I'm not sure that I would agree with the claim that the state is unable to stop shoplifters. The case here was Australia, but speaking to the United States:
You can't really do anything about shoplifting until after it happens. It's not a crime until it's been committed, then you can prosecute. The issue is there is a base level cost to do so, and it's going to take a very large amount of shoplifting to balance that. We as a society have basically accepted that certain crimes don't go punished, and it seems like low value shoplifting largely fits that category.
In turn, large companies have decided that they will instead collect data on their own until they have enough to make it a high value issue, with proof. Then the state will prosecute. The issue here is that companies do not get to illegally collect data, they still would have to do so within the bounds of the law. So what are those bounds? We say the Government can surveil us with impunity, but only for terrorism or whatever else gets brought under that umbrella. For "petty" crimes the government would need permission to collect the amount of data that these companies are and then build their case with that.
This isn't to say that shoplifting is okay, just that society doesn't seem to care all that much. Our reaction to companies taking actions like these will also show how much we seem to care about them as well. Spoiler on that last one: we don't seem to care (in the US).
It definitely depends on the state and store policy.
A Walmart in AZ has sent gigantic bouncers after me to detain me on suspicion of shoplifting a $5 bag of cat litter. In my state they are allowed to kidnap/imprison you until police arrive if they have 'reasonable suspicion' you're in the act of shoplifting, so yeah have fun guessing whether the guy with the walmart badge is actually security or just a rapist.
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.
Depends on the state.
AZ:
>C. A merchant, or a merchant's agent or employee, with reasonable cause, may detain on the premises in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time any person who is suspected of shoplifting as prescribed in subsection A of this section for questioning or summoning a law enforcement officer.
https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01805.htm
i.e. all they need is reasonable cause to suspect you are shoplifting. When I was detained no one ever saw me steal anything, I openly grabbed the cat litter, scanned it at the machine, paid for it, grabbed the receipt, then refused to show it to the receipt-checker (not about to slow down for that bullshit since it is now my property) so they just sent some dudes out to grab the cart out of my hands.
But if you challenged the qualifier of reasonable cause here you surely would win.
The store here almost certainly overstepped the law, and you allowed it to happen.
I "allowed it to happen" because I'm not about to gamble a decade+ in prison pulling out a knife or gun to be able to physically match the power of a gigantic bouncer on the hope the detainment is found unlawful, all over $5 in cat litter.
Unless by "let it happen" you mean I didn't let it happen then sue walmart, which would have zero deterrence effect on them as any lawsuit for a few minutes unlawful detention would be a rounding error on their balance sheet, and likely at my own expense since it's basically my word against another's and his army of corporate lawyers.
Uh not, it isn't "your word against theirs" -- a competent attorney will put a litigation hold on the CCTV footage, and they'll do it on contingency.
Makes me wonder if maybe you're being accurate, since you'll telling an unusual story and inventing reasons not to seek redress.
Also it'd be a criminal matter, not just a civil one -- having their LP have to get bailed out of the county jail sends a message.
Anyone can dress like rentacop or Walmart security. Pull out the pepper spray, say "back away," and leave.
I'm not pulling out a weapon unless it is the very last option, but I did not enjoy the prospect of having to mull that decision. In the end I just never shopped at that Walmart again.
We could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too.
That's what Trump/MAGA america wants. They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. They will gleeful cheer it on.
>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.
I've spent a lot of time in Singapore. Not a nation that should be emulated.
Why?
A couple that some people might not like
1) Execution for drug trafficking without violence
2) A slight majority of the populace eligible for public housing gets it via essentially a regressive tax system where a gigantic slice of the populace (immigrants) fund the housing they can't use, creating a very bizarre government-imposed scenario where housing actually becomes radically cheaper the better positioned you are to be wealthy.
Of course there are arguments for both.
1. Sounds good. I bet that lowers the amount of drug-related gang violence like nothing else would.
2. Same as in USA. I fund a lot of housing I cannot use via my taxes.
2 is not at all like the USA. USA has an ostensible progressive taxation for public housing -- the people on section 8 / public housing are poorer population than even the legal immigrants that can't get it.
Singapore's is regressive; they tax their massive % of population of ineligible immigrants so the citizens can have it essentially without means testing. It functions largely as a transfer of wealth from less rich to more rich.
This entire well is completely poisoned by the bad-faith whingeing of retailers end to end.
First of all; in times long past, retailers had zero shoplifting incidents, because every order was fulfilled by their employees, who would pick from the stock room and present the customer with a ready-to-take bag of their goods, and a purchase receipt. Shoplifting in this context was basically impossible.
The advent of customers picking out their own goods let to the introduction of customers attempting to leave the store without paying, but it also saved retailers incredible amounts of money, not having to pay to have employees both stock and pull orders.
However, because nothing is ever profitable enough, much further down the line (and, worth noting, when crimes are at historic lows) we get self checkouts, which are basically honor boxes with speakers. And that's fine, I love self checkout and my only complaint with it is now retailers are over-reliant on it, and, again in the name of cost-cutting, have 6 to 10 registers overseen by one worker, who has to sprint between them to sort out when the stupid things can't detect a light item, or have a conniption fit when you don't place a 75" television on them, and of course they have to also make sure all of those registers are ringing up the correct items, which has itself then given rise to bag checkers at the door.
And to be clear, I'm not like, endorsing any particular system here. I don't care how stores want to convey products to me terribly, just make it clear what the fuck I'm supposed to do, and I'll do it. What I am saying is retail theft is largely enabled by retailers who do nothing but chase the bottom line and constantly try and make their stores work with fewer and fewer people who are less and less skilled over time and are then SHOCKED when someone just takes something, because their ludicrously under-staffed stores are incredibly easy to steal from, if you want to.
And I would ALSO point out that throughout this long history, the cost of slippage has been built into the business, because theft is far, far from the only reason a product that is purchased wholesale may not make it all the way to a paying customer. Retail supply chains and especially grocery ones are simply AWASH in waste, and somehow, all the time, these stores make money.
So no, as a customer and taxpayer, I don't particularly give much of a shit about shoplifting.
> 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
> 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.
> This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer.
NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action.
Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid. As far as I'm concerned this is a straight fucking myth until I see proof.
Like, surely, nearly 40 years on this planet, surely, by the law of probabilities, I would've seen SOMETHING get cheaper. SOMETHING. ANYTHING.
And before anyone says “TVs got cheaper,” yeah—because they’re made in sweatshops with subsidized rare earths and sold at a loss to get you into the ecosystem. That’s not market efficiency, that’s strategic manipulation.
> NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action.
Then show me the profit margins? If they just pocketed all the money, where did it go?
> Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid.
I'm pretty confident this is one of those situations where as soon as I start to lay out out examples, they'll immediately be dismissed, but just in case that's not true:
Full price video games are WAY cheaper than they were in the SNES era that I grew up in. Factoring in inflation, even $70 games today are like half the price, or close to it. Even most digital deluxe and similar versions are substantially cheaper than SNES games were.
It's way, way, WAY easier to get by with cheap or free games these days. Free games basically didn't expect in the 90s other than demo discs maybe (and those typically were still bought as part of a magazine issue), whereas now there's plenty of free games where you can just ignore the gacha/skin elements if you want, and there's a bajillion demos that can be accessed totally free on every storefront.
Indie games? In the 90s, games from small development teams would still cost the full price or close to it, something like Silksong that's high quality and costs only $20 -- even at launch -- didn't exist.
I remember the 90s, I remember how most middle class families couldn't really afford all that many games each year, especially in the cartridge era. People are practically overflowing with video games now in comparison, it's crazy how much easier it is to build up a huge library.
Really, tons of electronics are way cheaper now than they used to be. A $1500 desktop computer in the early 90s was a reasonable mid-range price; even if you ignore inflation, you can get a perfectly capable desktop or laptop today for less than that, and if you factor in inflation, computers today are way cheaper (unless you want a high-end gaming PC).
> Then show me the profit margins? If they just pocketed all the money, where did it go?
[ Insert set of news clips of various billionaires and their billions that they've gotten ever more of ]
> I'm pretty confident this is one of those situations where as soon as I start to lay out out examples, they'll immediately be dismissed
I mean, I'm going to take issue with these since they're all examples of video games which were, when I was a kid, an emerging medium. Like that's basic economies of scale, not to mention the cost of all computers have fallen substantially, why would video-games be exempt from that? And if you're anticipating that kind of response, why don't you pick more cut and dry examples? Groceries, rent, healthcare, childcare... Hell, try it with books. Books are CERTAINLY cheaper to produce today than they've ever been, and I'm not even counting e-books.
The cost of living has outpaced wages for decades, and the idea that "competition drives prices down" is a myth that only survives in Econ 101 classrooms and libertarian subreddits.
> [ Insert set of news clips of various billionaires and their billions that they've gotten ever more of ]
Yeah, I figured you wouldn't have an actual response.
We were talking about grocery stores. Feel free to show me the massive profit margins that grocery store companies have on their products that they apparently are all massively overcharging us for. That's your thesis, so it shouldn't be hard to find the data.
> I mean, I'm going to take issue with these
A reminder that what you said was:
> NEVER. In my LIFE. Have I seen this in action.
> Literally every single category of product that I buy is more expensive now than when I was a kid.
So I provided multiple examples against your "NEVER" that you immediately shrugged off. I'd be lying if I said I was surprised.
> not to mention the cost of all computers have fallen
Wait, so you just lied before? Why?
> Yeah, I figured you wouldn't have an actual response.
You asked where it went. The top 1% of earners have nearly doubled their wealth in the last 5 years alone. That's the answer. The fact that your ideology and/or ambition to join them conflicts with it does not, in and of itself, make that not an "actual response."
Money is allegedly finite, at least it is whenever the subject of making society more equitable is raised. If all those people are so much wealthier, and if the economy is indeed a zero sum game, surely you must then acknowledge them having so much more, by necessity, means so many others must have less?
> So I provided multiple examples against your "NEVER" that you immediately shrugged off.
I said "I have never seen this in action" in specific reply to you saying:
> This is a wrongheaded way of looking at it, since in a competitive market, those cost savings will eventually be passed onto the consumer.
And beyond the blatant goal-post shift there that I must remind you, everyone can see, I feel it's appropriate to tear into your video game example because I think that's a lot trickier than you might:
First, the price stability of AAA games is not evidence of benevolent market forces. It’s a result of industry standardization, publisher control, and platform monopolies. Half-Life 2 co-launched Steam in 2004 and retailed for $60–$70, a price which stuck around for a couple of decades or so, and that’s before you factor in DLCs, deluxe editions, season passes, and microtransactions. The base price may look flat, but the real cost to access the full experience has ballooned. And unlike the cartridge era, you often don’t even get a physical product—just a license to access a server.
Second, this pricing model predates digital distribution. The idea that games got cheaper because of competition ignores the fact that prices held steady even as production and distribution costs plummeted. The savings from digital delivery, reduced packaging, and outsourced labor didn’t go to the consumer. They went to shareholders and executives. The top five game publishers have posted record profits year after year, even as they lay off staff and squeeze dev teams.
Third, pointing to video games and electronics as proof of market generosity is classic cherry-picking. These are industries uniquely shaped by global supply chains, massive economies of scale, and digital platforms that eliminate physical overhead. That’s not how groceries, rent, healthcare, or education work. In those sectors, prices have risen relentlessly while wages stagnate. If competitive markets reliably passed savings to consumers, we’d see it across the board, or hell, even just sometimes. Not just in industries that benefit from digital arbitrage and monopolistic control.
So no, video games didn’t "get cheaper" in any meaningful way, not really. They got more extractive, more fragmented, and more dependent on psychological monetization models.
You got super down voted for this, and my post was not popular either, but you seem to be one of the few here that get the sentiment.
There just isn't a huge energy to do something about a lot of petty crimes, therefore nothing is done. Like you, many people have complete apathy for the pursuit of minor shoplifting (I'm making an assumption here that you would be against large scale crime ring level shoplifting).
There isn't the will from the people or the politicians to care about petty crimes like this, until there is. People like you have explicit reasons why you don't care, and many people have the implicit "it just doesn't directly effect me therefore why should I care" reason.
Exactly.
Also worth noting: any store worth a SHIT that carries high value goods fully insures their inventory too, for stealing, and for their employees breaking one getting it out, for natural disasters, for fires, for boomers driving their SUVs through the front windows, and for like... a toddler running through one on the display floor.
Like I'm just... I'm fucking done listening to the endless bitching and crying on the part of corporations about how HARD it is to do business. If it's so awful, shut it the fuck down then.
And I genuinely wouldn't care apart from this is just a BOTTOMLESS well that reactionary politicians use to constantly divert money from anything we actually need to give yet more of it to fund yet more policing that doesn't do anything apart from murder black teenagers and shoot people's dogs, and no that's not JUST because Walgreens won't stop fucking whining in the news about it, but it isn't disconnected either. Crime has NEVER been as low as it is now, the only increases of any note were the ones that cropped up during the pandemic. Apart from that every single kind of larceny and theft has been on a steady downturn since the 1990's.
Quit. Fucking. Whining. About. Crime.