They need to do it the European way where you have to deposit a coin to get the cart and you get it back when you return it. I think Aldi does this in the US.

Should the stores have valet service patrolling the parking lot for your cart? Or should I just make sure to leave my cart parked uphill from your car?

Or maybe I should just make sure that there’s an empty cart inside every empty parking spot. That sounds like a fun sunny-day community anarchy event.

The best thing of the corrals is, when used properly, empty spots are actually empty and you don’t have to worry about stray carts slamming into your parked car. Unfortunately, they are rarely used properly.

Making work easier for the dude who has to go out to collect them is just gravy.

But there’s a segment of the American population that doesn’t want to do what’s best for ”nearly everyone, eventually”…they want to do what’s best for “me, now”. Even if most people (themselves included) doing the former automatically results in the latter. Basically prisoners dilemma. Same reason we still have Covid, same reason we can’t have public healthcare, and same reason a few kids collect lead at school every now and then.

In America the shops have areas where you return the carts and an employee takes them from that spot back to the store. The exception to this is Aldi.