If you do, not only do you not get any rupees, you are forced to pay a fee relative to the number of vases you destroyed.
When you enter the house of a wealthy man on Windfall Island you are confronted with a row of beautiful expensive vases that even sparkle! However, if you smash one, not only do you not find an item hidden within, you are also chastised by the owner of the vases and warned to not break any more.
You can walk up to the stand selling apples and take one, but Link will say he sees better looking apples at another stand and put the one he has back.
The hero was typically at least tangentially a treasure hunter, so looting ancient caverns was part of the job description.
When gaming began, and pretty much every game was Dungeon Crawling, this made sense. As much as the motto for the FPS is, " If it moves, shoot it," the motto for the Adventure Game and Role-Playing Game is, "When it's dead, loot it." or "Take everything that isn't nailed down or too heavy " (The latter advice appeared in the general strategy section of Infocom's manuals.)