Price-less shopping is not yet a widespread practice, and in some cases, even when the tags are removed from individual items, prices are still labelled on shelves or racks.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail

Vass Bednar is the managing director of the Canadian SHIELD Institute and co-author of The Big Fix.

The end of the year promises a predictable pricing whiplash: Prices are marked down for Black Friday and Cyber Monday at the end of November and then we all rush to conclude our holiday shopping only to watch prices plummet again on Boxing Day. It can make you feel like a price tag is a charade of sorts.

Walk into an American Walmart lately and you might notice something missing in the clothing department: The physical price tags. Where small adhesive stickers once clung to T-shirts and tote bags, sometimes there’s now a smooth blank space. A Target employee recently told The Daily Dot that staff have been instructed to tear off price tags from clothing. On Reddit, employees at Canadian arts-and-crafts chain Michaels say they field a constant flow of shopper questions: Why don’t things have prices on them any more?

Prices are becoming a private piece of information. Some say it’s tariffs. But the real answer,........

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