[karaterobot]

> Yet by 1797, US founding father Thomas Paine was arguing that “the earth, in its natural uncultivated state” would always be “the common property of the human race," and so landowners owed non-landowners compensation “for the loss of his or her natural inheritance.”

Paine also wrote a pamphlet about how the U.S. government actually owned all the territorial land the British thought they still owned after the revolutionary war. So, he did believe in owning property as it turns out.

And do we really want to adjudicate this issue by tallying the number of U.S. founding fathers who believed in property rights? It's a meaningless metric, and I don't think the results would fall in the author's favor anyway.

Also, owning land is not a modern concept. Stone age humans fought over territory: night raids, throat slashing. It's a human constant. The modern idea of property ownership is a less violent method of staking a claim, backed by the threat of force by the government. Generally an improvement.

I think this article is making a bad suggestion in a dumb way.

[now__what]

Did you actually read the article?

The statement about Paine is brief, and the author immediately moves on. In the full context of the article, it functions more to establish context than to bolster an argument. I have no horse in this race, but it's very weird that you've decided to cherry-pick this one statement so strongly.

[karaterobot]

Yep, I read the article, thanks for your concern. The fact that the author begins and ends the article by talking about Thomas Paine's position on land ownership isn't an accident. The point is to say land ownership is some modern perversion, maybe even an un-American one, so it's fair to call that into question.

[legitster]

The author is also heavily misquoting Henry George out of context to make their point.

[now__what]

Now that is a much more compelling critique. Thank you for sending me down this interesting rabbithole...

[nabergh]

The fact that humans have always owned land is a meaningless argument. We can all decide to use a better system for anything if we agree on it.