Are car insurance companies making money by sitting on their ass and taking the risk (that you don't have an accident)?
Is offering insurance immoral? Is purchasing it?
If by making money by "sitting on your ass" what you mean is "continuing to take financial risk" is immoral then the question becomes: What is the basis for the immorality?
Would you further suggest that it is somehow also not ethical, and if so, who is it that is harmed?
Car insurance companies are not sitting on their ass -- they risk their money by offering you a service. You, their customer, may plow into a crowd of people & cost them much more than you have paid in dues. This is in no way comparable to sticking your sound money in your mattress and sitting on it to become rich. Purchasing auto insurance is an obligation in most US states, it is an industry with plenty of regulations & plenty of slick lobbyists (see: Big Gobment). You may or may not consider it immoral in that respect. While obscenely bothersome, is not immoral to me.
If we assume deflationary, sound money (accept it as a premise of our argument), sitting on your ass *guarantees* you profit. There are no risks involved.
As i have mentioned earlier, money itself doesn't change the amount of goods in the world. By changing from one money to another, the world doesn't suddenly become wealthier or poorer as a whole. So, to answer your question, as you & other money hoarders become richer, the rest of the people become poorer, and that's who gets hurt. The poor people, the have-nots, the ones who always get hurt.
There's the assumption I was missing... We are starting with the bizarre assumption that Bitcoin is today, sound money. But by the time Bitcoin becomes sound, there probably won't be much deflation left to it, and very certainly nothing like it is today. Currently, it is anything but sound. It is still a very risky venture, and even some of its strongest advocates and investors are giving a much less than 50% chance for success.
If everyone that has bitcoins just "sits around" with them, it is pretty much guaranteed to fail, if even half do this, it is probably dead.
The blasted stuff is still in beta. Wait until it is version 3.x for this complaint, not beta version 0.8.x
However, the stakeholders are NOT just sitting around, and if everyone did, they wouldn't be worth much anyway. Most are pestering anyone who will listen about it. They are programming, they are developing, they are creating economies, they are looking for opportunities to make it succeed. Some are hacking each other, and ddossing exchanges, and all manner of illicit craziness. Others are shoring up defenses, building better exchanges, and trying to make a go of it. We have not yet seen the real bitcoin adversaries even.
These are very early days.
If you are under the illusion that your money held in bitcoins is not at risk, you probably won't have them for very long.
If you don't believe me, just ask Tradefortress.
If you think sitting on your ass *guarantees* you a riskless profit... I wish you luck with that.
This thought may have come from that guy who forgot about his bitcoins, and then found them.
There are many others that have never found them. And the reason he forgot about those, was probably because he put the chance for success at much much lower than we are today.