Duncan writes:
> Yes, those who would rely on "market forces" doing the
> job forget that *the market* decides what is to be offered
> and at what price. It constitutes a profoundly blunt
> instrument when it comes to standardization; in fact,
> often just the reverse.
This is mixing up two different aspects of metrication: (1) defining (fixing)
standards, and (2) using them in commercial products.
There is no one (to my knowledge) who has any disagreement over what a kilogram is or
what a meter is. Those have been clearly defined by international bodies. While these
bodies often consist of delegates representing individual governments, in a sense they
are a "market," as no country can be forced to participate or to adopt the standards
chosen. That most countries do both is an indication of the power of a market to
engender compliance.
A separate issue is that of applying these standards to commercial products. In this,
the market is an infinitely finer instrument than mandated standardization (e.g.,
"rational" package sizes). The reason is that mandated standardization means a few
people are deciding what is best for everyone, as opposed to thousands of intelligent
individuals trying thousands of ideas and letting customers chose the best by buying
them. ("customers" does not mean just "consumer". For example, the "customers" for
silicon crystals are large IC manufacturing corporations.)
The best example I can give is the electronics industry. This industry has essentially
NO mandates covering 99% of what it builds. Manufacturers ranging from silicon crystal
suppliers to integrated circuit suppliers to printed circuit manufacturers, etc., can
develop products without constraint of mandates from standards or government bodies.
What happens in practice is extremely "messy" in the sense that different companies
try to get a leg up by trying new things, try to get their design to become the
"standard" (for instance, packaging of memory modules for PCs). Many of these products
fail, some of them are successful, and some are wildly successful. Although it is
messy, it ensures that no one gets to dictate what everyone else has to do, Letting a
few people make such dictates *always* guarantees solutions that are not optimal in
some circumstances.
In the electronics industry, the standard-setting bodies (IEEE, EIA, IPA, etc.) are
general *years* behind the industry practice. By the time something is standardized
(e.g., 144-pin quadpak IC package), it is obsolete, as manufacturers have already
moved on flat-packs or TAB or BGA packages.
I would be willing to bet that everyone on this forum is using a PC or MAC that uses
"standards" that exist only amongst manufacturers, and for which no government or
standards body has had any input whatsoever. For example, PC serial ports use the
RS-232 interface. The EIA(RS)-232-D serial standard is still specified for operation
only up to 20,000 baud; PCs surpassed that a decade ago.
The market is the *best* tool for implementing metrication. If you want to mandate
that metrication happens, at least leave the market free to figure out how best to do
it.
Jim Elwell
