Status quo: Is it natural or is it plastic?

Not anymore-now that everybody thinks he or she is entitled to be special regardless of merit or effort.

In pre-Christian times when you had Patricians, Equestrians, and Plebeians it seems there was a sense of running things because one could-like a Patrician managing a road or an Equestrian joining the military. Of course there were those who sat on their asses and inherited, but the element of functionality in the titles limited their abuse. Then you get Royals, Nobles, Knights, Commoners, and the masterless class and it becomes more of a card you carry in your wallet to get better treatment than a walk of life. Then you've got America, a race anyone can win, but in which some start ahead of others-and there's neither duty nor class involved, just kids getting cars at as 16th birthday presents that I could work my whole life and not be able to get on the waiting list for. People accumulate tens of millions and pass it on instead of acting like there's more to life than material success and using it to shape the world. Now it's like, they leave us with nothing to strike out against, nothing to win, and not enough grit know what to do without them. The world is turning into an ant colony.

Functionality is the key to having self-sustaining egalitarianism but everyone's so afraid of failure that we're not allowed to live by our claws anymore. Pull your head out of the sand and your in a new tax bracket and paying half you're capital gains. Live you're own way and you're treated with suspicion. There needs to be something to take for oneself again.

Just off the top of my head I would say that no more than one million dollars could be inherited by one child. I think that if a child inherits more than that they would be unlikely to become a self-actualizing productive member of the community.