It's a shame you're missing the bigger picture of the free fall in public trust... And the social contract is burning and I think your shopping experience might be the least impacted.

Ultimately stores can go back to the general store or (bullet proof glass) method where the clerk gets all your stuff for you. There's also pick and and delivery options.

Making a more perfect union... That's the hard part.

It's not like that in most of the United States. You are cherry picking and attempting to claim the entire country is like it. It's not.

Not justifying it, but your experience sounds like the experience of a "bad neighborhood" not a nationwide phenomenon.

The late Soviet Union was damned by the iconic image of people waiting in endless lines for scarce consumer goods

Even when attacking the Right, left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that "when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts." While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism "both of the Right and Left," individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Red-baiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.

M. Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds