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FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#481

Post by cryptonector »

mattmaroon wrote: post #466
cryptonector wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress at this point is totally broken If Congress can delegate authority at will and with tremendous vagueness vagueness (as in the case of the FTC) then that allows Congress to be more disfunctional. If the Court reverses Chevron and later guts the FTC then Congress will have to get its act together -- they might not, but if they do then the Court will have helped us enormously.

I don’t agree with that mental model because it assumes Congress has to make sure the job gets done. They don’t. They can be as dysfunctional as they want. Polls show that the vast majority of people are unhappy with Congress, and yet they get re-elected at very high rates. There’s no real reason to suspect that their job performance had anything to do with getting elected anymore. They could very easily just fail to…

Perhaps we have reached the scalability limit of the Founders' scheme.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#482

Post by cogman10 »

cryptonector wrote: post #428
runako wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key point that gets overlooked so often. The Court accepts that governments outsource regulation to e.g. the private developers of building codes. Similarly, we don’t benefit from a Congress mired in details over the minutae managed by many areas of the federal government.

"Major questions" have to go to Congress. That seems like a good rule.

It's not though. The only people that can apply it are the supreme court and the only time they'll apply it is when precedence and the letter of the law goes against their own political ideologies. In short, it's lazy judicial activism.

It's anti-textualist, anti-originalist, anti-legal theory. It's a rule that the Supreme court has to invoke to achieve their objectives because they have no other avenue. The law was clear, the intent clear, and what congress desired was clear. Major questions should be solved by congress passing a revision to the law. The supreme court invoking it robs congress of their power because "we know better".

The reason it's such a bad rule is no lower court or litigant can really invoke it. It is only something the supreme court can use because it's undefined what qualifies as a "major question". Boiled down, it's "we don't like the law congress passed but we can't come up with a constitutional, textual, or historic reason why that law or it's application is invalid".

They would not use "major questions" if there were any other legal reasoning to go to.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#483

Post by tacitusarc »

bratbag wrote: post #452
BurningFrog wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think different patent lengths for different industries would do much to improve the current insanity.

I think full audited accounting of research costs should be included in the patent filing and that the patent should end either after 20 years or until profits from the invention (including payments from other companies licencing the invention) match 10x the costs. And the maximum payout on violating a patent should be the remaining profit to end the patent. Differences between industries then look after themselves.

Oddly all patent creators realize that extended Cabo vacations are the best way to brainstorm, and private Jet flights help with collaboration. Obviously only affordable by wealthy companies.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#484

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

anon84873628 wrote: post #357
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reject the handcuffs. Once enough people do, they will stop making it deferred. They know that if you're willing to reject the money, you're willing to leave (the handcuffs aren't keeping you there), and that scares them.

That's called a multi-agent coordination problem and game theory tells us it is not so simple to solve.

I don't know about game theory, but a few of us did it at one company and they changed their policy.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#485

Post by adastra22 »

xpe wrote: post #469
adastra22 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in a representative democracy where the powers of the government are constrained by constitutional law to be specific and enumerated, and aside from common-law precedent derive from a mandate by the people. Yet it is increasingly the case that the actual rules which citizens and corporations are required to follow are being set not by elected representatives but by unelected bureaucrats of government agencies…

You say some things that make sense to me, but then you use the phrase “waging war”… > FDA, for example, which is currently waging war on ADHD patients via the artificial Adderall shortage Why do you choose this loaded language? This does not build credibility in my eyes. War means something, and it not that.

I didn’t choose that language. The “war on drugs” is the DEA’s own marketing.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#486

Post by FredPret »

mcmcmc wrote: post #426
FredPret wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why we need two parties

The two-party system is a blight on democracy. You ever read George Washington's farewell address?

> George Washington

I'm a huge fan but nobody's perfect. Two parties were not only inevitable but work unbelievably well.

I'm not American, and I really don't want to inflame the political passions of either side, but take the US 2020 election, for example. I remember reading an article comparing various polling results on policy points and candidate popularity to the election outcome.

The polling results suggested that people didn't want Trump again, but liked many of his policies, and didn't want a far-left candidate either. Through votes for president, governors, senators, etc, they got exactly what the polls said they wanted.

Using the two-party system, over a hundred million US voters were able to send a very clear and nuanced message to the political system. How's that for a solution to a distributed co-ordination problem?

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#487

Post by edefefefee2 »

FredPret wrote: post #296

> "‘Robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms,’ said FTC Chair Lina Khan, who appeared at a House hearing in 2023." Should be the motto of every government in the world.

""" Under the final rule, existing noncompetes for senior executives can remain in force. Employers, however, are prohibited from entering into or enforcing new noncompetes with senior executives. The final rule defines senior executives as workers earning more than $151,164 annually and who are in policy-making positions. """

Given in tech industry / FANG, most people earn above the $151,164 I wonder how they define "policy-making positions" ?

As I read the above sentence I understand that this is a binary and and not an either you earn that much or are in policy making positions?

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#488

Post by cryptonector »

cogman10 wrote: post #482
cryptonector wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Major questions" have to go to Congress. That seems like a good rule.

It's not though. The only people that can apply it are the supreme court and the only time they'll apply it is when precedence and the letter of the law goes against their own political ideologies. In short, it's lazy judicial activism. It's anti-textualist, anti-originalist, anti-legal theory. It's a rule that the Supreme court has to invoke to achieve their objectives because they have no other avenue. The law was…

> The only people that can apply it are the supreme court and the only time they'll apply it is when precedence and the letter of the law goes against their own political ideologies.

Not really. First, any inferior court can also apply the major questions doctrine -- the SCOTUS is merely the final arbiter, but presumably in many cases either there will be no case (because the Executive will preemptively go to Congress) or the Executive will accept a lower court's decision w/o having to go all the way to the SCOTUS. Second, the doctrine is pretty clear: if the impact of a regulation is politically very controversial and its impact on the economy or liberty is quite large by comparison to more mundane regulations, then it belongs to Congress.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#489

Post by runako »

cryptonector wrote: post #428
runako wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a key point that gets overlooked so often. The Court accepts that governments outsource regulation to e.g. the private developers of building codes. Similarly, we don’t benefit from a Congress mired in details over the minutae managed by many areas of the federal government.

"Major questions" have to go to Congress. That seems like a good rule.

Since "major questions" has no concrete definition, this means each minor point can/will be litigated until the court determines whether that individual point is a "major question."

Quite arguably, Congress deemed the precipitating questions were not "major questions" and expressed as much by delegating to agencies.

Re: FTC announces rule banning noncompetes

#490

Post by patmcc »

bdowling wrote: post #457
patmcc wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're short relative to other IP (like copyright), and short relative to inventions that have long R&D and cost recovery timelines. If $NEW_DRUG takes 5 years to develop, 5 years to trial, 5 years to market, and 5 years to profit...20 years isn't all that long. If the invention takes 3 weeks and $0, yeah, 20 years is a long time.

> If the invention takes 3 weeks and $0… …then the patent can be invalidated on the basis that it is obvious. If the invention is commercially valuable, then invalidating it (or just pretending it doesn’t exist until you get sued, then invalidating it) can make more sense than licensing it. A related issue is that there are many, many patents that most people (e.g., competitors) mostly ignore, because everyone, inclu…

Yeah, it seems like we should have stricter "obviousness" testing when patents are issued. At least based on some of the software ones I've seen.
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