> Interestingly the US industry didn't switch to metric citing "conversion cost"
This isn't in the past - it is an ongoing argument that literally anyone who spends any degree of time in a machine shop gets roped in to. Every machine purchase is a vote on the ongoing argument.
Which is why I explicitly called it out - because of a collective action problem in the US, we can't make a simple, obvious efficiency change (which would indeed cause comparatively brief pain for large ongoing payoffs)[1]. It was a mistake for me to switch for the reasons specified. The interesting part is that correct micro-scale choices create a macro-scale problem.
Seems to be an ongoing theme of the past couple of decades.
[1] If you're not familiar with this, curious why a simple standards issue is well and truly unsolvable, and feeling masochistic you can search Youtube to catch what passes for mainstream political talking heads here making it about "heritage" and how the metric system is part of a UN plot.
This isn't in the past - it is an ongoing argument that literally anyone who spends any degree of time in a machine shop gets roped in to. Every machine purchase is a vote on the ongoing argument.
Which is why I explicitly called it out - because of a collective action problem in the US, we can't make a simple, obvious efficiency change (which would indeed cause comparatively brief pain for large ongoing payoffs)[1]. It was a mistake for me to switch for the reasons specified. The interesting part is that correct micro-scale choices create a macro-scale problem.
Seems to be an ongoing theme of the past couple of decades.
[1] If you're not familiar with this, curious why a simple standards issue is well and truly unsolvable, and feeling masochistic you can search Youtube to catch what passes for mainstream political talking heads here making it about "heritage" and how the metric system is part of a UN plot.