Jeff Bezos has the soul of a tightfisted Taiwanese factory owner. I hope I’m allowed to say this, being Taiwanese-American myself, and also because I say it in full admiration of Amazon’s CEO for the coming $199 Kindle Fire tablet.
Let me explain. Taiwan and China’s rise in the last two decades as the world’s leading mass manufacturer for, well, almost everything, is due to the energy, discipline and, let’s face it, penny-pinching ways of everyone in the....