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Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric
New submitter Applehu Akbar writes: The good news is that for the first time in years, a candidate in the next presidential cycle has proposed completing our transition to the metric system. Though unfortunately it's Lincoln Chaffee, let's all hope that this long-standing nerd issue gets into the 2016 debate because of this. Warning: Lame CNN autoplaying video.
Business lobbyists in the US would have candidates sell this to voters as an example of "onerous, unasked-for Big Government interference!" They'd threaten voters with nonsense like "You have to throw away your dad's old wrenches because it will be illegal to use inch sized bolts!" or "It's a big-tool-company plot to force us all to buy new wrenches!" This would spark irrational debates around pointless-topics, and won't do anything but make candidates look even stupider than they are.
Never mind that most shade-tree mechanics already have toolboxes full of both.
John
Even in Metric countries like Canada, many people still use imperial units for a lot of things. Go to the lumber store and you can get a 2x4, and they are sold in 6, 8, 10, and 12 foot lengths. Plywood is sold in 4x4 foot sheets. Just about everybody I know refers to their weight in pounds and their height in feet and inches. Almost nobody can tell you the metric equivalent without a calculator. We order a pint of beer at the pub, and most people still refer to a block of butter as a "pound of butter". . British people still use "stone" to express their body weight, and they are supposed to be metric as well.
You can standardize all you want, and print whatever you want on the packaging, but people are still going to use whatever they are used to. You could have the US go metric tomorrow, but people will still use Imperial measurements for another century
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
And note that the US was one of the initial signatories of Metre Convention and that our "customary" units have been actually defined from Metric units since 1893. The problem being that the people have been rather slow to stop using the customary units and the government hasn't really done much to encourage a total switch.
Well except in the 70's, Carter got blamed for that even though it was Ford who signed the legislation. The Reagan administration that came after was full of nostalgia addled traditionalists including the president himself, so the encouragement ended.
Considering signs don't last forever and the 100 year timeline that was given, I don't think the cost would be prohibitive. You could just update the signs during their normal replacement cycle. I'd imagine it would be something like this:
Years 0-25: All signs replaced must print both measurements
Years 25-50: All signs replaced must print both measurements, both with equal representation.
Years 50-75: All signs replaced must print both measures, with the metric measurements featured.
Years 75+: All signs replaced must print Metric only.
I guess some signs will need to be larger to accomodate more info, but probably not a "considerable" amoutn more then the normal cost.
The biggest problem with this proposal is that any legislation like this would just get repealed when the "other" political party takes office. There is almost no way that this would last for 100 years.