I suppose "fairness" is one way of saying it, but honestly, I'd just be happy with consistency at this point. Why do we change subsidies for say, agriculture every year? I live in Iowa and I'd be happy with just eliminating everything, including ethanol subsidies. All I'd ask is that we get rid of oil and other subsidies as well. Let them all compete on an even keel, the market will sort them out. If something is "bad" then the environmentalists will boycott that product and the companies that distribute it, thus decreasing demand. It seems kind of self-explanatory at this point, I'm not sure why government in particular has to be involved.
Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir I'm sure. Sanity simply has no place in politics.
Sanity has no place in taxation either.
So here's a story about tax fairness...
I have a friend he's in the cigar business. Totally legal business, but of course it's frowned upon by the government and society at large what with all the cancer thing and of course the smell of cigar smoke. He must pay 75% excise taxes on cigar sales. Is this fair to the cigar business? Imposing such a high tax? Or if you took the tax away, now is it fair to the rest of normal society who hates smelling cigar smoke and paying for cancer treatment?
Tax policy is not about fairness, and many times it is about the opposite of fairness, which is power. Non-smokers have the power. Iowa corn farmers have the power. Which side of the power coin (u see what I did there?) do you think bitcoin falls on? And what do you think the ultimate tax treatment for bitcoin will be? Fair or unfair to bitcoiners?