Every year, on the first Sunday of November and the second Sunday of March, the clock is either set back or set forward by an hour. According to polls in 2025, only 12% of Americans actually support daylight savings while 54% of Americans are ready to end the practice entirely. So why hasn't Congress done anything?
Olson's logic of collective action helps explain this. Ending the clock change is a collective good; people benefit regardless of whether they contributed. Because each person's share of the benefit is so small, no individual has an incentive to bear the cost of organizing and would rather free ride off of everyone else. The group is also so large that not everyone agrees on how to end daylight savings: should the time be Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time? These complications make this a latent group, where no individual can affect what will happen.
On the other hand, Olson argues that smaller groups have lower organizing costs and larger benefits per member. This is why they are more successful in overcoming the free-rider problem and achieving their collective goal. For example, the candy industry lobbied to extend daylight savings to November, believing an extra hour of daylight would bring in more revenue. While for a candy company, an extra hour of daylight is an extra hour of revenue, for most Americans, it is a minor inconvenience that is not worth the cost of lobbying.
If Americans really want to end daylight savings, they would need to find a selective incentive to get organized so that they can actually achieve their goal.
1 comment:
Beyond the agonizing loss of sleep the “Spring Forward” component of Daylight Savings poses for us all, I’d like to share and build upon another personal dimension of Daylight Savings: our twice-a-week 7:30am buddy walk to Public Choice from our apartment building. This very commute block is shared by millions of school-aged children nationwide, and has been the focus of much Daylight Savings debate, with Permanent Daylight Savings Time legislation expected to result in more than “2 billion additional dark-morning school commutes annually” (CNN). Researchers have noted the safety risks of these “dark-commutes,” emphasizing that 10,000 fatal crashes occurred between 7-8:30am in 2015-2024 school years (CNN). This concern and its representative Pressure Group, the PTA, are one of the biggest reasons the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 stalled in Senate.
The PTA and its individual DST cost are only a fraction of the greater market picture, with dozens of Pressure Groups competing against imminent deadweight loss costs under one of two additional stances: Pro-Permanent Daylight Savings or Pro-Status Quo. Examples include the PGA Tour (Former) fighting for millions of additional daylight play hours (Politico) and the A4A (Latter) fighting against flight schedule disruptions (OpenSecrets). The emergence of Pressure Groups/Opposition in response to deadweight loss costs serves as evidence of Becker’s inter-group competition logic in our political economy. Furthermore, Olson concludes that small groups dominate big groups due to free-riding. Such a conclusion predicts A4A (with only 10 members) as the clear winner in the DST battle. The PTA’s dominance (with 3 million members and a non-member-exclusive “daylight-commute” potential benefit) is a divergence from Olson’s Model in support of Becker’s “ambiguous group size effect.”
Thus, the DST dispute sits at the intersection of both Olson (as Nora discussed in-length above) and Becker’s ideologies, confirming several characteristics of each model in the real world. It’s a good thing we took Public Choice this semester, as increased DST deadweight loss costs and their respective Pressure Group battles might force future students into buying flashlights!
Links (unable to hyperlink):
CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/29/health/daylight-saving-time-children-sleep-wellness
OpenSecrets: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/03/is-permanent-daylight-saving-time-a-good-idea-lobbyists-lawmakers-and-sleep-experts-are-split/
Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/03/trump-tom-cotton-cell-phone-daylight-savings-01105998
USNews: https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/what-does-a-parent-teacher-association-do
MRO: https://mroevents.aviationweek.com/articles/airlines-for-america-the-industry-trade-organization-for-leading-u-s-airlines/
Post a Comment