An obvious difference between IP theft and muggings, however, is that the later also entails threats of violence (and sometimes even assault & battery). That's why robbery is generally considered more heinous than burglary, where the victims are typically not present or asleep. I'd agree though that some sort of dollar figure should be attached to the psychological trauma of being mugged, so that great-enough white-collar crimes can also lead to imprisonment.

I'll bet if you asked most people what they would prefer less, getting beat up or losing $500 million, the would answer the latter.

Which distributed among all Google shareholders is $100 each?

Sure. Basically the guy wronged 5 million people, $100 each. Makes it a significantly greater crime than a comparable mugging of a single victim.

Well, no. Distributed among all Alphabet shareholders it is, from the most recent numbers I've seen, about $85 million each from Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and smaller amounts from everyone else.

Also, in a mugging, the mugged is deprived of whatever was stolen. With IP theft the victim still has use of their IP

There's a difference between illegally downloading a movie instead of paying for it, and stealing technology and using it to bring a competitor to market. The latter is actually taking market share away from the organization it was stolen from, so they are deprived of something tangible.

Not if Uber used his stolen IP to out-compete Google. Then the IP would translate directly into a market opportunity loss.

The difference is the use of violence to threaten someone's life, as opposed to moving some numbers on a screen.

However, plenty of white-collar crime has physical effects. More than a few embezzled retirement funds have led to suicides, for example.

How do you tell someone that a store clerk robbed at knifepoint is much worse than having their retirement nest-egg evaporate because of someone they haven't even met? Serious white-collar crime should be pursued and punished much more than it currently is.

I would happily get smacked around if you promised to 'move around' some significant numbers into my banking account.