I am like Calli in that I don't have a preference in how to establish citizenship. I'm not going to touch the concept of citizenship with a 10 foot pole. What I can do is speak to the "technical" administration of the land.
Let's say we try Pat's example and abolish individual land ownership in the About Land dialog box. The citizen sees a parcel they want, pays the open meter next to it and boom, it's "legally" theirs in terms of CDS law. There is now one list to look at to determine citizenship. Yay!
However...
To whom would the parcel actually be deeded? It would need to be a CDS land group that manages citizen land, let's call it the "CDS Land" group.
The citizen will not be able to use that land in ANY way until an EM manually adds them to the "CDS Land" group. If the citizen and an EM are on at the same time, great! The EM adds them and they can start rezzing, set the land as home and set their music.
If no EMs are on when the citizen is online, that citizen has to wait for someone to invite them to the group. Let's say the EM is online but the citizen is not. The EM sends the group invitation. Great, right? Wrong! Do you know how many times group invitations to offline avatars fail? I would estimate that they fail 2/3 of the time. What ends up happening is that the citizen logs in and still is not in the group. They send a message to the EM saying "hey you did not add me to the group! I still can't use my land!" And the EM says "But I sent you the group invite!" Citizen says "well, I never received it!" Wash, rinse, repeat until both the citizen and an EM are online at the same time to ensure the group invite goes through.
Could we not use a group at all and just leave it in Rudeen's name? Nope. If it's in Rudeen's name the citizen can not set the land as their home or change the music. They could put prims on the land, if rezzing were left open. But if rezzing is left open then anyone could rez whatever they want wherever they want. It is zero land security. Could we make the group an open group so the citizen can join in themselves? Yep, but once again this means there is no security for rezzing on the land. Anyone that joins the group can rez wherever they want.
Ok, so we have to use a group that is not open-join and the EM and citizen play IM tag until the citizen is in the group. Eventually the citizen is added to the group. They can rez, and set the land as home and change their music. It took a few days to get them in, but hey now they are in and all is well. Great, right?
Wrong! With the way SL land deeding is configured, the prims on all of the parcels that are deeded to a single group get dumped into a giant "bank" of prims that anyone in the group can use on group-deeded land, anywhere in the sim. This means that someone with a double-prim 512 sq. m. parcel could rez 1000 prims on it in spite of the fact that the prim allotment on that parcel is 234 prims. Anyone could "steal" prims from their neighbors. This means that there would need to be an additional tool on the land and additional administrative steps for the EMs in order to keep track of parcel prim counts.
I have worked in estates that do parcel prim counts. I can tell you that people do NOT keep track of their own prim counts. They will rez and rez and rez some more. I had to track people down, send notes, send IMs in order to get them to remove prims.
Could an EM just return prims on the parcel that equal the overage. Sure they could, but if you think people get weird and proprietary about SL land, just WAIT until you return some of their prims without their knowledge or permission! Oh the angst! Oh the drama!
Other "issues" with using a land group: anyone could set their home on anyone else's parcel. Anyone could reset the music on anyone else's parcel. They all have to belong to a group role that allows them to do these things on the parcel next to their tier meter, yet those same permissions they need to use their own land are the same permissions on EVERYONE's land.
Is there any way to get around this? Well, we could set up an individual land groups for every parcel in the entire estate.
Ahhh...no.
Group deeded land would abolish the parcel-purchase-mistakes problem...and it would bring with it the issues that I list above. Chose your poison.
“And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness