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Friday, July 29, 2005DSTVirginia Postrel writes here about Ed Markey's proposal to extend Daylight Savings Time, an idea of which she does not approve. Notes Postrel, those things DST is meant to correct might be worsened, not improved, in the Sunbelt, which is where an increasingly large percentage of the population lives.My own thoughts are that 1) retooling things for a reconfigured DST could very well cause more trouble than even the claimed benefits and 2) ideally, it shouldn't matter. In an era where a highly regulated industry - the railroads - set the pace for the country, government initiatives made sense. In an era when local ordinances decided what decent people did, and where and when, government initiatives on time might have had their place. I even grew up in an era where time zone differences divided the country into distinct regions - according to which national network feed they picked up. But... we are in an era where e-mail, the net and cable news are 24 hours, the season's hot HBO show can be watched three times in 24 hours by the night owls among us and the fax can come in any time. We are in an era of 24 hour stores and 24 hour lives. The workday is not sunrise to sunset. Nor is it nine to five. The hours are set according to when people are buying, meeting, watching, etc, contingent upon there being employees willing to show up at those times. This morning, I started one job at 7:30 a.m. I finished another at 7:30 p.m. In between, I bought my lunch at an establishment that is open from 10-7. I bought my dinner at a place open from 8-11. The person who rang up my dinner order started work at 3. In the middle, I visited a bookstore that is open from 9 to 11, visiting the café that is open till 10:30, before deciding to go down the way to where I had lunch, rather than ordering from the café clerk whose shift usually starts at 11. My last stop this evening was at 8 p.m. at a 24 hour grocery. There was a line because one of the cashiers was "on lunch." Incidentally, I did not visit the local Unamás, a small Mexican chain, even though I could have got there before they closed - they have extended summer hours that they set, all by themselves, without government direction. I guess I've given away where I stand on DST. It's not a question of wastefulness or savings, but of long-term irrelevance. Yes, most businesses with traditional hours dutifully adjust for DST. Those with posted hours usually play along. But, increasingly, as summer hours, special events and competition with 24 hour outlets take off, the clock has come to be an instrument for keeping track of the hours we set for ourselves, not calibrating life with the hours nature used to set for us. In its own way, it would be good to get rid of DST. Not because it's a bad concept, but because it's one more thing to bicker over as a society when we could be making these decisions ourselves. If you run a bait and tackle shop, you should open an hour before sunrise, regardless of the time. If you run an ice cream shop, your summer hours ought to run till the sun slips over the horizon and the air becomes chilly. And if you're a doctor, you'll see me two hours later than promised, whether we mark it down as scheduled for two, seen at four or scheduled for three, ready at five - oops, maybe we'll see you tomorrow. Okay, maybe the way we calibrate time as a unified society can make a difference... Seriously, though, if we want to play it smart, we'll do ourselves the most good if we treat DST initiatives the way we treat so many other government efforts to solve our problems, working to maximize the good and minimize the harm in paperwork consequences while going about our business as before. By the way, for the history of DST and ideas about why it does and doesn't make sense, check out the books above. I particularly liked Save the Daylight. 
posted by gbarto at 10:39 PM |
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