On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 06:49:39
Jim Elwell wrote:
>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.
>...
??? I'm puzzled now, Jim. Please enlighten us. How can you be in favor of that?
So, in the name of 'protecting individuals' you would accept that the government
stepped in to **force** the fixing of the standards??? What if a fellow libertarian
preferred to call his 2-L gallon as such, a gallon? Are you finally admitting that we
do need some regulatory mechanism to 'protect individuals' after all? If you are, why
not make that leap of faith and finally agree with us that provided a specific
standard is *legalized* and adhered to ('fixing the standards', as you put it
yourself!), anyone can use anything else they'd want?
In other words, let Congress establish metric as the ONLY system to have legal
standing while at the same time allowing for people to exercise their 'individual
freedom' to use whatever gallon, acre, foot, inch they'd see fit (even the current
ones)!!! Your libertarian views would not be violated and our objectives would be
achieved *simultaneously*, a win-win situation in my book, is it not???
Marcus
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