ZadekpediaFree to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom is a book by Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University. Somin discussed the book and its arguments across multiple appearances on The Bob Zadek Show, where host Bob Zadek described it as bringing together “so many important and very related concepts” concerning the rights of those who wish to travel, both within a country and between countries Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
The concept of foot voting
Somin defines foot voting as the ability to choose what government policies you want to live under by deciding where you’re going to live, or in some cases what kinds of governments or other services you want to make use of. He identifies several forms: choosing a state, county or city within a federal system; international migration; and choices in the private sector, such as selecting a private school, a church or other civil society organization, or living in a private planned community like a condo association, as almost 70 million Americans already do Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020).
Somin argues that foot voting improves the quality of decision-making because people have better incentives to seek out information when their decisions actually make a difference. He contrasts the effort most people spend researching a television purchase with the effort they spend deciding whom to vote for, noting that the television they pick is the one that ends up in their living room, while the chance an individual ballot affects who holds office or what policies they pursue is very low 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
Decentralization and barriers to mobility
In a report discussed on the show, Somin wrote the section dealing with foot voting, which argues that because of voter ignorance and excessive centralization of power, more authority should be decentralized to state and local governments and to the private sector. He contends that expanded foot voting and decentralization can help reduce polarization, because part of polarization stems from so much power being concentrated in the federal government and particularly in the hands of whoever sits in the White House, making it frightening to have that power held by the opposing political party. Somin acknowledges that this recommendation poses trade-offs for those who favor a large and powerful federal government, though he argues there are many ways to decentralize power while falling far short of a libertarian minimal state 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
Somin identifies exclusionary zoning as the biggest barrier to inter-jurisdictional movement, describing tight restrictions on building new housing that make it almost impossible to build new cheap housing in response to demand, blocking millions of people from moving to places where they could find opportunity and better education. He also names state-by-state occupational licensing as another barrier. He argues that breaking down these barriers, alongside decentralization, would greatly expand people’s ability to vote with their feet, and that in some cases people could do so without physically moving, as with school choice 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
Immigration and asylum
Somin applies a three-part framework to claims that immigration causes harms such as reduced wages for native-born workers, an overburdened welfare state, or increased crime. First, ask whether the problem is real; he states that immigration actually reduces the crime rate because immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, have lower crime rates than native-born Americans. Second, ask whether the problem can be addressed by means less draconian than excluding immigrants entirely—for example, limiting eligibility for welfare benefits, which he notes is already done under the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Third, even where a real problem lacks such a “keyhole solution,” he argues that immigration creates vast new wealth that can be tapped to alleviate negative side effects, such as through wage subsidies funded by taxing some of that new wealth Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Somin concedes that one can imagine rare cases where immigration causes a great harm with no solution other than exclusion, but says even then proof is needed that the harm is great enough to justify consigning large numbers of people to lives of poverty and oppression. He compares the standard to restrictions on freedom of speech, saying he would want a high burden of proof before accepting that suppressing speech and allowing fascists to take power were the only two options Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021).
Across episodes
The episodes show Somin discussing Free to Move across episodes from 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, with the later treatments extending the foot-voting framework from the book’s core arguments about internal and international migration to asylum policy in the wake of the Afghanistan crisis and to decentralization proposals in a policy report.