Just a suggestion, but I played on this server where it was 5 dollars per surface block and you would get your land protected.
It was great because there would not be a lot of noob cities, or towns within the server.
For the cities and towns that players would buy for 5 dollars a block and then the owner of the city would sell plots on the land and make some of their money back or profit from it.
For the server I use to play there were RARELY grief reports.
Thanks for reading.
-Impersonator
Well, the thing being with charging $5 (I’m assuming of RL cash) is the fact that a lot of our members do not own credit cards, nor do they necessarily feel like paying for permission to build on the server. The server is ran off iConomy, which is our form of money spending. We give out money to players who donate actual money, and grants special privileges. Each town in the server sells plots of lands, or specific area for said in-game money, therefore rulling out the need to pay real money to still make profit. Although the idea does sound pretty sweet and I do like it, I feel like a lot of our newcomers would be discouraged at the idea of having to pay to play which would result in a drop in members, which of course would drive our server into dust, until POOF, innactive.
Please do enlighten me though, I find this really interesting! 
No, I mean make a government and charge players in game money to buy land and have the money go to the government account.
In-game governments do exist, however it would be up to the town owner whether to charge players or not. You can sell ‘plots’ in your towns if you wish, if that’s what you’re referring to. There isn’t a need to charge players to protect their land, we have a lot of staff members that have the rollback and ban command to use if needed.
I was once on a server similar to that. I think the plugin for that was called Townie.
@Kurry: Townie is a plugin that is all based on in-game money. You would use a cmd and you could claim a plot (I think it was maybe a 10x10 radius from where you performed the cmd). I liked using this plugin, the only thing that made this complicated was the fact the server I once played on also had a additional war plugin. The admin would decide on a certain day of the week like the purge where pvp would be allowed for maybe 30 mins or so And if another town won a war, another town would be auto-griefed to pillars of stones and dirt and etc. It was messy.
I think using a plugin like this would be great for Creative not so much Survival. Idk if it would be possible to only allow on creative but is still a nice suggestion.
you should add in a poll so people can vote and maybe the staff could consider it!
shudders
Ive been on plenty of servers with the Towne (townie?) plugin, No one had any idea how to use it.