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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Sunday openings
Message-ID: <605@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Dec-86 12:32:31 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.605
Posted: Wed Dec  3 12:32:31 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Dec-86 17:42:06 EST
References: <2819@watdcsu.UUCP> <708@looking.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 34


     Say every store stayed open on Sunday.  Would the revenue from
the increased impulse buying -- as Brad points out, the only extra
revenue we can reasonably expect such a practice to take in --
offset the cost of staying open one more day?

     If so, then logically everyone should stay open on Sunday.

     If not, then it's a classic prisoner's dilemma / tragedy of the
commons situation.  Originally all retailers stay closed Sunday.
Then some retailers find it is tremendously to their advantage to
open on Sunday (usually the larger stores, who can support such a
practice).  They get a lot out of it, until the stores which didn't
open go out of business or open themselves, at which point the only
stores left are stores which open Sunday.  By the assumption at the
top of this paragraph, there's no advantage to anyone; whereas if
they had all just stayed closed, everyone would be doing better.

     I really don't know which of these situations holds, but I
would suspect the latter.  Allowing Sunday openings would, it seems,
only have the effect of creating a tragedy-of-the-commons setup.

     My mother (amazingly) had another good argument against Sunday
openings, or at least in favour of stores staying closed some day
on the weekend.  Workers who have kids who stay in school all day
weekdays, but who have to work themselves on the weekends, never
get days free with their kids.  This already happens to a certain
extent with some workers (police officers, firefighters, etc.).
Allowing it to happen with large parts of the retail sector would
not be good for family cohesiveness.

--Jamie.
...!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"The fires col, my storys tol"