Trego's Mountain Ear

It’s just a matter of who we rent from. Some of us rent from landlords and some of us rent from the government. What is a property tax, except the rent you pay the government to live in your house? In fact, the only party that gets away without renting is the government.

Property is an interesting concept, especially digital property. I buy some software and suddenly, it’s unsupported and I can’t use it. Do I own the software? Effectively no, because someone else can take it away from me at will. I buy a movie, online. Do I own it? Probably not.

A fundamental trait of owning something, of it being mine, is that if someone walks up and takes it away from me, they are breaking the law.

If you realize that the government doesn’t think you own your home, a lot of the things it’s willing to do make a lot more sense. Of course, the government thinks it can tell you what sort of things you can have, or not have, on your the lawn. The government’s your landlord, and tenant protection laws need not apply.

The original phrase is not ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ rather, it is ‘life, liberty and property’. Despite that, as with many aspects of our legal system, we inherited the property tax from England.

Property Tax in England began under William the Conqueror (though he was hardly the first to use the concept) and had a lot in common with a protection racket. Pay the king for the use of the land, or…consequences.

‘Life, Liberty and Property’ just doesn’t sound quite as catchy. We maintained the property tax as a relic of our time as a British Colony and never got rid of it, despite the right to property being a fundamental underlying principle on which our country was founded.