I see it differently. Compulsory sucks, yes. The industry needs an incentive to get away from the 800-lb. gorilla dominating the scene, and not by gubmint decree.
We're a petroleum-driven economy. Your day-to-day life would be absolute crap without petroleum, and not just for fuel.
John D. Rockefeller, were he still alive, would fight the ethanol and other alternative fuel industries tooth and nail.
Corn ethanol is something that our founding fathers introduced, but since their horses didn't run too well on the stuff, they drank it instead.
It's an easy feedstock for biomass conversion to fuel, since the technology is so old. When applying for a job at the fuel distillery in Monroe, WI, I saw their pilot plant for switchgrass and other feedstocks.
IOW, corn isn't the be-all, end-all of ethanol production. I expect at some point it'll be fermented and distilled for just bourbon again, as the fuel distilleries transition to other biomass feedstocks.
Big Oil ain't gonna be happy about that. But if the folks in Ickystan and the Saudi peninsula decide they like us even less down the road, we aren't left holding the bag.
Which reminds me, I gotta brush the snow off of the solar panels out on the deck...