Standardization

Standardization is an issue that applies to many areas of operation in society such as products/services and government and the legal system. Instead of creating differences that create problems for users who have to work with different systems, we should try to unify where possible or practical because it makes things easy for people and sometimes one standard may be deficient while another has evolved into something better over time. There are many examples of such differences such as:

• Government and Laws:
  • Statue of limitation for child abuse/assault is only 2 years in one state but 35 years in another state (or country etc)
  • During a pandemic health crisis, vacation rentals are only banned in a few cities but not all
  • Traffic fines are $20 for going through a red light but $200 in another city
  • Its legal to own endangered species in one city but illegal in another city
  • Tenant and Landlord Rights in one city are in one stage of evolution and don't provide the necessary protection, while they are more evolved and advanced in another city. Every landlord is using their own software to manage the business including servicing of tickets and every software lacks certain features.
  • Insurance fraud only has a fine of $2000 which is easily paid in one state or province but in another state laws exist for higher fines, victim compensation, possible prison time and the guilty parties being banned from being being involved in the insurance business again
• Products and Services:
  • Home Security System companies have their own isolated silos of operations and do not share neighborhood alerts or calls for assistance with each other. The lack of such a standard endangers or saves lives.
  • Phones may have different charging ports (e.g. see news December 2024 set as date for universal phone charger in EU)
  • Hospitals use expensive software from 10s and 100s of different competing companies instead of one open-source publicly-funded (affordable) software
  • Brake pads for every car model are different sometimes in very small ways where in fact we could have a few models that fit on all cars, with differences only being justified if there's a real need to do so. The same is true for tire sizes. More interchangeable parts would result in less prices and other benefits
  • Sellers and buyers of products and services have to advertise/search on multiple websites

For many of these examples, there's no reason to have separate or different standards, systems or laws. This may be needed only if something is specific to the area and those situations do exist at times but they have to be fully justified. In the end consumers are forced to use multiple standards and suffer because of it.

The reason why these different systems exist because every location is operating with its own laws with no regards to standardization. There's more work in creating different laws and maintaining separate systems so this is also done for job security so government officials have no interest in standardization.

There are many other examples that standardization could be applied to e.g. currency, language differences, driving (side of the road, road signs), AC socket voltages, education systems and so on. Many of these are difficult to change however standardization should always be a goal and we should start with what can be achieved first.

Standards can also be used in product design and manufacturing to improve the convenience and expense of product repair and interoperability. This also helps the environment.

Advantages of standardization include

• If one location has a better system, that can be duplicated to other places instead of having different locations with laws that are in different stages of evolution
• Users don't have to learn multiple systems and switch between them
• Its more economical and efficient to create and maintain fewer systems
• It helps unify places

It takes some work to analyze systems and move them towards a unified standard. That is one of the things our leaders need to be doing. Efforts to standardize require understanding other people's needs and the relevant facts, looking at the situation objectively, negotiation, compromises, planning and strategy.

Lets take the example of landlords having 100's of different software to manage their properties, the serving of maintenance tickets created by tenants and rent payment systems. In the current situation, everything is very fragmented. Important features are missing from one software and partially present in another. Sometimes there's no software at all. Leaders from all over the world would work together to solve this problem. They would analyze the requirements of such software and would have a publicly-funded open-source version of the software created and maintained which would allow maximum transparency and coordination between the landlords, tenants, community and law-enforcement. Leaders would create laws to reward landlords who use this system. The feedback of its users would be used to always improve the software. So leaders of all countries would work together to create and maintain this software and they would help to deploy it globally so it can be used in any region.

Having one software that provides all the important features would be very beneficial for everyone and it would save on development costs.

One of the things that needs to be done is to start creating a Universal system (laws, administrative systems, applicable software etc) that all locations around the world can start adopting. It should also allow for exceptions and specific aspects that apply to specific areas.

The opposite of standardization is fragmentation and isolation.