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0 pointsxoa2y ago0 comments

>We legislate lots of things without consensus with 51-49 majorities.

We really do not in the US when it's a matter of genuine controversy. Once in a long while something gets forced through if the status quo is just unsustainable or it's a core plank issue or something, but the system isn't designed to allow anyone hitting 51 to easily pass anything contentious. And that's with your implicit take that there is a 51-49, but that's the thing, it's not a dichotomy in the first place. It's more like 25/25/40/5/3/1/1. Plus this isn't some inherently critical issue, for most people it's at most a minor irritation twice per year. For some it's a minor enjoyable, "free sleep". And thus status quo rules :).

>People in the past had a very different time environment. I used to have 1 watch. Now I have a dozen different clocks in my apartment.

Indeed! Our clocks used to not have global sub-millisecond automatic time synchronization.

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anon848736282y ago

>Plus this isn't some inherently critical issue, for most people it's at most a minor irritation twice per year. For some it's a minor enjoyable, "free sleep".

I want to push back on this a bit. It's not just the moment of change itself, it's how wall time compares to the sun.

And the problem with that is business hours being stuck to wall time. Essentially the government controls how business hours relate to the sun, instead of expecting each entity to change their business hours with the seasons (or not) as desired. This goes back to the time when business hours posted on a door were much more important.

If you are stuck in a "9-5" job or otherwise are committed to what the clock says, the time change significantly controls your interaction with the sun.