Exactly. By GP's logic, time zones are absolutist, and every town could & should observe solar noon independently.
I think folks are averse to "world time" (for reasons, largely inertial), so maybe the baby step is try 1 timezone per country (like China's done for .. 75 years ?).
I'd even argue Local Time has only ~4 useful times: dawn, daytime, dusk, & nighttime. Where I grew up, the parks closed at dusk every day. Nobody complained
If I take a walk at 7:05:35 PM every day, it seems very precise but doesn't indicate whether I need sunglasses or a flashlight. It's meaningless precision, like 0.6235 slices of pizza. If I'm coordinating a walk with you, I might as well use UTC: it still won't tell light from dark, but at least nobody'll be waiting for an hour due to DST. It'd make more sense to schedule our walk at `1 hour before dusk`, or "just" settle for UTC, IMO.
China did that for political reasons. The Republic of China used five, and Russia uses two timezones across those longitudes. Similarly, I also find it quite weird that France and Spain are in CET. France shifted when it was occupied in WWII, but maybe it's justified to remain in CET to reduce friction with the economies of its eastern neighbors. Whatever. Vive la weird. Countries do that to themselves.
A deviation of half an hour from noon is barely perceptible unless you use a sunclock. People can roughly estimate when the sun will set by just looking at local time and considering the current season. What throws a wrench in the works is daylight saving time. I fully agree that DST a huge annoyance and that its benefits were always rather situational.
I think folks are averse to "world time" (for reasons, largely inertial), so maybe the baby step is try 1 timezone per country (like China's done for .. 75 years ?).
I'd even argue Local Time has only ~4 useful times: dawn, daytime, dusk, & nighttime. Where I grew up, the parks closed at dusk every day. Nobody complained
If I take a walk at 7:05:35 PM every day, it seems very precise but doesn't indicate whether I need sunglasses or a flashlight. It's meaningless precision, like 0.6235 slices of pizza. If I'm coordinating a walk with you, I might as well use UTC: it still won't tell light from dark, but at least nobody'll be waiting for an hour due to DST. It'd make more sense to schedule our walk at `1 hour before dusk`, or "just" settle for UTC, IMO.