You want truth? The truth is that having every employer who has been using the 9-5 or 8-5 schedule change to some flexible system is never, ever happening.
I don't see the raw numbers, but the chart seems to indicate Americans waking up slightly before 7, maybe 6:50am? Not too far off from the source I found of 7:09am, and is still approximately 2 hours after you wake up.
And congrats at being disciplined. The vast vast vast majority of Americans aren't. And changing the habits of hundreds of millions of people is a pipe dream and really irrelevant to this conversation.
The jobs I've worked outside we started the day in the dark often times (construction, landscaping). What jobs have you worked that required perfect natural lighting the entire time? I'm assuming it's a decent minority of jobs.
You wake up 2 hours earlier than the average American (which apparently is about 7:09am). Things aren't and shouldn't be optimized for your abnormal sleep pattern.
> If a kid has to suffer through getting up on 5 hours sleep they probably won't make that mistake again.
... I don't think you've met kids before. The vast majority absolutely won't learn.
> Living a larger part of the day in darkness isn't good for most people's happiness, energy use aside.
Standard time moves sunlight to the morning, when people are sleeping. Permanent DST should give people the same or more sunlight during their waking hours. You'd have the same amount, waking up at 5am and assuming you don't sleep until at least 8:30pm.
> why is "turn on the lights" good enough for early risers but not for late-to-beds or night owls?
I literally say my reasoning in my comment. It's much harder to light up the outdoors for outdoor activities after work/school. I can't use sunlight in the morning for anything other than a wake-up aid.
> No one wants their first couple hours of the day to be darkness.
Why? What are you using the first couple hours of your day for except to get ready for work? Complete waste to do that in the daylight.
> Secondly, it's more dangerous for kids walking to school.
We should be pushing back school starting times anyway. If they're old enough to walk to school, then they don't need their parents to wait for them to leave before going to work, so that typical argument goes out the window.
> And lastly we use more energy since a larger part of our day is lived in the darkness for most people.
A weak argument IMO. Studies are not conclusive on the actual savings, and most of the ones that are out there say they save minimal energy. Besides, I think the mental health benefits of having more useful hours in the evening are worth the extra 0.5-1% energy usage.
You can't just "turn on the lights" for outdoor activities except in very specific cases. Those activities can't really be done in the morning because people have to get ready for school/work during that time. I really don't want to waste perfectly good sunlight getting ready for work. Let me use it when it can actually be used.
Light in the evening is massively more useful than light in the morning. Sports, hobbies, anything involving the outdoors. It's not really useful to have that hour in the morning when you're just getting ready for school/work anyway.
> I didn't buy a Tesla because of its Autopilot feature. If they pulled the feature today, I'd be totally fine with that.
Many many people paid $1000+ for the promise of Full Self-Driving that doesn't exist. People definitely care about the Autopilot feature a lot more than you.
> It's like a "smart" cruise control
Except they call it Autopilot! You can't call something Autopilot and then blame people for expecting the car to drive itself.
Call it lane assist or cruise control plus or something.
California has the highest income tax rate of any state. So... any state with comparable or worse infrastructure. And there's quite a few of them [1] [2] [3]