Published Apr 4, 2005
A favorite conservative cause is the evil of government regulation. They rail against the economic loss caused by taxes — a loss known in economics as deadweight loss. But who ever thinks of the non-economic deadweight loss caused by government regulation? What about the most serious loss of all — daylight savings time! Yes, just yesterday, the Federal Government’s inefficient regulations caused a deadweight loss of one hour’s sleep to us all!
The basic concept behind deadweight loss is this: whenever there’s an inefficiency in the market, some economic value simply disappears. This is actually pretty easy to prove mathematically, although I can’t do it without graphs and I’m too lazy to draw one of those. Inefficiency can be caused by many things, including:
- Tarriffs
- Poor estimations of available future labor
- Incomplete information exchange
- Wireless broadband
- Michael Jackson trial
Conservatives always focus on the cash losses from taxes and other forms of government regulations. Yet they forget about the most important asset of all, the thing of which neither you, nor I, nor, most especially, soccer moms, ever have enough. They’re taking away time.
(And don’t give me that crap about us getting back an hour in the Fall. We all know an hour now is worth more than an hour later — after all, with that hour now you can Just Get Stuff Done, but, with that hour in the future, well, you’ll just waste your time trying to Clean Up After Your Own Procrastination.)
Daylight savings time is a redistributive tax levied on all of us for the benefit of a few farmers. Perhaps, once, long, long ago, when the wildebeest roamed the veldt and the buffalo the plains, Daylight Savings Time represented a redistribution of precious time from lazy townsfolk to the hard-working farmers who formed the backbone of our society; but not today. Today, Big Government steals an hour of sleep from all of us to subsidize Big Corn and Big Beet Sugar. Does Big Soybeans really need our help?
I say no. I say stand up to the Sleep & Spend Congressmen in Washington. Show you don’t appreciate having your sleep taken away. Stick it to the man. Sleep in.
There’s some fairly good evidence, actually, that switching to permanent Daylight Savings Time, rather than doing the back-and-forth thing, would lead to reduced power usage, and possibly more economic activity and better health. Basically, because of the strength of the customs of businesses working 9am-5pm (roughly), people are willing to get out of bed in the dark, and as they’re preparing for work they don’t do a lot of power-intensive things. (I know, personally, that in the morning I don’t even like to turn on bright lights — I’ll prefer a nightlight or small reading light.) By extending daylight hours in the evening, we get people to spend more time outside the home, reducing their use of power (for heating/cooling the house, and for running lights and TVs and the like), and leading to more engagement in physical activities (jogging, pickup basketball, etc) and economic ones (taking a walk through the local commercial district, going to a sporting event, whatever).