> Desai: And so basically what these people decided is that if they let any individual company profit off of a barcode, then that would really be a huge impediment to this actually becoming universal. And obviously the whole idea of a universal product code is that it’s universal. So what they did is they chose seven finalists—seven companies—that would create a code in a way for it to be scanned, and none of these companies would get any sort of profits off of it.

> They would all agree to put the code in the public domain, and they would all just, you know, basically make money by selling scanners. That was the idea.

> Rosin: Wait. I just want to pause here. It’s, like, unimaginable. It seems completely logical when you explain it, that they should come up with a reason why this thing would be widely accepted, and that reason is sort of Marxist.

What's that, American ignorant author's defining a standard? (Sorry, cannot help but think that anybody else would call that sort of idea "Marxist").