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Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?
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this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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Because that would be a nightmare. "I'll meet you for lunch at 2AM", "No, I had a huge breakfast yesterday". You would need to relearn the times every time you went to a different place, "oh, right, the restaurants only serve lunch until 10AM" or "Sorry sir, but there's an extra fee for night time services starting 1PM". Those are much more likely day-to-day phrases than scheduling a meeting with someone from another continent. And you don't gain anything by this, because whenever you're communicating across timezones you can simply use UTC as a standard and everyone knows how to convert that to their own time. So there's no good reason and a lot of drawbacks.
I am baffled that needs explanation!
Only because we're already familiar with the current way of doing things, though. If we had all been on UTC for our entire lives, it would be a simple matter of getting to a new place, asking when local noon is, and going about our business.
"Hey, when is local noon here?"
"'bout 0330."
"Cool, thanks. Want to get together for drinks tomorrow night? Say, around 1045?"
They're all just numbers. They have no inherent meaning, only what we imbue then with.
It would get a little bit tricky with the date switching over in the middle of the day, of course. In my mind, that's the biggest reason.
So every time you deal with somebody in a different location, you can't assume anything about the hours and times you have to ask them or go look it up Even if you have a decent idea where they live because you're not going to know the time disparity of every city out there.
So… like it is already? Ever tried to call someone in a different time zone? It’s fine-ish 1 or maybe 2 hours off, but much beyond that still requires a minimum of research.
Why exactly is asking for "what time is the local noon" more convenient than asking "what timezone is this"?
How is "local noon is at 2:45" somehow easier to adjust to than "adjust your clock by X hours"? You don't need to relearn every thing like what time breakfast is served when local noon is 08:50.
Answer quickly, if noon is 0330 what time is dinner, what is a 9-5 job and what time do you expect to have breakfast. There are lots of adjustments you will need to make, whereas with the current system you know that as a general rule you can expect dinner at around 8, most people to work 9-5, and places to serve breakfast at 8 or 9, so you switch your clock when you arrive and you're done.
If you're a local who never moved timezones z then yeah it makes no difference what the numbers are, you would get used to waking up at 9PM and switching date midway through the day, there might even be 2 different words for tomorrow, one for the next day one for the next date, but the moment you traveled to a different location all of your years of being used to general time where things happen go out the window, it's much more of a hassle than adjusting your clock and assuming times will be mostly similar.
Yep. I can tell you that dinner would be around 0930, but you're right that the other calculations are tougher.
I'm not saying this would be better. Either system has trade-offs. I'm saying that each of them would be equally weird from the other side.