The federal government has spent over billion on aviation security in the past 10 years. Yet “your chance of dying in a bathtub is about one in a million, and from terrorism is about one in 3.5 million,” says Ohio State political scientist John Mueller. Mueller and his co-author Mark G. Stewart argue in their new book, “Terror, Security, and Money: Balancing the Risks, Benefits, and Costs of Homeland Security,” that cost-benefit analysis needs to be applied to security expenditures. The authors calculate for current spending levels to be cost-effective, the US government would “have to prevent four Time Square-type attacks every single day.” So why are we spending so much for so little added safety? Mueller and Stewart sat down with Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie to discuss the overestimating of risk from terrorism and zero-cost solutions to prevent another 9/11 attack. Mueller is Woody Hayes chair of national security studies at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State; he’s also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Mark G. Stewart is director of the Center for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia. About 7 minutes. Shot by Jim Epstein and Joshua Swain, and edited by Meredith Bragg. Go to reason.tv for downloadable versions and links, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.
Sat, 05 May 2012 03:22 
25 responses to “Why We Should Fear Bathtubs More Than Terrorists”
These guys don’t get it. The Al Qaeda terrorists are funded by shadow CIA, we should call them Al CIAduh.
The problem with pointing this out is that the government very well might declare war on bathtubs.
@mtanousable Clearly you fail to understand the argument posed. The argument is terrorism is not really a problem and not to be worried about because more people have died in bathtubs than terrorist attacks. I am not talking about the TSA I haven’t mentioned airport security. I say that argument is false because it can be made about cars vs war and machetes vs nuclear weapons.
Clearly, you fail to understand basic statistics, fail to realize that most of what the government does in no way makes us safer, and fail to realize that airport security only makes airports (as opposed to planes) prime targets for terrorism themselves.
@dragan221 They banned FourLoko with caffeine to “protect us from our own stupidity”, so they do that too. And the video doesn’t say “don’t protect us”, it says “do it well, by spending money wisely and actually making us safer, instead of just feeling that way.”
@mtanousable “No, I’m saying? we should do away with the TSA entirely. And if you agree, that’s the point you should have made, not some pointless side argument about perks.”
Read my original comment and you’ll see that’s EXACTLY WHAT I SAID. I didn’t make a pointless side argument about perks, I was arguing the semantics of what perks are because someone replied to me and made a bad argument where he equated rights to perks (or along those lines). GO READ MY POSTS BEFORE YOU HAMMER ME AGAIN.
@mtanousable I am not using fear tactics. How about this one? More Americans have died in automobile accidents than in all the wars America has ever fought combined. So if you are in 1940s America you are saying the Nazis are not a threat and we should worry about automobiles more. The odds of being killed by a Nazi in WW2 are so slim compared to being killed in a car crash so who cares at all about fascism. That is a retarded argument.
@chuck3668831 Fear tactics won’t work here. You are hypothesizing a lot of events to occur in succession that have never occurred, and are extremely unlikely. And a WMD attack is not going to be stopped by TSA screening your shampoo, anyway.
@DOHC2L No, I’m saying we should do away with the TSA entirely. And if you agree, that’s the point you should have made, not some pointless side argument about perks.
@Vote4RonPaulLiberty “Video games have nothing to do with security against threat of? terrorists.”
IT WAS AN ANALOGY TO MAKE A POINT ABOUT JOB PERKS.
@mtanousable “Airport security is a violation of American’s 4th Amendment rights.”
I agree the TSA searches are unreasonable. BUT – If some people’s rights aren’t being violated when yours are, that in itself isn’t a violation of your rights. You are essentially saying we must all have our 4th amendment rights violated equally to ensure fairness. That’s BS. Instead we should focus on making the security screening fair for passengers but without subjecting more people into the unfairness!
@DOHC2L Airport security is a violation of American’s 4th Amendment rights. Pilots passing through without getting searched are not using their “perks” – they are just exempted from a violation of the rights of the people by the government. He is right to complain about the violation, and saying the pilots just have a “perk” that means the government has to follow the Constitution with them, but not everyday Americans, is BS.
@DOHC2L Video games have nothing to do with security against threat of terrorists.
@DOHC2L Passengers can enforce it by refusing to do business with airlines that allow it. And remember that I said even while on vacation. – They aren’t working and their kids are no different than yours or mine.
@mtanousable “Rights are not “perks”.”
Well someone commented to me that it upset him when he saw airline pilots pass through security quicker than passengers do. So I pointed out to him that it was simply a perk of being an airline pilot, and I made the analogy of the perks to working for Walmart gave Walmart employees an advantage over Walmart customers just as pilots have advantages over airline passengers to illustrate the point that his complaint was not about rights it was about perks.
@DOHC2L Rights are not “perks”.
@TimothyStuartRiches Thankfully I’ve never had to kill anyone and your argument that I have a “dog in the fight” is irrelevant and wrong even if it was. My point is that we don’t need to strip search everyone before they fly and thus violate their basic rights which are reaffirmed in our Constitution and the amendments to it. You could only make the argument that I have a dog in the fight if I stood to gain monetarily from allowing people to be free. I won’t and my only emotion is disgust at gov
@ObsenityofAtomicTech You are a moron. I already explained to you that more radioactive fallout spews from a coal fired power plants every year than an equivalent nuclear facility. Also, every reactor that has failed was designed in the 50′s and thanks to people like you we cannot replace them with better units like the thorium reactor that would help us repurpose the nuclear waste we’ve generated thus far and render it harmless while providing for an increase in security and comfort. Moron!
@ctk777 “I’d say the big difference? is that bathtubs aren’t PLOTTING to kill more/all of us.”
You make a great point and it really shows the idiocy of their argument.
@Vote4RonPaulLiberty “But the pilots and their kids should have to go through all the procedures the rest of us do. Equality.”
Well who’s gonna enforce that? Government? That’s bullshit!
Suppose you worked at Walmart and were able to buy the newest video games before customers could… Then that pilot walks into Walmart and yells out “that’s bullshit!” because you and your co-workers bought all the copies of that video game… OH WELL, that’s ~a perk~ for working at Walmart. See my point?
@DOHC2L True. But the pilots and their kids should have to go through all the procedures the rest of us do. Equality. Pilots wear their airline I.D. while flying on vacation with their families and get waved through the line. That’s bullshit.
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@dlstb No I think that after 3 mile Island, chernoble, and Fukushima, anyone that thinks Atomic anything is good and safe and cheep is totally out of there mind. Insane people like you belong in rubber rooms, not making demands on what kind of electric generators the nation should license to operate.You seem to not even understand that cancer when is kills you has no tag that says it came from atomic fallout , even when it does. May you experience the benifits of fallout first hand, be informed
@thelimbokid Nothing wrong with my English moron. And it is a FACT that more people have died from machetes than nuclear weapons. Go read Victor Davis Hanson who is one of America’s preeminent war historians. Cunt.
@chuck3668831 Learn to speak English, then re-evaluate your pathetic excuse of an argument. Maybe “foster” (as opposed to factor) some real, goddamn facts before shooting off your slack-jawed mouth. Twat.