A Message to Libertarians

I am awakened in the morning by my alarm clock at the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, a clock powered with the electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I groggily rise out of bed and stumble into the shower to bathe myself in clean water provided by the municipal water utility using soap approved by the department of consumer affairs. As I dry myself I flip on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I then proceed to eat my breakfast composed mostly of derivatives of subsidized corn, inspected by the US department of agriculture inspected food and take my allergy drugs, both of which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

Thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program I then get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile, having been licensed to do so by the state, and set out to my public school on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issued by the federal reserve bank. Using the GPS system designed by the navy and maintained by the department of defense I check that I am, in fact, on the correct course. On the back from public school I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service.

Ok. I'll make this as clear as i can. >>13 was saying that "All private entities gravitate towards a common protocol." This is what has happened in the case of MIDI. Except MIDI is way too backdated these days. It is exactly what you would call ancient digital technology :p And it is totally inadequate for modern applications where for example you want to control sound and lighting via the same protocol. Or in the case of virtual reality systems, you might want to transfer color data, binary data and many other things in an integrating protocol.

What's happened is that many companies have tried to produce proprietary protocols for use with their own systems. Other companies have tried a different approach. They support their own protocol but maintain MIDI compatibility.

As a result, new equipment is condemned to use a 30 year old digital protocol. Probably the only digital protocol of this age still in use...

Now. I'm not trying to say that state intervention would do the job. I'm only saying that the industry has FAILED HARD to agree on a decent upgrade or overall change of protocol. Therefore i'm implying that the self-regulation of the industry doesn't always work. Even if that's to their own expense and the expense of the end-user/professional.

This as a result is holding back the progress which could have been made. After all the technology is there. They just cannot agree on how to use it in non-proprietary systems.