I never said that standardization was bad,

I never said you did.

what I said was that the references for standard measures were more useful. We don’t carry around rods for poking oxen much anymore, so that unit of measure is rightly confined to history.

I just showed you exactly how that is not the case. A measurement saying a foot is as long as your own foot is completely useless in every context except the one where you do the measuring and never communicate it to anyone else. The same applies to literally every imperial unit. I also went on to show you that metric units were also based on standard measurements, like kilogram being exactly the weight of a litre of water. You conveniently ignored the fact that imperial was using weird standards while metric used useful, convertible standards. Please try converting 1cu ft of water to weight in imperial, with the 'standard' that it's the length of your foot, not someone else's foot.

And please do stop referring to imperial units as 'standard' measures. That doesn't mean what you think it does.