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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

> This is a terrifying state of affairs. Similar to the whole "all code you write, on or off hours, belongs to us" some tech companies try to pull.

Just like Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that, including terms that prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life...

> Among other things, employees agree to never, ever tell anyone anything about the company. Employees also have to pay a fine if they quit Tesla and take a competing job within six months.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/tystnadsplikt-livet...

Seems like it's a US tactic that now is trying to be spread into other parts of the world. Terrifying indeed.

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> prohibited employees from talking about anything going on at Tesla, even after the left the company, for life...

Good luck monitoring that enforcing that

Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws

Edit: had a derp moment and totally commented without remembering the “Sweden” key word here. Ignore me, I’m wrong for many reasons

> Tesla was recently caught having their employees in Sweden sign contracts like that

>> pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment

Pretty sure the 1st amendment you're talking about doesn't apply in Sweden :)

I read Sweden yet somehow it didn’t register at all when thinking about my reply. Derp.

the constitution is a set of laws for lawmakers. It doesn't govern what people or companies do. Try reading one sometime. You might see one start with "Congress shall make no law..".

> Good luck monitoring that enforcing that

Unenforceable rules still have plenty of value in something called a "chilling effect" which people - even fully aware of an unforceable law - will still alter their behavior out of fear that they could somehow become entangled in it anyway. They preempt decision-making for many people.

Even in the US (which Sweden is not a part of, to be clear) the First Amendment only prevents the US government from abridging your freedom of expression, and only in most cases.

The first amendment restricts the government, not the people. If the people want to enter into such an arrangement, that is their right. This is just an NDA without an end.

>> NDA without an end

There are some legal limits on this. Things like the rule against perpetuities limit any sort of forever construct. The interesting question is whether someone bound by such a contact in life can perhaps speak after death: A book written privately in life but published publicly after death. That might be a case where general legal principals would win out over a corporate NDA.

> Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment and if memory serves right, no contract can change people’s federal rights or change any laws

The contract does not attempt to modify the protection of your free speech rights from government interference, so no.

(“But a government apparatus would enforce the contract, and corporations are chartered by the government, and anyway what good is a system that protects rights from the government if lots of people end up losing them to powerful organizations anyway?” Yes, yep, mmm-hmm. Welcome to left-libertarianism.)

(And, as the other poster noted, this is Sweden anyway, so the US constitution and bill of rights is irrelevant anyway)

>> Also, pretty sure that goes against the 1st amendment

I'm pretty sure it does not. Tesla is not the government and Musk is not, yet, president. There is precious little in the US constitution governing employer-employee relations. In fact, by not allowing such agreements, any government arguably violates the contracts clause. The US constitution frees people, which includes granting them freedom to sign stupid contracts.

> Musk is not, yet, president

will never be.

And why not? Congress can choose to discard electors from states excluding candidates (as may happen next year).

“In the 19th century, several state legislatures elected senators in their late twenties despite the Constitutional minimum age of 30, such as Henry Clay, who was sworn into office at age 29, and John Henry Eaton, the youngest U.S. senator in history, who took his oath of office when he was 28 years, 4 months and 29 days old.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_members_of_...

Because you must be a natural-born citizen of the US.

As far as I understand, there isn't really a consensus on what "natural-born citizen" actually means in the context of the US constitution. I'm sure some huge team of lawyers could argue that Musk somehow is "natural-born citizen".

There are some edge cases like “your parents are american but you were born on vacation in france”, but this one is about as crystal clear as you can get: elon was born in SA to a mother who was born in CA to canadian parents and a father who was born in SA to south african parents. He is a naturalized citizen of the US, and ineligible to stand for election for the presidency.

Yeah, which sounds like a fair guess, but the only way to know for sure is for it to be tested in courts, otherwise we're just guessing :) And as we probably all know, having large pockets for lawyers and lobbyists, makes a lot of what we think isn't possible, possible.

It's really not as crystal clear as you make it.

... other than "person x has never been and is not presently a citizen" this is as clear as it can get. Naturalized citizens are not eligible to be president, there is no gray space on this matter.

Well, today, he is a citizen. Presumably, he was natural-born and not fabricated in a laboratory. Does that make him a natural born citizen?

/s I hope.

Technically that can be amended, so it's still possible. I agree it's ridiculously unlikely though.

If nobody ever negotiates the terms of a pre-fabricated contract, then there is no freedom of contract going on, as a matter of common sense.

Have you ever been part of a corporate re-org where you were technically laid off and rehired and thus were legally forced to sign a new agreement? Such freedom!

All "contracts" that fit a pattern of take-it-or-leave-it with a zillion provisions should be negotiated by the government, a union, or some other collective entity with a reasonable claim to protecting the interests of the side that has no leverage alone.

Plenty of agreements are heavily constrained by regulators, (think insurance for example) and we take it for granted, so I am not suggesting any radical idea, just pushing back on the weasels who are always working at corrupting things.

To continue on the concept of illusory freedom:

> "I should not agree with your young friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract."

> "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered M. Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract."

> He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate [...]"

-- The Paradoxes of Mr Pond (1937) by G.K. Chesterton

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421.txt

One of the Swedish employees had a wife that posted about the strike on Twitter and the employee was summarily brought before HR.

But monitoring for life doesn't seem feasible. But they don't really have to. Just making people believe they can be penalized at any time can change their behavior.

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