What I meant by my statement is it's the medium of exchange. In that regard it is a creation of government as it now exists. Its value has everything to do with government policy.
It's value has to do with government policy due to the ability of government to use force against those who disobey the legal tender laws. It's that simple. We could have separation of money and state just as easily as we have separation of church and state.
People should have the freedom to peacefully choose whatever form of currency they would prefer to use.
Men did not make the earth. It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
Thomas Paine
A total misinterpretation of Paine's views.
"In “Common Sense”, Paine justified independence as a result of natural right, interest and common sense (Dorfman, 1938, p.372). Paine believed in the ability of the people to overcome self-interest, to achieve anything that is rational and within human faculty reason, all this in conjunction to improving the lives of the poor (Fruchtman, 1996, p.356). Paine’s writings were not directed to the working class rather to farmers, tradesmen and professional men.
He did not challenge the property rights of the rich or the doctrines of laissez-faire."
Paine on taxes and government:
"If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute." - Thomas Paine
"What at first was called plunder assumed the softer name of tax revenue." - Thomas Paine
"To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not." - Thomas Paine
"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes." - Thomas Paine
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerant one." – Thomas Paine
"There are two distinct classes of men... those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes." - Thomas Paine
"An Avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he a establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." – Thomas Paine
"When the government fears the people, it is liberty. When the people fear the government, it is tyranny." – Thomas Paine
