How do self-checkout machines allow for extra theft? Sounds more like a problem of cheaping out on employees to watch the check-out area if you ask me. You can hire one employee to watch over multiple self-checkouts the entire time, and end up paying less, many stores do that and it works.

I'm in a relatively rural area and pretty much every general store here has a lot of self-checkouts, and they're usually busier than the human checkouts (because it's way faster and more convenient).

Even without having people at self-checkouts, and assuming that allows people to steal more, theft is pretty much negligible compared to profits from additionally having the self-checkouts in the first place. Many people find it less of a hassle to go grocery shopping if it means they don't have to have a cashier check them out, and the throughput is higher.

A lot of times big box stores close down and blame it on theft, but in reality it's never theft, usually it's because the workers were about to unionize, or because upper management needed a scapegoat for below expected profits from the store.