> I'm not sure the case for one-big-bundle-of-property-taxes is any better, though. Where does THAT number come from?

It isn't some mysterious, unknowable thing made up out of thin air. You can, in fact, dig into your local budget and find out what these things cost, how much you are paying for them, and the history of decisions that led to them being what they are.

You really missed my point. All your objections either:

1. Also apply to the present day pricing of property tax:

  - "How do the police and fire departments set the fees?"

  - "Are they fixed for everyone in their area"

  - "how do the police and fire departments assess your property value?" - "Does someone make a fortune building a software system for police and fire departments to manage all of this?"

  - "Does the state now step in and take the property from them, effectively enforcing a monopoly that the state doesn't benefit from?"

  - "When a derelict building begins to burn on a block and threatens in-use buildings around it, who pays the firefighters for stopping the derelict building's fire?"

  - "what stops the new police and firefighter businesses from raising the price every year on every constituent?

  - "When grandma on fixed social security's fire fighting fees go up too much for her to afford to live there any more..."

  - "What about people who don't get any kind of insurance and pay no fees?"

  - "What about people who don't own property."

  - "Does the state pay if a park is on fire?"

  - "Will there be competing police and fire departments that offer lower rates (for lesser service?)?"

 - "Functionally, the state is in the best position to capture the necessary revenue to support these services." (The state simply can be the insurer! I did not even propose *private* insurance.)

I think in fact a well-executed insurance-like system would be functionally equivalent to the status quo, except that it would be far more efficiently priced.

I suspect the only real difference is that property tax, due to the path-dependent history by which it got this way, has wound up being substantially progressive as a tax, compared to what you would get if you tried to rationalize it. And it therefore feels impossible to replace it, because you'd set back all that progressive taxation, only to run into the problems that lead to the status quo in the first place. We really don't like to admit what it is what we're the govt paying for; the lump sum of taxes is a way of protecting the revenue streams that support public benefits from too much individual scrutiny.

But surely there is some other approach to keep moral-upside public goods in tact than this "security through obscurity". Surely.

> Once you really sit down and think about it, the idea that you "own" any real estate is kind of a joke.

I agree with this! It would be far better to model property ownership outright as renting from the public. People are awfully attached to the fiction of "ownership", though, and I think that deserves some credit.