I live in the Netherlands.

In the summer the suns up at 5 am. But at 5am I am asleep. I could get up earlier but that's pointless since school and work doesn't start until 8.30.

So in stead of having an hour of sunlight before school and work we all change our clocks to have an hour of extra sunlight in the evening in stead, which fits our cultural preference for social activities.

We could also, as you say, change every single sign, post and display of opening hours for every school, business and organisation at the same time to achieve the same effect.

But in the real world changing the clock is simpler.

It's a fairly trivial change. We already have timezones, which exist to deal with the fact that the sun comes up at different times in different parts of the world. We already have to design everything around the assumption that timezones can change, since people sometimes move to different parts of the world. All we do is cause, for an entire timezone, that it becomes a different timezone at one point in the year, and switches back later. This ensures that the sun continues to come up at a consistent time. The main issue it causes is to make the lives of programmers slightly more difficult, which I am sure they can cope with...

Thee golfing industry is one of the big proponents of keeping DST and lovbbies hard for it.

That is why you run your jobs on GMT/UTC and not display time.

Imagine having a solution that already works with changing system clock but then some very big very important very senior very developer shows up and launches a multi-year project to redesign this, potentially opening pandora box of endless bugs. PhD in Job Security, typical shit I see in corporate.

> So why not "smear" the DST<=> ST transitions by having four half hour transitions, once each quarter?

Very easy answer: Because it's already painful twice a year, and that would be making it even worse.

That answer is similar to the one for questions like "why do we have wide time zones that are somewhat inaccurate, rather than setting every clock based on the exact position of that clock?".

If you present this as the alternative, I think there's a chance people might actually just get rid of it :)

Plenty of countries have moved away from DST. Over half who previously used it IIRC.

No, that’s describing permanent DST, which was tried and failed, not lack of DST. Most people in the world live without DST and it’s fine. (The article also mentions this.)

Except it's not like Chesterton's fence, it was created at the edge of living memory for known reasons. If anything it's an example of the opposite effect, something like Chesterton's field, do we really need to build a wall here, it's been a field for a damn long time...

I don’t know, maybe someone should do a study on it.

There are measurably more heart attacks and traffic accidents after the switch.

It's an extra hour of potential outdoors activity before nightfall. Yes.

“This stupid thing we do that is worse for society than the perceived upsides is only twice a year. Why not keep doing it anyway?”

I live in Western Australia. for 3 years we trialed DST from 2006 to 2009. It was a nightmare personally, I was a sysadmin at the time and enterprise management tools were expensive and crap so we had to roll out DST file changes across our fleet manually. And because the change to allow DST for our region was a rushed job we then had to roll back after the 3 year unsuccessful trial.

Honestly, it was super stressful at the time. And DST that doesn't exist doesn't bother you in the slightest. Every day ends and flows into the next like the last. But the stress of a clock change twice a year doesn't have to happen, it's a choice.

Yes, we won't. It turns out that we're way too terrible at being rational way too much of the time.

For DST in particular: Even discussions where the participants manage to form something resembling a quorum to stop changing the clocks twice every year somehow manage to unilaterally get sucked into a seemingly-inescapable quagmire of differing opinions, wherein: The decision of whether to use standard time and stick with it or to stick with DST instead becomes an intractable impasse.

Accordingly, nothing ever gets done.

I have every expectation that I will be dead and buried before this issue is resolved.

I think US states aren't allowed to switch unless the feds decide to allow it

We don’t really get much of anything sorted these days.

Then get BC to change it back

Tough shit. I live on the eastern edge of Central Time, I don't want to be dealing with 3PM sunsets in December.

Then we should have timezones based not just on longitude, but also latitude. So northerly locales can get some sleep in the spring/summer/fall.

> If your issue is when work is scheduled, well businesses set their own hours, not the government.

Ah, someone who doesn't have kids in school/camp/some random activity yet.

We know how this goes in China (one time zone, no daylight savings time). Coming home from the bar in Beijing with the sun showing up at 4 AM was quaint back then, but I'm definitely glad we have DST in the states.

Working hours will not change.

I will fight tooth and nail against attempts to take one hour of daylight from me in the evenings for half of the year.

Businesses don’t care how much sun you get

> businesses set their own hours, not the government

In plenty of countries the government decides the opening hours of shops, restaurants and sometimes even offices. Labour laws and nighttime pay are coupled to the hours on the clock. Hours you can make noise is decided by government. Germany has the mid-day resting hour (Mittagsruhe).

Permanent DST is just a synonym for "let's all agree to wake up an hour earlier." The same change could be affected by e.g. schools and businesses agreeing to open at 8am instead of 9am. (Of course that would be wildly unpopular so permanent DST is just way to trick people into swallowing the pill.)

But would behavior change in the long run? Countries like Spain where solar noon differs wildly from clock noon just end up aligning their rituals accordingly (e.g. eating dinner at 9pm).

More tyranny inflicted upon the rest of us by morning people

Curtains would make the sun set later in summer and rise earlier in winter?

My work starts at 9am, therefore I wake up around 7am. My work start time does not adjust based on the seasons. Any sun before 7am is wasted for me.

Under DST, at summer solstice, the sun rises around 5am, giving me 2 hours of wasted sunlight.

Without DST, at summer solstice, the sun rises around 4am, giving me 3 hours of wasted sunlight.

I enjoy having additional hours of sunlight when I am awake, so for me I actually prefer having DST vs without it.

Similarly, in the wintertime, under permanent DST, sunrise is around 9am, and I don't want to drive to work in the dark.

I can see the DST argument for people where the shift kinda sorta works out, but many places (like Anchorage!) it's completely unnecessary. I live in Sweden and it's just the twice annually "ah shit the clock moved overnight."

4am sunrise seems ludicrously early to me, but then again, even a 5am sunrise is awfully early.