Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 530 posts

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#291

Post by BobaFloutist »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #278
vkou wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What objective metric would you recommend they use, instead?

Productivity improvement in a physical application - it now takes fewer people less time to build a house It takes less resources to remedy a failed over bridge. You’d have to have a basket of measurement like how we measure CPI - current approach is lazy.

What if an innovation makes things better, instead of faster?

The house takes just as long to build, but it's sturdier, longer lasting, better insulated, etc?

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#292

Post by freeopinion »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #273
crote wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory? Yes. In practice? No. For a lot of industries 20 years is an awfully long time to the point of complete irrelevance - and that "detailed information" is often vague enough to be unusable. Combine that with an overly-broad range of patent-able things and an overworked USPTO granting clearly invalid patents, and in practice (at least in the tech/software world) it's doing more harm than good. Patents are no…

> overworked USPTO granting clearly invalid patents Well no system can work that way - if judges in court were overworked and making invalid judgements, then the legal system would fail no matter what kind of laws you have and no matter what police does

These are pretty strange arguments. Why should an overworked USPTO lead to more patents? That assumes that the default is to grant the patent. If the default is to reject the patent, then an overworked office would not lead to more patents.

An overworked Supreme Court does not lead to more Supreme Court decisions.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#293

Post by banish-m4 »

oceanplexian wrote: post #265
banish-m4 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odds of the conservative activism SCOTUS siding with employees and COTUS (bought off by corporate lobbyists) passing a worker-friendly prohibition on noncompetes are both zero. OTOH, it's not outside the realm of possibility that COTUS might pass a federal law superseding laws in California, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Nevada, Washington state, and Washington DC to roll back states rights favoring workers. Simila…

There is widespread bipartisan support for noncompetes. NY, a bastion of liberal politics still overwhelmingly refuses to make noncompetes illegal.

> There is widespread bipartisan support

At which level(s), or do you mean voters? Voter sentiment has essentially no bearing on public policy, and it was even proven with data in a Princeton study confirming what we already knew. [0]

If I might quote Gore Vidal: There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.

Partisanship tribalism is a divide-and-conquer gambit that has been largely successful in keeping Americans fighting each other counterproductively and voting against their own interests.

0. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#295

Post by [deleted] »

oceanplexian wrote: post #258
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FTC doesn't really have the ability to do this, since contract law is part of state law The federal government can absolutely regulate both employment and contract law. (Merger agreements are contracts. The FTC was established to block bad mergers.) Whether the FTC can do this is untested. But that’s more a Chevron issue than a federal powers one.

Chances are extremely high that the current Supreme Court nullifies or greatly restricts Chevron. These kind of announcements are fuel for the fire and are likely to accelerate its demise. They will kill this faster than they killed the COVID vaccine mandate. Govt. agencies can’t make laws, even if we may agree with them (I actually do in this case). However this isn’t the role of an unelected government agency.

[deleted]

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#297

Post by nojito »

modeless wrote: post #167
Buttons840 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your attorney friends if a farmer growing food on their own land to feed to their own animals is "interstate commerce", and ask them to explain that to you. What I'm referring to here is Wickard v Filburn in which the Supreme Court ruled that a farmer growing food on his own land to feed to his own animals was participating in "interstate commerce" and could thus be regulated by the federal government. This is a…

The difference here is that Congress isn't banning noncompetes. The FTC is doing it. Different branch of government.

Congress established the FTC.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#298

Post by [deleted] »

k1rd wrote: post #253

With respect to garden leave agreements, as noted previously, commenters used the term “garden leave” to refer to a wide variety of agreements. The Commission declines to opine on how the definition of non-compete clause in § 910.1 would apply in every potential factual scenario. However, the Commission notes that an agreement whereby the worker is still employed and receiving the same total annual compensation and b…

[deleted]

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#300

Post by banish-m4 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #281
oceanplexian wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is widespread bipartisan support for noncompetes. NY, a bastion of liberal politics still overwhelmingly refuses to make noncompetes illegal.

> There is widespread bipartisan support for noncompetes. NY, a bastion of liberal politics still overwhelmingly refuses to make noncompetes illegal. NY Governor Hochul vetoed it because she is a hack politician and yielded to Wall Street pressure. Politicians with a spine (or constitution, if you prefer) are in short supply. https://apnews.com/article/noncompete-agreement-bill-veto-ne... > But in recent months, the…

That's the rule rather than the exception in the US as politicians go. Campaign finance reform failed because most (not all) politicians are indeed crooks who accept gold bars from foreign governments, embezzle from their campaign to buy luxury goods, or pay hush money to porn stars.

Let me refer you to George Carlin's approach: https://youtu.be/xIraCchPDhk

Post reply on HN