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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (67260)	5/20/2008 11:30:28 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543122

I'm not a fan of the "who ever profits is automatically to blame" idea. Partially because figuring out who did, is, or will profit from some policy isn't always easy, but mostly because people have motivation besides personal profit. Its true that personal profit is one of the most reliable ways to get people to make large efforts to do something over time, but its not the only possible way and in any case it doesn't take all that large of effort to ban something. While I oppose the people who support the drilling bans, I don't assume bad faith on their part. And even if some of them are actually presenting their case in bad faith, and arguing based on their personal profit, rather than what they believe is the truth, that doesn't mean all, or even most, people supporting the bans are doing so in bad faith. But then maybe your just using this argument as an example of the type of attack often made against oil companies, or the Bush administration on oil issues, and making a sort of refutation by rational analogy.