Having read a good portion of the comments in this thread and the anti-american sentiment attached, I am convinced that the only reason the US isn’t wholly metric at this point is out of spite.
I know the actual reason is that it would cost too damn much to convert all the infrastructure we’ve built in imperial, but now I just want the USA to keep kicking everyone in the balls at the Olympics, in the military, and with global corporate supremacy just to own it to the world that they’re better than all of you AND they use imperial.
Not using the metric system is such a massive waste of money (let’s talk about international trade, everyone else uses metric), there’s no way anyone is justifying it based on cost. It’s because when they actually tried to adopt the metric system in the 70’s people revolted and destroyed all the new signs. Because this is a barbaric fuckin country.
Most of the US standard units these days are defined in terms of metric units. But lots of individual laws and regulations from the federal down to the state, county, and municipal level are still worded in terms of those US standard units. This means that ultimately the U.S. is already using the metric system in actual fact, while the US standard units are used in name only. For example, the U.S. Standard foot is common throughout the country to define the boundaries of real property (land), but since 1959 1 foot has been defined as equaling 0.3048 meter exactly. The US foot is set to be replaced soon with the international foot, similarly defined by the meter, when the National Geodetic Service finalizes it’s new datums and state plane coordinate systems.
Point is, the US is already using the metric system, with a heavy accent.
Lots of industries in USA are metric and keeping the imperial around for the social inertia.
For engineers/scientists this works. For normal people, this works IFF there’s a gradual change. Eg: every sign that’s replaced should have both units. Every product needs to add both units in within next X years. Then they can make imperial optional after a decade or more of common signs and finally go all in on SI.
But ofc no one likes a working solution. They’d rather stick to the measurement system that escaped pirates
Having read a good portion of the comments in this thread and the anti-american sentiment attached, I am convinced that the only reason the US isn’t wholly metric at this point is out of spite.
I know the actual reason is that it would cost too damn much to convert all the infrastructure we’ve built in imperial, but now I just want the USA to keep kicking everyone in the balls at the Olympics, in the military, and with global corporate supremacy just to own it to the world that they’re better than all of you AND they use imperial.
Not using the metric system is such a massive waste of money (let’s talk about international trade, everyone else uses metric), there’s no way anyone is justifying it based on cost. It’s because when they actually tried to adopt the metric system in the 70’s people revolted and destroyed all the new signs. Because this is a barbaric fuckin country.
Most of the US standard units these days are defined in terms of metric units. But lots of individual laws and regulations from the federal down to the state, county, and municipal level are still worded in terms of those US standard units. This means that ultimately the U.S. is already using the metric system in actual fact, while the US standard units are used in name only. For example, the U.S. Standard foot is common throughout the country to define the boundaries of real property (land), but since 1959 1 foot has been defined as equaling 0.3048 meter exactly. The US foot is set to be replaced soon with the international foot, similarly defined by the meter, when the National Geodetic Service finalizes it’s new datums and state plane coordinate systems.
Point is, the US is already using the metric system, with a heavy accent.
Lots of industries in USA are metric and keeping the imperial around for the social inertia.
For engineers/scientists this works. For normal people, this works IFF there’s a gradual change. Eg: every sign that’s replaced should have both units. Every product needs to add both units in within next X years. Then they can make imperial optional after a decade or more of common signs and finally go all in on SI.
But ofc no one likes a working solution. They’d rather stick to the measurement system that escaped pirates
Hahaha yes you guys are the number one 😂
Imperial is just social inertia