I saw two interesting, and interestingly divergent, takes on the recent news that the European Union voted to allow Great Britain to sell some goods under the imperial system instead of going fully metric. So you can still buy a pint of beer in a pub instead of having to ask for 475 mL or some other quantity.
Here’s one response from TAPPED and another from Reason. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn they take opposite positions on switching over to metric, at least by some kind of government mandate. I find myself vaguely indifferent. I’m lazy enough to not really want to have to get used to new measurements, but I’m not so desperately fond of the imperial system that I couldn’t stand to change.
I think people could get used to it. Whether a bottle of juice is labeled “8 ounces” or “1/4 Liter,” people are going to buy juice by the bottle and not volume. If the sign says “Bananas 49-cents/pound” or “Bananas $1/kilo,” people are going to buy the number of bananas they want (or no bananas, as the case may be). (I couldn’t even tell you how much a banana weighs.) My proof of this is how Coke used to sell 20-ounce bottles and now they’re 500 mL. I know I sound like Andy Rooney if I complain that we’re getting less Coke per bottle and still paying more, but the point is that you still buy Coke by the bottle, regardless of whether the label is in metric or imperial.
So people could handle it, if they had to. (I also wonder if an increased immigrant population will bring a familiarity with metric measurement to America.) Of course, I don’t think it will happen, at least not in my lifetime. The tipping point will come if the NFL ever switches to 100-meter fields. Hell, they don’t even do that in Canadian football!
Anyway, all of this reminded me of the classic Dan Aykroyd commercial parody from Saturday Night Live when he introduced the “Decibet,” the new “metric alphabet.” (It also reminded me of this old post of mine I liked.) Nick Gillespie at Reason raises the specter of Esperanto if we submit to internationally-instituted metrification, but I think even he would prefer that to the Decibet.