It’s that time of year, time to spring forward. Twice a year, once when we set our clocks back and when we set our clocks forward (or back to normal time?), I’m reminded about the awesomeness of capitalism. (I’m often reminded of the awesomeness of capitalism but a lot of times capitalism gets jumbled without a definitive outcome, standardized time is as precise of an example as it gets).
Lawrence W. Reed has the best explanation of standardized time in his article It Wasn’t Government that Fixed Your Clock. Basically, there was no such thing as standardized time until trains needed to be on time. This meant scheduling on a standardized time scale instead of the hyper-localized time zones that earlier existed.
Because of an innovative group of capitalist, we were left with the time zones we have today. As Reed puts it “What time is it? Thanks not to pretentious central planners but to creative entrepreneurs, no matter where you live, there’s been a uniform answer to that question for about a century.”