Tyler Cowen Recommends Working Backwards

Angus, at Kids Prefer Cheese, contacted Tyler Cowen about his peculiarly aggressive pro-Naked Scanner position. In a blog post titled, Is Tyler Cowen an Exhibitionist?, he reports what Tyler said to him when he contacted Tyler for further explanation:

 In my view in the long run better scans mean fewer pat-downs!

I would encourage people to start by calculating the "p" that, twenty years from now, the major airlines get nationalized. Work backwards from there and compute the liberty-maximizing policy.

This goes directly to the point I made in an earlier post:

What Cowen doesn't get is that the real objection to the TSA is that it is a government body interfering between two parties entering into a contract, the passenger and the airline.


Many economists really need to get a better grasp of the importance of private transactions as a key to freedom, rather than simply starting at the point where government intervention is a given. Do they not comprehend that there are non-coercive market solutions to these problems? Rather than becoming propaganda agents for the government, they should really start taking a deeper look about freedom solutions.

 
Further, I'm thinking that 20 years down the road, Tyler would be pro airline nationalization, this way:
 

In my view in the long run, nationalization under a strong airline czar means less government intervention!

I would encourage people to start by calculating the "p" that, twenty years from now, some megalomaniac from a corporatist billionaire family gains power in the country. Work backwards from there and compute the liberty-maximizing policy.

Then again, he may not argue this way.