Thoreau
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Tim May wrote: I didn't dismiss it. In fact, I wrote more about this issue, which I haven't seen brought up by anyone else here, than 95% of all posts to Cypherpunks have in their entire amount of original material! My apologies. Dismiss was not the correct word. I suppose I view this issue as a larger hurdle then you do. I never claimed that a stable end-state is that of some airlines have no security procedures. Such was not the case before 911, so it is even less likely today. [snip] You are making my point, not arguing against it. I never claimed that a spectrum of security measures would be a stable, or even a short-term, state. Okay. I took your thoughts to mean that you were envisioning a market where the level of security provided by the airlines was completely under the control of the airlines themselves, and would be adjusted by the airlines according to the demands of the customers (and to a lesser extent, the employees and share-holders) so that the airline could remain profitable. My point was that such a system wouldn't get off the ground. The issue isn't simply *actual* collateral damage. Airlines would have to get permission to use the airspace their planes would occupy. If an airline's proposed security measures didn't meet with the requirements for the community controlling the airspace that airline wished to utilize, the airline wouldn't ever have the chance to see how the market would react to its security offering. I think it's a non-starter, because the potential collateral damage and the reliance on third-party right-of-ways is too great. Such a system could work well in other instances, though. Compare to private railway lines. A private train service would be able to initiate such a system with much greater ease, since there is much less potential collateral damage, and less use of third-party resources and property. Call me a pessimist, but I can't see how an airline with less than acceptable for the Common Good security measures would ever be able to begin operating. I don't think we'd ever have the opportunity to see what the market reaction would be -- the airline would not fly one plane. May's Law: The longer the essay, the more complaints there are that it was not detailed enough. Oh, Tim... I wasn't complaining. You asked for thoughts, and I was offering mine. -MW-
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Tim May wrote: Federalizing or socializing the costs of security is like federalizing or socializing flood insurance: it takes the efficiencies of the market away and creates distortions. A bare one objection to comprehensive market based security: a market needs private property, and other civil rights, in order to function efficiently, as predicted. Protection is what guarantees those rights. If you place protection on the market, you no longer have a guarantee that the market itself can function as originally intended. Cf. piracy (in its original form) -- an evolutionary system like pure market economy (anarcho-capitalism) will likely settle in a state with parasitic activity present. It is not clear that this stable state (you would call it a Schelling point) would not include a major proportion of rights violating commerce (like mafia protection rackets and the like). Hence it is not clear that it indeed guarantees maximum economic efficiency; it might be just a local maximum. The above, of course, has very little to do with Tim's analysis of private security of the airline industry. But it does have a lot of relevance to placing *all* of the normal police activity in the private sector. If I'm not wrong, Tim's essay is part of precisely such an agenda. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
You seem to have left out the fact that the single largest player in the market today is the government. The security measures that are now in place for air travel are IMHO an abuse by regulators that amounts to using a private actor as a proxy for an illegal search : to whit names, flight numbers and dates. Feinstein was on the news this morning talking about using airlight flight manifests to develop databases for tracking movements. As far as I am concerned an airline ticket should be a bearer instrument entitling the holder to passage. Their job is to get people from A to B. I should be able to travel as Ben Franklin with an ID I printed myself as long as the fare has been paid. The reasons for my travel, how and when I paid for my ticket and the date of my return trip are irrelevant. Had the cockpit doors been secure, the pilots able to watch CCTV of the passenger areas, plainclothes police been aboard and the info gained from Ramzi Yousef's PC captured in Manila been incorporated into hijack training and protocols 911 would not have happened even if half of al Quaeda had been flying United that day. About the only implementation of a trust certificate that would be acceptable is one that was issued after convincing the issuer that you were a good guy and was tied to you by perhaps a biometric and a PIN attribute but for which all connections to your identity were not stored. IOW, we don't know who you are but we believe the certificate belongs to you, we trust the issuer and they trusted you so off you go then. I'm sure there are protocols for proving membership without betraying identity. I want a choice in whether I leave a record of my travels or not. For estate reasons I may want to escrow my travel records for the duration of the trip. Bottom line : I want more control, more freedom, not less. Mike
Re: Market Competition for Security Measures
On Wednesday, October 24, 2001, at 10:52 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You seem to have left out the fact that the single largest player in the market today is the government. That's the sea the fish swim in...so pervasive that no one needs reminding of it. I am arguing for increased privatization, through simple measures. The security measures that are now in place for air travel are IMHO an abuse by regulators that amounts to using a private actor as a proxy for an illegal search : to whit names, flight numbers and dates. Feinstein was on the news this morning talking about using airlight flight manifests to develop databases for tracking movements. I don't support this government role. By the way, there are reports (maybe reposted here) that some hotel chains are cooperating in programs to link their data bases of hotel reservations with airline reservations with government files. So that Joe Businessman has booked a room at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency, Hyatt will link to his flight. Links to his company are next. The argument will be that this allows taking him off the list of suspects to scrutinize. We are headed toward a fully-credentialized society. No doubt with European-type laws requiring identification for all hotel check-ins. (I've been forced to show my driver's license at hotels for the past dozen years or so. Cash has been discouraged, though it's not illegal, yet, for hotels and motels to take cash and no I.D. It likely soon will be.) As far as I am concerned an airline ticket should be a bearer instrument entitling the holder to passage. Their job is to get people from A to B. I should be able to travel as Ben Franklin with an ID I printed myself as long as the fare has been paid. The reasons for my travel, how and when I paid for my ticket and the date of my return trip are irrelevant. You are welcome to look for a carrier that operates this way, in my scheme. But if Tim's Airline wants your fingerprints and retinal scans and a hefty security bond, you are free to find another carrier. About the only implementation of a trust certificate that would be acceptable is one that was issued after convincing the issuer that you were a good guy and was tied to you by perhaps a biometric and a PIN attribute but for which all connections to your identity were not stored. IOW, we don't know who you are but we believe the certificate belongs to you, we trust the issuer and they trusted you so off you go then. I'm sure there are protocols for proving membership without betraying identity. I want a choice in whether I leave a record of my travels or not. For estate reasons I may want to escrow my travel records for the duration of the trip. Bottom line : I want more control, more freedom, not less. I don't disagree with your wants, but the trends are not in our favor. Privatizing security at least gets market forces back into the equation, which they've been out of for far too long. --Tim May Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. --Robert A. Heinlein
