This is one of those ugly plastic bins you have to put your stuff in so it can get “x-rayed.” At the bottom it has a glittering add for Zappos.com. The TSA are selling ad space on the bottom of those bins. Is there no high-traffic enterprise so sleazy, specious or destructive that it cannot find buyers for its captive eyeballs? Who is the amoral opportunist behind this nauseating innovation?

Someone will say: What exactly is wrong with this kind of advertising? Well, setting aside any concerns regarding the ethics of advertising generally, it’s wrong to advertise with the TSA because the TSA is a scam. Zappo’s advertising dollars support the TSA in its mission (otherwise, I think we can fairly assume, the TSA would not solicit such dollars). And this mission has nothing but negative value for the travelers who endure its effects and the taxpayers who fund it. Good organizations do not give money to bad organizations, neither in exchange for valuable goods nor for any other reason. It is unethical to support unethical institutions.

Zappo’s should not support the TSA, and we should not support Zappo’s.

This is not the place to make a detailed case for the fact that the “Transportation Security Adminstration” provides us no real security and we’d all be better off without it. This has been amply demonstrated elsewhere. Let me just remind you of three points.

1. The TSA has never apprehended a single would-be terrorist.
2. This is partly because the TSA’s procedures are inadequate to catch any reasonably determined terrorist.
3. Most important: the TSA’s very existence is based on a lie. The international terrorist organizations from which it is supposedly trying to protect us do not exist. The primary and sole purpose of the TSA is to make this completely fictitious threat more credible.

Every year since 2001, we taxpayers and travelers have been wasting tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of hours on this absurd, insidious charade. I call on Zappo’s to terminate their relationship with the TSA immediately and to issue a public apology. Only if they do this will I stop telling everyone I know not to shop there.

There are many other wonderful places to buy shoes online. These include DSW, Endless (an Amazon offshoot), Gotham City Online, Piperlime (part of the Gap/Banana Republic/Old Navy empire), and ShoeMetro.