Twice a year the intrusive government effortlessly pokes me with a sharp stick.
If someone wants to get up earlier in the morning, then please do.
If you want to go to work earlier in the day, for goodness sakes, go to work earlier.
Don’t drag me into your wishes.
Time zones make sense. If we all used sundials where high noon is high noon, we couldn’t synchronize clock-based events from east to west. Until 1883, that is how it was. Localities each had their own time standard based on the sun. Sunrise, sunset and daylight were set by the sun.
It was a scheduling nightmare for the railroads, however. So they divided North America into four time zones that became known as “railroad time”… and was useful enough to be quickly adopted by the people as their standard time.
Congress couldn’t stand it. In 1918 they took it over to establish government time … just so’s everybody would know who was in charge.
But people forget. The general populace got to thinking that time just was.
That would not do.
So the rulers in the District of Criminals decided to jerk everyone’s clocks around twice a year just to remind the plain folks WHO IS IN CHARGE.
The only other possible explanation is that they are terminally stupid.
While I grant that is possible, even likely for some of them, they don’t have a majority FOR clock manipulation because they are all idiots. No, these people wormed their way into power and extreme wealth by being clever, devious, ruthless and many other things. Stupid is only cover.
I know them. I know what they are and who they are. I do my best to keep them out of my thoughts… get in the zen zone.
Obviously that pisses them off. So twice a year they poke me with a sharp stick just to shatter my meditation… just cuz they can.
Daylight Saving Time: A Government Annoyance
On March 13 Americans will, in their tolerant nature, acquiesce once again to a government initiated (and hardly popular) loss of one hour, and the setting of clocks out of sync with our planet’s celestial rhythm.
After an earlier (unpopular) 1918 trial of Daylight Saving Time and its later repeal in 1919, it was re-enacted nationwide under Nixon under the “Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973.” It’s now a relic of inappropriate interventions of the early seventies that included wage-price controls and the 55 mph speed limit. It represents what we don’t need. Consider some of the reasons for repeal:
Nature: It unbalances what is naturally harmonious. High noon should be when the sun reaches its apex, or as near as this can be, given the use of time zones.
Sleep Cycles: The (circadian) sleep cycle need not be disrupted twice a year, even if accomplished by a show of hands. In truth, the legislative process should be called out for its shortsighted habit of running roughshod over established peaceable social order. Here it smacks of social engineering with a disregard for workers, not to speak of an insensitivity to children losing sleep in the adjustment.
As reported at telegram.com “The Fatal Accident Reporting System found a 17 percent increase in traffic fatalities on the Monday after the shift.” This article cited findings in a University of Colorado at Boulder study of an increase in fatal motor vehicle accidents the first six days after the clocks spring ahead. This study suggests that the time change may even increase the risk of stroke.
Freedom: If those in a workplace agree to change their hours of work they are free to do so. Such “emergency” legislation imposed by the Federal government, on the other hand — however minor they seem — mandate conformity at the expense of basic freedoms.
Efficiency: Moreover, with the advent of LED-lights, the old cost-of-lighting argument has faded, especially because the start of the day has already been advanced about one hour as mentioned above. In fact, with more air-conditioning, the bias is for increased use of electric power under the time-shift, as people come home earlier in the hot season and turn up their air-conditioning.
Inconvenience: One has the annoyance of twice a year resetting clocks. This may take only 10 minutes, but over a 60-year span it’s 20 hours.
We all know what it feels like to arrive at work on time to find that everyone else had dutifully changed their clocks, so that we turn out to be one hour late.
There are real-world effects on major industries as well. Train and transport schedules cannot be easily adjusted. Amtrak, for instance, idles trains (and passengers) for one hour to keep on schedule in the fall and then tries to make up an hour in the spring by hurrying. More hourly work schedules need adjustment now that more businesses are open 24-7.
Affrontery: Perhaps worst of all is the fact is that there is no gain whatsoever in the number of minutes of sunlight in a day. It is hence presumptuous to maintain that the culture and habits of the people, as expressed by their arrangements and choices, were in error before the change. The benefit of the doubt should logically rest with conventional time.
Principle: Resetting clocks and watches not once but twice a year, is less a compromise of effort than of principle. It contributes to the habituation of interference by the state. We already prostrate ourselves filling out 1040 forms that tax the sale of our labor, including a required signature in disregard of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. If we ever want to undo such an affront to freedom, annoying impositions such as time-shifting are a good place to start.
Sunset Old Laws: Thomas Jefferson suggested an automatic sunset provision for legislation: “… every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years.” In an April 2016 Reason article by Veronique de Rugy: “What Government Can Learn from Moore’s Law,” is suggested a sunset provision (that could be retroactive) in all Federal statutes and regulations to require an updated renewal within two years. Even better, might be a required supermajority for renewal. In Jefferson’s day, by the way, clocks were known as “regulators,” but such regulation stemmed not from legislation, but from social convention that produced efficient governing without the state.
As with a plethora of interventions some may be minor inconveniences, but like time-shifting, they share in a disrespect for the principle of simply leaving people alone. Mandated time shifting affects everyone while standard time imposes on no one.