We are in a new age of logistical prowess, led by the dynamism of Amazon as it strives to carry out dizzyingly complex forms of order fulfillment and delivery. With the age of agentic commerce just around the corner—think of going to ChatGPT and having an AI agent scour every website for the cheapest offering of the specific dog food you buy—there is an expectation that the future of retail is near infinite assortment and ultra-fast delivery . Consumers want the exact flavor of the exact thing that they’re looking for, and they want it at their doorstep now . It seems sometimes that we are testing the bounds of infrastructural capacity and automation in logistics to fulfill this dream. There are a few things wrong with this dream, however, and the first, as I’ll review in a moment, is simply that it might not be so desirable. Even if you think it is preferable at an individual level, there are good reasons to question the social value of the logistical complexity that it necessitates.…