[Jeliza-Rose]

I ran across this letter from Franklin to Robert Morris, and I was curious about your take on it.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s12.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(financier)

All property, it seems to me, is the creature of Public convention. Hence, the Public has the rights of regulating descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the quantity and uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none may justly deprive him of, but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the Public, who, by their Laws, have created it and who may, by other Laws, dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. -- Benjamin Franklin

[nucklepunche]

I have brought this up somewhere on this forum long ago when I was battling libertarians who were claiming the founding fathers of the USA as their own. At one point IRL however I quoted this passage to a self-proclaimed libertarian who was claiming the founders (as libertarians are fond of, as if they were one monolithic entity) and asked him to identify the source. He guessed Karl Marx and was speechless when I explained the origins. The founders of course were not opposed to taxation on principle, but were fighting for the right to home rule.

This is for me is the argument against natural rights libertarianism in a nutshell. I do support the right to private property, however it is out of utilitarian reasoning as I believe capitalism is the best path to prosperity. However property is indeed something that comes out of society. Property as a concept, agriculture, the state, and the law all more or less originated at the same time in human history, and are inextricably linked. Absolutist demands on property rights are, however, absurd. Property is not pre-society, but entirely dependent on it.