Paper Companies' Windfall of Unintended Consequences 284
Jamie found a post on ScienceBlogs that serves as a stark example of the law of unintended consequences, as well as the ability of private industry to game a system of laws to their advantage. It seems that large paper companies stand to reap as much as $8 billion this year by doing the opposite of what an alternative-fuel bill intended. Here is the article from The Nation with more details and a mild reaction from a Congressional staffer. "[T]he United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies.... even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry — handsomely — to use more fossil fuel. 'Which is,' as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the 'opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established.'"
lawmakers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. We live in a society where 'corporate selection' fosters public companies who mindlessly take the action which most increases value for their shareholders. If a law is written such that it can be gamed - it will be.
Lawmakers should take that into account and legislate around it; cause they sure ain't gonna change Corporate American Culture any time soon.
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Corporations in any country will do the same thing, those that do not will die. There are countries where they're legislated out of existence or they become the welfare provider for the state and never really do much good.
Since /. going farther and farther left this is AC signing off.
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Interesting)
In the short term the solution for this is for the president to order the IRS to withhold these payouts until congress can close the loophole. If the paper companies sue, they would get laughed at or scolded by the judges as this is an obvious and evil perversion of the intent of the law.
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Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Except in our case, the cost of getting the car would exceed the benefit of getting the credit.
What the paper companies have is a benefit of the credit outweighing the initial cost to pull it off.
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Irrelevant! I am differentiating between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. You're a typical anti-corporate insect.
Wow, I can see the froth.
You object to applying the same argument against individuals. The principle is the same. How does the argument change if the Prius costs is less than the credit? Are the "previously bike-riding individuals" scumbags then?
Well, let's take this scenario you propose then. For sake of argument, let's just say the Prius cost is $30,000 to drive it new off the lot with all taxes and fees included. Using your argument that the cost is less than the credit, let's say I would get a $35,000 credit for buying a Prius. Now, let's say that I buy a Prius for $30,000 and get the $35,000 credit, and then have the Prius compacted into a cube and sent to the landfill for a few hundred bucks. I've just made almost
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas, we live in a nation where rule of law is paramount.
The letter of the law is what the law is, not the "intent" of the law.
Which means it would be illegal to withhold payments specified by law, and any lawsuit challenging such an act would likely succeed, with penalties.
In other words, you're stuck with the law as written until someone changes it. The government trying to game the law by not obeying it is, if anything, worse than some corporation gaming it by taking advantage of something not foreseen by the lawmakers.
After all, if the government can choose to not obey this law that you dislike, what's to prevent them from disobeying a law you like?
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"until congress can pass another ex post facto law"
Fixed.
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Re:lawmakers (Score:4, Informative)
This "loophole" has existed and been blatantly abused for many, many years. These paper mills are not even close to the worse abusers. The worst one I heard about, and this was years ago, was factories that sprayed a light mist of diesel on coal to claim this tax credit.
This tax credit should just be ended, not fixed.
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Actually, that was a different tax credit, the synfuels tax credit passed in the 1970s, not the new mixed-fuels tax credit.
So, pick your scenario:
1) The Congressmen who passed this new credit were ignorant of how the similar synfuels credit was exploited earlier this decade, despite broad publicity of the abuse (in, for example Time [time.com] .
2) The Congressmen who passed this new credit were aware of how it could be abused, but were too incompetent to put in safeguards against abuse.
3) The Congressmen who passed t
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
If the paper companies sue, they would get laughed at or scolded by the judges as this is an obvious and evil perversion of the intent of the law.
Quite possibly it was written with exactly that intent. We've been often reminded by nearly everyone studying Congress that most proposed laws aren't written by the legislators at all; they're usually written by "consultants" who are part of the lobbying setup and are paid by the corporations interested in the laws. It has come out repeatedly that most members of Congress haven't even read the laws that they vote on. They usually have only read the summaries, which are written for public PR.
So it's quite likely that whoever worked out the exact wording of the law was in the pay of one or more companies who wanted exactly what the story is about. They probably discussed it behind the scenes, until they were fairly sure that the wording would allow their employers to take advantage of the law in this fashion.
It's how things are done. And it's hardly any secret. It's been written about more times than we can probably count.
(Actually, none of this precludes the possibility of a Congressman understanding the issue. The point is that usually they don't bother themselves over such details. That's for their underlings to handle.)
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't matter. Precedent from the Supreme Court states that the IRS has sovereign immunity and cannot be sued on any issue within it's own domain.
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But I seriously can't fucking believe, that after eight years of the incompetent fucking clowns in the Bush administration, that anyone has the brass balls to try to justify, let alone suggest, more retarded, illegal bravado from the executive branch. You are a complete dumbfuck, just like the tools who passed this law in 2005, and the tools who are currently skullfucking the concept of market economics for their ill-conceived political agenda.
First of all;
because this is a tax credit, it's the bailiwicks of congress and the IRS
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I started to read your comment and was impressed until you got to the "Lawmakers" part.
Dude, what makes you think the lawmakers are not PART of the "Corporate American Culture"? It was probably lawmakers at the suggestion of said same "outside consultants" who gave the idea to the paper companies to put the loophole in the law to begin with.
Government is NOT the solution to this problem.
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If Libertarian philosophy = Anarchy, then:
Democratic philosophy = Socialism, and
Republican philosophy = Fascism.
Given the alternatives, I'll accept anarchy.
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Precisely. We live in a society where 'corporate selection' fosters public companies who mindlessly take the action which most increases value for their shareholders.
Are they not legally obliged to do so?
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Precisely. We live in a society where 'corporate selection' fosters public companies who mindlessly take the action which most increases value for their shareholders. If a law is written such that it can be gamed - it will be.
Lawmakers should take that into account and legislate around it; cause they sure ain't gonna change Corporate American Culture any time soon.
"Mindlessly" eh? How can you not understand the motives and cunning of "public companies"? Here's my take. These types of laws go well beyond any reasonable task of the US government. Further, without some sort of corrective force, there's no incentive for anyone in government to act differently. Hence, it is to our collective advantage for someone to ruthlessly exploit these laws.
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We live in a society where 'life' fosters people who mindlessly take the action which most increases value of their assets. If a law is written such that it can be gamed - it will be.
Lawmakers should take that into account and legislate around it; cause they sure ain't gonna change Global Human Behavior any time soon.
Re:lawmakers (Score:4, Funny)
Corporations and individuals are not free to pursue their own interests in whatever method they want - we create laws specifically to prevent that.
Are you saying you want a type of anarchy where anyone can do whatever they want, and hope that acting in a way detrimental to society correlates with bankruptcy?
I agree with what you say about having to make sure the "balance is positive" - but I think copious legislation should be applied to ensure that you can only have achieve this by benefiting society.
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, and in this case, they did just that : they pursued their own intrest the way the law forced them to, instead of the most profitable (and therefore, at least in this case, most environmentally friendly, way).
In general, the cheapest way for factories is often the one using the least raw material, and therefore at least close to the most environmentally optimal way.
but I think copious legislation should be applied to ensure that you can only have achieve this by benefiting society.
You're assuming that laws always benefit society. I guess women should be glad they get stoned in muslim countries. After all, it benefits society, right ? That's what the law does. Of course, very nearly all muslim countries are, at best, third world countries, racist dictatorships or worse. Seems their laws are less than optimal ... for both society and the environment.
But of course, "America is different !". Oh wait, not at all in this case. I guess that what happened here, totally in compliance with the law, and bad for BOTH society and the environment ... means nothing to you ?
But this was in compliance with the law, and against market forces, so surely it must have been good for society and for the environment ... oops ...
Why don't we look at the environmental situation in a country where "copious legislation", in fact as copious as it gets, was in force.
And there we find ... chernobyl, in the soviet union.
It seems to me your argument is flawed, both in theory and in practice.
You see, you assume laws are in the intrest of society, which is a standpoint that's idiotic, to say the least. In fact, given the world's current situation, the less laws a society has, the better it does.
Re:lawmakers (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, actually, in this case, the most profitable way was with the law. I'm not sure you entirely grasp what has happened here. Maybe you have and I'm just reading you wrong.
The paper companies already produce about 70% of their energy by using byproducts in the process of making paper. Under the law, if they add just a few gallons of fuel to the process, claim the process requires Gasoline, Diesel fuel or Kerosene, they get 50 cents per gallon on the 70% of energy they already created with the black liquor or whatever it was called. If they used 100 units of energy divided up with 70 gallons of their byproduct and 30KW or whatever the equivalent is of coal powered electricity, then by removing one KW electricity and adding it to the byproduct, they now get 50 cents for those 70 gallons. So at least in this case, they are doing both- "the most profitable (and therefore, at least in this case, most environmentally friendly, way)" and the most profitable way the law made them.
From the portion(s) of the law that I can tell, they don't have to add much more then one gallon of diesel to every batch of byproduct to qualify for the alternative fuel credit. The key point is in calling the process something else that requires Gasoline, Diesel fuel or Kerosene to get the credit for what they were already doing.
Re:lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
we create laws specifically to prevent that.
The only thing this law has prevented is papermills from using alternative fuels.
Are you saying you want a type of anarchy
The parent said nothing about anarchy. No need to erect strawmen.
I think copious legislation should be applied
Your "copious" legislation has already been applied. It is demonstrably counterproductive.
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The parent was suggesting as little government intervention as possible. What do you think anarchy is?
You want to know what a lack of sensible regulation and control gets you - look at the current financial troubles your country has caused.
Your house needs putting in order. I'd have thought the most efficient way is sensible legislation curtailing undesirable actions from your companies. but if you have a better plan, good luck to you.
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The parent was suggesting as little government intervention as possible. What do you think anarchy is?
Anarchy would be no government. Small government leads to a situation known as freedom.
You want to know what a lack of sensible regulation and control gets you - look at the current financial troubles your country has caused.
Actually the current situation is not as simple as that. While the bank failure can be immediately attributed to the repeal of the Glass Seagal Act (which, by the way, no one in legislation has bothered to reinstate), the real problems with the economy can be attributed to the creation of the Federal Reserve (putting banks in charge of the economy in the first place), and the dissolution of the gold standard (allowing the
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and the dissolution of the gold standard
How does basing money on rocks change anything? Money just provides a means to trade. If we want to base it on something of intrinsic value, I would suggest energy over shiny rocks.
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Precious metals are the obvious choice but the global supply of them does not grow at the rate the economy usually does, which is a problem.
I would argue that the real economy does not grow much at all, only that living standards get continually better through advance of technology, and that the inflated economy we see today is a result of profit from a position of debt.
Ultimately, IANAE (Economist), and I don't have a great answer for you, other than many economists from the Austrian school of thought believe in a return to commodity-backed money, and the economists from the Keynes school of thought have got us into this mess in the first pla
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You want to know what a lack of sensible regulation and control gets you - look at the current financial troubles your country has caused.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=community+reinvestment+act [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=federal+reserve+act [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fractional+reserve+lending [google.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae [wikipedia.org] The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (NYSE: FNM), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a stockholder-owned corporation chartered by Congress in 1968 as a government sponsored enterprise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mac [wikipedia.org] The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp
Re:lawmakers (Score:4, Informative)
I won't argue with your distaste of the Federal Reserve, Fannie May, or Freddie Mac, but I want to make a few points about regulation and government intervention.
The great majority of sub-prime loans made were not made under The Community Reinvestment Act.
The sub-prime loans made under the Community Reinvestment Act have a lower default rate than those made outside of its' purview
Too much regulation did not cause Fannie May, Freddie Mac, and others to overvalue their portfolios.
Too much regulation did not cause the ratings companies to give the securitized mortgages high ratings greatly understating their risk.
Too much regulation did not create the credit default swaps without enough reserve to pay them off in case of a bad economy, nor did it cause the companies selling those to insure their credit default swaps with more credit default swaps from another company that also did not have enough reserve to pay them off.
Too much regulation did not cause the ratings companies to rate the companies holding credit default swaps with insufficient backing AAA even though they could not pay off their obligations in case of default.
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Your assertion is:
The government ordered lenders to loan to people with bad credit ratings, no stable income sufficient to repay, and without any deposit.
This is prima facie false. Unscrupulous and unethical lenders began issuing loans to people manifestly unable to handle the repayment. They did this to make money. They did this because of the republican-championed deregulation efforts. Regulations would have prevented the massive numbers of foreclosed mortgages, because the people being foreclosed on woul
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I think copious legislation should be applied
Your "copious" legislation has already been applied. It is demonstrably counterproductive.
I cannot think of any instance where government is effective and efficient. What I have trouble wrapping my mind around is the call for more government when it seems to be counter productive. Repeating the same action over and over and over is not going to yield a different result.
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Start with: free to pursue their own interest
Add a bit: free to pursue their own interests in whatever method they want
Straw men - so easy, so convincing, so wrong.
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I wish they had "-1 Libertarian" mod here...
And I wish they had "+1 Libertarian" mod here....
Well, as a libertarian would say, "to each his own".
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From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Apparently the paper companies need 8 billion dollars and the government has the ability to pay it. :-P
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Um, isn't this the classic definition of communism? And isn't it a travesty that in a supposedly free market economy, the government enacts legislation that allows firms to act in (their own self interest) in overtly perverted ways? Just askin..
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Do you really think "-1 I disagree with you" is good?
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That's what the foe list is for.
Slashdot. I come here to get my stereotypes validated.
Re:lawmakers (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yet too many idiots are trying to turn that into an argument for more legislation. I mean, you'd think they'd learn ...
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Yet too many idiots are trying to turn that into an argument for more legislation. I mean, you'd think they'd learn ...
No, they want to be looked after, including having their thinking done for them.
You deserve the government you get (Score:2)
Only 8 billion? Oh come on. That's peanuts.
You have the oil industry being subsidised by half a trillion annually through the US military budget. You have the banks taking to the outright looting of the US treasury.
I mean... Wow.
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Incompetent lawmakers are incompetent.
As someone who has been a regulator, that attitude is, quite frankly, ignorant. Lawmakers are politicians, with that associated baggage, but in most case are neither incompetent nor ignorant. And most of the time, surprisingly, they come out with well-intended and thoughtful legislation. Not always, but much of the time. What they can get past industry lobbyists trying to help write the legislation.
Once they cross that hurdle the laws go to the appropriate regu
The Michael Scott Paper Company (Score:2, Funny)
Law from 2005 (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't mentioned in the summary, but the tax credit was passed in 2005. So no one thinks the $8 billion is related to stimulus packages passed more recently.
No, those will cost us a lot more when companies figure out how to fraud them.
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They did already. From what I heard from internal sources, as much as possible of that stimulus package, goes into parties, sex, drugs, and hookers of the big bosses of all banking companies. Then into big houses and other material wealth. And so on. Unfortunately, with that much money, you can party a loooong time. So I guess it goes like the board game Go For Broke [boardgamegeek.com]. ;)
Well, folks... (Score:2, Insightful)
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Care to offer any solutions that haven't already been tried?
Re:Well, folks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Capitalism seemed to work pretty well until we gave up on it early last century (it was just too damn hard for large companies to compete in an open market). We could always try that again.
Re:Well, folks... (Score:4, Funny)
Capitalism seemed to work pretty well until we gave up on it early last century
Children worked 18 hours a day in coal mines and the liked it!
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Competition is the grand savior of capitalism. In an unregulated market large companies band together and form monopolies, eliminating competition altogether.
Capitalism also makes the assumption that the consumer knows everything and consequently they can buy from companies that are good for the environment, treat their employees well, use non-toxic materials, etc. In reality, private companies are constantly covering up the shen
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There aren't any problems with capitalism. It is the most efficient, kindest, and most progressive economic system possible. Every singe
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In a centrally planned economy, the factories would be under direct orders from the central authority and would not be able to abuse the legislation in this manner. In fact, you wouldn't need legislation, an administrative order would suffice.
If I am not mistaken (IANAL), you cannot do something a law does not forbid if you go against the law's intent (at least in my country - Brazil - that's the way it works). So this practice would actually be illegal here, because the law was written to reduce fossil fue
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Deregulation (Score:3, Informative)
You mean the kind of deregulation where a central entity whose management is appointed by the president determines the money supply and a lot of the interest rates?
We haven't had deregulated banking since 1913 [wikipedia.org]. All we did was change one regulatory regime to another, which arguably allowed more abuse.
Wording vs. Intent (Score:2)
If I am not mistaken (IANAL), you cannot do something a law does not forbid if you go against the law's intent (at least in my country - Brazil - that's the way it works).
In the US it is the wording that counts. The intent is even easier for a court to manipulate than the interpretation of the wording.
If the government does not explicitly forbid something, it is permitted.
Re:Well, folks... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with central planning, this is clearly a case of abusing the law for gain.
The two are NOT the same.
Nor does is it evidence of your implied counterpoint that in a decentralized economy stupid economic or environmental decisions would not get made, they certainly would.
There's a reason why we have laws in the first place, some days I wonder if anyone certain people on slashdot has read the history of corporate America and the things they used to get away with in a more decentralized economy because there was no authority whatsoever.
It's only the Paper industry so far? (Score:2, Interesting)
Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another example where the intention of the law doesn't mean anything, what is actually written and what that can be stretched to mean does.
If a law is supposed to have a specific intention, then it should be written just for that.
Re:Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another example where the intention of the law doesn't mean anything, what is actually written and what that can be stretched to mean does.
This is rather troublesome. If these situations continue our representatives may be forced to actually read the legislation they're passing.
Re:Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:4, Funny)
This is another example where the intention of the law doesn't mean anything, what is actually written and what that can be stretched to mean does.
This is rather troublesome. If these situations continue our representatives may be forced to actually read the legislation they're passing.
Instead of thinking of the children?
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It's thinking about co2 these days. You see otherwise our kids will ... something that's very bad and nobody cares about.
But co2 legislation lets them pass idiotic laws. How about we tax the countries PROFITING from co2 production, instead of the ones suffering from it ? Tax the oil producing states, leave the rest alone.
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"But co2 legislation lets them pass idiotic laws. How about we tax the countries PROFITING from co2 production, instead of the ones suffering from it ? Tax the oil producing states, leave the rest alone."
Thus raising the cost of domestic oil which is passed on to the consumer, and making foreign oil more attractive.
Nice.
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How? Set up a central entity to judge which businesses are responsible, and staff it with incorruptible angels?
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I could swear Slashdot is becoming sentient. The fortune at the bottom of the page:
Re:Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:4, Insightful)
If a law is supposed to have a specific intention, then it should be written just for that.
Don't count on that happening any time soon. I've made similar points with my local MP about badly-drafted laws a couple of times - the response is inevitably a "soothing" "I'm sure they won't use it for that".
There have been cases recently where I have been proved correct. I wonder if I should write to my MP and say "Further to my letter of 1999, I told you so".
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"Just for that" like how? By trying to enumerate and define all the good ways to use alternative fuels? Most likely you'd miss many ways and include many ways that shouldn't be in there as the act balloons to ten times the size. Or you can try to legislate intent, but good luck trying. Unleaded petrol? Well, that's ecofriendly since it's better than leaded petrol, right? And that alternative fuel, it made a few hippies start driving instead of taking the bike so it's ecoUNfriendly right? Things will get cra
Re:Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem has nothing to do with intention. The problem is that the law was very badly written for every purpose. The law gives a $0.50 tax credit for every gallon of diesel mix used but the credit should have been based on some fraction of the price of diesel. The paper makers scam only works because the price of diesel has fallen so much.
Indeed, if diesel and biofuel prices fell far enough we could all make money simply by burning gallons of it in our back yards: spend $0.40 on a gallon of mix; claim $0.50 from the IRS.
If the law had been drafted by someone who wasn't retarded this situation would never have arisen.
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I think it's a mistake to assume that this law wasn't intended to have this effect. I'm not asserting that it does, but that kind of thinking can make you blind -- the kind where you assume things, I mean, not the paranoid part. The thing about government is that it creates beautiful opportunities to bone the people, so not being paranoid about government is insane.
Re:Laws are used as written, not intended (Score:4, Interesting)
The real problem here is that the law is basically an attempt to circumvent the fundamental principals of the Constitution, which was written to limit the powers of the Federal government. The founders didn't trust government, and sought to mitigate the necessary evil of having a government at all by restricting it to some very specific powers.
The 16th amendment gave the Feds all kinds of new power, so that's what they always use to try things like controlling behavior (a power they really shouldn't have). So whenever they pass a law offering a "tax credit", people sit around going "hmmm... how can we get some of that?" And why not? That's what people do. The more of your money goes to taxes, the greater the motivation to limit your liability or to have some benefit from government giveaways.
Same thing with all government handouts. About 40% of the budget of Medicaid and Medicare is spent on fraud. 40%. Because if people can get something for free, they will. Some will find legal ways (like these paper companies), and others don't care whether it's legal or not (like people that commit Medicare and welfare fraud).
So the real problem is $3.8 trillion of government spending. It attracts corruption, fraud, waste, opportunists, and everything else bad that people keep complaining about. And the 535 or so deciding how to spend that money aren't really very interested in being very diligent with it, because it's other people's money - so who cares about a few billion wasted here or there?
Repeal the 16th amendment, institute very strict term limits, hold the Federal government to the Constitution, and these problems would go away.
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Stretched and reinterpreted by many groups of people...
If a law is supposed to have a specific intention, then it should be written just for that.
Which requires legislators to actually do their jobs. Both reading and critically examining proposed (and existing) laws.
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Most of the time, laws are are written that way intently so that those companies that made campaign contribution (To both Democrats and Republican... smart companies give to both to make sure they get contracts and crappy self serving laws like that).
There are so many things like this one that don't get the spotlight in mainstream media.
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Not if the intention was to give certain industry 8 billion dollars. Then the intention and the result match perfectly. Incompetence is only one of the major problems with the big government, corruption is another.
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The intention was never to give something. The intention, of all politicians "giving", is to buy loyalty.
Buy loyalty with other people's money. That's what Barack Hussein Obama is doing.
In general, sneakyness beats altruism (Score:2)
In general, good intentions are overruled by individual and corporate greed and sneakyness.
The lawmakers may spend an hour thinking over the consequences of a bill, while the folks affected have all sorts of time and inclination to poke holes in the laws. Guess which side usually wins?
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If companies miss a hole they gain nothing, if they find a hole they gain $8 billion.
Guess which side is willing to devote more resources to poke holes in laws?
Re:In general, sneakyness beats altruism (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever heard of corruption ?
If the lawmakers find a hole they gain nothing. If they miss a hole they lose nothing.
If companies miss a hole they gain nothing, if they find a hole they gain $8 billion.
If lawmakers find a hole, they gain nothing. If they miss a hole, they get 2% of that $8 billion.
There, fixed that for ya.
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More like 0.02%. Not just corrupt, but cheap.
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If a company misses a hole, the competitor that finds it instead gets the upper hand. If the hole is big enough, it could even outcompete the first one into oblivion by using the power of the state (and our taxes).
Government interfearence screws up everything (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a limit to the amount of profit a car manufacturer on an individual car in the U.S. This only applies to basic passenger cars, not luxury cars or trucks. The answer? This is why the big 3 pushed trucks and SUV's so hard - which granted a large part of their customers wanted, but they largely ignored another large crowd that wanted small U.S. made economy cars. They produced crap instead, so we bought Japanese. Thank you Uncle Sam.
Some Americans With Disabilities Act rules apply only to companies of certain size, as in number of employees. Compliance is incredibly expensive in many cases. Some companies put the brakes on at a certain number of employees due to the expense of compliance sentencing said companies to stagnate growth at a certain size giving their mega corporation competitors an upper hand. Thank You Uncle Sam. The same can be said of certain FDA regulations and any other regulatory agency you can name.
My sister works for the Department of Agriculture. She writes checks to farmers to not grow crops.
Here's an idea:
KEEP THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT OUT OF IT
Unless something really needs regulating, leave it the hell alone. Food? Fine we need an FDA to make sure our food isn't nasty and contaminated. They probably overstep their usefulness in some cases, and under step it in others, but that's expected.
Yes, we do need an agency to keep track of Plutonium and Uranium. Just saying, yeah, track that.
We need an EPA - but it needs to know it's place.
ATF? We don't need that. It's a redundant agency originally created for tax purposes, not what they're doing now. It's also limiting freedom.
No government regulation usually helps huge companies by keeping the small competitors down. Create an agency to regulate an industry, then the companies buy the candidates they want and put them in the regulatory committees. The little guys can't do that.
Re:Government interfearence screws up everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless something really needs regulating, leave it the hell alone. Food? Fine we need an FDA to make sure our food isn't nasty and contaminated. They probably overstep their usefulness in some cases, and under step it in others, but that's expected.
Unfortunately, industry will stick their noses in when regulations are being written. Wonder why the FDA doesn't have many warning about the mercury in Tuna whereas private consumer groups do? [consumerreports.org]
Let's just say, legally this would be considered hearsay, but it was said that the Tuna industry was literally looking over the FDA'a shoulder when those regs were written.
So, even then, Government is too easily corrupted. Unfortunately, I don't have a better idea.
Re:Government interfearence screws up everything (Score:5, Interesting)
"So, even then, Government is too easily corrupted. Unfortunately, I don't have a better idea."
I do. You have to take the law back to principles, rather than specifics. Here's a few many of you are familiar with:
THOU SHALT NOT KILL.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
Therefore, undisclosed mercury in Tuna and defrauding an energy subsidy as a paper mill would be considered BREAKING THE LAW.
While we're at it, I have another recommendation. Since waterboarding is simply "enhanced interrigation", I'd suggest it should be a viable questioning technique for these types of white collar crimes. I have a strange belief system where if someone elses' countrymen are trying to kill me, I can at least see they were raised and taught that way. When my OWN countryman are trying to kill me, they should be punished ten times worse.
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THOU SHALT NOT KILL. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.
But you have to think like a lawyer, and ask how somebody could exploit the law. With your very vague laws, a rich bigot with well-paid lawyers could easily set precedent to outlaw abortion for rape victims, or to punish attempted suicide etc etc.
Your second law could easily be used to jail copyright infringers... or those who aid and abet... etc etc... The law has become very specific -- especially criminal law -- in order to remove these ambiguities.
Re:Government interfearence screws up everything (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a better ideia: keep the private sector out of government.
If you look closer, you'll find it's the agricultural lobbies that have gotten these absurd incentives, not the government that decided out of thin air to grant them.
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Yin Yang
The cause is the effect, the effect is the cause. It's going to take an outside force to break the two apart.
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You didn't actually read my post did you?
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Now, I am with you in some respects, that the regulations are custom tailored to the corporate giants as/is, and that needs to stop. I miss the days of the trust-busting, breaking up big bu
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I consider Roosevelt was a horrible thing to happen. He received fan mail from Hitler and Benito Mussolini before the war. They all three had more or less the same goals, until Hitler decided to go on a Jew killing rampage and Mussolini went into Africa. Look into the Blue Eagle and the NRA thugs (not the rifle association) to see why I feel this way, he was going for all out socialism.
I'm of the Libertarian persuasion, "do no harm". If what you're selling, no matter what it is, endangers people in ways
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You're right, it was FDR that was the big screw up, his cousin did a little better job.
Of course I just fed the troll.
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I did, I intentionally pushed to the logical conclusion of "where do you draw the line". You want food regulated, but what about silverware? Got to make sure we don't see a return to mercury/lead for those, or the use of toxic plastics, but then we have plates, which leads us to..... you see the pattern?
That's not necessarily the logical conclusion though. Free market theories require an informed customer. Requiring accurate and complete product information is a basic requirement of a free market, though more obvious now than when Adam Smith was around. Want to sell cans of Rat Faeces Stew? No problem, so long as you label it honestly. I don't anticipate a big market for it, but go for your life trying. Sell it labelled as beef, go to prison. Existing laws against fraud etc are enough for that situation if
So the next hole in teh road you hit.... (Score:3, Funny)
... call DOT and tell them to fill it with paper.....
Wait, this seems familiar... (Score:3, Funny)
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Oh wait I guess this does remind me of The Office.
legal bugs (Score:2)
Laws have bugs just like software. We don't stop writing useful software just because it may fail, we use bug tracking, debuggers, and bug fix releases. So, it's neither surprising nor avoidable that laws like this have unintended consequences. Lawmakers should simply have better turnaround times for fixing bugs in laws.
Shenanigans! (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, really? Not according to the US government. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/usinventoryreport.html [epa.gov] Paper doesn't even show up, and all of the "industrial" processes (as opposed to home heating, electricity generation, and transportation) make up less than 7% of US emissions, so paper-making is barely a roundoff error. I'm not arguing that the paper companies aren't taking advantage of a loophole, but to suggest that this is having any meaningful impact on emissions one way or the other is ludicrous.
Contact IP and voice your concern (Score:3, Informative)
This page [ipaper.com] is International Paper's feedback form. Tell them how you feel about this.
In addition to that, let your Congressional representation know too--OK it's Congress, but it might help anyway.
Not the first time for this law (Score:2)
Some people did try to get that changed but there was too much interest in keeping it that way, from the companies doing it and from the various environmental group who want to stop petroleum usage.