Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
I dunno - why can't the Europeans use dollars?
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Because the US dollar will be the first to crash when China hiccups. Granted, with today's electronic financial systems the rest of the world's currencies will be only a few minutes behind, but that may be enough to stock up on emergency food supplies
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Then instead of having different names for units, you just stick on confusing prefixes - and worse, abbreviate them so you're never really sure whether M stands for milli, micro, or mega.
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Oh, like the US system's units for mass (ounces) and volume (ounces) are totally different names?
If the metric system had been totally bogus, then it wouldn't have caught on. The French also tried to "metrify" angle units (
gradians instead of
degrees) and
time, but those two already worked well enough to stand a fighting chance. Different types of gallons, miles and ounces, not to mention all sorts of obscure and local units, only lead to confusion, so a unified system was quite welcome, especially if it was adopted on a larger scale to aid in the trade of goods and information.
This discussion
really should be happening
somewhere else.
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