You couldn't make it up

[shalath]

Wow. I'm posting a quasi-political thread. But damn, this one is good. You really couldn't make it up.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/hayes

-simon

[Sarvis]

Well, at least we can blame the Republicans. ;)

[Corth]

Great example of how good intentions often lead to ridiculous results.

[Sarvis]

Great example of how good intentions often lead to ridiculous results.

Yes, because of people being greedy.

[Corth]

People are what they are.

[Sarvis]

People are what they are.

People are what society teaches them to be. Society made a choice to promote greed as a virtue, and this is the result. The law itself probably wouldn't even be necessary if we promoted things like social responsibility as a virtue ahead of greed.

[shalath]

Great example of how good intentions often lead to ridiculous results.

Yes, because of people being people.

Fixed that for you.

[kiryan]

yea got to love it. par for government.

so the obvious answer to fixing this "government law created imbalance" is to make more laws and more opportunities for imbalances.

The end result, interests (lets call them special) lobbying for imbalances that favor them and against ones for others. Maybe not in this case... since its pretty blatant... but every other case. As long as government is going to give away money and decide who gets it... theres goign to be people trying to get it through every legal mechanism. The answer is to stop giving money away then you don't have these problems.

[teflor the ranger]

People are what they are.

People are what society teaches them to be. Society made a choice to promote greed as a virtue, and this is the result. The law itself probably wouldn't even be necessary if we promoted things like social responsibility as a virtue ahead of greed.

Ah... nature vs. nurture.

12 million people and enough food for 10 million, and we'll see what society promotes or doesn't promote and what people learn or don't learn.

[Botef]

Remarkable story, thanks for posting that. I work in the printing industry and I must say this comes as a bit of a shock considering paper prices have nearly doubled in the last five years. Everyone I've spoken to in the paper industry said it was rising fuel costs which is probably the case. At any rate, I'm not excited about seeing what happens down the line when this abuse gets corrected. If the paper industry can barely stay afloat with huge payouts from the IRS things could get real ugly.