1) Most times I've been asked to sign a non-compete it is after I'm already employed and usually with some kind of threat and a short timeline "sign this within thirty days or your fired". My bargaining power is such situations is basically non-existent.
2) I did once turn down a job offer at Amazon over what I felt was a very restrictive non-compete. After watching my friend get laid off by them and have that non-compete restrict him, I'm glad I didn't accept.
3) Only well into my career when I was financially comfortable and felt I had lots of options would turning down a job because of a non-compete make sense to me. If I was a new grad trying to get my foot in the door I would probably sign whatever the heck they put in front of me.
4) I think non-competes should be restricted to very high paying jobs. The more the job pays, the longe the non-compete can be for.
I've never worried about non-competes. Always worked for small startups, a few of which went broke, and none ever bothered me about subsequent jobs (programmer). I did turn down one job offer when they added a pointless dress code (suit and tie, when I had discussed riding a bike to work, and would never meet the public?), and quit another job when they imposed a suit and tie dress code after I'd been working there for six months ("Why don't you just try it?" — "What, rent a suit for a week and see if I like it?"). The only suit I wore after getting out of the Navy was a rented tux at my wedding (she was worth that minimal a dress code :-).
Had this anonymous reader ever read Rothbard, Hoppe or Kinsella, his whole understanding would have shifted, because he could then be able to comprehend that “intellectual property” is not property at all. His arguments are pointless if one accepts this stance.
I see property ownership better described as control than possession. In the US at least, the government controls what you can do with your property in some of the silliest ways possible, and if you don't pay your property tax, it's not just another debt; they confiscate your entire property, sell it, and sometimes keep the entire proceeds, not just the owed tax.
Or think of the difference between socialism (owning the means of production) and fascism (controlling the means of production). There's no practical difference.
Thus I see intellectual property as nonsense because it requires control after sale, and that's not how property works. If you want to keep something secret, go ahead, keep it secret. But don't tell the world, then expect the world to pay you for it after the fact.
I also see intellectual property as a fraud, since it only exists (in the US) because the Constitution specifically calls it out as monopolies Congress can define and change willy nilly, unlike plain old physical property, which has such a natural definition that the Constitution only has to mention it and everybody knows what it means. There is something bizarre about "property" getting less overall protection from "theft" if a book is published 50 years before death or the day before; or the "property" aspect persisting for 70 years, after death, but not a day more; or copyrights being inheritable, for a while, but not patents.
I suggest that ownership is better conceived as "rightful possession".
If the rightfulness is removed, then there can be no theft--whoever has control or possession at this moment, has ownership--which is nonsense.
What the "right" is --it is conclusion to a series of arguments--the kind of arguments that may be made in courts of law--whose premise is "man must eat of fruit of his labor".
"Rightful" is fuzzy and vague, exactly what lawyers love to quibble over — as your "series of arguments" shows. It also applies to everything, and thus adds nothing unique. Keeping "possession" in there doesn't eliminate any of the problems with government controlling property. "Control" is simpler and doesn't require lawyers. I'd just as soon leave the lawyers out of it as much as possible.
I don't understand the question. "then"? What has changed? Why does simplifying the definition to "control" instead of complicating it with "rightful" make it impossible to define "theft"?
If somebody picks my pocket, I have lost control over my wallet and the pickpocket now has control. If ownership=control, the pickpocket owns the wallet. Ergo no theft.
>> “Furthermore, I believe that most trading firm employees charge way too little for this loss of optionality, since despite being smart…”
Traders and quants have no choice because they bargain individually against firms that universally all have these noncompetes in place. You might value your loss of optionality a lot, but what are you supposed to do when every firm that would hire you all has 1y+ noncompetes?
Certainly a risk. The employer would have to make staying attractive. At my company (not a trading firm) we don't have non-competes, and we pay the people we want to keep well above market rates. The ones we don't care if they leave, market rates.
What are your thoughts about non-compete for physicians? Should a hospital force unhappy physicians to stay because they cannot uproot and relocate their families to avoid a non-compete? Unhappy physicians lead to poorer healthcare quality.
- someone on a non-compete might lose interest in eventually competing, so employers can sometimes buy permanent non-competition for the price of temporary.
- employees might expect non-competes as a perk of doing the job, which employers are more than happy to offer since it benefits them.
- trading firms are overly paranoid about the cost of competition and don’t internalize that competition can also benefit them. So they over-hedge against a risk that mostly wouldn’t materialize.
Point 2 is of course a sound justification for noncompetes. It is a version of one of the common defenses of noncompetes: that they facilitate firms making human capital investments in employees - investments that benefit employer/employee both and that would be at greater risk (and thus less likely to be made) if retention were not made more secure (without higher pay, which would also make retention more secure but might undermine the return on the investment).
1) Most times I've been asked to sign a non-compete it is after I'm already employed and usually with some kind of threat and a short timeline "sign this within thirty days or your fired". My bargaining power is such situations is basically non-existent.
2) I did once turn down a job offer at Amazon over what I felt was a very restrictive non-compete. After watching my friend get laid off by them and have that non-compete restrict him, I'm glad I didn't accept.
3) Only well into my career when I was financially comfortable and felt I had lots of options would turning down a job because of a non-compete make sense to me. If I was a new grad trying to get my foot in the door I would probably sign whatever the heck they put in front of me.
4) I think non-competes should be restricted to very high paying jobs. The more the job pays, the longe the non-compete can be for.
I've never worried about non-competes. Always worked for small startups, a few of which went broke, and none ever bothered me about subsequent jobs (programmer). I did turn down one job offer when they added a pointless dress code (suit and tie, when I had discussed riding a bike to work, and would never meet the public?), and quit another job when they imposed a suit and tie dress code after I'd been working there for six months ("Why don't you just try it?" — "What, rent a suit for a week and see if I like it?"). The only suit I wore after getting out of the Navy was a rented tux at my wedding (she was worth that minimal a dress code :-).
Had this anonymous reader ever read Rothbard, Hoppe or Kinsella, his whole understanding would have shifted, because he could then be able to comprehend that “intellectual property” is not property at all. His arguments are pointless if one accepts this stance.
I see property ownership better described as control than possession. In the US at least, the government controls what you can do with your property in some of the silliest ways possible, and if you don't pay your property tax, it's not just another debt; they confiscate your entire property, sell it, and sometimes keep the entire proceeds, not just the owed tax.
Or think of the difference between socialism (owning the means of production) and fascism (controlling the means of production). There's no practical difference.
Thus I see intellectual property as nonsense because it requires control after sale, and that's not how property works. If you want to keep something secret, go ahead, keep it secret. But don't tell the world, then expect the world to pay you for it after the fact.
I also see intellectual property as a fraud, since it only exists (in the US) because the Constitution specifically calls it out as monopolies Congress can define and change willy nilly, unlike plain old physical property, which has such a natural definition that the Constitution only has to mention it and everybody knows what it means. There is something bizarre about "property" getting less overall protection from "theft" if a book is published 50 years before death or the day before; or the "property" aspect persisting for 70 years, after death, but not a day more; or copyrights being inheritable, for a while, but not patents.
I suggest that ownership is better conceived as "rightful possession".
If the rightfulness is removed, then there can be no theft--whoever has control or possession at this moment, has ownership--which is nonsense.
What the "right" is --it is conclusion to a series of arguments--the kind of arguments that may be made in courts of law--whose premise is "man must eat of fruit of his labor".
"Rightful" is fuzzy and vague, exactly what lawyers love to quibble over — as your "series of arguments" shows. It also applies to everything, and thus adds nothing unique. Keeping "possession" in there doesn't eliminate any of the problems with government controlling property. "Control" is simpler and doesn't require lawyers. I'd just as soon leave the lawyers out of it as much as possible.
How do you define theft then.
Ownership is settled in courts all the time. This is what the courts do.
I don't understand the question. "then"? What has changed? Why does simplifying the definition to "control" instead of complicating it with "rightful" make it impossible to define "theft"?
If somebody picks my pocket, I have lost control over my wallet and the pickpocket now has control. If ownership=control, the pickpocket owns the wallet. Ergo no theft.
Most standard business practices exist for a reason.
>> “Furthermore, I believe that most trading firm employees charge way too little for this loss of optionality, since despite being smart…”
Traders and quants have no choice because they bargain individually against firms that universally all have these noncompetes in place. You might value your loss of optionality a lot, but what are you supposed to do when every firm that would hire you all has 1y+ noncompetes?
This would seem an opportunity for a trading firm to hire without (or with short) non-competes. They'd get better candidates for less $.
I think the market can handle this.
If there was one company that didn't offer non-competes, wouldn't they attract all the people who were looking to bolt at the first opportunity.
Certainly a risk. The employer would have to make staying attractive. At my company (not a trading firm) we don't have non-competes, and we pay the people we want to keep well above market rates. The ones we don't care if they leave, market rates.
They do not all have non-competes. Jane Street does not. D. E. Shaw did not for many years.
What are your thoughts about non-compete for physicians? Should a hospital force unhappy physicians to stay because they cannot uproot and relocate their families to avoid a non-compete? Unhappy physicians lead to poorer healthcare quality.
A few others that occur to me:
- someone on a non-compete might lose interest in eventually competing, so employers can sometimes buy permanent non-competition for the price of temporary.
- employees might expect non-competes as a perk of doing the job, which employers are more than happy to offer since it benefits them.
- trading firms are overly paranoid about the cost of competition and don’t internalize that competition can also benefit them. So they over-hedge against a risk that mostly wouldn’t materialize.
Point 2 is of course a sound justification for noncompetes. It is a version of one of the common defenses of noncompetes: that they facilitate firms making human capital investments in employees - investments that benefit employer/employee both and that would be at greater risk (and thus less likely to be made) if retention were not made more secure (without higher pay, which would also make retention more secure but might undermine the return on the investment).