The article’s rant shows shows that he’s just another xenophobic american who doesn’t realize how inferior his country is. It’s people like him that are polluting our internet by posting articles on his own server.

About the only thing I agree with is how he constantly rips on the Japs. God, I hate xenophobic Americans and Japs! What a whining bunch of cultural imperialists they are!

Americans like the poster don’t understand that the intricacies of our superior legal system. I heard their barristers don’t even wear wigs to court!

pathetic…

This article does demonstrate the wave of xenophobia and ignorance that seems to be growing these days.

The author does not appear to understand the trade issues involved nor does he appear to be able to form a coherent argument.

sad…

The sentence was an obvious over-generalization and just as obviously touched a nerve. I guess you are one of the people whining about how you couldn’t purchase any music from iTunes Music Store and then suing Apple for their “anti-competitive DRM” when they finally did secure the licensing to come out with it in your country, over-late and overpriced.

The point of this article was that if something is popular enough, it does make it across from one country to another. Nobody should bother bitching about those things. I could care less about Friends DVDs or Final Fantasy X International Edition and I can wait for a PSP or a cell phone that I don’t need. I’m bitching about the things that don’t make it from one country to another, not because “foreigners” are servicing their domestic market first, but simply because the target market is too vertical.

I chose an example of something from Japan that you can’t find in the U.S. or Europe because there is “no market” for it. I could have easily chosen something in the United States that you can’t get in Europe if I could think of anything. I don’t know what we have here that you want and will never get because the it is a long tail item. Maybe it’s Hummel figurines. In your case it’s probably an effective MAO inhibitor.

The internet was supposed to fix this–it obviously hasn’t. Instead, because of the Internet, we now KNOW about these things (but we still can’t get them).

E-commerce was about selling into the long tail. Prima facia, the reason this hasn’t happenned is because the cost of importation. Wasn’t globalization and free trade supposed to solve this? Instead of catering to the long tail, efficient trade has solved the problem if providing me the same mediocre desk at work that I have at home, even though they were purchased at completely different times by different people. Thanks Ikea!