You can create software/automation system that works/creates value for users. As a creator, you can ethically derive wealth from that value even when you are asleep.

Added as part of a reply:

Certain systems create value in excess of individual components you put into it. (That system may include a variety of resources that you pay market costs for, not only just your personal labor.)

The creator of the system can earn that excess value because it wouldn't otherwise exist. There is a term for this in an Intro to Economics textbook I read a long time ago, but I can't recall.

technically, yes, but you had to work to create it, and probably have to continue to work to maintain it in the face of competition.

If you have created some kind of lock-in which allows you to extract rent indefinitely from some initial effort, then you have some degree of monopoly, which would be ethically questionable.

"Earn while you sleep" does not mean "conjure from thin air and then earn perpetually". It just means creating a system that decouples time spent working from amount of money received. As opposed to a job, where they are tightly coupled.

Many things do not have identical competitors. Books, music, apps, and restaurants with unique recipes (within an area) come to mind. The creators of these products/services earn the value derived from the uniqueness/utility that customers value and pay for.

It's impossible to create wealth without labour. But you absolutely can amplify labour (any kind of tool, harness a horse, build a water or wind mill). And you can also store wealth: labour now, use later (e.g. grainstore).

Neither are wealth crestion while you sleep.

These examples use an absolute measure of wealth, of food. Whereas, labour amplification in our society is neutralized over time: when everyone has the same tool, your labour is no longer (relatively) amplified.

The typical application of these ideas to todays society involves a moat or artificial barrier that prevents your labour from being commoditized, while you benefit from everyone else's labour, which is commoditized. Typically, "you' are an in-group, with special knowledge and powers.

Paying people to work for you is unethical?

Some would argue that if you make a profit from it, then yes it is unethical.

If worker A makes product P, and you sell product P for $1000. And then you pay worker A $800 for the work, you make $200 profit.

Worker A did $1000 worth of work, but only got paid $800. You did $0 worth of work (with regards to actually making P) but you got $200.

Hence it is unethical.

That is assuming the raw materials cost $0 and there is no value to assuming the risk of the sales price.

If you pay the worker $800, but it turns out the market only values the widget at $500, does the worker return the difference? Usually not.

If you are not providing any value, why is the worker not just cutting you out of the deal and making and selling widgets directly?

> That is assuming the raw materials cost $0 and there is no value to assuming the risk of the sales price.

Yes, it was a very simplified model.

> If you pay the worker $800, but it turns out the market only values the widget at $500, does the worker return the difference? Usually not.

In that case the worker is the one being unethical.

> If you are not providing any value, why is the worker not just cutting you out of the deal and making and selling widgets directly?

Each person involved in making the product and getting it to the customer: marketing, distribution etc. would need to get paid their share of their contribution.

I guess my example was too simplistic, but that's simplest way I could make the point.

> > If you pay the worker $800, but it turns out the market only values the widget at $500, does the worker return the difference? Usually not.

> In that case the worker is the one being unethical.

I don't consider the worker any more unethical than the owner is in your example. Two adults have access to the same information and come to an agreement. If they both consent to the transaction without coercion, there can be nothing unethical about it.

Owner assumes risk for possible but not guaranteed payoff.

Worker gives up potential upside, but gets guaranteed payoff.

Worker has the option to reject the deal and assume the risk themselves if they like, or assume part of the risk by providing some capital of their own or working contingent on future payoff (a la, lower base pay + stock options like startups do).

The value of things in the future cannot be known. Reducing that uncertainty has value. Rewards are distributed in proportion to the risk that is assumed.

There is great value in the infrastructure required to produce a widget, even if it's just a group of people "putting thier heads together" (which is why individual workers can't just quite and start producing on their own).

But usually both the workers and the owners contribute and help build and maintain that infrastructure, so it seems unfair that only the owners profit.

I understand what you are saying but I disagree.

Your value is facilitating the whole enterprise, providing customers a way to get the work done, taking the risk of finding customers and other uncertainties of business while giving someone a place where she can earn these $800. If you had not done that, she would not produce the work and someone would not be able to buy it.

This is where your value comes from.

Would you consider people who work for you unethical, then?

Looks to me that in his view the people who work for others are the victims.