So, if a person is born into a particular society, you are effectively telling them that they must toil for whatever amount of time is necessary to pay for the policies that preceded his existence. At the very least, this sounds like indentured servitude.
Incidentally, the U.S. government was set up in such a way where men were not beholden to others, but were equals, trading value for value with each other absent coercion. A strong but limited government was instituted to protect individual rights---to protect us against internal and external threats with retaliatory force.
The expansion of the government over the last 100 years has nothing to do with the protection of individual rights and the original intention of Founders (who were greatly influenced by Locke). The "social contract" is a way for some individuals to justify the abrogation of protecting the freedom of individuals in favor of a gargantuan rights-violating welfare state.
Finally, what is the objective measure of how much an individual owes? Do they owe 50% of their time? 70%? To whom specifically do they owe this? How does one come to these conclusions in an objective manner?
You are conflating taxation with indentured servitude.
The U.S. government has supported taxation from day 1, including for the purposes of funding collective welfare, e.g. collective self-defense. Current citizens pay for the democratic decisions of past generations all the time. Even if you don't drive, you pay taxes to support road and bridge maintenance. This is not "indentured servitude". It is how a democratic society functions.
How much do we owe? Answer: it is determined through a democratic decision-making process that weighs costs and benefits to our society.
Case in point: This very forum would likely not exist without the aforementioned expansion of government. DARPA and government funding for high-tech research to the tune of billions of dollars has been instrumental in the birth and evolution of Silicon Valley, and continues today (e.g. Siri, self-driving cars).
I think it is a stretch to presume that without DARPA there would be no internet (or equivalent). There were many other networks that had nothing to do with the government - FidoNet, BIX, Prodigy, CompuServe, MCINet, innumerable BBS systems, and even I designed one in my head before I'd ever heard of Arpanet. Everyone who had two computers thought of connecting them together (and often did, with existing or ad-hoc protocols).
That ['DARPA created the Internet'] wasn't the point they made though.
If anything I think your "many other networks" example reinforces the point. The private sector left to its own devices came up with tons of incompatible small networks all vying to be the juggernaut.
The government, when faced with much larger problems than growing market share, instead invested considerable resources into solving a problem in a way that could handle the needs of a large national government, and then later invested more resources into making that internet a public good.
Even if the government hadn't developed its own internet protocols (and standardized on a notional private sector one), the government would likely still have been instrumental in expanding the use of some other standard. E.g. Eisenhower didn't invent the road, but his Administration sure did ensure a lot of them got built.
Putting aside the fact that the minicomputers that ran the early CompuServe came out of a multi-decade period of government-supported development and procurement, and also ignoring that CompuServe, Prodigy et al ultimately failed while the DARPA-spawned open Internet succeeded... the Internet is only one of a long list of technologies developed by DARPA or other government agencies over many decades and many billions of dollars. I mentioned just two in the headlines right now: Siri and self-driving cars, both of which trace directly back to taxpayer-funded research. Silicon Valley owes much to Big Government spending.
"What if" discussions are always ultimately flawed because one cannot go back in time and try something different. But my point is absent DARPA, the internet would have happened anyway in all likelihood.
Just like if the Wright Bros had not invented the airplane in 1903, someone else would have probably within 5 years. We'd still be flying today.
I suspect that the number of inventions that would not inevitably have happened once the preconditions were in place is very small.
After all, as I mentioned previously, having worked extensively with computers before the internet, the first thing someone with two computers tries to do is hook them together.
Hell, I even did my own hardware and software to transfer files from my LSI-11 to a PC over a wire. The government couldn't have stopped an internet workalike from forming if it tried.
There is a classic aphorism: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner."
This country was very specifically founded NOT as a democracy, for the very reason elucidated above. If the mob wants to vote your rights away, they should not be able to.
Self-defense and transfer payments from one individual to another (i.e., welfare) are different issues fundamentally. We authorize the government to solve the problem of coordination---in terms of defense, we don't want a bunch of private militaries roving around the countryside. At the heart of this is the issue of rights protection: if one man steals from another, his rights have been violated and government must act in response.
However, if the issue is whether a man has a claim on another man's property simple because he "needs" it, this is not sufficient justification for him to take it by force. Indeed, most people would call this "theft". Why is it different if the thug steals a dollar in dark alley from you or if a government coerces the same action at the point of a gun? Because a majority have voted for it?
You merely referring to the laws that you like as "coordination" and the laws you dislike as "theft".
Even if we narrowly focus on a particular system of "private property right protection", which was certainly not the exclusive focus of the founding fathers -- who also advocated slavery and were extremely protectionist -- that nonetheless requires the enthusiastic embracement of the majority enforcing its will upon the minority at the point of a gun.
Incidentally, the U.S. government was set up in such a way where men were not beholden to others, but were equals, trading value for value with each other absent coercion
Only men? I always find it amusing when this kind of libertarian rhetoric forgets that women exist.
And if you want to talk about who is protecting the freedom of individuals, keep in mind that the US banned slavery considerably later than it's contemporaries. You talk of a 'gargantuan rights-violating welfare state' while at the same time lionising a state that was quite happy to literally enslave people. Not figuratively or rhetorically, but literally enslave people.
Can you read back my comments? When did I lionize the institution of slavery? The Founders got most things right philosophically, and fell short on some of the practical implementation. Eventually the Civil War rectified this contradiction.
Perhaps you should read your own link, which says that 'men' is not gender neutral. "By the 18th century, man had come to refer primarily to males; some writers who wished to use the term in the older sense deemed it necessary to spell out their meaning.". The US was founded in the 18th century. So whether you want to use the 18th-century term supported by your own link, or modern usage, "men" is not gender-neutral.
When did I lionize the institution of slavery?
You didn't lionise the institution of slavery, but you were lionising people that made a system that supposedly was all about individual rights but was at the same time supporting slavery.
You don't get to talk about how awesome the Founding Fathers were about the rights of individuals if you get to hand-wave away the multitudes of individuals whom they had no problems putting in chains. I mean, you even specified "absent coercion" about a society with legal industrial-scale slavery!
Edit: to be clearer, the Founding Father's philosophy quite happily allowed for slavery in practice. Perhaps you shouldn't talk of it in such reverent tones - the 'welfare state' you complain of is clearly better at being fair to all individuals, not just the blessed ones that are pre-approved.
Incidentally, the U.S. government was set up in such a way where men were not beholden to others, but were equals, trading value for value with each other absent coercion. A strong but limited government was instituted to protect individual rights---to protect us against internal and external threats with retaliatory force.
The expansion of the government over the last 100 years has nothing to do with the protection of individual rights and the original intention of Founders (who were greatly influenced by Locke). The "social contract" is a way for some individuals to justify the abrogation of protecting the freedom of individuals in favor of a gargantuan rights-violating welfare state.
Finally, what is the objective measure of how much an individual owes? Do they owe 50% of their time? 70%? To whom specifically do they owe this? How does one come to these conclusions in an objective manner?