What’s wrong with Time Zones?

I’m glad you asked! There are multiple answers to that question. Let’s list them out, shall we?

1. They do not follow any sort of consistent pattern. 
   The entire reason why we originally created Time Zones (which was to better communicate the local time between railroad stations) is completely negated by the fact that Time Zones are divided up by countries in a political manner rather than a geographical one. Some countries prefer to split themselves into multiple Time Zones while other countries do not. This can lead to irregular and absurd jumps in time when traveling between countries bordering one another. A major example of this is China and Afghanistan. The entirety of China uses only one Time Zone, so when crossing into Afghanistan, the time changes by 3 hours and 30 minutes.  The biggest example by far though is the International Date Line, where the time changes by an entire day! 
2. They perpetuate an extremely outdated and primitive way of thinking about time. 
   Our ancestors were limited to what they could do when it wasn’t daytime, so they measured their time based on the appearance of the sun in the sky. This is why they built sundials. Today however, billions of people are able to continue doing whatever they please after the sun goes down because of electricity and artificial light (obviously). If this is the case, then why would we still use a system of time that stems from observing the sun’s position? The 24 hour system that we currently use doesn’t even exactly line up with one rotation of the Earth. It’s just a close average of all the different amounts of hours an “Earth day” can have in a given year. 
3. Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) already exists and is way simpler than our current Time Zone system. 
   Look, I understand that the idea of having to get used to a whole new system of time seems like way too much of a hassle for the average person. But at the same time, I am certain it can be done. Just as the French got the entirety of Europe and then almost the whole world to use the Metric System. Using UTC with standardized, non-political Time Zone borders instead of our current Time Zone format would drastically simplify the way we talk about time globally. Let’s say you’re in Sweden and you text your friend in Australia that you’ll call them at 2:00pm, you’ll both know that you’re talking about the same 2:00pm. Where in our current system, time conversions would make the same interaction far more complicated and could lead to either of you misunderstanding what time the other person meant.

What I want you to take away from all of this:

In our modern age, the way tell the time is way too clunky, outdated, and most of all, political. There’s no real life need for Sunrise to be at 6:00am and for Sunset to be at 6:00pm (give or take a few hours depending on where you are and the time of year [this is the exact reason our current Time System sucks]). If I’m in New York and noon is UTC 5:00pm (17:00), the fact that the number is no longer 12:00pm doesn’t matter. 5:00pm is going to end up meaning the same exact thing to me as 12:00pm once did. The numbers we use to tell the time only have as much meaning as we give them. The meanings we give them as of now are solely based on arbitrary lines and unnecessary tradition. 

If you’re with me, lend me your signature and help the whole world enter a new age of simpler time and easier communication.

(You can also watch this video by Mr. Beat to further understand how Time Zones work and what the problems with them are.)

https://youtu.be/qjUT7FbmNZ8