You approach that from a game design perspective to reduce the reward and set bounds on how much fun a player is allowed to destroy maliciously and what kind of counterplay is available, but if you completely eliminate it the world loses a lot of its drama. Conflict drives narrative.

I know Raph Koster has spent a lot of time since he designed UO thinking about this problem. I haven't looked at his current project but am curious to what extent he's licked this issue.

Grief is a natural consequence of player freedom, but it’s not worth giving up that freedom for some safety.

There are games that managed to allow PvP while also having places players can be safe, whether axiomatically, or by having enough players interested in providing protection that there are safe locations you can count on not being attacked because anyone trying will be quickly caught.

That's great until a game designer discovers that grief chases away the majority of players, and the griefers themselves will leave if they have no one to grief.

So from a philosophical perspective sure you're right. But from a dollars and cents perspective it's just good business to find ways to legislate griefing out of games. And that's why the market moved the direction it did.

turns out it is for a lot of players which is why the kind of game is extinct. Just like in the real world, there's a fine line between risk and adventure and walking into something that looks like Liu Cixin's the Dark Forest.

You want enough friction to generate interesting interactions, you don't want so much freedom that the worst exploiters start to crowd out every honest player, because then, just like in a rundown lawless neighborhood, you're getting a lesson in the broken window theory and you're only left with the scammers.

Players don't want to be continually victimized. That game design drives away all but a tiny minority of players.