In that sense, you don't own your body either: At any time, the government could send goons to shoot you or jail you or harvest your kidneys. Even if you leave the country, they could put a bounty on your head or send assassins.

Sure, there's courts and laws, but they pick the judges and can choose to change the laws. They could pass a constitutional amendment tomorrow giving themselves the right to harvest your kidneys, the same way local counties can pass a law at any time raising your property taxes.

And, even if you argue that you have rights under the current government, empires don't last forever. 300 years from now, who's to say barbarians won't be ransacking the house you left to your kids? In that sense, your rights are only contingent on the barbarians being too scared to attack, and not absolute.

So if your argument is, "You can't own a house because the government could take it away", it seems like you have no hope and no possible policy change would give you any "true rights" to anything.

What you say is absolutely correct.

While you have governments that can legally steal everything from you just because they can, you'll never really be free.

That said, there are degrees of freedom.

Property taxes in the US are very high so I consider it an inferior degree of freedom compared to owning a house in a country where I don't have property taxes. The more corporation / income tax I have to pay the less free I am, hence why I'll move to a country which charge less corporation / income tax.

Sure, I'm still owned by the government because they have soldiers and guns and I have none - but at least I can live my life as close as possible to how I'd like to live it.

It is possible to fix this situation once and for all: abolish the government and its idea of legitimacy, let people organise their own defence from the goons of other countries by paying voluntarily.

You won't end up with a much different system, you'll still have some people not paying anything and some people paying more to defend their community - but at least I would pay voluntarily what's needed for my defence without enriching the politicians, fake intermediaries with empty promises, and it wouldn't be coerced out of me under threat of fines and imprisonment.

That seems like it would very quickly turn into tribute to the local warlord.

That was, at least the common narrative goes, the fundamental basis for most if not all states. Mutual defense. And it's hardly any different today. There have been many cases of non-state societies who did organize their own protections. But to try and connect the dots with such factions (many of which are still functioning today) and the modern man is an error. We're talking societies with scribal and priestly classes which in no ways exist in the modern era, when the global average literacy sits at 83% and the mindblowing advancements we've seen in the last two decades alone is a force multiplier for autonomous organization that is totally unprecedented, like most of all of the advancements seen since the seminal moments of the industrial revolution.

But ultimately your negative outlook on the human condition is your own, 99% of daily life proceeds under conditions of total anarchy, authority and security are entirely illusory and we pay incredible costs to maintain those illusions, not in terms of liberty alone, but in toil and life itself. It leaves little left to live for, read the Death of Ivan Illyich if you want a better understanding of what I mean.

> 99% of daily life proceeds under conditions of total anarchy, authority and security are entirely illusory and we pay incredible costs to maintain those illusions

Those costs are totally worth it. I'd rather live in a nation with liberal democracy and property laws, than whatever more "pure" or original model you seem to have in mind.

You say that but history has lots of examples of people taken in by such egalitarian societies and doing an about-face, and when the European societies took in people, they more often sought to return.

In any case, what I'm talking about is democratic and does not forego property rights, in fact it could give you stronger property rights. But you didn't read the grandparent.