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Comment by layer8 | Hacker News Reader

The EU likely won’t scrap it, because the CET countries want to stay in a common time zone (no new time zone borders) for economic reasons, but either the very Eastern or very Western ones in that range would object to permanent DST or permanent non-DST, because it would move them too far from the solar day either in winter or summer. It can’t be fixed without one country or another getting the short stick, which means it won’t be fixed.

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If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...

They certainly could if they had started that way, but changing it now will disadvantage at least one of the countries (Spain for example), and those countries’ politicians don’t want to risk the ire of their voters for the greater good. And DST is regulated on the EU level, so can’t be changed by individual EU members without breaking EU law, like apparently individual US states can.

It’s status quo bias and loss aversion. Similar to how it would be better for the US to change their voting system, but it will never happen because it would disfavor one of the political parties who’d have to approve the change.

> like apparently individual US states can.

Nah, the States can’t. What we actually voted for, and I voted for this too, was that if Congress passed a law that enabled States to move to permanent DST, then the legislature is authorized to pass a law to move California to permanent DST. Congress hasn’t acted, and the main guy who was pushing for this isn’t in the legislature anymore, but basically the law did nothing except send a message from Californians saying “yeah, this sounds good, do it.” but technically it was never necessary.

States can opt-out of DST, as a few have done, but cannot choose permanent DST (assuming the relevant federal law would be deemed valid/constitutional).

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/daylight-savin...

Correct.

Spain should take the opportunity to move to WET like Portugal

They have more economic relations with the rest of the CET countries combined, so it’s more beneficial to stay in the same time zone.

Is that not true for Portugal, or Finland in the other direction for example? I haven’t seen clear reasons for why a 1-hour offset would seriously affect economic relations particularly if it doesn’t affect when businesses are operating. Spain is already known (in stereotypes, so not sure if this holds up in reality) for later start/end times to the workday or other engagements than most western/central European countries, probably partly a figment of the time zone.

I think it's the changing times that people don't like, rather than standard time.

I'd prefer California to stay on standard time instead of staying on DST, so noon will be aligned with solar noon. (It is, right? I never actually checked.)

Well… it’s not uniform.

Take today, Nov 1st 2024, solar noon is at the following times in the State in these locations:

1pm, Crescent City: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/@11788520

12:53pm, San Francisco: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/san-francisco

12:36pm, Los Angeles: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/los-angeles

12:32pm, San Diego: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa/san-diego

It’s tempting to want to put stock in solar noon as the the thing the day should be aligned around, but honestly it’s probably overrated. Personally, I much prefer daylight savings time over standard time if I had to pick only one.

Depends how far east or west you are...

US is the same way; my hot take has always been "time to move to a -/+ 30 minute timezone"

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