L.A. Liberty

End “Daylight Saving Time”

When ‘daylight savings time’ was explained to an old Indian, he said: ‘Only the government would claim to cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and end up with a longer blanket.’

We do not need a government mandate to get up an hour later during colder months or an hour earlier during warmer months. This forced cycle of stupidity that forever trades an hour now for an hour later merely exemplifies our subservience to the state. In fact, “daylight saving time” began as a result of one of the state’s favorite activities: during World War I as a way to save resources by reducing the amount of time people used artificial lighting (never mind that if fuel to power lighting became scarce, it would increase in price and people would naturally adjust their power usage accordingly).

As Murray Rothbard once said: “It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.” So in fighting a war we had no business being involved in (as is the case with too many wars), the state usurped the power to dictate our waking hours - and has never relinquished said power.

A change in the clock does not “give us more light”; the light is there, one need only employ a small bit of reasoning, self-reliance, and accountability. A “gain” in light in the evenings purportedly to minimize traffic accidents, if true, would naturally correlate with an increase in traffic accidents in the now darker mornings.

If I am a farmer and it behooves me to get up an hour later or earlier to avoid cold or make the most of the sunshine, I will do so (and indeed: farmers rise with the sun regardless of what their clocks read). If I am a distributor or grocer who works with farmers, it may be in my best interests to accomodate their fluctuating hours. The average consumer, meanwhile, likely need not be bothered.

To those comfortable with diminished liberty, this may be a small matter, but my self-ownership is absolute - in decisions large and small. Further still, the government’s ridiculous clock manipulations are unnecessary: free associations and free decisions always lead to mutually beneficial exchange and an ever-emergent natural order.

Update: see follow-up post here.

Posted March 13, 2011 at 11:10am in ∆ DST | comments || home