In the vocabulary of The Bob Zadek Show, “freedom to move” denotes the liberty of a person to relocate — from city to city, state to state, country to country, and, in one episode, from a country to something other than a country. Bob Zadek treats the phrase as naming a right of exit that operates alongside, and in his account exceeds, the right to vote. The concept appears across episodes on tax migration, federalism, private governance and asylum, and in each the emphasis falls on the same mechanism: the ability to leave a jurisdiction is what constrains that jurisdiction.
The right to travel as an unenumerated right
Zadek opened a 2020 episode by distinguishing enumerated rights — those set forth in the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech, worship, assembly and petition — from unenumerated rights acknowledged by Supreme Court precedent and political tradition. Among the latter he placed the right to travel, “the right to move from one place to another.” He described it as a right as important as, if not more important than, the right to vote, and went further: “the right to move is the right to vote,” while the freedom to move — voting with one’s feet — gives people more control over their political environment and their lives generally than the ballot does Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020).
The same episode’s framing supplies the article’s central contrast. Where voting is exercised within a jurisdiction and can be outvoted, moving is exercised against jurisdictions and cannot be. Zadek’s introduction presents the freedom to move as the means by which individuals choose the political environment that regulates them rather than merely contesting it.
Tax competition and the movement of residents
The earliest of the excerpts, from March 2013, approaches the topic through taxation. Zadek described states questioning whether to have an income tax at all and considering replacing it with a sales or consumption tax, a shift he characterized as not punishing earnings but taxing consumption. He argued that a consumption tax is built into the price of a product, so a buyer who dislikes the combined price simply does not buy, whereas the drive to earn is not similarly optional. He summarized the dynamic as a movement “born of freedom, freedom to move,” giving birth to a further freedom — to earn as much as one wants and to decide whether to pay a higher sales tax Where is Everyone Going? (2013).
Guest Travis Brown, in the same exchange, framed the constraint as a choice set: apart from not becoming a resident of California, there is no choice about how much state income tax one pays. He noted that personal consumption is up to 70% of US GDP, that consumption requires means, and that taxing personal income taxes the most mobile resource. Zadek then cited an annual study of economic freedom that weighs paternalism, free choice and occupational licensing alongside taxation, reporting the three lowest-ranked states as California (48), New Jersey (49) and New York (50), and the top three as New Hampshire, South Dakota and Indiana. He also named Governor Perry and Governor Scott in Florida among those whose states, in his account, support freedom more than California does.
Federalism and the safety valve
A July 2020 episode on federal property and local control restates the concept as a structural feature of federalism. Discussing federal courthouses in Portland, Zadek argued that states should be given the freedom to exercise their police power badly, that it is the citizens’ problem to remove elected officials, and that Washington is not the protector of local problems. He closed the exchange by noting that leaving states with the power gives people the freedom to move from state to state and vote with their feet The “Ratchet Effect” in Real Time (2020).
Guest Pat Eddington, in the same segment, disputed the premise that a serious threat to the courthouse existed, said the Federal Protective Service was already present, and cited Commissioner Hardesty of Portland in the New York Times that things had de-escalated substantially by the middle of June after the police chief was replaced. He distinguished people with signs and megaphones, which he called First Amendment protected activity, from someone using Molotov cocktails or incendiary devices, whom he said should be taken into custody. The freedom-to-move argument in this episode is Zadek’s, offered as the reason to tolerate local misgovernment rather than federal intervention.
Zones, seasteading and the market for governance
The September 2020 episode with Joe Quirk and Tom W. Bell expands the concept beyond existing jurisdictions. Zadek introduced the show as being about the freedom to move from place to place and, that morning, from country to something other than a country — private governance, and the degree to which one can live in control of the political environment that regulates one’s behavior. He described zones as political units existing within countries or outside them, politically independent of their physical surroundings, and noted that a state can be thought of as a zone within the federal system and a city as a zone within its state Vote to Float (2020).
Zadek framed the topic as a safety valve, the concept that keeps people at peace with one another, and said that people in control of their lives are less angry and calmer. He introduced Quirk as President and spokesperson for the Seasteading Institute and author of Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians, and Bell as a lawyer, a JD from the University of Chicago, who practiced in Silicon Valley and wrote Your Next Government? From the Nation State to Stateless Nations. The episode’s own summary describes the discussion as covering Special Economic Zones, seasteading and ZEDEs in Honduras, and as treating these as creating competition in a market for governance by allowing people to vote with their feet or boats.
Asylum and the right to move
The August 2021 episode with Ilya Somin applies the concept to immigration. Zadek stated as a premise that immigrants have rights and that there is an inherent right to move from place to place, which he said nobody would dispute, then pressed the asymmetry that a person whose life is economically hopeless does not qualify for asylum. He called it cruel that the most basic reason for wanting a better life is insufficient, and argued that Americans are deprived of the freedom to hire willing immigrants, borrowing Milton Friedman’s phrase about the freedom to choose whom one hires Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Somin agreed, describing the distinction between political refugees and so-called economic migrants as largely artificial. He argued that in Venezuela the reason so many people are poor and starving is primarily the policies of the government and its socialist ideology, so that generalized oppression can be as horrific as targeted persecution, yet only the latter yields asylum eligibility. Zadek referred to Somin’s book as the Bible for those who want to learn about freedom to move from place to place, and Somin directed listeners to his website, his writing for the Volokh Conspiracy blog on the Reason magazine website, and his book Free to Move. Zadek closed by expressing hope that Merrick Garland had read Somin’s suggestion and could, with a stroke of a pen, materially improve life for would-be immigrants.
Across episodes: no single arc
The excerpts show the same concept recurring over eight years without a developed argument between episodes. In 2013 Zadek derives the freedom to move from tax competition and the mobility of income, with Travis Brown supplying the consumption and GDP figures. In 2020 he states it as an unenumerated right in his own introduction, applies it to federalism with Pat Eddington, and extends it to private governance with Joe Quirk and Tom W. Bell. In 2021 he and Ilya Somin apply it to asylum. What changes is the domain — taxation, federal structure, new jurisdictions, immigration — not the underlying claim, and no guest in these excerpts disputes that claim.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the holding, citation or constitutional basis of any case recognizing a right to travel, nor do they identify the annual economic freedom study by name or publisher. They do not describe the legal status of ZEDEs in Honduras, the mechanics of seasteading, or the specific regulatory change Zadek hoped Merrick Garland would make. Several segments break off mid-sentence or at a section heading, and nothing in the excerpts supplies what followed.