I came across this in an article not even remotely about Thoreau (but kind of about Thoreau), and it flattened me.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. [Nieman Lab]