Mark Steyn is one of my favorite columnists, but his latest column did deserve a mild fisking. Simon delivers.:

Here’s where Steyn comes off the rails:

China
hasn’t invented or discovered anything of significance in half a
millennium, but the careless assumption that intellectual property is
something to be stolen rather than protected shows why.

That’s
one hell of a statement. Besides being unprovable it is also
meaningless. For the past 500 years China was mostly a relatively poor
country that wasn’t accused of intellectual property theft until the
last few years as it has rapidly developed. Steyn’s point is a valid
one - China’s advance will eventually rely as much as its capacity for
creativity and intellectual value-add as manufacturing. But in
aggregate that day is not here, yet.