Non-competes provide the standing an employer needs to bury a former employee in costs. Costs that are incurred, whether the employers case falls flat on its face or not.

Eh? I thought you were trying to argue the FCC's regulation of non-Competes would fail challenges.

But instead you're going on to explain how no-competes incur costs on the competition over cases without legal basis which supports the FTC position that no-competes are an unfair business practice. Undergoing an insincere legal exchange for the intended purpose of incurring damages and costs on the other party is unlawful; it's called abuse of process.

Any future R led Congress or presidency will roll back this regulation

They'd have to put a law through first, and it's not clear they would.

The FTC has only 1 commissioner whose 7 year term is ending before 2029.
 

Probably a condition for severance agreeements. In general you should Not sign new agreements on the way out, unless there is a benefit tied to the agreement. That benefit can't be your Pay for time and benefits already earned by working though. They might make you sign to pay out an Exit bonus, or cash out some other benefit.

  It's worth pointing out that last year in 2023, the NLRB banned the use of broad NDAs and No-disparagement agreements As a condition for severance contracts, as violating employee rights.

If their former employer sues them even on base of non-enforceable non-compete clauses, they still have to lawyer-up

they don't have to sue.. They'll likely send a Cease and Decist to the new employer who may not consider the merits and simply terminate their new hire. This is the likely outcome if it's a $20/hr worker. The lawyer time is way too expensive, and the new employer can hire somebody else.

The abuser can paper a ton of letters over the mere worry and break the employee without ever filing a single lawsuit.

The only way you win is if the new employer has your back. In this case, they might keep you on and help you get legal assistance in that area.

I predict this will die a violent death in US courts.

Much doubt about that one I would say. Not unless they are prepared to and can prove Non-Competes prevented by the rule cannot be considered Unfair under Competition/Antitrust law and the FTC act in the US. I would eagerly await their Proof that these agreements are actually reasonably necessary to secure a justifiable legitimate pro-competitive objective that's within the public interest. If There is an alternative available, and the companies did Not have to use a no-compete, then they ought to lose any challenge. The FTC is smart to exclude executives on this one. You're going to be hard-pressed to find a legitimate pro-competitive reason that 100% of the no-compete restriction is necessary On an individual employee who is not an executive or business owner -- for knowledge workers, etc, a NDA, or a very fine-grained agreement specific to the job assignment, and the specific info you will have access to, should be sufficient most of the time, And the broad nocompetes have a high chance of coming back as unjustifiable/unfair from any court.

Noncompetes are not much very well liked by the courts when employers try to use them. Non-competes are an example of restraint of trade agreements. Which makes the validity of all such agreements dubious. The common law requires the Non-compete restriction would have to be reasonably necessary in the protection of a legitimate pro competitive interest under antitrust laws -- the supreme court has rejected the notion that "keeping a level playing field" b/w competitors, etc, is a legitimate justification; the no-compete agreements would have to have some specificity, and the agreement would be invalid if it goes against public policy. The FTC Act passed by congress gives the FTC the authority to weigh the matter of public interest and set the public policy, and it falls under the executive branch of government's discretion when it comes to which type of incidents they are enforcing against as Unfair business practices.

The courts will generally defer to the regulator.

If the Agencies conclude that the restraint has, or is likely to have, an anticompetitive effect, they will consider whether it is reasonably necessary to achieve procompetitive efficiencies. If the restraint is reasonably necessary, the Agencies will balance the procompetitive efficiencies and the anticompetitive effects to determine the probable net effect on competition in each relevant market

Any agreement is unlawful (under the rule of reason) if its restrictive effect on competition is not reasonably necessary to achieving a "legitimate procompetitive objective, i.e., an interest in serving consumers through lowering costs, improving products, etc." (National Soc'y of Prof'l Eng'rs v. United States, 435 U.S. 679, 691, 98 S. Ct. 1355, 55 L. Ed. 2d 637 (1978).)

United States v. Visa U.S.A., Inc., 163 F. Supp. 2d 322 (S.D.N.Y. 2001

This is an area where the legislation passed by congress gives the FTC the explicit power to interpret a Broad law which Forbids all unfair business practices. Therefore, there is a very high chance they would survive challenges in setting a rule about business practices.

If Non-Competes are an Unfair business practice, then they were always illegal for employers to present to employees and enforce: The FTC simply had not yet recognized that fact yet, nor taken any enforcement actions, as the code was not yet interpreted the meaning of the law to preclude the practice.

They'd say it is a civil matter.

You can file a grievance or lawsuit over someone making legal threats, But proving bad faith or malicious intent and damages sufficient to justify the lawsuit becomes problematic.

You underestimate how common abusive clauses are in employment contracts. From blanket intellectual property assignments (even stuff done on personal time) to unpaid noncompete periods

Yes.. You got the right word there, abusive. They are abusive, and Ought to be prevented - for the same reason we Forbid retailers from doing certain things, such as putting one price on an item, and then charging a higher price at the point of sale. We don't allow retailers to stick you with fine print on the receipt that says "no returns, even if the item turns out different from what we advetised", etc. Same exact thing for employers and employees:

Employees are generally not in a position to bargain with employers, other than some jobs represented by unions.

Thus the government regulators Need to step in to protect people. They have done semi-OK in some respects, but completely neglected the issue in many other areas.

Blocking non-competes is a start. These OUGHT to have been banned a heck of a long time ago, though. Why only now, after so many decades of companies abusing them I wonder?

I would say Post employment employer Non-Disparagement agreements, overly broad NDAs, and blanket assignments of Intellectual Property are more examples of things there should be a rule against.

For NDAs they should be unfair if they try to use them for Opinions about the company, and a lot of things that are not actually legitimate trade secrets/secrets related to an upcoming bid or release, etc.

For intellectual property: It should have to be part of a project that employee had been specifically assigned by their employer or reported on as part of their work by the employee to their Employer or that the Employee had submitted or provided to their employer in the course of their normal job duties.

Something you doodled on a Napkin at lunch or on break should be Out of the question not the employer's, Unless
  it's clearly an integral part of a project you were assigned to do or doing at work. If it's a new invention, and you used a Company-owned pen to draw the figure on the napkin, then the Employer should have a right to get the cost of the Ink back from you, Or can allow you to give them the right to the drawing as a substitute, Etc, But it should be regulated as an Unfair business practice for companies to try to steal IP created by their employees on projects They don't do for work merely inspired by their job, Or utilizing some token amount of company property, etc.

The presumption that throwing more data and more processing power at LLMs will result in subjectively better performance ..

One thing that is true is it will result in greater Cost; likely with a low ratio of performance improvement to compensate for the added cost of just throwing more and more resources at it.

The improvements aren't that much.. The world seemingly has lost its mind in terms of over-investing hastily in a small number of technologies.

Unfortunately it seems like Detection and Spam prevention will now be a much harder problem than crap generation with these technologies.

If an activity affects interstate commerce, then that activity is potentially subject to regulation by congress.

Unfair Business Competition, Antitrust, etc, are federal issues. It doesn't matter if the company does not engage in any interstate commerce directly - it would still be subject to these laws.

This effectively makes it impossible to sue an employer for misconduct. Binding arbitration needs to go.

Erm.. This arbitration crap is not some long-standing standard. It's a new exploitive trend that is currently affecting about half of US employees.

They can require arbitration of contractual issues, but in case the employer breaks the law -- having a binding arbitration clause puts them in the DOL crosshairs.. Or so they say

We vigorously prosecute violations at workplaces where workers are bound by mandatory arbitration.

I can see barring someone who is in a sales position from going to a direct competitor in a small market where they would be able to take their clients with them

They don't exactly need a no-compete for that; they really need a broad no-solicit listing everyone who would be in the sales' peoples contact list.

As for future business prospects in the area; the company has not yet paid the Sales person to sell to them, especially not in companies where the Sales folk are paid on mostly commission, eg 25% per account in good standing -- in this case the company might have let go the Sales person solely to terminate Sales commissions from a number of recurring accounts. If the Sales rep had accumulated hundreds of $K per year in commissions but weren't making new sales often, then the rep can get to be seen by management as a liability.

So maybe you could say this is manipulative as well, and simply Ban no-solicits that don't preserve and include fair commission for the term on that person's active Sales and business referred to the company past the end of employment.

Intercepting letters is also done in the distribution centers based on the metadata.

That only works for letters delivered with the Postal service. I can have a private courier personally carry a lockbox containing a letter to you at point B from point A, and it will never hit the distribution center.

Furthermore, in case the person mailing the letter encrypts it before sending it in the mail; you won't be able to tell what the letter you intercepted contains. I mean: I can AES encrypt some text and print it out as a QR Code. Only my recipient will be able to read that, so long as only that recipient was given the key.

You can do that with electronic E2E messages just the same; it's just a digital payload you won't be able to decrypt without seizing the keys from the end users.

Likewise, I can use a voice encryption technology that encodes the call over the POTS line I am sending you to E2E; even if the link is "Listened in on" from a central dispatch point - it is only garbled noise.

No logging software is able to record the authentications to AAD, Exchange Online, or other cloud services run by Microsoft, Because they're
  Microsoft's servers; Microsoft doesn't provide you the ability to run programs on their servers - you literally Don't have access to the sets of logs, Tools, or APIs necessary to get the log of authentications without Paying extra for security licenses.

The other thing that's weird about this bill is it Purports to Restrict how the law could be challenged in court By stating that there is a Very short time limit to file any kind of challenge against the law, and the DC Court of Appeals has exclusive jurisdiction.

why is it that companies are so reluctant to invade customers' privacy at the request of the government?

It costs them money and creates risks. The companies Cannot exactly share with the public the nature Of the orders they have to follow -- but you can bet it's gone way beyond the Phone Company having to Provide a secret room at every central office to house the government agents who get to push a button and snoop on All the fiber connections or any Phone lines they want.

We're at the point now where they can say "Hey Google; We need to see everything everybody in the US searched for yesterday"

There's significant costs involved with capturing any significant amount of surveillance.

That takes infrastructure, compute, bandwidth, and employee time.

There are also risks involved. Including Public relations risks, and security-related risks. Any surveillance backdoor they have that employees can use Can also potentially be abused by other hostile nation states to spy on Americans; having A procedure that exist that easily authorizes a person at your company to tap into customers' private conversations, and having a large team who can do that on request, is an existential risk within their company's security posture. The companies also face risks of being sued if the power is used improperly.