Well, wealth can be used to create wealth, too, or even to help society directly. Some think that all of the wealthy are Donald Trump, but some are Gates and B

Well, wealth can be used to create wealth, too, or even to help society directly. Some think that all of the wealthy are Donald Trump, but some are Gates and Buffet and Rockefeller and Carnegie. It does not seem to me that intelligence is always spent so wisely. There are investors like Stephen Hawking, philanthropists like Norman Borlaug, and then there are people like William J. Sidis. Wealth squandered or consumed is extremely visible, but I think many capable inventors and entepreneurs stay in grad school and go on to quiet careers--using their brilliance a nothing more than a ticket to a slightly easier life. The equivalent of quietly living off an inheritance. Your gifts belong to you. Spent or given back or squandered, they are yours to do with what you will. It is repugnant to me to claim that because The Gifted are not going to use their Wealth optimally for the Common Good, the State is entitled to seize it and spend it more Wisely. The idea stinks of jealousy and avarice; it is an excuse to take, not an appeal to justice. It does not matter how people use their gifts; the gifts are theirs. You can scale the idea right down to Christmas morning. All the same arguments still work, but the fundamental injustice is clearer. If I want to give my brother a bike, anyone could object that he did not work for it and does not deserve it. He will probably use it foolishly in childish revelry and break it in some ill-advised stunt. He only got it because he had the good fortune of being my brother; there are strangers I don't know who need and deserve a bike far more. Certainly he isn't going to create wealth with it, in fact, for all we know it's just going to collect dust in the garage. Surely the state is entitled to take it and give it to someone more deserving, and leave my brother a skateboard in its place? Ptui. My money is mine, and who I choose to give it to is my business. If I choose to enrich friends and family who I love, that is up to me--and is one of the main points of having money in the first place. You can criticize my choices or appeal to me for the common good or explain to me why it's okay for you to help yourself to what, in your opinion, I'm not using. It's all irrelevant. The point of ownership is that I still have the right and responsibility to use my gifts as I best see fit.