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Comment by xoa | Hacker News Reader

Well we can't, and that's having tried! The replies do a great job of illustrating why really: there's no consensus. Some want permanent standard time. Some want permanent DST. Some are fine the way it is. In a big country spanning a lot of latitude as well as longitude and tens of millions on wildly different work and sleep schedules, messy compromise making no one entirely happy is what success looks like.

Basically time stuff is arguably one of the big Chesterton's Fences that comes up on HN a lot. We didn't end up where we are for no reason or because people in the past were stupid.

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We legislate lots of things without consensus with 51-49 majorities.

People in the past had a very different time environment. I used to have 1 watch. Now I have a dozen different clocks in my apartment.

We also did not interact with other time zones nearly as much.

>We legislate lots of things without consensus with 51-49 majorities.

We really do not in the US when it's a matter of genuine controversy. Once in a long while something gets forced through if the status quo is just unsustainable or it's a core plank issue or something, but the system isn't designed to allow anyone hitting 51 to easily pass anything contentious. And that's with your implicit take that there is a 51-49, but that's the thing, it's not a dichotomy in the first place. It's more like 25/25/40/5/3/1/1. Plus this isn't some inherently critical issue, for most people it's at most a minor irritation twice per year. For some it's a minor enjoyable, "free sleep". And thus status quo rules :).

>People in the past had a very different time environment. I used to have 1 watch. Now I have a dozen different clocks in my apartment.

Indeed! Our clocks used to not have global sub-millisecond automatic time synchronization.

>Plus this isn't some inherently critical issue, for most people it's at most a minor irritation twice per year. For some it's a minor enjoyable, "free sleep".

I want to push back on this a bit. It's not just the moment of change itself, it's how wall time compares to the sun.

And the problem with that is business hours being stuck to wall time. Essentially the government controls how business hours relate to the sun, instead of expecting each entity to change their business hours with the seasons (or not) as desired. This goes back to the time when business hours posted on a door were much more important.

If you are stuck in a "9-5" job or otherwise are committed to what the clock says, the time change significantly controls your interaction with the sun.

Brazil abolished daytime change a couple of years ago. Our time is the same all year, no more +1 and then -1 hour.

It was mess on the day there should a change, many people arrived on their appointments one hour before or later. Many automatic systems changed their time, different clocks at home reported different hours.

This chaos lasted one morning. After some time, nobody now complains about not having it. Many people don't remember about the change anymore. The only people that complains about daylight change are the ones that work with people from countries that have that.

Abolishing daytime change is not the same as adopting an "universal" (country-like?) timezone, but shows that it is _possible_ to do on a "big country spanning a lot of latitude as well as longitude and tens of millions on wildly different work and sleep schedules".

Maybe the main issue is that many people fear change? (Which is quite "funny", as winter/summer time is a change in time...)

I don't really care any longer having a pretty flexible schedule and no commute. But living in relatively northern New England, the timezone tweaks for summer and winter really were pretty welcome. I suspect that most of those ranting about timezone changes wouldn't actually want sunrise at 4am or sunset at 3pm.

I feel the opposite way. I too have a flexible schedule and no commute, and I'd prefer not having to change time zones twice a year. It's annoying and doesn't serve any useful benefit to me. I don't care when the sunrise or sunset is in wall-clock time, I can get up later/earlier and go to bed later/earlier if I want. Yes, there are things that need to be done during normal business hours, but I have a full 8 of those to work with.

The main issue I see is that of kids' primary school schedules: they already have to get up so ridiculously early; having to be in school when the sun isn't even up yet is brutal. But that seems to be the case in some places regardless of whether or not we do a DST change.

And of course there are plenty of people who don't have my (our) flexible schedule and lack of commute. It does suck to have to drive to work in the morning when it's dark, or come home in the evening without any daylight left to enjoy. But, again, this is going to be the case for many people even with a DST change.

In my case, I don't have kids, I don't have a consistent schedule, and I travel enough than a one hour timezone shift isn't something I even notice--the early airport pickup is far more likely to affect my rhythms. My preference is probably year-round DST in the Boston area. (We're basically in the wrong timezone.) But I understand being in sync with the rest of the east coast.

I'd also pretty much be fine with year-round standard time at this point but the time shift just isn't really on my radar.

Expecting school and business hours to have a fixed clock time, and then trying to shift that to the sun, is exactly the problem.

Imagine if instead the school changed the start time a few minutes each week in order to maintain a fixed offset with sunrise.

Bonus points because you don't force an abrupt change to circadian rhythm that takes two weeks to adjust.

Of course the problem is that many parents are stuck in jobs that expect fixed start times too...

> The main issue I see..

you've 180° misunderstood DST, the sole purpose of which is to give you an extra hour in bed in the winter

I also live in northern New England and feel the same at this point. It may not be ideal, but nothing else would be either. And honestly technology has made the pain points pretty much vanish for me anyway: now every single time keeping device automatically switches over, and my smart lights that I made a program for a simulated sunrise and time-of-day based color temperature changes also switch which means my circadian rhythm adapts right away. I can absolutely empathize with those who feel differently but I think where we've ended up is pretty decent given the ginormously different circumstances and wishes. Until something can win a better consensus.

I live in Upstate New York, and care much more about the frustration, added stress, and provable loss of life that results from the twice-yearly changing of the clocks than I do about what the clock says when the sun is setting. If I want more sunlight during the time I'm awake, I can get up earlier in the morning.

Not everyone controls their schedule.

But I would hope that everyone cares about provable loss of life from extra heart attacks and traffic accidents.

They do not.

> Basically time stuff is arguably one of the big Chesterton's Fences that comes up on HN a lot. We didn't end up where we are for no reason or because people in the past were stupid.

We should all pretend to be robots and use UTC for everything. Problem solved!

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