They aren't wasted because you get Bitcoins for them.
Nope, that's just a neat way of distributing the currency.
It's neat, but not efficient. A miner is left on as long as the bitcoins it produces are worth more than the power cost of producing them. In other words, in a (plausible) worst-case scenario, each bitcoin mined will cost just a fraction below the power burned to mine it. If the FED was working on that kind of margin, people might be even moar pissed
My point was that the Bitcoin network's main purpose is not creating/distributing bitcoins.
My point is regardless of intended purpose, miners are mining for profit. That's why millions of dollars are being spent on developing ASICs which will burn trillions of KWs of energy -- or the total value of bitcoins they produce, whichever's greater
Intent is only important to Baby Jesus.