Engineers and scientists globally standardized on the metric system because the units scaled better than all previous systems. How many inches are in half a mile, anyone? Because of this, engineers and scientists can communicate and cooperate globally much easier than ever before in human history.

Imagine constructing a building and measuring lengths with a stretchy string. How tall could you confidently build that structure? Could you produce precision tools if your machine has a 2% margin of error on all measurements?

Until bitcoin, the world used currencies whose units were poorly defined. We all know the issues with fiat's elasticity, but the same goes for gold as well since we can't audit the amount of gold held in reserves with any real precision. With a currency whose units are fixed and inelastic at the protocol level we can create economies that were never possible before.