a real attempt to reduce rent seeking would probably lead to civil war.

Reduce, not eliminate.

Put pressure though taxes, regulations, etc that benefit people owning things to do stuff with them and penalize people owning things to make money from somebody else doing things with them.

Investment will always be an important mechanism, it just needs to be a bit more disadvantaged than it is at the moment.

One of the mechanisms is as simple as taxing vacancy. If you own commercial or residential property that isn’t occupied, your taxes go way up to encourage you to drop prices until it gets used or you decide to sell.

People pay 50% of their income in taxes in states like California without rioting, so I don't see why attempts to reduce rent seeking would be any different. Any income generated from an land value tax is money that can be saved with less efficient forms of taxation. IMO, this has more to do with lack of economic knowledge rather than anything else. People don't realize that making housing affordable completely opposite from making it a good investment.

> a real attempt to reduce rent seeking would probably lead to civil war.

Agreed, but a failure to reduce it would probably lead to the same thing eventually.

The feudal lords will call on their bannermen to take up arms via Twitter.