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delamination t1_jealqae wrote

Reply to comment by Rocketgirl8097 in Would you support metrication in Washington? by Anything-Complex

> Every sawmill has to be retooled to cut in meters and centimeters instead of feet and inches.

I disagree that this is a concern in the short term. My initial push is not to legislate product offerings, but rather to push signage and mental shifts and making SI units ubiquitous. "You're refreshing this sign anyway, it now needs to include a little more info" is a pretty small cost burden spread over time.

Each industry will face challenges in metricification. You might never get the lumber industry to convert the product line: "lumber is Imperial because blueprints are Imperial because lumber is Imperial." I don't have a solution here, but retooling the mill is not where we need to begin. If a major home builder said "we're tired of doing blueprints in the US in Imperial, who wants to retool with us?" you'll get the demand. And if it doesn't happen, so be it. I don't want anyone to stop making / selling / speaking of 'a 2x4'. I just want Home Depot's sign to say 2"x4"x8' / 48mm x 98mm x 2.4m.

Bogging down in the late stage of "how each industry converts to metric" hides the issue that blocks getting started: as a country, we don't know how to think in metric, because we don't see it every day. Signs help begin to change that.

Here's my dream: someone visiting the US who doesn't know Imperial can see directions using km, to get to a grocery store where they can buy meat and produce and know the price per kg.

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Rocketgirl8097 t1_jeaq7hg wrote

A visitor is not going to be buying meat at a grocery store, they are going to be eating out. And if they for some reason were buying groceries they are going to be more concerned about the currency conversion than the unit of measure. Come on. I mean what benefit is there really?

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delamination t1_jeb20p6 wrote

> A visitor is not going to be buying meat at a grocery store, they are going to be eating out.

Having done longer stays, gonna disagree with that. Grocery shopping in other countries is great for saving money and getting to experience the place.

> And if they for some reason were buying groceries they are going to be more concerned about the currency conversion than the unit of measure. Come on. I mean what benefit is there really?

Low-level: Gas in Denmark right now is 14.66 DKK per Liter. "What's that in FreedomBuxx?" You usually have the currency conversion squirreled away in your head when you're in a country for a while. If you can think in Liters, you can do "1 USD is a little under 7 DKK so it's a smidge over $2 and change for a liter" and you're done. If you can only think in gallons, you do that, and then also have to convert 3.78541 liters per gallon, which yeah, you can round to 4, but it's another conversion. And while you might have "a liter is a quart, for small use cases", it's a second conversion and this pretty much where brains blow up. (Answer: it's 8.12 USD/gal).

High-level: We're on an island of Imperial units, and that's isolating to commerce/tourism. It's fine that we're 'the exception' while we're the 800lb-gorilla (363kg) economy but, someday we may not be. We doggedly refuse to believe that there could be any long-term (generations-length) benefit to the local+world economy that could outweigh the (amortized over generations) costs... to the point that the idea of starting a systemic/slow conversion seems too much, because we can't see what's on the other side.

I get you're not convinced. I'm sorry.

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Rocketgirl8097 t1_jebkzge wrote

No I'm not. I'm not seeing any benefit but a whole lot of cost. We are doing just fine with imports/exports and tourism.

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