I'm not following. Being able to work for more companies is pretty clearly a greater "freedom" than not being able to work for some of them. Your idea that the ability to contract away that right is somehow itself a "freedom" sounds awfully orwellian, no? The freedom to choose not to be free? Please.
And I don't follow your game theory point at all. This decision was about one particular kind of contract in the multiverse of possibilities. It certainly didn't throw out our "right to be sued" (again, Pravda much?) for breach of contract generically.
Okay, how about a simpler example: if California announced that, from now on, all restaurants must allow all patrons to smoke, would we be a) more free, because if we smoke we can smoke in any restaurant, or b) less free, because we can no longer elect to eat in a smoke-free restaurant, decide whether or not to allow smoking in our own restaurant, compare the benefits of a smoke-free or smokable restaurant, etc.?
When you no longer have the right to make an agreement, you are not more free just because that agreement restricts your freedom. A state could ban loans (you're more free -- you never have to pay interest again!) or marriages (screw this "'til death do us part" shit) or promises of any kind. You would be free of the obligation entailed by the promise, but you would no longer be free to trade restrictions for benefits.
It's profoundly misguided to say that being free means never being free to limit your future actions. This is a lot more clear when you study game theory -- people who can restrict their future actions have far more bargaining power. People who can't restrict their actions are, to that extent, unable to make promises.
Anyway, this should be a moot point: if you think noncompetes are a bad idea for you, you can turn them down. For someone who thinks noncompetes might be okay (e.g. a company can only afford to hire a new researcher if they know they can restrict this researcher from handing off ideas to a competitor), this ruling only restricts their freedom. Irrelevant to you, bad for other people -- how could you possibly desire this?
Smoking is restricted because it is a public health hazard, for the same reason we regulate the emission of toxins from other sources like industry or agriculture. So yes, there is a restriction in "freedom" in that case. But it's done for a clear, transparent and very compelling reason. (c.f. "no first amendment right to shoud 'fire' in a crowded theater", yada yada yada).
What is the public health interest in restricting employer choice?
It was a simpler example, for which there isn't a one-to-one mapping with the actual case. The point of the example was that when you turn a choice into an obligation, you don't get more freedom, even if the obligation is to do something that, on average, maximizes freedom.
We can try another example. Let's say you own a nice sound system. You want to move into a nice new apartment, where they like things quiet after 10 PM. If the manager is able to ask you to agree not to use your sound system after 10 PM, are you a) less free, because you are able to give up a particular freedom, or b) more free, because you can agree to abide by a set of rules in order to get something you want? I think it's clearly b), and I'd even question whether or not you 'own' a sound system if you are unable to agree to turn it off sometimes.
You seem to be making an absolutist argument about freedom here, but that's missing the point.
In your example: the answer is that the 10pm rule is a good thing if it means people have a choice of whether to live with late-night noise or not, and a bad thing if it means that no one does (because all available apartments have the rule, or don't). The proper balance of "freedom" (understood in the colloquial sense of being able to do what you want most of the time) depends on the state of the market, and has absolutely nothing to do with an abstract idea of "Freedom" that must be maximized in all cases.
In the linked article, the court found that in practice (because essentially all employers use these non-compete clauses) collective freedom would be better served by eliminating them. It's the equivalent of all the landlords in a city enforcing a 10pm noise rule, and it sucks.
It's the equivalent of all the landlords in a city enforcing a 10pm noise rule, and it sucks.
This seems like a fairly obvious flaw in your argument -- if noncompetes are such a bad idea, why are they so common? I'm not saying that their ubiquity makes them a good idea. I'm asking why nobody has gotten around to starting a company that avoids using them, and then gotten lots of great developers who work for less money because their freedom is maximized. If I found out that every landlord in my city enforced that rule, I would work hundred-hour weeks raising the money to buy an apartment that didn't enforce the rule, knowing I could charge a huge premium and get lots of residents.
As I've said in other contexts, most complaints about a purely capitalist system can be boiled down to a business plan -- and if nobody has done it, and you won't do it, what does that say about your complaint?
And I don't follow your game theory point at all. This decision was about one particular kind of contract in the multiverse of possibilities. It certainly didn't throw out our "right to be sued" (again, Pravda much?) for breach of contract generically.