Labor is performed physically. That is the method in "means and methods." Means can amplify and enable labor not possible and or practical otherwise.
Having built a means, and let's be real here: You could have funded the labor that created whatever means we are discussing here. That's not the same as actually building a thing. Now, many who do fund things participate directly. That's great!! (and something I believe makes better "things.") You could have done that too, and or both!
Let's talk about past work:
Say we have someone who made a tool, a means to better or possible labor. The product of their labor is some degree of wealth, right?
And while we are on the topic, wealth in the most fundamental sense, is defined by time; namely, how much of a person's waking time is purposed for them. Wealthy people self-purpose most of their time, if not all of it. Poor people have most of their time purposed for them.
One product of labor is the wealth needed for people to address cost and risks associated with continuing to exist. A food store, as an example, created with tools is wealth in that a person having that food store can choose to spend their time differently, purpose it, because the demand for food is met in advance, reducing cost and risk, which makes them able to afford to purpose their time.
They could invest that in better tools, means, or pursue the arts, or just relax, play, whatever. That's what wealth actually does.
Now, having created wealth, this person frees time and or depending on the means created, may free many other people's time. That's worth something, right?
I think so.
Now, let's carry on and say this person creates more tools, means with their bounty of time. That's an investment in themselves as well as others and the benefits are reduced costs and risks for them and everyone around them. More people are more wealthy, which frees more time and with that time comes more creation, innovation, arts, culture, the works.
That society, as it develops, becomes wealthy and can advance.
Notice I don't have money in any of that?
The reason I don't, is to highlight what wealth is, how it's distributed, and what it all means for the people involved. The actual work, wealth created, wealth maintained (it comes with it's own costs and risks), are all centered on labor.
It's not about money at all. Money, in the sense that matters to us continuing to exist here as people, doesn't actually do anything meaningful at all!
(this is why many people have strong, negative feelings about people born into or marrying into money)
Money permits things like leverage, usury, and other exploitations as well as decisions about who gets what and why. It does not, in and of itself, actually create wealth. Gamblers and money changers deal in money to get more money and when that's all boiled down, it's trading favors and or committments.
Take our means, tool creator makes a lot of tools. They could just share them, and many benefit. They could loan them out in exchange for things they value, and or could require others do, say, or avoid things desirable to the creator of the tools. And if that were unjust, others would simply make their own tools.
'nuff said there.
Now, let me visit wealth and society one more time.
A great many people in our society today are poor. Very large amounts of their time remain purposed for them. No matter our station in life, we all must deal with the cost and risks associated with continuing to exist here. Ideally, one's labor yields enough wealth to fund continuing to live and even more ideally, free time to persue one's own interests.
Today, roughly half of labor in the US does not yield enough to fully fund continuing to exist and or show up for work!
That scenario, when viewed through the lens I put here, is unjust and not equitable, nor sustainable. Say our tool, means maker demands large amounts of the fruits of others laboring with the means and or tools. And say they keep it to themselves, leaving most others to labor and remain poor in that very little, if any, of their time is available for them to purpose, build their own wealth, live a little.
How does that make any sense?
The answer is it doesn't. Not in the basic, human sense we all are forced to recognize and deal with.
You are asking others to value your past work as justification for your current position in life, when the real question is more like why so many remain poor, despite arguably fantastic past works?
Money is why. Money does a lot of good, and a lot of bad too.
Funding the making of a thing is not making the thing. Labor is what makes the thing.
Funding the making of a thing is a decision to make the thing, and money is one way we make those decisions. Others might be use or threat of force (having the army make people make things), or divine right (god says others have to make things), nobility (we are more qualified to determine who makes the things), and so forth.
With me so far?
Whatever it is you have done, if you did it directly through labor, or had a hand in it as part of shared labor, does not matter. The fact that you labored does matter, and it all has value. And that's great!
Funding things also has value, but it's not the same thing, and it's not an act of creation in the basic sense of creating wealth, and this is a point the other person in this discussion made.
A point I am making is valuing past works too highly actually does harm to society overall, and I've explained why and how that can be.