US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent | Hacker News Reader

US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent

bbc.com

47 pointsthrow0101d119 comments

Permanent DST sounds good to a lot of people, until they actually experience it. The US went on permanent DST in the 1970s and support plummeted after the first winter in DST (which is why we're not on it anymore). Of course, since it was 50 years ago, that means most people alive in the US don't remember the days of permanent DST.

The problem, I think, is that what a lot of people want is they want the sun to set quite late, like it does in summer time. But DST isn't going to give you those long summer afternoons in winter, because the sun just isn't up long enough; and the trade-off you'd make for maybe coming off work into the start of dusk is that dawn would start after you start working, which turns out to be pretty bad for your circadian rhythm.

> The US went on permanent DST in the 1970s and support plummeted after the first winter in DST (which is why we're not on it anymore).

More recently Russia tried pDST and went away from it:

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/russia-state-d...

A more southern-lattitude country, Turkey, has stuck with pDST, though some folks don't/didn't like it because of enrichment allegations:

* https://www.turkishminute.com/2024/10/31/permanent-daylight-...

As you said, that was 50 years ago. Technology and culture has changed since then.

I think Permanent DST is the best, because more sun in the afternoon in the winter is better, but in either case, let's just stop switching.

Glad to see progress made on this.

In my 20s, I strongly considered taking some time off to create and drive petitions across the Pacific states to put us all on permanent PDT (matching Arizona). In my research, I saw it would take an act of Congress to make that happen, so I stood down.

> to put us all on permanent PDT (matching Arizona).

Arizona is (wisely) on permanent standard time.

Yes, but PDT = MST

Boo, hiss. Permanent Standard Time is better in every way https://savestandardtime.com/

These arguments aren't very convincing.

Agree but now we could change 9-5 workday to 8-4 and that is better also

It's just names, might as well call it humpty dumpty time. Local time is defined by offset from UTC.

Boo! Permanent Dawn time is better. Every day at 03:00, set the time when the upper limb of the sun will cross the sea-level horizon at the equator to 06:30. That means kids never have to wait for the bus in the morning in the dark, except at high latitudes in winter but who cares about those kids right?

That is actually better in every way! Assuming the time zones are 2D so the dawn is local. It would probably cut down on cancer rates, too, by harmonizing circadian rhythms.

I've been a fan of continuous time change for a while now.

In theory, to get a similar result to the hour change twice a year, you only need ~20 seconds of change every day, though I think you could do even better if you took location into account.

I wonder how hard it would be to program an alarm to automatically offset a default wakeup time based on location and season to always occur after dawn while minimizing daily delta (and obviously allowing for an override "wake up at h:mm local time tomorrow, my work meeting doesn't care about my snowflake sleep program." Seems relatively achievable, but maybe harder to integrate into a normal phone UX.

Boo, in the age of AI we need two dimensional time zones which skew the clock a few seconds every night, continuously, so the sunrise is always at 6 am. Humans were made to rise with the sun.

I agree completely. But in the end permanent daylight time is better than flip flopping every year, and much more achievable.

I think if people understood that daylight time = get up early and standard time = get up late, most would agree that getting up late is better.

I want to to be light out after work so I can do things outside. Ideally for as long as possible. I don't care if I have to get up and start work in the dark; that time is lost to me anyways and that's what lights are for.

It's not though. I want more sun when I'm awake after work, then in the morning. Permanent DST time is actually better in every way.

The only time the Sunshine Protection Act has passed the senate was when gosh danged Tom Cotton wasn't there[0]. I swear, he's in the pocket of Big Time[1].

[0]https://www.mediaite.com/politics/that-daylight-saving-time-...

[1]https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/speeches/floor-speech-on-...

Perhaps worth noting that most medical and sleep/circadian research folks want permanent standard time:

* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-cal...

* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...

* http://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-D...

* https://www.chronobiology.com/impact-daylight-saving-time-ci...

* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

* https://srbr.org/advocacy/daylight-saving-time-presskit/

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/

* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/

> The authors take the position that, based on comparisons of large populations living in DST or ST or on western versus eastern edges of time zones, the advantages of permanent ST outweigh switching to DST annually or permanently. Four peer reviewers provided expert critiques of the initial submission, and the SRBR Executive Board approved the revised manuscript as a Position Paper to help educate the public in their evaluation of current legislative actions to end DST. […] The choice of DST is political and therefore can be changed. If we want to improve human health, we should not fight against our body clock, and therefore, we should abandon DST and return to Standard Time (which is when the sun clock time most closely matches the social clock time) throughout the year. This solution would fix both the acute and the chronic problems of DST. We therefore strongly support removing DST changes or removing permanent DST and having governing organizations choose permanent Standard Time for the health and safety of their citizens.

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

Recent US public opinion:

> As the March 9 [2025] switch to daylight saving time (DST) approaches in the U.S., the majority of Americans (54%) say they are ready to do away with the practice. By contrast, 40% of U.S. adults say they are in favor of daylight saving time, while 6% are uncertain.

[…]

> The plurality of Americans, 48%, say they would prefer to have standard time the whole year, including summer. Half as many, 24%, prefer having daylight saving time in place the whole year, including winter. The smallest percentage, 19%, prefer the status quo of switching between the two each year.

* https://news.gallup.com/poll/657584/half-daylight-saving-tim...

In the medium term wouldn't it likely not matter? Schedules will adjust to whatever permanent time system is adopted.

I doubt it. People seem to have a strong aversion to sleeping before sunset.

How would permanent DST matter in that regard? Are people going to bed at like 4 pm in the winter and now upset they'd have to wait until 5? DST is already used in the summer (and 3/4 of the year).

You're right, I should have referred to sunrise instead. For me, permanent DST would mean the sun doesn't come up until 9am in late December.

It's about summer. And yes, some people hate it that there is still light out at 9:30pm.

It does depending what you do. For example, I'd rather have more sunlight available after my work day ends.

But someone say working physical, outdoor job might prefer to have more sunlight early on.

Or vice versa, have less of their work day in the afternoon heat peak

I think that the gallup poll is flawed because it does not explain what daylight saving versus standard time is. I just spoke to an educated grad student, who thought that we were in standard time right now. Because the sun is out later during daylight saving time, the name is somewhat counter-intuitive. Also, because it’s on for most of the year, DST feels “standard.”

I've definitely talked to people that though daylight savings time is the time used in the winter, since that's when there are the fewest daylight hours and you need to "save" them or something.

Given how many times in my life I've internally groaned at yet another corporate email or website that references "EST" during the summer, I'm convinced no one is paying attention.

And that, if we do actually implement year-round daylight saving time, everyone will still call it EST.

I've heard both the "saving" has something to do with farming in the summer and candles in the winter, so either one could be daylight savings time. So I haven't been able to keep them straight and use "summer time" and "winter time" instead.

> and put the US under time currently observed between March and November - known as permanent standard time.

Was that a typo?

In the upper midwest, daylight savings time generally gives way to tractor-mounted LED time as contracted harvesting companies switch into high production to beat the late-fall rain.

Studies have been conducted about the safety of sticking to one time. The ones who are the most vulnerable are kids waiting for buses in the dark. We can't move to dynamic school times because we are still working the same paradigm as the industrial revolution- same schedule every day, year in year out. And society is simply too divided and fractured, and the motives too hidden and craven, to decide to move en masse to a dynamic schedule.

Studies also show that permanent standard time is better than permanent daylight time. But for some reason, the US wants to go against the rest of the world on this.

You are aware that at least much of Europe uses a similar system to what the US uses today?

Europe is less than 8% of the world's population. The vast majority of the world uses standard time. It works. No one there pines for permanent daylight time.

Europe is wrong 50% of the time. The US[1] will be wrong 100% of the time. It can mostly get away with this because it spans the continent. But still, you're going to deal with the stupidity that crossing the Mexican border you will always have to correct your watch.

[1] And Alberta + BC. But really - all of Canada is just a rounding error anyway!

Meanwhile, China has one timezone so I sort of doubt that DST registers given that.

> The vast majority of the world uses standard time. It works. No one there pines for permanent daylight time.

Timezones are political, there are many cities and countries that are an hour or more west of the timezone implied by their longitude, which is equivalent to permanent daylight time, even if they don't call it permanent daylight time.

See Spain.

> The vast majority of the world uses standard time.

This doesn't make any sense, "standard" is just an arbitrary choice.

See India for example, single time zone.

Ultimately the dumbest thing is to change the clocks back and forth. Just pick one, stick with it.

For what reasons is it better? I’d rather have the evening light than the first 20 minutes when I get up.

It matches our circadian rhythms better. That leads to absolutely massive better health outcomes, society-wide.

People wanting to drive home with a bit of light doesn’t really offset everyone’s sleep getting screwed up, especially those with later natural circadian rhythms.

> For what reasons is it better?

To start:

> Later sunrises and sunsets, as seen with pDST, are associated with multiple long-term health outcomes including increases in stroke, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.[8–10]

> The increase in obesity and other cardiovascular health problems show that even if DST were to encourage exercise in some individuals it is not enough to outweigh the effects of sleep and circadian disruption on food choices, metabolism, hunger hormones, and glucose control and other cardiovascular risk factors.[11,12]

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/

School start times should be pushed back an hour anyways. Students learn better, especially middle school + highschool age. The only reason we don't is because it conflicts with parents working schedules.

Every division of society should just use its own schedule, then the number of divisions doesn't matter.

"Standards are great. Everybody should have one!"

    Charles Moore, author of the Forth programming language

To the degree kids are standing around outside, they're already in the dark in northern US states (to say nothing about Canada and areas of Europe) for part of the year even with standard time.

And, yes, dynamic school schedules don't work because they need to be synced at some level with work schedules. A one-time shift might work though.

I mostly don't have a dog in this hunt. I pretty much set my own schedule absent the odd morning appointment.

In the northern states, sure. But now you’re expanding it to southern states and places on the edge of the transition zones.

Also, 2 hour late starts for cold are a fairly common thing to happen due to cold in northern states. Now you’re talking about 3 hour late starts.

> To the degree kids are standing around outside, they're already in the dark in northern US states

It's a continuum, not a discrete state. Even in the northern states, they're out in the dark for perhaps 4-6 weeks. Now that will get extended to, say, 10+ weeks.

We should really standardize on Time Cube

https://www.timecube.net/

Maybe they'll actually do it this time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...

The engineer in me wants standard time, but the human in me wants daylight time.

Essentially you're just redefining the standard UTC offset for US timezones.

Wasn’t this already tried at least once and then reverted some 2 years later?

Yeah but now everyone has cell phones and LED street lights that sometimes feel brighter than the sun.

It's worth trying again, it's not like it can't be reverted again.

> Wasn’t this already tried at least once and then reverted some 2 years later?

In the US in the 1970s, but more recently in Russia as well:

* https://globalnews.ca/news/1469007/russia-abolishes-daylight...

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/01/russia-state-d...

Note that, as your sources state, Russia tried permanent DST and changed to permanent standard time instead.

They didn't revert back to a system of switching between DST and ST annually.

If this is really a conflict on which side to pick when we go permanent, why not just cut it in half and make that permanent? Like India has; it's a half hour in between.

This is fine, provided we add the extra necessary time zone.

For night owls and teenagers, who already have a hard time in society, Daylight Saving Time makes things far worse. It’s been tried and failed, already, primarily due to school/kids issues. The sun will rise really, really late in the dead of winter in some places. Sleep experts are all pretty much in agreement that permanent Standard Time is better.

I’d be all for permanent Standard Time but there’s no way that’ll happen with the old people in charge of our government. Most of them probably wake up at 4am already.

As a night owl who sleeps late, I'm stoked to not waste morning daylight while I'm sleeping, and have more time in the evening to go out and do shit before it gets dark.

        I don't really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some
        agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving
        daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind.
        I even object to the implication that I am wasting something
        valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen.  As an admirer
        of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to
        reduce my time for enjoying it.  At the back of the Daylight Saving
        scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager
        to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make
        them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.
        
         -- Robertson Davies, The diary of Samuel Marchbanks,
                Clarke, Irwin (1947), XIX, Sunday

* https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/northamerica#L75

> Sleep experts are all pretty much in agreement that permanent Standard Time is better.

I wonder why we can't just push school back later in the winter? I guess that'd be a little disruptive to society (all the parents have to change their schedules depending on how it's implemented), but things are already disruptive with the time change, and summer vacation schedules, and so on.

Just spitballing, I'd prefer permanent Standard Time myself too.

> For night owls and teenagers, who already have a hard time in society, Daylight Saving Time makes things far worse.

As a lifelong night owl, I can say you have it backwards.

The time used in the summer is ideal, as the sun sets later. I despise the winter time when it is dark at 4pm. It might be light early at dawn but as a night owl I'm asleep then so it is a waste.

Permanent standard time means less sunlight time after work.

Permanent DST means kids walking to school in the dark.

Changing the clock twice a year fixes that and lets us avoid both, with the only cost being people complaining for a day afterwards. It's like ripping off the bandaid, instead of doing a slow agonizing pull that lasts months.

And yes, I know some people take like 6 weeks to adjust and they will complain incessantly to stop it, but for the whole group, the least painful thing (I'd argue by far) is just moving the clock an hour.

I agree permanent standard time is a better solution. But maybe we change work to 8-4 from 9-5 and might be better that way anyway.

Does anybody actually work 9-5 (ie 7 hours assuming they take a break or two)?

Most of us.

(It's actually 8-5 with an hour's break).

Which was my point - 9-5 isn't really a thing, it's usually 8-5 or 9-6 or worse. If we're going to adjust time zone, we should at least agree on when most people are/are-not at the office/school/farm fields/etc.

> But maybe we change work to 8-4 from 9-5 and might be better that way anyway.

Why not change the working hours of stores, and tv programming and other schedules too?

In the end, you get the same thing as a clock change, but having to change the times of everything everywhere.

What's TV programming? :-)

Stores already open across a spectrum of times.

Yes which is why I said permanent standard would be better than permanent daylight

Fuck all the night owls, right?

What if we just split the difference?

America/New_York becomes UTC-04:30

Pretty sure there are studies that indicate the time shift is actually harmful - more car accidents, more heart attacks, all sorts of things.

Really, the question is which system (standard, DST, or both) causes the least damage?

Also worth noting we tried permanent DST a few decades ago and it was repealed within a year because people didn't like it. Approval in advance was north of 70% and in the aftermath below 40%, IIRC.

One thing I'll never understand is why we shift the clocks at 2am on Sunday vs Saturday? Why not give people twice the number of days to adjust???? Seems like that would reduce some of the harms of the shift.

Personally, I'd prefer permanent standard time.

You're not a software developer, are you ;)? I'm not working on any timezone-aware products right now but I feel for all my brothers and sisters in the trenches if this passes and has to be fixed everywhere!

Even worse than that, it will pass, people will realize it actually sucks, then they we will go back to the quick and nearly painless "rip off the bandaid" approach.

Good for job security I guess!

No it wont. There's already one state in the union that has dipsensed with the silly time changes, Arizona. I've lived there for ~7 years while an adult, or about 20% of my life, now live in a time change state again.

Having experienced both I would take the no time change every time. And I have yet to meet anyone who would (small sample size for sure, I'm sure someones done some polling).

Arizona is on permanent standard time, which many seem to prefer over DST or permanent DST. This new law is trying to force permanent DST, which the US actually already signed into law back in 1974 and then repealed it within a year because no one liked it. Also, while permanent standard or DST may work in southern states, it becomes more problematic in northern states, particularly close to the edges of time zones. You could see sunrise as late as 9:30 am in some of these cases with permanent DST.

Winter sunrise would be almost 9:20 am where I live in western Idaho:

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/idaho/locking-the-cl...

Our representative Mike Simpson voted for it. He has done some good things compared with our other congressional delegates (Mike Crapo, Jim Risch and Russ Fulcher) who tend to make fly by night committee votes against whatever is popular with the general public, so I don't want to knock him. But he does represent district 2, which is 200 miles to the east and would have a sunrise closer to 9:00 am:

https://ballotpedia.org/Idaho%27s_2nd_Congressional_District

My feeling is that permanent DST is just not gonna fly here. So if it passes, our elected officials will take a lot of flack for it and have to run damage control.

> I'm not working on any timezone-aware products right now but I feel for all my brothers and sisters in the trenches if this passes and has to be fixed everywhere!

Things have improved though: back in the 2000s when the 'Bush DST' change occurred, all sorts of software had hard-coded assumptions.

This is because US developers, who wrote a good portion of OS and other software, had never experienced a tzdata update first hand. So that when (e.g.) PST8PDT had its rules changed, it turns a lot of stuff needed to be rebooted to pickup things up.

A bunch of code was put in to notice changes dynamically, so in 2026 things should hopefully be smoother if there are new rules.

> Permanent DST means kids walking to school in the dark.

It means much more than that:

> Later sunrises and sunsets, as seen with pDST, are associated with multiple long-term health outcomes including increases in stroke, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.[8–10]

* https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10476036/

The peer reviewed literature on the effects of changing time, pDST, and pST is quite extensive:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920869

And health problems will pump money into big pharma.

I'm going to be dubious of any study that has a call to action section and the author is the vice president of an advocacy group for their cause. It's a little bit of a "we investigated ourselves and found we were right about everything".

> I'm going to be dubious of any study that has a call to action section and the author is the vice president of an advocacy group for their cause.

How about the American Medical Association?

* https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-releases/ama...

Or American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, American Thoracic Society, and American College of Chest Physicians concurring?

* https://www.labmanager.com/new-position-statement-supports-p...

Chronobiologists?

* https://www.chronobiocanada.com/official-statements

* https://www.chronobiology.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/JBR-...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

You know what maybe all schools in the US shouldn't start at 7:30-8:15.

Similar idea with businesses.

Maybe people living in northern latitudes can have a different schedule than than south.

Better solution: Adopt summer and winter hours to follow the sun rather than arbitrarily changing the clocks and interrupting sleep schedule and circadian rhythms.

> with the only cost being people complaining for a day afterwards.

I complain all summer long.

> with the only cost being people complaining for a day afterwards

Tell me you never had issues with sleep without telling me you never had issues with sleep.

Of all the things Congress could be doing right now, it’s this!?

I wonder if UK will follow as well.

Nice, congrats US! EU promises to stop this madness every year for the last 6 years, and apparently it's impossible.

Morons.

As usual, when Congress finally moves to address an issue, they manage to do it in the stupidest possible way. Permanent Standard Time is the better choice in nearly every way.

Why so? Having more time in the evening after work is way better. Getting out of work and it already being dark is depressing.

And many people find it depressing getting going in the morning when it's still dark.

Plus, in Winter most people at best get off work around dusk anyway.

In addition, most studies indicate health benefits for standard time relative to both switching and permanent DST.

We tried permanent DST back in the 70s, and it sucked. We switched back. If we're going to make a change, it should be to standard time.

Am I the only person who thinks its odd that my government (US) thinks its can tell me what time to get up and go to bed?

Before timezones, "noon" was the point where the sun was the highest in the sky.

It seems we should focus on having our timezones be more in line with what "noon" is supposed to be: IE, major population centers should have "noon" close to true noon, with a little more flexibility for rural areas so they can stay on the same time as their closest major population center.

Or have a universal clock. But have regional start times. 9-5 makes no sense.

9-5 is a red herring for this topic - but why does it make no sense to you?

If everyone follows the same clock, like, now is 12:30pm, across the entire world, then while everyone could also work 9-5, we know that most people like to be awake during daylight and asleep at night, so the local working hours might be 2-10.

We can get an idea of the issues in China, which has a single national timezone instead of 4 or 5 geographical time zones. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China

> Beijing Time users in Xinjiang usually schedule their daily activities two hours later than those who live in eastern China. As such, stores and offices in Xinjiang are commonly open from 10:00 to 19:00 Beijing Time, which equals 08:00 to 17:00 in Ürümqi Time.[17] This is known as the work/rest time in Xinjiang.

Thus, "9-5" would get a name like "work time", or the existing name of "day shift" would have increased popularity.

Because we set it up so that our shared infrastructure goes under load at the same time instead of being better distributed. With a universal clock, there may be less pressure to start at shared time. Staggered starts.

That's called UTC. Most datetimes are stored that way and converted to local time in the UI.

(To prove it, open finder or explorer and look at a file's modified time. Then change your time zone. You might need to refresh the window. You can even select UTC as your computer's time zone. It's how some cloud servers operate.)

I also really like having 12pm being the moment the sun is at the highest point. But I think the whole point of that change is to simplify and this would go the other way.

that became an issue with the introduction of trains and their schedule.

how do you think this would work today with our interconnected world? we absolutely need standardized times or everything falls apart.

Please re-read my comment

Okay, so you travel from, say, Washington DC to NYC and then you have to set your clock back by... I think it's like 13 minutes?

Which is why railroads started instituting time zones in the late 19th century: because it turns out having to recalibrate your watch every hour or so is a recipe for creating train crashes. Railroad time didn't become standard time until the early 20th century, in large part because a lot of the smaller cities were pretty irate at having to adjust their clocks. (It also doesn't help that coincidentally, places like Chicago and New York City are very near the center meridian of their time zone).

> places like Chicago and New York City are very near the center meridian of their time zone

Chicago is very close to the eastern edge of the Central time zone, though I know that was not true throughout history.

If you look at the "natural" disposition of the time zones, Chicago is very near the appropriate longitude (90 W) for the median of the time zone. The border between Eastern and Central time zone should be about halfway through Ohio; instead, the Eastern time zone is skewed westward, since Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan wanted to be in the same time zone as NYC.

No, you completely misinterpreted me. Just keep true noon within ~30 minutes of noon in population centers, and allow rural areas ~45 minutes. DC and NYC would be in the same time zone.

Right now DC's true noon is more than an hour off. That's too much. (Where I live, my true noon is always ~30 minutes off, both in standard and dst, so I can't complain.)

Ideal and impractical. Even with modern wifi.

Why not have your own timezone based on where you are standing right now? Oh, right, because that's the opposite of universal (or at least worldwide).

One-hour shifts are manageable. One-minute shifts between population centers are not. Your meeting would start at precisely 8:03:38, your time. The business you are calling would close its doors 13 minutes before 5 pm.

Please re-read my comment

This is a great question, and theres alot of history there, this is how time used to work until travel and communication speeds necessitating coordination over larger areas required it. The biggest driver in North America? Railroads.

Great documentary on the history of human relationship with time is available here: https://www.pbs.org/video/pbs-indies-time-1/

Technically no. Work and School dictate when we get up and go to bed. It's all relative. We could create a timezone where 12:00PM is in the morning. We are just used to this idea that morning, afternoon, evening, and night need to correspond to specific time values. For example, China uses just one timezone. So local regions just adapt to what logically makes sense. In a perfect world, local regions would adapt to the amount of daylight we have for each season, like it was before timekeeping and timezones. So school and work would shift when they start based off the rising of the sun. This isn't practical though for multiple reasons. It would cause chaos and confusion for work shifts, scheduling etc.

You can get up or go to bed whenever you wish.

You can say today's date is 27 Messidor Year CCXXXIV if you wish.

The problem is when you want to coordinate events between people following different time conventions.

Timezones as we know it started off as a railroad company invention. Does the London/Birmingham train follow London time or Birmingham time? Does the stop in Rugby use Rugby time?

DST in the US used to be a regional choice until 1966. Coordination became an issue.

"The lack of standardization led to a patchwork where some areas observed DST while adjacent areas did not, and it was not unheard of to have to reset a clock several times during a short trip (e.g., bus drivers operating on West Virginia Route 2 between Moundsville, West Virginia, and Steubenville, Ohio, had to reset their watches seven times over 35 miles)." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_time_in_the_United_...

> with a little more flexibility for rural areas so they can stay on the same time as their closest major population center.

We can do that already. I remember when most of Indiana didn't follow DST. Businesses in Danville, Illinois, near the border followed Indiana time by changing the listed hours of operation during summer.

Speaking of Indiana, 'Attitudes began to change in the 1990s, as Indiana's time zone situation was seen as impeding the state's economic growth. Interstate travel and commerce were difficult as people wondered, "what time is it in Indiana?"' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

Having 12:00 noon be when the sun is highest makes these issues reappear.

No $#1t, Please re-read my comment

I've re-read it 5 times. I do not see what I am supposed to be seeing.

> Am I the only person who thinks its odd

No. Many people have complained. In the TV show "The Bob Newhart Show" we find that Bob Hartley thinks that talking about the then-recent timezone standardization to be a safe topic with his father-in-law, but the latter finds it very odd and irritating.

> that my government (US)

Time standardization started without governments. Would you rather follow local sun time and railroad time and radio/TV station time, all different? Which time do you follow if you want to call your aunt 150 miles west of you?

> that my government (US) thinks its can tell me what time

How are they preventing you from keeping your own time? How are they preventing people from following the Jewish calendar?

OTOH, if you have jury duty at 9am next Monday, you better be there on government time. But note that when I last served on duty, the county was huge, and some people took an hour to drive in. Their home could well be many minutes off court house time. So how do they determine the right time to be there?

> time to get up and go to bed?

The government has never told me what time to get up or go to sleep. I was never in the military or other organization where the government had that much power over me.

> Before timezones, "noon" was the point where the sun was the highest in the sky.

Which ended up being a problem once fast long distance travel became commonplace. So how do you solve that problem?

> It seems we should

Yes, you've expressed an opinion. I responded by pointing out the known consequences should everyone followed it, based on historical practices.

> with a little more flexibility for rural areas so they can stay on the same time as their closest major population center.

I also pointed out how that can happen in a timezone system, by changing ones listed hours of work/school/etc.

Iceland is on UTC+00:00 year-round (Greenwich Mean Time), to stay in synch with much of western Europe, even though that's at least an hour behind local solar time.

So plenty of people disagree with your opinion, and changing their opinion would be hard.

You're making a strawman argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

We can have timezones where noon is close to true noon. Where I live, the sun is highest either at 11:30 (Standard) or 12:30 (DST.) Most major cities are southwest, so if we stay on permanent standard, everyone's true noon is going to be within 30 minutes of noon on the clock.

Permanent DST screws things up for the cities that are southwest of me, because then their sun is highest in the sky after 1:00 PM. These cities are very far, either requiring a plane ride or a day-long drive, so it's not a big deal for them to switch to a different timezone.

Make sense? You're going off on strawman rants without understanding what I'm advocating for.

I fundamentally do not understand your advocacy.

You started with:

'Am I the only person who thinks its odd that my government (US) thinks its can tell me what time to get up and go to bed?'

How do you have the timezones you want without the government (federal, state, county, tribal, or whatever) still involved in telling you when to go to bed?

You write 'Permanent DST screws things up for the cities that are southwest of me' but you have not explained how that screwing up is all that worth complaining about or changing, when we know of places like Reykjavík which are far more screwed up, with seemingly little concern.

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