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degrowther: Arguments against the metric system
[…] I dislike many of the arguments people use to push for its broader adoption in the US.
I don’t think this article makes a coherent argument, and I’ll try to spell out why.
I am a scientist and also have training as an engineer. I love measuring things! But in many cases, measurement doesn’t serve us — it serves the needs of the state and capital. It’s no coincidence that the push to adopt an international system of measures coincided with the ascension of capitalist hegemony.
Societies before the current capitalist orders have measured. Measurement is central to everything from construction, to trade, to medicine… Every society benefits from accurate, reproducible measurements. Even in the future non-capitalist utopia, we still need measurements to ensure clean water, medicine, and the daily allowance of <strike>gruel</strike> nutricious energy slurry.
Being measured is the first step that a mere object takes toward becoming a commodity. Objects are useful for people, but commodities are only useful for capitalists (I just saved you the trouble of reading about three chapters of Marx).
It’s almost as if the largest system of chattel slavery in the world preceded the introduction of the metric system, and survived for six decades afterwards.
Likewise, the foundations of the greatest colonial empire in history were layed just before the French Revolution.
Adoption of the metric system does not free its user from the limitations of the squishy organic matter that’s using those measurements. Why else would centimeters be such a commonly used measure, when the metric system supposedly prefers multiples of 1000 (and 0.001), if something on the scale of an inch isn’t inherently useful?
No it doesn’t, and no-one has said it would. SI is not normative in that way.
During history, coherent systems based on the meter have included [cgs] (centimetre-gramme-second), [MTS] (metre-tonne-second), and the ultimate victor, MKS-A (meter-kilogram-second-Ampere).
Of course people adopt measurements that are “closest” to what they want to measure. We use *centi*meters for stuff like boxes, *milli*meters for small stuff, *deci*liters for food-related volumes, *hecto*liters for wine production, *hect*ares for land area, *kilo*meters for distance. So in each case, the meter is subdivided or extended into terms that fit the measurement domain.
In Sweden a common measurement is the “mil”, or 10km. It’s often used when discussing longer distances.
Implying SI demands only the use of powers of ten that are modulo 3 is a strawman.
Both [inches] in use in the USA (industrial/statute and survey) are based on the meter, but with slightly different definitions.
When should a user measuring small distances in customary units go from say, 1/64″ to 15.625 thousands?
The metric system was invented by one of the first modern nation-states, then a brand new liberal democracy that didn’t let its new commitment to the notions of individual freedom from expanding upon the cruel colonial policies of its former monarchy.
This wildly misrepresents the political realities of the French Republic, which abolished slavery.
The largest, most widespread *colonial* empire was ruled from a country that used those nice, human-based __imperial__ measurements.
1861 - A committee of the British Association for Advancement of Science (BAAS) including William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), James Clerk Maxwell and James Prescott Joule introduced the concept of a coherent system of units which is fundamental to the modern metric system. They proposed the metre, gram and second as base units.
1963 - Weights and Measures Act redefined the basic measures of the ‘yard’ and the ‘pound’ in terms of the ‘metre’ and the ‘kilogram’. Many of the old imperial measures were abolished (drachm, scruple, minim, chaldron, quarter, rod, pole, perch, and a few more). Imperial units are now defined in terms of metric.
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