I agree that 10 as the base is suboptimal, however everyone using the same base has great network effects. That’s what the other 190-ish countries are annoyed about
> Smaller nations have no problem changing everything. The marginal benefit is too small for a giant to turn on a dime.
Every other nation seemed to manage it. It's just the usual American exceptionalism. There's nothing special about the USA that makes it harder to implement. There's just just a stubborn belief that there is, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. A bit like all the other policy issues which the rest of the world has solved but the US still argues about.
I really don’t think that’s the issue. Even in the US, people complain constantly about the units.
The stubbornness you speak of is actually more to do with not willing to accept the costs of the change. World’s largest economy can’t just change it all at once even though majority of the people support it.
No one in the US argues that the Metric system isn’t superior. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that multiples of 10 in a base 10 system of numbers makes everything easy.
In fact, the superiority complex comes from non-US folks thinking “look at those dumb Americans and their stupid units”.
Certain people think “Americans just don’t get it”.
I am talking about adoption and standardization, not whether one is better than the other. If right hand side was “better”, it would be pretty much impossible for US/EU to change the driving side. Can you imagine the costs? Even if it was better.
Yes, but my point is that it isn't an example of the US adopting a standard. It's the US just happening to have chosen the more popular of two arbitrary options.
One interesting fact about US food labeling requirements is that manufacturers are legally required to use incorrect conversion ratios.
Per the law 21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii) [0]:
> (viii) For nutrition labeling purposes, a teaspoon means 5 milliliters (mL), a tablespoon means 15 mL, a cup means 240 mL, 1 fl oz means 30 mL, and 1 oz in weight means 28 g.
In reality:
* 1 fl. oz. ≈ 29.57 mL [1] (the volume measurements all build off of one another so I won't bother converting more than one)
* 1 oz. ≈ 28.35 g
In other words, volume and mass measurements are legally required to be off by ~1.4% and ~1.3% respectively.
> Smaller nations have no problem changing everything. The marginal benefit is too small for a giant to turn on a dime.
I don't think it is the size of the US that is the problem, I think the real problem is the US political culture.
The most successful approach to metrication is (a) do it in a big-bang, all at once, not gradually (b) make it apply uniformly nation-wide (c) make it apply across as many industries/sectors as possible, with as few exceptions as possible (d) take a predominantly mandatory rather than voluntary approach to metrication. If the US had followed that formula, it would very likely have succeeded, but it never had the political will to go down that path. Instead it opted for a piecemeal, voluntary approach, which was never likely to be a great success
In a parliamentary system such as the UK, Canada, Australia, etc, cabinet decides on a policy, and then the government usually has the numbers in the legislature to enact whatever policy cabinet decides. By contrast, in the US, the executive (President and cabinet) and the legislature (Congress) are two arms-length branches of government, with far less coordination, and it becomes much harder to push policies through unless strong interests are backing them.
Hence, in the US, it is basically impossible to get any controversial policy implemented unless either it has corporate lobbying behind it, or else it is some kind of emotional issue which attracts the attention of activist groups. Corporate lobbyists don't support mandatory metrication (it will cost business money, at least in the short term); metrication doesn't induce the kinds of emotions that issues like abortion or racism do, so there is little activist energy pushing it.
Also, the US historically has a much more hostile attitude to technocratic bureaucracy than most other Western countries do. In other countries, the scientific/technological elite consensus is "this way is better", and the government endorses it, and so the general public falls into line behind the government. In the US, there has always been much more resistance among the general public to those kind of elite proposals. (That said, I think in more recent years the rest of the English-speaking world is becoming more like the US in this regard; I think the Internet has helped export that US culture of distrusting technocratic elites to the rest of the English-speaking world.)
In about 4 months the UK is scheduled to leave the EU.
Probably some portion hope to revert completely when they do.
Probably some portion hope that they rejoin the EU with another vote; and in the process get dragged the rest of the way to the engineering age measurements in the process.
Well, for rooms with actual tatami mats, you are not really interested in the area, but rather how many mats will fit.
Thus, a 24m^2 (12 mat) room with the wrong aspect ratio will not fit 12 mats. (I'm using the 1 mat = 2m^2 conversion for convenience and I actually use 2m^2 mats in my tatami room.)
Practically, mat sizes can vary a bit and can be custom sized. [1]
Even though today only a minority of apartment rooms are actually used with tatami it is still customary to give all rooms in mat units and usually in m^2 too.
BTW that's similar to how non SI units are still used in other countries nowadays, e.g. (metric) pounds and half-pounds are still used in context of groceries in colloquial German.
The UK left the EU at the end of January 2020. The EU is currently treating us as having various member agreements in place until the end of December 2020 but we have already left at this point.
