Well written. There's lots to mull on here!
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Geelong, Australia
61 3 5241 2008
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.metricationmatters.com
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on 2005-03-11 03.16, Jim Elwell at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Gentlemen (& Ladies?):
I come to work this morning to 20 or so emails prompted by my post to Pat Naughtin. I have read them all carefully, and would like to address them as a group.
My bona fides for those who don't know me: I am an ardent PRO-metricationist, and have spent years and many thousands of dollars promoting metrication in the USA, including metricating the company of which I am president, training and certifying many employees in metrication, giving away as freebies metric rulers (now over 15,000 of them), and various activities in support of the USMA.
I am also an staunch, unapologetic libertarian, meaning that as far as I am concerned, individual liberty is the transcendent goal for civilization. Way, way, way more important than meters and liters.
I think the discussion needs to be split into three pieces: (A) safety-related metrication issues, (B) non-safety related issues, and (C) international issues.
(A) Safety related issues. I don't believe anyone on this list would argue that, where safety is involved (e.g., medicine, commercial air transport), that there is no role for the government to ensure common measurement. Furthermore, since metric is so widely used in the world, converting non-metric safety-related measurement to metric is probably a good thing, but must be done extremely carefully where it changes long-established procedures.
(B) Non-safety related issues. Here is where there is substantial disagreement on the forum. A few of us argue that people should be able to buy/sell products in the units of their choice, whereas others want to force commerce to be metric.
It is important to understand that freedom to buy/sell in the units of your choice does NOT mean that every buyer will find a willing seller, or vice versa. It does NOT mean that if you want to buy cheese in kilograms (or pounds) that you have any "right" to do so. It means that if both a buyer and a seller wish to use certain units, they are free from any government compulsion stopping them.
The costs, inefficiencies and loss of freedom incurred by FORCING commerce to take place only in metric units far outweighs any conceivable benefit from forced metrication:
(1) How does it harm, in any reasonably connected fashion, someone in Germany if I buy apples by the pound in Salt Lake City, Utah, from a local farmer? I contend it does not. Anymore than that German buying his apples in kilograms harms me.
(2) Forcing metrication in the USA will require huge new government regulations and bureaucracies, which tend to live forever, and feed off taxpayer dollars. This alone will destroy thousands of private sector jobs, while providing no real benefit, just a warm, fuzzy feeling to those who want everyone to use metric.
(3) Forcing metrication guarantees more loss of jobs when companies have to put dollars into converting their operations, modifying or replacing perfectly good production equipment and tooling, etc. If metrication is allowed to happen over a course of years, companies will still do it (as they have been doing), but will do it in the way that makes the most financial sense.
(4) And, of course, the overwhelming issue of allowing government to dictate that people may not live their lives in whatever peaceable, non-fraudulent way that they choose. THAT certainly is not what I think the USA is all about.
(C) International Commerce. Some complaints were posted about TABD, putting off deadlines 10 years, etc. Let me ask two questions: (1) if metric is such a major factor in efficiency of commerce, why does the country that is the least metric in the world (and imports far more products than it exports) have the strongest and largest economy? (2) if metric is so important to (say) Germany and France, why do their governments not have the courage to prohibit non-metric imports?
My final comment relates to the language discussion: languages are a good analog for NOT forcing metrication. There is no law in the world that requires international commerce, personal interactions, or even government interactions, to be done in any given language. So the parties to various transactions have picked the appropriate language for whatever circumstances they find themselves in. For business people, it has become English between most countries. Not by mandate. Not by forcing people to learn any particular language. Simply by many millions of people trying to make billions of interactions as efficient as possible.
Metric is becoming the measurement language of the USA. It will take another 10 or 20 years to become dominant, but it WILL happen and we don't need more government agencies and regulations to make it happen.
Jim Elwell
