It's not thuggish. It's merely a bad deal. It's a bad deal for the company too, since they will have to compensate people more for their level of skill in order

It's not thuggish. It's merely a bad deal. It's a bad deal for the company too, since they will have to compensate people more for their level of skill in order to make up for it. It's also ridiculous of the company to think of creativity as zero-sum like that (e.g. what if he watched TV instead? Now no one benefits), but even if it was, creativity on personal projects is of asymmetric value -- the employee no doubt cares more about that time than the employer could plausibly benefit from it -- so it's an especially inefficient thing for the company to negotiate for. All this suggest the employer was being dumb and missing out on a hire for no good reason. Dumb but not thuggish. In fact the view that it is thuggish is feudal, since it implies that the employers are lords handing out favors and punishments to their subjects below, and thus have a duty to be fair and compassionate about it. But the employer is really an equal at the negotiating table. Some people argue that capitalism can be coercive in the relevant way (a point I have no wish to argue for or against here), but it's demonstrably not true in this instance, since Braithwaite was able to walk away from a crummy deal. No doubt the employer was worse off for it. That's how it's supposed to work.