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Comment by ed_balls | Hacker News Reader

because that's one of the greatest incentives for people to create wealth. Why would I work and create wealth if I can't give it to my children or to charity that I created? Let's consume all of it.

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A lot of notable scientists have given up all patent rights to their discoveries because they were motivated to help the world. And to be fair, be famous and respected too.

I can understand that for the first few million, but an inheritance of hundreds of million or even billions doesn't really do society much good.

Depends what he/she does with the money. There are many things that government won't do and there is no market for it e.g. Polio vaccine. You have to have wealthy individuals to fund these ideas. Never mind that. You cannot design the system to force people to give you the money. They would move with the capital abroad. What do you do then? Start a war? Wealth is not a problem. Corruption and poverty are.

I agree wealth is not a problem, but corruption can be particularly devious in the hands of the wealthy. Wealthy people also have a greater benefit to the world than the average person when they are benevolent. I think both facts are the same with a wealthy government.

> Depends what he/she does with the money

No, it doesn't. Justifying the choice is good after it turns out good as some sort of moral strategy. The choice (of how to use absurd wealth) is now subject to not-society. So any benefit is accidental, at best. It can easily be lit on fire and that is just as bad because society gets no say in it.

> There are many things that government won't do and there is no market for it e.g. Polio vaccine

From my reading of [1], the Polio Vaccine was developed by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#History

Or even the recipients: "If my children are competent, they don’t need my money. If they’re not, leaving them a lot of money is only doing them harm."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/chinese-philanthro...

Even in our age most of the wealth is in the hands of people who don't own millions, and they're the ones that would really worry about inheritance. If you keep looking at the exceptions to explain the rules, you'll always end up with weird edge cases. The super rich don't need inheritance law, they can use their money to get what they want, even if it's illegal.

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