Another overhead cost which plays havoc with civilized nations and peoples is the support of a bureaucracy.  Increased extent and complexity exhaust the community capacity for voluntary service and lead into an era where the volunteers who carried on the limited public activities of a village are supplemented and eventually replaced by a constantly growing body of public servants.  Growing extent and complexity plus the need for finding safe places for those who are useful to the rich and powerful, widens and deepens the public crib.  In large enterprises, private as well as public, paper work employs a small army, which must be fed and housed at a level worthy of “a great nation.”  Business machines reduce the personnel necessary for a given social enterprise, but their high capital and operational costs increase overhead.

Another aspect of overhead costs is the multiplication of parasitic professions.  In simple villages, there are few body servants, no able-bodied individuals who fetch and carry at the word of command, or who only stand and wait for the moment when some whim, fancy or real need may call for their services.

Village life, with its limited area and still more limited resources, has little economic surplus upon which parasitism can feed.  There is landlordism, of course, but the margin of surplus is small.  The city, the province, the nation, the empire present a different picture.  Parasitic professions abound and proliferate:  money changers, money lenders, realtors, confidence men, gamblers, fortune tellers, priests, entertainers, artists, thieves, robbers, and prostitutes abound, consume more than their share of the community income, without making an equivalent return in production or service.  Their support adds to the social overhead.

Another source of social overhead are the numerous followers of the “something for nothing” cult who receive unearned income—­an income derived from civilization in its mature and its final stages.

Broadly there are two types of income—­earned income and unearned income.  Earned income is something for something—­or return for goods provided or service rendered.  Unearned income is something for nothing—­an income derived from some monopoly, privilege, sinecure or form of property ownership.

Property in persons or things has been a characteristic feature of all civilizations.  Property owners, receiving rents, interest, dividends, in proportion to the amount of property which they own are not called upon to make equivalent return in exchange for their property—­based income.  This personal parasitism of property owners is aggravated by provisions of property law under which the owners of property can give, sell or bequeath these sources of unearned income to family members, friends, associates.

Eventually, unearned income, handed on through generations, creates a class or even a caste of citizens who live without rendering an equivalent of services, on the labor of their fellows, adding a significant amount to the total of overhead costs.