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It’s not that I’m objecting to the closure: it is certainly very inconvenient at first (I did go without food on quite a few Sundays when I couldn’t gather the

It’s not that I’m objecting to the closure: it is certainly very inconvenient at first (I did go without food on quite a few Sundays when I couldn’t gather the determination to hike to a small shop), but not unworkable; it was simply a convenient comparison (if with much lighter economic consequences). I suspect the precise conditions vary by country, because I’ve certainly bought stuff from hired cashiers on Sundays, it’s only the supermarket chains that didn’t work. As to the rights argument, I tend to be wary of them in general, because any mention of a “right” tends to have an absolute or moral quality to it, and those are dangerous enough not to be used lightly or without justification. The goal of guaranteeing people a holiday is not itself bad (I’m just not ready to call it a “right”), but can be reached in quite a few other ways, such as (off the top of my head) prohibiting employment contracts that span a weekend boundary or just flat out prohibiting contracts that mandate work on holidays except for (strictly optional) overtime. Each of the options can have additional effects (such as shaping the weekend ambiance of your city in a certain way or making overtime de facto obligatory for low-paying jobs), and I’m not against deciding that any of them is best, only against not recognizing the existence of the choice. My concern is the intellectual honesty, not the employment politics.

em-bee 5y ago
any mention of a “right” tends to have an absolute or moral quality to it and that seems to be exactly how the law is meant to be understood from the way it is written. the main problem with choice is that it is only the choice of the employer, not of the employee. and therefore having such a choice would be at the disadvantage of the employee. there is a balance to be made between the convenience for the consumer and that for the employees. as an employee, having the same day off as for everyone else is what makes it possible to join other activities. if people start getting random weekdays off then suddenly most of my friends will not share the same time off as me. that's not workable. therefore the more important question is, how many people get disadvantaged if we allow supermarkets to open on sundays, compared to how many get a benefit, and is it worth that tradeoff? obviously different countries feel different about that, but pretty much all of them still give everyone else the same weekend off instead of offering full flexibility for companies to choose what days to take off.

em-bee 5y ago

any mention of a “right” tends to have an absolute or moral quality to it and that seems to be exactly how the law is meant to be understood from the way it is written. the main problem with choice is that it is only the choice of the employer, not of the employee. and therefore having such a choice would be at the disadvantage of the employee. there is a balance to be made between the convenience for the consumer and that for the employees. as an employee, having the same day off as for everyone else is what makes it possible to join other activities. if people start getting random weekdays off then suddenly most of my friends will not share the same time off as me. that's not workable. therefore the more important question is, how many people get disadvantaged if we allow supermarkets to open on sundays, compared to how many get a benefit, and is it worth that tradeoff? obviously different countries feel different about that, but pretty much all of them still give everyone else the same weekend off instead of offering full flexibility for companies to choose what days to take off.