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I wouldn't call it a states' rights issue, but it is an issue where states get to decide. In Indiana, the state lets it go county by county. The argument for i
by wpietri 5y ago
I wouldn't call it a states' rights issue, but it is an issue where states get to decide. In Indiana, the state lets it go county by county.
The argument for it kinda depends on where you are. Keeping in mind that humans are diurnal animals, take a look at this graph for your city: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-francisco https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/san-francisco
Here, during the winter, daylight starts between 6:23 and 7:25 in the morning. In the summer, it's between 5:47 and 7:21 am. That's with DST. Without it, full daylight would come as early as 4:47 am.
That's more dramatic if you're further north. Take a look at Minneapolis: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/minneapolis https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/minneapolis
For them, winter daylight start between 6:28 and 7:51 am. Summer daylight starts between 5:26 and 7:26 am with DST. Otherwise, it would be as early as 4:26 am.
So basically, the more north you are, the more summer daylight comes very early in the morning. Given that humans are diurnal animals, and given that a lot of jobs depend on daylight (e.g., agriculture, construction), and given that we use a social definition of time to regulate a lot of coordinated economic activity, the question is: do we adjust the schedules or the clocks?
Certainly when DST was invented, adjusting the clocks was the only practical option. If we have too many light hours in the morning and too few in the evening, let's just swap the clocks by an hour. There aren't many clocks and you get everybody to do it at once, so no communication is necessary.
These days maybe you could replace it with seasonal hours set by every business on as they see fit, but that's an awful lot of schedule-adjusting and hours-checking that needs to happen to know if you can pick up coffee on your way to work. So personally, I'm for staying with DST.
- bluGill 5y ago> So basically, the more north you are, the more summer daylight comes very early in the morning. That is half the picture. The more north you are the later in the evening sunlight lasts. I grew up near Minneapolis - in winter there is nothing you can do to get daylight both before and after school hours, and when close to the equinox it is hard to even hit one if you sun during recess as well (one hour after school starts or one hour before it ends). Daylight savings time is useless in the north because there isn't enough daylight in winter to do anything useful with no matter what you do. In summer it is pointless as there is far more daylight than you need and so you have to learn to sleep with the sun up.
- wpietri 5y agoI grew up at a similar latitude, and I disagree. That one can't perfectly solve the problem through a clock shift doesn't mean that there are no benefits to the clock shift.