Comment by tialaramex
3 years ago
In terms of arbitrariness, note that your "traditional" units are only actually defined in terms of the SI system ("metric" units). Metrication is expensive and although the US is rich it declines to spend the eye-watering sums it would cost to do adequate metrication separately for its own unit system, so the pound is defined as some number of kilograms, the inch is defined as some number of metres and so on.
As a result to the extent all the systems are arbitrary, all the traditional units are automatically one step more arbitrary.
The number of layers of arbitrary dont bother me very much. We've metrified our industry (gradually over 50 or so years), dealing the the government is metric, etc. I think we've adopted the metric system in the most important places - I dont think our competitiveness is harmed or helped if I have to buy meat by the KG at the grocery, or the weather forecast comes in celsius or not.
Then why not just officially ditch what is, at this point, a quirky anachronism at best, and a potentially really expensive source of mistakes [1] at worst?
[1]: https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metr...
Largely, the because the costs to change what remains, isnt worth the savings we'd get from doing it. Moreover the people who would have to bear those costs, are often the people in business least able to do so.
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