Cannot remove remote origin

I'm running git 1.8.0 on OS X, and every new git repo seems to have a remote called "origin":

$ git init
$ git remote
origin

What's odd is that I can't remove it:

$ git remote remove origin
error: Could not remove config section 'remote.origin'

And therefore I can't add a new remote called origin. Why is this? What can I do to change it?

Solution 1:

You should be able to remove origin with

git remote rm origin

Not that you need to, you can just change the origin with set-url

git remote set-url origin "https://..." 

Solution 2:

Open the .git directory and edit the config file where it says [remote "origin"]