I have the opposite view. Property taxes seem like the least bullshit to me, as they make buying up all the land and turning the population into serfs less attractive. Land is strictly limited, and it existed before you arrived on it, after all. You didn't go out there and create the grains of dirt you built the house on. Only the house is from you, and houses aren't actually all that valuable. Land is the apex national property, as it is the one that determines the territory of the nation. I don't think land within a nation-state can be directly and wholly owned by an individual, by very definition. If the individual owned it, that would mean that the nation would have no claim on it, despite it being within its own borders. The whole point of a nation-state is that the territory within its borders is owned, collectively, by the sovereign (the citizenry). You can only purchase the title on it from the state. The title is what you pay taxes on in exchange for the state defending your title. The more valuable that title is, the harder the state would have to defend it, and the more you should pay. Of course, you could start your own state on land not yet owned by a nation and attempt to directly own that. Well, until someone takes it from you, which would be easy. Or you could build a state on the moon, or something. I think that might actually be some people's plan. But the nation states are already on the moon...