Thank you, Adrian, for your clarification below. I can now understand better where you are coming from. Please just allow me to make an extra addendum here on this subject of "labeling choice". I honestly believe that it would be politically much easier to push for allowing metric-only labeling than to introduce metric as mandatory (and/or in first place). This for two basic reasons. Firstly, the industry may consider making metric mandatory as expensive. Whereas now they could label things in ifp only, with the new regulation they would understand that that would effectively officialize "dual labeling", which they'd argue it would indeed be an expensive avenue. And, quite frankly, how could we effectively argue against such strong rationale? (toughy, right?... :-S ). Secondly, they could argue that making metric mandatory would place them at a disadvantage position vis-a-vis other competitors, and make those that have chosen to "go metric" look really bad now. Look at the situation of the automotive industry where they have successfully been able to "dupe" the public into believing that their industry is ifp! Once the consumer *sees* that the specs are actually "hard metric" when previously they were led to believe that they were "hard ifp" s/he could get very angry about it. >From these guys' perspectives it would be best if they were "left alone". Allowing >metric-only places the burden on those companies that would choose to do so. And >assuming that they believe that these would be few (except for those that can afford >it, like the Cokes, Pepsis, Proctor & Gambles...) they most likely would not object >to the introduction of this legislation. Besides, please remember, anything that >would upset the status quo could suffer considerable resistance. Allowing >metric-only in an environment which is believed to be largely pro-ifp or anti-metric >would cause very few to find any reasonable justification to lobby against such a >move. Therefore, we should simply hope that ultimately the consumer would find metric-only products to be preferable if they come from reputable industries and if they are *rationally-sized*! That's why in my strong personal opinion going soft-metric is useless and a waste of time, besides its actually being a sabbotage of the whole process! How can we expect anyone to be in favor of a system that gets pushed down our throats based on stupid package sizes like 1.89 L, 25.4 mm and other atrocities??? Inasmuch as it would be preferable for us to see such figures there than their equivalent ifp counterpart. The main thing is that we need to convince people that the solution is to use user-friendly values after all! ;-) Marcus On Sat, 14 Apr 2001 21:30:11 Adrian Jadic wrote: >... >It is all about efficiency. In other words if it takes the same political effort (or >similar) to get primary metric on the labels as it would take to make them >metric-only, then it is simply not worth the effort. >This is where she agreed with Marcus. And I do too. > >However my point was based on the *supposition* that modifying the requirement for >dual units to require SI first and mandatory *may* require less effort. Or, maybe can >be done at the UPLR level. > >The problem is that *I don't know*!. I guess that people with more experience in the >field should tell us if this is possible or it just can't be done. > >The whole idea was that IF it is easier to do than it is worth to do it. > >"That's all folks!" > >Adrian... Who needs Cupid? Matchmaker.com is the place to meet somebody. FREE Two-week Trial Membership at http://www.matchmaker.com/home?rs=200015
