Airports and cabs

Just a few scattered nonpokery thoughts here.

1.

On my most recent trips to the airport, picking up and sending off Cardgrrl, I was pleased to discover that McCarran International has finally joined the 20th century--a bit late, but still. Previously, they had these idiotic quarter-fed meters. Because it is impossible to know in advance exactly how much time you'll need to occupy a parking space, that meant either pumping in way more quarters than were really necessary, or cutting it close. The latter option meant either running all the way back out to the parking garage to buy more time if you guessed wrong, or risking getting a ticket. It was a completely idiotic system for such a facility.

Now, though, they operate like every other civilized pay-for-time parking garage. You take a ticket upon entry, and pay for how long you were there on the way out. The potential downside of this is a long wait at the exit. But I have been impressed by the efficiency of the automated booths they have set up. Put the ticket in, put your credit card in, and you're on your way in less than 60 seconds, start to finish.

Efficient and appropriate use of modern technology--from a governmental agency? I was stunned.

2.

I forlornly stood by as Cardgrrl went through the security line when she was leaving. It took a while, which gave me time to watch the cycle of video messages playing on the overhead monitors. Our airport might suck in a lot of ways--no, scratch that; our airport DOES suck in a lot of ways--but we bow to no other air terminal in the world in the excellence and entertainment value of our instructional security videos.

I've watched them in other places, and they are just what you would expect from bureaucracies: lifeless, dull, mechanical messages conveying the point in as drab and unimaginative a form as human minds can conceive. Remember that wonderful Wendy's commercial from the 1980s, about the Eastern Bloc fashion show? (Svimvear! Evening vear!) Same idea.

But not in Vegas! We have Klingons from the Star Trek Experience (now defunct, but who cares?) and knights from the Excalibur Tournament of Kings showing that weapons can't be taken onto the plane. We have Rita Rudner telling jokes, but stopping when she gets to the security line, because humor is not appreciated there. We have Lance Burton, trying to empty his pockets of all metal items, but finding an endless variety of coins and other trinkets everywhere, including behind the screener's ear. We have characters from "Mystere" (whom I wouldn't have recognized before seeing the show recently) trying every which way to put a baby through the x-ray machine, before learning that one is to simply carry small children through the magnetometer. We have a bevy of businessmen performing a synchronized choreography of removing laptop computers from their cases for screening. We have Wayne Newton.

Every one of the dozen or so messages in the loop is well-executed, clever, funny, and yet ends up making its point clearly and memorably. Again--who would ever have thought that governmental lackeys could manage such a thing?

3.

A news story from yesterday illustrates nicely just what is wrong with nearly every governmental attempt to regulate businesses. Las Vegas taxis are, for the first time, now going to be able to accept payment via credit cards--something that obviously should have been happening 20 years ago, like everywhere else in the world.

Reading the summary of the meeting of the Taxicab Authority makes me want to pull out what little hair I have left. They were debating such mind-numbing minutiae as how much of a fee to allow to be charged, and in what form and with what frequency the cab operators would have to report these transactions to the Authority.

Here's an idea: How about just letting the owners/operators of the business decide such things on their own? If they try to charge outlandish fees, people simply won't pay them, or will use other cabs instead. There's this crazy idea called the free market, in which things like that tend to work themselves out to the satisfaction of both vendor and customer. It's as if there's an invisible hand at work. (Great concept, eh? I oughtta write a book.)

Of course, that would also apply to not regulating the number of taxis that operate, or where certain ones are and aren't allowed to pick up fares, how much they can charge, whether to allow smoking, whether to require video surveillance in the vehicles, and so forth. We simply don't need a nitpicking, meddlesome, inefficient regulator trying to micromanage the whole system. Supply and demand is a much better tool than central planning. The Taxicab Authority, and all other similar nanny-state bodies, should ask the Soviet Union about how well centralized management of services and commodities works out. Oh, wait--you can't ask them, because they collapsed under the weight of their own lethargic inefficiency, while sapping the lifeblood of freedom from the millions of souls they enslaved and tormented in the process. Sorry, forgot about that niggling detail for a second there.


And, to anticipate an objection, no, there is not a disconnect between the various segments of this post. I am pleasantly surprised at a couple of examples of nice work from the functionaries that run the airport precisely because long experience has taught us to expect all operations of governments to be as stultifying and aggravating as the lines at the DMV and the post office. If the airport were run by a private company instead of by the government, we would have seen obvious improvements like the parking system implemented long before the public agency bothered getting around to it. Governments are necessary evils. We need them for some things, such as courts and criminal law enforcement and protection of individual rights. It's just that those things don't include running airports or taxicab services.


Addendum

I decided to add a note here rather than in the comments section, in response to what "deuce-four" (nice alias!) wrote. The argument, in short, is that having no regulatory authority would mean that there would be bad operators, which a visitor would chalk up to all Vegas cabs equally.

The first problem with that argument, IMHO, is that it would apply equally to any other sort of business: restaurants, hotels, casinos, shows. I.e., it becomes an argument for having a nanny-state bureaucracy trying to ensure that every consumer's every contact with every company is a positive one.

The second problem is that it assumes that governmental agencies are actually effective in screening out the bad apples. But this is patently not so. Vegas cabs are, despite being heavily regulated, notorious for such abuses as long-hauling customers. Is there actual evidence that the average consumer experience is better for having regulation than it would be without them? I doubt it; I think that is merely a guess, and an unwarranted one at that.

The third problem is that it assumes that there is no alternative except for (1) heavy-handed governmental regulation or (2) an anything-goes marketplace that will be littered with bad apples. I think that confuses the familiar with the necessary. Let me sketch what I think would be both most likely and most desirable, if we got local agencies out of the way.

Up would spring private, independent certifying companies. Let's imagine one we'll call White Star Taxi Endorsers. This national company offers certification of quality to cab companies all over the country. For a fee, the operator would get to plaster the WSTE name and emblem on the side of its cabs. Consumers who cared about quality in their cab service and were familiar with WTSE could selectively choose to hire only cabs with that certification. WTSE would require that its endorsed cab companies keep the vehicles spotlessly clean, have friendly drivers who spoke good English and treated people couteously and obeyed traffic laws, never long-haul clients, post fares clearly and have no hidden fees, etc. WTSE would spot-check compliance with local secret shoppers. WTSE would also provide a mechanism for dispute resolution if there were any problem with one of its certified companies allegedly cheating a customer or not performing up to snuff. WTSE might even provide a centralized dispatching service--a single 800 number you could call from anywhere to get a certified taxi (if one is available where you are), so that you wouldn't have to call a bunch of places to find out which local companies carried the White Star seal of approval. (They could even make an app for that!) Of course, maintaining such standards and paying WSTE's fees would mean that certified cabs would cost a little more than others, but in exchange the customer would have guaranteed standards of honesty and quality met. Alternatively, if you care more about low cost than quality, you could pick a taxi at random and take your chances. The point is that it would all be private, all voluntary, all free-market. I submit that the result would be better all around than the ineffective, inefficient, arbitrary, power-hungry local regulatory agencies.

Incidentally, the same would work for other kinds of things that we tend to think of as requiring governmental regulation. Take restaurants, for example. A private certification firm might well do far better than the kind of spotty enforcement of food safety and cleanliness that is typically done by city or county licensing agencies. Customers who care about such things would look for the seal of the company providing the inspection/certification service, and only eat at places endorsed by inspection companies they trust to do a good job.

The great majority of local, state, and federal regulations of business would, could, and should be done better and more efficiently by the free market, if only it were allowed to operate.