I was thinking recently. What would the world look like without governments around the world saying, “hey, it’s 3:00pm in my capital. What time is it in your capital?”
If there wasn’t a state to tell everyone to obey the same time standards everyone would be walking around with watches saying different times.
Appointments would be missed, people would have breakfast at random times, children would stay up as late as they wanted to… It would be total Chaos!!!
IIRC, it was the major railroads that created time zones to prevent missed trains. The state only made it official after the fact.
lol, without fiat time zones, the evil capitalists could create new time zones daily and thus trick the poor serfs into working 20 hours a day! (for 3 cents an hour of course)
I work with systems development, and I find it frustrating how “Daylight Savings Time” takes resources when developing software. How wonderful it would be if those resources could be spent otherwise!
Are time zones really state imposed?
As shazam said, they were originally created by railroads, without any government involvement. Today, Wikipedia says that they’re “legally mandated”, but not by who. I’m guessing that each country decides what time it uses.
The time zones themselves are based on the fact that mass transportation systems need a means to synchronize their travel. This is especially true of planes and trains. Trains were where the time zone idea came about. Prior to trains, it was whatever folks could guess based on the position of the sun (+/- whatever clocks they had on hand). All time zones did was codify what was given: the sun is at different points in the sky relative to location.
What I would love to see DIAF with regard to time zones is the daylight ‘savings’ time concept. There’s nothing worse than having to move a clock an hour ahead or back just because it ‘adds’ time to the day (which it doesn’t). There’s no real reason to have them, and all they do is make me (and others) grumpy when the shift occurs.
Well, some people like an extra hour of daylight in the evening, as opposed to before or when they are at work. People have fixed office hours, and moving the clock is convenient in that regard for a whole lot of people. This is an argument which is more relevant in places like Alaska and Scandinavia than in the contiguous States of those United States.
That said, there are of course consequences with moving the clock. Not only do we have to adjust ourselves, but also our clocks, and computer systems must be designed and developed to handle 23 and 25 hour days. As mentioned previously, there are better uses for the resources that go to this.
Moreover, people should adjust their schedules, rather than force the consequences of DST upon those who have to carry the cost of their luxury of having daylight in the evening instead of in the morning.
I live in the UK and there’s often talk about how DST is unnecessary and has detrimental affects. As well as the waste that is caused by shifting everyone’s clock backwards or forwards an hour twice a year I’ve also read accounts of how it has led to deaths because of people waking up technically earlier even though it still says the same time on their clock, and due to it being darker outside they are more likely to get into accidents, the most common of which being car accidents. In fact, I believe it has been discussed in Scottish parliament if Scotland should pull out of DST which, at present, the whole of the UK observes.
To be honest, yes it is an aggressive institution, as some people in this thread have said, it didn’t start out as a government institution but it is now a government institution; there are plenty of examples of other institutions like this, so the state-imposed time zone is certainly not unique, but is it really something worth targeting? I’d rather attack the government as a whole, and pick out some of their major wrongdoing, time zones are largely a passive institution and in a free market society I really doubt that things would be done a great deal differently with regards to time.
Do they throw me in jail if I set my wristwatch an hour and 13 minutes earlier? I don’t thinks so, so it’s a voluntary institution, not an aggressive one.
Dairy cows don’t know what time it is.
I know a number of individuals that pay little attention to what time it is. Lives centered on the accomplishment of tasks, particularly productive tasks, don’t have much incentive to abide formal time constraints. Except for being on time to pick up parts or attend services on Sunday morning time is feeding time, milking time, fence-fixin’ time, harvest, plant or time to eat.
Even months have lesser time significance than breeding cycles, weather, or soil condition.
Very little there to suggest that time zones are an aggressive institution.
Do you engage in interstate commerce ?
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usc.html
ec. 262. Duty to observe standard time of zones
Within the respective zones created under the authority of sections 261 to 264 of this title the standard time of the zone shall insofar as practicable (as determined by the Secretary of Transportation) govern the movement of all common carriers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce. In all statutes, orders, rules, and regulations relating to the time of performance of any act by any officer or department of the United States, whether in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of the Government, or relating to the time within which any rights shall accrue or determine, or within which any act shall or shall not be performed by any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, it shall be understood and intended that the time shall insofar as practicable (as determined by the Secretary of Transportation) be the United States standard time of the zone within which the act is to be performed.
Perfect proof that serious consideration intercedes with the available information!
Not in any sense, shape, form.