There's a pro-DST lobby because more post-work daylight hours is correlated with higher consumer spending. For that reason, permanent DST is more politically expedient in relation to permanent standard time.
> And if people want to have more light in the evening, then they just leave work earlier. Surely that is easier than permanent daylight savings time.
I don't think it's possible to lobby employers to change their shift hours. It is, in fact, much easier to lobby the government to change the clocks.
> I predict a lot of people will want to move school start to a later hour then.
This is probably a good idea, though... good ideas don't really seem to have much bearing on the way we arrange school schedules.
You're probably overthinking this. Not every government action is a five-level Machiavellian scheme. Sometimes overwhelming public sentiment carries the day.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/01/1050492391/daylight-saving-ti...
At the very essence of Economics it is the focus on actions human beings, fundamentally trade and labor. And it seeks the most optimal level of benefit or utility for humans.
This is an incentive for companies, not necessarily humanity.
Schools, work shifts, shop opening hours move over time to fit im the light window.
I don't like when people accuse others of living in a "bubble", but this is a particularly egregious example of being deeply out of touch with the lives of most working people.
Honestly anyone who is passionate about which time to switch to has put way too much faith in the whole academia-to-reality pipeline. Those folks get shit so directionally wrong so often on more important things, I really don't think any academic's model of the consequences of ST/DT will be anything remotely close to complete.
We should all just chill, and be grateful for the relief.
But I also have seen over the last 20 years that flexible time has moved from an exotic perk to a standard contract term in my country, at least for white-collar workers. And we have mandatory works councils, where workers can have a say in certain decisions, for example shift hours. (In the US the equivalent is roughly when a company has a union.)
So it is not being out of touch, it is a political demand. I am just saying what's possible.
> Permanent standard time is considered by circadian health researchers and safety experts worldwide to be the best option for health, safety, schools, and economy, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, American College of Chest Physicians, National Safety Council, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Canadian Sleep Society, World Sleep Society, Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, and several state sleep societies.
> It is supported by environmental evidence, owing to evidence that DST observation increases driving, morning heating, and evening air conditioning, which all in turn increase energy consumption and pollution.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_time_observation_in_...)
You are also only mentioning a subset of research on the subject. Increasing ambient light in the evenings is directly associated with reduction in evening crime.
https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/97/5/1093/58281...
That said, there is clearly a lot of scientific evidence that it would be better if people got up earlier and enjoyed the morning light. In practice, that doesn't seem to be what "most people" actually do. The time that most people engage in activities is in the evenings, after work, not in the morning before work. As such, it seems a clear win to give more daylight in the times people are actually enjoying themselves, rather than condemning most of the country to leave work in the pitch dark.
You are ignoring the entire portion of the comment that addresses this complaint: it applies equally to either position, thus, it's a non-argument.
> [less crime during DST]
Well, that's interesting, perhaps, but still one has to weight it against the alternative. It seems a quick Google says things like DST-attributed deaths alone are ~$200M/yr, an order of magnitude larger effect, not to mention the emotional toll. So while I grant that as an argument against… I'm not sure it is enough.
> rather than condemning most of the country to leave work in the pitch dark.
Instead, you condemn the country to arrive at work in the dark.
It was also tried before, and people hated it:
> Polling in November and December 1973 showed strong and in some cases overwhelming support — 57 percent in a Gallup poll, 74 percent in a Louis Harris and Associates poll, and 73 percent in a poll from the Roper Organization.
> […] In a Roper poll conducted in February and March, just 30 percent remained in favor of year-round daylight saving time, while a majority favored switching times again. Louis Harris polling in March showed just 19 percent of people said it had been a good idea, while about twice as many — 43 percent — said it was a bad one.
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/15/no-more-c...)
We make tradeoffs all the time to give the people the option to do the things they enjoy doing even if it means non-optimal public health outcomes. perma-DST is incredibly popular as most people prefer having the option of extra daylight in the evening.
You have to be somewhat careful when reading pro-DST articles; yes, the same sorts of arguments tend to be presented, but when I read carefully, they're always vs. the status quo; I've yet to see it vs. perma-standard. That is "we should switch to perma-DST b/c it is better than normal-DST/the status quo." I think that argument is probably correct; the point is that perma-standard-time is better yet.
> of all decisions were based on optimizing public health outcomes […] aggressively regulated to outright banned.
… well… perhaps we shouldn't be giving children concussions & obesity that lead to a long list of health problems down the line …
But aside from that, most of those a parent or the person themself can simply opt out of. I can't readily opt out of society's time-keeping; I'm going to have to use the same system to communicate with the rest of y'all. And AFAICT, perma-standard is a better overall decision, and perma-DST is a local maxima of sorts.
I disagree. Noon should be whatever noon's offset from UTC should be.
We should all use UTC.
I presume one wants a fixed offset / a fixed 24h day (modulo leap days). (The length of a day changes during the year. And I mean in the sense of "the time between high noon on one day to the next" changes, not the amount of sunlight, which of course changes. This is what the "mean" in "mean solar time" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_time#Apparent_solar_time)
1) Permanent DST 2) Permanent Standard Time 3) Status Quo
And the problem is that, at least based on what I've gathered anecdotally from speaking to people and from which side the media pushes, preferences are usually 1-2-3, followed by 2-1-3, followed by 2-3-1, with anyone who prefers the status quo in dead last.
Personally I prefer standard time to DST as well, but we don't really have any power to make that decision.
The argument in favor of DST generally goes that people have more spare time in the afternoon than in the morning. So extending afternoon sunlight hours benefits more people.
From the government's perspective, they cannot force all companies to shift their working hours, but they can shift the clock. They're changing the abstraction once instead of changing all concrete implementations.
This change doesn't make a difference for most of us in tech, since we can usually set our own hours. But it does make a difference for shift workers.
I'm a proponent of this regardless. Forcing teenagers to be awake at 6AM is not helpful.
If you move school an hour later then typical working hours also have to move an hour later and nothing actually changes.
Our children will say it is unnatural for teenagers to wake up at 7am.
Feel free to follow your own advice and come into work later.
I am not a morning person, and so naturally I welcome this trading away of brighter winter mornings to get brighter winter evenings. But I recognize there are many, presumably yourself included, who prefer the opposite.
I don't have a good solution to suit everyone, and I certainly don't want to gloat at having "won." If anything, perhaps just as workplaces are sorting into remote-first and non-remote-first to address different employee preferences, the same will happen with times of day.
But I also don't have any kids in school, and I don't have a 9-5 job. Maybe that flexibility makes the difference.
What percentage of people do you think get to choose what time they can leave work?
I know people will say it's too hard to change habits and (clock) work hours, but with permanent DST you will have to change that anyway, when people realize how dark winter mornings will be. I predict a lot of people will want to move school start to a later hour then.