Your description of the smart solution is that nothing changes at all, and that isn’t what is being proposed as the “smart” solution. Instead that’s a 3rd option where people moan that things need to change but nobody actually makes any effort to change it.
I’m not meaning to be argumentative when I say that. I’m just being pragmatic based on the fact that we’re in this “time-shifted” state because of people’s laziness so expecting people to make a conscious effort to change for an idealistic goal (as sensible as that seems on paper) simply isn’t going to happen.
Not to mention that people’s personal timetable is often dictated by multiple parties (as I examples earlier: gym classes, sprint stand up, times of worship, school hours, etc). A change like that couldn’t easily be drip fed to the masses as everyone’s schedules have already been designed around the current “time-shift” and a persons schedule isn’t generally a solo calendar without dependencies.
For example I could start work an hour earlier but my sons childminder and daughters nursery isn’t opening an hour earlier. So I can’t change my behaviour. Everyone needs to make the change together if it’s going to work. Hence why changing timezones “works” for time-shifting. (I say “works” because it accomplishes it’s goal of time-shifting a populous but obviously different people might disagree it’s a solution to the larger problem of natural day light hours).