I like when daylight savings time ends, because we get an extra hour of sleep; but then it will have to take up again, come the spring, and I hate that coming time with a passion.
If we could stick to normal time, we'd have nice early sunsets and sunny mornings here in November, and earlier dark come summer. That would be pleasant when the day already seems 20 hours long, and most of it blistering hot afternoons.
I've never gotten a good explanation for why we keep this odd custom. Apparently it was a pet dream of Benjamin Franklin, who thought longer hours of daylight in the summer would save on candles? And now people argue that it saves on power bills, but I don't see how.
Or the argument goes that people want more time with daylight after they get off work in the summer, for, I don't know, sporting and cavorting?
None of it makes much sense, and everyone hates it. Why not stop?
1 comment:
Everyone does hate it, and several places have voted to stop!
The problems with actually stopping are basically two things (afaik, not an expert or even an economist).
One, nobody wants to stop FIRST. If country X stops doing daylight savings and country Y, their main trading partner doesn't, that introduces a bunch of potential friction and confusion that costs money and nobody wants that. So X and Y would have to both agree to stop, but that kicks the same problem down the line to Z that they also trade with.
For example, several Canadian provinces have already voted to eliminate the time change, on the condition that neighbouring provinces also do so, and/or that the USA also does. Because trade. And money is more important than people being really tired, and the car accidents that happen when tired people are trying to commute an hour earlier are a sunk cost.
Counterpoint: Russia stopped doing daylight savings, but they notoriously don't care what other countries do so this issue was not a factor.
Two, agreeing on whether to be on permanent summer time or normal time is really hard.
This seems to be the main roadblock for the EU ditching the clock change. Different groups (member states, industries, regions, what have you) have different reasons to prefer one or the other, so the current system can't be ditched until an agreement is reached.
My Solution: Move to a country that has never done DSL at all and forget about this nonsense.
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