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As fascism burns across America, it's important to remember that Trump and his policies are *not popular*. Sure, the racism and cruelty excites a minority of (very broken) people, but every component of the Trump agenda is *extremely* unpopular with the American people, from tax cuts for billionaires to kidnapping our neighbors and shipping them to concentration camps.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Keeping this fact in mind is essential if we are to nurture hope's embers, and fan them into the flames of change. Trumpism is a coalition of people who hate each other, who agree on almost nothing, whose fracture lines are one deft tap away from shattering:
Take noncompete "agreements": contractual clauses that ban workers from taking a job with any of their employers' competitors for *years*. One in 18 Americans has been captured by a noncompete, and the median noncompete victim is a minimum-wage fast-food worker whose small business tyrant boss wants to be sure that she doesn't quit working the register at Wendy's and start making $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's.
The story of noncompetes is bullshit from top to bottom. The argument goes, "Your boss invests heavily in training you, and lets you in on all his valuable trade-secrets. When you walk out the door and go to work for a competitor, you're *stealing* all that training and knowledge. Without noncompetes, no boss will invest in the knowledge-intensive industries that are the future of our economy."
Now, like I said, the *vast* majority of people under noncompetes are working low-waged, menial jobs with little to no training, and no proprietary trade secrets to speak of. Which makes sense: workers with less bargaining power end up signing worse contracts. That's half the case against noncompetes.
Here's the other half: the *most* IP-intensive, profitable, knowledge-based industries in America operate without *any* noncompetes.
California's state constitution *bans* noncompetes, which means that every worker in Hollywood *and* Silicon Valley is free to quit their job and walk across the street and join a rival.
If Hollywood and tech are examples of industries that "can't attract investment," then we should be shooting for every sector of the American economy to be so starved for capital.
Silicon Valley's origin story is based on the ability of key workers at knowledge-intensive firms to quit their jobs and go to work for a direct competitor: the first Silicon Valley company was Shockley Semiconductors, founded by William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing silicon transistors.
Shockley literally put the "silicon" in Silicon Valley, but he never shipped a working chip, because he was a deranged, paranoid eugenicist who ran such a dysfunctional company that eight of his top engineers quit to found a rival company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Then two of the "Traitorous Eight" quit the Fairchild to start Intel, and the year after, another Fairchild employee quit to start AMD:
This never stopped. Woz quit HP and Jobs quit Atari to start Apple and the tradition of extremely well-capitalized companies being founded by key employees who quit market-leading firms to compete with their old bosses continues to this day. There are many things we can say about AI, but *no one* will claim that AI companies - especially not those in California, where noncompetes are banned - have trouble attracting investment.
Half of the leading AI companies were founded by people who couldn't stand working for Sam Altman at Openai and quit to found a competitor. Just last week, Altman flipped out because Mark Zuckerberg poached his key scientists to work on competing products at Meta:
You know who understands this? The lawyers who draw up employment contracts with noncompete clauses in them: the American Bar Association bans noncompetes for lawyers! *Every law firm in America operates without noncompetes!*
Everyone hates noncompetes. They are *bullshit*, and only get worse with time, as the largest companies in America metastasize into sprawling conglomerates, they compete with *everyone*. Who isn't a competitor of Amazon's?
Biden's antitrust enforcers hated noncompetes, too. Former FTC chair Lina Khan held listening tours and solicited comments to hear workers stories about noncompetes, developing a record that she used to create a rule that banned noncompetes nationwide:
America's oligarchs weren't happy. They sued to overturn the rule, and got a nationwide injunction (you know, those things that Trump's illegitimate Supreme Court claims are unenforceable) that suspended the FTC rule pending a full hearing.
It's clear that Trump's FTC is going to walk away from this fight and let the rule die. Trumpism is wildly unpopular, and this is no exception.
Americans overwhelmingly support banning noncompetes, but Trump's richest donors are terrified of another Great Resignation and want to keep us indentured to their shitty companies, so Trump's FTC will sell us all out.
But that's not the end of things. As David Dayen writes for *The American Prospect*, states and local governments can pass their own noncompete bans, and they are:
Take NYC mayor-in-waiting Zohran Mamdani: unlike Trump (and the Democratic Party's billionaire wing), Mamdani campaigned by offering to create policies that are *popular*, including a ban on noncompetes. New York City has two distinct groups of workers who are screwed over by noncompetes.
One of those groups is Wall Street finance bros, who work for some of the most legendarily toxic assholes to ever draw breath, and are overwhelming bound by noncompetes that will all become null and void the day Mamdani dons his sash.
The other group of workers Mamdani will liberate are those at the very bottom of the income distribution, from fast food workers to gig workers to doormen, who are victims of some of the dirtiest noncompete clauses in America, including "bondage fees":
Big cities are filled with workers who are getting screwed by noncompetes and every city government has it in their power to liberate every one of those workers (who are also voters).
States can do even better. There are already four states that ban noncompetes, two of them blood red: California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Other states place significant restrictions on noncompetes, including Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Nevada bans noncompetes for hourly workers, Idaho only allows them for "key employees"; Louisiana limits noncompetes to two years, and NJ bans noncompetes for domestic workers.
Up and down the country, in states blue and red, noncompetes are unpopular, and banning noncompetes is popular:
Oregon just banned noncompetes for doctors and other health workers, as part of a sweeping, bipartisan law that banned the "corporate practice of medicine":
Lina Khan's FTC developed an irrefutable record about the abusive nature of noncompetes, proving industries can attract capital and field successful companies without them. States have it in their power to step in where Trump has betrayed American workers. This isn't the most efficient way to protect workers - that would be a federal ban on noncompetes - but it will still get the job done, and it will weaken the Trump coalition, which is barely holding together as it is.
interestingly, in Germany non-competes are totally legal. But with a simple change: the employers needs to pay for the time of the non-compete (at least 50% of the pay). This makes them much less interesting, but still available
Note: I wrote this poem yesterday in the haiku style of poetry and published it for the first time today, the 3rd of July, 2025. You came here to be human so be true to your humanity.
Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 07/03/25: US Spent $1.25 Billion on THAADs Defending Israel, Israel Kills Gaza Hospital Director, and More youtube.com/watch?v=FKsUwXIy8s…
Contact the White House: https://whitehouse.gov/contact/Support the show: Antiwar.com/donatePhone bank for Defend the Guard: https://defendtheguard.us/phoneb...
This was the hardest one to find out of the three I bought. I had to go onto like the tenth search page to find a website that was run by a singular Japanese dude who seems to have every out of print figure ever. I even searched the website name to make sure it was legit, it was way too convenient.
@Ronnie21093 Figure-rise Standard Umamusume Pretty Derby Tokai Teio? That one is still available for around 60 leaf buxs at one of my local plastic crack(Gundam) dealers
The Figure-rise Standard Umamusume: Pretty Derby Tokai Teio model kit represents a character from the popular multimedia franchise "Umamusume: Pretty Derby," which features anthropomorphized versions of real-life racehorses portrayed as "horse girls.
@poopernova @Ronnie21093 I almost gave up and ordered the small pop up parade Mcqueen with the normal school uniform. Luckily I decided to keep searching.
"Christianity is at the root of the evil that has corrupted the West. This is the truth, and it does not admit uncertainty. In its frenetic subversion of every hierarchy, in its exaltation of the weak, the disinherited, those without lineage and without tradition; in its call to "love", to "believe", and to yield; in its rancor toward everything that is force, self-sufficiency, knowledge, and aristocracy; in its intolerant and proselytizing fanaticism, Christianity poisoned the greatness of the Roman Empire. Enemy of itself and of the world, this dark and barbarous wave remains the principal cause of the West's decline." - Julius Evola
@relentless_eduardo@freeatlantis.co The Church had yet to corrupt the inner metaphysical values of the European at that time (the Rosicrucians, Knight's Templar, etc had more Pagan elements internally than Christian).
the greatest period of Spanish expansion to spread Christianity was about 1500 - 1800
so could we say the entire conquest of latin america by spain and the almost entire conquest of north america by the northern europeans were both symptoms of decline?
Reprinted from CommonDreams. The attack by Israel and the U.S. on Iran had two significant effects. First, it once again exposed the root cause of turmoil in the region: Israel’s project to “reshape the Middle East” through regime change, aimed at ma…
💸 Soutenez nous sur Tipeee : http://fr.tipeee.com/parolesdhonneur 🗞️ Nouveau numéro du magazine "Nous" http://nous.qgdecolonial.fr/ 🔔 Abonnez vous à Paroles d'honneur sur Youtube : https://www.youtube.
If the music's gotten boring, it's because of the people Who want everyone to sound the same Who drive the bright people out of our so-called scene Till all that's left is just a meaningless fad
If the music's gotten boring, it's because of the people Who want everyone to sound the same Who drive the bright people out of our so-called scene Till all that's left is just a meaningless fad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E0MdKJreSE
"Ich bin Antizionistin - auf jeden Fall." Ein Interview mit Esther Bejarano, an alle heuchlerischen "Linken", die Esther eigentlich bei jeder Gelegenheit feiern und dennoch Antizionist*innen als Antisemit*innen brandmarken. 🖕🏽 jungewelt.de/beilage/art/27802…
Gespräch mit Esther Bejarano. Über den Rechtsruck in Europa, die jüdische »Welt von Gestern«, Zionismus und Israel heute, das Großmachtstreben Deutschlands und seine neuen Kriege
My initial reaction: "These people honestly think someone committed suicide just because they put a picture from a bridge? That's so stupid" Went to Twitter to check on the profile for myself.... literally every single one of their last few posts reads as: "the last things I want to say before I off myself". Huh... Maybe I was too rash to criticize. I guess people did do their homework before celebrating the death of a person they don't know.
@alyx This isn't the first time someone has posted a picture from a bridge with an ominous message, plus they've likely physically mutilated themselves which further fucks with their mental state. Poor bastards
Why people are killing themselves for something they cannot change or influence is beyond me
Perhaps the book im reading on Stoicsm is finally bearing its fruits because i see no logical reason to end yourself because of something that you cannot influence or change.
Just accept your situation and move on You choose to be influenced by your fate and situation, you cannot alter fate so stop resisting it right?
Perhaps rational thinking is not on the menu for some of these people 🤔
@xaetacore Well these are not exactly rational people, and a lot of their issues are likely self-inflicted given they've decided to be troons and have likely mutilitated themselves permanently, I don't blame theme for wanting to end it all considering there's no future for them other than as sterile slaves to medication
Spielen die Leute in Malta, Zypern und Luxemburg eigentlich nur selten Computerspiele? Die Beteiligung bei Stop Destroying Videogames ist abgeschlagen niedrig. citizens-initiative.europa.eu/… Bevor ihr euch fragt, für den Erfolg der Initative muss man in 7 Länder den Schwellenwert überwinden und eine Million Stimmen erreichen. Wer noch nicht abgestimmt hat, kann sogar mit eID abstimmen. Es hat bei mir aber mehrere Versuche gebraucht, bis ich mein Statement of support receipt erhalten habe.
🌟 Narcissism can deeply affect creative collaborations. During brainstorming, a narcissistic individual might dominate the conversation, seeking to overshadow others' ideas rather than build collectively. This can stifle innovation as the space for genuine exchange shrinks. Monopolizing ideas often leads to resentment, reducing trust and teamwork. Awareness of these dynamics helps us foster healthier, more balanced creative environments where every voice matters. 💡🤝 #Narcissism #CreativeCollaboration #MentalHealthMatters
Peter Putnam was a promising student of John Wheeler who became obsessed with a computational model of the mind, was tormented by a pathological relationship with his wealthy mother, and ended up contributing to community politics while working blue collar jobs.
Science writer Amanda Gefter spent more than a decade tracking down the people who knew him, and diving into a vast store of his unpublished work and private papers.
I've always been open with my criticisms about Halo but he's not a bad dude. I just think he's wrong about a few things, that isn't enough to get me to leave the site, especially since it's one of the few places I can still call relatively free on the internet. It's small, but varis is a replacement of 4chan, and ebaumsworld, and myspace, and all the fun I had on the internet before it went to complete shit.
The beauty of the fediverse is that you can have alt accounts on other websites but still communicate with people on this site (if it hasn't been set to local post lol) Great for when I want to post uncensored loli sex or gore at people I don't like but don't want showing up here.
3 Ιούλ 2025, 07:32 - Λωρίδα της Γάζας, 2 Ιούλη του 2025 O Oυαλίντ και η Λιν... Ενας πατέρας αποχαιρετά τα παιδιά του που έπεσαν μάρτυρες από βομβαρδισμό του σιωναζιστικού στρατού εναντίον Παλαιστίνιων που στέκονταν μπροστά από πάγκο λαχανικών κοντά σ…
From yesterday: #Hamas said in a statement that it is studying the ceasefire proposal but noted that it wants any deal to lead to an end to the war. #Hospital officials in #Gaza said at least 111 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli air strikes across the Strip today, including 24 people waiting for aid. Wafa news agency reported earlier that 14 Palestinians have been arrested in Israeli raids across the #Bethlehem governorate in the occupied West Bank, where about 400 families would be made homeless by an Israeli army order to demolish more than 100 homes. Israel’s governing Likud party, led by Netanyahu, is pushing for the formal annexation of the occupied #WestBank before the Israeli parliament’s summer recess on July 27. aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/20… #palestine #apartheid #IsraelApartheid #occupation #colonialism #IsraelTerroristState
RDV samedi 5 juillet dès 14h00 place de la République
Stop Génocide ! Cessez-le-feu !
Stop à la collaboration de nos dirigeants et des mes médias aux ordres !
Des sanctions cotre les (…)
Attached: 1 video
On Thursday 03.07. I'll have the honor of giving a talk with @malteengeler@legal.social on "Fascist AI" in the "Loops" series of events (https://www.newpractice.net/loops).
See you there.
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Nέα έρευνα αποκαλύπτει σοβαρές μονομέρειες και συστηματική αναπαραγωγή της ισραηλινής ρητορικής από τα ελληνικά τηλεοπτικά δελτία ειδήσεων - Η μελέτη περιλαμβάνεται στον συλλογικό Tόμο «Η ενημέρωση (ξανα)πάει στο μέτωπο» σε επιμέλεια Γιώργου Πλειού κ…
Ahora resulta que para que no haya incendios, se ha de ayudar a los agricultores y las zonas rurales. Hace un año pedí un permiso para poder tener un burrito o caballo (el plan era animales en tránsito para ayudar a santuarios o protectoras) Pues bien meses de negativas y problemas por parte del ayuntamiento del pueblo. Algo que era sencillo, sólo pedía poner una pergola pequeña (básicamente 4 palos y un toldo) todo lo demás estaba cubierto para cuidar al animal. Pues bien, imposible hacerlo. No ayudan, no son flexibles y básicamente solo los importa que pagues y pagues. #catalunyarural
Probably just about everything that's done by servants/"the help"/"assistants". If Jeff Bezos' life depended on cleaning a kitchen well within a given time, he would be doomed. Though Bezos is not the best example, since he seems to have grown up somewhat poor and actually worked as a line cook in his youth - but most rich people aren't upstarts, they become rich by inheriting.
At aid distribution sites alone, Israel has killed a full half of the number of settlers killed on October 7.
Palestine does in fact clarify all things. It clarifies that all major institutions are on the side of silence and genocide. It clarifies that this rotten, racist global order must fall under its own weight.
Le nouveau rapport annuel du Haut Conseil pour le Climat vient d’être publié et le constat est cinglant pour l’action, ou plutôt le manque d’action du gouvernement Macron. Voici en 10 points les principaux enseignements du rapport : bonpote.com/les-francais-mis-e…
1. At the Tipping Points conference in Exeter yesterday, I spoke about the likelihood of food system collapse: a massive existential threat few people's radar. If you want a handle on the issue, here's the submission I made to a parliamentary committee. + 🧵www.monbiot.com/2023/03/09/t...
2. We need to do four things all at the same time. A. Ensure that 8, 9 or 10 billion people receive a healthy and sufficient diet. B. Do so without destroying Earth systems. C. Rewild as much land and sea as we can, to stop and reverse 6th Great Extinction drivers. D. Prevent food system collapse.
3. People tend to get siloed, in every profession. What I see in almost all food discussions is a focus on either A or B or C, but very seldom on all three, and even less often on A,B,C and D. Yet we will fail unless we address all 4.
4. So you get people saying "here's how we can increase yields to ensure there remains enough food for everyone." Yes, but where's the water going to come from? How will you protect the soil? What about #Insectageddon?
5. Then you get other people saying (in fact this theme now dominates discussions): "Look at my regenerative farming model. It's conserving soil and killing less wildlife." Great. But your yields have fallen by 75%. So either someone else must intensify or more land must be used to grow food.
Provided to YouTube by Rhino/ElektraPainting Box (2010 Remaster) · The Incredible String BandThe 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion℗ 1967 Elektra Entert...
The Dovers were an example of mid-1960s folk rock and pop, heavily influenced by the British Invasion and American groups such as The Byrds.They began their ...
Why the fuck can't jeets get their W sounds right? I hear them use that sound all the time, on random words spoken correctly.
I'm serious -- why? Why not learn and pronounce those words correctly, regardless of what those letters sound like elsewhere in the world? The W sound is one of the easiest sounds to mimic.
When a billionaire dubbed the ‘Czech Sphinx’ takes control of Royal Mail—Britain’s storied postal service—it’s both a chance for modernisation and a kind of slow-motion national retreat.
Politico - Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegaly deported by the Trump administration, details his mistreatment in a Salvadoran prison, claiming he suffered “severe beatings,” sleep deprivation, malnutrition and other forms of torture at the hands of his jailers. politico.com/news/2025/07/02/k…
Having agreed to increase their military spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the European states have created a series of problems for themselves.
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2025/07/03/sta…
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Pluralistic: Trump’s not gonna protect workers from forced labor (03 Jul 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Keeping this fact in mind is essential if we are to nurture hope's embers, and fan them into the flames of change. Trumpism is a coalition of people who hate each other, who agree on almost nothing, whose fracture lines are one deft tap away from shattering:
pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fra…
The vast unpopularity of Trumpism presents endless opportunities for breaking off parts of his coalition.
3/
Pluralistic: The true, tactical significance of Project 2025 (14 Jul 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Take noncompete "agreements": contractual clauses that ban workers from taking a job with any of their employers' competitors for *years*. One in 18 Americans has been captured by a noncompete, and the median noncompete victim is a minimum-wage fast-food worker whose small business tyrant boss wants to be sure that she doesn't quit working the register at Wendy's and start making $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at McDonald's.
4/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The story of noncompetes is bullshit from top to bottom. The argument goes, "Your boss invests heavily in training you, and lets you in on all his valuable trade-secrets. When you walk out the door and go to work for a competitor, you're *stealing* all that training and knowledge. Without noncompetes, no boss will invest in the knowledge-intensive industries that are the future of our economy."
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Now, like I said, the *vast* majority of people under noncompetes are working low-waged, menial jobs with little to no training, and no proprietary trade secrets to speak of. Which makes sense: workers with less bargaining power end up signing worse contracts. That's half the case against noncompetes.
Here's the other half: the *most* IP-intensive, profitable, knowledge-based industries in America operate without *any* noncompetes.
6/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
California's state constitution *bans* noncompetes, which means that every worker in Hollywood *and* Silicon Valley is free to quit their job and walk across the street and join a rival.
If Hollywood and tech are examples of industries that "can't attract investment," then we should be shooting for every sector of the American economy to be so starved for capital.
7/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Silicon Valley's origin story is based on the ability of key workers at knowledge-intensive firms to quit their jobs and go to work for a direct competitor: the first Silicon Valley company was Shockley Semiconductors, founded by William Shockley, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing silicon transistors.
7/
Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Shockley literally put the "silicon" in Silicon Valley, but he never shipped a working chip, because he was a deranged, paranoid eugenicist who ran such a dysfunctional company that eight of his top engineers quit to found a rival company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Then two of the "Traitorous Eight" quit the Fairchild to start Intel, and the year after, another Fairchild employee quit to start AMD:
pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/the…
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The Traitorous Eight and the Battle of Germanium Valley – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This never stopped. Woz quit HP and Jobs quit Atari to start Apple and the tradition of extremely well-capitalized companies being founded by key employees who quit market-leading firms to compete with their old bosses continues to this day. There are many things we can say about AI, but *no one* will claim that AI companies - especially not those in California, where noncompetes are banned - have trouble attracting investment.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Half of the leading AI companies were founded by people who couldn't stand working for Sam Altman at Openai and quit to found a competitor. Just last week, Altman flipped out because Mark Zuckerberg poached his key scientists to work on competing products at Meta:
fortune.com/2025/06/28/meta-fo…
Knowledge-intensive industries are provably compatible with a system of free labor where workers can work for anyone they want.
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Meta taps four OpenAI researchers for Superintelligence team
Mark Gurman (Fortune)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
You know who understands this? The lawyers who draw up employment contracts with noncompete clauses in them: the American Bar Association bans noncompetes for lawyers! *Every law firm in America operates without noncompetes!*
Everyone hates noncompetes. They are *bullshit*, and only get worse with time, as the largest companies in America metastasize into sprawling conglomerates, they compete with *everyone*. Who isn't a competitor of Amazon's?
pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its…
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Pluralistic: 02 Feb 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Biden's antitrust enforcers hated noncompetes, too. Former FTC chair Lina Khan held listening tours and solicited comments to hear workers stories about noncompetes, developing a record that she used to create a rule that banned noncompetes nationwide:
pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/cap…
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Pluralistic: Antitrust is a labor issue (25 Apr 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
America's oligarchs weren't happy. They sued to overturn the rule, and got a nationwide injunction (you know, those things that Trump's illegitimate Supreme Court claims are unenforceable) that suspended the FTC rule pending a full hearing.
It's clear that Trump's FTC is going to walk away from this fight and let the rule die. Trumpism is wildly unpopular, and this is no exception.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Americans overwhelmingly support banning noncompetes, but Trump's richest donors are terrified of another Great Resignation and want to keep us indentured to their shitty companies, so Trump's FTC will sell us all out.
But that's not the end of things. As David Dayen writes for *The American Prospect*, states and local governments can pass their own noncompete bans, and they are:
prospect.org/labor/2025-07-02-…
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States Take the Lead on Banning Noncompete Agreements
David Dayen (The American Prospect)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Take NYC mayor-in-waiting Zohran Mamdani: unlike Trump (and the Democratic Party's billionaire wing), Mamdani campaigned by offering to create policies that are *popular*, including a ban on noncompetes. New York City has two distinct groups of workers who are screwed over by noncompetes.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
One of those groups is Wall Street finance bros, who work for some of the most legendarily toxic assholes to ever draw breath, and are overwhelming bound by noncompetes that will all become null and void the day Mamdani dons his sash.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The other group of workers Mamdani will liberate are those at the very bottom of the income distribution, from fast food workers to gig workers to doormen, who are victims of some of the dirtiest noncompete clauses in America, including "bondage fees":
pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bon…
Big cities are filled with workers who are getting screwed by noncompetes and every city government has it in their power to liberate every one of those workers (who are also voters).
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Pluralistic: How workers get trapped by “bondage fees”; Red Team Blues Chapter One, part five (21 Apr 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
States can do even better. There are already four states that ban noncompetes, two of them blood red: California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. Other states place significant restrictions on noncompetes, including Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Nevada bans noncompetes for hourly workers, Idaho only allows them for "key employees"; Louisiana limits noncompetes to two years, and NJ bans noncompetes for domestic workers.
Up and down the country, in states blue and red, noncompetes are unpopular, and banning noncompetes is popular:
ipsos.com/en-us/majority-ameri…
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Oregon just banned noncompetes for doctors and other health workers, as part of a sweeping, bipartisan law that banned the "corporate practice of medicine":
pluralistic.net/2025/06/20/the…
Oregon's in good company: noncompetes are banned in the health sector in 32 states, including Arkansas, Indiana and Colorado.
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Pluralistic: Oregon bans the corporate practice of medicine (20 Jun 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.netCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Lina Khan's FTC developed an irrefutable record about the abusive nature of noncompetes, proving industries can attract capital and field successful companies without them. States have it in their power to step in where Trump has betrayed American workers. This isn't the most efficient way to protect workers - that would be a federal ban on noncompetes - but it will still get the job done, and it will weaken the Trump coalition, which is barely holding together as it is.
eof/
ziggy
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cory Doctorow reshared this.
Lucinek
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •SouprMatt
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •I believe there is a difference between polling and voting.
During a poll (talking to a human being), people pretend to a better version of themselves. You know, the version who isn’t a racist?
When they secretly vote, they let their true feelings out.
So 45’s policies are more popular than a lot of people admit. Of the 77 million who voted for this, how many did NOT see the “Mass Deportation” signs?
I guess we will find out in 2026 how many of the people being polled now are lying.