Good to see someone positive about California, given all of the politically-motivated negativity. It's a great state for many reasons.

I mentioned non-competes as one of a universe of things that makes this unusual; including its original non-profit status becoming substantially for-profit, and the apparent ease with which MS can now gut the supposedly controlling non-profit and walk away with everything.

And, I'm guessing even the CA policy on non-competes wasn't conceived with the idea of one company simply "taking" another company at-will, even if that scenario is technically covered.

I am not clear about the intent of your comment. People should be free to sell their labor to whoever they want. And people should be able to buy labor from whoever they want.

All businesses at all times are subject to losing their employees to another employer who is willing to pay enough for them.

My original point had very little to do with selling labor/non-competes, but I think you keyed on that part. Maybe re-reading and omitting that will make it clearer.