Can anyone here argue why any state should allow noncompete clauses? It seems like something that solely helps business owners and nobody else.
The burden of proof is on "why should a state ban noncompete clauses". As another commenter noted, the default should be to permit voluntary agreements between parties.
There are certainly good arguments for why states should ban them. But that is the position that requires an argument.
Government protections for wages, liability, and safety don't need additional argument. No need to construct a logical through-line against someone presenting a specious "trickle down economics" assertion. The imbalance in power is already recognized. I don't know who would believe that this decision was anything but corrupt.
Basically, if you have a zero sum game with two companies and one has better IP than the other, it makes sense for the time span through which the company without can't reverse engineer it. In every other case it means the groups of companies under the umbrella of non-competes will slowly loose to groups of companies in jurisdictions without non-competes.
To expand on that, if you objectively have some special sauce that you don't want leaked to your competition then it's a net gain for you and a loss for the rest of X industry (where X is finance because they're the ones who want this, not tech). In reality though, it's extremely rare to have sole control over an incredibly strong piece of IP that defines a market. In reality, everyone thinks they do because they don't know what anyone else has. Everyone has something that gives them an edge, hence being competitive in the market, but sharing those secrets within their local area can make the whole industry way more performant.
The law applies to everyone so if you can't have non-competes, neither can your competition. At a local level it will make groups of companies much stronger than their more distant competitors because they can share knowledge under the table at a much higher rate.
For example, let's say I'm Bob the baker and I own Bob's Bakery. I sell my bakery to Steve. If I were to then open "Bob's New Bakery" across the street I would have sold Steve a crappy barrel of goods. You can see this in a lot of small service-based business too. So you'll have a non-compete that says you can't open an X within Y miles or Z months.
It's a useful construct for some cases.
Ask anyone bemoaning a non-compete why they signed it. They didn't have to! The answer is always: "I wouldn't have gotten the job without it." Exactly. The job would have still been filled. No company is going to not hire a needed worker just because nobody will sign a non-compete. But the company would have hired an otherwise better candidate instead.
In other words, the person who signed the non-compete gets to screw over other workers now just by giving up a small chance of not being able to do a certain job for some duration in the future. That's a pretty good value proposition.
Can you not see the huge power imbalance at play? It's not like other employers in my area aren't also requiring them. So my choice was sign it, or lose my current job, not qualify for unemployment, and I'd have to hunt for a new job but not likely one without a noncompete and likely not without moving.
Don't act like "it's a choice" in our industry because the only companies not pushing them are companies in the few states that have outlawed them.
We are in a company store situation "you don't have to work for that coal mine, you could go to the next town over and work for a different coal mine that has the exact same city setup"
The acquirer was later one of the big opponents of legislation that would eventually somewhat limit non-competes in Massachusetts.
Trademark laws seem to be useful. Laws against theft seem to be generally nice. Laws against selling company secrets. Contract laws.
The state may have concern if that mutual benefit is harmful to the rest of society. A medical doctor, for example, agreeing to not compete could see him no longer able to provide medical services, which could see a third-party to not receive the care they need. As such, the state may find a need to interject to protect the society (i.e. third-parties in need of medical care) it represents.