Old Policies Don't Simply Die

In an interesting paper of The Political Economy of Controls: American Sugar, by Anne Krueger, the closing paragraph reads:

"...at the very least, economists advocating government intervention in markets would be well advised to recognize that the measures they advocate will, once enacted, have a life --including supporters-- of its own.."

I think this is why the series of measures introduced by well intended Indonesian economists decades ago --rice price stabilization and import restriction, fuel subsidies, to name a few --, are still fiercely defended by many supporters regardless their irrelevancy to the current situation.