Great Britain has apparently decided not to switch over to the metric system, or at least not just yet, saying that it would be harder to sell things to the US if they did.

As my friend Don tells it, there’s only one reason why the US isn’t solely using the metric system like almost every other country in the world. Toolmakers realized that if the rest of the world changed but the US didn’t, then every car repair shop and every do-it-yourselfer in the US would have to have two sets of tools, so they lobbied US politicians very hard to stop the US from changing over. I can’t find any evidence for or against it (though I haven’t looked very hard), but from my understanding of business and the political process, it’s highly likely that he’s right.

Since there have apparently been several major and very expensive screwups involving one group using metric and another using Imperial measurements, and presumably millions of smaller ones that never make the news, it would help both Americans and the rest of the world if the US ignored small special interest groups and changed to metric.

Of course, that’s not going to happen. Special interest groups have been part of politics since the beginning, and politicians aren’t at all shy about taking money and advice from them.

If I could think of a workable system of government that would ignore special interest groups in favor of what’s best for everyone, I’d expound on that for a while here. The damnable thing is that I can’t… the democratic system, despite all of it’s many warts, is the only workable system that I know of. And it breaks down when the majority of citizens don’t participate and special interest lobbies are allowed to take over.

The more I learn about people, the more I prefer the company of cats.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. J. K. Galbraith, Letter to Kennedy, 1962