All my seat posts are marked with minimum insert marks. Some time ago, it was pointed out here that this is to avoid trashing the frame - the seat post has to be below the top tube where it joins the seat tube. Now, on my one bike, the post is 27.2mm and the seat tube is 30.2 or something like that, so it has a shim.

Soooooo, why is that shim so short??? Far shorter than the minimum insert length? This completely trashes the idea because the stresses are taken entirely over the shim length.

Bad design?

(This would not be the only instance on this particular bike: The bottle cage mounts, one on down tube and one on seat tube are too close together so you can't actually get 2 bottles in. Dickheads.)