[matthewdgreen]

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it is not solely your decision to make. We as a society, as taxpayers and potential jury members, are being placed on the hook for the costs of enforcement and the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce. If you and your employer want to engage in a non-enforceable personal agreement to avoid competition, that’s (mostly) your business. But if you ask us to use the court system we taxpayers pay for to enforce it, things are very different.

[baronswindle]

Can you point to empirical studies that demonstrate "the negative consequences on the local economy that these agreements produce"? This is an honest question. I think theoretical analyses point in a bunch of different directions, and I reckon data would help inform our arguments.

[ScottBurson]

We have the natural experiment of California, which as I recall, if it were a country, would have the world's sixth or seventh largest economy.

Compare what's happened to the Boston metro area with Silicon Valley. Boston matches the Bay Area in top universities, and if you go back to the 1980s, had even more of the computer industry. But the Valley has outpaced it ever since, and by now has much greater economic vitality.

[MiddleEndian]

As a Bostonian I agree. There was some recent Massachusetts legislation to limit non-competes but I wish they'd done away with them entirely like in California.