We don’t even have standards that strong in programming languages or even fucking machine code (ISAs) anymore.

I think I would like to return to that ideal time (if it ever existed), but… I feel like I’m in a vanishingly small minority.

I think it comes down to incentive structure, and the most clear incentives push away from strong stnadards. The big advantage to (a) strong standard(s) is(are) interoperability, but that’s something end users have to demand because it’s an anathema to rent-seeking-behavior (a central facet of surveillance capitalism, choke-point capitalism, enshittification, and technofuedalism). But, even there, natural incentives fail us, since most users get more utility from “innovative” features instead of low switching costs – or at least the think they do until they actually try to exit a platform/service.