That's nice until you get a false accusation and there is no formal procedure to appeal the ban.

->store sized vending machines

Which was literally the shopping experience before Selfridges "revolutionized" the department store experience by letting customers have direct access to goods for sale.[0]

Before that everything was behind a counter and you have to be served and monitored. Even the grocery store was a similar experience, whereby you would give the clerk your list and they would select everything for you.

Everything that is old is new again.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1...

People willing to pay a membership fee like Costco are probably less likely to be shoplifters, plus signing up for a membership means they have your info which further discouraged shoplifting, and then if they do catch you then it's easier to ban you from all their stores.

Or... just open up big warehouses, only do online sales, and then deliver to customer?

The truth is we have tried it and on a large scale: The Automat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat). Don't see to many of those around anymore, except maybe analogues in Japan.

With some perspective on the idea, would you invest in the retail real estate, the technology development, and later maintenance, and then still need to have staff to stop people from just breaking into the machine?

> Some percentage of any population will be shoplifters.

This is only true in ways that don't matter, because you count "any population" being large enough to obviously include miscreants. Most people do not shoplift, and therefore there are MANY ways to slice a population which will not include shoplifters.

Welcome to iCostco, I love you

They want money and there's no reason not to do it. This isn't a matter of meeting peoples needs, most thefts are not of anything necessary. It's just a job to them.

You're saying it in sort of a condescending way, but there's still truth.

Desperation leads to crime, true.

But also true: a lack of societal norms leads to crime. Any time we advocate or demonstrate disrespect, cheating, injustice, cruelty, unwarranted rule-breaking, doxing, or any kind of mob mentality we are contributing to it.

And yes your favorite political villains are all guilty of this, but we need to start with ourselves and the people close to us.

You're getting downvoted but you're right, more and more people cannot afford to pay for life's necessities.

Wages have stagnated for decades as prices have increased. What possible solution is there other than to address the biggest elephant in the room.

Two points: You can explain away any data with an argument like that. If you don't have evidence, then there's no evidence of out of control crime.

Except stores have continued to report shrink, not crime stats, this whole time.

That reported number did not go up, which was bad for the narrative they want to push, so the National Retail Federation, the largest lobbying organization for retail who publishes shrink stats for decades has suddenly stopped publishing that stat.

The rates in 2023 were 66% of what they were in 2010. That decline has not been driven by reduction in crack usage.

The falling shrinkage is a good indicator, although it’s imperfect for obvious reasons. Of course, there are anomalies like COVID, but otherwise the trend is clear. Also when some entity like supermarket chains or their advocacy groups tried to split up shrinkage by its causes in the past decades, even the shoplifting part fell. So there is no better statistics, and that tells that shoplifting is probably falling.

Of course, you cannot know, but statistics is quite clear that shoplifting decrease is way more probable than increase, and you need some other reasons to advocate for increasing shoplifting. So when somebody does that, it’s highly probable that not because shoplifting is actually increasing.

Okay, then how could anyone possibly know theft is going up?

Wouldn't insurance rates go up if they reported all of the shoplifting? I suspect most large company's do some sort of self insurance setup though.

As part of lobbying for changes to laws, or for more police funding - stores accurately track "shrinkage", why are you so certain it's not being reported?

OTOH there are four critera for a legal stop -- they need to see you enter without the merchandise, select it from the shelf, conceal it, then walk past the point of sale AND all merchandise. And you have to have an unobstructed view of the person, because if they discard the item you stop them for, you're in for a world of (legal) hurt.

Also many stores have shot themselves in the foot by placing items for sale outside the front doors... thus a shoplifter could claim they just stuck something in their pocket because they forgot they needed a pumpkin and thus needed a cart, or something to that effect.

If you stop someone and can't document these four points, they can challenge the stop, and you're up for a LOT more losses from the unlawful detainment suit.

So basically, they value upselling people at entrances more than limiting liability, and a savvy shoplifter can sue for a lot of money if the store allows reusable bags, since that removes the ability to charge for "concealment" given that by selling Safeway or whatever branded opaque bags, you have implicitly consented to "concealment" of merchandise.

Anyone can dress like rentacop or Walmart security. Pull out the pepper spray, say "back away," and leave.

>We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too.

That's already the law in a huge part of the country.

> They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime.

Places like Qt (gas station chain) in AZ have armed guys that are trained to shoot if lawful (armed robbery, etc).

I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you implying that shoplifting should not be punished? Wouldn’t lack of enforcement or punishment for wrongdoing only lead to more wrongdoing? Isn’t the well-accepted viewpoint on this website that if the cost of violating a law is lower than the profit, that is what companies will do. What makes you think people won’t make the same calculation?

The way to solve this problem is to make the cost significantly higher than the benefit. Suggested reading: Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs. Of any person who has ever run any country, he solved this problem in the most effective way.

> However, because nothing is ever profitable enough

This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer.

If you think they just kept those new profits forever -- where did they go? Because grocery is an infamously low-margin business to be in, even now.

> and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows

Depends how you count. If suddenly any theft below $900 is now a misdemeanor (as opposed to, say, 100 previously), then sure, the crime stats will show the crime is low because many retailer simply won’t bother to report it.

I think once this whole idea of crime became a political issue recently, all these stats should be taken with a huge grain of salt

I get you are outraged. It hurts to hear things you dislike, but please, simply go talk to a store owner in CA. Ask them the last time they bothered to call police for shoplifting. Sit down. Think what statistics would show when people GIVE UP on law enforcement.

Or, simply google it, check it on reddit, facebook, nextdoor. It is well understood that police in CA do not respond to thefts and do not care about them. It is internalized to point that nobody bothers to call.

If the statement that actually enforcing law will lower crime is politically motivated, then I’m afraid to ask what statement isn’t. Is it OK to state that 2+2 = 4, or does that have political undertones too?