There's a difficulty in that the very term 'capitalism' refers back to Marx, who was talking mainly about Victorian England. Even the age of the robber barons in the United States came at the end of Marx's lifetime, and the development of social democracy in the 20th century, with capitalism moderated by regulation and high government spending and taxation in aid of social programmes, was all beyond Marx's ken -- he thought the only resolution would be 'revolution', which, on the Russian model, turned out to be a terrible idea. Still, if he looked at the absurd fortunes made by US internet moguls like Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Google panjandrums in our own time, and their ability to move money round the world to dodge tax, he might think that not enough moderation had been done.

Is the theory that the stores know the actual shoplifting numbers but they just lie about them, or that they have no clue?

google.com

i think it's mostly they have no idea and everything just gets lumped into "shrink". but store closures are much more likely to be due to rapid overexpansion rather than paltry things like shoplifting.

walgreens recently admitted when their shrink numbers came out and they were actually down 1% that they had played up shoplifting numbers previously.

but WAGE THEFT trumps all other theft, so lets not buy the corporate tears too much..

It's such a ludicrous claim that "cite or ban" is fine. My man said, "most grocery stores have been forced to close do to shoplifting and unsafe working conditions for employees." MOST. In the entire city of Chicago!

I googled it and got a bunch of recent articles with headlines like:

"Chicago exploring creation of city-owned grocery store for food deserts" https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-food...r-me/13780331/

"Chicago mayor proposes city-owned grocery stores as Walmart, Whole Foods exits leave ‘food deserts’" https://nypost.com/2023/09/18/chicag...rocery-stores/

Surely another random proposal that goes nowhere, as is the norm for this kind of thing. These links and others do mention, to dunyain's point, that stores like Wal-Mart and Whole Foods have been closing in certain Chicago areas, although his "most grocery stores have been forced to close do to shoplifting and unsafe working conditions for employees" claim is quite the exaggeration, to put it nicely.

Seems like a humane, incremental idea; if you have a system which allows large companies to quit service in certain areas, something should at least be made available for the citizens of those areas to shop for groceries and goods.

I left wondering what you think the components of shrink are.

i would assume you understand that it's more than just shoplifting.

So you don't think people who make definitive claims about things most people find dubious should be asked to show their source, or is this a pedantic objection to the use of the words "needs to"?

Shoplifting; theft by employees, management, others who have after hours access; items not received from supplier; items sold but not properly removed from inventory; damaged items...that's just a few off the top of my head.

No I think people should back themselves up and I'm fine with "cite or ban" even here but not if it's going to be applied selectively.

Good to see you’re on board with it, and won’t be further derailing the convo.

This talking point is about Walmart and them closing half their stores in Chicago. Most stores aren't closing in Chicago and it really isn't much of an issue at this point.

Walmart is different, though. They want to swap out stores for automated warehouses because online sales with pickup and delivery are only going to increase from here and I'd imagine that they just want to make sure that they well positioned with the locations to do that.

I'd assume that Walmart would prefer to close all of their stores in Chicago as well as any underperforming store now as they claim that all 8 of their stores have lost money for 17 years straight. But they feel that loss is worth to a point moving forward.

Cite or ban should absolutely be used selectively. To not do so would be farcical and a total misuse of the idea.

Your opinion is that we should institute a policy here that is rife for abuse?

My opinion is that posters who contribute little of value and repeatedly make baseless claims should be treated differently from those who put thought and effort into their posts and don't just lift their opinions from media sources that are known to be both biased and lying.

Wage theft is the best reason to abolish capitalism imo

most people who want to abolish capitalism are terrible at it

First of all, ok boomer

Secondly, I could have been great at capitalism. I had the perfect skillset and a good education and a middle class family and could have gone into trading or being a lawyer or whatever. But I realised pretty soon as an adult that the richest people are amongst the most unhappy people in our society, and that being good at capitalism isn't a moral good, nor does it make you happy. Being good at capitalism doesn't just mean getting your grind on, it entails exploiting others, and that's something I saw as dehumanising myself as well as those I would be exploiting. So I consciously chose not to be good at capitalism. My bank balance does not determine my self-esteem, nor how I want others to see me. Status and symbols are for people so insecure they're desperate for others to know how successful they are. Capitalism isn't some magically difficult puzzle that only the best and brightest can solve. It's pretty easy. Work hard, work smart, until you can get others to work hard and you barely even have to work smart. The smartest people in our society have recognised that as a trap, and lead simple lives.

Both of these posts make claims that are AT LEAST as hyperbolic as anything I said, and the poster did not profer a single cite to back it up. I suspect most of the claims made in these 2 Slighted posts are not true at all, but because they align with King Spew's own biases, he is completely agnostic towards this.

As far as he military base example, in a vacuum you may be correct. But in the context of Chicago it would not work at all IMO, as the military has a relatively low corruption and anti-crime ethos, and Chicago is high corruption and pro-crime. IF Chicago authorities treated theft and corruption as seriously as the military does it would most likely work, but we all know there is no world where that would ever happen.

I do think the military example is interesting, because professional militaries are a rare case where "socialism" seems to work. But it requires extreme sacrifices to personal liberty and conditioning to suppress human nature itself to make it work.

Whereas capitalism aligns very well with human nature, which is why it works so much better, although obviously if exploitation is taken to an extreme it to can not work. But it is much easier to make work, and has a much higher upside.

Is this somehow an admission that you were lying when you said most grocery stores in Chicago closed due to shoplifting?

Would you have preferred I responded with "google.com."

Note, I am not advocating Slighted should be banned, or subjected to any "cite or ban" policy. I actually really appreciate Slighted's responses to my comments, because he tends to address the actual arguments instead of just personal attacks or nitting obvious hyperbole without addressing the crux of the argument itself.

The crux of the argument is that in the backdrop of the racial reckoning of 2020 and its associated criminal justice "reforms," big blue cities are being absolutely torn apart by horrible policy decisions (as myself and other predicted is exactly what would happen). And the idea that the answer to this problem is to ignore the actual drivers of the dysfunction and double down and give progressive Big Blue govt more control to enact their own version of socialism is laughable.

FWIW (not much I imagine) I actually think this thread was doing just fine without King Spew getting involved, and his interjection was completely unnecessary and counterproductive.

The problem is that the hyperbolic situation you report is happening would clearly indicate an issue in need of major intervention, whereas reality is mostly okay. If you had good arguments to make, you wouldn't need to so often make up additional facts to support yourself.

Bobo - I know what comprises shrink. (A long time ago I was in store-audit for a retail company). I was asking Slighted what he thought was in shrink because he implied companies just called it all shoplifting for some unstated nefarious reasons.

As an aside, 35 years ago 90% of retail shrink was from employee theft. I have no idea about now as then it was really cash going missing disguised as inventory. No one uses cash now so that's hard to do. But, people are clever and find a way to do what they want.

You are wrong on your first point (I'm not a boomer) and also your second. Since you're so smart and also such a good guy, why not engage in capitalism, exploit the rich you hate so dearly, and give to those in need?