Re:The failure of self-checkout technology
by workfromspace on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @06:03AM
(#39026149)
Thank you for your analysis.
I don't think it's a numbers issue. Japan with 127 million has multi-provider solutions such as IC cards, and I've heard India has Aadhaar and China has similar services.
But I agree with the federal part. I guess it makes things harder as federal states of Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Spain) has some centralization and bureaucracy issues, but at least they still manage to get a national systems such as ID cards.
Re:The failure of self-checkout technology
by lxgr on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @09:42AM
(#39028343)
You're right, it's not a matter of size alone.
Japan is much more homogenous than the US, as far as I understand, and trust in government institutions also seems to be much higher. Both advantageous preconditions for establishing a national eID system!
To me, it seems like given the size, market maturity, but especially the legal and political environment of the US, any change requiring large-scale coordination between multiple actors, especially public and private, has become very hard.
Single-actor innovation requiring no cooperation of existing stakeholders has become the way to go: That (plus large existing car-based transport stakeholders) is why there is Uber instead of a working public transit system in most cities.
That's true for most systems you list: Anything payments related – the US has over 6000 banks; even given the population size, that's enormous! Identification cards – it's about immigration status at least as much as it's about people being skeptical of the federal government. E-government: Ok, that one is probably due to a lack of trust in the federal government's tech capabilities, which at this point has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.