One of the earliest moral truths we endorse is that cutting the line is generally wrong. Why should paying to do so make any difference?
If you have flown out of a major U.S. airport in the last few years, you’re probably familiar by now with CLEAR. Maybe you’re one of their reportedly 7 million-plus subscribers. But in case you’re unfamiliar, CLEAR is a subscription-based service available at many airports across the U.S., which affords members the privilege of cutting the TSA line—that is, not just the regular TSA lines, but even the Pre-Check lines. All you need to do, after paying the membership fee, is to have your eyes and fingerprints scanned by CLEAR’s software to verify your identity, and you’ll be escorted by a CLEAR agent to the front of the line. It’s as simple as that.
I’m not a CLEAR subscriber, nor do I want to be. I am, however, a philosophy professor, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about concepts like fairness.
I believe CLEAR is unfair and thus unethical. And thinking about why it’s unfair illuminates other kinds of inequality elsewhere in society.
Here’s the basic ethical problem. Cutting in line is generally morally wrong. Doing so permissibly requires special moral justification. CLEAR allows people to pay a private company for the privilege of cutting the line; and paying for something is not enough to make it morally justified. This system imposes burdens on others, and treats them unfairly, without providing them with fair compensation (of some form or other). Thus, the practice is unfair.
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CLEAR allows people to pay a private company for the privilege of cutting the line; and paying for something is not enough to make it morally justified.
Let’s dive a bit deeper.
Waiting in line is generally due to scarcity, whether of a good or a service. Our default approach to dealing with scarcity is to implement a “first come, first served” (FCFS) policy. This seems fair in general: if waiting is necessary, those who have waited the longest should be prioritized. The line roughly reflects that ordering.
But sometimes we have good reasons to deviate from FCFS.
FCFS can be inefficient. Suppose I go to a restaurant by myself, and behind me is a party of six. I arrived first, so I should generally be prioritized. But if the only six-top in the restaurant opens up, it would be inefficient for the restaurant to seat me there by myself. The reasonable thing to do is to seat the party of six, and wait for a smaller table to open up for me. This imposes a small burden on me—I have to wait a bit longer—but this seems to be a fair tradeoff for the gains in efficiency.
FCFS is also insensitive to need. Consider emergency room triage: life-threatening conditions are rightly prioritized over broken toes. Adjusting FCFS to accommodate serious need is not simply a matter of maximizing efficiency, but also of addressing urgency. To be sure, this imposes the burden of longer wait times (and thus more pain) on some patients to benefit others. But a policy of triage is clearly morally preferable to, say, insisting that the gunshot victim wait his turn at the back of the line.
Here’s a simple test, inspired by philosopher John Rawls, for whether we should deviate from FCFS. Ask yourself whether you would prefer the alternative system over FCFS if you didn’t know which person you’d be in that scenario. Clearly, we’d generally prefer a triage system if we didn’t know whether we’d be the one suffering from a broken toe or a gunshot wound.
What does all this have to do with CLEAR? Well, CLEAR systematically disrupts FCFS, by affording some the privilege of cutting the line. Is this justified?
First, is it more efficient? I don’t see how. Perhaps one could argue that the money from CLEAR subscriptions helps offset TSA costs, thereby allowing for more agents and a faster process. But there’s no evidence to support this.
Is it based in need? Again, this is doubtful. Sure, some CLEAR passengers are in a hurry, or they may travel more than the average flyer. But neither of these is a morally important need.
Run our earlier test again: if you didn’t know which type of flyer you would be, would you agree to implement CLEAR? I suspect not.
But while we put up with the idea that, in our society, people can sometimes pay their way to the front of the line, that doesn’t mean we should welcome it.
There is also the matter of cost. First off, why should a private company be given the power to manipulate the line in this way? (This highlights one significant difference between CLEAR and TSA Pre-Check: the latter does generate revenue for TSA, and it involves giving the government information to facilitate a faster identity verification process.) And, more importantly, why should merely paying for a subscription afford one the privilege of cutting the line? We don’t think paying the ER nurse to jump the triage queue is justified (though, admittedly, things are less clear with the maître d’). No doubt FCFS can be altered in some cases, such as airport employees, flight crew, and those who (through no fault of their own) would otherwise miss their flights.
But while we put up with the idea that, in our society, people can sometimes pay their way to the front of the line, that doesn’t mean we should welcome it. Lines are one of the few remaining ways we relate to each other as equals. We shouldn’t be okay with disrupting this merely because some are willing to pay for it. This effectively treats otherwise egalitarian spaces as auction sites, with benefits going to the highest bidders.
CLEAR is perhaps a minor example of this phenomenon, but it is pervasive in our consumer-driven culture. We should be skeptical of tendencies to describe changes as “innovative” and “advances” when these benefits largely accrue to those with greater means—and the burdens are born by those without.
I know you’re probably still tempted to subscribe to CLEAR, but I’d encourage you to resist the allure. Maybe you can discuss this argument with the other people suffering with you through the inevitably longer lines that await you.
