So if I break into your house (without damaging anything), go through all your stuff, and put everything back the way it was, that doesn't violate any of your property rights? [...] I sneak into a private museum without paying the required fee. Nothing wrong with that?
My right to control the configuration of my property includes keeping you out of my house, just like it includes keeping your paint off of my Rembrandt. Again, this derives from the nature of physical space: the house can't contain everyone and everything all at once, so someone has to decide what goes inside, and that person is the owner. Same goes for the museum.
Say I shine a flashlight in your window. That might or might not violate your rights, most people would say it doesn't. Say I shine a flashlight in your window and ruin some film that you had developing. The ruining of the film is the damage you suffered, actionable if and only if shining the flashlight in your window violated your rights.
Are you saying you're entitled to ruin all my film unless I agree to outlaw shining flashlights through windows?
What's the purpose of this Rube Goldberg system of rights and wrongs? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to say that what happens to me and my property as a result of your act is what determines whether I've been wronged?
You seem to have this backwards. If my violation of your rights damages your property, that's actionable. But damaging your property alone is not a violation of your rights. You have no right not to have another's actions damage your property.
I beg to differ. If what you call "property rights" don't even fulfill the basic requirement of stopping someone else from breaking my stuff, then they're so watered down as to be worthless.
Otherwise, if I drove my car down my driveway and created vibrations that ruined your glass structure, that'd be actionable even though driving my car down my driveway is something I'm supposed to have the right to do.
Sometimes one person's rights conflict with another person's rights, but we don't need to demolish those rights in order to resolve the conflict.
Say you and I both have a shot at a particular client. It's near certain the client will pick you or me. I disconnect a wire in your car. Your car doesn't start. But there's no damage, reconnecting the wire costs nothing. If you miss the meeting and lose your chance at the client, is that actionable? I violated your property rights not by damaging your car but by trespassing on it. The damages aren't the physical changes to the car but the meeting you missed. I violated your rights, you have damages fairly attributable to that violation.
A meeting with a potential client has no tangible value, even if I wish to have his money and I'm "near certain" my wish will come true. It's not mine yet.
That doesn't mean there's no damage from your act, though. Clearly reconnecting the wire cost
something, otherwise I would've reconnected it in zero seconds and gotten to the meeting on time. It cost me the time it took to diagnose the problem and reconnect the wire, and we can assign a value to that time.