In Japan you can get virtually
any electric device to massage you or vibrate you. You imagine it,
you'll find it, including a full body massage.
Every such healing, stretching, massaging or vibrating device introduced in the U.S., with the exception of the simplest sex vibrator, has been pulled off the market when the company selling it gets hit with a lawsuit.
We have a general American view, discovered thirty years ago by George Leonard that any product that comes on the market should have been designed by fully prescient engineers who made sure no possible misuse could ever be made of the product.
George pointed out that nearly every jury would buy the argument when presented with the facts of a disaster, say a car rolling over while taking a turn too fast, that the engineers of the car could have foreseen the use of the car at too high a speed and should have built in a design to thwart misuse.
Our
legal system makes sure that lawsuits can be brought against almost
any product or service, with little or no merit. The consequence is
that the cost of defending against lawsuits forces small companies to go out of business or sell out
to larger companies that can survive lawsuits.
That is why we only have giant companies in the auto industry, pharmaceuticals, HMOs, electrical equipment, engine manufacturing and virtually all consumer electronics.
Change our laws about lawsuits and we'll have more interesting products in our markets and more innovative small businesses.