Of all the developments in modern America, few would have infuriated Patrick Henry more than self-checkout.
This was a man who helped launch a political firestorm because Parliament wanted colonists to pay a tax on paper. Not land. Not cattle. Not whiskey. Paper.
When the Stamp Act arrived in Virginia in 1765, Henry rose in the House of Burgesses and delivered a speech so inflammatory that members reportedly shouted "Treason!" His response was less than apologetic: "If this be treason, make the most of it."
Patrick Henry was not a man inclined to quietly accept arrangements he considered absurd.
Which brings us to Walmart.
The Revolution Nobody Asked For
At some point in the last twenty years, Americans wandered into their local stores and discovered something strange.
The cashiers were gone.
Or at least most of them were.
In their place stood rows of glowing machines demanding that customers perform the labor themselves. Scan your own groceries. Bag your own groceries. Look up your own produce codes. Solve your own technical difficulties.
The modern American enters Walmart as a customer and leaves having completed a brief unpaid internship.
Henry would have hated this immediately.
Not because he disliked work. Patrick Henry belonged to a generation that cleared forests, built farms, dug roads, and fought wars. Nobody accused eighteenth-century Virginians of being lazy.
What they disliked was being tricked.
And there may be no greater con in modern American life than convincing customers that doing someone else's job is a convenience.
The Greatest Corporate Victory Since the British Empire
Think about the arrangement.
The corporation eliminates labor costs.
The customer performs additional labor.
Prices remain exactly where they were.
The customer is then told he has received better service.
It is a masterpiece.
The British Empire spent a decade trying to convince Americans that unpopular policies were actually in their best interests. Parliament failed spectacularly.
Walmart succeeded.
King George III must be reading quarterly earnings reports in the afterlife and muttering, "Why didn't we think of that?"
Had Parliament proposed a law requiring colonists to unload their own ships, sort their own customs paperwork, and thank the Crown for the privilege, Patrick Henry would have set Virginia on fire.
Yet modern Americans happily scan thirty-seven grocery items and describe the experience as efficient.
One almost has to admire it.
The Machine Does Not Trust You
Of course, defenders of self-checkout insist that it saves time.
This claim appears to rest entirely upon folklore.
Every self-checkout kiosk eventually reveals its true purpose: not processing transactions, but accusing innocent people of vegetable-related crimes.
The machine informs you that an unexpected item is in the bagging area.
The unexpected item is the item you just scanned.
An employee arrives.
A badge is scanned.
The machine reluctantly agrees not to alert the authorities.
Three minutes later it becomes suspicious of onions.
Five minutes after that it questions your interpretation of bananas.
By the end of the transaction, the machine has developed a stronger investigative record than most police departments.
Patrick Henry once warned that "the liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
It is difficult to know precisely how he would have applied this principle to a self-checkout kiosk.
One suspects he would have found it suspicious that a machine incapable of identifying a cucumber had been granted authority over commerce.
Give Me Liberty. Or Give Me a Cashier.
What would have irritated Henry most was not the labor itself.
It was the sales pitch.
Americans are told this is innovation. Progress. Convenience.
But innovation is supposed to remove work, not redistribute it.
The washing machine eliminated labor.
The tractor eliminated labor.
The automobile eliminated labor.
Self-checkout looked at centuries of technological advancement and concluded that customers should do more work instead.
That is not progress.
That is outsourcing with better public relations.
Henry famously asked, "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"
A modern revision might read:
Is a gallon of milk so dear, or a package of paper towels so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of becoming an unpaid cashier?
Patrick Henry would not have enjoyed self-checkout.
He would not have enjoyed the touchscreens.
He would not have enjoyed the bagging area.
And he certainly would not have enjoyed explaining to a machine for the third time that he was not attempting to steal avocados.
The man helped launch a revolution.
Yet somehow his greatest contribution to modern America might have been leading an angry crowd toward Customer Service.
Give him liberty.
Or at the very least, give him a cashier.
— John Handcock