[icanhackit]

> strikes me as naive

This is interesting because your viewpoint focuses on the law and who is technically in the right, while his viewpoint values community cohesion and well-being. This tends to be the line between conservative and liberal viewpoints regarding treatment of lawbreakers - hard line reactions which favour the capital holder versus rehabilitation, decriminalisation, consideration of the social fabric.

That said, stealing someones walnuts and reselling them is a douche move. Being a centrist, I'd recommend approaching them about it and providing a warning. If you'd prefer not to approach, leave signs near the trees indicating theft will be reported and what the punishment could be. If they don't heed the warning then report them. The correct answer is often somewhere in the middle.

[chipperyman573]

Community well-being would be not reporting those who just take and eat/keep/etc his walnuts.

On the other hand, these people are deliberately stealing his walnuts and re-selling them. There's no community well-being here to preserve, they are stealing and profiting.

[icanhackit]

> There's no community well-being here to preserve, they are stealing and profiting.

I agree that they're stealing and profiting from someone else's resources but there is a community cost to someone receiving a criminal record or worse for a relatively minor crime. And was it a friend's son or someone else only a few degrees of association away?

They should be punished if they continue after being warned but when the punishment exceeds the grade of the crime, anyone concerned about community would stop to ponder the cost-benefit of reporting the thieves. What we should have is punishments that better suit the severity of the crime, like community service.

In the Everyone Wins category: the thieves apologise, return the remaining walnuts and any money made, and offer to help the owner tend to their house and garden. Alternatively they can sell the walnuts on the owners behalf, generating money without having to pay for labour. In the everybody loses category: you strip someone of their ability to get certain jobs due to a criminal record and they turn to more crime to make up for the shortfall in income. Or you send them to jail and rather than having a well-tended-to garden your tax dollars are paying to have a harmless thief in prison.

[gwbas1c]

Police can be asked to give warnings. It goes a lot further than a property owner

[sethrin]

Can we perhaps instead of 'punished', maybe 'brought to justice' or 'rehabilitated'? Negative consequences should be focused on making the affected persons whole, and secondarily on getting the person to the point where they're not likely to repeat the crime. Insisting on proportionate suffering is in my opinion morally dubious, and risks devolving into "eye for an eye" mentalities, or worse.