Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom is a book by Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University, discussed by Somin and host Bob Zadek across several episodes of the Bob Zadek Show. Somin is also the author of [[library/democracy-and-political-ignorance-why-smaller-government-is-smarter|Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter]], The Grasping Hand—on Kelo v. City of New London, a case Zadek describes as dealing with eminent domain—and, as co-author, A Conspiracy Against Obamacare. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
Defining foot voting
Somin defines foot voting as the ability to choose what government policies to live under by deciding where to live, or in some cases what governments or other services to make use of. He distinguishes several forms: voting with one’s feet within a federal system by moving among states, counties or cities; international migration; and private-sector choices such as private schools, churches or other civil society organizations, including private planned communities like condo associations, where he says almost 70 million Americans already live. He adds that the vast majority of Americans are in the United States because they or their ancestors voted with their feet for the country over others. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
Internal foot voting and its barriers
Zadek frames the book as showing that foot voting—or the threat of voting with one’s feet—is far more powerful than ballot-box voting in shaping government behavior, and that the right to move from place to place is crucial to preserving freedom. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
Discussing the coronavirus pandemic, Zadek speculated that working from home would let people leave crowded downtown apartments and that this might disperse economic and political power away from cities; he noted Somin had “calmed me down a bit.” Somin cautioned that predictions are dangerous, partly agreeing that some jobs can be done as well from home and that the crisis may accelerate recognition of those jobs. He countered that many people are more productive in areas with lots of others in the same or closely related industries—what economists call agglomerations, such as Silicon Valley—and that face-to-face interaction improves productivity and happiness. Setting aside the virus, Somin said the bigger problem is serious barriers like zoning that keep people from moving to places where they can take advantage of agglomeration; his concern, he said, is that too few people have access to those places. He called it a tragedy if a long-lasting public health threat becomes a barrier to human happiness and productivity. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
International migration as foot voting
Somin’s book argues for a fundamental similarity between foot voting through international migration and foot voting within a single country’s federal system: both provide opportunities for political freedom and for improving one’s economic situation and liberty. He calls it ironic that the issues are usually discussed separately—people on the right who boast about Texas gaining migrants from blue states often view international migration with suspicion, while people on the left often hold the reverse set of attitudes. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
The gains from free international migration, Somin argues, are much larger than those from internal foot voting, because the difference between the best and worst American state is small compared with differences between countries—even the worst American state, he says, is not nearly as bad as Cuba, Venezuela or Haiti. Migration to a country with better institutions can make a person two, three or four times more productive almost right away, and the opportunities of people oppressed on the basis of religion or ethnicity are stifled at home; he gives the example that a woman could be more productive in a Western nation than in Saudi Arabia, where women’s opportunities are severely restricted by the government. Economists estimate, he says, that free migration throughout the world could approximately double world GDP, primarily because of the many places where people cannot be very productive because of horrible political institutions—North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela or Haiti among them. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
In the episode, Zadek describes President Trump’s campaign against what seemed to be all forms of immigration as very aggressive and characterizes the present national position on immigration as utter cruelty, and he notes immigration has been in the news regretfully far too much. Foot Voting > Ballot Voting (2020)
Asylum and Afghanistan
A later episode returned to Somin in the wake of the Afghanistan crisis, described in the excerpt as the physical chaos at the Afghan airport and the chaos under the law in dealing with Afghans seeking to enter the United States under various amnesty rules. The episode’s listed topics include the lack of explicit constitutional authority for federal immigration control, freedom of movement, and the “material support for terrorism” bar applied to victims of forced labor, along with the Board of Immigration Appeals and the Attorney General. Zadek introduces Somin as focusing on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights, and recalls that Somin joined the show upon publication of Free to Move, which he says brought together many important and very related concepts. Hard Questions About Asylum and Afghanistan (2021)
Democracy and the libertarian report
In a 2022 episode, Zadek speaks with Somin about his work on a libertarian team responding to a project of the National Constitution Center on problems with the democratic system in the United States, particularly though not exclusively during the 2020 election and its aftermath. Somin describes the project as convening teams of specialists from different ideological viewpoints—a conservative team, a progressive team, and a libertarian team whose other members were Walter Olson and Clark Neily, both of the Cato Institute. He says the team’s report addresses three things: immediate threats to the integrity of the electoral system and political process, such as President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 result and stay in power even though he lost; empowering people to have a meaningful say in the policies they live under, including by voting with their feet in the federal system and making decisions in the private sector; and increasing opportunities to participate in governance, particularly by strengthening the jury system, which he says the founding fathers and others like Alexis de Tocqueville viewed as a central mechanism of ordinary participation but which has been lost or degraded over recent decades. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Somin concedes there are problems inherent to democracy, such as voters having little incentive to be well-informed, some of which probably cannot be dealt with and others of which can be mitigated. He distinguishes these from problems not inherent to democracy—such as a losing candidate’s refusal to recognize an election result—which can be addressed by strengthening safeguards. He adds that some degree of conflict is unavoidable in democracy and that disappointment when one’s preferred candidate, party or ideology loses cannot be completely eliminated. The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022)
Across episodes: the argument revisited
The excerpts show no development in the argument across episodes: the 2020 episode presents the book’s core case for foot voting and its treatment of internal and international migration, the 2021 episode applies the migration-rights framework to asylum and Afghanistan, and the 2022 episode carries the same theme into the work of a libertarian team on democratic reform, with Somin advancing the position in each treatment.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what legal provision, bill or case supplied the federal government’s immigration authority, nor what any asylum case held or what bar applied to forced-labor victims beyond the phrases named in the episode’s topic list. The distinction between inherent and institutional democratic problems is left unresolved where the excerpt breaks off in the foot voting section of the report. Nothing in the excerpts reports the outcome of the National Constitution Center project or the contents of the report beyond what Somin describes in the interview.