I'd like to have an effort thread about the usage of units. As an engineer, this is something I run into quite frequently so the calls from people for America to switch to metric is something I encounter often. With that said, I plan on going into detail on why the US Customary system is, in general, superior to metric.
Why is this a political issue? Control of the way people speak and think is obviously a good way to push a political agenda. For instance, does globalism become more palatable when we're already using a global unit system? Consider the way many globalists push for leftist systems in the US. "Every country in Europe does it!" is a refrain I hear frequently when discussing universal health care, for instance. While I'm not suggesting that the metric system is a gateway to globalism, I think it's important to keep the similar rhetoric in mind.
I want to start with the things that aren't really arguments. "Metric's units make more sense" doesn't really hold up. A meter isn't really inherently better than a foot or yard. Celsius isn't really any better than Fahrenheit. You can basically carry this through all the units. It gets really weird when you get into the electrical units. Go read up on what an Ampere is and tell me that is "intuitive".
I'll follow with things I think metric does well. Metric's standardization with prefixes obviously simplifies things. Milli- means thousandths. Kilo- means thousands. And so on. This ties in with how the simplicity of unit conversions, which is something I think most people who aren't college students rarely do, but it's still better in a lot of cases. Metric also makes some measurements easier. If I'm trying to precisely cut a piece of wood, for instance, millimeters for the board length and blade kerf are a lot easier to work with than inches and fractions - which can get down to the 64ths and be a bit of a mess to work with. I'd say the inherent benefits basically end here.
I'll continue in another post.