The only thing keeping the stores in the article in business is that they stock only a relatively small amount of cheap merchandise with no secondary market. Their total liability is so low that it's cheaper than hiring staff.
Since it hasn't been tried at scale, this is an unfounded proposition.
Shops already deal with routine pilfering. My partner's secondhand bookshop had an estimated 5%+ loss rate from petty theft. Large department stores deal with almost continuous shoplifting.
Yes, theft is ubiquitous in a small part of the population. No, this does not mean the honour system cannot work "at scale"
A social system can rely on the goodwill of its participants for quite some time. But as that system grows and becomes more well known, it inevitably becomes a honeypot for bad actors to exploit. Once those bad actors take advantage of it and experience the lack of consequences, that behavior is reinforced and shared with other bad actors.
The system will either need to change to flush them out, or it will cease to function even for good actors.
Giant Eagle, which is a huge grocery store recently started the exact same thing: https://www.beaconjournal.com/news/20190222/zap-giant-eagle-...
They've been doing it for a year, and have added stores, so contrary to what you say, clearly it works.
*added as an edit
I think petty theft is far more instinctive than you may realize. I personally have to fight the urge to steal my daughter’s holloween candy, even though I can easily afford my own, and she would give me some if I just asked. I don’t know where the urge comes from but I know it’s there, and I doubt it’s an uncommon type of urge.
Social interactions can really help to bolster behaviors we prefer in ourselves. I can see them being useful in keeping honest people honest. In the same way a gym buddy makes it harder to skip a workout.
In any case, someone raising questions about emergent behavior in the general population shouldn't invite questions about that specific person's imminent ethical lapse.
I've heard of willpower being an expendable resource, but not conscience. I don't feel like it places a burden on my conscience to do the right thing, in fact, the opposite is true - doing things against my conscience causes a mental burden or strain, maybe explainable by cognitive dissonance (I am a moral person // I just did something I consider immoral).
I think what distinguishes this situation from most others is that it is generally rational to follow your conscience. It makes sense to me to follow my conscience and not steal from BestBuy because there are people at the door who may catch me, there are security tags on products, and there are probably cameras. If all of those things disappeared, it is not so rational for me to not steal. In those cases, every time I listen to my conscience, it is with reluctance. In time, I may steal, or I may alter my behavior to not be put in that situation (I'll shop somewhere with those checks). Again, this is a thought exercise, so it may be different in practice.
At least in the US, there are so many opportunities to steal. In so many stores, it's so easy to just walk out with merchandise. So many private properties have items that aren't bolted down.
(Someone could steal about $1000 of firewood from my backyard, for example, plus the nice racks.)
Somehow, I don't think your prediction will come true.
If I walk past it all the time though, and I
- don't have other ties to you (like knowing you or living in the same neighborhood)
- am not at risk of getting caught (you're blind and deaf for example, and there are no neighbors to see)
- need firewood
it's not obvious to me that I won't steal. There are probably a lot more checks in place that are involved that don't come to mind, but having shoppers rely on themselves simply make theft more likely I think.