I've been mulling over the idea of a city-state and would just like to hear people's thoughts, ideas, and maybe even historical knowledge on the subject. All-in-all, I agree with Hoppe's view that the most practical and just route towards liberty in the future is a progressive series of (hopefully) peaceful secessions, breaking down the political units into smaller and smaller pieces. But what lies at the end of this process? Of course, nobody can really know but we can speculate and I love speculating on interesting things like this.
I envision the emergence of powerful city-states. They would be tight geographic regions, probably on or near the location of existing major cities. The primary problem facing the city-state is keeping out aggressive States and their agents who will seek to corrupt and weaken the mores of the residents of the city-state making it vulnerable to reconquest by the old political unionists seeking to reunite seceded territories. This would require the imposition of physical and other boundaries. Someone will have to patrol and enforce the boundaries and the person or persons who do this will have a kind of power over those within the enforced boundary.
But I envision a way where this process can be done in such a way as to preserve rationality and tie it to market demand. I believe people would choose to colocate in a geographical location where there is economic freedom (and, hence, opportunity), even at the expense of having to live behind a boundary that protects their economic freedoms from interference by de-stabilizing outside powers. This suggests that there is a genuine demand for emborderment. However, emborderment has usually been administered by a King or chief of some sort whose powers are hardly bound by the discipline of profit & loss and, hence, become irrational.
A better way would be to treat the border itself as a kind of property which can be bought and sold. The embordering business would earn revenues from duties and excise fees. The policies of embordering businesses would be in competition with one another... those with the policies most favorable to doing business and human flourishing would, over time, attract the best and brightest. This would provide a constant pressure on such businesses to adopt policies that best serve their residents.
By thinking of an embordering business as just another business, it also becomes subject to law, like any other business... it can be sued, go bankrupt, bought, sold, etc. This would mean that such businesses would not enjoy inherently unjust powers despite their unique position in surrounding the property of others.
Thoughts? Criticism?
Clayton -