Changing clocks is annoying. So are the alternatives.

Unfortunately, there’s no elegant way to please both those who care most about having bright summer nights and those who care most about avoiding dark winter mornings. So if a good compromise leaves everyone a little unhappy, what we do now might be the fairest solution. As much as people love to gripe about it, changing clocks twice a year does give us the advantages of both systems: We get later sunsets most of the year, without the misery of super-late sunrises in the winter.

Of course, more is at stake here than just personal preferences—time is a matter of policy, with implications like any other piece of legislation. Changing the clocks has real downsides; “springing forward” in particular tends to cause brief upticks in the number of workplace injuries, fatal car crashes, heart attacks, and strokes, likely because of the disruption to people’s sleep. Those in favor of permanent DST predict that it would lead to less crime and increased consumer spending; those in favor of permanent standard time predict that it would lead to reduced gasoline consumption and better sleep.

Each system of timekeeping produces winners and losers. Many industries have favored DST because they stand to gain when people have more daylight after work to do stuff. Before Congress extended DST by three weeks starting in 1987, convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, the golf industry, and makers of barbecue equipment lobbied for the change. The National Association of Convenience Stores has claimed some credit for that expansion, which the trade group’s former chair once estimated eventually translated to tens of billions of dollars in additional revenues.