In the spirit of Click and Clack, I offer the following conundrum. Consider first this letter to the editor from today’s paper:
Stupid blue laws thwart purchase
Government is the only source of such stupidity. Or at least with the authority to enforce such ignorance.
After church, my wife, Mary, and I went to Wal-Mart for a new sports watch for her. She decided on one and told the clerk to ring it up. The clerk said, “I can’t ring it up until 1:30, and it’s only 1:15. Why don’t you shop around and come back in 15 minutes?”
We wandered around for about 10 minutes and saw folks were checking out with bananas, potato chips and, yes, even beer, but you can’t purchase a watch until 1:30. I said I’ll have a beer while I wait till 1:30 to buy the watch.
Woe unto you who think government is the answer. When are we going to vote these nitwits out?Bruce G. Kelly
Columbia
This is an interesting letter on several levels, but the most immediate question that arises is this: Where in the Midlands do you find a jurisdiction where it would be illegal to buy the watch before 1:30, yet legal to buy beer on Sunday?
The simple answer is that there isn’t one. Poor Mr. Kelly would be hard-pressed to find the "nitwits" that he wants to "vote out," since there is no jurisdiction that has made those two decisions that he finds so maddeningly inconsistent.
Give up? I had, but then Warren proposed a potential answer — while there is no one such jurisdiction, this Wal-Mart was in an anomalous location that was both in the city of Columbia and in Lexington County. It’s not a thought that would have immediately occurred to me, but of course there are such places.
My first guess was that we’re talking about the new Wal-Mart on Bush River Road, right next to Malfunction Junction. The map on my wall in the editorial dept. shows it as in Lexington County. It does NOT show it as being in Columbia, but it’s an old map, and I have the advantage of private intelligence in this case: I recently tried to buy beer there on a Sunday, and succeeded. Ipso facto, to wit, etc….
But that’s not where this happened. When Randle, who edits our letters, got back to the office, I asked her to call Mr. Kelly and get to the bottom of the mystery.
The answer: This incident occurred at the Harbison Wal-Mart, which is certainly in Lexington County, and — while I couldn’t find confirmation of the fact on any map readily at hand, the odds are that if it’s in that area and developed, it’s in the city.
Of course, Mr. Kelly still can’t find anyone to vote out of office for creating this situation. Even if he lives in both the city and Lexington County, it’s beyond the power of any local elected official to solve his problem. A Columbia city council member, for instance, might change the beer-sale ordinance, but could do nothing about Lexington’s blue law — and vice versa, if you follow me.
His problem is similar to one we’ve pointed out many times before, in somewhat different contexts. It’s not a matter of too MUCH government, but of too MANY governments.
He can vote against EVERY incumbent if he chooses (the Doug Ross solution), just as a sort of universal, howl-at-the-moon sort of protest, but that wouldn’t solve his problem. That is, if you consider not being able to buy a sports watch for 15 minutes a problem. And I’m sure many of you would. So commiserate with poor Mr. Kelly, a man without recourse to redress.
Related Posts
The fact that tax dollars are used to pay any nitwit to come up with any law that determines when a store can sell certain items (or allow The State newspaper to avoid paying sales taxes on its product) is exactly what separates independent thinkers from group thinkers.
As I’ve said repeatedly, Brad, don’t complain about anything the government DOESN’T do that you want it to do when it does so much that it doesn’t need to do. The fact that ANYONE spends any time trying to regulate the hours a business can or can’t sell a product goes beyone nitwits and reaches asinine level.
If you like the way things are, keep voting for the incumbents. I’m sure one of these decades they’ll achieve the nirvana-like all-government, all-the-time state you seek.
Me, I’d rather let someone who actually puts the effort into running a business decide what’s best for his customers. But I guess that makes me some kind of radical libertarian.
And I would challenge you to come up with a supporting argument for blue laws that does not use the words: church, worship, or religion.
How these laws are considered Constitutional is beyond me.
Actually this is rather simple. The general assembly simply passes a law that abolishes ALL sales bans for ANY product sold ANYWHERE in South Carolina. If you want to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels at 7:30 on Sunday morning that should be legal. I’d go one step further. If Walmart wants to sell Jack Daniels so be it. (Of course I would allow them to sell pot and operate video poker machines also, but that’s another story). This is a case where the state law should over-ride local initiatives.
As a side note, if a six pack of beer comes packaged with a promotional sports watch could you buy it or not in the Harbison Walmart at 1:15 on Sunday?
“As a side note, if a six pack of beer comes packaged with a promotional sports watch, could you buy it or not in the Harbison Walmart at 1:15 on Sunday?”
Congratulations, bud. You have reached your zenith. This is the most ingenious, insightful, cut-to-the-chase post I’ve ever seen from you. It really gets to the crux of the matter here.
And Doug, you’re right. How a blue law passes constitutional muster boggles the mind.
“As a side note, if a six pack of beer comes packaged with a promotional sports watch, could you buy it or not in the Harbison Walmart at 1:15 on Sunday?”
Congratulations, bud. You have reached your zenith. This is the most ingenious, insightful, cut-to-the-chase post I’ve ever seen from you. It really gets to the crux of the matter here.
And Doug, you’re right. How a blue law passes constitutional muster boggles the mind.
“As a side note, if a six pack of beer comes packaged with a promotional sports watch, could you buy it or not in the Harbison Walmart at 1:15 on Sunday?”
Congratulations, bud. You have reached your zenith. This is the most ingenious, insightful, cut-to-the-chase post I’ve ever seen from you. It really gets to the crux of the matter here.
And Doug, you’re right. How a blue law passes constitutional muster boggles the mind.
the late ken lay, bernie ebbers, bear sterns, fannie mac all did a great job of deciding what was best for their customers didn’t they. so does scana, twc, etc. what;s best for customers is to raise prices, right exxon mobil? many businesses succeed because they let their customers decide what is best for them.
Well, they say great things come in threes. How the Hobart did that happen?
And now, on to the Warthen generality that sounds so good but means so little.
“It’s not a matter of too MUCH government, but of too MANY governments.”
That statement, of course, leads me to wonder how too many governments might be a problem other than by providing too much government.
Could too many governments lead to too little government?
I think not, and certainly not in the situation Mr. Kelly reported in his letter, but apparently Mr. Warthen thinks so, because he says we have too many governments in South Carolina, yet he continually asks for more government here on the blog, and he says not too much but too many, when the obvious truth is that too many necessarily means too much.
Methinks splitting too many hairs will make you bald, or at best strangely fuzzy.
Good points p.m. If Lexington county had the same laws as the City of Columbia there would be no problem. Simply put, Lexington county has TOO MANY laws, hence TOO MUCH government. Brad really butchered the logic on this one.
Only if you believe, as the libertarians who do most of the commenting on blogs do, that Blue Laws are such an awful idea that local communities should not be ALLOWED to have them.
Some of us do not consider buying a sports watch at a given moment a Fundamental Right of Man that justifies a larger, more powerful level of government dictating to local communities what their local standards will be.
If, say, Bennettsville wants a day free from commerce — Sunday, or Saturday, or Tuesday — in a bid to escape the insanity of the 7-day work week that moderns have embraced, it should be allowed to do so (I remember a time, for instance, when everything in B’ville, including the public library, was closed on Wednesday afternoons). Similarly, Columbia should be allowed to have beer sales at any time it wishes.
Problems — or apparent inconsistencies — would arise if Bennettsville and Columbia overlapped.
Anyway, what interested me about the letter was that Mr. Kelly was protesting what he saw as an inconsistency or contradiction in local ordinances. Yes, one detects an impatience with Blue Laws in general on his part, but what I was addressing was the specific point he raises. And the cause of that particular “problem” is that two separate jurisdictions were pursuing two separate (and not necessarily contradictory, although one can see them that way) policy goals.
The efficacy of Blue Laws is another subject. If that had been all Mr. Kelly were writing about, I would not have taken an interest in his letter.
george32 wouldn’t be able to buy any fuel for his car or to heat his house if Exxon had not been able to raise prices enough to make an 8% profit, still not as good as the average for manufacturing of 9.9%.
Enron did a good job of lower prices to consumers, and the free market cleaned up their collapse rather smoothly, so consumers could not tell any difference in supply or price.
Enron was only able to acquire so much control of gas distribution because President Clinton pushed through special treatment for the company… after the usual large “campaign donations”, even though Clinton was not running for any office.
Brad,
Only you would think that it IS a government right to determine when a sports watch could be sold.
But wait, then why can’t Lexington decide for itself that it needs a heart center? Shouldn’t that be a community choice?
I get it. Sports watches requires a local focus while heart bypasses should be controlled by the state.
And you’d have no issue with Lexington setting up a “No newspapers sales on Sunday before 1:30” either, right?
And the cause of that particular “problem” is that two separate jurisdictions were pursuing two separate (and not necessarily contradictory, although one can see them that way) policy goals.
-Brad
Now you’re just being stubborn. The CAUSE of the problem is too much government meddling in the people’s fundamental right to conduct commerce as they see fit. In Mr. Kelly’s case he wanted to buy a watch, Walmart was more than willing to sell him the watch and as far as I can tell there would be no public benefit that would result from his being denied the opportunity to buy the watch. Yet he was denied that opportunity. Is there a reason Mr. Kelly and Walmart should have been denied the opportunity to make a non-coerced transaction? Of course not. Yet that is the situation. In this case a larger government entity, the state, should override the obvious irrational situation that exists in regard to the Blue Laws.
But if you insist on getting down to the smallest level of government to make decisions of this type that would be the “government” of the individual. Really, government at any level has no business in this kind of transaction.
Similarly, Columbia should be allowed to have beer sales at any time it wishes.
-Brad
I adamently disagree. It shouldn’t be up to Columbia to decide when to have beer sales. That should be left up to individuals having the freedom to make decisions whether Columbia wants them to or not.
Similarly it shouldn’t be up to the Supreme Court of South Carolina to ban video poker. Nor should it be up to Washington to decide whether someone should be forbidden from smoking pot to alleviate symptoms of chemo therapy. These are choices that individuals should be allowed to make based on their particular interpretation of what is best for them.
We’ll make a libertarian out of Bud any day now! 🙂
Brad’s going to need a lot more of the Kool Aid.
Doug, I think the problem with Brad is that he’s never been seriously inconvienced by some dunderheaded government decision. If the State wants to condemn his home to build a road or if they ban the Godfather he would see things differently. Until then freedom is an abstract concept to Brad that is only relevant in a narrow sense, to protect Brad’s interests.
I see freedom in a broad sense, if it doesn’t affect me personally. That is what this country should be about. Sadly in many instances we loss sight of that.
It is not Columbia, Irmo, Richland County, or Lexington County that has “Blue Laws”.
It is the State of South Carolina that has “Blue Laws”: http://www.scstatehouse.net/code/t53c001.htm
Now, once a county collects more than $900,000 in a year from the accomodations tax, that county is exempt from enforcing Blue Laws.
Talking about a confusing array of local and county governments: Columbia is now in Lexingon County, with its shoestring annexation of the shops on Harbinson Blvd. Cayce is now in Richland County when they annexed flood-plain property from the failed Green Diamond venture.
What a mess. The state has somehow managed to pass legislation at the state level that allows stores, but only certain stores apparently, to sell beer but not watches but only during certain time periods. At other time periods the same store can sell both watches and beer. But in other stores you can sell watches but not beer, again only during certain times of the day. Then there are other stores that can sell Jack Daniels but not watches or beer and then only during certain times (Mon-Sat 9am – 7pm).
But we still don’t know if a six pack of beer when bundled with a watch could be sold at the Harbison Walmart on Sunday before 1:30 pm.
Another interesting situation, what if the store straddled the county line (in Columbiana Mall this actually happens) between Richland and Lexington and the watch rack is in Richland County and the cashier in Lexington County would Mr. Kelly be allowed to buy the watch before 1:30?
Or, same scenerio but with the beer instead of the watch.
Or, if the rack is in Lexington County and the cashier in Richland County.
This cries out for repeal. Why doesn’t it happen?
Y’all just can’t understand my fundamental, principled opposition to sports watches and all they stand for, can you?
What IS a "sports watch," anyway? Probably some plot by Osama bin Laden or that godless commie Putin…
Sorry, guys. Those of you who feel passionately about this will have to have your argument without me. What’s the German expression, Herb: Ohne mich — Is that it?
ohne mich Und auch ohne mich, I must say.
This doesn’t have to be a church vs. state issue. In Europe it has been a protection of workers issue. Now that will get the libertarisns’ goat, won’t it!
We used to have a lot of different types in local Bible study groups in Friedrichshafen, Germany, most of whom were blue-collar workers or small business owners who very glad for Sunday and Wednesday afternoon shop closings, so that they had some time with their families.
Of course, that had to give way to the almighty Euro and capitalist pressure. Seems like the pendulum always swings to extremes, either to protect the worker, or to allow the bosses total freedom.
I’ll make no friends with that last bit, but I can’t help it. Blue laws aren’t that bad.
Sorry about the misspellings. In a rush.
Stores in South Carolina used to close at noon on Wednesday into the early 1970s.
It was a slow time of the week, and a chance for merchants, who would often have to work a long Saturday, to have a leisurely lunch at home, and maybe go catch some fish or take the dogs quail hunting.
Actually, Herb raises a point that extends beyond blue laws — well beyond.
Europe has had an easier time coming to terms with abortion than we have in this country because they don’t couch it the way we do here, in terms of one absolute "right" (to privacy) in irreconcilable opposition to another absolute "right" (to life). Here’s an overview of how the various countries handle it.
Mind you, I don’t like where the Europeans end up on this — I’m opposed to abortion. I’m just saying that by skirting the question of absolute rights, they’ve managed to deal the issue without it taking over their politics the way it has in this country.
Yes, except one has to wonder with abortion laws in Europe if the pressure isn’t on to push the gestation limits way out, though in general they are much more humane than here.
And I think to be honest, one has to admit that the Catholic church has a lot more influence on the legislatures, in an indirect way, than the churches do here. By and large I believe that the Protestant majority of North America, who have traditionally provided a very important balance factor in the development of our liberties, has succumbed to what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”–God will forgive me, after all, that’s his job–so the influence of Protestantism has gone to the opposite extreme.
I’m not sure what to make of Lee’s statement. It has been the pressure of unions on German government that has somewhat held back Sunday store openings in that country (and they are still regulated), and of course Walmart has no chance with a 24-7 opening time in Germany. But I’m assuming that Lee is not a friend of labor unions and their influence on government!
I would hold to that statement on influence, even with the emphasis on “culture wars” and “family values.” The difference being, perhaps, that European legislatures are not as paranoid as we are about separating church and state.
I wonder if the teaching of religion in the public schools in Europe doesn’t have something to do with it as well, though now I give myself totally to speculation. But it was a total shock to our kids when they came back to this country to go to college and discovered that when a bunch of young people got together, they didn’t discuss issues over a cup of tea or glass of beer, but rather sit and watched a video, or ran around in vehicles.
Oh well, I’m rambling, making enemies in the process. But as I wrote before:
Once the reputation is in tatters,
the opinion of another hardly matters.”
i>Ist der Ruf erst ruiniert, lebt es sich völlig ungeniert. Wilhelm Busch
Another note on the abortion issue, it is interesting where the Obama campaignis going with the abortion issue. Looks like a political maneuver, though. Odd for that to happen this time of year, isn’t it?
P.S. the next post on getreligion re “It’s a child, not a choice” is worth reading as well.
Germany’s commercial restrictions are not due solely to union influence, but also to commercial interests — companies / employers — as well. Reduced-price sales are heavily regulated by strict and promptly enforced laws prohibiting steep discounts, a practice that works to the detriment of consumers and limits the advantages that a Wal-Mart or other discount retailer can promote. The theory is that “regulated” sales protect sellers from unfair competition.
Well, I didn’t expect anything else from you, Mike.
I’m working on a software project now where we are implementing what are called “German Privacy Rules”. According to these rules, we cannot show any information that would allow a manager to compare the work performed by one worker with another. I’m waiting for the day when those “rules” make their way over to the U.S.
Meanwhile:
“Germany and France still enjoy the largest number of vacation days among all countries in continental Europe. The French get 30 days of paid vacation with an additional 11 public holidays, while in Germany workers receive 24 days off, plus up to 13 religious holidays.”
So Doug and Mike are saying that, since over-regulation is bad, no regulation is best.
So maybe we shouldn’t have child-labor laws, either?
Maybe there is such a thing as balance?
Yes, Herb, that’s exactly what I said. The part about forcing children to work in coal mines is just written in invisible font.
You pick and choose the laws you think are meaningful. Why can’t I?
Doug,
I hate to tell you, but unionized industries have been fighting this battle to grade workers for over 100 years. That is why Gilreath had to develop all his modern methods of industrial engineering, like line balancing, time studies, and learning curves for line changes, in the non-union mills of Greenville, SC.
Right now, I have software running an a heavily automated intermodal logistics operation, with union operators. We have the data on how many units each clerk processes in a day, but management is barred from using it at all – not even to figure out how to help each worker have a less stressful day at work.
I tried to create a matrix of political issues that took into account 2 factors.
1. the importance of the issue and
2. how obvious the solution is.
As for the Blue Laws, they are probably only about a 2 or 3 on the importance scale. Sure, it’s no big deal to wait an hour or two to buy a sports watch. But on the obvious scale this is the 10. No solution is more obvious than this one. The Blue Laws should simply be abolished, period. No more fine tuning. No more tweaking or rationalizing. Again I ask, why hasn’t this happened?
Herb, like many liberals who want so desperately to be compassionate, your examples are extreme, comparing grotesque situations which are rare, ancient, or non-existent, to ideals which will never be achieved.
The social reality is that it is good for children to work and learn how to function as adults.
The medical reality is that hard work is good for children, much better than and safer than sitting in front of a video game or skateboarding.
The historical reality is that even most of those children slaving in mills were better off than where they came from or where they would go if they lost those jobs.
The vast majority of the world has always been, and still is, uneducated, illiterate and unskilled. Even the best and brightest have to start somewhere and improve themselves.
What you should be worried about are real problems, like how to stop the least intelligent, least literate, and most socially maladjusted people from procreating so fast and producing so many more poor, mistreated children, who will grow up to be cattle for demagogues and dictators.
Perhaps somewhat overdone, I agree, and yet a lot of them, even though they have it coming, can’t actually take it. We weren’t bound by these regulations at our youth center, and yet having them as a background gave me three weeks of vacation when I had a young family, which I always appreciated. It was important for our family. You seem to believe that all business entrepeneurs should have free license to do with their help as they please—but believe it or not, a whole lot of the world disagrees with you.
I thought that was what this blog was about, debating the laws that are good, and those that are not. But I forgot—some of us don’t want any laws at all, or so it would seem. At least not until they are affected themselves.
I would be interested in knowing which examples are extreme and grotesque.
Depends on what you mean, but I fear this is a drastic attempt to try and disparage all social labor laws. Your commitment to an ideology is shining through, but it won’t work. These 19th century battles have already been fought. Hello? Anybody home?
Nice try, comparing 21st century spoiled kids with sweatshops in the 19th century. Won’t work, Lee.
Nice sentence from someone who doesn’t have a clue what slaving in mills was like.
Oh yes!!
What is this supposed to mean? And I don’t think you really have any idea about what I really do, nor does it look like you read what I wrote.
We don’t live in the 19th century Herb… though some liberals fantasize that they do.
There are no children slaving in mills today, and most of the ones who did in the 19th century (actually the 18th) were better off than the alternatives they had.
It was Parliament which legislated the destruction of rural life and force adults and their children into mill work….Abusive government, not the free market.
I do have an idea about hard work, Herb. I grew up on a working farm of over 1,000 acres. I won’t bore you with the details – it’s as foreign to most liberals as being an astronaut or patriotic American.
You need to grow up and try to discuss the issues without all the personal smears, especially those based on your total ignorance.