Introduction
Right off the bat, I love sequels: not the ones Hollywood
cranks out, but the opportunities I sometimes get, with this blog, to piggyback
on a previous topic. If you even remotely enjoyed my last post, or enjoyed hating it, my second installment of Prop 7, One Year Later should grab you even more forcefully.
Perhaps it’ll even shake you around, like a dog with a rag doll!
In this post I explore in some detail the complete and total
clusterfuck Prop 7 would create, if it were actually approved by Congress.
First, a correction
In a response to the survey I sent around about Prop 7, one
respondent wrote, “Hawaii and Arizona don't observe daylight savings time, so I
didn't think Congress would care if California opted out of it.” I commented in
my post, “Ah, this is a confused voter (or abstainer). Prop 7 isn’t about
staying on standard time—it’s about staying on DST year-round.”
Well, I misconstrued the respondent’s meaning. He replied
(via email) that by “it” he meant “opting out of the Uniform Time Act of 1966,”
not “opting out of DST.” He did understand that Prop 7 was about year-round
DST, and his point is that if Congress already lets two states choose not to
conform to the Uniform Time Act, they should tolerate California opting out as
well (even if it’s a different flavor of opting out).
Can technology help?
This same respondent opined that modern technology platforms
such as Google Calendar and smartphones should make it feasible to handle the
complexity of three concurrent flavors of time observance—those being a) the status
quo; b) never observing DST; and c) observing DST year-round. He described his
exceedingly complicated workday routine and how it’s exacerbated by his kids’
byzantine schedules, but how it’s all manageable because he and his wife can
rely their electronic calendars.
I have to disagree with this
albertnet reader. You might imagine that my dissent is based on the fact of not
everybody using smartphones or calendar software. Actually, that doesn’t bother
me so much … if these outliers complain, we can just tell them to get with the
program. (I know, terrible pun—I couldn’t resist.) It’s also possible to fault
technology in general where DST is concerned. For example, my modern car clock
has a setting for automatically adjusting to DST but it quite simply doesn’t
work. Meanwhile, my microwave oven has a setting to automatically switch to DST,
but it couldn’t work because there’s
no way to program the oven with the date. But this is also just static. I have
a much bigger issue with my friend’s assertion. The fact is, where deviance from the Uniform Time Act is concerned, computer calendars are absolutely no
help.
These electronic tools work great for a complicated family
schedule because everyone is in the same time zone, so whatever tweaks are made
to DST will affect all family members the same. But interstate business, when DST
outliers are involved, is another story entirely. As I wrote in my first Prop 7 post, “Today, Monday, was rough. At work, an 11:00 a.m. conference call threw
people into a tailspin because the recurring appointment had been set up by
somebody in the Arizona time zone, where DST is not observed. For those outside
Arizona, the call automatically jumped forward by an hour on our electronic
calendars.”
To make this clearer: at the beginning of March, before DST
started, the 11:00 a.m. PST call was at noon MST (or to be more precise, noon
Arizona time because Arizona is given its own time zone in Microsoft Outlook
and Google Calendar). A week later when DST kicked in for CA, AZ hadn’t
changed, so the call was still at noon Arizona time. But since CA was now
synced with AZ (because PDT is the same as MST), the call suddenly moved to
noon for the Californians. This presented conflicts with other noon calls
already set up with other non-Arizonians. Despite everybody’s groovy electronic
calendar technology, these humans have to bicker about this situation twice a
year … and that’s all because one
state is doing one type of Uniform
Time Act exception.
If states could switch
to year-round DST…
If California were allowed to switch to year-round DST, of
course that would set precedent for other states to do the same. Suppose New
Mexico copied Arizona and stopped observing DST, while Colorado stayed as-is,
and then Wyoming went to year-round DST to be like the cool kids in California.
Clocks in this case would cease to reliably align with geography. The weekly
call for the Mountain/Desert Sales Region that covers these states would get unbelievably
screwed up twice a year when the time changed, as you shall see.
Let’s say the calendar event was created by the Regional Director
who works in Colorado. And let’s say it’s a 2:00 p.m. call: on November 1, this
would be 2:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (MDT), which equates to 1:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (MST) in New Mexico (due south of Colorado, in case your
sense of geography is worse than The Donald’s) and 2:00 p.m. MDT in Wyoming (due
north). So that’s your status quo. But a week later, on November 8 when CO
falls back, all hell breaks loose. For the CO folks, nothing changes except the
call goes from 2:00 p.m. MDT to 2:00 p.m. MST; their calendars aren’t really affected.
But the call moves from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. for the NM folks (because NM is now
synced with CO) so the NM folks would have to reschedule their other 2:00
calls. On top of that, this same call would become a 3:00 p.m. Wyoming call
(because they’d still be on MDT, so they’re now an hour ahead of CA). So
Wyoming would also have to move their
other calls to accommodate this!
How is this simpler than everybody changing their clocks
twice a year? It’s a complete debacle! You’ve got a call that, depending on the
state and the time of year, can take place at 1 p.m., 2 p.m., or 3 p.m., despite all
these states being at basically the same longitude!
And that’s just one
state opting out of DST and one state
going to year-round DST. Imagine if even just a handful of other states started
exercising their freedom to deviate from the Uniform Time Act in this way.
Electronic calendars notwithstanding, millions of Americans would be totally
confused. Time zones would become so variable, and so disconnected from
geography, people would go nuts.
Slippery slope?
Now, you might accuse me of a slippery slope fallacy—that
is, of overstating the downstream consequences of California getting its way.
But if you think about it, it’s highly likely other states would adopt
year-round DST if California was doing it. Imagine Washington state, with all the
tech companies headquartered there (e.g., Microsoft, Amazon, SAP Concur).
Surely they’re on conference calls with Silicon Valley companies all the time,
and would get tired of the rigmarole every time the clocks changed. Supposing Washington
state followed California’s lead, what do you think Oregon would do, sandwiched
as it is between the two? It would probably fall in line and adopt year-round
DST. With the entire west coast on year-round DST, other states with west coast
vendors, customers, and partners—like New York and Virginia—might be tempted,
too.
Many states wouldn’t, though. Montana isn’t exactly a hive
of interstate corporate activity, and if they went to year-round DST, the sun
wouldn’t rise in their northernmost city until 9:21 a.m. at the end of December.
It could be that northern states in general would tend to frown on year-round
DST due to such impractically late mornings. Southern states would probably
stay away from year-round DST too, because they have such hot weather. (Arizona’s
earlier sunrise gives its denizens a chance to exercise before it gets hotter
than balls out, and their earlier sunset means they don’t have to run their air
conditioning so late.) If anything, with this new shift away from the Uniform
Time Act, southern states might take the opportunity to copy Arizona and give
up DST completely.
With all this in mind it’s not hard to imagine a hopelessly
unmanageable situation with mass confusion every March and November, if
Congress decided to allow states to observe year-round DST. I highly doubt the
authors of CA Prop 7 ever considered any of this. Hopefully Congress has, and
will hold their ground when California comes around asking to do their own
thing.
Who cares?
If you’re still reading this, I’d guess you’re in the
minority of people who will bother to ponder such stuff. As I was trying to
discuss this with my wife (and already approaching the outer limits of her
attention), our daughter chimed in, “Why do we have to change the clocks at
all?!” I replied, “Well, if that’s not just a rhetorical question, I’m happy to
answer it.” Before she could even reply, my wife cut in: “No, no, she didn’t
mean it!” My wife might as well have added, “For God’s sake spare her … she’s just
a child!” My daughter was quick to
pile on: “Please don’t explain. I really don’t want to know.” (If you do want to know, click here and search the page for “Should we have DST?”)
Prop 7, especially given that it passed, is a great example of the limitations
of democracy. Most voters don’t want to wade very deep into complicated matters
of policy, but they still want to have their say. They demand simple answers,
but sometimes simple answers just don’t exist.
Consider this: seven out of ten Americans want to stop
changing their clocks, according to an Associated Press poll, as described here. The problem is, four in ten want to get rid of DST, and three in ten want to
adopt it year-round. Factoring in the three out of ten who are fine with the
status quo (i.e., changing the clocks twice a year), putting this matter to a
simple vote creates, essentially, a three-way tie. (Handing victory to the
slightly larger group, the four in ten who oppose DST completely, would
disappoint six in ten Americans … hardly a good solution.)
In the case of Prop 7, the Federal government needs to
ignore the California voters and do what’s right for the country. I know that
sounds brash, but I’m serious. Imagine if our government decided that states
should decide everything for themselves. Texas, for example, could decide
airport security was a pain in the ass, and that they didn’t need metal
detectors. I can envision a Texan politician arguing, “Why shouldn’t an American carry a gun on a plane? How better to stop
terrorists?!” Voters in Texas would love this because they’re tired of standing
in lines at airports, taking off their wristwatches and belts and shoes and so
forth, and might vote for the change as breezily as Californians voted for Prop
7. If Congress honored the wishes of these voters, you’d have armed
Texans flying everywhere, and the burden of disarming them would fall to
airports around the world, who would need metal detectors at the egress points
of each terminal. Why doesn’t this happen? Because, so far, the lawmakers in
Washington have the good sense to maintain the FAA as a nationwide body
applying the same rules in every state (and Texas hasn’t thought to propose
such a thing … that I’m aware of, anyway).
I’m optimistic, then, that Congress
is thinking harder about DST (or will, when the time comes) than the voters in California did, and the
simple-minded knobs that introduced Prop 7. If Americans across all fifty
states were to agree that changing the clocks twice a year wasn’t worth doing,
then Congress could come to some consensus about the best way forward: we could
all either abandon DST nationwide, or all adopt it year-round. Until and unless
that happens, I sincerely hope Washington tells California, “Go away, kid … ya
bother me.”
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