There's also opposing needs: working folk like afternoon sun so they have daylight when they get off work, parents with school children like morning sun, so it is light when their children are waiting for the bus, and in the winter there's not enough daylight to satisfy both groups of people.
The fight to keep DST is about merchants more than anything else. Shopping is increased during the week if it is still light after you get home. When you get home and it is already dark, you are more likely to just stay home. I personally don't think it has anything to do with employers wanting to deny employees daylight. They mostly want a known schedule for customers and co-workers. Make DST -2 hours or get rid of DST and I think employers wouldn't care at all either way.
That's being nit-picky, though, as the practical outcome is that anything less than nine hours means you'll go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.
The point of fussing with time zones (or the start-time for school/work, if you're in some weird place where people are capable of that) is so that you can go from "no morning or afternoon sun" to "morning or afternoon sun". You could tweak your 8.5 hours of daylight so that the sun rises at 6am and most people go to work/school in the sunlight and the sun sets at 2:30, or you could tweak it so that the sun rises at 10am and most people get some evening sun until 6:30.
It's not great but it's an option, instead of demanding the sun rises at 8am and sets at 4pm so that noon is noon and no one gets to enjoy it.
Alaska?