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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Looks like it actually is easier to ask the government to shift the whole country's time zones rather than successfully ask employers to let their employees shift their schedule an hour earlier, which would have the same effect.

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Change one law, or negotiate with hundreds of thousands of employers, school boards, day care centers, among other things, simultaneously, in the hopes that they all come to the same decision. Seems easier to me.

Directives backed by the threat of violence (i.e law) often are easier, does not make them ethical or right

As mentioned in another comment, not everyone had this choice. Parents' time is bound to the school's schedule. Many jobs inherently don't cover this flexibility. Think construction, health care, public transit, education. It's really a very large percentage of the population, but one that's underrepresented on HN.

I have none of these constraints and in fact shifted my schedule by 2 hours without any problem. So it can be hard to see the very different reality and guard rails others have to deal with.

There are many places where times are hard coded into the law. For example, in my city, construction crews are only allowed to work from 7am to 7pm. By changing the clock time, that law will still work, but if everyone's work times changed, that law would need to be changed too. And that's just one example of thousands.

People aren't codebases, a broken refactor manifests itself not as total societal collapse (a "crash") but slow social disease, with people arguing about the cause. To get everyone aligned, we need a law, not just to tell everyone to be flexible with each other.

This has been the case for well over 18 years, now. Congress can agree on literally nothing except futzing with Daylight Savings, so that's what they do to prove they're working in a bipartisanship-like manner.

What utter garbage and a laughable excuse for a government.

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