Amen, Joel!!! I totally agree that there is too much confusion between dynamic range compression (the volume wars) and lossy data compression. Keep spreading the word!

I submit that some artists WANT their recordings to sound like crap. OK, maybe not like crap, but not super-clean and pristine. Even when the Beatles were recording, they would try their darnedest to mess with the sound, to use extreme EQ and compression to get the sound they wanted. Well, heck, the most common sound in rock is heavily compressed and distorted guitar!

You can say that modern recordings are like abstract paintings. Do people complain that "Guernica" isn't photo-realistic? (or doesn't even use much color?) In which case, all we can hope to do is have the playback equipment reproduce whatever signals are on the the end recording (however "bad sounding" or "dynamically compressed" they are) as faithfully as possible.