The government response to the attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 shows just how incompetent – and dangerous – bureaucrats really are.

Here we go again. As you may have heard, a Nigerian man named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a plane on Christmas day.

Northwest Airlines Flight 253, from Amsterdam to Detroit, saw panic and mayhem on the final approach as Mr. Abdulmutallab appeared to set himself on fire. After spending 20 minutes in the bathroom, he had pulled a blanket over himself (complaining of stomachache) and set off a packet of explosives hidden in his underwear.

Fortunately there was no explosion. As with previous terrorist Richard Reid (who had hidden the same type of explosive in his shoe some years back), the attempt failed. In a show of ad hoc heroism, Abdulmutallab was quickly subdued by passengers.

The government insanity, though, was just beginning. In response to the attack, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) hit airlines with a slew of tightened rules:

• Limiting international passengers to a single carry-on bag
• Second-round security checks, including manual pat downs and body searches
• On certain flights, disabling the map showing the plane’s progress and location
• Requiring passengers to remain seated for the last hour of the flight
• Prohibiting passengers from having blankets or pillows in their laps for the last hour of the flight

What a classic example of knee-jerk incompetence.

Just consider the silliness of the “last hour” rule. Once a plane has taken off, it will be in the air until it lands. Does it really make all that much difference to a would-be bomber, then, whether the explosion takes place in the last hour of flight or the first?

If said bomber has to go the bathroom to enable his device, why couldn’t he just do it an hour and 10 minutes before the plane lands... or a few minutes after the seatbelt sign has been extinguished... or otherwise make an adjustment to the new “rules” that is really no trouble at all?

And what, pray tell, is the point of doing things like disabling in-flight maps and limiting the number of carry-on bags? If a terrorist is determined enough to pack explosives into his underwear – or even (ugh) jam them into his nether regions – how could it possibly matter whether you or I are allowed one duffle bag or two?

In reading the TSA’s list of utterly asinine decrees, your editor is reminded of Cicero’s observation on bureaucrats:

A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?

Can These Guys Do Anything Right?

The good news is, sanity prevailed – at least to a small degree – as the airlines themselves loudly complained to the TSA. Some of the new rules have apparently been made “optional” – at the discretion of the individual airline or flight crew – no doubt due to the glaring pointlessness of the measures.

The bad news is, Mr. Abdulmutallab had already been flagged as a potential threat... yet was allowed to board the plane anyway.

The would-be terrorist had training connections to Al Qaeda through Yemen – a country now being bandied about as the “new Afghanistan” – and had been described as dangerous by a family member. As The Wall Street Journal reports:

U.S. officials say the accused man's father, a prominent banker in Nigeria, had warned officials at the U.S. embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, in recent weeks that he feared his son had been "radicalized" during trips outside the West African country.

The father's concerns about his son weren't specific, nor did they point to any imminent threat against the U.S., according to a U.S. official. But they were enough for U.S. authorities to add his name to a broad terrorism database, called Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. People on the list are not precluded from boarding flights to the U.S.

Mr. Abdulmutallab wasn't added to more sensitive databases, such as the so-called "no fly" watch list, that would have flagged him for additional screening or barred him from boarding a U.S.-bound flight.

So, let’s see what we’ve got here... A man who has made multiple trips to terrorist training camps is credibly alerted as a potential threat – by his own father, no less – and yet we somehow let him get on board a U.S. flight anyway.

Meanwhile, the millions of travelers who pose no credible threat whatsoever get to see their trips made more miserable for reasons that make no sense.

Tell me again why we want to put government in charge of anything? The mismatch would be hilarious were it not so dangerous. Not only do pointless and ineffective measures come with a scandalous time-and-money price tag, they distract from a focus on real problems to be solved and truly effective reforms to be made. An emphasis on fake dangers leaves the real dangers unaddressed.

Failure as Prerequisite?

It is perhaps no accident that government agencies tend to bungle most everything they touch. As the self-educated philosopher Eric Hoffer observed more than half a century ago:

Failure in the management of practical affairs seems to be a qualification for success in the management of public affairs. And it is perhaps fortunate that some proud natures when suffering defeat in the practical world do not feel crushed but are suddenly fired with the absurd conviction that they are eminently competent to direct the fortunes of the community and the nation.

The trouble goes back to feedback mechanisms and incentives. In a free market system, failure gives incentive to change. If an idea fails in the marketplace, you figure out what is wrong with it... try again with a better idea... or try something else entirely.

In government, however, failure gives incentive to do more of the same. Rather than fail “better,” as Samuel Beckett advised, the bureaucrat’s incentive is to fail bigger. It is the disconnect between pragmatism and ideals that allows government to grow so bloated and unwieldy. In the marketplace, it is not enough to merely be possessed of good intentions. For the bureaucrat, it is more than enough.

Hoffer’s point, which he further underscores in his book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, is that politicians and bureaucrats are driven by a desire to meddle in other’s lives for lack of contentment and fulfillment in their own. Combine this meddlesome impulse with a sort of dull and witless yearning for power and control, and what you get (in addition to rank incompetence) are asinine lists of rules like the ones drawn up by TSA.

Getting What We Want

Sadly, the government response to this latest Al Qaeda attack – which was a rather pathetic show, really, especially after eight years – is also driven by the shallow desires of the populace.

Many pointless airport safety measures are endured because the average man (or woman) wants to feel safer, even if that feeling is a complete illusion. Given that a sufficiently motivated terrorist can always find ways to stay a step ahead of dumb rules, the dumb rules serve as nothing but a false measure of confidence (and a full employment act for plodders).

This desire for false security further extends to economic management. When something unpleasant happens, we want the government to “do something,” even if that something makes little or no sense. We pretend not to notice that the people in charge of “doing something” are often refugees from the real world, driven more by appearance and sentiment than actual results.

H.L. Mencken said that “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want... and deserve to get it good and hard.” That seems as good a description as any for what’s happening now.

Austrian Unease

These thoughts further underscore why your editor is distinctly uncomfortable with the notion of “crisis over, everything's super” for the global economy.

What have we really accomplished in the past year, other than implementing “extend and pretend” on a grand scale? What lessons have we really learned, other than “when in doubt, throw more (taxpayer) money at the problem?” No real punishment has been meted out. No real reforms have been made. Instead, like icing on a rancid cake, “stimulus” has been glooped over the whole mess. We have written checks we can’t cash and called it good.

Ludwig Von Mises, the father of Austrian economics, warned long ago that “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom expansion brought about by credit expansion.” Have we really and truly dodged that reckoning, or merely postponed it? Evidence suggests the latter.

And as healthcare “reform” marches forward, putting a seventh of the U.S. economy in the hands of those who think and act like their brethren at TSA, one has to wonder how many more straws the camel’s back can handle.

Other Related Topics: Airline Industry , Homeland Security , Justice Litle , Macro Trader

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