{"id":51397,"date":"2015-06-08T12:54:49","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T12:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/08\/the-us-and-the-metric-system-2.html"},"modified":"2015-06-08T12:54:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T12:54:49","slug":"the-us-and-the-metric-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/08\/the-us-and-the-metric-system-2.html","title":{"rendered":"The US and the Metric System"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US will never (i.e., at least for the next 50 years) change from the old UK units of measure (as locally implemented) to the metric system for three reasons:<\/p>\n

(1) But it's HAAAARRRDD<\/b> — There's always social inertia. People dislike change and the advantages of change in this case are perceived much lower than the cost (losing an intuitive understanding of measurements, looking stupid, etc.).<\/p>\n

(2) Don't Tread on Me<\/b> — We have a reflexively libertarian society. While one can chart out any number of exceptions, the US is not a top-down command-control nation. "The government" (in the US the federal government) cannot truly mandate adoption of the metric system, though it could certainly push the matter significantly. And, really, the issues in (1) can only be overcome by mandate and subsequent a generation of getting used to it. (That's both a bug and a feature of the American system.)<\/p>\n

(3) America!<\/b> — For too many people, use of American measurements has become somehow bound up in American heritage ("My grandpappy measured in ounces and Fahrenheit, so it's good enough for me!"), American exceptionalism ("Of course we use something different! We're better!"), American impudence ("The rest of the world can suck eggs!"), and the overarching sense of America as being the most important and powerful country in the world (see all the above). To propose changing to metric is not just to suggest an inconvenience (1) or the government treading on us (2), but to be positively un-American. It's to "give in" to those Europeans, or to the Chinese*, or to anyone else who isn't us.<\/i> That can only be seen as a sign of weakness, of dependence, of the US not being able to dictate its own way, let alone the way the world operates.<\/p>\n

In a sense, it's self-fulfilling prophecy: when America feels it has<\/i> to change, it will<\/i> be a sign that its importance in the world has significantly diminished.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of reasons to change to the metric system. But until the reasons above are addressed, especially (3), it'll never happen here.<\/p>\n

(*Though, to be fair, I expect at some point in time — when they feel they can<\/i> mandate it — for the Chinese to introduce a decimaliized version of some traditional set of weights and measures. For their part, (1) is considered irrelevant, (2) is not the case as well, and this will be their version of (3).)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/a>
\nWhy Americans still use Fahrenheit long after everyone else switched to Celsius<\/a><\/span>
\nYou can blame two of history’s all-time greatest villains: British colonialism and Congress.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

View on Google+<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US will never (i.e., at least for the next 50 years) change from the old UK units of measure (as locally implemented) to the metric system for three reasons: (1) But it's HAAAARRRDD — There's always social inertia. People dislike change and the advantages of change in this case are perceived much lower than … Continue reading “The US and the Metric System”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-plusposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":38532,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/the-us-and-the-metric-system.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":0},"title":"The US and the Metric System","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-Aug-13 1:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Sigh.No, a grass roots \"Let's use the metric system at home!\" thing is probably not going to be all that helpful. \u00a0Well, okay, maybe I'll change my weather station\u00a0upstairs to be metric, to see how that goes, but ...... this kind of a standards change really is a top-down thing.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12450,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/04\/30\/metric.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":1},"title":"Metric","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 30-Apr-08 9:24am","format":false,"excerpt":"DOF points to an article about the metric system and What's Kind of Wrong with America (The Island of Doubt : I HATE Fahrenheit ... and its link to presidential...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13383,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/05\/metric_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":2},"title":"Metric","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Jan-09 6:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Everyone and their brother (including my brother's brother) is linking to this Xkcd strip over in Google Reader, so I might as well share it with those of you who...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":23579,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/09\/standing-proud-with-liberia-and-myanmar.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":3},"title":"Standing proud with Liberia and Myanmar!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 9-Nov-11 8:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Because, y'know, We're Number One, and lead the Alliance of the Undecimaled! #ddtbReshared post from +Les JenkinsWe're kinda dicks about that, Embedded Link Countries not using the metric system | The Meta Picture The Meta Picture. Countries not using the metric system. 9 November, 2011 in Places | Comment. Share.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128503,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/another-day-another-deserved-lambasting-of-the-tsa.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":4},"title":"Another day, another deserved lambasting of the TSA","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Nov-15 7:16am","format":false,"excerpt":"That said, a couple of thoughts:1. If we deem weapon detection (to choose a metric) to be vital, then what is the magic target that we want airport security (of whatever sort) to find? 10%? 25%? 50%? 95%? 100% ? What level of intrusiveness and delay are we willing to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":38073,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/01\/the-decimal-date.html","url_meta":{"origin":51397,"position":5},"title":"The Decimal Date","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 1-Jul-13 5:46pm","format":false,"excerpt":"On Twitter, someone was asking for the date \"in metric\", since it was Canada Day. \u00a0They took it as a joke -- I took it as a challenge.The Revolutionary French were decimal-happy, and it's hard to blame them. They decimalized the currency. \u00a0They decimalized measurements (which became the metric system).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}