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Originally Posted by Savage Clone
Winning the lottery is no better or worse than being born into old money.
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but there's a relevant difference there. when you're born into old money you do nothing to actively circumvent the usual necessity to earn your pay -- it just kind of happens, and you don't buy a lottery ticket. plus when you're born into old money, you earn your inheritance in a sense by earning the trust of the testator -- otherwise he/she would disinherit you or leave nothing for you in the will.
i can't speak for anyone here but myself, but i can personally find nothing to say for that kind of instant gratification. maybe winning a bazillion dollars would induce a sort of temprary euphoria as you surround yourself with enormously expensive goods and use the power that invariably comes with that sort of sum to your own advantage, but there would always be a sort of guilt looming in the background, knowing that nothing of your own doing had caused such a fortuitous event. now maybe if you use the money to better the state of the world (financing medical research, setting up scholarship funds, etc.) THAT would be gratifying, but that would simply be another case of earning your reward, viz., the knowledge that your actions are helping others and the respect for yourself that ensues.
to bolster my point, let me introduce a quasi-famous similar case by the late philosopher robert nozick. his question was, if you could hook yourself up to a machine that would induce any sort of experience you wanted for the rest of your life, would you, even though you would be doing nothing but sitting there hooked up to a machine as in the matrix? i would say no, because happiness is something that has to be actively pursued -- no pill, machine, box, or lottery ticket could ever substitute for the
bona fide activities of human existence.