At the time leap seconds were introduced, it was much rarer for anyone to be able to tell (much less care) that someone on a another continent had a clock a few

At the time leap seconds were introduced, it was much rarer for anyone to be able to tell (much less care) that someone on a another continent had a clock a few seconds off from theirs (and those who cared most were probably astronomers, which is why we ended up with leap seconds). There's a reasonable argument that the number of bugs (and extra work for programmers) now caused by them is enough that we should just stop adding them (and perhaps change time zones every few millennia). Of course, the 'correct' way to fix it would be to use TAI rather than UTC just about everywhere, but that change would be hard to implement compared to just not adding more leap seconds.