DST is nothing more than a government trick to get people to get up earlier. This trickery may result in a better usage of daylight hours in some cases but also messes with people natural body clocks, and has other down sides as mentioned in other comments. It’s best if we use standard times based as closely to sun (local) time as possible. Then people can get up early or late as they see fit, workplaces can set their hours earlier to get off early if they choose, schools can set them later so kids won’t be out in the dark, etc., based on what works best, instead of being tricked into doing so by a fake clock.
Here’s another idea. Every March, those of us who HATE DST are faced with the dreaded “Spring Forward” effect in which everyone loses an hour of sleep so that they can be cranky and unproductive for the following week, with absolutely no discernable benefit. The hour eventually returns in the fall (much like the puzzler), but by then it’s too late to recover.
Why don’t we just set our clocks BACK one hour every month? This way, we can look forward to a refreshing gain of an hour’s sleep on a regular basis. It also would be a major boon for productivity, since every US time zone would be aligned with another time zone somewhere in the world once every 24 months (Note that this critical advantage will only last until everyone else in the world realizes what a brilliant idea this is and decides to copy us, so SPEED IS OF THE ESSENCE!)
We need to motivate the vast listener base (at least, those who are awake) to move this idea forward with the alacrity it so justly deserves.
To avoid wasting any sunlight, I suggest we synchronize our clocks each day so that 6 am is always set to the actual sunrise. This avoids unwanted sun in our eyes when we are trying to sleep and extends the day to its maximum length to obtain all the benefits you have described. This continuous synchronization can be accomplished using a bit of software and a world-wide clock synchronization system. The benefits will be tremendous.
Ever heard of “British Double Summer Time”? It was tried during WWII. (You can find out more on Wikipedia under “British Summer Time.”)
I propose something much simpler than “double daylight time”: re-drawing the time zone boundaries so that (for instance) New England would be part of Atlantic time. (Due to latitude and the way the time zones are drawn, early darkness is the biggest problem in NE. Leave the rest of the country out of it for now. Boston would enjoy the same longer daylight hours that Michigan now enjoys – and you never see anyone in Michigan saying the sun sets too late.
This continuous synchronization can be accomplished using a bit of software and a world-wide clock synchronization system. The benefits will be tremendous. <<
So it’s 6:05 where you are and 6:12 a bit West and 6:17 a little farther, etc. Good plan.