Reactionaries worry that a patchwork of sovereign corporations that grant their subjects the right of ad libitum exit to the domains of other such corporations would eliminate the borders that bound nations and constrain immigrations of men devoted to other, foreign, and probably lesser cults – or, why would they have been interested in immigration to begin with? – and thus lead to the demolition of righteous, apt, prudent, ergo successful and prosperous nations or peoples.

It is a reasonable worry. It is the sort of thing that we ought to worry about. But we may dismiss it.

Exit is after all impracticable in the absence of a right of entry somewhere else. Where no right of entry is granted to foreigners, their exit from the domains of their former sovereigns can end only in their utter bewilderment in no man’s land – i.e., in death. Unless, of course, they are able to make a successful case for their admission to some other domain of some other sovereign corporation.

And sovereign corporations are likely to regard potential immigrants with a particularly jaundiced eye. Any immigrants after all are bound to dilute the value of shares in the sovereign corporation already outstanding in the hands of its subjects. They are likely to cost electors a fair bit of money. Immigrants who cannot cover that cost, and indeed more than cover it, who cannot when push comes to shove offer current shareholders the likelihood of a substantial marginal increase in the value of their shares, are not likely to find themselves welcome in any polity that is as prosperous as the one they have left. They will rather find that the only sovereign domains where they are welcome are those that are less prosperous than the domains they have left.

There are financial considerations, as well. I sell my shares in the sovereign corporation I would leave for some other; I must then be able to buy into that other, more desirable, and therefore more expensive sovereign corporation. That, only, if the current shareholders of that more desirable corporation will even let me buy. The emigrant is selling low, and buying high. He is in a poor position. He is impoverishing himself, at least at the margin, in order to take a big risk on a wholly new life.

It is a daunting prospect.

Then there is this: who is inclined to trust a man who has abandoned his own native people as much as a brother or cousin who has not? No one. Who is inclined to treat a man as if he were a distant cousin, when that man has betrayed and abandoned his own real cousins? No one.

The immigrant is rightly suspected by everyone of being not quite completely trustworthy. He is viewed with suspicion, correctly. He is like a man already divorced: a poor matrimonial prospect. Leaving his native nation, he has betrayed one extended family already; why admit such a man to another?

Exit is *completely useless* – is, i.e., practically impossible – unless one can find entry somewhere else that is better. So, it is useful only for the more excellent subjects of relatively failed states, who are able to demonstrate their own inherent value to some more successful polity.

I do not even here yet mention the tremendous risk to existing shareholders of a proposed immigrant from some other nation, adherent from his birth to some other, foreign cult, who therefore proposes (in virtue only of the local presence of his person) to import religious, moral and political notions at odds with those of his future countrymen.

Exit, then, is not tantamount to open borders. On the contrary. You can leave your family. Can you then find another?

No.

You cannot.

Leave, then, at your personal peril.

Exit is no problem. Free entry, on the other hand, is cultural and national suicide.