Canada

Yup, the corporation's favourite hobby is externalizing of costs. This is just one more example.

Automation would be some kind of robot that unloads my cart and packs my groceries into properly organized bags.

That's true. Honestly, as someone who despises chit-chat and likes to be in and out as quickly as possible, I prefer self check-out, but I know the people pushing it aren't doing it for the same reason I would.

There's a bunch of lemmings thinking "challenge accepted".

This isn't true for everything across the board however, and the number of .001% is a bit of hyperbole. The driving force behind theft is multifaceted but the biggest ones are probably a mix of resell value, time to flip, and ease of access. Most items not from grocery stores are fenced through oh say Offer Up.

I worked for a major retailer as a mix of boots on the ground and investigative loss prevention and I will say theft is far more common than people give it credit and that mostly stems from how damn easy it is. Pre-Covid theft only loss were probably about .8-1.5% depending on the location and during/after was around 2-4% these numbers are for my state only though.

Now of course this is still a drop in bucket and corporation are still horribly, horrifically greedy which is why I had to get out and now get to relax working from home. I just wanted to frame the numbers a little better since I had to live and breathe this shit for years.