(…psst…Walmart…)
I don’t get the mindset of the people who do those things. To me it’s obvious that an orderly system, even one run by unscrupulous people, is better than chaos. That’s why I disagree with the people from the article that are promoting shoplifting as a form of protest.
People don’t generally go to prison for shoplifting. Shoplifting is usually a misdemeanor.
ETA: I guess it’s possible for it to be a felony but you’d have to be lifting a Rolex or something
Thing is, if you’ve live in an orderly system all your life, it’s not always that obvious. To people who actually have experienced social breakdown and chaos, well, history shows that authoritarian regimes that rise in the wake of chaotic periods (China comes to mind) the world over have been able to gain great support just by promising “order” and delivering it, even if it’s tyrannical order.
Chaos is one of the few things that actually makes a nice, predictable tyranny look good by comparison.
I agree with the second part of what you say, that a tyrannical order (at least if we’re talking about a tyranny like present day China) looks good by comparison to chaos. Of course in the case of China they didn’t exactly choose the chaos, which was instead imposed upon them by the British, Japanese, etc., so they get a pass WRT making the choice willingly. MAGAs, as well as the people in the article in the OP, seem to think that chaos is actually a better choice than the orderly system we had before Trump. I don’t get it, on either an emotional or an intellectual level. It’s like having a choice between a shit burger (chaos) and a plain, boring hamburger (an orderly system with wealth inequality), and willingly choosing the shit burger. To get to the point where the shit burger / chaos is preferable, the alternative would have to be something like a hamburger with ground glass in it. The only present day regime that I can think of that has reached that point (both orderly and so terrible that even chaos is preferable) is North Korea.
In rural areas they tell stories like that about the cities.
I expect that some particular stores have had such problems. But I’m pretty dubious about some of the stories.
Yeah, I’m very suspicious of the idea of prices needing to go up in rural communities due to more shoplifting. These are the communities where valuables are less likely to be locked up. There is often less security, and yet prices for most goods are usually lower. Every time I talk to friends in the city, I marvel at how much higher things cost them.
There are indeed some smaller stores that have higher prices than bigger stores (that are still rural, but less so), but I understand that to be because they can’t buy as much and can’t afford the margins as much. And, as a consumer, you’re somewhat paying a convenience tax to not go to the bigger store further away, same as you do buying food at a gas station.
I guess maybe they could argue that the lower margins mean that the even smaller number of shoplifters hit them harder? But it really seems like everything else would be a much more significant contribution.
Considering the number of farm stands around here which use honesry boxes, I’m pretty sure that rampant shoplifting isn’t why our rural groceries keep closing down.
Again, it depends on the community.
Having lived in a town that had to give up the Backpack Program, where qualified kids would get a backpack full of kid-friendly food to take home on Fridays, because so much of it was being traded for drugs, usually meth, I get it.
I would like a cite for this, for two reasons-
- None of the issues with the program listed that as a reason or even a concern-
- You cant get much if any meth for a pack full of apples and bananas.
The economist Noah Smith walks through the economics of shoplifting.
In general, the cost will get divided up among those various people. But the pain will land much more on the poor and working class. Suppose that people start shoplifting more from Whole Foods, and it costs the company $20 million — 0.1% of its revenue. Now suppose that cost gets evenly divided — $5 million comes out of Jeff Bezos’ pocket, $5 million comes out of the salaries of the company’s executives and top managers, $5 million gets recouped by the company via price hikes, and $5 million gets saved via store closures and job cuts.
Think about how much pain that would cause to each of the parties involved. If Bezos loses $5 million, he won’t even notice. It’s a rounding error on his wealth. The executives and top managers of Whole Foods will probably be slightly annoyed, but their lifestyles won’t change. Whole Foods’ middle- and upper-class customers will be a little more annoyed when prices go up. But the worst pain by far will land on the people who lose their jobs when stores close and staffing gets cut. $5 million is almost 100 employees.
Every time you shoplift, in other words, you’re stealing from the people who work at grocery stores and drugstores and discount stores. You’re stealing from the communities that those stores serve. You’re contributing to food deserts. You’re raising unemployment. You’re making food less affordable for the most vulnerable. What you’re not doing is hurting rich people in any appreciable way.
Also:
If you’re shoplifting because you’re poor and desperate, the pain you’re causing to society might be worth it. But if you’re shoplifting because you’re a bored, arrogant multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder, you’re just a rich person hurting poor people for fun.
His example assumed the shoplifter was targeting Whole Foods. In practice I think shoplifting is something that’s likely to occur uniformly across all stores or… disproportionately at stores in worse locations. Since it’s a widely shared cost, it’s probably borne mostly by customers, though to some extent by employees as sales shift over to Amazon.
All that said, I understand that employee theft is more costly than customer shoplifting. 2010 study:
That leaves out stuff that goes bad.
I wondered about that. It also leaves out dropped glass bottles and other damaged merchandise. There’s an entry for “Unknown”, but 4% seems small. Also, what the heck is “Administrative?” (I mean I can imagine, and I could also look it up in the report, but…)
The cite is commercial research. Estimating this stuff is problematic: I suspect it’s based on error-prone company surveys. Still, better than nothing.
Props to the visual designer who chose closed circuit TV monitors as background for the graphic. It was a nice touch.
ETA: Here we go: it’s from the National Retail Security Survey, conducted by the University of Florida I think.
It does not define Adminstrative, AFAICT. But it’s a secondary source: maybe the original 2010 report is floating around somewhere. It does contain some risible material.
I think the chart is just showing losses due to illegal activity, although I’m not sure what “Administrative” means in that context. Possibly “costs associated with dealing with the other wedges in this pie chart.” Or embezzlement and other losses to “white collar” crime, but I think they’d have picked a more descriptive label if it were that.
The 2023 National Retail Security Survey indicates that external theft now exceeds internal theft. I opine that’s a soft estimate and that the combined share of shrinkage - now at 65% - is a harder figure. Here is the breakout:
So, where does the shrink occur? Respondents attributed their overall shrink to different sources of loss. External theft, including ORC-related events, accounted for an average of 36% of total loss. Internal (employee) theft reported in at 29% of shrink loss. Process, control failures and errors came in at 27%, with unknown (6%) and other (1%) rounding out the total shrink loss percentages.
Glossary
ORC - organized retail theft
- Internal Theft: Acts of theft committed by an employee, or in collusion with an employee by outsiders. Internal theft methods vary but often include cash/deposit theft, fraudulent refunds, merchandise theft or providing discounted or free merchandise to non-employees.
- External Theft: Thefts like shoplifting, burglary or break-in, robbery, credit card fraud and other retail crimes committed by non-employees. These thefts could include the loss of merchandise or monies.
- Process, Control Failures and Errors: Losses that occurred through normal business operations and may be due to cashier errors, inaccurate system pricing, accidental loss or damages and other operational or systemic errors.
- Other: Retailers may include additional areas of loss based upon their individual business structure or segment. This bucket may include expired goods, vendor or third party-related losses, claims, etc.
- Unknown: This category of reported loss allowed a respondent to include reported losses that have occurred, but due to certain circumstances may not be properly categorized.
“Administrative” is probably: “Process Control Failures and Errors.” Overall shrink is at 1.6%, so let’s not exaggerate the magnitude of this problem. Or minimize it. This is a touchy subject since internal theft tends to rise with higher turnover, which tends to fall with higher wages. So, yeah. Touchy.