You're listening to the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and I'm here with the Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein.

Here at Hoover, Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow.

He's the Lawrence Attish Professor of Law at NYU,

and he's a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago.

And Richard, I'd like to start by reminding you that you've signed an exclusive

non-compete agreement with me that you may not leave and create another, well let's call

the still libertarian podcast. I'm hoping that we'll stand up in court. I'm such that will stand up in court.

I'm such an honorable citizen and I would never think of leaving somebody who's giving me such an advantageous relationship.

And in fact...

I appreciate that.

Well, and then we have this guy immigrant in the background. I know he's a dubious sort, but we love him too.

Indeed, indeed. Well, so I bring it up Richard because earlier this year, I think it was in January, the FTC proposed banning non-competes in the United States.

And as part of this process, of course, the Federal Trade Commission seeks public comments and you

in fact made a public comment you sent me an article making three points perhaps in favor of keeping

them and I'm hoping we can kind of go through them one by one

and talk about a few more things.

So first, start me off with the historical look

at non-competes in the US and maybe even the the fewer arguments for

for having them in place. Well the actual thing begins in England around 1711 in a case called

Mitchell against Reynolds and it was a case of a former employee trying to go into

direct competition with his current employer. And what happened is they understood very early on that a rule of reason was necessary,

...