How quickly will a standard be updated if the mandate encourages companies to entrench on the current standard? Industries built around the legislative certainty of the current standard may exert influence to inhibit moves to new standards, even if there are good reasons to move on.

What if we had mandated, by law, that all monitors must use the VGA connector in 1995? Would that have made DVI or HDMI or later technologies less likely to take off?

Suppose a company sees an opportunity for a better standard with such a law in place. They would have to develop the new standard and create the market for the new standard, all while their change is forbidden by law. How can they propose a new standard before actually developing it? Then, after sinking the costs on a hope, they would have to pay more to fight to change the law to encompass the new standard against everyone who likes it the way it is.

Don’t get me wrong. It would be neat if every doodad I had used the same connector. But soon enough, any connector we care to choose is a straitjacket. We raise the standard for improvement from being incremental and iterative to no change short of world shaking all at one go.