For laws to work, they need to have the respect of the population. If not, they're just oppressive. Killing people for even minor offenses like stealing may sound like a fast and easy solution to get rid of scum, but can you honestly say that you've never done anything wrong in your life? When you've been drinking with your friends, have you never taken a bottle of beer that didn't belong to you? What if your brother or best friend were caught taking something insignificant that didn't belong to him, would you support him being put to death for that? And if I wanted someone dead, it would be the easiest thing to set him up by a stolen object found in his room.

My belief is that such laws would lessen people's personal morals, and instead having people believing you could do whatever you want, as long as you didn't break any of the rules set down by the government. People would start navigating the laws looking for loopholes to make extra gains. Laws wouldn't be able to cover every aspect that someone would consider wrong and immoral, and if they did, they would become so restrictive, that they would hamper any attempt of entrepeneurship and innovation, and you would end up with a society where growth and development were as good as non-existant. A good deal of people who's managed to get really rich, people who are catalysts towards growth and the betterment of society as a whole has got the place they are today by operating on the edge of what's legal. If death was threath hanging over people trying to make a better live for themselves their motivation would be squashed, and we'd be stuck with a nation of "government workers" acting as robots, trying to cover their own *** with every move, and resisting change. Change is a necessity for growth.

We'd be stuck with a nation of people living in fear. Something that would be a great violation of one of the most important principles our society is built on. Freedom.