Nah. The founding fathers were the richest colonists and George Washington was the richest of them all. It was some rich people opposing richer people overseas that they were descended from.
They didn’t want concentration of political power but they had the economic power. Interestingly the political power endangers them because it has the power to take away their economic power. That’s the real battle still going on today.
Because it wasn’t concentration of power they were concerned with. They were only concerned with concentration of power against them (political power against their right to profit).
It was a selfish play not a principled one. For example, slavery was written into the constitution. How the hell does that happen when all men (and no women) were supposedly equal? Slavery was enshrined as an economic and then a political right (2/3 vote).
Not all of them were for slavery but that was the end result of the document/of the competing forces at play. It institutionalized slavery in the new nation.
“According to those scholars who saw the root of Jefferson's thought in Locke's doctrine, Jefferson replaced "estate" with "the pursuit of happiness", although this does not mean that Jefferson meant the "pursuit of happiness" to refer primarily or exclusively to property.”
What has gradually happened is that personhood has been gradually extended to more and more entities (sometimes non human).
The colonists were ALL for maximizing economic power (pursuit of estate). They were ALL for limiting political power against economic power.
So this notion that colonists were against economic power is just wrong. Others may have held the notion but not as the colonists if you go by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
And if that is the case, then you have people taking both sides of the argument over a long period of time.... Pro economic freedom vs limits to economic power.
It isn’t well recognized. It’s just a debate/fight people have been having for awhile.
It's this dynamic that some people want to treat each other as peers in some ways. This is because they are stronger as a group i.e. united we stand, individually we fall. However they to exclude others since if you include everyone, then there is no advantage (us vs them, the other).
They didn’t want concentration of political power but they had the economic power. Interestingly the political power endangers them because it has the power to take away their economic power. That’s the real battle still going on today.