Not all taxes are arbitrary. You can't argue that taxes on natural resources are arbitrary. Take mineral resources as an example. I think it's very difficult to find the idea of taxing the use of these resources as absurd in a similar fashion to those presented by this article. Same can be said about radio spectrum.
If we applied the same philosophy to land, we'd need much fewer "arbitrary" tax types and percentages.
Our tax systems are indeed deeply flawed and arguing that any system is arbitrary and equally absurd/paradoxical/inefficient is incorrect since there are examples of ethical (and I would argue necessary) taxes.