Good point.
I heard a podcast recently (99% invisible) that talked about how the “60 degree” screw became standard in the world. Before that, there were many competing types of screw, which meant that there were all kinds of incompatibilities.
What they mentioned only in passing was that the British Empire already had a standard at 55 degrees. At that point, the British empire was huge. The smart thing to do would have been to simply adopt the British standard and make it the worldwide standard. Instead, the US forced the rest of the world, including the whole British Empire to adopt the new standard.
I imagine if the US hadn’t entered WWII the world might be using German standards, or it might be using British Empire standards, or maybe even Soviet standards, but it definitely wouldn’t be using American standards.






Just convince Ireland to enforce it… and thereby piss off the tech companies that are the basis for their economy because they pretend to be Irish. Or, convince the tech companies to move from their safe haven of Ireland to somewhere else in the EU where the GDPR is actually enforced… something they’d gain nothing from doing.