The Daylight Savings Time Myth

The arrogance of the federal government is astounding. On top of everything else they do that irks me, they also feel like they can change time itself.

Just to give some prospective, Modern Daylight Savings Time (DST) was the ideal of a Britton named William Willett, who sought to impose his own “morning person” world view. It was adopted in the US in 1918 as part of the irrational rise of nationalism in the early part of the 20^th century. DST has gone through some adjustments, most recently in 2007 when the switch dates where moved.

I have to admit here that I am somewhat biases against time change. In my line of work I have to keep accurate and synchronized time across a wide variety of computing devises. So twice a year I get the job of going around to 50+ computers, phones, printers, fax machines, etc, and make sure that they ether have made the time jump, or adjust them to match the new correct time. I also have to go to many of my clients and make sure that their computers, phones, printers, fax machines, etc, have done the same. So the Sunday and Monday following a time change is a big headache for me, and enviably something gets missed, or decides to revert/jump and weeks later I’m track down a problem, or worse not finding a problem because the logs are an hour (or two) off. Not only does the “act” of switching cause problems, but also this notion of moving the switch dates also cause its own spate problems. A lot of software, OSes, and time centric hardware have the DST switch dates hard coded into them. So for these legacy systems I have to now set the clocks forward or back on the new switch dates, and then reset them on the old switch dates when they change themselves.

Both in 1918 and in 2007, DST technology has been justified by congress to the public as money saving venture. Well, personally I lose money every time the time changes because of the aforementioned reasons. Finally I have learned that I’m not alone. The Wall Street Journal published an article discussing a paper written by Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant, economists at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The article and paper are part of a growing movement to show that DST is neither cost saving nor necessary in the US.

Most of the rest of the world does not observe a DST, and those that do rarely switch on the same dates as we do. So those of us who do a lot of international business also have the additional gripe of having to figure out what time it is in another country based on what day of the year it is. It makes setting up conference calls tricky. If the US did away with DST, I feel that we would set a new standard for the world to follow, and this arcane system would fall away.

I urge everyone to contact their congress critters and ask them to set aside this folly of DST.