Story highlights Lincoln Chafee called for U.S. to switch to metric system

John B. Marciano: Spread of metric system is a triumph of international capitalism

John Bemelmans Marciano is the author of 'Whatever happened to the metric system?'. The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) There is much to be admired about presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee's willingness to take unconventional political stands. But as he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination on Thursday there was one proposal I wish he hadn't suggested: that America should switch to the metric system.

The idea that we should change our daily system of weights and measures is certainly bold. However, Chafee's putting it forth as a kind of apology to the world for the last dozen years of U.S. international behavior -- rather than on the basis of how much it would cost the American people and what benefits it would bring them -- is staggeringly wrong-headed.

Don't get me wrong -- the metric system is one of the greatest tools ever invented. It is already the first language of measurement in science classes around the country. The first time I ever heard my kindergarten daughter use a measure, it was for something that she said stood "about four meters off the ground". (She also likes soccer.)

The metric system is as preeminent in American industry as it is in schools. Manufacturers in this country made a massive push toward the metric system in the early 1970s, which became part of a drive to take the nation metric as a whole. Then-President Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975. The main resistance -- aside from everyday citizens -- came from the unions, who feared that a switch to an international system of measurement would make it easier for big corporations to ship jobs offshore. (They were right.)

The spread of the metric system is a triumph not of science but international capitalism. Nowhere was it adopted out of idealism and pure reason. If it had been, the 10-hour clock -- another component of the original metric system -- would've been adopted too.

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