“Voting with their feet” is the libertarian concept that individuals express preferences about government by relocating between jurisdictions rather than by casting ballots. On The Bob Zadek Show, host Bob Zadek and his guests treated the fifty states as a marketplace for governance in which citizens register approval or disapproval of a state’s tax and policy mix by moving into or out of it.
The marketplace for governance
In a 2013 episode, Zadek framed the concept through the metaphor of the economic marketplace. He said the marketplace and its pricing mechanism set the value of a commodity through the individual decisions of millions of people, and that this collective decision-making is a more accurate predictor of worth than a dictate from Washington, Sacramento or Albany. He extended the logic to politics: the country trusts majority rule in elections, and trusts the wisdom of 50-plus-one voters to decide who the best candidate is. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
Zadek then described a marketplace for forms of political governance, which he identified as the 50 states. Each state, he said, is more or less free to determine by the will of its people and its elected officials the nature of its government — how much taxes take wealth from the people and what is given to voters in exchange. He said one can tell whether a concept for state government is successful not by pricing but by the taxpayers and citizens who can and very often do vote with their feet, moving from a state whose system of government is unappealing to one that is more appealing. Figuring out where the movement is to and from, he added, requires statistics and the ability to read and synthesize a lot of data. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
Zadek introduced his guest Travis Brown, author of How Money Walks, as having done that analysis, and said Brown would share what he had learned about which forms of state government seem to be working and appealing to taxpayers because they move there, and which are unappealing because they are moving from there. Where is Everyone Going? (2013)
Foot voting and voter ignorance
In a September 2013 episode, Zadek called voting with your feet a favorite topic of his and of his guest Ilya Somin, saying he lives in California, where people are voting with their feet by leaving. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Somin argued that studying political ignorance makes him more pessimistic in the short to medium term, because even on policy issues where there are pretty good ways to improve things significantly and most experts agree on the way to go, the public’s ignorance means those improvements will not be made. He said the study also shows a relatively easy way things can be improved: if fewer decisions are made through large, complicated centralized government and more by voting with our feet, either in the market or when choosing to live in different state or local governments, the quality of decision-making in society can improve significantly. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Somin illustrated the incentive difference by comparing consumer purchases to voting. Most people, he said, spend much more time figuring out which car or TV to buy than figuring out who to support for President, not because the car or TV is more important or more complicated, but because they know the purchase decision will make a difference. Similarly, when deciding whether to live in California versus Nevada, or San Francisco versus San Jose, people put much more time and effort into learning about that than into deciding who to vote for. He added that there is a social norm against arguing about politics, and that people get annoyed when their political views are questioned, but are much more attentive when someone points out a bargain on a car or a TV — because on subjects where knowing the truth helps them make better decisions, people are on average more open to new information. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Zadek raised the 2010 midterm elections, when economic policy was probably the most important issue and economists with doctoral degrees profoundly disagree about proper economic policy, asking how voters could possibly acquire the lifetime of economic knowledge required. Somin responded that it is impossible for voters to know as much as economists, but that the data show they do not even know extremely basic things that non-economists can easily find out — in the 2010 election, two-thirds of the public did not realize the economy was actually growing as opposed to shrinking. He added that majority public opinion is often wrong about issues where most experts, liberal and conservative, tend to agree, citing free trade, which economists overwhelmingly agree is good for the overall economy while voters historically tend to be protectionist, and technology, about which voters tend to be pessimistic while economists on the right and left overall hold almost the opposite view. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Zadek described Somin’s subtitle, Why Smaller Government is Smarter, as the takeaway, and argued that reducing the federal government’s power and moving it back to the states, counties, towns and cities would let voters vote more intelligently — in his small town north of San Francisco, he said, every issue is modest in size and he can vote with clarity and confidence because it is local. Somin agreed that the takeaway is not so much that voters do a better job in local elections as that when an issue is controlled by local or state governments, voting at the ballot box is not the only option: people can also vote with their feet. If you do not like the policies of San Francisco, he said, you can move to lots of other communities in the Bay Area; if you do not like California’s policies, it is tougher to move out, but huge numbers of Californians have moved to places like Nevada and New Mexico and Texas over the last few years. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Somin said that when we vote with our feet we have a much better incentive to be informed than when we vote at the ballot box, because the decision on where to live actually makes a difference. He noted that government at all levels spends nearly 40 percent of gross domestic product, so even if voters followed politics more closely they could not have even a minimal understanding of many issues current government addresses; if government were responsible for fewer issues, they would have a better chance of understanding how those issues work. He emphasized that he was not saying this proves we should decentralize all functions of government or be complete libertarians, but that ignorance is at least a big part of what should be considered in debates over the role of government. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Zadek raised the national debate over the federal government’s control over school curriculum called Common Core, noting that curriculum was once determined at the school district level, and that once a decision is made so far away the dilution of one vote is so profound that control is lost. He said this is an example where voting with your feet cannot work — you would have to move to Canada or Mexico to get away from a curriculum you disapprove of. Somin agreed that it is much harder to vote with your feet against a national policy than against a state or local one. Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013)
Federalism and historical context
In a 2020 episode, Zadek said voting with one’s feet is especially important in a system of federalism, where a substantial amount of the laws regulating us are passed at the state level under the state police power — though he and Somin would agree there is too much power at the national level, which diminishes the value of foot voting because the choice becomes changing countries, a far more dramatic activity than moving from state to state. He said the concept of foot voting goes hand in hand with the concept of federalism, and that in American history, from the Pilgrims on down, people have been voting with their feet. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
Tax competition
In a 2021 episode on the corporate income tax, Zadek described proposals to prevent states from using federal money to reduce their state taxes as a kind of minimum wage for taxation — no one allowed to pay less than a certain amount. He said the Biden administration had tried in its domestic tax policy proposals to prevent states from using wealth they get from the federal government to reduce state taxes, because New York, California and Illinois are at a tax competitive disadvantage given their high taxes, and corporations and individuals are voting with their feet. He said Biden is determined to eliminate any tax competition, whether between states or between countries. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
Guest Richard Rubin said one thing he watches is rate gaps, because there can still be arbitrage opportunities for companies. He gave the example that if the global floor is 15 percent and a company headquartered in Ireland, the UK or Spain can pay a minimum of 15 percent, while the US domestic tax rate is 25 percent — the administration wants 28 but that is clearly not going to happen — and the US says US-based companies have to pay 21 percent on their foreign income, then a spread of three or five points between a US-headquartered company and a foreign company matters. His general mantra, he said, is that taxes matter but not as much as you might think. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
Rubin said companies might respond through inversions, through US companies being bought by companies from other countries, or through startup IPO activity happening more with non-US domiciled companies. He said the margin Republicans are concerned about is that companies will find ways to not be American and that jobs will go along with that. The counter, he said, is that corporate taxes were just cut a lot and the economy did not do all the things proponents said it would, so maybe taxes do not matter so much. He called the effects an unknown, and said a clearer sense will come as the mix between the global deal, what other countries do, and what the US Congress agrees to becomes known. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
Across episodes: no development
The topic appears in four episodes — Where is Everyone Going? (2013), Is America Doomed by Voter Ignorance? (2013), Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020), and Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021) — and the excerpts show no development in the concept across them: Zadek and his guests apply the same framework of migration as preference-revelation in each.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any election or migration study, the name of any bill, or what any case held. They do not give the founding date of any principle or the title of any guest beyond those named. Where an excerpt ends mid-sentence, the thought is left incomplete.