As I recall, this is precisely how British Columbia got Sunday shopping. Stores and shopping malls broke the law repeatedly. There were fines, but Sunday shopping was popular. Eventually, public pressure led governments to legalize Sunday opening.
I didn't agree with it then and I don't fully agree with it now, but it can work.
Gas stations were also allowed to be open although they rarely had convenience stores attached to them back then.
> “Didn’t realize you were low on bread and forgot to get it Saturday oh well kids are not getting a sandwich in their lunches for Monday morning school.”
It is possible to make bread. And to eat other things. And to buy school lunches. And to borrow or trade food with neighbours.
Remember when Arkansas rolled back some child labour laws? Hopefully you do, it was last week[1]. The reason why not "just do something good for workers instead" is because companies want cheaper employees with fewer options to leave, not better protections for workers.
> "Why is it Sunday? Why not Saturday?"
Great, well done, you've bikeshedded it from "mandatory day off" to "no mandatory day off" because you can't see a difference between them. Religion bad, Atheism good, therefore roll back labour protections?
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/08/politics/sarah-huckabee-s...
I didn't say religion bad. I said that Sunday was chosen because of it's alignment with many Christian religions, and this is true: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_law
There are many other religions that do _not_ have Sunday as a day of rest; other abrahamic religions choose Friday (Islam) or Saturday (Judaism, 7th day Adventist). Non-abrahamic religions and atheists feature further diversity.
Consider:
> California twice passed Sunday closing laws, in 1858 and in 1861. The first was found unconstitutional just five months after it was enacted. It was used to convict and imprison a Jewish clothing merchant who closed his business on Saturday, and opened it on Sunday.
( https://historycollection.com/the-random-history-of-blue-law... )
One could simply mandate that businesses offer employees one or more consistent day of rest instead of having the state pick religious winners and losers.
In the United States, blue laws have historically been used to oppress religious minorities like Jews and Sabbatarian Christians.
It's a stupid idea and a dumb law that it only makes sense if your worker protection laws are too weak.
i am actually curious how they do that in israel where the jewish law not to work on sabbath is taken much more seriously.
As those people should have same exact rights to spend leisure time with their families and friends.
And… just protection for retail workers? Is there a reason it wouldn’t apply to all workers below a certain pay range (or maybe it did, and the “no shopping” rule is just a shorthand?)
and actually, in germany for example, the rule is not that shops must be closed. you can open your shop if you can run it yourself, without any employees help.
depending on the country, saturdays can be school days, but generally nowadays, the rule extended to saturday as well, actually, with the exception of retail. it used to be that saturdays were half work days. and of national holidays are equal to sundays.
Provide your own answer here: why did the system which exists to exploit humans for profit do away with a free day instead of "just" passing worker protection laws? (Why did you frame it as "prevent people from overworking" instead of "prevent people from being overworked"?)
> "It's a stupid idea and a dumb law that it only makes sense if your worker protection laws are too weak."
Humans exist for more than just buying things. You may not like "A Sabbath for God" but "A day for something in life other than shopping" is an important idea. When September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks happened - great big terrorist attacks on American soil for pretty much the first time - President George Bush told Americans to "go shopping" in response. When many American teenagers grew up, they hung out at a shopping mall.
Are you not lamenting the increasing feeling that you can't go out in public without being charged to be somewhere these days? Or the gradual turning of all walks of life into advertising and subscription services? Is any pushback on it "stupid and dumb" to you?
I'm sorry I used the wrong words.
> Humans exist for more than just buying things
Yea, duh
> "A day for something in life other than shopping" is an important idea
That's fine. Why does it have to be the _same_ day for everyone? That's the stupid idea. Pass a law that says everyone must be given a full day off every week, I'm with you. Pass a law saying that day _must_ be Sunday, and I'm walking away.
Hell, pass a law that says everyone must be given three full days off every week, I'm with you. Pass a law that says you have to pay someone 3x for every hour they work beyond 30 hours, I'm with you. Pass a law that says everyone must work 9am-3pm and I'm walking away.
> Are you not lamenting the increasing feeling that you can't go out in public without being charged to be somewhere these days?
Irrelevant to the conversation, but generally, no.
> Or the gradual turning of all walks of life into advertising and subscription services?
Irrelevant to the conversation, but yea, it's a hellscape.
> Is any pushback on it "stupid and dumb" to you?
Nope.
Is the low wages of retail workers less bad on the other days of the week?
Probably not the best example, because it's not like a sandwich is the only lunch option (the lazy one for sure), but I take your point. Migraine and no painkillers, period and no pads, sex and no condom, alcoholic and no alcohol (with risk of lethal DTs)? Too bad...
Why even do this to someone if you understood their meaning and more or less agree?
Scotland - Largely Presbyterian ie rather more Catholic than us southern softies wot do Church of Eng. Your Catholic is rather more concerned about Sabbath behaviour than your Protestant except when they don't. Mind you we have some laughable nonsense available regardless of denomination - for example otters were once classed as fish hereabouts for Fish Friday. lol! It is quite hard to get more than 50 miles away from the sea in Britain. We also have quite a lot of rivers/streams/brooks/burns/cultured waterways - canals. Those ribbons of water contain quite a lot of fish. Yes, the UK might be quite as mad as you imagine it - we seem to require mammals to be classified as fish to ensure we make a God happy (one day in seven).
I recall shopping on Sunday becoming a thing here around the late 80s/early 90s but hours were not too conservative here in the UK compared to the rest of europe. We never had formal lunchtime closing for example, which is bloody annoying. I lived in W Germany for a few years back in 70s-90s and it was tricky buying stuff around 1200-1400 depending on where you were and the time. Nowadays I note that Italy, Spain, Portugal int al still have some pretty patchy midday work practices. That's fine but caveat emptor!
Back then, nothing was open on a Sunday.
In some parts of Scotland (the Western Isles for example) doing any work, hanging your washing out, cutting your grass etc. on a Sunday, to be violating the Sabbath. No laws. Just peer pressure from your neighbours. As you'd expect this is stronger in smaller villages than larger towns.
Your final para describes rather more of little Britain than just bits of Scotland.
I actually do agree with it. Same reason as jury nullification. If enough people (jury members in this case) believe that the law / particular application is unjust then fuck it. In nullification the government must give in. I do not see why it should be any different in general. The key here should be what constitutes "enough"
Mob rule.
Slavish obedience.
The jury is not supposed to be robots. They're there because there's supposed to be someone with judgment.
IA is learning the difference, unfortunately.
If I told someone smoking is bad forr their health, would you follow with "I know a person that smoked till 98" as reasonable advice? This is the same argument.
And in this case, the actions of IA may well end them for all of us. That's not such a good outcome for breaking the law, is it?
And we're seeing the IA possibly going to end because they wanted to break the law, and not completely for some moral cause, but because breaking it helps them. There was plenty of reasonable calling out Brewster's ignorant and self-serving choices on this issue for some time. He didn't need to do this, and he put the entire operation at unnecessary risk, as his critics claimed would happen.
This is what lawbreaking generally does.
Does cohesion of those families matter less?
You didn't split out essential services, and it seems dead-obvious to me that shutting those down would cause more harm than good even when you value all families exactly the same. There's no way they're saying the families of essential service providers are less important.
And it seems pretty clear they're grouping those other things in with essential services, which you could disagree with, but is a very different thing from saying those families are less important.
I am genuinely curious how a person reconciles two seemingly opposing views:
"It gives everyone a guaranteed weekly timeslot to spend time together."
where everyone is everyone except:
"except restaurants, attractions, hospitality and essential services".
I could easily give in on essential services, because a lot will ride on how broadly they are defined, but if the goal is 'family cohesion' building for everyone then as few groups should be excluded as possible ( which also means that businesses that people, who usually have even less leisure time than most of us -- restaurants, attractions, hospitality -- can recharge ).
I will be honest. For me it the line drawing always tends to be the most interesting piece, because it tends to indicate what the individual really values. In this case, and this is not a shot, because it is very human thing to do, they value 'their family cohesion' and 'their ability to participate in various leisure activities' over those who have to serve them, while they bond with their loved ones.
For the record, the line listed by parent is not unreasonable, but can you give me an argument as to why it is not amazingly selfish way of looking at society ( Sunday for me, but not for thee ).
Sure, that's easy enough. Even if some people can't participate, it's a big benefit to have most people share a day, and everyone that's taking those sunday work slots should be getting paid significantly extra and also probably on rotation. And the other poster might be in one of those businesses.
If someone in a restaurant/attraction/hospitality business has less leisure time, you could improve that by valuing Sunday higher. Let them trade two Sundays in a month for 3-4 non-Sundays.
And I btw, do not count public transport as essential service. People have plenty of time to walk, and emergency can include ambulances for medical problems.
Is it the responsibility of the government to protect the profit opportunities of some specific people who choose to be a certain religion?
If it’s not the sabbath, then I’m intrigued and want to learn more.