I don’t know why you continue to miss the entire point we’re making. No one is saying that “time x value=cost” is false. We’re saying that “value” is a very, very small number, and thus cost is very, very small as well.
At the grocery store, the faster you get through the register, the faster you can get on with life. At the airport, the faster you get through security, the faster you get to…wait for the plane to board. Look, you have to get to the airport an hour before your flight. That means you’ve got an hour to kill, whether it’s checking in, going through security, or doing any of the things whose sole purpose is to kill time.
And when you say that someone would have to pay us a lot more to go through security again, you’re absolutely wrong.
Please explain how you would come to that number otherwise? Assuming the numbers given here were correct, there are 880mm passengers. If the total “loss” is $10 billion dollars, that mean each person values 19.5 minutes of their time at $11.36. That means they value an hour of their time at $34.95. Given that we are apparently not differentiating between working and non-working hours, that means people think their time is worth $306,162 per year. How many people actual make anywhere near that? Even if I were more generous, and limited it to just the 2000 hours many work per year, you get $69,900, far more than the average salary in the US. And those numbers are low given that many of the passengers are children whose time is essentially worthless.
If that is not how those numbers are calculated, what else besides working can generate almost $35/hour for the average person?
That’s the problem though. They are trying to say price is a measure of value. In common parlance, by saying something costs you X amount, you are implying that something has an equivalent value of X dollars. When you are writing an article or making a general argument, that’s extremely misleading.
I strikes me as incredible stupid. Mostly because the “costs” have no relation to the actual value of things. Let’s say I go into an art store. The owner has 3 finger paintings done by his marginally talented 4-year old. He says there are worth 6 million dollars each. Both he and his daughter value their time and effort at that price. What do you think is the value of the paintings? Let’s say his store burns down, and he places an insurance claim on the value of the painting? Should the insurance company give him $18mm?
Are you really asking me how you should make a decision? I don’t object to a cost-benefit analysis, what I object to is pulling costs figures out the ass to scare people.
No, I am saying if it took you an hour to go to the grocery store to get the bread, it would not make sense to say the bread costs you the price of the bread, plus the money you could have earned during that hour had you been working.
One that doesn’t try to put an arbitrary dollar value on it. Why not just say “Americans are waiting an average of 19 minutes longer in line per flight because of TSA security procedures than they would otherwise, which decreases the enjoyment at the airport since they have less time to sit at the gate reading, working on their laptop or eating/drinking at the bar.” We can balance that “cost” against the “benefit” of whatever added security we get from those procedures. It’s simply not an *economic *calculation. The time number, if accurate, tells us something. The dollar number is meaningless.
I don’t fly every week or anything, but it is part of my job to travel and it is extremely difficult to characterize what people are doing as “waiting for the plane to board.” It is true that the reason they’re at the airport is to board a plane, and if they could show up 20 minutes later to do that, then they’d be doing something else. People who value punctuality and low-stress when traveling might indeed show up at the airport at the same time but this doesn’t imply that the difference between standing in line at security and putting up with the added hassle is equivalent to all the other ways to occupy their time at the airport.
These choices are not equal. You accept they are not equal. Therefore one choice or the other is a cost to the parties in question.
So what you’re saying is since TSA was instituted, practically no one decided to drive instead of fly? You’re saying that before TSA was instituted, people hung around in security lines anyway, because what’s the difference where they wait? No. No, that isn’t what’s happened at all. And you admit it. You admit standing in line is not the same as enjoying a beer at a restaurant. Even though drinking another beer at a restaurant is an actual thing people spend money on, you are willing to discount this entirely as a “small” figure because they’re not there to drink beer, they’re there to “wait” which has a “small” value.
No. You look at dollars as an accounting value, not an economic value. This is unfortunate for you, because it gets in the way of understanding the number in question. But it is not misleading, it is not shady thinking, it is no more arbitrary than the price of a candy bar.
This is far too low. It may well represent the average interval between getting into the TSA line, and putting your shoes back on, but that is not the half of the extra waiting time.
Because the actual time for the above varies so much, a traveler really needs to allow an hour, minimum, and more than that at “known slow TSA” airports, or for international flights. This is frequently far more than is actually required, which just means the traveler has to sit around inside the secure area. You might argue that this time is at the traveler’s discretion, but the alternative would be occasional missed flights, and we would need to add the wait for the next flight to the TSA caused delay. Layovers on international flights must similarly be scheduled far longer than pre-9/11, expecially with increased customs and immigration scrutiny..
Secondly, TSA procedures have resulted in substantially less air travel both due to travelers unwilling to tolerate the added delays, as well as increased fees to pay those TSA agents. As a result, fewer flights are flown, which means the traveler often ends up taking an earlier flight out, or later flight back than would be preferred, or takes a more roundabout route, sometimes requiring an additional overnight stay in order to meet business needs. These flights are much fuller, resulting in longer times for boarding and disembarking. Fat chance any of this extra time was counted.
No one, for the rather simple reason that most people only work 40-50 hours a week, not 168, because they value things other than hoarding money, like sleep, social relationships, and achieving inner peace through meditation or watching football games.
This is not unsurprising, given that the average salary in the US likely includes a boatload of people that don’t regularly fly.
Fascinating. But I suppose under your labor theory of value here, it’s fair enough.
Nothing is “generating” money. This isn’t an accounting class.
I see. Well we will never get anywhere, because I don’t think things have “actual value”, they have value only in the context of people making choices in the face of scarcity.
They should give him whatever his policy covered. If he paid for a policy to cover eighteen million in damages then of course they should give him that amount. Chances are excellent he could never purchase such a policy on the mere assertion that his child’s art is priceless, though.
So you don’t object to costs or benefits, as long as they’re not measured? Or what? Serious question. Your position is utterly baffling to me.
As far as I know, you are the only person who has said so. But I am willing to work with it, as a fair approximation of how much you’d have to pay someone to do something they don’t want to do, like work. But your method here would explode cost infinitely. The bread costs what it costs, and driving to the store costs what it costs, and if the bread is too expensive, do you suppose someone might drive farther to buy cheaper bread? I know you want to say yes, who wouldn’t, but I feel like your position demands you say “no” because you can’t pull figures out of your ass like that.
Increased security also affects employees at airports, and how they do their job, and how much they enjoy that job, and how much the employers have to pay their employees, and how productive they are, and…
Yes, they do value them. But the value of that time is not $34.95/hour. Why is this so hard for you to understand? The allegation is that people value that time, time spent not working, just like the time people spend sleeping or achieving inner peace, at nearly $35/hour. What if anything justifies that in your opinion? Just because people say their time is worth that much? Nobody would pay them that much for their time, just as nobody would pay $6mm for a finger painting.
Unlikely. The average salary only includes productive working people. It doesn’t include children, the unemployed, etc. All those people fly.
But those numbers mean nothing when they are pulled out of your ass.
Why not? Is it because the value he assigns to his art, like the value people apparently assign to their time waiting in line, is vastly inflated?
If you want to calculate the value of the time people spend waiting in TSA lines, the look at the actual economic loss people face, or what people would actually pay to avoid such a thing. Don’t just put numbers into a crude equation to get a number large enough to scare people.
And waiting in line at the airport takes the time it takes. My point is that assigning an arbitrary value to things to advance a specious argument is shameful. Hate the TSA all you want, but don’t try to say the delays they cause costs us $10 billion.
Let’s use your bread analogy. Say buying bread from store A take 5 minutes and costs $3. Say buying from store B takes 35 minutes, and costs $2. If we are to include a time cost equivalent to a loss or work wages, nobody would every spend more time to do anything. Would it be fair to say the SDMB costs society millions of dollars every year since people spend time posting here? No, because that time is generally leisure time with little to no real value, not time taken away from more productive things. Thus, even if we assign a cost to posting here, it’s not our average hourly wage x the number of hours spent on the board. That, in a nutshell, is my objection. I don’t care if people try to come up with a **real ** number for our collective loss, just don’t act as though it’s as simple as wage x time = loses.
Btw, I am still waiting how you arrive at a $10 billion loss via a different method.
brickbacon, you are not only attacking the number $10bn (a number we would have to ask Bruce Schneier about). You seem to be attacking a procedure that has been normal for 50 years in highway planning, and that are mandated by laws in several states.
Time spent in traffic has a cost. A new highway may reduce that cost. If the highway is less expensive than the calculated benefits, building it could be a great idea. If not, we should try something else.
It isn’t. I actually don’t think your interpretation of this figure is the right idea. But for a back of the envelope calculation, it will do ok.
Again, this is your allegation. It is your interpretation of what someone means by waiting costing some dollar value. Personally, I think this would undervalue the costs in question, for the reasons you get to later, which means your criticisms of your own interpretation only serves to inflate the cost, which is why you find it so incongruous. But it is close enough for not writing a research paper.
Opportunity cost.
Right. So it is a good thing we’re not taxing this kind of thing, huh? Of course, what really happens in real life is… people stop flying. Since they’re not paying any money, I guess this isn’t a cost, either? Or can you finally find a place to put a dollar value on something?
As far as I can tell, your hypothesis supposes their time literally has no value because they don’t earn money. But, since they occupy line space, they do increase the costs on the other people. Now, normally we count everyone’s costs and everyone’s benefits equally, but since you don’t seem inclined to do that, it will make the costs paid by those who you are willing to count inflated.
I understand you are averse to any kind of cost benefit analysis with actual numbers, even if they are inaccurate estimates. What I don’t understand is what your alternative is. How do you decide between two options? I’ve asked this I think at least twice and failed to have any elucidation on your point.
No, it is because he asking the insurance company to put their money on that line. Thus their view of the value of what they will be insuring is important.
We are looking at the actual economic cost. You are looking at the accounting cost. This is the fundamental disconnect. Lost opportunities don’t count in accounting cost. This is why I earlier mentioned the cost of lost opportunities: it is easy to remember, it is called “opportunity cost”. When you’re balancing your checkbook, you only record the cost of the movie ticket. When you’re deciding to go to the movie, you’re weighing it with whatever the next best alternative is, which you are forgoing. If you only obsess over accounting costs, you will always find these kinds of figures too large. But that is not a problem with the figures, it is a problem with your interpretation.
I’m not scared. It sounds like an underestimate to me, actually, fairly conservative.
Wow… what? Seriously, what!!!
Now leisure has no value? I… don’t know where to even begin. This is truly a position I had never expected one to maintain.
Fuck, I’m waiting for you to give me anything that explains how people make choices. So far, I not only see a complete lack of anything that would let people choose among alternatives, but a complete denial that time even has any value whatsoever. It is unfathomable.
My decision to drive from the Bay Area to Santa Barbara instead of fly has nothing to do with security and everything to do with the general suckiness of the airlines. Maybe we should hold them responsible for the additional deaths as well as TSA.
I certainly agree that security should be made more efficient if possible. A shoe scanner would be real nice. I have a laptop bag that lets you keep your laptop in, and TSA is fine with this. But doing away with “disbenefits” is not a good thing if it increases the risk.
In the Bay Area we are spending lots of money doing earthquake retrofitting, which has the penalty of higher tolls to pay for it. However, one thing we don’t have to worry about is that if we don’t do it, or delay, the earthquakes will choose to hit us earlier.
If you have suggestions about improving efficiency without increasing risk, I’m sure TSA would be happy to hear them.
I’ve already noted the decrease in hijackings when the first round of security was established, and we’ve had a marked and fortunate lack of hijackings when this round was. Even on 9/11, do you think the passengers on Flight 93 could have overwhelmed the hijackers and kept the plane from hitting the Capitol or White House if they had been able to carry guns on board?
I enjoyed flying prior to the TSA. I found it well worth the money. It sucked a bit when TSA got into full gear, then got worse. At that point, airlines must have been feeling a pinch, too, because suddenly even the flights themselves went from pleasant to shitty. I assumed that it was directly related to the TSA but maybe it isn’t. Now, if it weren’t for work, I would not fly at all. In fact I am in the process of looking for another job, even willing to take a salary hit, to avoid flying.
Anyway, no, if we assume that the market for flying works then the costs are already correctly accounted for, or close enough that the additional costs TSA poses can be counted against them.
I think the chief problem is that it is very hard to get an estimate of the benefits. Personally, I was not scared to fly after 9/11, I think the whole thing is totally overblown. I worry more about airlines cutting costs on maintenance than I do about terrorists. I think the TSA is needed about as much as random stop and searches by the police are needed at major intersections. (Which, if the implication isn’t clear, is not at all.) But, again, my feelings on such matters do not usually inform people in charge of social policies.
Bruce Schneier says that the reduction in hijackings are caused by two things: Reinforced cockpit doors and the general knowledge that passengers and crew now will attack a hijacker. This means that a hijacking or a suicide mission now will fail.
Since 500 people die due to the current security checks every year in the US, it must therefore hinder more than about one and a half hijacking with a total loss every year to have a net benefit. I need some very good arguments to believe that is the case now.
And the alternative is not letting people carry machine guns aboard. Some security control is certainly cost effective - but there must be some factual reason for them. At the moment they seem to be based on the principle of “As long as I buy every expensive gizmo available and spend as much money as possible on feeling people up, no one will be able to blame me if one slips through”.
What opportunities are given up here? The opportunity to wait at the terminal? Twenty extra minutes of sleep? The definition of an opportunity costs is:
The “next best alternative forgone” is generally not anything that has great value. That why the opportunity costs here are low. Note I didn’t say non-existent.
Then you might have a reading comprehension problem. How exactly was it unclear to you when I said:
[QUOTE=Brickbacon]
Nobody has said that the time loss has NO value. What I, and some others, have said is that the calculation is wildly off the mark because they selectively treat waiting time as income-earning time. Income earning time is actually valuable, but it’s often not fungible or elastic. That’s using crude math to say waiting 20 minutes costs society X amount is a terrible way to make a point that the TSA is a bloated bureaucracy.
[/QUOTE]
Or more directly when I said:
[QUOTE=Brickbacon]
I understand time has a value. I think that was clear form the first post.
[/QUOTE]
So it it’s not clear to you that I know that, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Because it’s such a ridiculous question, I figured you must be joking. But let me humor you. For any decision that is to be decided via rational means, you can try to objectively calculate the personal value you assign to decision A, then weight it against the alternatives. If A has the most positive value or best outcome, you choose A. For decision based on emotions, if you feel A is the best, you choose that. Most decisions will be a combination of both.
Again, let’s look at the definition of economic cost:
In the case of waiting at the airport, the best alternative (for most) is not getting paid to work, it’s waiting elsewhere. There is no disconnect here. It’s just that your side has decided to inflate numbers in service of a specious argument.
More importantly, 9 times out of 10 that I seem some calculation like this, it’s in a newspaper article read by laymen. The vast majority of people do not make that distinction. That’s why it’s misleading.
Let’s use another painfully simple example. Say I work for the velco association of America, and I want to highlight how bad shoelaces are. For the sake of argument, let’s say I calculate that the average person in the US spends 10 minutes per year tying shoelaces. Using the same monetary value we assigned to airport waiting time, I could say that shoelace tying represents a $1.82 billion loss for the American public.
Now let’s say they quote me for an article about how much better velcro shoes are, and I say, you know, we Americans collectively spend nearly 52 million hours tying our shoes every year. That represent a $1.82 billion dollar loss. We really should switch to to velcro. Wouldn’t that be a very misleading argument?
Leisure time has less value than time spent working.
This is becoming tedious to correct your mischaracterizations of what I’ve said. Feel free to try to explain why you think the cost is accurately measured at $10 billion, or why you think my math or methodology were off.
Not going to help with a bomb, would it? The guy who ran our pool, who was also a Pan Am pilot, died over Lockerbie.
Since you appear to agree that some security is required, how many of these supposed 500 deaths are due to the incremental time required to take off our shoes and show our liquids? Showing ID at the beginning of the line takes no time at all.
No, all the security extras were directly the result of an attempt to attack a plane. The new scanners don’t seem to take any longer than going through the metal detector. Setting up choke points does make getting to your gate take longer, no doubt about that, but once you decide to check for guns, the rest come almost free. Long lines happen at peak hours. When I fly at off peak hours I stroll through security in no time at all.
If you really cared about the delay, you’d support not less security but more TSA staff and more machines. While some airports don’t have the room, I’ve been to a lot with plenty of room and still only two or three lines. And it would be easier on the TSA staff also.
False dichotomy, either you care about the delay and want even more invasive TSA, or you don’t care about the delay and want less. The real choice is you care about the delay because you know there is no such thing as absolute security and that other than the basics, it isn’t worth trying. The rest is just theatre.
I’ve said this before but as a former airport employee with security clearance to the ramp, the song and dance customers go through is an utter farce. 89 days out of 90 employees just wave a badge to get through a secured door and then put whatever they want in the cargo area of your planes.
Trying to waste more customer time and taxpayer dollars on customer security is like trying to keep the cows from escaping the open barn by patching the roof.
I support security measures that have been subjected to a cost-benefit analysis and found to be effective.
I know a lot about computer security. I know that partly effective security will only stop stupid people. Several holes have been demonstrated in airport security and never fixed. From that I conclude that the current measures are not designed to stop smart terrorists.
A network firewall with a known hole is less than worthless.