[Postosuchus]

That's an excellent idea! It will work out absolutely great - much like Communism.

Meaning, when you forcefully standardize and regulate how phones are built, you might expect that companies will not compete on making better phones (since they are not very much differentiated) but on who produces the cheapest phone.

[esperent]

You're thinking of socialism, which is what the EU is doing here (socialism-lite, anyway, as championed by the Social Democrats) and yes, it does work. Free healthcare, free education, and we're working towards decent privacy laws and regulations on big companies. It's far from perfect of course, but comparing it to how pure capitalism is going in the US it's clearly the better system.

[ur-whale]

> but comparing it to how pure capitalism is going in the US it's clearly the better system

Funny, I observe the exact same things you observe and come the exact opposite conclusion: Europe is currently dying a slow and painful death and will likely be entirely irrelevant in less than 10 years (not that they matter much anymore today already).

Some better system that is!