[jacknews]

IMHO a clear example of govt intervention being beneficial is the EU enforcing USB C for charging, and before that, USB for phones charging. Compared to the complete mess, inconvenience and waste of virtually every single model of phone requiring a proprietary charger.

But of course there are a zillion other examples, if you bother to look, it's just that those benefits disappear into the fabric of society.

[nickpp]

To understand why you’re wrong ask yourself: would USB-C even exist if some global government would’ve succeed in mandating micro USB chargers as the EU tried in the past?! We’d all be stuck with the wold's worst connector.

Luckily usb c sucks less, but: What company will now have any reason to research a better connector to replace usb c when it’s not allowed to put it on the market?! Any innovation in this area was made illegal in the EU. Luckily we still have USA not yet succumbing to the madness.

These kinds of shortsighted decisions are why the EU stopped growing and innovating and started falling behind while becoming dependent on cheap Russian energy.

Even if well meaning and well written (two big ifs), the actual price of regulation is extremely high, it’s stagnation. But nobody realizes it because that lost opportunity cost forever disappears into the fabric of society…

[jacknews]

nope.

Of course if you mandate a very narrow standard, completely inflexibly, you may have this kind of problem.

But from where I am, it looks like the 'swashbuckling free market' has stagnated due to monopoly power (Apple lightning), whereas the 'evil plodding government' has ensured compatibility, reduced waste, gauging, etc, while accommodating the incredible evolution of the USB standard.

[nickpp]

The free market was doing just fine, thank you very much. It converged by itself into two pretty good standards (none of the previously EU-recommended micro-USB abomination) - one private one open but each having a big enough market to make sure there was very little of that much-pretended "waste". On the contrary - the e-waste next year when millions of Apple users have to throw away perfectly fine cables and charges will be absolutely gigantic.

Apple will have no problem complying as they already had a separate European nano SIM model. Or maybe they were ready to switch to USB-C anyway (a standard they helped develop), as they did with iPad Pros and MacBooks. While us users will swallow the cost as always while bitching about downgrading to USB-C.

But now innovation in this domain was made illegal. There is no way a company will invest in researching a new connector when they cannot legally bring it to the market. So Europe is becoming dependent on American creativity in yet another area. A small and maybe negligible one, of course, but this is a symptom of a larger disease: the EU is voting to mandate stagnation. And the worst part when outlawing innovation is this: you don't even know what you are missing. Because nobody is allowed to invent that future anymore.