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why is the US not Metric
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KL27x:
^Exactly. That's the fight Americans so far are still winning against an overgrown federal government. If I were to bet, I think United States of America as we know it quite likely only exists for maybe 100 more years. Cuz.... things change.

When our government has the power to unilaterially do things like South Africa, it is already over. It's way easier to give a government power than to take it back. In Australia changing to metric-only was perhaps popular will. But in America it is not. Think of america as 100,000 special interest groups all in it for themselves. American politics doesn't agree on anything even if it's sensible, until there's personal incentive.

I'm sure there are parties very interested in metrication, cuz they want to profit from it. Not because it's "good for the country." W/e that means. Peeps think that changing road signs and tape measures does something magical and they no longer get Whitworth screws in their consumer goods. We'll have the country with the same problems as before, only some asshole and his nephews will be enriched at the expense of the rest.

Every state: Yeah, we love metric. We want to change to metric.
Federal Board of Metrication: ok, do it. Starting with AZ.
AZ: OK. Great.
... ?
We're ready
....?
....OK, you can turn on the money hose.
Fed: We aren't going to pay for this.
AZ: Ok. Ne'er mind. We still love metric and are completely dedicated to it, but our signs work ok for now. We thought we were going to get something out of it. Turns out it actually costs a lot, and there's not enough local support for us to skim off the top and do this as inefficiently as we wanted to on your dime.

The AZ experiment "It's here, it started!" obviously did not trigger the donations from private enterprise or individuals or USMA that they hoped. No blood to squeeze out of the stone. Now we see the real amount of interest. Almost none.

In my era we learned this in school. We learned how "pork barrel" politics works. We learned how self-interest runs things. And we learned about the inherent fragility of the balance of powers. It's a miracle America has gone this long and is still in as decent shape as it is. American people and American culture is a big part of it. You can't maintain individual rights/freedoms unless you fight for them. This is part of our culture and psyche. We know this can all evaporate in less than a generation, and the path to this destruction will probably be littered with good intentions. Some things are more important than inches vs centimeters. We would rather use a calculator once in a moon than to allow our government to mandate something so immaterial to anything of any importance, let alone at a great cost and against popular will.

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added as an edit, because it doesn't deserve a bump.

see 28:40. This Australian states that the new road signs were put up in advance and covered with sacks. These were then removed on "M day."  He makes the suggestion that the cost was covered by the savings obtained thru allowing the old signs to stay up for a period of 18 to 24 months longer than normal, which sounds like a fairy tale to me.

Earlier in the video, he claims that changing to metric in construction ultimately saved ~10% of the cost of home construction by using the opportunity to change the building code to use 25% fewer studs. By moving the stud spacing from every 18" (~450mm) to every 600mm. No citations/references. Just this 10% number people like to throw around. Note they also spec'ed a stronger wood. For various reasons, this would not necessarily be the case in the US, even if you believe these fairy tale numbers. Liability and legal repercussions might be different in the US, and also the size of the market is much larger. This "stronger spec'd wood" might rise to 3x or 10x the price if the US started building all their homes with it, if it was even sustainable at this rate, at all. While the price of sustainable, fast-growing pine and douglas fir would take a plunge due to a humongous drop in demand. The tail can sometimes do things that the dog can't.

Regarding the 10% savings, he also describes in his experience in the construction industry, a company did an experiment building one house in metric and one in imperial. According to him, the waste leftover from the imperial home filled two 5-ton(ne?) trucks. And the metric house, only a wheelbarrow. I would assume that any real differences would be due to the starting sizes/shapes of construction materials used, and that this comparison was done after all building supplies were sourced to fit the new metric method. There are statistics and there are exaggerations and there are bald face lies. Take your pick, here. I am sure this "scientific double blind controlled, not-anectdotal experiment" was performed to demonstrate a particular outcome. Et voila! Australian government made a great decision. Fact! (That after changing an entire system from sourcing to construction to optimize any one single home design, that building a different one with the same workers and materials will be less efficient.) You can actually tell he knows his dishonesty by his body language. And he never specified... was this an imperial wheelbarrow or metric, and what was the volume? More importantly what was the size of these houses and where is the waste being generated? There are a million games you can play, here. Meredith Perry should look this guy up.

The best way to maximize efficiency is to have a competitive construction industry. Period. We don't pay people for their productivity, directly. We pay by the hour. Of course when you do a spring cleaning, the mice will be better behaved when the cat is forced to pay attention and oversee things, especially when they're calculating your efficiency. The cats also like to give themselves credit. All the way up to the government. This guy gets paid to make these talks, because this is the guy spreading the message they want their people to hear. Period. "We did it, and look; it's awesome!" The end where he says "metrication is inevitable" is like bsfeechannel's fantasy. Complete bullshit.

Also, BTW, Tepe's tape measure shows what I was talking about. It looks like they mark only every 10th cm on this tape? There's plenty space to mark every inch serially up to any distance you would measure with an imperial tape measure. Without crowding the numbers into each other or squinting. This is no doubt something that was considered ever since man started making rulers and tape measures. Recall that the Romans had both digits and inches on their rulers. And the smaller digits died, for some combination of reasons, while the larger inch thrived. Today, most of the world has gone to super smaller digits called cm. Which metric is great for chemistry and physics, but it was not evolved through millennia of hands-on fabrication work alongside centuries of communication between workers in the ever-changing English language.
cs.dk:

--- Quote from: tooki on December 21, 2019, 03:18:02 pm ---I have never seen a combination one in a hardware store anywhere outside of the Americas (as of now, meaning Europe and Thailand). Whether measuring tapes, foldable yardsticks, office rulers, or analog calipers, micrometers, etc, it’s metric-only by default.

--- End quote ---

I've never seen an analog caliper being metric only.  I have 5 different in my workshop, all with inches on the top.
Like this one;


Tape measures with dual scales are also readily available here in Denmark.
https://www.hoffmann-group.com/DK/da/hodk/M%C3%A5lev%C3%A6rkt%C3%B8j/Linealer%2C-vaterpas/B%C3%A5ndm%C3%A5l-mm--tommeafl%C3%A6sning/p/462014

I can not really understand tires though. Their width is in millimeters, and the diameter is in inches. How weird is that?
The only full metric tire I know of, was fitted to Citroën CX.
Tepe:

--- Quote from: cs.dk on December 23, 2019, 10:01:36 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on December 21, 2019, 03:18:02 pm ---I have never seen a combination one in a hardware store anywhere outside of the Americas (as of now, meaning Europe and Thailand). Whether measuring tapes, foldable yardsticks, office rulers, or analog calipers, micrometers, etc, it’s metric-only by default.

--- End quote ---

I've never seen an analog caliper being metric only.  I have 5 different in my workshop, all with inches on the top.
Like this one;
(Attachment Link)

Tape measures with dual scales are also readily available here in Denmark.
https://www.hoffmann-group.com/DK/da/hodk/M%C3%A5lev%C3%A6rkt%C3%B8j/Linealer%2C-vaterpas/B%C3%A5ndm%C3%A5l-mm--tommeafl%C3%A6sning/p/462014

--- End quote ---
Readily available from a shop that does not sell to private persons is readily available in a fairly narrow sense.
cs.dk:

--- Quote from: Tepe on December 23, 2019, 12:22:49 pm ---Readily available from a shop that does not sell to private persons is readily available in a fairly narrow sense.

--- End quote ---

Well, it was just first result from google as an example. I've seen plenty of them in my life.. https://smedebutikken.dk/maalebaand-3-mtr-mm-tommer

I wouldn't be surprised if Jem&Fix, Silvan, Bauhaus, or similar have them on the shelves.
tooki:

--- Quote from: cs.dk on December 23, 2019, 10:01:36 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on December 21, 2019, 03:18:02 pm ---I have never seen a combination one in a hardware store anywhere outside of the Americas (as of now, meaning Europe and Thailand). Whether measuring tapes, foldable yardsticks, office rulers, or analog calipers, micrometers, etc, it’s metric-only by default.

--- End quote ---

I've never seen an analog caliper being metric only.  I have 5 different in my workshop, all with inches on the top.
Like this one;
(Attachment Link)

Tape measures with dual scales are also readily available here in Denmark.
https://www.hoffmann-group.com/DK/da/hodk/M%C3%A5lev%C3%A6rkt%C3%B8j/Linealer%2C-vaterpas/B%C3%A5ndm%C3%A5l-mm--tommeafl%C3%A6sning/p/462014

--- End quote ---
I was surprised, when shopping for calipers in the past year, that tons of Mitutoyo models are metric-only — even among the digital ones!!

Here’s their catalog page of standard vernier calipers. 60% of them are metric-only:

https://www.mitutoyo.co.jp/eng/useful/catalog-2018/html5m.html#page=235

If you flip through the calipers selection, overall about half of them are metric-only, most of the rest are both, and a small number (mostly dial) are inch-only.


As for the yardstick: tue claim was that you could walk into any hardware store in Europe (i.e. not a specialist industrial tool vendor) and get dual-scale models. I think that’s untrue.

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