Bimetralism vs bilingualism vs bimetallism
Following from previous item on dual calendar systems.

People who know two or more languages have more flexible brains. This has been observed for a long time, and recent research with MRIs has shown that it's physical. Shifting between two languages gives you two mental spaces that operate separately.

We don't have a lot of dual calendars now. As mentioned, Thailand has the only active dual calendar. Muslims and Jews use traditional lunar calendars for religious purposes and the Gregorian for secular.

In other areas of measurement, most of the world is purely metric. Only USA is dual. We use metric for some types of work and English for most.

Broadly, everything related to buildings and land is purely English. Everything related to electronics is purely metric. Other types of work are mixed. (Countertrendly, computers REdeveloped a non-decimal NATURAL measurement system for memory bytes.)

Fashionable tyrants constantly mock USA for speaking only one language, AND constantly mock USA for speaking two measurement systems. Can't have it both ways.

Before the dominance of central banks, most of the world used multiple currency systems. Gresham's Law is unfamiliar now, but it was never correct anyway.

In many disorganized third-world countries dual or triple currencies are still common, and the people are adept in using them to advantage.

When your country uses semi-official dollars and official hyperinflated Zmakniks, people know the value of each common item AND THE VARIABILITY in both dollars and Zmakniks. Since the Zmakniks are low-value and fast-changing, most people will prefer to use the higher-value and more stable dollar. This is NOT what Gresham says.

Gresham only works in a peculiar situation where the high-value currency can become a PHYSICAL collectible, while the low-value currency has no intrinsic value AS COINS. In that case the gold coins will be saved up, and the non-collectible banknotes will circulate.

A process similar to Gresham-for-collectibles sometimes happens with other types of measurement. When two units are available and one is high-status, the high-status unit will be applied to high-status items like vintage wine and BMWs, while the low-status unit continues to measure ordinary items. The distinction shows up nicely in foodie circles, where high-fashion OCD diets measure food in precise metric terms, while ordinary people measure in English or plain natural systems. OCD rich fuckheads consume 0.187 kilograms of Drizzled Reduction Nanoprotein Medallions, while ordinary humans eat a handful of chips.

(There! I managed to use all four of my related hashtags meaningfully!)

Labels: defensible cases, defensible spaces, defensible thymes, defensible times

  ¶ 5:39 AM