Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
Many people live of the fruits of their parents labour or success, or of that of their grandparents, greatgrandparents etc.
Fortunes have been passed down for generations that have been made by a person's effort, luck such as having oil discovered on ones land (and owning the appropriate rights when it happened), criminal enterprises such as bootlegging, gambling, slumlording, running a successful bawdy house, or perhaps extortion or robbery.
Helen
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The difference, to me, is that the inheritors you mention have to keep up the labor of their predecessors if they want to reap that fruit. The inheritors of authors and musicians don't have to lift a finger. Our societies are built on the premise that we produce, some produce more than others, but still, to have a functional society we are expected to produce. Some of us are physically or mentally not capable, we do our best to take care of those, some societies do more some do less.
So from societies vantage point it seems strange that we would grant some people that are fully capable of being productive members of society a life in perpetual unproductivitiness.