Wow. Thirty pages of posts. Reading them all is a whole segment of my life which I shall never experience again. Was it worth it?
Well, one thing it did was to re-awaken memories of an introductory course to political philosophy at university nearly half a century ago. The concept being considered was freedom, and the thoughts of one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, Sir Isiah Berlin.
Berlin described two concepts of freedom:
The two concepts are:
'negative freedom', or freedom from interference, which Berlin derived from the British tradition,
and
'positive freedom', or freedom as self-mastery, which asks not what we are free from, but what we are free to do.
Berlin points out that these two different conceptions of liberty can clash with each other.
(Wikipedia article on Isiah Berlin)
It seems that this encapsulates this discussion (with the exception of the abuse which some posters appear to believe strengthens their case).
The arguments in favour of extended shopping hours were made at an early stage of the thread as were appropriate rebuttals. All that has happened since is the entrenchment of these positions with "debate" becoming more hostile and nasty. Having said that, my perception is that the bulk of the nastiness comes from those supporting the negative freedom elements of the argument.