Simple, because most likely your employment agreement says that you should be devoting your full time and attention to your job for 40 hours a week or whatever. If you're pulling 80 hour weeks across two companies, there's theoretically nothing wrong with that[1], and I suspect those are not the type of people the parent poster is against. The same applies to businesses. If you had a contract with a vendor promising that you'll be their sole client, and it turns out they're actually working for other companies, that would be unacceptable as well.
[1] unless your employment agreement also specifices some sort of exclusivity.
>If you had a contract with a vendor promising that you'll be their sole client ...
Where I am in Canada, I've had exclusivity required for an employment contract but only within the employer's niche and for pay well above industry norms.
The problem over here comes when the work is structured as a contractor/client arrangement.
If someone is set up as contractor, even with a registered company, they can be considered a de facto employee and have all the protections given to regular employees. Additionally the client, as the de facto employer can get in trouble for not making and remitting payroll deductions.
Even incorporating won't save you. There are several criteria but, if you're the sole employee of a corporation, you're considered a personal services business. It makes you ineligible for any corporate tax reductions, an additional 5% tax, and virtually no deductions are allowed outside of payroll expenses; even supplies and directors' action payments.
The expectation and contractual requirement of sole employment goes against free market principles. These requirements, and absolutely the ones making any sort of restrictions on where/who someone can work for after leaving a company, should be legally unenforceable.
>The expectation and contractual requirement of sole employment goes against free market principles.
What "free market principles"? The wikipedia article for "free market" says:
>In economics, a free market is an idealized system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority.
In this case, two parties (employers and employees) are voluntarily entering into a contract without government coercion. I fail to see how that's against "free market principles".
In idealized concept, all participants must be free to buy and sell their goods and services to all other participants. A market where buyers can only buy from certain sellers or sellers can only sell to certain buyers isn't free regardless of whether the constraints are government mandated or privately decided. For example, if the owners of all the food production refused (on their own accord) to sell to certain groups because of their ethnicity, that wouldn't be a free market. Also in the vast majority of cases, the employee has much less negotiating power than the employer. So 'voluntarily ' here has the same meaning as voluntarily giving your wallet to mugger pointing a gun at you. In this analogy the gun is potential homelessness and starvation.
>In idealized concept, all participants must be free to buy and sell their goods and services to all other participants.
And who uses "free market" to mean the definition you just proposed?
>For example, if the owners of all the food production refused (on their own accord) to sell to certain groups because of their ethnicity, that wouldn't be a free market.
1. While I agree the example you gave is undesirable, the unclear whether the badness stems from "buyers can only buy from certain sellers" or something else. An easy test of this would be: if I refuse to buy widgets from Acme Co. because they also make cluster munitions, does that mean I'm violating free market principles?
2. how does exclusivity agreements play into this? Are they all against your definition of "free market"?
>So 'voluntarily ' here has the same meaning as voluntarily giving your wallet to mugger pointing a gun at you. In this analogy the gun is potential homelessness and starvation.
This is a terrible analogy because homelessness and starvation is the natural state of things, but the same can't be said of a bullet traveling towards your head at 300 m/s.
1. Yes, this would be against idealized free market
2. Yes, they are all against idealized free market
'Natural state of things' would only apply in the absence of all society and civilization, but since there are land owners and employers, its not a natural state but a man-made one, just like a gun. A bullet and homeless/starvation can be both deadly and/or cause severe bodily harm, just at different rates.
[1] unless your employment agreement also specifices some sort of exclusivity.