General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
rstofer:
--- Quote from: Simon on October 29, 2019, 07:01:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on October 29, 2019, 03:27:12 pm ---
To cut to the chase, metric is eurocentric and the US doesn't do eurocentric. Worse, the standards are French and we definitely don't do French. We will never convert on a national basis.
You could also explain the issue as a matter of elitism. The elite use metric and the last thing they want is for the commoners to understand what they're talking about so there is no real push to convert. Those who need to use metric can and will. Those who don't need it will never convert.
--- End quote ---
that is what makes your personally backward. I don't know about the rest of America.
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Walk down the street, next time you're here, and ask people what they think. You might be surprised. All is not kumbaya between the people in the US and their opinion of various other countries. Don't spend your time talking to the people in the mega-population centers, get out to the fly-over states and see what the people really think.
I don't think my comments will be far off the mark. There has to be some reason that metrification is another "third rail" of politics. It's not like we don't know about metric, we just don't care. And politicians don't dare bring it up! Why do you suppose that is? I see protests on TV every night. People in favor of this, people opposed to that but I have NEVER seen a protest in favor of metrification. Hmm...
It's pretty clear I am a redneck except, well, I did go to school (MSEE) and I did work in Silicon Valley for 25 years and I worked as an expat with specialized skills building a semiconductor plant in Singapore. I seemed to get along with metric just fine. And now I know what a "green card" is!
The ONLY unit of measure I care about today is the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Those of us on fixed income and retirement accounts rely on an increasing DJIA. We are forced, beginning in the year we reach 70-1/2, to withdraw about 8% each year and we expect, no, we demand, that the market make it up! Good news! The DJIA is up over 34% over since the inauguration. For old people, that's a really big deal. There are a lot of old people in the US. And we vote!
The rest of this stuff? Totally unimportant!
rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on October 29, 2019, 08:19:23 pm ---This behavior has been exploited in the US where almost all food is labeled in both metric and traditional units. A product that was originally in a nice round number of traditional units is resized down to a nice even metric number without a change in price. Later, after that is absorbed the product is resized again to the next smaller even traditional units. This process has been repeated in some products until they are half their original size.
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That's inflation for you. None of that price hike but yet the price is hiked!
In Brasil a box of laundry detergent always had 1kg. Many years ago, the manufacturers surreptitiously reduced it to 900g and it was clearly stated at the bottom right corner the new weight - this went on for months (if not years) without people realizing that. Then a customer realized the farce and fed it to the news outlets - lots of people (including myself) found boxes of the stuff bought months earlier with the 900g clearly stamped there. During the whole brouhaha, some of the brands labeled their boxes with a capital 1kg and brandished as if they were the trustworthy ones.
rstofer:
--- Quote from: boffin on October 29, 2019, 05:27:06 pm ---
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on October 29, 2019, 05:11:40 pm ---and has gained the advantage in number of users and will probably, sooner or later take over everywhere.
--- End quote ---
190 of 193 member states of the UN are Metric
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Outstanding! Yet the largest economy in the world isn't metric. I wonder if causality applies...
For all the discussion above, and elsewhere, nothing is going to change. The US will never convert and folks might as well get used to it.
Simon:
It's more a case of what everyone is used to. I can work with eithor mostly for what I need.
james_s:
--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on October 29, 2019, 08:19:23 pm ---rstofer is absolutely correct on this one. The unit of measure on those large PET bottles is the bottle. We don't buy x bottles to get y liters of soda. We don't say we need y liters to fill z 0.5 liter glasses. We buy the number of bottles that will fit the refrigerator or cabinet or budget. When that runs out, or nearly runs out we buy more. And I suspect that is the way people operate worldwide. The guy designing the bottle filler may care about the units, and other people in the Fab chain may care, though here in the US the recipe is likely to be in traditional units.
This behavior has been exploited in the US where almost all food is labeled in both metric and traditional units. A product that was originally in a nice round number of traditional units is resized down to a nice even metric number without a change in price. Later, after that is absorbed the product is resized again to the next smaller even traditional units. This process has been repeated in some products until they are half their original size.
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I don't speak for everyone, but people I know refer to the bottles as "two liter bottles" (or the smaller one liter size). Ultimately no, most people don't care what unit it is and nobody says they need "10 liters of Pepsi for the party" but anyone who has bought a bottle of soda will know about how big a liter is. The cans are for whatever reason measured in ounces but those really are just referred to as a "can" of this or that, sizes other than 12oz are rare.
It could be Bushels or Pecks or any other arbitrary unit though and nobody would really care, as long as it was consistent.
The thing that bugs me are "gallon" containers of icecream that through the magic of shrinking food products to obfuscate price increases are nowhere near a gallon anymore. That drives me insane because while I fully understand the need to increase prices, when someone tries to hide it like that I feel like I'm being cheated.
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