Decentralization as dispersal of power
In a June 2020 episode, Bob Zadek described how the severing of the link between where people live and where they work could disperse economic and political power. Once that link is broken, he said, New Jersey and Boise, Idaho become the same for someone whose office was in New York, and people are free to live wherever they want. He connected this to an earlier show on voting with your feet with Ilya Somin. Zadek predicted that as population and economic power decline in major metropolitan areas, they increase in the rest of the country, spreading economic and voting power more evenly and diluting the intense power of the largest metros. He then extended the argument to public service unions, which he said derive their power from large cities: the teachers’, transport workers’, prison guards’, and policemen’s unions. As that power is diluted, he argued, pressures on pensions and city budgets decline. Zadek called the virus, in the long run, a gift from God in terms of dispersing economic and political power, and described this as his overly rosy view. The Future of Cities (2020)
Brent Orrell agreed that the weight of history is behind the analysis, noting that suburbanization of American life has continued since the end of the Second World War, and shared Zadek’s preference for people being free to choose where they live. He pushed back on two fronts. First, he said cities have traditionally pulled together disparate people, backgrounds, and skill sets that helped drive innovation, and that face-to-face communication matters because most human communication is non-verbal. Second, he said not everybody can move: elites always have the option to opt out of a bad situation and generally exercise it, while middle and lower income groups do not, so the worst effects fall on the most vulnerable. The Future of Cities (2020)
Small business, central planning, and the “too small to matter” thesis
In an August 2021 episode, Bob Zadek asked why small business—which he said accounts for approximately half of business activity and 99.9% of the number of businesses—was ignored during the COVID period. He framed government as responding only to political pressure, and contrasted small business with lobbies such as the South Florida sugar lobby, which he described as one family in one area of one state that in effect dictates world sugar prices. Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021)
Carol Roth offered two theses for how small businesses were treated: either they were “too small to matter” or they were “too hard to control.” She contrasted this with the banks during the Great Recession, which were told they were “too big to fail.” She said the intention does not matter because the outcome is the same, and tied the discussion to what she called the entire thesis of decentralization versus central power. She cited roughly 30.2 million small businesses holding about half the economy before COVID as decentralization and as representing the free market, freedom, choice, and transparency; the other half, she said, is in the hands of about 10,000 to 15,000 big businesses. With so few entities holding so much power, she argued, it is easier for politicians to deal with them for lobbying dollars and campaign support. She warned that moving toward central planning produces an unholy triumvirate of big government, big business, and big special interest, at great expense to economic freedom and wealth creation. Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021)
Foot voting and the libertarian case for decentralization
In an August 2022 episode with Ilya Somin, Zadek asked Somin to pick one problem from his report and explain what made the solution libertarian. Somin said no proposal in the report is purely libertarian, because the authors tried to base all of them on widely shared assumptions. He identified the foot-voting section—the part he had the biggest hand in writing—as having the most libertarian flavor. The argument there is 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, empowering people to vote with their feet: choosing what state or local government to live in based in part on its policies, or making private-sector choices such as private school choice. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Somin’s stated mechanism is incentive: people have much better incentives to be informed when their decisions make a difference, as when buying a television set, than when voting for president or governor, where the chance of affecting the outcome is very low. He also argued that expanded foot voting and decentralization can reduce polarization, because so much power is concentrated in the federal government and in particular in the hands of whoever sits in the White House, making it scary for partisans when the opposing party holds it, which stimulates partisan conflict and efforts to overturn elections. He conceded the recommendation goes down easier for libertarians, who already want to decentralize power for other reasons, and poses trade-offs for those who like a large and powerful federal government. He added that power could be decentralized while falling far short of a libertarian minimal state, since the federal government is so overgrown that as much as half or two-thirds of it could be eliminated and still be far from a pure libertarian state. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Barriers to mobility: zoning and occupational licensing
Asked what guardrails he would add or subtract to encourage foot voting, Somin named several categories. The first is limiting and decentralizing more functions of government so fewer sit with the federal government and more with states, localities, or the private sector; he allowed that a comprehensive analysis of every function is beyond the discussion, but said that at the margin the value of foot voting argues for greater decentralization. The second is breaking down barriers to interstate and other interjurisdictional movement. He called exclusionary zoning the biggest barrier, particularly a problem in California, where tight restrictions on building new housing make it often almost impossible to build new housing, especially cheap housing, in response to demand. He said this blocks millions of people from moving to places with opportunity and better education, harms those people, reduces their choice, and damages the economy by making us less productive. He also named state-by-state occupational licensing. He noted that in some cases people can vote with their feet without physically moving far, particularly by choosing among local governments or in the private sector—for example, school choice letting parents send children to a different school without changing address. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Federalism and the minimum wage
Zadek raised the national minimum wage as a federal statute he considered at one time of questionable constitutionality, and asked whether eliminating it would open up mobility by letting states and businesses compete for wages and workers rather than having minimum wage laws operate as federal price fixing. Somin said he generally agreed a national minimum wage is a bad idea for the reasons Zadek mentioned. He noted the national minimum wage has not been raised in about 13 or 14 years and stands at $7.25 an hour, so it is probably only a modest constraint on mobility because relatively few jobs would open below that level. But he said many people, particularly in the Democratic Party, would like to raise it as high as $15, which would be a much more serious constraint on mobility and would put many people out of work. Even at $7.25, he said, it destroys some jobs, particularly in relatively poor states and for workers with weak credentials trying to enter the marketplace. The excerpt ends mid-sentence as he says the current national minimum wage is probably only a relatively modest obstacle to. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Democracy, centralization, and its limits
In an August 2022 episode, Zadek asked whether the problems of democracy are inherent in democracy itself. Somin distinguished problems inherent to democracy—such as voters having little incentive to be well-informed—from problems arising from specific current institutions, giving as an example that it is not an inherent problem of democracy that a loser of an election like President Trump in 2020 refuses to recognize the result and tries to overturn it by various means. He said some inherent problems can be mitigated though not eliminated, some safeguards can be strengthened, and some forms of political participation can be expanded. 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022)
Zadek then asked whether the project assumes more democracy is always better, citing the 17th Amendment as an example of increased democracy and the disappearance of an effective Electoral College as another movement toward more popular democracy. Somin said that is not his assumption: he recognizes that too much can be done through the democratic process, and the report devotes a section to expanding other decision-making mechanisms like voting with your feet and the jury system. He said that trying to do too much through a democratic process, particularly in a very centralized way with the federal government having more and more power, can be dysfunctional and can even undermine democracy itself. He said there is somewhere an optimal amount of democracy, though it is hard to know exactly what point. 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022)
Across episodes: what changed
The three episodes show the same question argued at different levels rather than a development in the argument. In June 2020, Zadek advanced the dispersal thesis himself, predicting that remote work would spread economic and voting power out of large cities and dilute public service unions, with Orrell supplying the counterweight that elites can opt out while middle and lower income groups cannot. The Future of Cities (2020) In August 2021, Carol Roth supplied the quantitative frame—roughly 30.2 million small businesses against 10,000 to 15,000 big businesses—and the “too small to matter” versus “too hard to control” alternatives, with Zadek framing government as responding only to political pressure. Carol Roth on the War on Small Business (2021) In the two August 2022 episodes, Somin gave the most systematic account, tying decentralization to foot voting, voter ignorance, polarization, exclusionary zoning, occupational licensing, and the minimum wage, and explicitly denying that more democracy is always better. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022) 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the state in which any city discussed is located, the name of any bill, or what any case held or which amendment it turned on beyond Zadek’s passing reference to the 17th Amendment as an example of increased democracy. They do not give the founding date or founding principle of any organization, nor the title or field of any speaker beyond Zadek’s description of Carol Roth as an investment banker and economist and his reference to Somin’s report and co-authors. Several passages break off mid-sentence—Somin’s minimum wage answer and the closing segments of the 2021 and 2022 episodes—and nothing beyond those points is reported here.