Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 241
Shrinkflation
You may not know the name Shrinkflation, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.
The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.
Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.
Watch two shopkeepers in the same lane during a lean month. One cuts quality, the other cuts margin. In a year, one has customers and the other has stock.
Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.