For the ‘ISO’ standards where I'm aware of the process, development was funded by the participants. ISO is just a rent-seeking gatekeeper, like academic publishers.

As I have encountered it, the vast cost of the standardization process is already borne outside of ISO because creation and update of the standards is done by outside participants. Hosting the standards documents is a minuscule cost and fees seems mostly a holdover when potentially large bound physical document publishing and distribution was involved.

I know they don’t subsidize standard development. But there is still cost for running an organization to manage and coordinate (and maybe translate) what is being standardized over hundreds of topics. Of the 40 million in total income, selling standard documents is 1/4 to 1/3 of their income. You don’t pay for the cost of electronic copies, but for running the organization.

source: https://www.iso.org/files/live/sites/isoorg/files/store/en/P...

That’s a tiny amount. The major nations should each pull a budget line item and support it directly and remove costs of accessing the iso standards. That could go under NIST in the US. (Maybe start a service charging for for cryptographically signed standards doc).

Where's the money going? ISO staff? Who do what?

ISO holds meetings where member delegates improve the drafts and negotiate the standards to be.

Are some people arguing that doesn't need to happen, or can be done cheaper? Is that argument based on detailed attention to the budget?

There's a parallel dysfunction in California, where the legally-enforced version of the electrical code is available on paper only, at a price of $224:

https://catalog.nfpa.org/NFPA-70-National-Electrical-Code-wi...

In democracies it seems taxpayer money can only be had for purposes that please some fraction of the legislators.

yes. excellent example of a situation almost identical to mandating ISO standards.

Should the Library of Congress nationalize the NPFA?

I got my local library to buy a copy of the National Electrical Code. I can study it... but only at the Reference Desk at the library.

There are some derived texts that are pretty good, that the library will let me have, so long as I renew the checkout, and nobody else wants it.

Hmm.