Why not just ditch time zones altogether and have everyone on the same clock?
DST was good enough to implement while in an agrarian society, so why not the universal clock in a global connected society? Just imagine the precision.
</half-joking>
DST was good enough to implement while in an agrarian society, so why not the universal clock in a global connected society? Just imagine the precision.
</half-joking>
Also destroys the idea of a 9-to-5 job. Make it start at :30 if that's better for the longitude.
Planes, trains, and automobiles changed all of that. That and modern communication. Today, it matters. Now if I need to talk to someone in Japan, I have to coordinate things so that we're both awake. It matters if it's nighttime to them. Which is why we do have a universal clock. It's just expressed differently based on your distance from the prime meridian.
But, it's not the expression that matters.
Daylight Savings Time (DST) is a very stupid way to deal with a lot of stupid people. Everyone here arguing about making people adjust schedules, etc. That's exactly what DST is. But instead of your local grocery saying "Yeah, we're opening at 5am for these months" we just tell the entire country to change their clocks. Which is the same net effect. It's a fiction we engage in to pretend we're not inconveniencing ourselves. And in some ways, it probably is easier this way. It's controlled, determined, and doesn't require a ton of signage to be changed. We already have to set clocks, so it all works out.
I think a lot of the arguments about the "extra hour of sunlight" are kind of stupid. Because, it's not an hour. It's not going to be pitch black regardless. And most of what people do after work involves walking from the inside of one building to the inside of another. But then again, I wake up between 5 and 6 and go to bed between 10 and midnight.
I'd prefer for it to be on Standard time year round because if you are X zones from the prime meridian, you should be +/-X based on that. But, once again, time zones are really stupid because they don't conform to distance from the prime meridian. Morocco is +1 UTC despite being completely to the west of prime meridian. Most of Greenland is -3 despite spanning 5 zones, with one small section actually observing UTC despite being in the zone that should be -1 and the section that is -1 actually should be observing -2.
And look at the US on this map (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/World_Ti...)
Central Time is the most dominant zone going from the westernmost point of Texas to most of the Florida panhandle. Most of Texas should be -7, not -6. And so on and so forth. I bet if you "fixed" this kind of bullshit, more people would be in favor of Standard time year round. Or at least less opposed to it.