You say you want the right but never expect to use it. If that is the case it is probably not worth very much. I know you mean well, so I say this without tryi

You say you want the right but never expect to use it. If that is the case it is probably not worth very much. I know you mean well, so I say this without trying to be antagonistic and start up a "debate." The thing is, this is from the world of principles, and despite what you may have been told incessantly, there is no direct way to value a principle. The whole idea of selling this principle breaks down immediately if you imagine the President saying this to me: "We're paying you this money so that you can keep quiet about us." My response would be, "Why pay, you can have that for free!" From an economic standpoint, it probably costs me far more than they would consider paying to disparage them. I could write a witty blog post, get some HN karma, maybe sell a few books, and feel grand. But forever afterwards, I'd be going to job interviews, or trying to raise money for a startup, or whatever, and people would be saying "He's a nice guy, but I worry that he'll write about our private business." If we sit down and think of this thing in dollars and cents, they'd have to pay me handsomely to disparage them. The whole thing is ridiculous. I'm not insulted that they want to go through the exercise of asking and being rebuffed, but by response is always going to be, "How about you pay me the severance, and I don't sign this, and then I go about doing what I've always done, which to date has been exactly what you want." And then the President says, "Why should we pay?" And I counter, "So that I can tell anyone who asked that you have been fair to me, instead of saying that I have nothing to say about how our business concluded." And maybe that is worth something to the company, maybe not. But really, you can't buy principles. If you could, they weren't principles, they were "wouldn't it be nice if it was convenient to act this way" ideas.