Why not, murder is a good solution. There shouldn't be tolerance. It's a fantasy world.
That's wrong. A fantasy world does not absolve the inhabitants of the world from generally trying to act in a reasonable manner.
NPC's which are people you can talk to should show greater intelligence than an insane rabid animal. As in perhaps they should possess a survival instinct and not suicidally take their level one, knife-armed ass to attack the heavily-armed warrior who stole a wooden spoon.
You want to talk about immersion-breaking, that's definitely it. Travel back in time 500 years and blatantly steal a spoon in a crowded market, and that won't suddenly make the entire crowd turn as one and try to beat you down. Most wouldn't care at all.
Uhhh... that... isn't in the game.
Even then... I don't see why my viewpoint is so incorrect that I don't want absolute immersion breaking justice
Are you saying that this game does not have co-operative play?
Are you expecting a party member to pickpocket contraband into your avatar's inventory, snitch on you to the guard, and then you are stuck in jail forever, game over? Because I don't think that will happen.
All games have compromises and breaks with reality for the sake of fun. You have to learn to accept that. The game doesn't force your players to eat food every few hours and drink every few hours and use the latrines every few hours and sleep for 6-8 hours while doing nothing except watching your avatar sleeping.
Could there be - I know. I'm only fishing here for cheap points - an option inside the players head to NOT steal everything not nailed down?
There's always that option. I use it all the time. But because the option is in the player's head, it's up to them to decide whether to use it or not.
Larian's philosophy seems to be allowing as much freedom as possible. They could easily have programmed in a "non-interactive" flag into their world objects so that players cannot interact with them at all. But that's not what they wanted to do.