Consider what happens in countries without legal protection of property.
Anyone can help themselves to your stuff when they want. Capital
formation is extremely difficult, if not impossible, in those circumstances.

Capital is not only for large corporations. Mom and pop stores,
peddlers, farmers, etc need to have capital in the form of goods, money,
or services. If those things are not protected in some way, the strong
will simply take what they want.

So your "victimless crime" does violence to the person it's directed at.
That person has put an effort into giving value for goods that someone
has agreed to. You seem to suggest that society as a whole should pay
for the theft of goods from the owner, and let the intruder go.

Uh, I'm not going to pay anything in taxes or higher insurance payments
so a criminal can pillage with impunity. I'd expect any owner of goods
to be quite irate if I somehow was helping myself to the fruits of the
owner's labor without recompense.


Bill wrote:
people for what is apparently only a crime of breaking and entering. If that is
all the intruders did I hardly think that is worthy of a death sentence.