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Why don't we have one timezone covering the whole earth?

And instead changing the time work and other things happens depending on where you are. Would be easier to arrange meetings across the globe. Same thing applies to summertime. You may start work earlier if you want, but dont change the clocks!

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  • People that proposes to replace local timezones with global UTC must be living in europe where it doesn't impact them much if we do abolish the timezone. Now consider people that lives in the other side of the planet. Most people are active during the day, yet for them, the day will end right in the afternoon under the new system. So you tell your friend "hey, let's meet tomorrow", then your friend would be like "do you mean this afternoon, or in the morning next day?". No way people living in the asia pacific would accept this without military intervension.

    • I think they mean concepts like morning and evening, or day and night would remain. The difference would be that in London, midnight would be 12:00am, but in San Fransisco, midnight would be... 16:00 / 4:00pm. Each timezone would have to adjust the numbers, in the same way the southern hemisphere considers January to be in the summer.

      • isn't that just timezones with extra steps?

      • I think the compromise would be the country/region that proposes global time should get the +12h offset. If the benefit really outweigh the pain for them, then they can deal with such a large offset themselves and spare the rest of the world from the brunt of the pain.

        • nah, a 12-hour offset is boring and easy to deal with. give them a 6-hour offset.

          • 12h offset is where it causes the maximum confusion to society because the date changes right in the middle of the day. In our personal and professional live, we never considered the date can change right in the middle of the day, causing wide variety of minor inconvenience in our daily life. Some examples of minor inconveniences:

            • Celebrating new year at noon. No more firework shows (could be good for the environment?).
            • Is today your friend's birthday yet? Or is it in the afternoon?
            • should we celebrate christmas on 24th-25th or 25th-26th? Will Santa sneaks into our house at noon?
            • and possibly more minor inconveniences...
    • must be living in europe

      This is a very dismissive argument. I live in a time zone where the day number would roll over during my waking day. But I still think that it would be better overall. (But not worth the switching costs.)

      “do you mean this afternoon, or in the morning next day?”

      It takes very little imagination to realize that this would not be an issue. "Tomorrow" would almost certainly be interpreted as roughly the next daylight period. This issue already exists as people are often up at midnight and somehow we don't get confused when people say "I'll see you tomorrow" at 23:55. We know that they don't mean in 5min. This is just a source of jokes, but no one gets confused.

      The real issue would be things like "want to meet on wednesday" if there is a transition during working hours or "want to go out for dinner on the 17th" if the day transition happens near dinner time. I think this would be the hardest part to adapt to, but language is a flexible thing and I doubt it would take long for it to adapt.

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