Source: Noahpinion
Noah Smith documents a concrete shift in urban retail infrastructure: stores like Walgreens are shuttering locations and locking down merchandise in response to theft, forcing consumers into friction-heavy transactions that make legal purchasing harder than stealing. This creates a death spiral where security measures (locked cases, limited hours, fewer locations) degrade the customer experience enough to accelerate store closures, particularly in lower-income neighborhoods that lose access entirely rather than gaining better security. Shoplifting is less a crime problem than a symptom of broken retail economics—when the cost of loss prevention exceeds the margin on sales, retailers choose to exit markets rather than serve them differently.