Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "BritMonkey" channel.

the older measurements are easier to make estimates with for most human scale activities... because they were pretty much all designed for precisely such tasks in the first place. the reason why there are so many different units with such bizarre conversion ratios is because they were never a single coherent system, but instead the formalization and standardization of many different systems used for many different purposes. the metric system, on the other hand, is designed primarily for ease of calculation (and the many benefits That brings) particularly in the context of science and mass production, paying only as much attention to practical day to ray use as it must in order to be usable enough to be adopted (for reference, only the multiples of 1000 are officially part of the metric system. the 10, 100, 1/10th and 1/100th units are unofficial additions adopted in various places (centimeters are super common. Centiliters, decimeters and deciliters, despite being Very useful scale units, rather less so).
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@Tom_Bee_ The current state of things is not that unprecedented... take a look at most major empires in history generally right as they start declining from their peak, and you'll start seeing ever more instances of problems with the economic system, corruption, infrastructure not being built in sufficient quantity or maintained properly, worsening conditions for the lower classes, wealth concentrating in the upper classes (and causing problems for Them in the process too), increasing instances of plagues, droughts, floods, (often due to infrastructure breaking down and administrative issues combined with continued population growth, which combine to undermine the various measures that were previously mitigating the causes of those problems... and, of course, one can only be so lucky for so long before something goes poorly). All sorts of stuff like that. The weird bit about the modern situation is that, rather than a single Empire hitting such a point and collapsing while everyone else trundles along, it seems like, to varying degrees, most of the world is being hit by this (the exceptions mostly being places that weren't doing so brilliantly to start with). Or perhaps not so weird. An empire is, when you get down in the guts of the thing, mostly built on the back of a single, somewhat centralised, trade network, plus some degree of cultural hegemony, after all.
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@CarterHancock ... no, what you need to do is reform your utterly defective political system that actively encourages corruption and incompetence. (at least if you're an American, which it sure Sounds like you are.) "too much government" is a repeatedly cited, and repeatedly disproven, Excuse for stripping away Good regulation to facilitate further abuse by the already rich and powerful (the same people calling for such deregulation often being just fine with new regulations that suppress competition in favour of their friends and investments). When you dig into it, the problem is almost never Too Much government, except on the occasion that the government has become overly large and bloated as a consequence of the Actual problem: BAD government. Almost universally due to corruption. Though there is a related problem where a single geopolitical entity is just too large to govern effectively by any method other than almost pure bureaucracy, at which point all of the various checks and balances that should prevent abuses and bad actors start breaking down under the weight. If you're lucky it's a strong monarchy and you get a competent emperor who purges the worst of the rot and institutes reforms to mitigate the problem for a couple of generations. But you can''t solve that problem by getting rid of Laws, or governing bodies that actually do useful work, only by breaking up the geopolitical entity into small enough units (by both land and population) that the sheer scale of the system cannot insulate those in government from the consequences of their actions.
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@filanfyretracker American Customary Units aren't actually a 1:1 match for Imperial units. If I remember rightly it's mostly the units of volume that are actually somehow Worse than the British Imperial system (units with the same name but different sizes, less sensible conversions between units, etc) , while units of length are the same and I can't remember if weight was better or worse, but I belive ACU has less different units than British Imperail. From memory.
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