My New Article on "Freedom Through Foot Voting"

The article adapts and expands some of the ideas developed in my recent book "Free to Move," and is now available for free download on SSRN.

My new article, "Freedom Through Foot Voting" (forthcoming in the British public policy journal Economic Affairs), is now available for free download on SSRN. It builds on and expands some of the ideas developed in my recent book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Among other things, the article applies my framework for dealing with potential downsides of freedom of movement to the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, and other similar situations. My book, of course, was finished just before the pandemic began, so I was not able to address that issue there.

Here is the abstract:

Freedom of movement is one of the great issues of our time. Expanding opportunities for both international and internal migration can greatly expand freedom and opportunity for hundreds of millions of people. The same goes for expanding freedom of choice in the private sector. "Voting with your feet" in any of these three ways is also, in crucial ways, superior to ballot box voting as a mechanism of political choice.

In this article I summarize the key advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting, describe how they apply to the three major types of foot voting, and outline answers to several types of standard objections to expanded migration rights. I address these issues in much greater detail in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, on which this article draws.