A few months ago, @turtlekiosk tweeted an idea that I keep thinking about: “In the future shoplifting won’t matter, not because loss prevention or surveillance will be really good but because everything will require a subscription service that subsidizes the price of the thing you stole.” It’s not so difficult to imagine a scenario in which some version of an Amazon Prime subscription turns Whole Foods into the supermarket equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet, with a monthly or annual price calculated based on how much an average customer (or even a specific individual) might realistically carry out of the store—the formerly opposite acts of shopping and shoplifting converging upon the same process.