This is a common myth spread by capitalists. They use the excuse of "shrink" to justify 10xing prices, when in reality there was never more than a miniscule amount of that 10xs total value stolen.

If they want people to stop stealing, they need to provide a better product.

To quote one of the more tolerable capitalists "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

No they don't. They already charge as much as they think they can make money from. The price/demand curve is pretty basic microeconomics.

The whole thing is, what price maximizes the total revenue, given the supply/demand curve? Then if that revenue is high enough to pay for the costs of earning that revenue (which includes shrinkage), then the product is profitable.

Then it makes it on to shelves if it is profitable enough compared to other products, or if it will draw enough people in to buy other products to be worth losing the opportunity cost from putting that on the shelf vs something else.

So shoplifting does increase the price something needs to be to be profitable, but it doesn't do anything to raise the price people are willing to spend on it. So it'll more likely lead to closed stores, discontinued products, or added security measures (assuming those measures are less expensive than simply replacing the stolen products).

In some neighborhoods, they just shut down stores.

Still lineups of people ordering oat milk lahtays for $7.

Everytime, and i mean EVERY SINGLE TIME, you have been told prices have increased because of shoplifting it has been a lie. Its propaganda and will continue to be propaganda. These companies will do anything they possibly can to siphon off as much as they can. Wage theft exceeds shoplifting.

Yeah man, if youre poor you have no right to living standards /s

Just steal it then instead of paying for it?

The prices don’t raise if it’s just free anyway ;)

good! fuck everybody else, my children need wine

By telling people not to shoplift you're increasing the price for them from 0$ to retail. Nice going.

Raising prices is a last resort for stores. Before they do that most places such as supermarkets will cut hours in order to make up for a bad inventory. So shoplifting more directly causes retail employees to lose much needed hours.

Depends on the store, depends on the scale.