It sounds reasonable: States are bitterly divided on abortion, so we should let them decide instead of forcing the majority of the country to accept a policy that they strongly disagree with. But today’s America lacks many of the prerequisites that would make federalism an outlet for positive policy change. Instead, it’s now often destructive. The idea that states would act as laboratories of democracy and learn from one another’s experiences requires clear consequences for good or bad policy implementation.

Electoral politics should be one way for those consequences to register, but Americans’ dismal participation in local and state elections, anti-democratic gerrymandering, and single-party-dominated states severely weaken that feedback loop to politicians. Another way is “voting with your feet”—moving away from states that enact policies you disagree with and punishing them with the removal of your tax dollars and economic output.

In decades past, political freedom and economic freedom tended to point in the same direction: For Black Americans fleeing Jim Crow or LGBTQ Americans escaping culturally conservative areas, big cities provided not only political safety but economic opportunity too. Now those arrows point in different directions because the cost of living has grown so significantly in Democratic states. Constituents who are trapped in a state because of financial insecurity are no different—at least to their elected officials—than residents who stay because they are happy with local policies.