“Laboratories of democracy” is the phrase Bob Zadek attributes to Justice Louis Brandeis, whom he describes as one of the greatest Supreme Court justices and as having served on the Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. On The Bob Zadek Show, Zadek uses the phrase to name the federalist idea that states are incubators for ideas and places where individuals choose a locale based on how much or how little government they want. Legalize drugs. (2009)
Brandeis and the federalist idea
Zadek introduces the phrase while arguing for drug legalization, saying Brandeis respected the importance of states as incubators for ideas and that Brandeis “railed, again unsuccessfully, against federal encroachment on states’ rights issues.” In the same episode he applies the idea to California, which he says is possibly going to be on the forefront if it has the courage to experiment with “the legalization and control of marijuana,” and he wonders whether Tom Ammiano’s bills have any legs. Legalize drugs. (2009)
The phrase recurs as a fixed point of reference. In a later episode Zadek quotes Brandeis more fully: a state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. He calls this the core principle of federalism — 50 states co-equal in many ways with the federal government, each experimenting with the right combination of taxation versus benefits to its citizens, with the success of one state dictated by the movement in or out of that state by its taxpayers. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
Seasteading and the limits of the state laboratory
In the seasteading episode Zadek asks why the states cannot be, in Brandeis’s words, the true laboratories of democracy, and why it cannot work at the state level. He notes that it does not solve everything because there is still a federal government. Seasteading (2009)
Guest Patri Friedman answers that it works to some degree but that the benefits are very limited because most of the spending and most of the regulation are at the federal level. He cites a famous study that people move from high-tax states to low-tax states two or three times more often than the other way around, and notes that Las Vegas was the fastest-growing city in the country for 20 years. Because so much power in the US is centralized at the federal level, he says, the amount of freedom the Free State Project will be able to get, even with 20,000 people in New Hampshire, will be very limited; most of the benefit of moving there is in the freedoms you get right away and in being part of a community of like-minded people. He adds that Supreme Court cases have not been very good for federalism or state autonomy. Seasteading (2009)
Zadek’s setup in that episode supplies the earlier attempts at exit: Ayn Rand’s hoped-for Laissez Faire City, which failed because she could not find a country willing to cede land, and Michael Oliver’s Republic of Minerva, built on a reef 260 miles off the coast of Tonga in 1972 and invaded by a Tongan force. He also lists the reasons Jason Sorens, a college professor in Buffalo, picked New Hampshire: the lowest state and local taxes in the country, the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending, a citizen legislature whose representatives have not raised their $100-a-year salary since 1889, the lowest crime level in the US, no seatbelt laws and no helmet laws, and the license plate “Live Free or Die.” Seasteading (2009)
Tax migration as the laboratory’s test
The tax-migration episode treats movement between states as the mechanism that grades each experiment. Zadek says he is willing to pay a premium — he makes up a figure of $20,000 — to live in California rather than Texas, because he gets something of value from the weather and the Dungeness crab rather than from the government. He says he likes that California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois have punitive tax policies and more of a welfare state than other states, because taxpayers have a choice and have voted with their feet, either by staying or by leaving. California’s high tax policy, he says, is not enough to chase him out but is enough to chase other people out. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
He frames the alternative starkly: with 50 states experimenting, the success of one state is dictated by taxpayers moving in or out, whereas if one big state — the federal government — did all the experimenting, the choice to move to a different country would be a far more drastic decision than moving from one state to another. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
From states to cities
A later episode extends the laboratory idea downward, to the city. Zadek tells guest Dr. Mark Lutter that his presentation is an ode to federalism: just as Brandeis observed that the states were incubators of democracy, where one state could experiment and other states would adopt what worked and reject what did not, Lutter is describing federalism at the city level — try an idea, see if it works, and if it works it will spread because it is a good idea. The End of Nation-States? (2018)
Lutter agrees that is one way to interpret it. He says some policies, such as national defense, are more efficient at the national level, but many others are better done at a more local level, whether state or city, because they may be more responsive to the needs of the citizen. He calls charter cities and free cities most exciting in Africa and parts of Asia, where cities are urbanizing extremely rapidly, and notes that in sub-Saharan Africa the country ranking highest on the World Bank Doing Business Index ranks about 50; a charter city that ranked 40 would, he says, become a magnet for every entrepreneurial person in sub-Saharan Africa. The End of Nation-States? (2018)
Zoning: local versus state control
The zoning episode stages the laboratory idea as a conflict inside libertarianism. Zadek says that as a principle of federalism writ small he favors local control over state control, just as he favors states over the feds, because the closer government is to him the more individual control he has — but he concedes that on housing this bias puts him on the wrong side, since state control seems more interested in more and lower-cost housing. He asks guest Christian Britschgi to discuss who controls zoning, the locality or the state. Free to Build (2023)
Britschgi argues that local governments are very sensitive to people who already live in the community — concerns about property values, traffic, shadows or bird deaths — and less sensitive to the ability of people who do not live there to move in, so localities tend to have more restrictive rules than a state government with a more general interest in economic growth. The movement in zoning reform, he says, has been to shift decisions about how restrictive local governments can be from the local government to the state government. He calls himself a federalist and says that is why he favors some states trying out shifting zoning decisions to the state level: federalism is the arrangement in the Constitution whereby states have wide control over their own policies, the federal government has very limited control, and local governments are basically not mentioned at all. He would like to see more state-level experimentation — “some more laboratories of democracy, if you will” — on making these policy decisions at the state level, because states are generally going to have a greater interest in housing affordability and be less likely to be captured by interests with strong preferences for restricting housing production. Free to Build (2023)
Zadek objects that Britschgi is not a federalist but, in 1787 terms, an anti-federalist rather than a Hamiltonian, and warns that Britschgi’s words could be quoted in support of a stronger general government. He says favoring state control makes him worry that he does not really favor more control to the citizen, because control is being moved away from the voter, and he describes himself as conflicted about zoning and about state versus county. Britschgi replies that his aim is neither state nor local control but individual control, and that the question is one of judgment and prudence: which layer of government will produce decisions giving individuals more control. He says the evidence is largely that local governments have been very restrictive and states a little less so, though environmental review rules are set at the state level, so there is still reason to worry about state power over land use. On the narrow question of whether you are allowed to build an apartment building on residentially zoned land, he says, the state government will be a little bit better about letting you do that than your local government. Free to Build (2023)
Across episodes: the laboratory under pressure
The phrase is introduced in 2009 as a description of how states incubate ideas and is applied to California’s possible experiment with marijuana legalization. Legalize drugs. (2009) Later in 2009, Zadek poses the laboratory idea as an explicit question — why can’t it work at the state level? — and Patri Friedman answers that federal centralization of spending and regulation sharply limits what any state or the Free State Project can achieve. Seasteading (2009) By 2013 the laboratory is described as a marketplace in which taxpayers vote with their feet, and by 2018 the same logic is pushed down to the city, with Dr. Mark Lutter agreeing that charter cities are a version of the idea while noting that some policies belong at the national level. Where is Everyone Going? (2013) The End of Nation-States? (2018) In 2019 the laboratory frame is invoked for California’s own policy experiments, and in 2023 it becomes an argument between Zadek and Christian Britschgi over whether the state or the locality should set zoning rules, with Britschgi calling for “some more laboratories of democracy” at the state level and Zadek worrying that moving control upward moves it away from the voter. Not Enough Bricks (2019) Free to Build (2023) The development across the excerpts is thus a shift in the unit of experimentation — from the state, to the taxpayer’s feet, to the city, and finally to a contest between state and local control — rather than a change in the underlying Brandeisian idea.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not give the full text or holding of any case, nor do they identify the amendment or statute on which any case turned. They do not state the outcome of Tom Ammiano’s bills, the fate of the Free State Project’s 20,000-person threshold, or the results of any zoning reform. The seasteading excerpt notes that Supreme Court cases have not been good for federalism without naming them, and the zoning excerpt refers to environmental review rules without naming a statute. The excerpts also break off mid-sentence in several places, including Zadek’s introduction of the Laboratories of Democracy segment in the drug-legalization episode.