A government is nothing more than the principles upon which a community of individuals decide to act in harmony. Do the words "By my life..." ring a bell? Was not Dagny told she could not remain (enforcement of sovereignty and borders) until she had pledged her allegiance? Certainly.

Excellent points

Tom, Ms. Rand apparently agreed with you, as she availed herself of the SS and Medicare "programs" into which she had been legally coerced to pay for many years. So you are in good company as far as your sentiments.

This distinction is critical to this entire debate. Thanks for the clarity in your comments.

Air travel makes intercontinental travel faster and may magnify the effect in some cases, it doesn't change the principle.

The hordes of illegals coming across the Mexican border are not traveling by air.

So how did people get 'ownership' of property. If two people wanted the same piece of land, how did they decide who had a right to it. The government had ownership of it and gave it out.

If your argument holds then 84% of the state of Nevada is owned by no one. Anybody who wants to can go and declare that they own it. Want to own half a state? Just go say it's yours.

Even worse, if the government cannot deed lands then no one can EVER own that 84% of Nevada since there is no way to get a recognized deed.

Naturalization pertains to citizenship, not traveling.

Implement was a poor choice of words, protect is a better one that carries the meaning I intended. I may have a right to keep you from coming in my house, but unless I have the personal force to prevent it I require the government to protect that right. I used the term implement in that respect since I may have that right but may need assistance for it to be followed.

While government is supposed to use property within limits required for defined purposes, there are options as to how this can be done. The administrators selecting among options are still responsible to the citizens for the performance of their duty.

Whether or not you agree with his statement it was not an "ad hominem".

"Breaking and entering" pertains to private property, not entering a country. National borders do not delimit a government ownership of the country. When a country is attacked it is not called "breaking and entering".

Government does not own property and does not deed it. It issues official deeds recognizing and defining the property in question, but does not "deed" the property. Someone "deeds" property to you when you buy what he owns from him or he gives it to you, including inheritance, or a new deed is recognized for a claim to previously unowned land.

The latter is how the country was originally settled. Ownership was acknowledged and recognized by government, not "handed out" by government. No one can "give away" something he does not own as private property. Government jurisdiction is not ownership. Only individuals can have rights.

The early process was corrupted, especially in the colonial era, due to feudalist claims by grantees of European governments. In practice that power was wrested from their hands and worked around, with or without formalities, and the original privileged "grants" were eventually ignored. But government did not "steal" it, there were no owners to steal from. They tried to make overreaching claims to unowned land based on political privilege, which did not survive. See Rothbard's multi-volume history of the colonial era Conceived in Liberty.

The settlement of the west in the post colonial period was based on an intended orderly process for recognition of claims to ownership of previously unowned land. That ended in the late 19th century when the early European-influenced statists progressively claimed permanent control by government of land still not recognized as claimed privately.

Today's "public ownership" or "government ownership" is a misuse and corruption of the concept of property ownership as a right.

Government does not "implement" rights, we have rights and act in accordance with them by our nature as human beings. Government is supposed to codify them in objective law and protect them under objective criteria for the use of force.

A private individual delegates his right to defend himself. When under direct attack he may still defend himself and need not ask permission, but may not use force beyond that in retaliation. He does not "request" the government to act, government must act in accordance with law. The court system is part of that.

Citizens do not "direct" government administration of land. Government is supposed to use certain kinds of property only within limits required for defined government functions, not "manage" land on behalf of citizens. A government is not a corporation.

Immigration pertains to people coming into the country regardless of where they go once in the country and what property they use, whether public or private and regardless of permission granted by private owners for particular uses.

You never, ever, ever own your land or your house in this country because you will always owe property tax. If you fail to pay, the gov't takes it.

Bush neither recommended nor suggested privitization. He denied that was what he was doing.

According to economic theory (and many real-world examples), the first property owner to remove the “no trespassing” barrier would reap outsized profits from the only land-based access point between New York and California. Others would quickly follow, driving down the price of access to typical free-market levels. This is why the OPEC cartel has so much difficulty controlling the price of oil. In an Objectivist society, networks of competing private roads, railroads, shipping lanes and airports would ensure the ready availability of travel alternatives.

I don't know about that. It seems to me that we could have a long narrow line of private property owners from the Mexican border to the Canadian, right in the middle of the USA, and all property owners could say No Trespassing. Then what? Nobody from New York would be able to cross the boundaries to visit California? No, I think there must be some legal way for traffic to pass by around and between separate property owners. Does that make sense? Then the same would apply to border crossings.

The ability to use retaliatory force is ceded to a government, I'll grant you that. The only way a private club can use force is by calling upon that self-same government to act in it's behalf. And, presuming that the club can justify its request it will.

While governments have no inherent right, like corporations they can implement the rights of the people who make them up, in this case citizens.

So how this all comes out in the sense of immigration and free travel is that the land owned by the government that has not been deeded to individuals or corporations is managed by the government not because of any inherent right the government has but the rights of the citizens who direct the administration of 'their' land. This is entirely analogous to the officers of a corporation directing the use of corporate property on behalf of the shareholders.

If we had an Objectivist society in which all property was private, then all property along the border would be private, and no one would have the right to cross the border by vehicle or on foot unless given permission by the owner of the property. And even if such permission were granted, such immigrants would have to obtain further permission to enter anyone else’s private property. So as a practical matter, any country with an Objectivist political and legal system would close its borders to mass immigration.

That is correct, and is why I said "suggesting the idea of privatization". That much was accurate. The latter part about recommending privatization was more than he did, and you are correct in making that clarification, as well as your subsequent analysis.

He didn't try to privatize it. He wanted a very small fraction to be in a privately owned account, and that still mandatory. Yet the intellectually statist hordes descended it on as if it were a private replacement. He couldn't begin to refute them because he insisted he did not want to replace it with private savings. He accepted their premises and lost farther from there.

But every piece of land that someone owns is theirs because at some point a government deeded it to them. My business partner, Jan, is part owner in a ranch whose title is signed by a U.S. President.

While we talk about people purchasing land, all land was initially seized by some government which handed it out. That's the only way we decide that it's 'owned' by someone.

How else would you have ownership of property. Yes, you bought it from someone, but who did they buy it from etc.

Chile's example in this area is acceptable. One key early step in my shrugging was seeing just how soundly GW Bush was reviled for merely suggesting the idea of privatization. The timing of that was about the same time that his popularity after 9/11 declined. I'm not saying I liked GW Bush. Recommending privatization of Social Security was one of the few things he did that I supported. He held that point of view about as long as one would hold a hot potato without potholders. Sad.

thank you. perfect words laid well like track on a line. with strong spikes. :)

Yes, voluntary cooperation is not collectivism, which makes the individual subservient to the group.

But government does not "own" land; it controls public property in accordance with the functions of government only. "Public ownership" means no one owns it. Individuals own land and use it by right; governments do not do anything by right. Government is supposed to protect private property rights in accordance with objective standards, it is not the source of property rights, as presupposed in "giving" or "selling" people land. Government cannot own land. Today of course statist government is doing much, much more than it should both in its own land "ownership" and denying property rights to individuals.

It is the difference between an individual and a government, which has a monopoly on the use of force in a geographical region and which acts on behalf of the rights of individuals under objective law. A proper government does what it must do and is limited to that and only that, it does not act by right. Individuals act by right and are restricted only in what they cannot do. A 'club' is a voluntary association of individuals.