“Shrinkage.” A big problem.
I’m not talking about the delicate issue identified in the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Hamptons.” I refer, instead, to the business lingo for theft.
It’s rampant and taking a sad toll.
Dick’s Sporting Goods is the first major retailer to blame declining profits on the “shrink” of its inventory because of mass theft. “The sporting goods and athletic clothing seller reported second-quarter results Tuesday morning that included a 23% drop in profit, despite sales that rose 3.6% in the period,” CNN explains.
But it’s not just a Dick’s problem. “Retailers large and small say they are struggling to contain an escalation in store crimes — from petty shoplifting to organized sprees of large-scale theft that clear entire shelves of products. Target warned earlier this year that it was bracing to lose half a billion dollars because of rising theft.”
The cause?
No mystery.
Leftists have long been uncomfortable with private property. Their socialism seeks to replace private property with public property and private control over the means of production with governmental control. No wonder they often excuse private thievery as something like a revolutionary act.
When Pierre-Joseph Proudhon put the idea boldly onto paper in 1840, that private property is itself theft, he really meant landed property, not personal property. Today’s leftists, unburdened by subtlety, keep coming back to opposing what is the core institution of civilization: respect for other people’s things.
Which allows for everything from privacy to progress.
Encouraging petty theft, as the left has knowingly, and organized theft, as the left has unwittingly (I hope) is not without consequences.
Our wealth, our liberties, our peace — they shrink.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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4 replies on “Shrink Shrank Shrunk”
The shoplilifers certainly understand the concept of private personal property, just take their cell phone and watch the reaction.
What is happening is a failure to recognize the equally private property of entities, the government, insurance companies, corporations. That has been lost. If Dick’s, Target, Walmart or Walgreens have their inventory “liberated” there is no moral pain involved-for in the eyes of the theif it is not equivalent to taking from an individual. That blindness drives out merchants and creates commercial deserts where retail is most needed.
Economic and moral education if failing in America. So too the society must follow. Amazon will prosper as their “shrinkage” is minimal. The brick and mortar will disappear, joining Amazon on the internet and the least of society will suffer the consequences.
Additionally, do not try that in a same town or with an individual merchant. There will be consequenses.
Walmart, as a matter of policy, prosecutes all retail theft and leaves juristictions where the authorities will not cooperate.
We create our own world and must be prepared to live in it.
In California , they redefined “petty” as “$950 or less” and the penalty is a fine of up to $1000 and the threat of jail time in their grossly overcrowded jails. So, worst case, if they get caught (2/3 don’t), they’re out $50.
This is now a viable profession.
I don’t want to deny that the penalties in California are wilfully insufficient, bit a perpetrator can always be ordered to pay compensation on top of any other penalty. So the gamble in shoplifting isn’t quite as good as you calculate.
In reality, what typically happens to a shoplifter when caught is that he or she is banned from the store (making re-entry an act of trespass). I once witnessed a fellow who had been thus banned from a local drugstore reacting at later occasion with surprise and great dismay that he could no longer shop there. He didn’t deny having previously engaged in shoplifting; he just felt that being banned from the store were an over-reaction.
And I’m sure that the political left is moving towards a position that would indeed treat such bans as unlawful discrimination.
Shoplifting is a catch-all term which calls to mind petty pilfering of stuffing an unpaid for item into a hiding place and not including it in checked out items. It doesn’t come close to conveying the difference of organized mobs who run through a store grabbing thousands dollars of merchandise or people loading up carts to the tipping point then barreling through the exit rather than the checkout. That’s looting. Not shoplifting. Florida government officials now publicly warns looters that they may be justifiably shot. Predicting that Florida will have substantially less issue in future with shoplifting than libprog cities like San Fran.
Property rights are human rights.