The US is going through the same as every other succesful human society ever has:

1 Creation by strong commited men instilling solid rule of law
2 Corruption through centralized control of a larger and larger population combined with exponential inheritance until the great-great grandchildren of the most aggressive rule by default over a drastically enlarged population
3 Systematic failure concealed and compensated for by militarization and seizing foreign assets by force (war)
4 Dissent due to (perceived) immoral behaviour and ever-reducing opportunity for those outside the 'elite'
(i.e inheritees driving million dollar sports cars at 17 while working seniors go hungry)
5 Move toward police state system to maintain control and security leading to resentment and polarization of politics
6 Technological advantage in warfare eroded over time by ambitious imperial contenders
7 Ability to respond to change compromised by corrupted power system and entitlement of ruling families

and finally either
8a neutralisation into nostalgia
or
8b collapse into chaos

Marcus Aurelius said:
"Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too."

If there ever was a society that could beat the system it probably is the US. But it better get its shit together pretty soon.

You mentioned a bunch of metaphysical rules of the universe above. I'm assuming that since God created the universe and everything and everything, that he created both the physical rules and these metaphysical rules too.

* "sin" --> Rule: Sin exists and is defined by a particular set of actions/thoughts/etc.

Sin is defined as disobedience to Gods commands

* "death" --> Rule: Death exists

Natural death temporarily exists..the second death is eternal

* "Their sin brought death into the world." --> Rule: When the first person sins, death will come to everyone.

This isn't a rule, it is simply a consequence of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

* "He bore the punishment (death) for all sins so that through Him, we could be forgiven for our sins and be given eternal life." --> Rule: For humans to be forgiven for our sins and be released from death, someone had to be sacrificed.

There is a story about a King who decreed that anyone who committed the crime of adultery would have their eyes put out. This was enforced in the land for some time, until one day the prince of the kingdom was caught in the act. The King then was faced with a dilemma. On one hand He desired to be merciful to the prince, his son, but on the other hand he had to maintain his standard of justice to maintain the integrity of his authority in the kingdom. Therefore, to solve this conflict between justice and mercy, he put one of the princes eyes, and one of his own.

This story is similar to the reasons why God sent His Son to the cross. It was the solution to the conflict between His justice and His mercy.

* "What was required was a man who lived a perfect, sinless life in total obedience to God" --> Rule: The sacrifice had to be a perfect human to be effective.

The law was given because of sin, and the law couldn't make anyone perfect. What the law did was serve as a mirror unto man to show him what sin is. What was required was someone to perfectly fulfill that law so man could be reconciled back to God. Until that point, man had been spiritually separated from God because of sin. It took a sinless person to build that bridge and restore mans fellowship with God. That is why Jesus serves as a bridge between man and God, because it is only through His righteousness that we can reach God. Our good works are not good enough; they are like filthy rags before a Holy God.

So, why did God invent these particular rules? Why did he invent the concept of sin in the first place?

Why did your parents tell you not to play in traffic or take candy from strangers? For your protection.

Why not let us rut around like the other animals doing whatever occurs to us without the need for judgement?

Because we're not animals, and because we know better. He created us in His image and gave us a conscience to know right from wrong. We are set apart for His purposes.

Why did he invent death if he loved us so much?

Death was a punishment for sin. However, it was also a tender mercy. If mankind was immortal, we would be eternally separated from God.

Why did he create the rule that when one person sinned, the whole of creation would die (especially after he created humans such that they would sin all the bloody time)?

It wasn't a rule, but simply a consequence. When He created human beings, they were not made such that they would sin all of the time. It is when man chose to sin that his nature became corrupted. It's like how traits are passed down from their parents genetically..we inherited their sinful nature.

Why did God create such a horrible place as Hell? Why not just love Satan and Satan's angels (all his creations) enough so that they would be good again as he expects from you and me?

We don't know whether there was an offer of reconciliation to Satan or not. What we do know is that today they all stand condemned. Salvation is not "God loving us enough so we'll be good again".

Why would God create such an impossible condition for the forgiveness of sins that he would have to create and send his son to be killed by his fallen creation?

I gave an explanation for this earlier. I will say that His standard for goodness is moral perfection; that is inherent to His nature.

This all sounds like plot-driving fantasy writing to me (Rule: the one ring can only be destroyed by being dropped into the fires of Mount Doom; Rule: Fairy dust and happy thoughts will give you the ability to fly; Rule: Walking into the special closet without thinking about it will put you in Narnia), and that's why I think the Bible is fiction too. They're such random rules of cause and effect (not to mention some of the random rules of sin itself) that they can only lead to disaster and disappointment... unless they're just plot devices that lead to a bunch of awesome fantasy stories. And that's what I currently believe.

As you learn more I hope you will begin to make the connections between what we have been talking about for the past year or so. Although you are developing a more in depth understanding of the gospel, it is still on a superficial level and you have many misconceptions. If you want to understand it, then instead of trying to constantly falsify it, you might actually try studying what Christian theologians (and not skeptics) have said about it. There is nothing logically contradictory about the gospel. It is internally consistent in every respect, and its depths are inexhaustible.

If God doesn't want to send us to Hell, why did he invent rules so that he would? Can't God just change or break his own rules and stop sending us to Hell?

Let's say you have a perfectly well behaved son, but one day he starts doing meth on your kitchen table and bringing hookers into his room every night. Are you going to compromise your standards and say that is okay or are you going to lay down the law and give him an ultimatum? You don't want to do anything that would harm your son, because you love him, but neither are you going to approve of his behavior, or endanger the well being of the rest of the household. You are going to let him know there are very real consequences to his behavior and enforce the rules.

God is Holy and just.

By who's definition? What can those human words of judgement possibly mean when applied to a god? And if we are following the human meaning of "just", how is it just to create the concept of sin, create death, create rules where if you sin you die, create hell as the punishment for sin, and then create humans such that we would definitely sin? That's not just in the least. And yes, you say that you and I have the chance to redeem ourselves, but what about those of us who lived and died before we had that chance? Why should they all have to suffer? They will never have the chance to accept Jesus as saviour.

God has given us progressive revelation. As I've said before, you don't go to hell for what you didn't know, you go to hell for what you do know and reject. Everyone prior to the cross was saved according the amount of revelation God had given them. For the gentiles, it would on the basis of their conscience. For the jews, it was on the basis to their adherance to the law.

The words holy and just wouldn't mean anything if God hadn't give us revelation about Himself. They mean something because of who He is. It is without Him that they would become meaningless. Essentially, it is all to say that God is perfect. Or as they say in philosophical circles, that He is a maximally great being, possessing every possible perfection.

We will experience life as God had originally designed it, here on Earth, before the fall.

That's a new one for me. Can you give me a quote? I was pretty sure heaven was up in the sky somewhere, even according to the Bible. Didn't Jesus "rise" into heaven?

Revelation 21:2-5

And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

Now, because of Jesus, we can be forgiven and go free. Jesus paid our fine in full. This is the good news, that through Jesus our sins are forgiven, and that He grants us eternal life. Pray to Jesus Christ and ask Him to come into your life as Lord and Savior, and you will be saved.

If my fine is paid in full and I've been given eternal life, why am I praying for anything?

For the same reason that if you wish to enter a door you must first walk through it.

>> ^messenger

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " `Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, `Love your neighbor as yourself.' " "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" In reply Jesus said:

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. `Look after him,' he said, `and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

(Luke 10:25-37, NIV)

>> ^renatojj:

When I was a kid I played with Construx, anyone remember that? Not legos, I despised legos, they're for babies. Construx had these knots that really hurt your fingers, specially when you had to snap them off. Toys should hurt you, the pain makes you stronger, helps you grow. Or something.
Now legos are everywhere, Construx is nowhere to be found, and you can build your own marble maze out of legos.
What is wrong with the world?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construx

Discontinued in '88, revived and discontinued again in '97. I can't say I'm surprised, either, considering how far Legos have come, what with all the motors, sensors and programmable stuff.

I had a ton of Construx as a kid, enough that at one point I built a "robot" that was roughly my own height. I use the scare quotes because there were no motors or other forms of self-motion. It was articulated, but I had to move it myself.

I had Legos, too, but not as much. I also had Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoy, both inherited from my uncles, so I guess I had a lot of construction toys. I probably spent more time building things in the yard with sticks, rocks and dirt than with any of these toys, though.

Well said. I couldn't have added anything better.

>> ^NetRunner:

The purpose of the question wasn't an invitation for people to deliver a wish list, but instead a rhetorical questioning of what more he'd have to do in order to get certain people to say he's doing a good job as President.
On that score, bobknight didn't say "more" jobs, he just said jobs three times, as if Obama has delivered none, which is obviously wrong. As for less debt, I find this request amusing. Bush inherited a huge surplus and a booming economy from Clinton, and turned it into trillion dollar deficits and the worst economic expansion since WW2. Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and has already reversed the trend (deficit is shrinking, and employment is increasing).
So what more do people want before they admit he's doing a good job? The answer given, as always, is "fix all the messes created by Republicans in one term despite lockstep opposition from Republicans."
The real answer, however, is nothing.
>> ^BoneRemake:
Bob did not say anything about his track record, Bob was stating what he wants.
More jobs and less debt. you two would be stupid not to want the same thing.

The purpose of the question wasn't an invitation for people to deliver a wish list, but instead a rhetorical questioning of what more he'd have to do in order to get certain people to say he's doing a good job as President.

On that score, bobknight didn't say "more" jobs, he just said jobs three times, as if Obama has delivered none, which is obviously wrong. As for less debt, I find this request amusing. Bush inherited a huge surplus and a booming economy from Clinton, and turned it into trillion dollar deficits and the worst economic expansion since WW2. Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression and has already reversed the trend (deficit is shrinking, and employment is increasing).

So what more do people want before they admit he's doing a good job? The answer given, as always, is "fix all the messes created by Republicans in one term despite lockstep opposition from Republicans."

The real answer, however, is nothing.

>> ^BoneRemake:

Bob did not say anything about his track record, Bob was stating what he wants.
More jobs and less debt. you two would be stupid not to want the same thing.

>> ^messenger:
First, you've made the assertion many times here that if we will only just invite Jesus into our lives, he will reveal himself to us, etc. I've told you somewhere here that my own family did just that. We were all faithful Catholics. My parents have been practising for over 70 years. My sisters were Catholic for varying lengths of time from 15-26 years. I was Catholic until I was 14. We all fervently believed, but at no point was anything revealed to any of us. Nobody in my family has ever directly experienced anything like what you claim will happen in 5 minutes.

That isn't really surprising. There are two kinds of Christian out there, those who have a religion and those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Catholics primarily fall under this first category of Christian. The Catholic religion, if you've done your research, is essentially Christianity blended together with paganism. There is no pope in the bible, no nuns, no monks, no sacraments, no confession, no mary worship, no bowing to statues, no praying to saints, etc. These is very little resemblence between what catholics practice and the Christian faith. That is why so many catholics do not know Christ. My mother, who attended the catholic church when she was a child, told me she barely ever heard about Jesus while she was there.

A Christian who has a religion is someone who simply has a head knowledge about Jesus. They were most likely brought up in the church, and have inherited their parents religion. They don't know why they believe what they believe, it is just simply what they were indoctrinated with. They believe Christianity is going to church, reading the bible, and praying. These people do not know God and are not born again.

A Christian who has a relationship with Jesus Christ is born again and supernaturally transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. They have intimate knowledge of God because they have the Holy Spirit living within them and experience the presence of God on a daily basis. These are those who have given their entire lives and personalities over to God, as Lord and not just Savior.

While by a miracle some catholics are actually born again, most are not. You do not know the Lord for the reason that you had a religion and not a relationship. I don't blame you for running away screaming from the catholic religion. I empathize with anyone who escapes that madness. What I pray is that you consider Christ without the burden of that religion, and look at what He actually taught about how to know Him.
>> ^messenger:
Second, most times that you make the assertion that if you look for Jesus wholeheartedly that you'll find him, I remind you that the same can be said for every religion on Earth. If I gave myself to Islam, I would become Muslim and believe. If I gave myself to Judaism, I would become Jewish and believe. You gave yourself to Jesus, so you believe in him, not Mohammed. If your test for your claim of Jesus's divinity is that if we seek him we'll find him, then by that exact same test, we could also prove that Islam and Judaism are also true. Can you give me something other than statistics on the predominance of Christianity in the world to support the claim that Jesus is the true god and the other religions are false?


If you invite Jesus into your life as Lord and Savior, you will receive the Holy Spirit, whom will supernaturally transform your being and give you an undeniable revelation of Gods existence. You will experience true joy, a lasting peace, and have intimate knowledge of the love of God. I am not saying this as some sort of metaphor..that is what will literally happen to you. You will know when you encounter the living God, versus some feel-good experience with false religion.

>> ^Ryjkyj:
You know my feelings on the subject Shiny, but there's one thing I appreciate about this video: his rant about how the rich are not getting into heaven. I've heard all sorts of different interpretations and people trying to "translate out" their own beliefs in Matthew 19:24, but I just can't see it in any other way than: "If you have it, give it all away. You can't take it with you and we certainly aren't taking it into account when you get here."

Far from bashing Christians (and I know I'm ignorant where the bible is concerned), I agree with and support this particular idea. It frustrates me to know end when I hear people try to rationalize their selfish excess.

The idea of the rich rarely being saved is well supported by scripture. First, I think Jesus couldn't have been more clear about it in Matthew 19:23:

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven"

However, I do not believe this is a condemnation against having wealth in general. Rather, I think is a condemnation against those who use their riches for selfish gain and not for the greater good. This interpretation supported by James 5:1-6

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

It is condemning those rich who have lived in luxury and in self-indulgence, who have gained by cheating more righteous people of their just due. It even rises to the level of murder in Gods eyes, perhaps because of the impact of a poor person losing even a few days wages could be fatal.

This is illustrated even more plainly in the Parable of the Rich Fool

13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

14Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

16And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21“This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”

God is condemning greed here, and this is something we can see is nigh universal with the rich. Too much is never enough for many of them. But what this is saying is that it is not money itself, it is the love of money that is the issue:

1 Timothy 6:9-10

But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows

The love of money is a snare and a temptation to people. It is what you can call a false idol, because those who pursue riches cannot serve God:

Matthew 6:24

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.


It comes down to what you love; God or the world, and whatever you love more, your heart will be in that:

Matthew 6:19-21

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also

That's why Jesus posed these two questions:

Matthew 16:25-26

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Steve Jobs is a good example of this. He had about as much money, power, celebrity and accomplishment as you could desire in this life. Yet, what good did his riches do him when it was his time to go? They couldn't keep him alive, and they couldn't insure his eternal future. In the grand scheme of things, they were nothing but a millstone around his neck.

So yes, I think there is clear evidence that scripture condemns the rich, but only the greedy and self-serving rich. Not those who use their wealth for the greater good and not for themselves.

>> ^conan:

incredibly stupid tabloid science. i'm amazed that there're still people who can differentiate between cause and correlation. fat parents are having fat kids, is it genetics? no, it's because whatever the reason for your bad eating habits, you pass them down to your kids. what to you expect from your kids when you only eat junk? they'll eat it too. either because they mimic you or because you're the one who feeds them! congratulations, now you have perfect excuses: what once were "heavy bones" now are "hunger hormones" and genetics. this "documentation" didn't provide any hard facts, just hormones with names in quotation marks and similar snake oil stuff.
Step 1: stop doing sports, eat more junk and surprise! you'll become overweight. Step 2: catch up on exercising and change your diet and surprise again! your weight will drop. it's common sense. and this comes from someone who's still perfecting step 1... ;-)


I think you're misunderstanding the point of it. Everything you say is correct to a degree. I didn't hear them say that the sole cause of obesity is hormonal, not once. I'd be surprised if you watched it all the way through. The way you feed your children and the habits you give them is absolutely the root cause, at least I would say so. Then society/culture, marketing, advertising fast food. The cheapest foods are junk, that also plays a part.

But what they're saying here, is that the reason some people end up getting wildy overweight and not just a bit chunky is because there isn't the same hormone to tell them they're full. The amount some fat people eat would make a regular sized person sick, in just one meal.

I don't believe obesity is genetic either, I am one of those people who inherited my mothers shitty eating habits, was overweight as a child and now have to suffer the consequences of that. However my sister was fed the same way, offered the same things, but was always skinny because she ate like a bird (one years she would only eat bread rolls, haha). My children are two very different types, too. My daughter can eat more than the average adult, you know that old saying, hollow legs? But she puts weight on if I let her eat the wrong things or every time she feels hungry, so over the years I've had to very much restrict her. Now she tends to make the right choices so hopefully that will go through to adult life with her and I've not passed down the same bad habits, however she would eat every half hour if she listened to her belly. My son is just the opposite. If he's not hungry I could offer him his favourite anything and he'd turn it down. Lucky bugger!

Then there's the thing where my sister all of a sudden in her late teens became overweight. That didn't make much sense. But her eating habits had very much changed. The bit in this doc where they were testing identical twins where one was overweight and one wasn't was fascinating and tied things up much neater.


>> ^snoozedoctor:

Getting fat is like filling a bathtub with water. If you run the spigot faster than the drain, it fills up. Now THAT is heavy science. Burn more calories than you eat = weight loss.


You're talking about how to lose weight, a science we all understand This is talking about the reasons some of us gain. It's always pissed me off when bigger people rather than just admit they stuff their faces, try and pass it off as big bones (eh?) or genetics. I'm even rather cynical of people who say they love their weight and being big is beautiful and they want to be like that. I think rather they know how bloody difficult dieting is, not just the losing weight but keeping it off, also I think those people, and bless them for it, accept that they don't want to go through the endless bullshit of dieting and gaining and embrace it. Or they've got some chubby chasers paying them top dollar to watch them eat and balloon to 400 lbs. Food is very very addictive once you've learnt the pleasures of it, just like a drug. It's very hard for anyone who doesn't have a weight issue to understand it, especially since you've been listening to people make endless excuses for it over the years. I think that's what is putting the blinkers on you now when you watch anything with alternative reasons for obesity, you just see it as an excuse.

This is exciting, because what they're saying is if they can recreate these hormones they will be able to find a way of replacing them, which will make the whole dieting process much much easier.

"There goes Altair, being chased yet again by Italy's finest."

Ahem, Altair was in Jerusalem, Damascus, and Acre. Ezio was in Italy.

Also, the mechanics they're making fun of here? In the Italy-based games, guards would recognize you when you sat on benches, and jab their spears into hay-bales.

Though Ezio still survives 1000 foot falls when he just lands in hay, or piles of leaves, or oddly enough, flowery bushes...

Though they've also said that assassins are actually imbued with special abilities they inherited via a little human/SPOILER interbreeding.

A site named "dorkly" should know these things!

The field of epigenetics is far, far more important than many people realise. It essentially means that every life decision you make can get passed on to your kids due to epigenetic inheritance.

One example is when people make lifestyle decisions that lead to obesity - this physical transformation results in altered epigenetic tags, some of which will be passed on to their children. The children are paying the price for their parents mistakes in the form of increased fat accumulation which often leads to diabetes, obesity and other problems.

Obesity is just one example however, it's also important to realise that how you treat your kids affects these methylation tags, and their behaviour later in life is partly to do with how these tags are laid down during developmental stages.

You know... This is completely politically incorrect, but...

The boomers raped the economy, created one of the biggest world market crashes in history, were in power, both in elected office and by holding the balance of power in votes during the greatest shift between rich and poor (in the direction of the rich) in recent history and they racked up the biggest debt in history, leaving it to future generations to pay back.

In short, they've screwed the world for the rest of us.

Now they want billions of dollars for research and treatment so they can hold on for longer in their old-age homes and wipe out the inheritance?

Seriously? While young couples scrape to take care of their kids, and dream that one day, maybe they'll be able to afford higher education, if some of this crap gets sorted out.

I say screw 'em.

Let their brains rot. We shouldn't be spending another dime on them.

Of course they still vote in massive numbers, so that will never happen. They'd rather have children starving in the streets than suffer the slightest discomfort. They'll just rack up another few billion on the deficit for everyone left behind to pay off. What do they care? By the time anyone in power develops the backbone to actually DO something about the situation they'll be long dead.

And more:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19651_7-reasons-ants-will-inherit-earth.html

So I guess I should just ask point blank, are you saying that my overall premise is wrong, and that there is no such thing as "idle rich"?

And just to make myself explicit, where I was really gonna go with the argument was that there's a fundamental problem with castigating "idleness" and valorizing "work", especially if your definition of "idle" is "not receiving any income" and "work" as "receiving income from any source".

Paris Hilton is an awesome springboard from the usual "welfare queens vs. captains of industry" conversation into something a little more grounded in reality, since both welfare queens and captains of industry are just figments of our imagination. The real people we lump into those categories never live up to those caricatures.

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
No, and in fact the people I can think of who lived off their inheritances tend to have done something notable as well, or I probably wouldn't have heard of them (like the impressionist painter Paul Cezanne).

When I tried a google search for more candidates, the first hit was from ancient Greece! Apollodorus, son of Pasion the slave...
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Do you have a better example in mind? I mostly use her as my go-to example because she's a name people will recognize, associate with being ridiculously rich, has a reputation for having a crap work ethic, and a reputation for being completely out of touch with how normal people live.

I have more nuanced reasons for picking her as well, but that's really more of a springboard into a discussion about what "work ethic" really means...

No, and in fact the people I can think of who lived off their inheritances tend to have done something notable as well, or I probably wouldn't have heard of them (like the impressionist painter Paul Cezanne).

When I tried a google search for more candidates, the first hit was from ancient Greece! Apollodorus, son of Pasion the slave...
In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Do you have a better example in mind? I mostly use her as my go-to example because she's a name people will recognize, associate with being ridiculously rich, has a reputation for having a crap work ethic, and a reputation for being completely out of touch with how normal people live.

I have more nuanced reasons for picking her as well, but that's really more of a springboard into a discussion about what "work ethic" really means...