Daylight Savings: A Microcosm

Why can’t we change Daylight Savings Time?

Because it’s a microcosm for our entire system of self-government at this point in history.

2001, Wikimedia Commons

It’s been a while since anyone has told me Daylight Savings Time is helpful. Designed for industrializing societies so as to preserve daylight at the end of the workday and modernly to save energy on lighting and heating, the actual advantage of DST is disputed in balance of the sleep disruptions, travel disruptions, and record-keeping complications that it often causes.

What may have once been useful is generally groaned over and begrudgingly tolerated now. We could opt out as a country or as a state, but we don’t. Why? Well, to boil it down, it’s because of lobbyists.

While some industries like airlines dislike DST for the confusion it causes or for the late sunrise times it creates, others like it. Sporting goods manufacturers and facilities like the extra hour of daylight after work for people to take part in outdoor sports. And retailers prefer it because people shop more in the daylight. And these groups have put together lobbies that have kept our representatives, both at the state and federal level, from allowing DST to expire for about a century (give or take some extra complications).

I feel like that’s our entire country right now. Things that may have once been useful but most of us agree now need changing—even if we don’t fully agree on how—go entirely unaddressed because the status quo benefits a powerful someone or group of someones who has our representatives by the campaign purse strings.

And to hide their intentional inaction, our representatives put on acts of political theater, accusing each other of the same inaction they display, feigning persecution, and busying themselves with politically deadlocked or radical topics that appeal to their voters but are unlikely to succeed at anything but wasting time.

Because talk is cheap, Tales from Lansing is very carefully designed to highlight the actual actions of our state-level representatives, rather than focusing on the endless words—often of little value—that stream from politicians of every stripe.

Because I think the only way we’re going to start learning how to elect better politicians is to pay more attention to their actions than their words.

And then maybe we’ll all sleep better at night, and not just because of the repeal of Daylight Savings Time.