[dmurray]

So the federal government hasn't insisted that non competes be enforced, it just no longer holds that they violate national law, and returned the power to regulate them to the states?

This seems like a good and sensible thing. Most other employment law issues are regulated at the state level. If banning noncompetes was popular enough to get passed by the federal government, surely there are at least 20 or so states that would want to ban them locally.

[tdeck]

Maybe we should leave slavery up to the states too. Surely there are at least 20 states that would want to ban it locally.

[unclad5968]

I'm against non-competes, but likening them to slavery seems distasteful. I'm not sure they infringe on people's freedoms or rather a specific people's freedoms the way slavery did/does. No one is going to secede over non-competes.

[jfengel]

It illustrates the way the "leave it up to the states" argument grates on some ears. It's a slippery slope argument, which is not automatically faulty. It is a call to know how you expect things to not slide down.

If the suggestion is "anything shy of complete chattel slavery", people get worried.

[IncreasePosts]

Why have states at all then? Why not just one giant national government?

[SpaceNugget]

Why have a federal government at all if states are perfectly well suited to all forms of human rights oversight, lawmaking, etc?

[int_19h]

Collective defense?

[Uvix]

The US has been that since 1861.

[gamblor956]

In living memory, at least 3 SCOTUS judges have stated that slavery is legal and should not have been ended.

Two of those justices currently sit on the Supreme Court.

[unclad5968]

What does that have to do with non-competes?

[gotoeleven]

Please cite.

[hedora]

I’m not the person you are replying to, but California had a ballot initiative that would finally eliminated slavery in California in 2024.

It failed.

If you think the US completely banned slavery, or that slavery is unpopular, you’re misinformed.

[gotoeleven]

Well that was about forced labor in prisons which is a bit different.

[lazide]

To quote a well known (fictional) sociopath - ‘what’s to prove? It’s free labor!’

[outside2344]

Really? If you are an employee of Microsoft, how is it possible not to run afoul of a non-compete in tech for example?

[duxup]

I think it best non competes simply don't exist.

Want to keep your employees, compete in the market.

[evil-olive]

> Most other employment law issues are regulated at the state level.

this is just flat-out not true. look at the NLRB [0] and OSHA [1] for the two most obvious examples of the federal government regulating employment conditions.

there is certainly lots of employment regulation that also happens at the state and local level, but why is that an argument in favor of not doing federal regulation?

eg, if I'm working in North Dakota and get injured on the job, then yeah the state government will adjudicate my worker's comp claim, and generally speaking the feds don't need to get involved.

however, if the company I work for in ND requires me to sign a non-compete contract that supposedly applies in all 50 states, and might prevent me from moving to South Dakota or another state - how is that not a concern of the federal government? this is interstate commerce, which the constitution very explicitly gives the federal government power to regulate.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Board

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_Safety_and_Health...

[jfengel]

Both organizations are widely expected to vaporize, or at least become completely useless. As far as the administration is concerned, they are waste, fraud, and abuse.

[lokar]

To be fair, any R president would have done this. The pendulum goes back and fourth…

[jfengel]

Many Republican Presidential candidates campaigned on promising this, but in office they are least tried to govern. The voters got fed up and voted for someone who genuinely did want to destroy it.

[anon7000]

Disagree, I don’t think Trump campaigned on abolishing OSHA, for example. I had people telling me not to take some of his more “out there” statements too seriously. Others telling me democrats were inciting division for simply pointing out that Trump seemed inclined to destroy the federal government — not to mention the lies about Project 2025.

My point is that while many like these changes, others definitely didn’t expect it to go this far. So let’s not act like most Americans actually want this.

[lokar]

That’s my point, the difference here is not the policy goal, it’s the execution.

I see a lot of people acting as if the aims of Trump are some big departure. In fact they have been mainstream R goals for a long time.

[HarryHirsch]

Let's be honest, the other party wasn't much better. Lots of talk about "womens healthcare", but not a peep about funding OSHA properly. Me? Brought in to clean up after a major incident that made the regional news and cost the taxpayer ~ 2 millions.

[dragonwriter]

Tangentially related:

"Republican Pressure to Disband OSHA Rises Amid Sweeping Trump Orders": https://www.inc.com/kit-eaton/republican-pressure-to-disband...

"NLRB Lacks Quorum to Exercise its Authority Following President Trump’s Removal of Member; The President Also Dismissed NLRB General Counsel Abruzzo": https://www.stinson.com/newsroom-publications-nlrb-lacks-quo...

[_elf]

I'm not sure why companies would want a patchwork of regulations across 50 different jurisdictions versus normalized national regulations.

Non-competes are anti-competitive nonsense, which is why the oligarchs love them.

[count]

It’s regulatory capture for large well resourced companies - keeps the smaller players off the field and unable to scale.

[anon7000]

Nothing says anti-establishment like entrenching the existing establishment of massive corporations