• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    6 days ago

    Dude, I can go to any hardware store and get metric shit all day long. Some of it US made.

    You have a really skewed idea of how little the units involved matter. They literally teach conversions in elementary school for one thing.

    But, for another, what makes you think a multinational conglomerate car company can’t just paint new numbers and letters on a dial?

    If you want to make “the US” squirm, you can’t just pick some random shit like that to refuse to export. It’s stupid. You gotta just refuse to play entirely. Which is damn near impossible because a lot of the companies that are actually exporting things to the US are way too big to give a fuck, often have US based branches that they would also be hobbling, and would tank their local work forces entirely.

    Like, pretend that toyota decides “fuck sae”, and only sends new parts with metric units on them. What happens? Nobody in the US is going to give a fuck at all. Toyota dealers will, and toyota plants will, but not anyone else.

    You know who will care? Whatever factory worker in some other country that’s mass manufacturing those parts, and now has even worse pay.

    To matter, Toyota would have to just outright not ship anything, and hope that the loss in sales isn’t more than the manufacturing savings. Then, instead of the actual workers having less pay, they’re out of work in a capitalist hellscape where multinational conglomerates and the oligarchs that own them play tiddlywinks with people’s lives. But, hey, at least those workers showed the US that they can’t be bossed around.

    I get it, I do. You’re all pissed off and are grabbing for things to regain a sense of stability and maybe improvement.

    But you’re talking about burning someone’s mail while they’re burning your house.

    Jfc, dude, I get that this is showerthoughts, but damn. Put some actual thought into it if you’re going to veer into serious shit. This is stoned teenagers sitting around at a park level of idea.

    Like, do you not realize that damn near every brand you think is a company is just one piece of a bigger company that’s a part of an international network?

    That’s just automotive. Every branch of every publicly traded company is like that. Not a single person that’s in control of any of them gives two shiny fucks about you or me. They don’t give a fuck about japan, or the US, or brazil, or Liberia, they only care about themselves. Trying to pretend that refusing to ship one kind of part painted one way is going to disrupt any of that is absurdist.

    And I can guarantee you that the leader of your country, whichever one that is, doesn’t give a single shiny fuck about you either, or the US. At best, they might care about not screwing you extra hard as long as it doesn’t interfere with their power and money.

    You want to change something? Rise up. Get together with like minded people and take the fuck over.

    Tear down the oligarchy and maybe it’ll spread far enough to encourage others to do the same. But dicking around with pieces and parts? That’s a joke dude, a joke. It wouldn’t even inconvenience anyone that makes decisions until everyone rises the fuck up, and that ain’t happening.

    • bluGill@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      6 days ago

      Toyota has always been metric only in the US. Once in a while a “shade tree” mechanic will fit a SAE bolt/nut to hold something in, but the cars didn’t come from Japan with anything SAE, and when they built factories in the US they didn’t design anything for SAE.

      No auto manufacture in the world designs a new part with SAE parts, and they haven’t since 1980 or before. There are still a lot of things like alternators that haven’t got the case changed since they were designed in the 1960s that have SAE parts, but anything newer is all metric. Once in a while they put a oil plug in with a SAE bolt head, but the threads likely metric.

      Every mechanic who doesn’t specialize in antiques uses their metric tools more than the SAE. Those who work on US cars still have the SAE tools, but they don’t get much use.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        5 days ago

        Well, that’s all true, but my Toyota has mph on the dial, not kph, and that’s what I was riffing on more than the hardware specs.

        Tbh, the only car I’ve ever had in my fifty years that wasn’t all metric, parts wise, was my 76 cutlass. Even the shitty escort station wagon that was an 83 was metric on enticing everything I ever had to touch on it, except the oil drain plug, iirc. Wanna say it was a 3/4 inch head.

        Also, fwiw, I blocked the guy so I didn’t end up being a dick to him rather than criticizing his idea, so I’m not sure if this will show up until I unblock once I’m sure he’s not going to be silly at me again. So, if this comment pops up in a few days, that’s why; I’m not gravedigging older comments lol

    • MushuChupacabra@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      7
      ·
      6 days ago

      That’s a lot of words to say the US probably wouldn’t like the planet to shift to, insist on, SI exclusively.