I attribute the downvotes to the unpopularity of non-complete clauses on HN. In addition to that, most of the libertarian and right-leaning users seem to be in North America, so I can count on less sympathy from ~4-12 GMT. It is also possible that my writing has gotten substantially worse in the last few hours, but it seems unlikely that I am being more rude or unfair than I normally am.

The non compete is nearly entirely valuable in that it it depresses wages. In reality its entirely likely that between firm A and firm B neither has a whole lot of special sauce non competes mostly serve to keep each other from competing for employees thus driving up wages.