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Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

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51–60 of 108 posts

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#51
post #8

Even shops with security guards dont work in the UK at the moment. It's a shame this could never be a thing here.

As a counter point, when I came to UK, it was super weird to see self checkout machines. Where I am from (Pakistan), I can't imagine anything like that. Although watched a video recently where in a rural area a guy left a cart of fruits on the side of road for people to buy the fruits and pay by themselves, at the end of the day cash was just little bit less than total amount. These machines in UK felt like I was bei…

You're on multiple cameras for most of the self-checkouts in the UK, with at least some both capturing your face and an overhead view that will trigger a "are you sure you scanned this" complete with replay of what looked to the system of you potentially failing to scan an item before putting it on the scales on the other end if it looks like you move something past the scanner without the scanner triggering.

The system will also typically signal for an attendant if you after a short amount of time ensures the weight on the receiving end matches the expected weight of the items scanned so far.

There's not all that much trust involved in it, and I think just being aware of the cameras will make most people who might be tempted think twice.

Of course it's possible to steal still, but it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs the shrinkage to add up to a lower cost than having more people at the tills.

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#52
post #34

What the article doesn't mention but the store's website https://tot-go12.com/ does is that you need to pass through facial recognition to enter the store and there are multiple cameras tracking whether you try to leave without paying. (Maybe like Amazon Checkout where there's humans continuously monitoring the video feed.) "High trust society" or not, you need some minimum level of security to avoid becoming a honey…

Doesn't matter that they have cameras on top to monitor etc - it's still a high true, high order society that enables it.

Sn Francisco super markets on the other hand (and increasingly everywhere else), have to lock cheeses and baby formulas

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#53
post #24

I'm blown away by a fridge costing <$100, used or not. Did I misunderstand the prices?

A quick search shows I can get fridges used for less than that in London, though mostly small ones. I guess to a lot of people, when they replace goods like that, the hassle of selling it outweighs the perceived return

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland is so small, basically a city.

Switzerland's population would make it one of the biggest cities in the world, more than double the population of Los Angeles, and more than New York City. Neither of which could be counted as high trust.

The population of Switzerland is ~9 million. The population of LA metro is around 15 million, and NYC metro aroound 20 million

LA "the city" might be less but you can't tell where LA ends and it's other parts begin. It's one giant metropolis. Same with NYC.

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#55
post #8

Even shops with security guards dont work in the UK at the moment. It's a shame this could never be a thing here.

As a counter point, when I came to UK, it was super weird to see self checkout machines. Where I am from (Pakistan), I can't imagine anything like that. Although watched a video recently where in a rural area a guy left a cart of fruits on the side of road for people to buy the fruits and pay by themselves, at the end of the day cash was just little bit less than total amount. These machines in UK felt like I was bei…

They just save more money not hiring the cashier.

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#56
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a different system, they don't go to court without iron-clad case. Japan does not have a large prison population.

And they heavily influence (using pressure such as off-the-record interviews, and long detention times during the investigations) the suspect's statements so that it says what they need to make it a crime, even when it isn't. Whatever the suspect may say afterwards, they just have to point out to the signed statement and say "but here you confessed". Source: I have been directly living such occurrence lol. That's wha…

given the stats above, 33 of 100k incarcerated, vs 541 of 100k in the USA. I'm inclined to think that the USA has far more of those types of cases than Japan.

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#57
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we had a way to make this sort of system work in a low trust society. I’d rather we had a way to change low trust societies into high trust.

If there are consequences to bad behavior which results in real, felt, shame, then society will self-police to whatever values it holds. However, there can be downsides; for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.

>for instance a lack of out-of-the-box thinking and individuality.

Overrated. There's close to 0% of it going on in "low trust societies" anyway. It's not like the average social media zombie in the west is anywhere near an "out of the box" thinker...

Re: Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

#58
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we had a way to make this sort of system work in a low trust society. I’d rather we had a way to change low trust societies into high trust.

After traveling for years, I often wonder how various cultures end up high or low trust. Wealth or financial inequality doesn't seem to be the main driving factor, despite seeming an obvious cause. Racial and ethnic homogeneity doesn't always explain it either. Destruction of traditional culture by things like colonialism seems to be an important factor.

> Destruction of traditional culture by things like colonialism seems to be an important factor.

Were native peoples of North America high trust between tribes before colonialism?

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