Daniel Immerwahr

And Herbert Hoover won't let him in because he doesn't have a ticket.

Like, this is this is a guy who believes in the rules.

He believes in the system.

Standards are a funny thing because everyone wants to be on the same page, but no one wants to have to do that by getting onto someone else's page.

And the more these industries develop, the more each corporation is invested in their own world.

There was just a lot of physical retooling that would have to be done.

So you would lose a lot of capital if you had to suddenly start making things the way that your competitor made them rather than the way that you were accustomed to make them.

And at all that time, your competitor is going to try to snap up all your business.

So his move is not to pass laws.

His move is just to get the manufacturers to agree.

And apparently he was shockingly persuasive in doing so.

So as Commerce Secretary, he pulls in the manufacturers of paving bricks.

And it's like, okay, there are 66 kinds of paving bricks, which is altogether too many.

Can there be fewer?

Well, there can.

And actually paving brick is relatively easy because it's just dimensional.

So after talking to Herbert Hoover, there are 11 kinds of paving brick.

But like, that's the easy round.

He just keeps going.

It is everything.