But surely there are degrees to this? I mean, if someone tall sits in front of you at the movies, they are violating your right to full viewership of the movie. If you get cut off in traffic, your rights are being violated.

Where is the line? Why is property theft deserving of the end of a human life?

In the case of the article, we’re not just asking about blanket “property theft”. I don’t think any of the proponents are say shoot someone who’s stealing a loaf of bread.

In many parts of the world, a car used to get to work. If you can’t get to work, then you can’t make money, and if you can’t make money then you can’t eat.

Does everyone who gets their catalytic converter stolen have enough money to get it fixed? If not, then this crime might be tantamount to depriving someone of their whole car

This.

It’s not just a random part of a car their stealing. It’s entirely possible that loosing the catalytic converter cascades into being jobless and homeless.

This is an argument that the system in which you are operating is flawed, society should ensure that you are not so vulnerable that a vehicle failing will make you end up jobless and homeless. This is not a good argument that criminals disabling your vehicle for profit is an acceptable justification for killing them.

I don’t agree that you should shoot someone for stealing your catalytic converter either, but just for the sake of argument…

So what if the argument that having your car disabled could spiral you into homelessness is more of a critique on our lack of a safety net? What can the average citizen do about that? At this point, not very much. The system is cruel, yes, but it’s the one they live in.

In my city, catalytic converters thrives are known to be highly organized, armed, and prone to violently confronting people who try to chase them off. A few people have even been shot for trying to do so. The police are too busy with shooting after shooting to do anything effective to try to stop them. When you have a group of people going out night after night, stealing with impunity and threatening anyone who gets in their way, it becomes very difficult to muster any compassion for them.

(little bit confused by your first sentence, I definitely do not support shooting people for stealing ones cat converter, just for clarification)

So if the police are useless and you are beholden to this powerful and highly organized pack of thieves, you think going out there and shooting them is going to make your life any better? What happens if you don't 'get' them all and now you're in a shootout with multiple armed opponents? What about the rest of their organization, reckon they will let you get away with it? Personally, I'd rather have my car temporarily damaged.

What can an average citizen do about their safety net in the US? Probably a whole shitload, anywhere from political participation, union involvement, volunteering, voting for politicians that support a better safety net.

However this argument can be made for so many things. Even just the tall person in front of you argument, what if the movie (about lottery for example) was so moving to such a person it would have changed their life, bought a lottery ticket and gotten rich, is the person justified to kill the tall person for potentially stealing their livelihood? Joking aside, I can think of a million examples, each more comical and absurd than the last

Being tall isn’t illegal.

Physically ripping out a catalytic converter from a persons car is.

And don’t forget, it’s not like the police will do anything to help you…they’ve abdicated their role in many places for many crimes.

You can drive without a catalytic converter (though you will fail smog test so it could eventually cascade to that).

You can't drive a car safely without a catalytic converter (unless the thief has been kind enough to patch up their damage with a straight piece of pipe, which never happens.) With a damaged exhaust system under the car, the driver is at substantial risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. And with a driver so intoxicated, everybody else on or near the road is at risk as well.

When the cat is removed your car almost certainly violates noise ordinance, so it's undrivable unless you know someone quick with exhaust pipes and clips or a welder.

So, yeah, you can drive a car without a cat, but not without a muffler (generally). Fix it tickets still incur a monetary cost.

> You can drive without a catalytic converter

This is incorrect for modern diesels that have a DPF system and inject DEF fluid. The cats are required hardware. You may be allowed 50-250 miles without them then the vehicle will not operate. It is well within possibility that someone stealing your cat between two places in Texas could be a big problem for you.

I think you're confusing rights with something else here. I'm specifically talking about natural rights, and I don't know if you're trying to steer the dialog into "what is a right" or just have a wrong idea, but I am not interested in philosophy or deconstruction of well established concepts

And who is it that gets to draw the boundary around "natural rights"?

The point being that humans defining natural rights goes against the concept of "natural". The entire exercise is a catch-22.

Funny how in each case where this comes up, natural rights always means something different. Almost as if the term is consistently used retroactively to justify extreme measures rather than to inform people of their rights per se.

A natural right is a right that you are born with. Rights aren't defined prescriptively in the way that you imply. They're enumerated and acknowledged. Not granted.

Enumerated and acknowledged by whom? What happens when two people disagree about what is a natural right?

You have not proposed a solution to this issue.

Your reply also stinks of moral realism which is a huge can of worms unto itself.

We draw the line ourselves. This line will be the aggregate maximum punitive multiple that you'd append to a theft.

Property theft to many, even implicitly, is very much the equivalent of the theft of some quantity of their life. People work and struggle, expending some quantity of their life to acquire property. To forcibly deprive them of their property is the removal of some portion of their life.

The other way to view this is that in an ideal world, this is done by the state. The state alone possesses the means for other punishment. The individual cannot detain, nor can they fine or garnish wages. The sole means of action available to the individual is force. Thus, if the state is derelict in it's duty, the citizen has only the application of force at his disposal. When you're applying force, you'd better be willing to go to lethal, since being unwilling to do so drastically increases the risk to yourself if the counterparty doesn't play by the same rules.

> To forcibly deprive them of their property is the removal of some portion of their life.

This portion can be made whole again by replacing the property, either through insurance, through restorative judgements against the perpetrator, or various other means.

Taking a life is final.

Replacing property is still depriving others, just in aggregate, rather than on an individual level. Are e so divorced from the concept of how property is obtained that we think we can magic it out of an infinite pool?

> Replacing property is still depriving others, just in aggregate

Not if the original property is retrieved or the thief is made to pay.

I'm not sure in the context of this discussion, the worth of a human life, that your plea to consider where stuff comes from is that important.

I see property in the current context as a proportion of a life. People invest time and effort, the better part of their lives to create and acquire property. The theft of such is thus a theft of said life.

And so if I take a candy bar from a drugstore counter, I deserve a 9mm round between the eyes?

Sure, if you want to have 0 sense of proportionality.

Steal a candy bar, no biggie. Steal a car and I won't sweat that death.

Ideally though, the police would intervene. That they aren't is the root cause of this problem.

> The theft of such is thus a theft of said life.

In an entirely reversible manner.