3 ms·

> The less labour rights a country has, the more competitive a country's businesses are. If you can keep your workers in quasi-indentured servitude, you're goin

> The less labour rights a country has, the more competitive a country's businesses are. If you can keep your workers in quasi-indentured servitude, you're going to be more profitable than a business that can't. Counter point, you are conflating each individual business profits and motives for the profitability of the economy and country. But each business doesn't exist in an a vacuum, but inhabits the same environment for getting workers. By making it easier to start new companies, and to compete, by banning non competes, the surviving business might actually be more profitable than the ones before. Example: California doesn't have non compete, and it rules the tech world, with a lot of the more profitable tech companies there. While each individual company might benefit if it was suddenly allowed to do non competes, they benefit way more for being located in such a center for innovation.

Evidlo 2y ago
> Counter point, you are conflating each individual business profits and motives for the profitability of the economy and country. That was mentioned in the second paragraph. > It's a prisoner's dilemma because even though the economy would be better if non-competes were banned, any individual business makes more money by forcing employees to sign one.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  It makes "more money" in the sense that other businesses make less money. But it's not exactly a zero sum game in most industries.
  - jjmarr 2y ago
    It's entirely possible for something to be a positive-sum game, and still have people individually acting in their own self-interest reducing the size of the economy. Global warming is the same thing. If everyone pollutes, we all die and the world ends. Individually however, if I'm in a world where everyone is burning coal, I don't see any gain to setting up my own wind turbine. Meanwhile everyone who kept burning coal has a slightly better existence until we all die a horrible death. The flipside is also true, if I'm the only one burning coal in a world of wind turbines, I won't have a significant effect on the climate and I get cheaper energy. The economic solution to this is regulating greenhouse gas emissions so nobody can gain an advantage from burning coal. We all live and businesses make more money (because Earth will still exist to make money on). It's also possible to do this with non-competes. If a world without them is economically better, we need to put our efforts into banning them globally. It doesn't make sense to only ban them in the US or Canada, because companies can just outsource to where it's acceptable.
consteval 2y ago
> you are conflating each individual business profits and motives for the profitability of the economy and country I think everyone does really. In fact, I'd say this is the "big idea" behind conservative fiscal policy as a whole. This assumption is the seed of it all.

Evidlo 2y ago

> Counter point, you are conflating each individual business profits and motives for the profitability of the economy and country. That was mentioned in the second paragraph. > It's a prisoner's dilemma because even though the economy would be better if non-competes were banned, any individual business makes more money by forcing employees to sign one.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
It makes "more money" in the sense that other businesses make less money. But it's not exactly a zero sum game in most industries.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  It's entirely possible for something to be a positive-sum game, and still have people individually acting in their own self-interest reducing the size of the economy. Global warming is the same thing. If everyone pollutes, we all die and the world ends. Individually however, if I'm in a world where everyone is burning coal, I don't see any gain to setting up my own wind turbine. Meanwhile everyone who kept burning coal has a slightly better existence until we all die a horrible death. The flipside is also true, if I'm the only one burning coal in a world of wind turbines, I won't have a significant effect on the climate and I get cheaper energy. The economic solution to this is regulating greenhouse gas emissions so nobody can gain an advantage from burning coal. We all live and businesses make more money (because Earth will still exist to make money on). It's also possible to do this with non-competes. If a world without them is economically better, we need to put our efforts into banning them globally. It doesn't make sense to only ban them in the US or Canada, because companies can just outsource to where it's acceptable.

consteval 2y ago

> you are conflating each individual business profits and motives for the profitability of the economy and country I think everyone does really. In fact, I'd say this is the "big idea" behind conservative fiscal policy as a whole. This assumption is the seed of it all.