What the ballot initiative was meant to do and what the legal wording of the initiative are are two different things, though.
there are a million and one ways to implement a standardized open protocol securely.
Right, but that work hasn't been done yet, and moving ahead before that exists is a big risk.
Most of the west has already been dealing with this for decades, and the way they typically deal with it is through offshore manufacturing and immigration. The process has been to identify a low cost nation, build up enough infrastructure to work from there, move manufacturing to that nation, and then when the nation becomes wealthier and no longer able to be exploited, restart the process. We've seen this cycle with India and China, and now it's starting to branch out (a lot of South American nations are being bulked up as "near-shore" partners that are cheap, but also in the same timezone and closer for shipping). Africa is another continent with a lot of potential future options.