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Why do companies employ people who could switch to another company? Why do they sometimes compete with that other company by making better offers? Because good employees (or citizens in this case) bring value to the company/nation.
If I am a citizen of France currently, I still have to bear the responsibilities (paying taxes, following laws etc) even if I have the option to easily become a German citizen next week. Then I have to keep up my German responsibilities.
I'm not entirely onboard with it as I think national pride and the like does have a function. But it isn't entirely crazy. It's basically an extension of the Archipelago Scott wrote about. Freedom of movement as a way to pressure governments to be the best government. Democracy of the feet so to speak.
Just to be clear, Non-compete clauses do exist. Companies frequently take a stance on how a person can sell their labor after leaving, precisely to avoid that person jumping ship and directly helping a competitor. Of course, there is a larger body of law (the government's legal system) that enforces those clauses, so I suppose in the case of nations, the global legal system would allow nations to require that citizens not go and help another country which is economically competing with that nation.
Most workers aren't under no compete clauses though, that is reserved mostly for white collar knowledge jobs. It's not worth it for Forever 21 to have a no compete clause for their retail workers. And even if they did how would they ever know? And no competes are also often not legal depending on location. Right now if I had a no-compete clause for a job in PA, I could move to California and mostly ignore it entirely as California generally does not recognize no-compete clauses.
Sure. I'm just pointing out that it's not at all unheard of or uncommon for a company to try and get some exclusivity out of a worker.
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