Feudalism involves using force to take and hoard finite resources such as land from others without recompense. I’m describing a society where everyone is free to create wealth from their labor and is also free to have their descendants inherit and benefit from the wealth they created from their labor.

> create wealth from their labor

I am not sure what you mean by lasting wealth created by labor. Can you give some example? You mean "intellectual property"? You want society broadly based on that?

I can think of a bunch of examples not based directly on intellectual property (I assume you mean "royalties" and similar, such as from songs / books / etc).

If I found a prosperous business, say Walmart, and my kinds inherit it, this looks to me pretty much based on labor and not on taxing the use of some "intellectual property". Same for an industrial enterprise, like an automaker that is privately owned.

Of course, the kids would have to find a way to continue managing it well in order to reap the benefits, it wouldn't exactly be "forever free money with no work", though they could get close to that for themselves by selling the company.

I guess some could question whether being a CEO of such a company is actually "labor", especially when considering the kids (when the "building" phase is over) but I'd say that's a whole different debate.

Honestly, I don't see, conceptually, a big distinction between building a corporation (like Walmart) and a nation. In both cases, there is a person which organizes other people and makes sure that collectively, they fight with other neighboring organization over resources, for mutual benefit within the group, and win. And then, like in feudalism, the descendants of the organizer himself inherit the organization, and the right to control it, and tell people what to do.

Yes, technically the leader's job is still qualified labor (although in case of being just a shareholder, there is no labor involved, if you are CEO or in a board, you are actually paid extra aside from the dividends).

But that's not the main point, the main point is, just like in feudalism, the founder of the institution has the indefinite, and hereditary, power to make decisions concerning the institution, in other words, he owns it. The other people involved in building it (and their descendants) do not have such powers. And that is deeply problematic, which is why today we reject feudalism in favor of e.g. democracy. For similar reasons, I believe, we should reject hereditary ownership of corporations in favor of, say, worker coops.

Well, to me, there is one very, very big difference between a company and feudalism, which makes this analogy break down.

As a worker, I have the choice of becoming a serf to the owner of company A, or I may set up my own company B and compete with A.

Or anything else in between, like starting as a serf and then quitting and deciding that I'm going to do my thing. Or even decide that I've amassed enough money as a serf and don't need to work anymore (see the early retirement folks).

All this is not possible with feudalism, if only because joining another master would have me move to a possible distant land and cut me from my family.

Of course, I realize that depending at least on circumstance, some people may not actually have that much of a choice. But then, the question becomes, how much does the owner of the company owe to the workers? Why would they strive to improve the company if they can't reap the benefits? Only from the goodness of their heart? Not sure how well that works out in practice.

The issue, in the end, is of who's entitled to the fruit of one person's labor. It's not clear to me that the workers should have a bigger share than the owner. Of course, this devolves back to the classic "the owner can't build the company without the workers / the workers can't build the company without the owner" which doesn't have a clear-cut answer.

> For similar reasons, I believe, we should reject hereditary ownership of corporations in favor of, say, worker coops.

Genuine question: why don't we see more coops? I know in France there are some, mostly around agriculture. But they seem more an exception than a rule.

Would you argue this is a situation where the local optimum (the hereditary corporation) is better than the global optimum (the coop)? Which would explain why people, given the choice, will set up a corporation instead of a coop, like a tragedy of commons of sorts?

I think your objection to that analogy doesn't affect much the main moral argument against it. Yes, maybe it's less brutal, and you have more freedom, but it is still, IMHO, fundamentally unfair, i.e. that of all the people who collectively built something, some of them get the hereditary right to control the institution (the owners), while some of them do not get the right (the workers).

Who gets the fruits of labor (and how much) is IMHO always a matter of debate in any society. I do not believe there is an objective justification (contrary to some free market advocates). In any case, if you own shares of a company, your labor input can be zero and you still get fruits; I don't know how that is fair (unless this entitlement is divided among all members of the society, like for example all citizens of Norway share the oil profits).

> Genuine question: why don't we see more coops?

IMHO, two reasons. One is lack of legal framework. You have to keep in mind that legal frameworks for modern corporation evolved over at least 300 years, and in the beginning, there wasn't even things like limited liability.

Second, in practice coops face threat of investment strike, because investors simply do not want that system and they are more connected than workers are. Sometimes both of these are a factor, for example many coops faced problems getting bank loans, etc.

It's like asking in 15th century, if democracy is so great, why don't we see more of it? Humans are creatures of habit, and often there are existing power structures that have to be resisted first.

It's not a different debate at all. Because these arguments are really about living off the value of other people's labour.

Sometimes managerial/organisational ability is productive and creative, but in reality it's often piratical and exploitative.

It's much easier to get rich by limiting worker freedom and opportunity and herding workers towards a precarious existence than it is by creating genuine opportunities for enhanced collective wealth.

Do you want wealth to be a narcissistic signifier of being better than other people - and therefore wholly deserving of extra special treatment - or do you want to be an organiser and inventor who creates systems which give everyone (not just a small in-group) a helping hand up and makes the culture more creative, inventive, and interesting?

if that child inheriting a business is not actually very good at managing, they should not try, but instead hire a good manager.

There's nothing wrong with living off the profits of the business, and do no labour at all.

IP rules restrict others' production or ownership. Wealth is owning of the products themselves. You don't become less wealthy in that sense if another person makes a copy of something you own.

Not all of them, copyright doesn't. In any case, aside from something like a Minecraft world, I don't really see how you can "create wealth" without taking from someone else first. Can you provide a positive example?

What is included in "taking from someone"? Am I allowed to purchase or gather cheap resources and make much more valuable products after applying skilled labor?

Yes. But I am not sure how you transfer the fruits of this labor to your descendants, so they would benefit from it. Every property needs maintenance, and "being rich" (as OP said), or even middle-class, means to have enough property that you need to hire somebody (at least ocassionally) to maintain it.

Also OP talked about building an institution, which presumably means that there are other people involved. Unless he meant something like building a worker cooperative, I feel like in the arrangement he envisioned for his descendants, it will be other people working for them, providing them with their labor. I don't see that much different from feudal arrangements.

Can you give an example for a case where someone has created significant wealth from their labor that isn't based on a laughably broad definition of the term "labor"?

Serfs were often descended from freemen who had to sell their freedom. The lords did hoard land, but they did not necessarily take it by force. Usually they inherited it, or they bought it.