The decision to share a seed phrase with someone is entirely personal to that person if their family has reliable descendants to provide them with that seed phrase. There are many elderly people in the world who have no one to care for them in their final days, even if they have a lot of money. In fact, this happens as a result of social values and family breakdown. If it is the case that a person has a large number of bitcoins in his portfolio but does not get a chance to pass them on due to the lack of a proper successor, then you can call him a loss rather than a waste, even though if he had a family of his own he could have served them.
If that person intentionally doesn't share his seed phrase with anyone, you can call him a waste. If he was a great person, he could have donated the bitcoins he had accumulated in return for a lot of hard work to an orphanage or some other service organization.
I dont really like the bolded sentence in your comment. Just because an investor is dying and he has no one to pass on his portfolio, he then has to prove that he is a great man by giving out his Bitcoins to a charity organization. Trust me, he has nothing to prove to anyone of being great or not. This is something he worked hard for, it took him dedication, stress, commitment, and sweat. He can choose to let the investment go null once he departs based on the fact that not even a charity organization will keep the money for the children. Rather they will share it within the board, even in his departure his lawyer can decide to take it himself.
In the end, it's in his position to choose what he wants to do with it. To give it out, let it waste or anything. Fuck proving to be a great man.