> I do wish we would have metriced around base 12

Please clarify what you mean by this. Let me call your system altmetric for clarity.

Surely, you want altmetric to use prefixes that are powers of 12 - okay, fair enough. I see the analogy with the fact that 1 foot = 12 inches, and how base-60 is used in minutes and seconds (also arcminutes and arcseconds). (But why no thirds and fourths?)

But do you want altmetric to require all numbers to be expressed in base-12? If no, then your system does not allow easy conversion. In real metric, the fact that 1.234 kg = 1234 g is a trivial conversion, and it turns a calculation problem into a mere syntactical transformation. If yes and you require base-12, then you've basically alienated everyone. It would be about as weird as telling construction workers and doctors and drivers to use hexadecimal. But at least it makes unit conversions as trivial as base-10 metric.

Let's say you have your altmetric utopia with prefixes based on powers of 12, regardless of whether you require numbers to be expressed in base-12 or not. What do you do about the rest of the world which uses base-10?

You're the head chef for a cruise ship, and the upcoming voyage has 572 people for 14 days. (Imaginary) guidelines say that to keep people happy, you need to provision an average of 800 g of food per person per day. In metric: 572×14×800 g = 6406400 g ≈ 6406 kg ≈ 6.4 Mg (tonne), a simple calculation.

In altmetric, you still get 6406400 g, but now you need to start dividing by 12 repeatedly to form larger groups. Let's just say alpha = 12^3 and beta = 12^6. So 6406400 g ≈ 3707 alphagrams ≈ 2.15 betagrams. That doesn't make life any easier.

Or let's take a somewhat different example. When buying stocks on the market, you specify how many shares you want to buy and the price you want to buy at. But you can't say "I have $X, buy as many shares as possible without exceeding $X". So say you just received a $30000 bonus (after tax) and your favorite stock has an asking price of $68.49 per share for an unlimited quantity. In decimal math, this is easy to figure out - $30000/($68.49/share) = 438.02 shares, so you round down to 438 shares and place your order.

But suppose you're in some F'd up world where you have to specify your stock order in stones, pounds, and shares ("ounces"), where 1 stone = 14 pounds, 1 pound = 16 shares. So your order of 438 shares becomes 1 stone + 13 pounds + 6 shares. You had to do an excessive amount of busywork just to fit into that non-decimal system. And along the way, you might have to think about things like the fact that it's also $15341.76/stone, $1095.84/pound.

You're not the first person I've come across who wants measurements to be grouped/divided into units by some factor other than 10, usually 12. I did a lot of thinking about this, and my conclusion is that if you make an altmetric system where prefixes are not powers of 10, then you lose a huge benefit of the metric system. (The other huge benefit is coherent derived units, like 1 joule = 1 newton × 1 metre.)

> I take back what I said about the mile.

It looks like the derivation of the English statute mile is this: 1 mile = 8 furlongs, 1 furlong = 10 chains, 1 chain = 4 rods, 1 rod = 5.5 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet. You can confirm that 8 × 10 × 4 × 5.5 × 3 = 5280.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Statute , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_(unit) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(unit)

This mythical altMetric utopia requires everyone to actually count in base C (to use dc notation) as well. the main advantage is that thirds and quarters(the useful fractions) tend toward whole numbers. In base 10 all you get are halfs and fifths(and nobody wants to use fifths)

everything would still be metric, the calculations would be as simple, every one would learn their baseC times tables and how to do baseC long division.

$3000 / $(68.49/share) = 54.59B1 shares 54 shares = total cost of $2B88.B6 take your remaining 33.07 and have a nice lunch

1000 Cgrams(1728Agrams) = 1kiloCgram 1000kiloCgrams = 1 Cton

but going smaller a third of a Cgram is 0.4 Cgrams a quarter is 0.3 Cgrams

Does this actually makes any ones life better... Probably not. but it has every advantage of using baseA and the minor(very minor) advantage that thirds and quarters are easier.

But this assumes that baseC won over baseA 1500 years ago, and if there is one truly global success story it is baseA, many languages, cultures, writing systems, but everyone(statisticly) uses baseA with arabic style numbers

footnote: I am using the slightly obnoxious prose of using baseA and baseC to avoid the confusing ambiguity that saying base 10 in base twelve means there are twelve numbers in a digit(where the word digit, coming from the way we count on fingers would also mean twelve.)