Borders in the franchise system

Under the franchise philosophy, jurisdictions and other organs of government large and small are property. In a monarchic franchise system ownership of jurisdictional properties tends to be by individuals, whereas in a republican franchise system ownership of such properties tends to be by corporations. There is no such thing as sovereignty or "the" government, but instead a wide variety of property rights to exercise specific political powers that may be bundled, or not, in a wide variety of ways. The rights, duties, powers, and so on of persons in franchise systems are defined in property deeds, often called charters.

In a franchise system, it follows that jurisdictional boundaries are a kind of property boundary. This does not, however, mean that these boundaries should be treated in the same was as the popularly understand generic property in land is treated today. For example, it does not automatically follow that one of their features should be a strict right of exclusion.

Popularly we treat property in land as if it all came in one generic variety, but in fact properties (called in law "estates") can come in a wide variety of forms. There can be estates, sub-estates, and so on. There's no contradiction between having boundaries of larger properties and also having boundaries of smaller properties contained within them. And these boundaries can mean different things depending on the kind of estate involved. A jurisdictional estate can encompass a number of economic estates, for example, and the borders of each have different legal consequences.

There is nothing more important to liberty than reducing exit costs. As Daniel Nagy points out in the debate at this link, this also argues towards reducing entrance costs -- although I do draw a distinction between the two. Restrictions on their residents or guests leaving the property should be highly discouraged, and indeed generally constitute kidnapping. This should apply at any scale. Thus all forms of serfdom and national citizenship with restrictions on emigration that tie people to a territory, whether economic or jurisdictional, are highly destructive of liberty.

The right of an owner to exclude people, on the other hand, should be very high for smaller properties and less so far larger (jurisdictional) properties. A jurisdictional property that restricts entrance also restricts the freedom of association of the jurisdiction's inhabitants. If a family desires to live and raise their children among "their own kind", whatever kind that is, the property policies or deeds that implement these associational preferences should be implement far more at a local level (for example with restrictive property deeds) than at a national level. Thus for example I favor the right to enforce discriminatory covenants on single lots and neighborhoods that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down under the fraudulent theory that these constitute "government action" and thus violate the Equal Protection Clause. But on the scale of a large "nation" such as the United States, I am for open borders, unless the border restriction is due to a compelling reason of security that cannot be handled on a local scale.

(This text is based on a comment I made in a prior post).