Comment by Jetrel

Having been around that culture quite a bit, I think it's safe to say that quite a few people believe that yes, personal property has enough of a sanctity/value that it's worth capital punishment to enforce that as a societal norm.

The logical hole in this is that when one traces back "why" personal property has such a high value, the only source of its value comes back to it being thought of as an inseparable part of the life-experience of the person who owns it. To contrive an example, let's say someone's a pre-computer author (i.e. before easily duplicable backups), writing one of those life's-work novels, and they have a single copy of the manuscript of their magnum opus - to threaten to destroy the manuscript is to threaten their life's work; to threaten everything they poured their life's passion and effort into. It's conceivable that to destroy it might literally kill them by driving them to suicide.

But that's exactly the hole in the logic: at it's most extreme where property really is equatable with the value of a human life, the only thing that gives this property any absolute moral value is the value of the human life and passion that went into building it. If you've then got a conflict between "a holder of property" and "someone who wants to destroy that property", really it's just a threat on your "life".

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One is then simply asking a question of whether it's justified to take another person's life to protect your own.

Most secular ethics frameworks say no; christianity and buddhism repeatedly and explicitly say no, over and over again, including direct quotes from christ himself.