What if you walked into a Walmart or grocery store and every item was free?

Most people would take stuff, maybe even a lot of it. The anonymity of a big box store, the idea that everyone else is doing it and really the stolen items were already paid for by the consumer in the form of the purchase price allows it to be inevitable that shoplifting is happening, no matter what they try.<br><br>Let's think about this for a second. What if one day you walked into a grocery store or Walmart and every single item was free? How would it even work? Would you just make a list and hand it to a store worker, who would just drop the items into a cart for you. Or would they be entirely self serve? Everyone would be allowed to just roam about and grab as much stuff as they wanted, as many times as they wanted, and they would never be turned away.<br><br>Well, the very first day, everyone would go absolutely nuts. They would stock up on everything they could eat, needed for their daily lives, and make lists of all of the things they want. They would go home and stuff their houses to the brim with new shit, and then, they would make lists for their friends and family and go back for those items. The friends and family would do the same thing for them in return. Every single day, they would go back into the stores and stock up on new shit.<br><br>Eventually, the stores would be overwhelmed. To make matters worse, every restaurant would be free, every hotel stay would be free, every public service would be free. There would be no money, wages, or anything like that, so everyone would have nothing better to do than to hang out at free restaurants and public services all day. It would be total chaos.<br><br>This is what would happen if everything was free. And so, from that first day, every single day the stores would have to change their rules to handle the inevitable problems that come from everyone having everything they could possibly want. The second day, they would limit how much of each item a person could have. The third day, they would limit how many times a person could go per month. The 4th day, they would limit the total number of items one person could have. The 5th day, they would limit how long you could stay in a restaurant or hotel. The 6th day, they would limit how many times you could visit a public service. The 7th day, they would start to require a card with a barcode to track every item that everyone took or used.<br><br>It wouldn't work. When you give people something for free, and they take it, and you make rules about it, they will do whatever it takes to get around those rules because they have no incentive not to. They didn't put anything into the system, and they have nothing to lose. You give them something for nothing. And you think they would be more honest with you for it, or more forthcoming, or more willing to follow your rules? They won't. They will do whatever they have to do to get what they want, because you could have given them what they wanted in the first place, but you didn't. You gave them nothing, and they want something for nothing, so they will take it from you. That is what this system creates.