Thomas Paine

I was browsing reddit and came across this post titled "Thomas Paine on 'you didn't build that':

 

I don't get why people think that you can do things on your own.  The argument that should be made is simply "individuals succeed on their own with voluntary market participation."  Since this implies that the market is other individuals participating in social interaction.  The argument the left seems to be pushing is "individuals do not succeed without government."  They just conflate society (or the market) with the state.

The 'individualist' that the leftists describe, ironically, is a self-sufficient Marx-esque, superman.

Republicans are going to lose the plot if they keep trying to just push back against what the leftists propise instead of stating their own propositions.

Just to add to what Aristophanes said:

The Division of Labor.

I have done further reading of Agrarian Justice and Paine advocates an estate tax that funds a program which acts as today's social security. Is he the most 'progressive' founding father?

I have done further reading of Agrarian Justice and Paine advocates an estate tax that funds a program which acts as today's social security. Is he the most 'progressive' founding father?

Probably.   Just like Jefferson (and Aristotle) supported universal public education.  The French liberals who came up with laissez faire destroyed it shortly after.  They just wanted the state to act for the public instead of for the monarch and merchants.  They weren't ancaps.

What other progressive ideals did the founders hold? Anyone know?

If one must always pay dues on "personal property", then it is not personal property. So he must be arguing that all men own everything. If everyone owns everything then everyone should have equal say in what happens with any property anywhere. Or else "ownership" doesn't really mean anything. So everyone everywhere should pay out some sum of money to somebody in appreciation of the item they're currently possessing, but in point of fact these dues are not distributed evenly over all of society, people do not have equal say in what happens with everything, and he's not arguing that they should, so what is his point exactly?

I would venture a guess that he believes in an oligarchy of priveleged individuals that should share his wants and desires, so that his neighbors can be aggressively forced to work toward fulfilling his ultimate utopia, at the exclusion of anyone elses.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he connot acquire personal property.

So if we give someone an island, it's suppose to just be self evident that he can't acquire personal property? He can't acquire personal property from someone else, because there is no one else. He has complete authority over everything he sees, he owns it.
This person seems to be implying that real ownership doesn't exist without a stamp of approval from society, but this begs the question; How did the first piece of personal property come into being? Of course a person first claimed it from nature and then exchanged it with someone else.

So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained.

If that's how he wants to define property that's his problem, but he's going to have a Hell of a time figuring out how the first person came to acquire the first piece of personal property.

All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

Now he betray's his lack of knowlege about mediums of exchange. A person can produce value in his specialty and exchange his labor for a medium of exchange. He then can exchange this medium of exchange for anything someone else is willing to trade. Once he has obtained these items through voluntary exchange, he doesn't owe the original owner any debt of gratitute, the entire debt was paid in full at the close of the sale.

Unless the sale was through a stipulation that future owners will pay dues to some abstract aggregate, which is absurd. No contract can apply where neither party is clearly defined or have agreed. Thomas Jefferson put it best when he said that the world is ruled by the living and not by the dead.

Thomas Paine, tsk tsk.

In any equal exchange, when complete neither party owes the other anything, both are satisfied.

Just because wealth is a product of exchange doesn't mean you suddenly owe society, unless you've stolen your wealth or used political or other privilege to do so.