It is BY DEFINITION. That's what money IS - a record of how much society owes to the person who holds that money.
When a person dies with an amount of money, they have put work into a system, and received output in return. As an autonomous person with their own property, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do what they want with it?
Because they are dead, and dead people don't want things.
Scratch out humans and make an analogy to squirrels. If a squirrel collects a bunch of nuts, dies, and it's children are left to try and survive, in the perspective of the squirrel that's died why would they not want their storage to go to their children? Their children are their responsibility. It's no different from money.
Maybe in someone's version of an ideal world your logic makes sense, but if someone works their whole life, accumulates energy, and it's willed away from them when they die, that's theft.
You can't steal from a dead person. Dead people have neither possessions nor desires.
And squirrels don't leave anything to their heirs - their stash of nuts goes to whatever animal finds them first, or (more often) goes un-eaten.
What does society owe someone with a lot of money? Goods and services? That's not a debt, that's an exchange.
It's a debt. Money is worthless except as a placeholder for debt.
Money is debt and debt is money. That's what they are.
Ok, I'm going to try to better understand your viewpoint. This is how I see money:
1) Person A does work for material wealth in the form of money
Where does that money come from?
2) Person B provides goods or services in the form of work in exchange for person A's money
Where did person A get money from?
3) Now person A has goods or services, and person B has the money *he or she worked for*
But how did person A get money to begin with?
Maybe in some scenario calling someone's wealth a debt to society makes sense, I just don't understand how the word 'debt' applies here.
Because money makes debt transferable. If you go back along the chain, ultimately you find that money represents a debt.
A basic definition: debt - something, typically money, that is owed or due
I would say 'something, typically
measured in dollars, that is owed or due'. Dollars are the unit of debt, just as Joules are the unit of energy.
So forgetting econ 101 for a second, if someone has money they can exchange it for something else. A person that provides a good or service in exchange for someone's money doesn't *owe* them something, they're providing them something in exchange for something else. In my head that's fundamentally different from borrowing from and then re-paying someone.
But the money still represents somebody's debt. It exists because (and only because) someone owes the holder of the money some goods or services - and it is useful because it makes that debt transferable
In my head, this is an important distinction because it's the work that someone does which provides output (wealth) for that person. Sure we've created a society where physical currency is the means of exchange, but in a materialistic sense this 'wealth' belongs to that person. In other words, if you acquire something, you by definition own it unless someone physically or legally takes it away from you. And in our world we are legally entitled to the wealth that we accumulate. I don't think this is a coincidence, it's because money is a physical representation of an individual's physical energy storage, not some vague concept defined by nation-states. So when we die, we currently have the legal right to distribute our own wealth how we like.
If that's not logically sound, please explain where I'm going wrong.
You seem to think that money is a good or a service; But it's not. The money in your wallet is a symbol of the fact that you have provided goods and services to someone, but have not yet received any goods or services in return.
When you think about where money comes from, it all becomes clear. Money appears from nothing when a debt is created. It vanishes when that debt is repaid. While the debt exists, the money acts as a way of transferring that debt to other people.
Consider a barter economy. I have a goat; You want a goat. You have ten chickens; I want ten chickens. We swap. No money is involved, no debts are created.
Now, what if I don't have a goat with me, but I still want your ten chickens? Well, I have a goat at home; So I will give you a piece of paper that says 'Bilby owes Rousseau one goat'. When you are ready, you come and see me, and I give you a goat, and destroy the paper. That paper is a token of the debt I owe you.
Now, perhaps you also want a pig. So you go to the pigman, and he says "I will give you a pig in exchange for a goat". You don't have a goat, yet. But you can cross out your name on the paper that says I owe you a goat, so now you have a paper that says 'Bilby owes the bearer one goat', and give that to the pigman, so that he can come and get a goat from me when he wants one. You have created money - in the form of a one goat bill, drawn on the bank of bilby. That paper is not intrinsically worth anything. But it represents a debt, that you are owed, and can transfer to another person. Whether the pigman will accept it depends only on whether he trusts that I will make good on my debt - whether the bank of bilby is a trusted institution.
Money is the above process writ large. We invent a unit called the 'dollar', which allows us to float the price of anything else on the open market - a goat or a pig is worth $10 today, and a chicken $1 - but now, if the demand for pork goes up, we can increase the price of a pig without affecting the relative prices of chickens or goats, which makes business much more convenient. If the price of goats goes through the floor, you can still swap your $10 bill for 10 chickens, so you are less exposed to risk than you were when holding commodity based money.
Money arises when someone commits to owing someone something. I tell the bank that I will owe them a house; They give me money to represent that debt - bingo, I just got a mortgage. If I give the money back, the bank destroys it, and they no longer have a claim on my house. I give my time to my boss; He gives me money that he got from our customers, who got their money from their customers, who borrowed it on their credit cards - it didn't exist until they spent it, and as soon as they created the money by putting a purchase on their credit card, they created an exactly equal debt. My pay is the debt my boss's customers' customers' accrued.
Money is tokens representing debt. That's all money is. And we value it because it's backed by the government - the value of the money is entirely dependent on our trust that the government will ensure that everyone (including the government themselves) will make good on the debts that the money represents. Quite literally, your net worth is a numerical indicator of how much society is in debt to you - how much you have given, but not yet gotten back.
He who dies in net debt, wins.
