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Comment by tdeck | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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

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

Collective defense?

The US has been that since 1861.

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.

Please cite.

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.

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

Restricting the slave owner to the state (+ leasing to businesses) does not make it not slavery. I can't believe I have to say this.

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

What does that have to do with non-competes?

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

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