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if you seem to think a 'colonial' standard of measurement is bad because it was imposed by force (metric wasn't in the vast majority of metric countries btw), the 'indigenous' one would need to be meaningfully different. but old measuring standards were arbitrary impositions from old ruling classes
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how is that worse? if you're going to argue this is a knock against metric, the 'french ruling class' needs to be worse than whichever royal nonce decided the length of an ell.
btw when did the french conquer south america? it's so weird they're all using metric but i can't remember the date when Napoleon came round and forced them all to switch
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gold reading comprehension star for you ⭐ you've successfully arrived at my point but you seem to think its yours.
i'm equivocating between the imposition of measurement systems through coercive force and arguing it is not a valid complaint against metric---so you agree?
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bunch of aristocrats
even right after clarifying this shouldn't matter (and doing apologetics for the medieval equivalent) you return to this false standard and it isn't even true! SI is tied to universal constants so anybody in any condition can work with it, without even having to procure a copy of the standard. it's literally not arbitrary, or developed by out of touch aristocrats who never worked with their hands.
"actual craftsmen doing actual craftswork" because everyone has the same size of hands and feet? have you heard of sexual dimorphism? this is so childish, absolutely none of your arguments hold water (if you even stick to them) and are colored by a completely falsified version of history. instead of crafting unbelievable appeals to working people and cultural heritage, perhaps ponder why you're in disagreement with the vast mass of humanity and socialist thinkers. wonder about the billions of workers and craftsmen who get on just fine without your units
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the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second
it's also 1/1000000th of the distance from the pole to the equator, you can do this math yourself with basic tools to "everyday" acccuracy, just like a kilogram being a litre of water (with a much fancier process to get it physicist-calibrated). not equally arbitrary. a hand or a foot is a distance that has never existed in a replicable form beyond a single body, the dimensions and physical characteristics of observable, stable natural phenomena are the same for everybody, everywhere.
but lets get back to your absurd sequence of events "someone eventually said "lets all agree to use the King's foot as the standard" that someone being the King, the "agreement" was the coercive power of the state to enforce that ruling. what if the king's foot was unusually short/long? you had to use it all the same. this fantasy you've constructed about the humble ole' conventional units doesn't agree with the basics of how states work, no matter how euphemistically you present "the guy who draws and quarters people for not bowing low enough decided his foot was a standard of measurement" there was absolutely nothing democratic or 'bottom-up' about it. you want to hear about democratic processes? how about the hundred republics that have gone metric without the threat of force? the peoples republics, the soviet union, the dozens of countries that became independent from britain and adopted it?
Get their ass