Recently in a Moscow court, a Russian oligarch ignored the cage surrounding him and spoke with a canary's glee. Mikhail Khodorkovsky—imprisoned in a Siberian gulag since 2005—dazzled the courtroom with his showman's flair when, in self-defense, he produced a jar of crude oil. Using this prop, he mocked the charge that he had stolen oil from Russia by ridiculing the concept of ownership itself. He illustrated how, if you and I were to exchange purchase and sale agreements concerning this jar, the oil itself would still not change hands—it would remain in the jar on the table. ...