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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

Compared to the US, Germany is more regulation heavy in general. Many of those regulations seem fine or even great, there are definitely ones that weird me out a bit as an American living here though, like legally enforced quiet hours on Sunday, days where it's illegal to dance, and really just the large amount of government-religion interaction.

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The US has lots of overbearing regulations and laws relating to "moral" stuff such as drinking and nudity. In many places in the US, it's illegal to drink alcohol in public [!!!]. That's pretty fucked up, not being allowed to drink a beer on a park bench. And don't get me started on the puritan anti-nudity laws...

I don't know. The US does seem to also have its fair share of strange, overbearing laws to the point where you can easily find "weirdest us laws" lists online:

https://www.businessinsider.com/weird-us-laws?r=US&IR=T

Those are generally on the books because they are unenforced, so nobody even thinks to remove them. Were they enforced, they'd be struck quickly. Sometimes that even happens.

Are the ones in Germany enforced? Honest question, I don't know, and I'm interested in the answer.

Quiet Hours on Sundays? Definitely enforced.

Dancing Ban? Usually not unless you're either A) a very big venue or B) a public place like a school. But for either cases it wouldn't matter much since most of them are closed on those days since they are usually national holidays anyway.

I'm more worried about the lack of certain laws in the US - like worker protection, minimum wage, working hours kinda laws.

> I'm more worried about the lack of certain laws in the US - like worker protection,

OSHA, workman comp

> minimum wage,

Present

> working hours kinda laws.

Overtime/holiday pay.

What's lacking again?

> Overtime/holiday pay

You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law. Also missing from US law: parental leave and sick days. None of these things are mandated, they are purely up to individual companies to optionally provide, which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

What's this then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...

> Also missing from US law: parental leave. which just isn't good enough in the rest of the world.

So, I checked, and out of the 193 countries in the world, only 41 mandate parental leave. [1]

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/u-s-lacks-m...

You're misreading the article. This is out of a 41 country sample by the OECD. A lot more countries actually implement parental leave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#By_country

And even so. Do you want the US to be ranked together with developed nations or places like Papua New Guinea and ... Huh, turns out that's the only other country listed besides the US that has no paid maternity leave.

> You are severely misinformed if you believe these to be mandated by law.

The US Department of Labor says they are:

https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/overtimepay

In the US, the government dictates what hours you're allowed to drink, and in buildings that serve alcohol, you frequently need a license to be able to dance in those same places - even when there is no alcohol being served at that time.

There’s a difference between business licenses and making dancing itself illegal. I don’t know if that’s a real law somewhere in Germany, but it’s definitely further along in restricting personal freedom than requiring a business license to allow dancing in a club that serves alcohol, and I’d be surprised if Germany doesn’t have similar laws.

Although I imagine there could be some very conservative local jurisdictions, in the US, that outlaw dancing in some ways as well.

Having something be licensed simply means that it’s now illegal for you to do that thing.

It’s a euphemism.

Honestly, I feel it must be unconstitutional to outlaw protected expression by people simply because they are standing in a building in which other people serve alcohol at other times.

Dancing itself isn't illegal, just doing it publically, on those days. It's rarely enforced, many places have exceptions that it's allowed unless the local church mess is disturbed due to noises.

Any closed club is fine to my knowledge.

I don't necessarily think there's an agenda to most of these laws. It's Germans doing what they do best, overengineer in this case, laws.

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