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Unlike my late and much-missed colleague Jim Buchanan [2], I never bought into the social-contract theory of the origin of the nation-state. Historically, it’s not descriptive; analytically, it’s a mess. Yet there are real-world instances of communities being formed by actual voluntary consent among the flesh-and-blood people who are then bound by the rules of the communities. See, for example, this wonderful 2002 collection of original articles, The Voluntary City [3], edited by David Beito, Peter Gordon, and my colleague Alex Tabarrok. Also relevant – I brag without justification – is my and Randy Holcombe’s 1989 article, “Government by Contract [4].”
Now to brag with justification: my student Mark Lutter – who is writing his dissertation under my direction – is doing exciting work on proprietary cities. Indeed, not only is Mark academically exploring the nature of community consent and governance, he’ll soon move to Honduras to work full-time in an effort to make proprietary cities more of a reality. Here’s an essay written by Mark to introduce the concept of proprietary cities [5].
If you can’t beat your nation-state, it would be good to have genuine options to leave it. Such options are today far too few and weighed down with government-imposed burdens; jurisdictional competition among sovereign governments is today obstructed by practical and political barriers. Hopefully, vigorous jurisdictional competition will become a reality in the not-too-distant future. If so, a non-trivial portion of the thanks will be owed to my student Mark Lutter.