Developed real estate titles are notoriously one of the least fungible assets in existence.
Relatively uniform rural undeveloped farmland titles might work but I doubt it would get the same historical inertia since gold outlasts governments more reliably than land titles.
I've re-read your statement several times and I'm still not quite getting it. If your point is that railroads or factories are as valid a basis as 'can be used to bail someone out of IRS agents with machine guns shooting their dogs and putting them in a little cage' than I agree with you.
Although it brings me back to, you can see how maybe it was simpler historically for people to just settle in a fungible, transportable, easily dividable hard asset that had essentially as good inflationary properties as anything else they could find.
Relatively uniform rural undeveloped farmland titles might work but I doubt it would get the same historical inertia since gold outlasts governments more reliably than land titles.