More Thoughtcrime from Alex Singleton

Despite his unfortunate endorsement of CAFTA, Alex Singleton still keeps the vulgar libertarians guessing. He followed up his earlier posts on drug industry protectionism with a couple of new posts critical of the cartelizing effect of software patents. This last crime of lese majeste against the drug industry resulted in a snarky post by Don Lloyd at Catallarchy. So I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop....

But once you take drug and software and entertainment "intellectual property" [sic] out of the picture (that is, when you eliminate most of the forms of corporate welfarism that CAFTA was designed to promote) what's left that couldn't be better accomplished by simple reductions or elimination of tariffs? You know, what free trade used to mean before the eleventh edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. About all that's left is phony "privatization": the kind that involves

1) selling taxpayer funded assets to politically connected global financial elites, in "funny auctions," at pennies on the dollar; after
2) the taxpayers spent more polishing them up to make them saleable than they get from the sale; and
3) the new owners systematically stripping their underpriced new property of assets, and making many times more money selling them off than they paid for the enterprise.

You know, looting.

But the way things are going, I wouldn't be too surprised if Alex denounced that as well one of these days. If that happens, the vulgar libertarians may bring out their big gun: a fatwa from Leonard Peikoff.