The value of property may be represented in dollars, but that is not necessarily the only or most important value that the owner attributes to it. There are things other than money which must be paid in order to gain ownership of something. What of the hours, days, weeks, months, years and even lifetimes spent pouring vast amounts of effort into building, developing and maintaining that property? What of the memories attached to it? The personal sacrifices made to have it? Property of any kind, while ultimately material and therefore transient, is not always replaceable.

I watched a video recently that showed an older black man pacing in the street, shouting at looters and rioters (who were allegedly protesting on behalf of BLM for justice and equality), demanding to know why they stole his computer and destroyed his truck and his business. He wept over the loss of a lifetime of hard work, dedication and investment, all of which was unjustly taken from him in a matter of minutes by a group claiming to want equality and justice for black Americans. Why, he wanted so badly to know, did these people destroy what he spent his entire life and savings building that was beneficial not just to him, but to the entire community? He was already so old that he would never be able to rebuild. His life’s work was gone. Can that really be measured by something as simple as a number of dollars? Should he have been afforded the right to protect his property with violence, if necessary (which it apparently was, as no violent means of protection was used and his property was destroyed)?

A liberal friend told me (using other words) that, if anyone should enter onto his property with a nefarious purpose, they should expect to be greeted by the business end of a shotgun. This is a perfectly reasonable position to take. Why, then, is it not reasonable, to him or most leftists, for certain other people to take the same position? Why is it not reasonable that our government should support this position as the constitutionally guaranteed right of every American citizen that it is?

There is another important question that is raised here: what exactly is the value, not of life, but of living? Time, once spent, cannot be recovered. Effort, once expended, cannot be reclaimed. What is the dollar value of a life dedicated to good work, perseverance, commitment and compassion? What is the dollar value of a memory? These are the same questions asked by those who suggest that life is more valuable than property. So, to rephrase your question, what is the exact value of a life? Also, are all lives equally valuable and, if so, by what justification?

I believe that the value of a given life can be measured by the impact that it has on the lives around it, so no, not all lives are equally valuable. Valuable, yes, but not equally so. Based on that belief, I argue that it is possible, given specific conditions, for one person’s property to be more valuable than another person’s life. A life mostly spent deliberately behaving in a manner that has a constant, profoundly negative impact on the lives around it does not merit preservation at the cost of property that provides even a marginally positive, beneficial impact to the lives it affects. This system of value measurement is, of course, dependent upon one’s personal beliefs as to what constitutes positive and negative impact on lives. There are, however, some fairly common things that people consider to be one or the other. Serial rapists are generally considered to have a negative impact on lives that outweighs nearly any good they do the rest of the time. Healthcare providers are generally considered to have a positive impact on lives that outweighs their tendency to create tremendous debt for patients because most people prefer to be alive and in debt rather than dead and financially solvent. So, in the event that both the serial rapist and the healthcare provider are a deliberate risk to someone else’s property, I would use deadly force on the rapist without a second thought and do my best to spare the life of the healthcare provider. If I do not know, I am likely to assume that the person threatening my property does not generally have a positive impact on lives and is thus expendable. That, too, is a perfectly reasonable position to take.

So, no, there is no cure for murder. Once a life is extinguished, there is no remedy. You are correct there. There is also no remedy for a lifetime wasted, a legacy destroyed, a home connected to thousands cherished memories sacked and burned. Property is not always a simple matter of dollars and cents, just like life is not always a simple matter of being alive or dead. The value of both is dependent upon how they are used, what is invested in them and what is connected to them.

There is, as I said before, some value for life and property that is necessarily subjective. I have seven children. Their lives are more valuable to me than the lives of people who are not my children. They are more valuable to me than any property. If one of my children was (as an adult for the sake of this argument) to be killed by a person who was protecting his or her property from them, I would naturally be devastated. I would almost certainly be angry with the person who killed my child, at least for a while. There would be no way for me to get my child back. Still, I would not consider that killing a murder or unjustified, though I’m sure I probably wouldn’t care at the time. This brings me to another point: would I be justified in killing my child’s killer under a system that assumed the inherent value of that child’s life to be of equal value to all other lives, which assumption is necessary to assert that all lives are more valuable than property?

Well, yes. If my child’s valuable life was taken to protect less valuable property, it would only be fair. Since my child’s life could not be reclaimed, I would be justified in taking the life of the person who took the life of my child. Fair trade. However, what of my wife who, like me, lost a child but now has no life to justly take in return? Would she be justified in taking the life of a child of her child’s killer? I say no, but some might disagree. To them I ask, when does it end? At what point is the blood debt considered to be squared? If, as I believe, the only justified killing in this scenario and under this system was the one I committed, then we must conclude that all life is not equally valuable because the parents of the person I killed would not be justified in killing me, despite having lost a child just as I did. Their blood debt must go unpaid because the life that I took was less valuable than mine. Why? Because the life I took was used to take a life in defense of personal property.

It all comes back to this: no two things are of equal subjective value, including people. It is therefore necessary to take one of two positions: either people’s lives are not all equally valuable and so some may be less valuable than property, or all human life is of equal value regardless of its impact on other lives and is also inherently either more or less (in this case, more) valuable than property regardless of the same. One of these positions affords people the right to protect what they have without fear of recrimination (or at least it used to), while the other either defeats itself or results in a Wild West system of endless, fully justified blood feuds. I leave it to you to decide for yourself which one you prefer.