Last night I turned on the TV, and just surfed through the channels. My impressions of Danish TV:

• One of the networks plays “Spiderman” as often as Bravo runs “Scarface.”
• Apparently, “OC” and “Seinfeld” are more universal in their appeal than I realized.
• Something called “soccer” is a very popular sport.
• If the hotel menu is an accurate indicator, porn in Denmark is now imported from the United States.

Think about that last point for a minute. Isn’t this like importing Finnish wood to North Carolina to build furniture? Isn’t there a legendary Scandinavian porn industry (at least according to American adolescent male lore)? What happened? Has local porn fallen prey to globalization? Are flickering images of Southern California condos and poolsides now to be found on screens in Brazil and Estonia and the Netherlands?

You’d think this was an industry where local produce could compete perfectly well against globally-produced goods. Or are high-volume, low-cost imports killing off local competitors? Has local porn been destroyed by the welfare state? Don’t these people have any work ethic? (Or am I thinking of Sweden?)

I think when economists talk about how Americans have to retrain to become more globally competitive high-wage service jobs, this isn’t what they had in mind.