A french baker who owned his own shop was fined $3,600 for working 7 days a week during tourist season.
http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/french-baker-fined-for-being-open-too-much
An employee yes, an owner, no he should be able to make his own hours.
Capitalism is not embraced in France (or a lot of European countries) as it is here I guess…
See my related post on the goings-on in Japan, the overworking capital of all… (under money or happiness).
Liberalism at it’s best!! 
Too much regulation. Better deregulate and let people live their own life.
Goal of regulation is to facilitate operation and ensure a fair conduct of business.
Over regulation slows down operation and stifle innovation.
Under regulation becomes wild wild west.
Obviously we want an optimal amount of regulation. But who is the judge? How should regulation keeps up with development to maintain the goal? That is while it is easy to understand conceptually, but is hard to implement because it can be very subjective.
Too much regulation already. More will come.
The goal is to have millions of regulations. Everyone will break multiple regulations every day. The trick is to selectively enforce some of the garbage regulations. Only enforce regulations on a few individuals who are disliked by the powerful person.
Eventually the country will become a kingdom ruled by powerful people. Common citizens would become puppies who have thousands of violations each that are waiting to be prosecuted on some day he or she disobeys the powerful men
Has always been even in a democracy. Once it dawned on you that this is the case, it doesn’t matter what kind of governance system, democracy, communism, imperialism or whatever label given. For ordinary citizens like us, what we need is job and safety, nothing more, nothing less.
In Chinese, we call it 杀一č¦ç™ľ
went to italy, could not find any open restaurants at 4pm when we were really hungry… besides… mcdonalds.
In that case the French are the smart ones.
France GDP in PPP: 41K
Japan: 42K
Overworking to death just produces 1K more.
In fact, if you ever travel to Japan, you’ll notice the country is so inefficient. A lot of this overwork is just busy work.
I hear part of the culture is to “look busy” or “look overworking”. If you sleep in the office, it’s a sign that you work a lot!