I don't know what kind of flexibility HN'ers have, but the overwhelming majority of people can't just decide to leave whenever they please.

And it's utterly missing the point, keeping track of time is an inherently social issue. If I didn't care about other people (and again, had no time-related obligations to work or study), I'd most likely just use UTC everywhere and wake up whenever I wanted. I want more light in the evenings exactly because that's when I'm outside, and if I went to bed at 8pm, my social life would suffer.

Making solar noon 12 o' clock would be giving the all light to Spooky23 (and wasting most of it), as practically everyone wakes up at most 6 hours before noon, but are awake for 10 hours after. Noon isn't the middle of normal waking day. Making solar noon 2 hours late is exactly the compromise!

Maybe we should have some sort of compromise system: in the summer where there's plenty of sunlight hours we can get that extra hour in the evening (without sacrificing morning light hours), and in the winter we could have a sightly shifted time to make sure the stm doesn't get up too late.

Not always possible to leave for home earlier (with meetings and such)

But you’re not actually leaving earlier, it’s the exact same point in time whether you call it 6pm EST or 7pm EDT.

Not trying to be patronizing as I realize you are not dumb and know this but I’m explaining the disconnect between sides of this argument.

Book a standing meeting on your calend/ar to leave at 4 (or whenever). For exceptional meetings, make an exception and stay late. Probably come in early, or some how signal that you're not a slacker, just running a different schedule. This obviously doesn't work in all environments, but it can in many.