[maxwell]

UTC is problematic since it splits the day: when it's midnight in Greenwich, it's still yesterday for half the world. The Unix epoch occurred in 1969 in Hawaii.

BIT (UTC-12) is better. Only positive offsets. Everyone on the same day.

[schoen]

Don't you get the "it's already tomorrow for half the world" problem in place of the "it's still yesterday for half the world"?

[maxwell]

No, not with UTC-12 (all positive offsets) or UTC+12 (all negative offsets). Any other anchor time zone creates separate days, i.e. positive and negative offsets.

[NoInkling]

What happens if a country that's currently at the new UTC-12 anchor wants to move back an hour under that system? Are they forced to "wrap around" and move to the next day instead? Or do you move the anchor itself back (to UTC-13) just to accommodate them?

[maxwell]

Nothing to prevent sovereign countries from declaring to be on different day if they want to.

The BIT anchor would not be changed for political reasons, unless approved by residents of Baker Island.