From: nico@athena.mit.edu (Nicolas Reinecke)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Re: shopping hours
Date: 23 Aug 92 15:28:34 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <1992Aug22.180728.15102@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, pmiragli@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Pierluigi Miraglia) writes:
|> In article <oli.714385854@ernie> oli@math.rwth-aachen.de (Oliver Bonten) writes
|> :
|> >>b) a law that allows competitive shops (i.e. shops selling the same
|> >>   stuff as you) to *sue* you if you open outside normal trading hours.
|> >
|> >Certainly. There is a law prohibiting "unfair competition" (unlauterer Wett-
|> >bewerb). It is certainly unfair competition if you gain an advantage over
|> >your law-abiding competitor by ignoring valid regulations. If it weren't
|> >possible to sue the offender, the competitior would have to break the law,
|> >too. And that's not what regulations are supposed to achieve, is it.
|> 
|> The German situation regarding shopping hours is similar to that
|> existing in Italy. My impression is that in both countries competition
|> is basically unfair - i.e. the assumption is that competition must
|> really be stifled, not regulated.
|> Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why exactly opening a business
|> longer hours would be "unfair". Is it unfair to work till 3 am so that
|> you can write a better than average PhD thesis, say? Would it be then
|> "valid" to prohibit the sale of, say, coffee so that similar efforts
|> might be become physically impossible?
|> Ciao/Tschuess
|> -- 
|> Pierluigi Miraglia       Miraglia.1@osu.edu
|> Dept. of Philosophy, The Ohio State University
|> Logic before Frege: "Metalanguage? It's like when you talk about
|> football in French" (Intro. to Symbolic Logic anonymous)

To start this off, I have to admit that I find the strict opening ( or should I
say closing ?) hours to be a major pain in the rear end, especially when you are
used to opening hours in other countries (i.e. USA), but there is something to be
said about business fairness.

The smaller a business gets, the less likely it is, that the income produced
beyond the regular opening hours will be able to support the necessary labor it
takes to leave the business open. Therefore the advantage of leaving a shop open
is only there for the bigger shops. The result of such opening hours can be seen
in America. The size of the supermarkets is considerably larger than anything in
Europe and due to their turnover, they can support longer opening hours. The
delis, though, have found another niche to hit into, and that is the convenience
aspect. Due to larger stores, it becomes more and more inefficient to keep them
close to where the people live, so they move out to the country, where it becomes
more difficult to access them.

So, if you consider the fact, that someone running his own small shop wants to
make as much money as someone doing the same thing for a bigger chain, I think
it is reasonable to say, that the law regarding opening hours does protect this
wish and therefore contributes to a fairer business environment (just like the
monopoly laws do).

What I find more interesting, is the fact, that the organized labor unions, which
by large consist of employees from larger stores, are the ones, that are most
violently opposed to longer opening hours. As it was posted before, they should
be the ones supporting this change, because ultimately, it'll increase the number
of available jobs in this sector. Even if that does mean, that people will have
to work for someone else rather than for themselves.

Tschuess, Nico