I see I have been downvoted a few times. What's your argument? Where do you disagree? I'd like to hear an alternative viewpoint.
So let me kick it back to you: What's your argument?
Metric and imperial are both pretty arbitrary; one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard.
And that they are easy to convert among each other (simply powers of 10). And that there is a complete system of units (SI) that is based on it (what is the imperial unit of force, power, voltage, current,...? etc.).
The little-known "pound". :p
What's the most important then? The price tag. But each unit of ground beef isn't always the same size: 1.08 lbs, or 1.23 lbs ,etc.
Fortunately vendors are required to put a price PER unit of weight. In metric system countries it would be : Brand A is 7€/kg, Brand B is 5€/kg , (and for the sake of the argument, Brand C is 0.65c per gram, but usually it's always per kg.) Which one is the cheapest? Easy answer. Brand B < Brand C < Brand A
In the US? One is $5/lbs , the other is 35c per Oz. Which one is the cheapest? In this base 10 world, It's a bit tricky to make base 16 conversion by head
Same with liquids: fl oz, gal, etc. with the Metric system? €/cl , €/l , they could even write €/ml, multiplying/dividing by 10, 100, or 1000 doesn't' requires a calculator. Even if you only have the price per unit, for the same brand: 1 bottle of 2L is $3, 6 bottle of 500ml is $3, here buying the 6 pack is better. (Usually the bigger the bottle, the cheaper per unit of volume, but not always, especially in the US)
In the US? 1 gallon is $3, but a 6 pack of 16 fl oz is $3, which one is the cheapest? 6*16 = 96. but 1 gallon is 128 floz, so the 6 pack is 75% of a gallon, so the gallon is cheaper here
Why? 1m is about the length of one step (heel to heel)
> Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius
Why? Freezing water has 0°C, boiling water 100°C.
> Pounds are more useful than kilos
By a numeric coincidence (gravity of earth is nearly 10 m/s^2) 1 kg has a weight of about 10 N. This makes it really easy when going climbing to compute what mass you can put on some part of the safety chain.
Generally: It is a pain in the ass to convert these non-metric units among one another. For one example 1 P̸ = 12p, 1 in = 6 P̸, 1 ft=12 in, 1 yd = 3ft, 1 mi = 1760 yd. Sounds very simple and logical to me. :-(
Alone this fact is for me argument enough for metric units.
For me, the major advantage of the imperial units is that they're all approximately human-scale. My foot is about a foot, my stride is about a yard, and it's surprising if I encounter weather outside 0-100F. A pint is a big drink; a cup is small one.
I'm a scientist, and all this goes out the window in the lab, of course. Even there though, a lot of the useful conversions do need some arbitrary constant (e.g. density, molarity) and the SI prefixes are not incredibly useful. I've literally never heard anyone measure something in deci/decameters. In practice, we tend to pick a unit that's approximately the right size and and stick with it--tiny things might be between 0.05µm and 2,500 µm, for example.
Given its origins in Revolutionary France, the metric system is quite literally a communist plot.
That must be a joke
Two systems of measurement for essentially the exact same things just complicates matters. Suggesting that your system is better (I'm (perhaps wrongly) assuming that it's because you learned one first) and more 'instinctive' or 'natural' is pretty poor argument.
Are there any truly objective reasons you can argue one system (in your case, imperial/customary) is actually better?
Yes, some units have slightly nicer divisible quantities, but that's easily outweighed by the crazy inconsistencies between different units of a type (stones, pounds and ounces, for example).
Or inches, feet, yards & miles. There's no obvious relation whatsoever, and while there maybe be historical justifications for their values, they're not exactly arithmetically convenient.
Or the horrible mess that happens when you get into fractional quantities. How much is 17/32" + 1/4"? Sure, I can work it out, but just adding some decimals together is a darn sight easier[1]. That can be done in either system, but imperial/customary definitely seems to favour it IME.
Ultimately, I think people are going to have a preference for whichever they learn first, and intuitively approximate.
For that reason, making a distinction between 'those fancy-pants science units' and 'good ol' everyday patriotic inches' strikes me as a foolish compromise that benefits neither.
I could probably object to other things in your original post as well, but maybe I'm just projecting my childhood biases the other way.
[1] for me, anyway. I've grown up with a bastard hybrid knowledge of mostly metric/SI, but enough exposure to imperial that I can intuit some, but not all of the conversions. Temperature is probably my weakest. I know from memory that 37oC ~98F, and that conversion is 5/8x + 32 or something along those lines. But to see '250F' and set my oven correctly, I have to think a bit. Or to guess if a temperature is below freezing or not.
Having a hobbyist/armchair interest in machining & woodworking, the mental mode-switching when reading/watching videos by Americans vs everyone else is jarring.