Completely agree. The only one on this list that upsets me is Clear.

It's such a transparent abuse of government power that it makes my blood boil. Airports are funded through my tax dollars and TSA is as you said mandated by the government. There is limited space and resources in the airport so allowing a private company to take up some of that space and what's more turn a profit from it is peak Rent-seeking behavior and anyone in government who allowed this to happen should be run out of office.

> Airports are funded through my tax dollars

Not really, or at least not in the same sense/degree as stuff like highways and roads. For example, my nearest major airport boasts:

> Airports are supported by the users of the airport and the fees, rents, or leases in place with airlines, tenants, and travelers. The bottom line for local taxpayers is “if you don’t use the airport, you’re not paying for the airport.”

-- https://www.portseattle.org/blog/who-pays-sea-airport

Agreed. And to make it worse, Clear speeds up the id checking phase of airport security, but that has never been the chokepoint in my experience (it's instead the xray scanner).

Nope, the real benefit of Clear is that once you are past the id check, you waltz past most of the line for the scanner. I suppose that depends on the airport but that's how it works wherever I've been.

If your local airport is incredibly congested, Clear goes from a nice to have to a huge timesaver.

Oh, I agree that Clear is worth using since you get to skip the id line. My point is that Clear isn't making the process any more efficient - they instead created a "skip the line" option under the guise of "technology".

And the tech doesn’t even work that well! Half the time I end up pulling out my ID. They also erased my account this summer in a “system upgrade.” I pictured some poor DBA getting chewed out for deleting thousands of rows by mistake.

> Disney & sky resorts are private and are free to charge who they want how they want.

Many ski areas, while private bushiness often operate on public lands through long-term leases [1]. Some amount of public access (eg free uphill access to the lands) are often requirements as a part of the lease; I don't see why certain business terms shouldn't be able to be regulated in the interest of the general public.

[1] https://www.snow.com/info/colorado-forest-service-informatio...

>I don't see why certain business terms shouldn't be able to be regulated in the interest of the general public.

Implying that there is a legitimate public interest in equal-cost access to rides at disneyland does not seem like a defensible position.

That's a bit like saying it is against the interest of the public to charge more prime orchestra seats than second tier balcony seats at the opera.

My position is that if Disney wants to charge ten trillion dollars to skip the line to ride a rollecoaster and one cent for a rollercoaster ride with a 40-year waiting period, that's none of my concern.

The comment you are replying to is about skiing on public land, Disney has nothing to do with it.

At every ski resort I've been to, you pay for the lift pass granting access to the ski lifts. The only thing stopping you from slogging uphill on foot and skiing down for free is gravity.

This is not the case, many resorts on public lands in the US do not allow uphill travel.

Not on the ski slopes themselves of course, but is there anything stopping a determined person from slogging their way up through the woods?

In my state resorts have the legal right to allow / deny uphill travel, regardless of whether it's public land or not. This is for several reasons that are mostly related to safety:

- There's a large amount of people that skin up and hike here, enough to present crowding issues if it's allowed

- Grooming being done in the early morning when people want to start hiking, and it's hard to see hikers regardless of if they use lights or not

- Areas that are roped off from above can be closed for unstable snow with high avalanche risk, or may be subject to bombing operations (hand placed explosives and artillery to induce avalanches before they are caused by skiers)

Check your areas rules, many allow it under certain conditions like time of day, routes, lights, etc. It's a good idea to make friends with someone on the patrol team so you know which areas are safe (and contain good snow ;) )

Clear doesn't avoid the TSA and in fact, the TSA isn't directly involved with Clear aside from setting the requirements for the "trusted traveler" program that Clear operates under. It's the airports who control the lines up until that first TSA agent and it's the airports that Clear is paying to ensure their customers are prioritized. In most cases those airports are owned by the local city or state government.

I get a little chuckle when I'm in the airport Xray line and the Clear agent is trying to get the attention of the TSA agent. But he/she ignores them and waves over a family of 7 instead. LOL.

At SFO half the time the Clear + TSA-pre is slower than the standard TSA-pre anyway.

One of the few times that a premium experience for the better off improves the experience for the lesser well off. As opposed to credit cards, with their rewards for those who can afford them, resulting in raised prices for people who can only pay in cash. As someone who uses pre-check, I love this outcome.

Keep in mind pre-check isn't just about line times (though there are plenty of times it's drastically different). You also don't have to unpack your stuff, or take off your shoes, or go through the mm wave scanners. The funniest part is that that's still the standard experience in many other countries: with pre-check, we're paying for a "downgrade" in security theater!

I don’t understand the “security theater” criticism. There hasn’t been an airplane hijack or terrorist attack since 9/11. That is not proof that we can relax security checks. Nor is it proof that it’s just about the locked pilot doors. If anything, it’s proof that the system has worked well so far.

+1 it has always confused me too - security, while imperfect, does make a difference

The Flight 93 movie making heros out of people resisting hijackers (and making it known that hijacking wasn't just a diversion to Cuba anymore) was the only thing we ever needed to fix the system.

It's not proof of anything, including not proof that it works. The catalytic converter was stolen off of my father's car, was replaced, and then was stolen again. When it was replaced the second time, he very seriously considered paying for anti-theft devices to accompany its replacement. In the end, he chose not to purchase or install any anti-theft devices. His catalytic converter hasn't been stolen since. Just as this is not proof that choosing to do nothing has prevented subsequent theft, if he had purchased a device, the absence of a subsequent theft would not be proof of its effectiveness.

Rich people don’t get the electric vehicle subsidies, at least not the consumer facing ones. There is an income limit that is fairly low by rich people standards.

Do not allow politics to take private jets.

You’ll see TSA issues will vanish very fast.

Plenty of Congresspeople fly commercial like everyone else, at least between their district and DC.

Or it would result in a higher tier version of TSA PreCheck.

Exactly the opposite, there will be not a VIP + normal, but Politician + VIP + normal lanes.

Regarding voting for the TSA: Remember the median number of flights taken by an American in a year is zero.

The majority of voters have no incentive to make the TSA experience not suck. Their only stake is the self-satisfaction of increasing safety, however theatery it might be.

So...by that logic, the theater aspect of TSA is completely invisible to the majority of voters, and they get no satisfaction of increasing safety. They might see a news item on TV once in a while, that's about it. Doesn't seem to me like we can blame voters for what the TSA does, at least not today's voters.

Voters after 9/11, on the other hand, were definitely security-minded, and the political response to that is how the TSA became the juggernaut that it is today.

> Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats, so they get what they vote for.

Probably not an original idea on my part... but if the # kleptocrats (elected officials) is approximately constant, and the # of decisions made per kleptocrat goes up* (I can't actually say if this is true or not), as an individual the ability to direct change goes down it seems.

*or the number # of changes the aggregate lawmakers agree on goes down (i.e. more things left unaddressed)

At least the fast pass offloads some of the cost to frequent travellers. Funding airports with taxes is slightly regressive as high-income earners will usually fly much more often compared to someone on minimum wage.

> Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats

I'm not arguing in any way to stop trying, but this is a systemic issue that won't be solved by voting. For a start, all of the options are kleptocrats.

Clear lines in major markets have been consistently longer than precheck for the past year. On top of that, they're building a new, private facial recognition system. Clear is hot garbage.

There was a time when these practices would have been considered anti democratic. But like checks and balances those days are long gone.

> Disney & sky resorts are private and are free to charge who they want how they want. You don't like it? Don't use it.

that's all well and good until essential services are privatized because "free market good" and now you're dead because someone outbid you for the next available ambulance.

ERCOT can get away with charging $10k+ to a single customer during a "surge" in demand during a massive snowstorm... but "don't like it, don't use it"?

Oh how surprising, a school of tough love post. These people own the world, and we all have to merely accept & live in it as they permit us. Very nice.

This kind of shit creates enormous class tension. These luxuries have become enormously harder to afford & make happen. Now, you go do some hard earned family time thing & a bunch of rich folks are constantly skipping in front of you? It's degrading & insulting in principle, and in practice it greatly diminished the time one gets to spend doing the activity.

It's unlikely many companies will suffer much for these policies. Indeed their bottom line will probably soar, as they de-democratize access and step away from a 1 person 1 vote operational pattern & walk further down that pay to play world.

But it's gross & disgusting & going to breed enormous class hatred or despair. It's an indignity. As for the "Don't like it? don't use it" tough love, well, the number of ski resorts not owned by Vail keeps shrinking. The number of Disney World alikes is pretty limited. We have to share this planet, and telling the not-wealthy to shut up & like what they get is a disastrous plan, is abnegation of humankind.

Ultra-wealthy & their dollar-based optimizations should not be the only thing with a hand on the wheel of this planet. (And it wouldn't kill the libertarian neofuedalists to pretend like they even a little bit of compassion buried down somewhere).