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Comment by rjmunro | Hacker News Reader

Moving around what we call the hours of the day is a really stupid way to change habits.

Why not do this for other unit's of measurement? People travel at 70mph on highways, have accidents and die. Lets make 1 mile only 1200m instead of 1600m, now when the speed limit is 70mph, people will really be travelling at 84kph instead of 112kph, so less will die. It's utterly absurd. Just post a 50mph limit.

If you want people to start the day earlier at certain times of year, you just legislate that things start earlier at a certain time of year. For example schools and shops should be obliged to change their opening hours on that day.

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Exactly. The right way to go about it would be changing standard business hours (and school, etc.) twice a year.

Coordinating a mass schedule change at a specific point in time is just a different method of implementing daylight-savings time.

Between the two, changing wall clocks seems like the simpler of the two options, but either is fine.

All kinds of businesses have seasonal hours already, and without any coordination or need to make everyone change their clocks.

I agree with you that allowing each organization to make their own seasonal shifts requires less coordination and is simpler in many ways.

Just to be clear, I was responding to the parent poster who suggested we "just legislate that things start earlier at a certain time of year" as an alternate implementation of a coordinated schedule change. Among the various coordinated approaches that I can think of, changing clocks seems like the least bad.

And there is undoubtedly some utility in a coordinated approach given how intertwined our lives are. But whether it's worth the additional cost? I don't know. Trying to get my kids to school on time this Monday was more difficult than usual, but at the same time I can't actually shift my work day earlier unless the schools also start earlier.

How do you legislate that things happen an hour earlier when you don’t legislate when they happen in the first place?

For stuff that you really care about, you pass regulations that public institutions have to follow. This takes care of stuff like school hours, counter opening times, mass transport time tables and the like. The rest of society either adapts or doesn't care. Some businesses, especially if they are outdoors-related, already have different opening hours in summer and winter. It really doesn't have to be legislated on a large scale.

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