Dumb, Wrong, and a Century-Plus to Abolish

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill called the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make Daylight Savings Time permanent in most of the United States -- in November of next year, to allow for the transportation industry time to adjust.

This is good news, but here's a question we should all ask right now: Our republic has inflicted this inane ritual on itself since the time of Woodrow Wilson -- for over a century! For as long as I can remember practically every adult I have known has hated this.

There has even been damning scientific evidence building up against it for some time, as co-sponsor Marco Rubio noted:

Image by Artem Riasnianskyi, via Unsplash, license.

I will just tell you a couple of the reasons why I think that is important. There is some strong science behind it that is now showing and making people aware of the harm that clock-switching has. We see an increase in heart attacks and car accidents and pedestrian accidents in the week that follow the changes.

The benefits of daylight saving time have also been accounted for in the research; for example, reduced crime, as there is light later in the day. We have seen decreases in child obesity, a decrease in seasonal depression that many feel during standard time, and then the practical one and the one that I have witnessed with my own eyes.

All of this, and it took over a century before we saw the first serious chance of a repeal.

And remember, the House still has to pass this and the President sign it yet. This is not a done deal.

There is a lesson here for all of us, especially anyone whose first thought is There ought to be a law! whenever they hear about something they don't like: Even if everyone hates the law that comes out of the American Sausage-Making Machine, good luck getting rid of it.

Indeed, even if the law doesn't do much and solves the alleged problem it was meant to, further knowledge may prove it to be a bad idea, as happened here.

Again, good luck getting rid of it.

And remember: In a society in which the government doesn't tell us how to use a clock, nothing would stop us from clock-switching or staying put as our best judgement of our own needs indicates.

The government is unique among our social institutions in being able to force people to do things. Let's set aside the matter of whether it should be telling us how to set our clocks. (It didn't always do this, and I would argue it never should have, to put it mildly.)

Just on practical grounds, clock-switching shows that government mandates can force people to do things that are actively harmful, even when there is lots of evidence that they are actively harmful. We have lived for over a century with a practice that -- absent federal law -- the few this practice helps could have done anyway -- while the rest of us did what made sense to us.

There is a saying that if you can't trust a man in small matters, you shouldn't trust him in large ones. That goes at least double for the government, as the small matter of time has illustrated.

-- CAV

Updates

4-13-22: I have changed my mind about certain aspects of this bill, and now oppose it. More here.