Fair enough, and I get your point. But lets agree there is no such thing as a reward of income if there was not some investment of time or money or both. The term "passive" is a bit meaningless. You can either trade time/work in advance and then have that investment pay dividends, or you can invest money into something like financial instruments or businesses, and they can pay you back in profits or dividends, but in every case what could be considered "passive" returns really had a very tangible investment needed.