Forks mostly mitigate philosophical issues, like gender neutrality, continental neutrality and such. That's a job, but not (arguably) the job. S The job was to

Forks mostly mitigate philosophical issues, like gender neutrality, continental neutrality and such. That's a job, but not (arguably) the job. S The job was to be an easily learnable lingua franca, a common second language. Esperanto (also the forks) is a better tool for that job than english. All else equal, it's much quicker to learn. Returning to the metric analogy, I think it's interesting to see the whys. Ultimately, the quality of a language system is not the only or main thing leading to its adoption. There's a massive cultural element. The metric system was ideologically compatible with the French revolution and enlightenment/scientific/modern cultural ideals generally. It was also useful individually, often by influential individuals (eg scientists). Even if everyone uses another system, it's still worth learning metric so you can do math, engineering or land surveyance more easily. You can always convert units for communication purposes.. I assume it's still like this in the states. If you need to calculate volume, you use metric and then convert to square feet or gallons. This gave metric systems a bootstrap that esperanto didn't have. This has a parallel to network-effect products. You can't displace Twitter or facebook just by making a better alternative. That only matters once you have millions of users. You must have a bootstrap... a reason for individuals or small groups to use it regardless of overall usage.