The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
731.
Marriage, property, speech, tradition, race, family, people, and State, are each links in a chain--separate parts which have a more or less high or low origin. Economically they are justified by the surplus derived from the advantages of uninterrupted work and multiple production, as weighed against the disadvantages of greater expense in barter and the difficulty of making things last. (The working parts are multiplied, and yet remain largely idle. Hence the cost of producing them is greater, and the cost of maintaining them by no means inconsiderable.) The advantage consists in avoiding interruption and incident loss. Nothing is more expensive than a start. "The higher the standard of living, the greater will be the expense of maintenance, nourishment, and propagation, as also the risk and the probability of an utter fall on reaching the summit."
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.