Teori:

The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence to work: those who’re able to think, will not work under compulsion; those who will, won’t produce much more than the price of the whip needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional consent. Any other policy of men toward man’s property is the policy of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages who play it short-range and starve when their prey runs out — just as you’re starving today, you who believed that crime could be “practical” if your government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance to robbery illegal (Atlas Shrugged.)

Praktik:

How bad is Venezuela’s economy? Even the criminals are struggling to get by. . . .

Suddenly there’s a whole class of people whose pockets are no longer worth picking.

“If they steal your wallet, there’s nothing in it,” says Yordin Ruiz, 58, a shoemaker. . . .

Fewer bank robberies are occurring, because there’s not much cash in banks. Who can afford to save?

There are fewer cars on the road to steal. With the price of imported parts soaring, many vehicles just sit in garages.

And even the criminals are migrating, the report said, joining a mass exodus of over 3 million people seeking better opportunities abroad.

“In Venezuela, it’s just not profitable to be a thief anymore,” said Roberto Briceño-Leon, a sociologist who coordinates the observatory.

The decline in robberies reflects a peculiar phenomenon. A visitor returning to Caracas after years away might expect to find a city falling down. The economy, after all, shrunk by around half in the past five years. But the city is not collapsing. It is disappearing. (Washington Post.)

För den som vill ha en längre utläggning om varför plundring och brott inte lönar sig, vill jag tipsa om min artikel “Brott lönar sig inte”.