Really great article!

Imagine a much bigger market place, and see how its bigger because of government intervention. Imagine how the waste being collected has to be certified and weighed - this needs an impartial outside certification, which costs. You add this cost to your prices, as does everyone else in the system. Do this for every other aspect of the trade (waste certification, insurance etc) and again, add these costs to your prices. The end result is that government intervention has created a whole industry which employs people who are legally installed parasites onto the original business. They do serve a dubious purpose, however, it isn't to the original members of the marketplace. What they do is to help increase the turnover of the business, which helps employ more people, which eventually creates a bigger economy - which my its definition is wealthier. Wow - having written this, I realise that governments do create jobs (even if they are just creating price inflation to pay for it) - argh, what a horrible fact to have to admit! Of course, these jobs don't create any benefit to the market if there is a legal requirement in having the extra services. Phew, I feel better now!

The question you have to ask yourself is why is airport security such a big deal? It isn't because of the obvious "We want to stop planes being bombed out of the air". If that was the case, they would take things seriously and stories like this wouldn't happen. The real reason is more to do with being seen to be all powerful and in control of the fear. This is done by making life as inconvenient and uncomfortable as possible for the passengers. The idea being that they really are working because no planes have been crashed into the twin towers since(sic)! Yes, I know it sounds like a 'tin hat theory' but never the less, if you actually want to leave the country, just take a ferry. Use a white hire van and they won't look at you twice! If you want to blow up a plane, just think of something that hasn't yet been done - like hiding your stuff in your wife's religious clothing ...? :) While it would be nice to brag about how bad various EU security systems are - I'm not stupid!