This is exactly the reason why I do not believe in 'democracy' in such cases. It leads to muddle and endless confusion for decades. I hope that it will work in the USA, where many people are suspicious of what the government does. It evidently does not work in Canada and Britain, and it did not work in many nations that went metric in the past. Many nations tried the voluntary approach, but as soon as metrication reached the retail trades, trouble started and this is what happened in Britain and Canada. In France it almost destroyed the metric system. Only strict laws that forced trade (not private citizens!) to use metric ended the muddle. In Canada some conservative politicians thought of the ballot box and climbed the anti-metric bandwagon, with this madness as a result. I am glad that we have not adopted the euro the 'democratic' way. We would have double pricing and double currencies for decades. On all other issues we are democracies. Years ago I read a Letter to the Editor in the Guardian, where a British person reported that the street markets in Kenya went metric almost overnight with no difficulties whatsoever, no consumer and traders resistance. This also seems to have been the case in other Third World countries. Why can these poor nations achieve what some rich nations cannot?
Han ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ezra Steinberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2004-03-26 23:14 Subject: [USMA:29310] Canadian metric muddle evident > Someone posted recently an article from a newspaper in the prairie provinces arguing against the current Canadian metric muddle and recommending going back to Imperial or completely forward to metric. (Hard for me to see how they can go back given all the current investment in metric, like speed limit and distance signs, and the fact that the last hold-out, the USA, is inching -- yes, that's deliberate on my part --- towards conversion.) > > I saw this quite clearly on the Science Channel last night on a program that talked about monster trucks. (No, not what you see at the speedway on Saturday night, but the huge multi-million dollar trucks that are used in mining, etc.) They shot the program in Canada, and the engineers and other folks interviewed kept bouncing around from metric to Imperial. The pattern I thought I discerned was that they used metric for short distances (metres) , liquid quantities (litres), and temperature (degrees Celsius) and Imperial for longer distances (miles). > > Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like what most Brits seem to be doing these days, n'est-ce pas? Don't they have a muddle there, too?? ;-) > > Still, there miles ahead of US! (Still deliberate ... ) > > >
