> As for not working as hard, plenty of rich people have recently declared the majority of their wealth won't go to their children.

A lot of them are actually putting the wealth into foundations that their children will end up controlling. I believe Warren Buffet has done that.

So even though their children might not have all that wealth outright, they still have the influence and wealth that comes from control of that wealth through the foundations.

Perhaps they know what's best for their companies which is why they're not giving their entire wealth to their children.

And if they do, if you believe in meritocracy, it won't matter as that wealth will be squandered away with each subsequent generational transfer, as is often the case.

It's not about punishing the foolish, it's about maximizing the utilization of societies resources. If you hand ten million dollars to a fool and he squanders it, he's not the only one that loses.

The best reason for a meritocracy isn't fairness or justice, it's the benefits it creates for everyone. When someone smart is given control over resources, they create more resources, for themselves and others.

When that someone smart creates more resources, isn't is likely that they're in a better than average position to plan for its distribution, specifically including placing those resources under the control of smart people to utilize them?

I trust the creator of wealth (small, medium, or great) to allocate it intelligently far more than I trust a bureaucracy to do so.

Hence the need for a meritocracy.

There is a huge difference between voluntarily giving one's wealth away to one's choice of entities than the government forcibly taking that wealth from one's estate. Giving one's wealth away is a choice. A freedom. So should be the option of leaving that wealth to one's descendants or successors (biological or otherwise).

When you say forcibly, they've been protected by the government their whole lives. They're protected from crime, protected from armies, protected from assassins, thugs, and warlords.

They've taken advantage of the schools, infrastructure, courts, laws, etc.

It's a social contract, it's two ways, and part of the price of all that stuff they've been using is to pay inheritance tax.

If they don't want to pay, they could go to a country without all those benefits. But they shouldn't expect to be able to take everything with them, it's not just theirs.