The concept of a single global
time zone is not one without merit, and its implementation would certainly be economically attractive and beneficial for many. But just what segment of our globalized society would really benefit from this? The growth of our global telecommunications infrastructure has become a big pain in the ass for a growing percentage of people on Earth, who are subjected to work-schedules (or lack of any semblance of a schedule) which fall far outside of the conventions in which they co-habitate. Millions of people are living out-of-synch with their neighbors, their families, and the hours that the
DMV is open.
A manager may think that it is a great boon to be able to hold a weekly 2-hour conference at 1000 hours with her underlings located in branches flung across the five continents. Yet to the underlings who have to undertake this meeting at dinner time or when his wife and kids are fast asleep, this phenomena is about as popular as Wal-Mart now being open on Thanksgiving to the poor associates having to brave the Black Friday hoardes rather than eating Turkey with their families.
It is no great revelation that some folks spend much of their working lives on the night shift. I work in a factory which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. My factory manufactures plastic containers in a highly automated process. The machines my factory were built in Switzerland, Germany, France and Japan. We even own one machine which was built in that far flung backwater known as New Jersey. When breakdowns occur which result in unexpected downtime during local daytime hours, and technical assistance from the builders and programmers of the machine is needed, it may be dinner time in Europe or in the dead of the night in Asia.
Even with the miracle of the Ethernet, which can allow a technician half-way around the earth to go online with a down machine's processor to troubleshoot it, getting hold of a person and getting them out of bed to come into the office may be unlikely. Now, a 24-hour call center may be able to employ legions of unskilled, semi-literate phone-answers to assist you whenever your cable television service is disrupted, but in an industry where a machine's broken subassembly costs more than two brand new cars, well-paid engineers are dear. These people still expect to go home for dinner while the sun is still shining in the west.
The only benefit that I can see of having a single global time zone would be to make a single global workday. Everyone on earth goes to work and leaves work at the same moment, without fail! If a second or third shift is necessary, then they all start and end their shifts in similar global unison. If your boss had a weekly meeting at 1000 hours, then it would be followed by lunch for every one the world over. One could imagine something like every Civil Defense Siren on earth sounding off three times a day without a corner of the earth to escape the alarm. The trouble would be deciding who gets to eat their lunch when the sun is highest in the sky?
If one were to propose to the CEO of Siemens Energy and Automation, for example, that a single global time zone should be implemented for these reasons, he or she would likely agree that having the whole assets of Siemens Energy and Automation and all of it's global partners and customers in said time zone would be a boon. Germans love efficiency after all, right? Naturally, our CEO would also think to make 1200 hours the time of day in which the sun is highest in the sky in Germany. I think that it would be safe to say that the CEOs of General Motors and of Mitsubishi would also think that 1200 hours should be the time when the sun is highest in the sky in Detroit and Tokyo respectively.
Maybe someday, when the majority of the world's assets are owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland or whatever corporation the Illuminati are hiding behind, some all-powerful uber-executive will look up into the sky at noon, local-CEO time. He or she may tap out a memo to his underlings on his or her iPhone and decree that DeutchesBankCostcoYumFoods LLC is now on the Unified Global Time zone and all vendors and distributors had better follow suit or be banished from the gravy train.
Maybe someday. Until then, you may still have trouble traveling in Indiana.