You make some excellent points. However, this case really isn’t about circumventing the political system. It is about the relative deference that people give different evidence when deciding to act. Our tendency to over discount the importance of the surroundings is generally referred to as the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Social psychology tells us that a person’s surroundings powerfully affect his actions because the surroundings provide clues on how to act. Here, the number of burglars confirmed everyone else’s expectations—this was a bunch of free stuff. Then the true owner comes home. He appears to be angry about being late to the sale, demanding his right to the stuff. For the craigslister, was it entirely unreasonable to believe the advertisement and dozens of people over the true owner?

What if the opposite situation were true? It was free stuff but the “owner” was really a counterfeit, trying to swindle loot off of the people who were rightfully claiming it. Should we expect 30 people to relinquish the fruits of their bargain hunting to a freaked out guy yelling at everyone without offering any objective evidence of ownership?

I agree, the people should have stopped to confirm the facts after the owner established, to a reasonable person in that situation, that he was the true owner. However, until that point, were the craigslisters acting unreasonably?

The challenge of doing a show like “Countdown” is that when it’s going well, the natural inclination is to fall into a routine. Every day is a scramble to put together guests and topics, and you find yourself falling back on the same familiar faces. And so it is with “Countdown,” which tends to draw its regular guests from a roster of about seven or eight regulars.

Dana Milbank, Jonathan Alter, Rachel Maddow, Eugene Robinson, Maria Milito during “American Idol” season…it’s a guest list any longtime “Countdown” viewer can rattle off pretty quickly. There’s nothing wrong with any of these folks, they all rightfully deserve camera time and attention.

But they’re also appearing on “Countdown” because they tend to reflect Olbermann’s opinions on politics and pop culture, and at some point, it tends to be all a bit intellectually incestuous. The typical conversation consists of Olbermann saying, “Point a, point b and then point c.” Then the guest agrees with all three points, and perhaps brings in point b2 as a way of expanding the conversation. It all has a “Groundhog’s Day” quality to it that I find maddening.

http://allyourtv.com/0708season/theproblemwithcountdown.html