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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3416 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

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And yet people have jobs, which they very frequently have to be at the next day. July 4 doesn't usually fall on a weekend like it did this year. It's not reasonable to insist that people can't get sleep when they have to be up the next morning just so that people can get hours upon hours of fireworks. 11 pm, even in your time zone, would be over an hour of darkness. 10pm would be similar in places I've lived. My stated timeframe of 10-11pm is a perfectly reasonable one imo.

July 4th is more important than jobs. Not being facetious.

Not even close. A person's livelihood is far more important than any given celebration, let alone this one which isn't even that important.

Not to dig in, but I can't let the hyperbole slide. A night of interrupted sleep on a national holiday, is not a threat to 'a person's livelihood'.

So whether livelihood is more important than a celebration (and it is), is an irrelevant point here.

Celebrating July 4th is a more important social tool than ensuring total sleep quality on a single night of the year.

I disagree that it's hyperbole, I chose that for a reason. You can't know what's going on in a person's life. Maybe they have an asshole boss who hates them and is looking to fire them at the first opportunity. In that case, interrupting their sleep may well be endangering their livelihood through no fault of their own. Thus the comparison I made.

If one has talked to all of their neighbors within range of the fireworks and found that they aren't causing problems (commendable if so), then fine. But realistically the people who set off fireworks until 2 am aren't doing that, they are taking the stance of "I don't care about the impact to you, I want to have fun". That is selfish and not ok in my book. Heck, that doesn't even accomplish social cohesion like you are arguing for - it causes divides between neighbors (because one of them is being an asshole to the others), not brings them together.

they are taking the stance of "I don't care about the impact to you, I want to have fun".

You have discovered the entire point of Independence Day, which celebrates exactly this on a nation-state level.

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