> The less labour rights a country has, the more competitive a country's businesses are. If you can keep your workers in quasi-indentured servitude, you're going to be more profitable than a business that can't.
The first statement is largely true, the second statement is not. Somebody has to buy the stuff you make. At the level of an individual company this isn't a thing -- Ford isn't really going to sell a big percentage of its cars to its own employees -- but at the national level it is, because Ford does sell a substantial percentage of its cars to Americans. And it's easier for companies to sell domestically than internationally because domestic customers will favor them and foreign governments use protectionism to varying degrees.
The reason that most "labor rights" make companies uncompetitive is that they're inefficient. Requiring companies to provide specific benefits, rather than money with which employees can buy whatever they want, lowers real compensation because wages adjust to compensate (typically by rising slower than global GDP) and then you're stuck with whatever version of the benefit the employer provides instead of having the option to take the money instead and being able to choose yourself in a competitive market. Which raises the company's costs relative to their perceived attractiveness to workers. Unions for structural reasons typically prioritize things like seniority rules that aren't to the benefit of all their members (namely the newest ones) and in turn make it hard for the company to attract new talents who don't want to wait 30 years to get the salary a foreign competitor can offer today. This is why, when given the choice between higher pay and some other employer-provided benefit, people typically take the money. But the rules get passed because they're sold as a free lunch, and then industries decline there because they're not.
Non-competes are the opposite because they have a similar effect on the industry as a whole as do the inefficient labor rules, i.e. they increase the costs of other companies in the same jurisdiction. John was working for company A and wants to work for company B, but isn't allowed to, so company B have to hire Chris, who isn't as good -- otherwise company B would have hired him to begin with. It hurts the workers and every company except for company A. Then company A (or as a group, large incumbents) go to the government to lobby to let them do this even though it hurts the industry and country as a whole.
In general, anti-trust rules improve the competitiveness of a country's industries, because they improve the competitive fitness of its companies and allow them to survive when new foreign competitors come who would eat the lunch of a wasteful bureaucratic incumbent that isn't accustomed to competitive pressure but can't touch a hundred nimble entrepreneurs who are already doing what it takes to win the customer's business in the face of stiff competition. It turns out this is also the same thing that actually helps workers.
The first statement is largely true, the second statement is not. Somebody has to buy the stuff you make. At the level of an individual company this isn't a thing -- Ford isn't really going to sell a big percentage of its cars to its own employees -- but at the national level it is, because Ford does sell a substantial percentage of its cars to Americans. And it's easier for companies to sell domestically than internationally because domestic customers will favor them and foreign governments use protectionism to varying degrees.
The reason that most "labor rights" make companies uncompetitive is that they're inefficient. Requiring companies to provide specific benefits, rather than money with which employees can buy whatever they want, lowers real compensation because wages adjust to compensate (typically by rising slower than global GDP) and then you're stuck with whatever version of the benefit the employer provides instead of having the option to take the money instead and being able to choose yourself in a competitive market. Which raises the company's costs relative to their perceived attractiveness to workers. Unions for structural reasons typically prioritize things like seniority rules that aren't to the benefit of all their members (namely the newest ones) and in turn make it hard for the company to attract new talents who don't want to wait 30 years to get the salary a foreign competitor can offer today. This is why, when given the choice between higher pay and some other employer-provided benefit, people typically take the money. But the rules get passed because they're sold as a free lunch, and then industries decline there because they're not.
Non-competes are the opposite because they have a similar effect on the industry as a whole as do the inefficient labor rules, i.e. they increase the costs of other companies in the same jurisdiction. John was working for company A and wants to work for company B, but isn't allowed to, so company B have to hire Chris, who isn't as good -- otherwise company B would have hired him to begin with. It hurts the workers and every company except for company A. Then company A (or as a group, large incumbents) go to the government to lobby to let them do this even though it hurts the industry and country as a whole.
In general, anti-trust rules improve the competitiveness of a country's industries, because they improve the competitive fitness of its companies and allow them to survive when new foreign competitors come who would eat the lunch of a wasteful bureaucratic incumbent that isn't accustomed to competitive pressure but can't touch a hundred nimble entrepreneurs who are already doing what it takes to win the customer's business in the face of stiff competition. It turns out this is also the same thing that actually helps workers.