At 06:35 PM 1/28/2002 -0500, James R. Frysinger wrote: >...Suppose NIST were to certify >only metric scales on instruments and were to promulgate an announcement >that henceforth all non-SI quantities were uncertified and could be >anything the user felt like. Then the confidence in non-SI quantities >would vanish and their value in industry would, too....Ironically, this is >actually a step towards "less government" and that is why I had proposed >the above in response to something that was posted by Jim Elwell.
I agree that such a step is "less government," and that it would accelerate the move to metric. However, I also believe it would be unconstitutional, that is, in violation of the "fix the standards" clause. A Libertarian believes that the proper function of government is to protect individuals against force and fraud. De-certifying widely-used units of measure would just about guarantee a lot of fraud, in addition to being an abrogation of one of the government's duties. So, as much as I would like to jump on this bandwagon, I am afraid that I cannot. Jim Elwell
