I can expand on this a bit. Non-competes [0] are a tragedy of the commons. There's no incentive for any single employer, in a jurisdiction that allows non-com

I can expand on this a bit. Non-competes [0] are a tragedy of the commons. There's no incentive for any single employer, in a jurisdiction that allows non-competes, not to require them of most employees. Any employer who did that would be unilaterally taking a loss (the potential employees they can't hire because they're subject to their current employers' non-competes) with no corresponding benefit. But if all employers require non-competes, we demonstrably wind up with a less vibrant economy. So, what is the libertarian response to a tragedy of the commons? Is it not to create and assign property rights so that someone has a legally defensible interest in protecting the common property? In this case, I would suggest that by outlawing non-competes, California has asserted that workers have a property right to the general skills and knowledge that they acquire by working. The word "general" is important here; companies still have IP rights to their specific techniques and processes. But companies cannot claim ownership of the worker's general knowledge; it belongs to the worker. [0] I'm using the term as shorthand for "non-compete restrictions that don't require the employer to pay at least a substantial fraction of the employee's salary for the duration of the restriction".