Take a look at the restaurant business. When you open a new restaurant, working from before opening to after closing every day is not atypical, even when you are selling something people want and have hired the right people. Going months without a day off is unsurprising. It may not be praiseworthy, but it's not something to look down your nose at either. Its just solid, honest hard work that's required to establish a restaurant from scratch. And if the restaurant is successful enough for the owner to try starting a branch, then the owner is going to have to split his time between the two, thereby expecting all the profit from the first restraunt while being at the new restaurant a majority of the time to get it running. Is that rent seeking, or free money for past work? Perhaps you think so, but I don't agree, and likely most people would not agree either.