this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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The public poll was extremely skewed, mostly Germans voted.
Biologists argue against permanent summer time, people are in favor of summer time. But most people haven't looked into the issue enough. Do you like to get up early? Then summer time is indeed better for you. But for most people it's not. But summer is nice and it's really complicated to think about time and the sun and how one changes when we move the clocks, so most people think they prefer summer time. Public health and public opinion run opposite in this case.
At the moment we have one time zone all the way from Spain to like Poland. Poland doesn't want to give up summer time, Spain doesn't want to give up standard time. (Or was it the other way around?). They are on the fringes of the time zone, geographically speaking and feel the negative effects the most. Obviously neither country wants to make the situation worse for its citizens, so no agreement has been reached.
(I'm an American so I'm not immediately in the discussion about whether Europe does DST or not but I do have opinions on DST itself)
I prefer Summer time, but I honestly don't care which one "we" stick to as long as we quit fucking with the goddamn clocks. I don't care if we split the difference, set the clocks to a half-hour between, and leave them there.
I HATE the logic of actually moving the clocks back and forth.
I care which one we stick to because going home at 5pm in the dark is depressing for a whole month in the northern half of the US. Iโd much rather go to work in the dark then go home with the last bit of light and do something fun before the sun sets.
See if I was in charge that would be managed by "our company opens at 8AM" vs "our company opens at 7PM." Not the dumbass 20th century idea cancer where you reset every clock everywhere.
I think the USA already tried the permanent summer time thing. They stopped after two years, because it was bad.
If you actually would like to get up earlier for work or school, then yes, summer time is indeed better for you. You are also part of a small minority that sees it that way. Most would like to get up and show up to work later instead.
Arizona and Hawaii don't switch their clocks to this day, I don't know if they're aligned with "DST" or "Standard" time which I can never keep track of which is which so I call them "summer" and "winter" time.
Standard time is winter time. I never remember what daylight savings time is either. In German it's just summer time and normal time/winter time. You're not actually saving any daylight by moving the clocks around!
There is a bit of leeway which time zone to choose. I mean Spain and Poland are doing fine too. But 1 hour offset from normal seems to be the limit of what is reasonable.
This whole discussion would be useless if we just introduce flexible working hours and have school start an hour late. Instead of 9-5 you'd have 10-6 and people won't have to get up as early.
Well, they could get the timezones, that actually fit to their geography.
This is an option. I think it is not a very popular one though, because it makes cooperation and trade a tiny bit more complicated.
I would add to this the compounding effect of northern places. If one were to keep summer time all year round, the sun would rise at 9.30 am in the winter.
On the other hand, if one keeps standard time all year round, it rises at around 2 am in the summer.
(I still hate daylight savings though.)
The medical/biology side is pretty clear, standard time is better than summer time if we keep our current workday schedule. Getting up in the dark is much more detrimental than going to bed a long time after sunset.
You can always make arguments based on the extreme summer/winter solstice daylight time. If you have four hours of daylight, the time zone doesn't really matter, it will suck either way. I consider such arguments to be in bad faith.
I don't understand what you consider as bad faith here. You presented and east-west perspective over a single time zone and I presented the northern situation as well (since the phenomenon in question - length of day vs time of day - gets amplified the higher north you go), and not sure where you saw any disagreement.
I find dismissing it as 'four hours of daylight would suck either way' to be in bad faith.
Now, had I wanted to nitpick your argument, I could have said that Spain should not be counted because they should probably be on the same time zone as the UK and Ireland by their actual geographic location, so the issue there would stem more from the fact that they chose the wrong time zone to begin with. The sun rose in Madrid today at 8.13. In Rome it was at 7.09. Same time zone.
Notice the subtle difference?
I consider it bad faith, because it's a few months in the year which suck either way. Yes, having the sun rise at 2am is bad. But is 3am a noticeable difference? Or alternatively is it really that much better or worse to have the sun set at 11pm instead of 10pm?
It is much more honest to talk about the timings around equinox, because there we have 12h days and when to get up in relation to daily life (mostly in relation to when work starts) is a much more relevant question then.
Someone else also mentioned the "wrong time zone" problem. Yes that is true. I believe the current state was preferred, because it makes interaction with France and Germany easier. Changing the time zone would be a reasonable improvement as well,at the cost of a bit more complexity in trading and daily international cooperation.
(Not sure what you mean with the "subtle difference", maybe it was to subtle for me. I would disagree with the "Spain should not be counted", because they are obviously affected. But yes, changing time zones would be a valid solution to the sunrise/sunset problem and I do not consider that line of reasoning to be in bad faith because it is a valid solution to the problem with its own tradeoffs that can be discussed.)