[mindslight]

They have many choices. Off the top of my head: accept the higher loss, raise prices on in-store purchases of those items to account for the higher shrink, authorize their security guards to forcibly stop and detain people, put vending machines that unlock with a payment card (deposit) rather than employee-operated locks.

I don't know why you're continuing to absolve the well-capitalized corporation of responsibility for their choice of dumping externalities on legitimate customers, except as part of some gish gallop of reactionary talking points that lash out with blame for everyone but those directly responsible for the frustrating conditions.

[x0x0]

> gish gallop of reactionary talking points

Yes, indeed. I don't understand why you're not blaming the criminals and the incompetent government enabling them, rather than merchants with thin margins. Or us, for not being enthused about paying for the thieves.

[mindslight]

We can condemn each individual criminal for their personal choice to steal, but this does not have much bearing on the overall situation. There is no "government enabling them", rather there is a government that is necessarily choosing how to optimize its limited resources.

Meanwhile, a large store full of goods manned by a skeleton crew, which doesn't even hire a single person to chase down thieves, seems like quite the attractive nuisance. Why is it governments job to subsidize the security of this store's stuff through the threat of expensive post-facto enforcement against a bunch of judgement-proof perpetrators? Why do you keep absolving the well-capitalized corporation of responsibility and even agency ?

[antonkochubey]

>Why is it governments job

Because it’s literally the excuse for taxation?

[x0x0]

And I'm sure there will be some excuse for sf's clearance rates -- and that juiced by people not bothering to report crime here -- being horrific.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/police-sfpd-san-fr...

We're now at the point where Geico doesn't even ask you to cosplay working government by filing a police report. Because everyone knows that nothing will happen.

[mindslight]

It's one of the purposes, sure. But I don't think the set of people who want to raise taxes, and the set of people complaining about rampant shop lifting have very many people in common.

Would you personally support cities levying higher sales taxes on in-store purchases at large stores that forgo traditional security guards (let's imagine matching the state rate, so effectively a doubling) to pay for the resulting costs of those stores not preemptively securing their merchandise?