Oh good, so poor people in the ghetto would have to slog their way through checkout themselves more than we privileged people would, shopping as we do in more profitable stores.

Otherwise if you mean that all of a retailer's stores should have self-checkout in equal measure, then we're back to square one: The same places are as less profitable as the more profitable ones. Why impose this deeply unwanted downgrade on your already profitable stores?

I'm not making an argument about market mechanics. I'm just saying that it's dishonest for a retailer to claim self-checkout is about anything other than the obvious.

If providing groceries to food deserts were really a motive for these cost savings, there is one thing they could do to promote self-checkout that would absolutely work where all of those other efforts in the article don't: Offer the tiniest token discount for doing it yourself.

But they don't, and there's the answer.