I didn't write this.

It's true! I didn't! I'm actually conglomerating ideas conveyed by F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Thomas Jefferson, Dr. Erick Erickson (my econ prof), and a multitude of other writers to put what I'm about to say together.

So here goes.

Saying "You didn't build that" is like saying you don't own something because you bought it, instead of having built it yourself.

So let's break this down into simple parts. I get what Obama is saying which should be conveyed if you read my intro analogy. The efforts put into your business by your employees, business partners, contractors etc. is what actually makes your business possible. But it MAKES UP the business, it's not what CREATES the business. Creation is an action. A deliberate and purposeful action. Components are inanimate, in context. - As a business owner, I'm buying the actual physical components that make up my product, INCLUDING labor. I'm also managing business partners and sales contracts as an asset in the same context. - These things, land, labor, capital, are what makes up a business, but it is not what creates the business.
I'd like to reiterate, that labor is a product purchased by a business from the employees. That's why you get paid in dollars and cents, instead of scrip or simply taking home what you made. That's also why it's a market despite how much someone wants to argue otherwise.

So, the creative force that takes all those parts and puts them together, is the owner. In that the creative force and action taken by that person to put all of the constituent elements together is the process of building something, that makes it's builder the OWNER..

The fundamental premises behind the idea that "you didn't build that" is the notion that the employees working effort also built the company. While this is true in a disconnected abstract manner, it's incomplete. What the employee agrees to when he/she enters employment is agrees to trade, for money, the products of his/her labor. So, what you create as an employee is being bought by your employer. What your employer does, is no different than what a carpenter, or engineer does. They take parts of the whole, refine them and assemble them into a fully functional product. - The parts of a business are the capital investment, the productive coordination, and the administration. While the parts of a stool would be the legs, the top and the cushion, as it were.

Edit:
I promised I would come back to this and update it. As I re-read this and the whole of Obama's statement, I should note that what I wrote here assumes some kind of intent in Obama's speech - What are you getting at and why? As a politician, I assumed he was plugging for some kind of constituency.

Obama's talking about the idea that no one person created something in it's entirety. What he's half-identifying is the fact that knowledge (and human action) are de-centralized concepts that make up a much greater whole.

What I'm highlighting with this post is that, while fundamentally correct in principle, there really is no explicit conclusion drawn, and whatever meaning I can derive from the statement based on Obama's character, is seriously false.

Simply because one person didn't develop an idea, or create the necessary precondition for the success of that idea or business, doesn't mean that person didn't develop or doesn't have some kind of ownership in end result. It also doesn't mean that the existence of that precondition should require some sort of compensation to those who created the precondition nor does it mean that those same people should be entitled to reap in the success of the idea or business.

Why? Because of basic economics. Smith's Circular Flow model (if you want to look it up) incorporated government and Keynes later extrapolated on it. If an enterprising entrepreneur uses basic government established infrastructure by building a business in a high traffic area, and that business thrives the government, the people and the business win. - The business develops and employs more people, provides a service to the local area, and in turn pays taxes to the government that build the road. This is pretty basic for most people. If we say that the person who established the business isn't entitled to the profits (or is perhaps less entitled to the profits) then we eliminate the benefit of success - This is call the problem of incentives, in economics. If we say "You should pay more taxes because of your success" in addition to the reducing the incentive I mentioned before, you're also saying that there's a purpose in paying more taxes which is ostensibly, more spending. If more spending is the goal - the question is "on what?" Which becomes an even bigger moral dilemma. If we force those business owners to pay for things they don't agree with (especially in a democracy) we're disenfranchising the business owners. If we force their customers to pay (through their income taxes) for improvements that increase their business, we're disenfranchising the customers.

The issue I take, is the assumption that government is the beginning, and that everyone else (other than the entrepreneur) has a stake in what the entrepreneur did. The value added to the economy is employment, and the goods and services provided by the business. True, the business owner may get rich - but arguments about who gains the most are simple "THATS NOT FAIR!" arguments. If Obama's preaching equity, I'd question what his sense of equity is? He builds a brewery on the side of the White House while he tells the rest of the country to "tighten their belts?" Doesn't seem very ideologically consistent... he's not practicing what he preaches.

So my point here is - "Fairness" arguments aside (which are subjective and almost always some variety of ad misericordiam) what is the point he's trying to preach?

The answer is - There isn't one. He's preaching ideas that are written to compel a vote. Romney's doing the same thing for his side of the camp. The fact of the matter is, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are so incredibly distant in their constituents ability to ideologically hold them to their speeches, that none of it means a damn thing. It's just a matter of coming up with the best argument to secure a vote. You could ask twenty different people what they take from that paragraph or quote, and you'll likely get twenty-five different answers.

These guys are no different than we are - They're just doing whatever it takes to score the next promotion, or jot their names down as influential in someone's life.