Go Metric and save!

Another measure of America’s decline might be… metric, or rather its continued opposition to adopting the metric system, along with two other “world leaders” in the category like Burma and Liberian. 

I have written a bunch of blogs on the subject starting in 2010, and I see our reluctance to go Metric as a “declining economic indicator”. Supporters of the status quo claim that it would cost too much money. I tend to come from the opposite side, saying: “It might in fact save us a whole bunch of money!” 

Recently, I stumbled upon a comprehensive study on this very subject by Pat Naughtin that gave me plenty of ammunition to make that point. In it, he admitted that the saving aspect of going Metric could be considerable. 

Mixing the two system creates confusion and errors too, like the one that plagued NASA scientists and designers who got mixed up in their different approaches to measurements that lead to the Mars Climate Orbiter loss at a cost of about125 million dollars! 

Long before that and back in 1915, a mathematician by the name of Joseph Victor Collins, estimated the cost of not going Metric could cost the US the equivalent to more than $8 billion a year in today’s dollars. 

In fact, based on Naughtin’s figures and various points, the cost of of non-metrication, based on a $21.43 trillion 2019 GDP, would be almost $2 trillion! Ignoring Metric is a bit like remaining racist; it doesn’t have a bright future. 

A smarter, perhaps contrite America will eventually see the light and metrication will happen; we all might be gone or very old at that point, but it’s ineluctable!