I have never seen someone shoplift food and I never will.

The supermarkets are just catering to their actual customers: the stock market.

Price controls don’t address the root cause either. We need massive anti trust action to break up the agrifood and food distribution monopolies.

This decision sucks.

As a general rule, I don't like to ask for help when I'm out shopping. More of a "get your shit and get out" shopper. No fancy cheese for me, I guess.

There's a ton of people this affects too. Like, what about refugees who aren't confident speaking English? People with anxiety disorders? The non-verbal and other disabled people?

And never mind the people who can't ask for help, what about the trend to keep stores understaffed on a skeleton crew? How can you ask an employee to unlock the frickin' cheese if there's no employees to find?

I really hate this trend of treating customers like criminals. I just want to eat - so selfish of me, but I'm afraid I've gotten used to it.

I am shocked that some people are not protesting by filling carts with meat and just leaving them in an aisle and walking away, also ice cream.

The packages have gotten much smaller

Blatantly so in some cases. Nature Valley granola bars reduced their size by like a third but still kept using overstock of old wrappers so you'd get a box full of wrappers partially filled with tiny bricks of granola.

“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.” - anonymous quote

These problems are never originated by the poor, they are created by the wealthy. It's an age old practice of the wealthy to create inequality and then blame the poor for not being lucky enough to be rich. Many writers and thinkers have understood this problem for centuries but too many powerful people take advantage of the ignorance of the population.

Who is the smart ethical individual?

Someone who steals food because they have no other way of getting any?

Or the billionaire who doesn't need any more wealth to live a long fruitful existence but still decides to consciously increase the cost of the food he sells in order to make himself even more wealthy?

"If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin but he who causes the darkness" - Victor Hugo.

I'm also curious about the logic of what items get locked up.

I went in a few shops recently, and all the toothbrushes were locked up. I know personal-care items tend to be the first things in the cages. Yet plenty of other items with higher value and margins are out in the open.

Is there some virtue-agenda in play? Don't make it too easy to steal your way into healthy or presentable?

Maybe if they weren't taking advantage of people and recording record profits then people wouldn't have to steal.