Potential

I can't remember where I saw the comment, else I'd link to it. It was most likely a comment on The Smallest Minority, but I can't find it in the limited amount of searching I've done. The comment was related to the Castle Doctrine, and it went something like this: "In Australia, we place a higher premium on human potential, so we don't see defense of a television set as being something worth shooting someone over."

The comment got me thinking about high school physics. I remember that Eureka moment when I got it: the potential energy the brick has 100 meters above the ground equals the kinetic energy the brick has when it hits the ground. You just set the two formulas equal and solve for the mass of the brick or its velocity when it hits the ground.

The corollary to this is that, at any point in the brick's descent, the sum of its remaining potential energy and the kinetic energy it has gained so far is also equal to the potential energy it started with. You can calculate its velocity after it's fallen 50 meters based on this or do other nifty things.

So what do bricks have to do with the above-referenced Australian? Well, human potential is analogous to the potential energy that brick has. (The fact that both phrases include the word "potential" is a good hint here.) At birth, a person has potential, and at death, he has expended that potential. The sum total of his life is a measure of the achievement of that potential.[1]

And this is where I have problems with the Australian's comment. Property represents the achievement of human potential in the same way that kinetic energy represents the achievement of potential energy. At some point, some person had the potential to work a number of hours necessary to generate the income necessary to pay for that television set. Its theft is not merely the theft of some petty little thing, it's the theft of the achievement of one human's potential. This equates to the theft of that human's potential.

[1] Okay, the analogy falls apart a bit. The brick cannot fail to achieve its full potential, but humans can certainly do so.