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I thought that DST was dumb until I moved to Tokyo and find it sad that sunset is at 4pm in the winter

Sunset isn't changed by DST. You adjust your schedule. You're free to do so on your own terms, without the government forcing everyone to do the same shift at the same time for the same amount of time.

It only works when you don't have children (kindergartens and schools start at 8) or spouse (who can have a different schedule) or office work (so you don't have to be at the office at 9.)

Time has stopped being an astronomical fact, and is a social contract nowadays. It's possible that you can afford to opt out of that contract, but most people can't.

That's mostly true(*), and we should work on making the opt-out a standard procedure where ever possible.

Instead, the public discourse centers around which minority can force the majority to follow their preferred terms in the social contract. At best, it's a zero sum game - most likely, it's a net loss for everyone if we include all externalities, especially the suppression of discussions about more individuality.

(*) DST is not a social contract, it's entirely made up by the law.

You can take it in any direction you want, but I have pretty low expectations of schools willing to teach my kids from 10 to 16, or mechanics willing to fix my car at 20, or doctors willing to take my blood exam at 22 — all that just because that would be convenient for me.

The modern society started with the Industrial Revolution, when the people understood that there are some very tangible benefits when everyone starts working at the same hour, and started building around that. This building included discarding "local time" (an astronomical fact) in favour of standard time (social contract.)

But not everyone does start working at the same hour. I went to a supermarket today that opens at 07:00 and closes at 23:00, a cafe that opened at 10:00 and closes at 18:00, and a charity shop that opened at 12:00 and closes at 16:00.

When I was working I worked from 08:00 to 16:00 with a half hour break for lunch. But several of my colleagues in the same office worked 07:00 to 15:00. All of us worked with other engineers in countries across the world. My children went to school at 08:30 until 13:30 until they were in senior high school when it was 08:00 to 15:30

The local buses start running at 05:30 and stop at 22:30.

> or doctors willing to take my blood exam at 22

There used to be a system in my country where there were large doctor offices and you didn't really have your doctor, as you had your clinic. (I'm not talking hospital, but doctor's office.)

It was staffed around the day. Each doctor had a work life balance and you could come in whenever. I'm pretty sure this approach works for most service professions.

School can be transitioned to be purely online. Watch video lectures when you want and take online tests regularly. There is really no point to lock all kids up at school for hours each day if the goal is merely to teach them. People leave school illiterate these days, so it's not like it could get any worse.

It would be possible to split the day into shifts and have the night owls providing services for other night owls.

Medical emergency cover is 24 hours already. Some factories run 24 hours. So do some transport networks.

There would be huge benefits for commuting because traffic would be spread out.

The practical issues have more to do with noise and energy use, not the "social contract."

Most working adults are also parents, and so their working hours are wrapped around the daycare hours.

In any case, you’re talking about a societal change which is much broader than just a clock-setting issue.

You confuse two things. Not manipulating the clock doesn't mean that anyone forces the other changes we've discussed here upon you. We're just criticizing the fact that people point to the concept of DST and try to tell us that it's A) for our own good (it isn't), B) the only way to get more daylight (it isn't), and C) a solution to a societal problem (it isn't)

And before industrial revolution, people were even more in sync. Whole families/groups slept in one room, so one of you wakes up, everyone wakes up. One insist on staying up, everyone is bothered.

> there are some very tangible benefits when everyone starts working at the same hour

This must come from an office worker, dropping their child off at school or day care at 8, doing some chores until 9, starting work at 9:30 - or something like that. I suggest you take the bus or the metro once at 5 in the morning. You'll see plenty of people going to work. Maybe it's a local thing, but public services in Germany often start at 6 so that they can finish work before citizens start calling (and so that they can leave early and benefit from everything else still being open).

Also, there are mechanics that fix my car in the middle of the night when it breaks down – but I have to pay a membership fee, otherwise, it would be unaffordable. There are also plenty of doctors willing to work a night shift, but since we have socialist health care in Germany, it's difficult to pay them a premium - so that leaves those who triage by acuteness, not by price.

> I suggest you take the bus or the metro once at 5 in the morning.

In order to do that I would need to drop the kids at 4:50 at the (closed) doors of the school, and it will end very badly very quickly.

> start at 6 so that they can finish work before citizens start calling

How happy you must be to live in a country where you can (still) simply call your public services.

You don’t seem to get it. People with kids are actually taking the metro at 5. How do you think the trash is collected in the early morning hours? The newspaper delivered? The bread baked? The shelves filled? The streets cleaned? Are those jobs only done by people without children?

I'd guess they are either before children, after children (teenagers can get themselves ready), or in a situation where their families provide some help — a spouse with a different schedule, grandparents, older children taking care of the younger ones, etc.

And that gives you the right to enforce your schedule changes onto them?

You must be mistaking me for someone else, I'm not in any position to enforce anything onto anyone.

With that, sometimes the society needs to pick one option out of several, like what side of the road to drive. The options are not ideal, however not picking any side whatsoever would quickly lead to an unmitigated disaster. If you feel like the society is forcing you to do things against your will, you can move to an uninhabited island and not march to any beat of anyone's drum but your own.

I'm thinking of a time I worked a university help desk and had to deal with a professor that considered himself a night owl and didn't understand why we weren't staffed during his preferred working hours of 10pm-8am. He was literally the only one on campus working those hours, besides things like security.

There's wanting to work a bit earlier or a bit later than everyone around you but there's a limit to how out-of-sync you can get.

For work it doesn't really matter. If your company is large enough you'll have offices around the world and have to deal with some colleagues not being available during your working hours. Just keep all communication asynchronous.

Exactly, the time on the clock is just a number, can't understand people complaining about this.. If one wants to have its dinner at sunset then so be it, whether the sunset is at 4PM or 9PM. I mean I get it some people don't have a freewill unfortunately but many people can dictate how their day shall look like

If I need to go to the bank, or the gym, or do basically anything involving other people, I can't just like, do whatever, man. I'm sort of beholden to the rest of the world's scheduling. How is that hard to understand?

Online banks, 24/7 gyms (or close to). That's my situation .. Yes I can't shop at 3AM if that's going to be your next point, but I'm okay with that one :-)

With that said, I don't know where you live nor what is your situation, and like I said previously many people can dictate how their day shall look like but of course not everybody can.

You confuse "not wanting the government manipulating everybody's clock" with "wanting to manipulate other people's schedule".

Note that DST doesn't change that. It makes the already long days feel longer, not the short ones. Or you could view it as your mornings being brighter in winter perhaps. But yeah, as such it never made much sense to me, though maybe my view is too much mid latitude driven.

I also live in Japan and I have yet to find a foreigner that likes the Japanese time zone. What is the purpose of having the sunrise a 4:00 in Summer if all the shops and businesses are closed until 9:00?

I guess you found me! I like it. No change is better than changing any arbitrary time.

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