> Your entire approach here is quite arrogant.

You're right, it was unintentional but I can see how what I wrote could be perceived this way. My apologies. I am clearly acknowledging the intelligence of other posters by attempting to make a clear case for my position. If I did not believe that other posters were intelligent I would not engage in the discussion at all.

> 1) deontological: freedom to contract is always a good thing. It is a human right, and government has no legitimate moral power to remove that right from people.

Freedom to contract implies that both parties to the contract have bargaining power. In an employee/employer relationship this is mostly untrue. The only bargaining power that the employee has is simply to walk away. Legally any term of a contract is supposed to be met with "due consideration". In an employment contract, typically the offer of employment is treated as "consideration". I argue that a non-compete is so onerous as to require additional consideration beyond a mere offer of employment, however this is rarely if ever given. As an employee you may only choose to accept it or walk away, unless you individually have some unique position which grants you bargaining power.

While I am generally opposed to government regulation, if we had an absence of all regulation it leads to less freedom for individuals, not more. Or rather, it leads to less freedom for the majority of individuals in favor of more freedoms for a small number of individuals. This is not beneficial to society, and thus this argument does not refute my statement "They have literally no value to society."

> 2) Hayekian / information theoretic: I have local knowledge regarding both my costs and my benefits from signing a non-compete contract. Government legislators and bureaucrats, at some great remove, has almost no knowledge of either my costs or benefits.

This is possible, but isn't a societal argument. This is an argument that says there may be value to you as an individual employee due to local knowledge, but it doesn't mean there's a larger value to society. I accept that it's possible to have local knowledge that gains you a benefit from the non-compete. Such as: You have some special skill that is required by the employer. You are one of the few people with that skill. The employer both /must/ hire you and /must/ keep the non-compete in the contract. This provides you local knowledge which could allow you to bargain for an outsized salary or bonus compared to others in your field, or to get special severance arrangements to counter-balance the non-compete.

In this case, it might be possible that the insistence of the employer on the non-compete provides you individual value. Although, I'd also argue that the terms of the non-compete are not valuable to you, it's the fact your opponent in the negotiation won't let it go and your knowledge of what that is worth that lends it value. In either case, it doesn't give it value for society as a whole, so this does not refute my statement "They have literally no value to society."

> 3) pragmatic (overlaps #2): perhaps I am desperate to break into career field X and would pay almost anything to get in. Or perhaps my skills are much lower than other competitors. What can I offer employers that my peers can not? My willingness to sign a non-compete. Or perhaps I know that I will be moving in three years, and thus a geographic non-compete has no downside to me. Etc.

In this case, your desperation as an individual implies you don't have the bargaining power necessary to negotiate a contract fairly. Your willingness to agree to a coercive term is a sign of desperation, not value. This argument establishes neither a societal value or an individual value to the terms of the non-compete.

If your skills are lower than your peers, then other employers are less likely to hire you away. If the company hiring you is trying to get you to agree to a non-compete because they intend to train you to increase your skills, then a fairer method would be to increase your compensation as your skills increase with the understanding that your increased skills increase your value as an employee. The non-compete is unnecessary and exists again only to provide coercive action against you. This argument neither establishes a societal value or an individual value for the non-compete.

If you know you're moving in three years and the terms of the non-compete are strictly geographic, then you have local knowledge which means the non-compete cannot harm you. It doesn't provide any additional value you for you, but you've managed to nullify its downsides for you individually. I'll concede this one neutrally on an individual level that this provides some level of local knowledge (in the vein of your 2nd argument) that assists you in contract negotiation. This argument though fails to establish a societal value.

Again, this argument fails to refute "They have literally no value to society."

I cannot prove a negative, but I spent quite a bit of time thinking about why they exist before I wrote my original post. I could not come up with any reason why non-competes are valuable to society. I could not come up with any reason why they are valuable to employees. I could only come up with reasons why they might be valuable to an employer and narrow cases where an employee might use them as a bargaining chip but only in a way which nullifies their downsides. There is no upside to an employee for a non-compete. None. They restrict freedom of movement in the labor market and arguably lower the overall innovative output of a society.

I reiterate my original statement. "They have literally no value to society."