| | First off, the Russians DID have oil. In fact, Russia was one of the largest net exporters of oil prior to the Bolshevic takeover. Then they appointed political comisars to run the oil fields and in short order ruined them, as it took specialized technical skill and experience to keep the right pressure on the oil drain from a field; otherwise you lose the connection and have to start over. Russia went from being a net exporter of oil and grain to being a net importer under the commies.
Tibor, your comparison of loss of life and limb to loss of physical property brings up a pet pieve of mine, which is the way that most people, including most objectivists and libertarians, put an irrational, emotion-based value or, more usually, disvalue, upon the former. For example, when someone is assaulted, they don't want the reasonable costs, including pain, stress, etc. They want VENGENCE! And so, vengence stands in for justice in our legal system.
I fully understand the feeling. I feel it, too. But it really, for the most part, I think stems from the utter failure of our legal system to do anything that really stops such assaults or catches many of the perps to begin with. So, when we do catch someone, we want to string the bastard up!
The degree of injury suffered in an auto accident that might net, say $15,000 in medical bills and other damages, will result in a demand that the perpetrator of an equivalent assault spend five years or more in prison - at taxpayers expense, and generally no hope of collecting compensation for the victim, as the perp is not generally in the money to begin with, and will usually leave jail a pauper with few job prospects beyond resuming his criminal career.
I personally would prefer getting the $5,000 to set things straight, whether the damage was accidental or intentional. But our state society considers "crime" to be anything that violates democratically dictated social norms, so the "justice" system is not about justice at all, but rather about enforcing those norms, and since they only catch a tiny percentage of the perps, the ones they do catch have to serve as examples and deterents.
In a free, libertarian society, there would be the equivalent of an inverse jail. Such people, the professional criminals, would simply find it impossible to get to their victims, as they would have to pay astronomically high insurance premiums to get into a private Mall or proprietary community, based on their established record of risk. And part of the premium would go to the security guards and bounty hunters who would dog their every step, physically or via video surveillance, etc. Known criminals would likely have to wear or implant a geo-location, tamperproof ID to even get insurance so they could walk into a grocery store or bar.
I personally feel little sympathy for criminals in our society. In fact, I feel a general loathing toward them, probably beyond the actual threat they pose. In the kind of libertarian society I describe above, however, criminals would be few and far between, and people would find themselves victimized so infrequently, that when it did happen, they would likely respond as in "Oh, that poor, poor person! How could they end up in such a state, acting like some kind of animal predator toward their fellow human beings? What can we do to help them?" And psychologists or therapists would step up to the plate, offering to straighten them out for a cut in their future earnings...
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