Good editorial in the Globe this week by Greg Bialecki, my former boss at the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.   In my view, resistance to change - deeply rooted in Boston's culture - poses the biggest threat to our economic competitiveness.     

"Recent efforts to reform our laws and regulations in the diverse areas of liquor licensing, ride-hailing, noncompetition agreements, and local zoning have all been bogged down by the same opponent: the desire to preserve and protect the status quo and those who benefit from it.  We should certainly consider the consequences of disruptive change and how to help those affected by it, but that cannot be the driving force of our public policy decisions."

Very good article by Conor Dougherty in Sunday's NY Times about the proliferation of non-compete agreements.   Every year or so an article like this piques national attention, but the conversation usually peters out before meaningful change is implemented at the state level.   

I put an enormous amount of effort into reforming our laws on non-competes while working for the Patrick Administration.  Aside from being anticompetitive and patently unfair, they stifle entrepreneurship, drag down wages, and provide yet another reason for tech-minded graduates from our world class universities to flee to Silicon Valley (where non-competes are unenforceable under California law).  Workers are often presented with these agreements under unfair circumstances,  sometimes after they have accepted a position and given notice to a prior employer.  Most disturbingly, employers are increasingly demanding that low-wage workers sign non-competes.  With the Patrick Administration, I gathered testimony from a part-time pet groomer and a teenage camp counselor, both of whom signed non-competes and were subsequently threatened by former employers after taking other positions.   

Employers have ample tools at their disposal to prevent former workers from misappropriating what's rightfully theirs.  That's why we have nondisclosure agreements.  That's why we have trade secret, copyright and patent laws.  That's also why non-solicitation agreements and anti-poaching agreements are perfectly legitimate and enforceable. 

But if employers want to prevent former employees from working, the solution is simple: Pay them for the time they're stuck on the sidelines.  And provide employees fair and reasonable opportunity to review and understand what they're committing to.

The Dell-EMCs of the world would like us to believe that the sky will fall if we significantly reform our laws on non-competes.  But guess what: Silicon Valley is home to the most vibrant tech ecosystem on earth, and a non-compete there isn't worth the paper it's printed on.  

The Massachusetts legislature keeps failing us on this. 

Excellent article by Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine about the ideology of modern reactionism as the driving force beneath Trumpism and the perils of ignoring it:

"You can almost feel the g-force today.  What are this generation’s reactionaries reacting to?  They’re reacting, as they have always done, to modernity.  But their current reaction is proportional to the bewildering pace of change in the world today.  They are responding, at some deep, visceral level, to the sense that they are no longer in control of their own lives.  They see the relentless tides of globalization, free trade, multiculturalism, and mass immigration eroding their sense of national identity.  They believe that the profound shifts in the global economy reward highly educated, multicultural enclaves and punish more racially and culturally homogeneous working-class populations.  And they rebel against the entrenched power of elites who, in their view, reflexively sustain all of the above.

I know why many want to dismiss all of this as mere hate, as some of it certainly is.  I also recognize that engaging with the ideas of this movement is a tricky exercise in our current political climate.  Among many liberals, there is an understandable impulse to raise the drawbridge, to deny certain ideas access to respectable conversation, to prevent certain concepts from being “normalized.”  But the normalization has already occurred — thanks, largely, to voters across the West — and willfully blinding ourselves to the most potent political movement of the moment will not make it go away."

The Walk for Hunger took over the streets of Boston today, as it does this time every year.  Hats off to people raising money for good causes (and getting some exercise to boot), but every time a charity walk takes over the neighborhood I find myself agreeing with Ted Gup's NY Times op-ed about the weirdness of it all.