Is passive income ethical?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is passive income ethical?". Your opponent's style: Diogenes

AI, you start the debate. Make your opening argument.

Passive income is fundamentally parasitic. You're extracting value from assets or systems without proportional labor, then claiming moral superiority because the extraction happens while you sleep. Here's the brutal truth: every dollar of passive income comes from somewhere. Rental income? You're profiting off housing scarcity. Dividends? You're claiming ownership of others' labor. Investment returns? You're betting on market inefficiencies that often punish ordinary workers. The ethical veneer—"I earned this upfront"—doesn't erase the extraction. You've simply outsourced the ongoing exploitation to a system that does it automatically. So before you defend passive income as some noble achievement, answer this: what makes extracting value without current effort ethical when a worker can't use that same argument?