Re:White House urges ban on non-compete agreements for many ...
by coldtea on Wednesday October 26, 2016 @08:01AM
(#12795732)
>To go meta for a moment: I think that this sort of statement exposes a flaw that many of us have in debates. It's related to the "argument from ignorance" fallacy, but is not exactly the same thing. I take it as one of my priors that people at news.yc are intelligence. When lots of intelligent people argue for X, and X makes no sense at all for you, you should ponder with some real seriousness that perhaps N intelligent people are not insane, but, instead, you are missing something.
That's a strawman, since it assumes that only insanity or ignorance makes people favor a position that's bad for the general public. There are much more probable causes for such a view, such as personal interests.
>1) deontological: freedom to contract is always a good thing. It is a human right, and government has no legitimate moral power to remove that right from people.
This is not an argument. This is a conclusion, or an axiom. ("Because human rights" are not an argument either. See where how deep this rabbit hole goes?).
Second, it can be argued that freedom to contract is NOT "always a good thing". It's a good thing only when one side is not far more powerful than the other to the point of forcing the contract. When one side is coerced to sign (because e.g. else they cannot find employment in SV because all employers require non-competes), then it's not a freely chosen contract clause anymore, nor a free job market.
Third, even if freedom of contract was "always good", still what's good thing for an individual, is not necessarily a good thing for society.
Stealing and cheating, for example, can be good for the person doing it, but it's not good for society (and even less so in many people start doing it).
>2) Hayekian / information theoretic: I have local knowledge regarding both my costs and my benefits from signing a non-compete contract. Government legislators and bureaucrats, at some great remove, has almost no knowledge of either my costs or benefits.
That's a naive view that assumes government as some removed from society enemy entity. In a democracy a government is the representation (imperfect as most human creations are) of the will of the people, and laws are based on historical experience and reasoned arguments, with input from people "in the field" in drafting them.
Also, government has much more complete information and view of the overall societal cost of non-competes, whereas you as individual mostly have your local knowledge to go by and personal gain as your guide (assuming of course you're freely entering the contract out of calculation, and not because employers have created a trust on the issue, and you are left with no other option).
>3) pragmatic (overlaps #2): perhaps I am desperate to break into career field X and would pay almost anything to get in. Or perhaps my skills are much lower than other competitors. What can I offer employers that my peers can not? My willingness to sign a non-compete.
Or offer to have sex with them. This rabbit hole also goes very far...
That's a strawman, since it assumes that only insanity or ignorance makes people favor a position that's bad for the general public. There are much more probable causes for such a view, such as personal interests.
>1) deontological: freedom to contract is always a good thing. It is a human right, and government has no legitimate moral power to remove that right from people.
This is not an argument. This is a conclusion, or an axiom. ("Because human rights" are not an argument either. See where how deep this rabbit hole goes?).
Second, it can be argued that freedom to contract is NOT "always a good thing". It's a good thing only when one side is not far more powerful than the other to the point of forcing the contract. When one side is coerced to sign (because e.g. else they cannot find employment in SV because all employers require non-competes), then it's not a freely chosen contract clause anymore, nor a free job market.
Third, even if freedom of contract was "always good", still what's good thing for an individual, is not necessarily a good thing for society.
Stealing and cheating, for example, can be good for the person doing it, but it's not good for society (and even less so in many people start doing it).
>2) Hayekian / information theoretic: I have local knowledge regarding both my costs and my benefits from signing a non-compete contract. Government legislators and bureaucrats, at some great remove, has almost no knowledge of either my costs or benefits.
That's a naive view that assumes government as some removed from society enemy entity. In a democracy a government is the representation (imperfect as most human creations are) of the will of the people, and laws are based on historical experience and reasoned arguments, with input from people "in the field" in drafting them.
Also, government has much more complete information and view of the overall societal cost of non-competes, whereas you as individual mostly have your local knowledge to go by and personal gain as your guide (assuming of course you're freely entering the contract out of calculation, and not because employers have created a trust on the issue, and you are left with no other option).
>3) pragmatic (overlaps #2): perhaps I am desperate to break into career field X and would pay almost anything to get in. Or perhaps my skills are much lower than other competitors. What can I offer employers that my peers can not? My willingness to sign a non-compete.
Or offer to have sex with them. This rabbit hole also goes very far...