U.K. businesses will once again be allowed to sell their products in British units of measurement, like pounds and ounces, instead of the metric system.
The British government has announced that U.K. businesses will once again be allowed to sell their products in traditional, British units of measurement, like pounds and ounces, instead of the metric system.
This move is a win for freedom-loving people everywhere, and the restoration of customary units should be a cause for jubilation in the streets.
The metric system has its origins in the French Revolution, as a way to stick it to the Ancien Régime. It didn’t go international until 1875, when a group of diplomats got together in Paris (which, historically, is a pretty good indicator that a bad decision is on the way) and signed the Treaty of the Meter. That treaty established the BIPM, an intergovernmental organization with a French name, to oversee a new, worldwide measurement system.
Just like that, with the strokes of a few pens in Paris, centuries of history began to be erased. The French Revolution may have been over, but the mindset of the revolutionaries lived on. The French Revolution was a time when men were, in the words of Edmund Burke, “pull[ing] down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.” The top-down imposition of the metric system did just that by erasing customary units.
By “customary units,” I don’t just mean the U.S. customary system, but any unit of measure derived through custom. If you read about the origins of customary units, you’ll find that many of them are based on specific occupations, like brewing, farming, and surveying. They were invented by people doing their jobs who needed a way to measure things. They developed units of measure that were useful to them and persuaded others to adopt them for ease of commerce. Customary units eventually became standardized through a bottom-up process. They represent the wisdom of our ancestors, the accumulated experiences over the centuries.
The meter represents the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. It was originally defined as a tiny fraction of distance along the earth’s equator. It’s so far removed from anything normal people do, it may as well have been invented by aliens.
As Burke said, “it calls for little ability” to point out “the errors and defects of old establishments.” Indeed, it calls for little ability to say, “Base-ten would be easier.” Never mind that we tell time on a non-base-ten system and it works just fine. It’s not for lack of trying other systems, either: The French tried a ten-day week and ten-hour days for a while, but it didn’t stick.
Or consider that the computer or smartphone on which you’re reading this post measures information in bits, a base-two customary unit derived from the days of punch cards and vacuum tubes. And there’s eight bits in a byte, oh no! (Customary units also have elements of humanity in their very names: One half of a byte is called a “nibble.”)
As computer processors became more powerful, the measurement system grew with it. The old Nintendo ran on an eight-bit processor; 64 bits is the norm today. Now, programmers can use a base-16 system to express 64 bits in only 16 numbers and letters. Customary systems are never static. They’re endlessly adaptable to fit our changing needs with no requirement for an intergovernmental committee’s approval.
The other side of adaptability is also true: When a customary unit is no longer useful, it naturally falls out of use without anyone having to table a motion or call a vote. The Bible relates many measurements in cubits, which was an ancient unit derived from the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. We settled on feet and yards instead for distances in that range.
There are also plenty of subdivisions of the inch that we no longer use. There are three barleycorns in an inch and four poppyseeds in a barleycorn. In a more agricultural time, those were useful. They aren’t anymore, so we stopped using them (at least explicitly: The barleycorn is the basis for shoe sizes). Some subdivisions of the inch are still used: There are 72 points in an inch, and you use the point every time you choose a font size in Microsoft Word.
But what about working across national borders? The metric system is great for that. It’s useful in international trade. Scientists, too, should use the metric system so that their work is easily comprehensible around the world.
Most people aren’t scientists, though. When you’re standing in your kitchen making a recipe that calls for two cups of flour, it doesn’t matter in the slightest that someone from Germany might not know how much flour that is.
In fact, someone from Germany looking at your recipe might not even know what “flour” is. The German word for “flour” is mehl, which doesn’t look like “flour” at all. With language, we all readily understand that there’s richness and depth in variety, and there’s value and beauty in tradition. A world where everyone spoke the same language would not be a better world. A worldwide language would necessarily have to be bereft of cultural significance because there’s not one worldwide culture. Esperanto was an attempt at a worldwide language, and it has never gained much interest. The mere act of choosing the Latin alphabet for Esperanto excluded the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Iranians, etc.
The metric system is Esperanto for measurement, except many more people have been seduced by its scientistic allure. The metric system is based on the utopian idea that everything old is bad, and that humans have the power to create a better world by severing all ties with custom and tradition and imposing contrived, rationalistic systems on people, whether they like it or not.
By allowing customary units again, the British are striking a blow against that nonsensical and destructive worldview. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with a cold drink — from a twelve-ounce can.