3 ms·

What if the prospective employee is presented with two offers: 1) No non-compete, long hours, and low salary 2) Non-compete agreement, short and flexible hour

by nickff 10y ago

What if the prospective employee is presented with two offers: 1) No non-compete, long hours, and low salary 2) Non-compete agreement, short and flexible hours, and high salary If this is a possible scenario, would the ban on non-competes be anti-worker?

taneq 10y ago
Non-sequitur, unless banning non-competes would make the hours longer and less flexible or the salary lower on the second job.
- nickff 10y ago
  You are assuming that no employer would ever pay more and be more flexible in exchange for a non-compete; I can imagine many employers in highly competitive industries who would.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    You can imagine many things, but can you point to any evidence? Many people write blog postings about non-competes; I can't recall a single one where extra money was attached.
    - nickff 10y ago
      If you agree with my supposition that forcing an employee to choose the lower-paying job with bad hours would make the agreement anti-employee, we should look at evidence of whether non-competes are paid for by employers. If you disagree with my supposition, we should address that first, as the rest of the argument depends entirely on that. My first piece of evidence for the proposition that employers pay for non-competes is that some of them prefer to hire employees with non-competes. Companies pay for everything they require of employees, as all unnecessary conditions reduce their options (for employees), and the only reason they ever offer money is to increase their options (from 0-1 or 100-200). In addition, it is very common for employers to value non-competes as assets (for accounting purposes). There are many other points in favor of the idea that companies do pay for non-competes, but we can start here.
      - greglindahl 10y ago
        Sorry, I don't agree with how you approach the entire problem. Labor law exists mainly because there's information asymmetry between companies and employees. You seem to be presuming that there's a free market for labor; that's not the case when there's information asymmetry. Your "evidence" falls apart when there's information asymmetry.
        nickff 10y ago
        I think it is well known that there is information asymmetry in every transaction/deal/agreement involving more than one individual; saying that there is information asymmetry proves nothing. There is a highly regulated market for employees, and for employers. I didn't provide any evidence at all; I just asked if you agreed that in certain situations, it was possible for a non-compete ban to be anti-employee.
        greglindahl 10y ago
        You said "My first piece of evidence" and now "I didn't provide any evidence at all". Given all the downvotes you've gotten, I recommend that you sharpen your debating tactics. You'll probably get better engagement that way.
        nickff 10y ago
        Ah I'm sorry, I got confused thinking that we had gone back to my comment on taneq's last parent of this branch. 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.
        eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        Mostly you're getting downvoted because you want to make legal policy based on what you suppose or imagine, rather than what you can demonstrate actually happens.
dredmorbius 10y ago
You're raising the spectre of artificially nonfungible conditions, and ignoring power differentials between employers and employees, as well as game theory leading to non-optimal equilibria.
- nickff 10y ago
  I don't understand what you mean when you say that I am "raising the spectre of artificially nonfungible conditions"; I described a possible situation, and asked whether you agreed that it was possible that non-compete bans could be 'anti-employee' per your definitions. I agree that I am ignoring many things, as this is a limited discussion, and I am only addressing the impact of a law on a single employee, and its ethical ramifications.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Its possible in theory for employers to offer additional pay to work in conditions wherein the employee will be slowly poisoned where such additional pay is cheaper than proper safety equipment. Its even possible that the employer will find people dumb/ignorant enough to take this it doesn't mean its reasonable economically for the society to allow this sort of transaction. Your earlier scenario made no sense as their would be no reason to suspect that the 2 employers respective pay and conditions were related you have just presented it as such. Imagine the law were changed tomorrow? Would the high paying non compete using employer suddenly start paying smaller wages? Would they have any employees tomorrow if they did? A freer labor market would be MORE competitive not less there is no reason to suspect that they wouldn't have to pay more not less to retain the same talent.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    First, you're moving goalposts (the initial question was about how or why noncompetes are anti-worker, anti-competitive, and/or anti-innovative), and doing so without acknowledging the point. Chalk it up to my own history of arguing on the intartubes, but I find that tedious and generally a Bad Sign of things to come. Secondly: my second point answers my first. Markets don't manifest in individual transactions, they manifest as the emergent behaviour of multiple transactions. As others have noted, setting bounds to what can be traded away has proven necessary, empirically, to avoid winding up in a highly non-optimal equilibrium point. If you're interested in ethical ramifications, I recommend two excellent works on the topic: A Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Even that treatment is unsatisfactory as it neglects considerations of short-term vs. long-term trade-offs. Your example is contrived in that it essentially poses a Sophie's Choice: give up condition of long-term viability A or because of my superior position in establishing and enforcing terms, give up condition of long-term viability B. The optimum condition would be for no artificial constraint on A or B imposed by the employer.

by nickff 10y ago

taneq 10y ago

Non-sequitur, unless banning non-competes would make the hours longer and less flexible or the salary lower on the second job.

nickff 10y ago
You are assuming that no employer would ever pay more and be more flexible in exchange for a non-compete; I can imagine many employers in highly competitive industries who would.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  You can imagine many things, but can you point to any evidence? Many people write blog postings about non-competes; I can't recall a single one where extra money was attached.
  - nickff 10y ago
    If you agree with my supposition that forcing an employee to choose the lower-paying job with bad hours would make the agreement anti-employee, we should look at evidence of whether non-competes are paid for by employers. If you disagree with my supposition, we should address that first, as the rest of the argument depends entirely on that. My first piece of evidence for the proposition that employers pay for non-competes is that some of them prefer to hire employees with non-competes. Companies pay for everything they require of employees, as all unnecessary conditions reduce their options (for employees), and the only reason they ever offer money is to increase their options (from 0-1 or 100-200). In addition, it is very common for employers to value non-competes as assets (for accounting purposes). There are many other points in favor of the idea that companies do pay for non-competes, but we can start here.
    - greglindahl 10y ago
      Sorry, I don't agree with how you approach the entire problem. Labor law exists mainly because there's information asymmetry between companies and employees. You seem to be presuming that there's a free market for labor; that's not the case when there's information asymmetry. Your "evidence" falls apart when there's information asymmetry.
      - nickff 10y ago
        I think it is well known that there is information asymmetry in every transaction/deal/agreement involving more than one individual; saying that there is information asymmetry proves nothing. There is a highly regulated market for employees, and for employers. I didn't provide any evidence at all; I just asked if you agreed that in certain situations, it was possible for a non-compete ban to be anti-employee.
        greglindahl 10y ago
        You said "My first piece of evidence" and now "I didn't provide any evidence at all". Given all the downvotes you've gotten, I recommend that you sharpen your debating tactics. You'll probably get better engagement that way.
        nickff 10y ago
        Ah I'm sorry, I got confused thinking that we had gone back to my comment on taneq's last parent of this branch. 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.
        eli_gottlieb 10y ago
        Mostly you're getting downvoted because you want to make legal policy based on what you suppose or imagine, rather than what you can demonstrate actually happens.

dredmorbius 10y ago

You're raising the spectre of artificially nonfungible conditions, and ignoring power differentials between employers and employees, as well as game theory leading to non-optimal equilibria.

nickff 10y ago
I don't understand what you mean when you say that I am "raising the spectre of artificially nonfungible conditions"; I described a possible situation, and asked whether you agreed that it was possible that non-compete bans could be 'anti-employee' per your definitions. I agree that I am ignoring many things, as this is a limited discussion, and I am only addressing the impact of a law on a single employee, and its ethical ramifications.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Its possible in theory for employers to offer additional pay to work in conditions wherein the employee will be slowly poisoned where such additional pay is cheaper than proper safety equipment. Its even possible that the employer will find people dumb/ignorant enough to take this it doesn't mean its reasonable economically for the society to allow this sort of transaction. Your earlier scenario made no sense as their would be no reason to suspect that the 2 employers respective pay and conditions were related you have just presented it as such. Imagine the law were changed tomorrow? Would the high paying non compete using employer suddenly start paying smaller wages? Would they have any employees tomorrow if they did? A freer labor market would be MORE competitive not less there is no reason to suspect that they wouldn't have to pay more not less to retain the same talent.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  First, you're moving goalposts (the initial question was about how or why noncompetes are anti-worker, anti-competitive, and/or anti-innovative), and doing so without acknowledging the point. Chalk it up to my own history of arguing on the intartubes, but I find that tedious and generally a Bad Sign of things to come. Secondly: my second point answers my first. Markets don't manifest in individual transactions, they manifest as the emergent behaviour of multiple transactions. As others have noted, setting bounds to what can be traded away has proven necessary, empirically, to avoid winding up in a highly non-optimal equilibrium point. If you're interested in ethical ramifications, I recommend two excellent works on the topic: A Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Even that treatment is unsatisfactory as it neglects considerations of short-term vs. long-term trade-offs. Your example is contrived in that it essentially poses a Sophie's Choice: give up condition of long-term viability A or because of my superior position in establishing and enforcing terms, give up condition of long-term viability B. The optimum condition would be for no artificial constraint on A or B imposed by the employer.