But, having a yard as a basic measure of length doesn't seem all that stupid until you pair that with the Newton, the basic measure of force to get a derived unit for the physical property called pressure. The meter is "too big" and the Newton is "too small" and this creates absurd consequences. In the English system, one atmosphere pressure, a basic necessary quantity is approximately 15 pounds force per square inch. But, because the unit of pressure in the metric system is the Pascal (1 Newton per square meter) you get a bizarre number for just one atmosphere, 101,000,000 Pascals. (101 Mega-pascals).
The implications for engineering of this "little" problem are stupefying. The great downfall of the metric system turned out that real world situations impose "constants" that have to be multiplied into almost every calculation. Gravity, Atmospheric pressure, the Speed of Light are all such constants and they take away the easy multiply by 10 or divide by ten aspect of metric work. Worse, often one synthetic unit forces another synthetic unit to be difficult. The English system grew out of "practical" units growing in popularity for their ease of use.
The ever popular "Furlongs per fortnight" criticism of English units repudiates two units that made sense for horse drawn times but not in modern times, where as miles per hour is quite handy and no one looked back except for the metric mind police. But, the Mega-pascal is a curse to all of engineering as well as its still too small sized companion the Newton per square centimeter. You must use a calculator for all work in these units because you aren't doing it in your head. And thats the base problem. Right sized units help you around the impacts of the physical constants rather than you up against them like shoals. The slug, much maligned as a unit of mass allows the pound mass and pound force to co-exist and saves the mental gymnastics of dealing with this problem in every calculation. The rightsizedness of the pound leads to the rightsizedness of the BTU (British Thermal Unit) which is the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of water 1 degree F.
Yes, you have to mulitply by 12 frequently in the English system, but the deep reality of the English system is not 12 but instead 2. At the core of the English system is binary, pints, pounds, ounces, gallons and feet often fit together in relationships of powers of 2. A square foot of water is 8 gallons. A gallon of water is 8 pounds. A pound of water is 16 ounces. And folks used to dealing with binary, find these conversions just as swift as the base 10 relationships that metric was supposed to provide.
That was done so that people around the world could have the same length for the metre (meter, in American English), as used everywhere else.
IIRC, the new standard foot is defined in terms of the metre, simply because the definition of the metre is more universally accurate(as in, that wavelengths-of-light measurement is the same wherever it is used as a definition for). Because it borrows from this definition, the foot too becomes just as accurate. But the main point is that the definition in terms of wavelengths was declared to make the measure universal.
BTW,
The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.
;^)
I just realizes that it's also far easier to measure, cut out a pattern, and sew in English than in metric. I LOATHE metric patterns, can't make head or tails of them. Give me that 5/8" seam allowance every time!