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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

Historical note: in the days before supermarkets, all the inventory was kept behind the counter. Someone had to come up with the idea of letting customers browse the shelves and that shoplifting was an acceptable loss.

Maybe it will move the other way again?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggly_Wiggly

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The tech solution is amazon go https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=16008589011

You don't get let in without an amazon account. Once in, you take what you want and computers figure out what you bought and charge you.

You jump over turnstile without an amazon account. Once in, you take what you want and leave.

I imagine if that's a problem there are some crafty designs that can physically prevent someone from entering without "tagging in."

Man LA sure sounds like a shithole. Here in the Netherlands in the big cities most stores allow self checkout

self checkout is all over the place in LA.

I could take it or leave it.

I certainly wouldn't condemn a location as 'a shithole' simply due to whether or not self-checkout was a thing, but i'm not going to go out of my way to defend LA, either.

P.S. where did LA come into all this? I re-read everything and can't quite figure it out.

I think there is certainly a space for picking everything in an app on your phone before you actually go to the shop or pay a bit more for the shop to come to you. Presumably this would be less costly to run than a traditional store.

Perhaps today you could have machines manage many clerical duties. Essentially like a giant vending machine.

I mean have hyper local delivery and pickup only stores everywhere.

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