Local stores have very little locked up here. My area has industry, which provides wages. Wages produce taxes. Taxes are used for police. Through surveilance police arrest shoplifters.

Complacency only back-slides society. I will agree that a waning industry does as well, or that our hyper-fixation on growth is bad, but that’s another discussion.

If someone offers a free item, someone will take it whether they need that item or not, whether they can afford that item or not. Nature takes the path of least resistance. It’s easier to take than to work.

As such, there is no incentive to work if the item is free. If there is no incentive to work nothing gets made. Yet people will need things so you’re forced to make items people need. Which makes items not really free after all to the dismay of many an anti-capitalist.

Regardless there will always be some percentage of the population that will feel above the rest, mainly due to mental deficiency or addiction, independent of the economic system. For punishment of theft I would prefer to see forced induction into the municipal workforce for 5 years, flat sentence with a minimum wage earned in municipal bonds, held in a community barracks with a tapered reintegration into society. A sort of forced communism for those who can’t cope.

I’m ready for the downvotes.