End the Globalization Gravy Train – The American Mind

Brent Bozell dismantled this argument years ago: we are concerned with people behaving well, and if cultural (and legal) pressures encourage them to do it, that s just fine. Research by Jonathan Gruber has found that that state blue laws laws that force businesses to close on Sunday increase church attendance. Aside from spiritual benefits, Robert Putnam has chronicled how church attendance is actually a positive social good for many attendees.

While we might praise the meritorious worker who finds his way to church despite working a 12-hour shift on Sunday, the average traditionalist will (correctly) want to make a life of virtue easier, and not harder. So close the damn businesses on Sunday. Commercial freedom will suffer. Moral behavior will not, and our society will be much the better for it.

These sorts of tradeoffs between the freedom of the commercial space and the values of traditionalists are common, though we might not realize it because we so often defer to commerce.

via americanmind.org

J. D. Vance