[tz] Egypt to have DST again

[Tim Parenti]

On 30 June 2016 at 13:23, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 06/30/2016 08:02 AM, Matt Johnson wrote:
>
>> Also, anyone have any insight into the $8M IATA fee they keep mentioning?
>>
>
> My vague impression is that they're referring to an estimated cost to
> airlines etc. of switching schedules, not to a formal IATA fee. Perhaps
> someone from the IATA estimated the cost. This is just a guess, though.


If only it were made more clear that there very likely exists a point in
time beyond which the costs incurred from having to deal with any
particular observance or non-observance of DST are dwarfed by the costs
incurred from uncertainty and duplication of effort in the lead-up to and
in the wake of last-minute policy changes.

I can't claim knowledge of the relative size of potential economic
impacts... but this close to a proposed change (~a week out), it's almost
certainly not a simple matter of "we can either change the clocks or not,
and that will either incur a cost or not", but rather the (apparently) more
complex matter of "costs are currently being incurred already because no
decision has been finalized, and costs will tend to decrease once a
decision has been finalized either way (although perhaps by unequal
amounts)".

It turns out that, in our interconnected world, people, corporations, and
indeed entire industries like to be able to plan timings reliably more than
a handful of days ahead.  While folks are generally able to collectively
deal with uncertainty like this, preparing workarounds and creating backup
plans, we're well past the point where the total human effort involved will
be minimal... and since the preparations currently must involve at least
one potential outcome that *won't* ultimately come to fruition, those costs
will likely only grow until people are finally able to focus those
resources solely on the outcome that will actually happen.

</preaching_to_the_choir>

--
Tim Parenti
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/attachments/20160701/a6ecd8e8/attachment.html>