Cicero posted:

I barely know poo poo about economics -- how does this grok with certain regulations making markets more productive?

The example that I'm well aware of is California's hostility to non-compete agreements (most of them are illegal or unenforceable there): the general consensus I've seen is that this is a big part of why the tech sector exploded and has been so successful in California, that companies can't stop people from switching companies, which has led to a culture where people job hop frequently (and create startups frequently), which means you get a lot of cross-pollination of best practices, and existing behemoths can't stop their employees from going to a smaller upstart that might have a newer, better way of doing things that'll beat them in the market.

Basically, non-compete agreements are locally optimal for the company requiring the agreement, they're beneficial for incumbents because they make it harder for your current employees to go elsewhere. But they're bad for the ecosystem as a whole, they're globally suboptimal, because they hinder newer, more effective companies from disrupting old ones by making it harder for the new companies to recruit.