Have you seen some of the very glassed-in sorts of "safe" stores that exist in high crime areas? Tons of bulletproof glass, nothing directly accessible without asking the cashier. It doesn't scale to any kind of a store where sales are made by people walking around and seeing items and being inspired to buy them. It only works for gas stations and restaurants, for the most part, and even then it's a hassle for the staff.
> whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe
Never mind economics, it might just be logistically impossible unless you invest heavily in security personnel, who really won't do very much in the event of any kind of more serious criminal action.
Food deserts, etc. form in high crime areas because the crime drives them away. The current anti-police attitude is going to make this worse in the short term; I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll.
> "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities.
What does that last bit actually mean? How do stolen items "externalize as violence"? It sounds like GPT-3 regurgitated a sociology textbook.