Foot Voting in the Private Sector

This chapter explains how foot voting in the private sector can expand political freedom. Some 69 million Americans currently live in private planned communities, and such arrangements can offer better and more diverse foot-voting opportunities than public jurisdictions alone. This type of foot voting is not as clearly “political” as others, but it still enhances political freedom in the sense that it provides an alternative to the government. Much can be done to increase the availability of private planned communities, including for the poor. The chapter also addresses claims that private sector foot voting does not qualify as genuine political choice, that it can only benefit the affluent, and that it has severe limitations of scale.