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> seems less harmful than perpetual rights to a piece of land.

Interestingly, society agrees with you; for the most part, we don’t grant perpetual rights to a piece of land. Instead we charge property tax to ensure you are doing something productive with it. You have to generate enough free cash flow to pay the taxes or you lose the land.

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Not really. The property taxes on a piece of land I own are about $200 per year, which can be paid in perpetuity with a low five figure endowment stored in zero risk FDIC-insured CDs. In most counties, property taxes are fairly marginal and come nowhere near necessitating that land is used productively.

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