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Forget farms, this is even how the supermarket produce section works in Switzerland. You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag (witho

Forget farms, this is even how the supermarket produce section works in Switzerland. You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag (without anyone looking over your shoulder) and then you go to a (nowadays potentially automated) cashier. Heck, it's how the tax system works as well. Government has no way of knowing how much is actually on your bank account, well at least not officially (gov was probably quite happy about the US breaking our banking secrecy). So everyone is supposed to be responsible enough to fill out their taxes and hand in all the information needed. At the end it all works out fine - turns out you can mostly trust people to be honest and the system keeps working for everyone, at least it did so for the last 170 or so years.

usaphp 10y ago
> "You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag" How is that different from self checkout in most of the big food stores in USA?
- m_mueller 10y ago
  I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost certainly noone is going to notice if people print the tag for cheap Apples and put it on a bag of expensive ones.
  - microcolonel 10y ago
    Here in Toronto, we have both. In fact, one location of a grocery chain might allow you to tag and weigh your own items, whereas another location of the same grocery chain might require an attendant (usually right next to the automated machines) to verify it. I've seen one location go from requiring an assistant to allowing full self-serve. Not sure about the U.S. but I have the impression that there must be places which are similar in the U.S.
  - randlet 10y ago
    No. The majority of vegetables I buy (in Canada but it's the same in the US as far as I've seen) are not pre-packaged. Self checkouts have a scale built into them that you weigh your own produce and punch in the code to say what kind of food it is. It's trivial to cheat if you want, but most people are honest. This is also true in hardware store self checkouts where you buy loose items and the store relies on you being honest about punching in the correct code when you check out.
  - irrational 10y ago
    Not exactly. Typically there will be a sign that lets you know how much the produce is per imperial pound. There are analog scales there that you can use to weigh your produce to give you an idea of how much it will be, but the real digital scales are at checkout. At self-checkout you put the produce onto a scale and then click on the picture of the produce your are purchasing so the computer can correlate the weight with the item. There isn't anything stopping you from clicking the picture of a cheaper produce item other than the honesty system.
    - Fuzzwah 10y ago
      ... and the staff member hovering around the self check out area.
      - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
        Who is definitely going to notice the that you rung up something expensive as something cheap...
      - irrational 10y ago
        Not around where I live. They hang out about 15 feet away.
  - Reason077 10y ago
    Here in the UK, like the US, the self-checkout machines have built-in scales that weigh your produce and calculate the price automatically. There's no extra tags involved, you just have to select what the produce is if it doesn't have a barcode. There is indeed an opportunity to "cheat" by weighing something expensive but telling the machine it's something cheap like onions or potatoes. But the machines can be monitored remotely from a security station, so there is a small chance you'd get caught. That keeps most people pretty honest. I'm sure a few cheats do slip though, but the losses from this sort of thing are presumably much less than the savings from employing less checkout staff!
  - cowsandmilk 10y ago
    > already weighed and tagged portions generally no. They do sell stuff like that as well, but most is out in the open and you bag yourself. And then punch in the item codes or look them up at the self checkout. There's no real check, although sometimes they catch people cheating by reviewing video.
- chrisper 10y ago
  Selfcheckouts are pretty recent. Grocery shopping like described above is how it worked forever.
TWAndrews 10y ago
You can mostly trust Swiss people to be that honest. It doesn't work like that everywhere.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  Isn't that a chicken-and-egg problem? IMO if a society treats people like responsible adults they'll rise up to the task. The question is of course how to transition there. I can't say to have any recipes, but I'm reasonably sure that taking away civic rights is counterproductive. Maybe try to get one electable political party that makes it their thing to protect and even expand citizen's rights and allow for more self responsibility? I don't like the Libertarians for some of their antisocial ideas, but at least that's where they seem to have gotten something right.
  - someguydave 10y ago
    >IMO if a society treats people like responsible adults they'll rise up to the task. That's one hypothesis. Another is that trustworthiness is a genetic trait.
    - m_mueller 10y ago
      I'm sure it has genetic components, but the question for me is rather whether those components differ between peoples. I'd assume that evolutionary pressure selected quite heavily for people who can be trusted to cooperate.
      - dri_ft 10y ago
        But there are also obvious evolutionary pressures towards self-interest, even when it means breaking promises/trustworthiness. (Remember, selection happens at the level of individuals, not of whole groups and societies!) The balance between the two pressures could be different in different environments. In other words, it's quite possible that one environment could select more for trustworthiness, another more for untrustworthy self-interest.
fryguy 10y ago
You can still do this at hardware stores in the US. You put your nuts and bolts in the plastic bag and write down the price and quantity and then they add them up at the register. I was really shocked as a teenager when I realized they just "trusted" you to do it correctly.
- Theodores 10y ago
  Well... Worked in a busy bike shop as a kid and sometimes you would have someone come through the door after a nut or bolt. I would go to the workshop and spend quite a bit of time finding the bolt, then I would only be able to charge 50p for it. By the time I had came back I could have used that time to serve a customer after some real purchases, e.g. a whole bicycle. There wouldn't even be any 'word of mouth' benefits, the bolt could be for a lawnmower or something and the customer could be far too wedded to their tin box vehicle for there to be the chance to upgrade them to a bicycle. Anyway, it was not cost effective to do personal service bolt sales, at 50p a time, had I been smarter I would have had a big box of random bolts under the counter and made things 'self service'.
saiya-jin 10y ago
well, for supermarket this is common all around europe for fruit&veggies, east, west, everywhere. probably cheaper than hiring extra person to mark everything correctly. all super/hypermarkets in france are same, shopping there every weekend.
Arizhel 10y ago
>You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag (without anyone looking over your shoulder) and then you go to a (nowadays potentially automated) cashier. The US has its faults to be sure, but it's not that different here for buying produce these days. A lot of things had little stickers on them which can be scanned directly, and for other things the automated cashier lets you type in or look up a code number and then set the item(s) on the scanner/scale to be weighed. If you really wanted to cheat, it would be trivial to buy a bag full of some expensive item and type in the code number for some cheap item.

usaphp 10y ago

> "You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag" How is that different from self checkout in most of the big food stores in USA?

m_mueller 10y ago
I haven't been to too many US supermarkets, but don't you get the vegetables in already weighed and tagged portions? IMO if you do that yourself, and there isn't even a cashier doing a bit of sanity checking, there's just more opportunity to cheat. With self checkout alone you can just not scan something, but it would seem a bit more obvious to catch (which I could see the chains doing with security cams). Almost certainly noone is going to notice if people print the tag for cheap Apples and put it on a bag of expensive ones.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Here in Toronto, we have both. In fact, one location of a grocery chain might allow you to tag and weigh your own items, whereas another location of the same grocery chain might require an attendant (usually right next to the automated machines) to verify it. I've seen one location go from requiring an assistant to allowing full self-serve. Not sure about the U.S. but I have the impression that there must be places which are similar in the U.S.
- randlet 10y ago
  No. The majority of vegetables I buy (in Canada but it's the same in the US as far as I've seen) are not pre-packaged. Self checkouts have a scale built into them that you weigh your own produce and punch in the code to say what kind of food it is. It's trivial to cheat if you want, but most people are honest. This is also true in hardware store self checkouts where you buy loose items and the store relies on you being honest about punching in the correct code when you check out.
- irrational 10y ago
  Not exactly. Typically there will be a sign that lets you know how much the produce is per imperial pound. There are analog scales there that you can use to weigh your produce to give you an idea of how much it will be, but the real digital scales are at checkout. At self-checkout you put the produce onto a scale and then click on the picture of the produce your are purchasing so the computer can correlate the weight with the item. There isn't anything stopping you from clicking the picture of a cheaper produce item other than the honesty system.
  - Fuzzwah 10y ago
    ... and the staff member hovering around the self check out area.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      Who is definitely going to notice the that you rung up something expensive as something cheap...
    - irrational 10y ago
      Not around where I live. They hang out about 15 feet away.
- Reason077 10y ago
  Here in the UK, like the US, the self-checkout machines have built-in scales that weigh your produce and calculate the price automatically. There's no extra tags involved, you just have to select what the produce is if it doesn't have a barcode. There is indeed an opportunity to "cheat" by weighing something expensive but telling the machine it's something cheap like onions or potatoes. But the machines can be monitored remotely from a security station, so there is a small chance you'd get caught. That keeps most people pretty honest. I'm sure a few cheats do slip though, but the losses from this sort of thing are presumably much less than the savings from employing less checkout staff!
- cowsandmilk 10y ago
  > already weighed and tagged portions generally no. They do sell stuff like that as well, but most is out in the open and you bag yourself. And then punch in the item codes or look them up at the self checkout. There's no real check, although sometimes they catch people cheating by reviewing video.
chrisper 10y ago
Selfcheckouts are pretty recent. Grocery shopping like described above is how it worked forever.

TWAndrews 10y ago

You can mostly trust Swiss people to be that honest. It doesn't work like that everywhere.

m_mueller 10y ago
Isn't that a chicken-and-egg problem? IMO if a society treats people like responsible adults they'll rise up to the task. The question is of course how to transition there. I can't say to have any recipes, but I'm reasonably sure that taking away civic rights is counterproductive. Maybe try to get one electable political party that makes it their thing to protect and even expand citizen's rights and allow for more self responsibility? I don't like the Libertarians for some of their antisocial ideas, but at least that's where they seem to have gotten something right.
- someguydave 10y ago
  >IMO if a society treats people like responsible adults they'll rise up to the task. That's one hypothesis. Another is that trustworthiness is a genetic trait.
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    I'm sure it has genetic components, but the question for me is rather whether those components differ between peoples. I'd assume that evolutionary pressure selected quite heavily for people who can be trusted to cooperate.
    - dri_ft 10y ago
      But there are also obvious evolutionary pressures towards self-interest, even when it means breaking promises/trustworthiness. (Remember, selection happens at the level of individuals, not of whole groups and societies!) The balance between the two pressures could be different in different environments. In other words, it's quite possible that one environment could select more for trustworthiness, another more for untrustworthy self-interest.

fryguy 10y ago

You can still do this at hardware stores in the US. You put your nuts and bolts in the plastic bag and write down the price and quantity and then they add them up at the register. I was really shocked as a teenager when I realized they just "trusted" you to do it correctly.

Theodores 10y ago
Well... Worked in a busy bike shop as a kid and sometimes you would have someone come through the door after a nut or bolt. I would go to the workshop and spend quite a bit of time finding the bolt, then I would only be able to charge 50p for it. By the time I had came back I could have used that time to serve a customer after some real purchases, e.g. a whole bicycle. There wouldn't even be any 'word of mouth' benefits, the bolt could be for a lawnmower or something and the customer could be far too wedded to their tin box vehicle for there to be the chance to upgrade them to a bicycle. Anyway, it was not cost effective to do personal service bolt sales, at 50p a time, had I been smarter I would have had a big box of random bolts under the counter and made things 'self service'.

saiya-jin 10y ago

well, for supermarket this is common all around europe for fruit&veggies, east, west, everywhere. probably cheaper than hiring extra person to mark everything correctly. all super/hypermarkets in france are same, shopping there every weekend.

Arizhel 10y ago

>You pick your stuff, you weigh it yourself, you choose the right tag (without anyone looking over your shoulder) and then you go to a (nowadays potentially automated) cashier. The US has its faults to be sure, but it's not that different here for buying produce these days. A lot of things had little stickers on them which can be scanned directly, and for other things the automated cashier lets you type in or look up a code number and then set the item(s) on the scanner/scale to be weighed. If you really wanted to cheat, it would be trivial to buy a bag full of some expensive item and type in the code number for some cheap item.