Collusion is bad even for free markets (let alone other economic models), but rather than enter that lengthy argument, I'll point out one thing: they did this in secret.

I'd be somewhat more understanding of your argument, if the companies had publicly declared they were colluding to keep wages down and prevent employee mobility amongst themselves.

How do you figure prospective employees would have reacted to that?

Well were do you draw the line? Do 100% of open jobs have to be affected, 90%, 80%?

Pragmatically, I think Apple and Google are both big enough that collusion between them is going to have an effect on the market, even if no one else is "in on it". Idealistically, I don't like a companies of any size colluding. It seems to undermine principals of the open market.

It seems to me that the issue with this is the potential deception. If you know that two companies have this agreement, and you work for one of them, you will know that trying to switch between them won't get you anything good, so you'll look elsewhere instead. What if these agreements were allowed, but had to be shared with employees? Would such a requirement be legitimate and sufficient?

Unless you can't get a job at those companies, or don't want to work at them, or they also get involved in the collusion. Then you're actively being hurt.

> I understand the argument to be that, with no where else to go, they can lower the salaries of highly-skilled employees. But isn't there always somewhere else to go?

Sure, but let's change the context of the list and see if it makes a difference. Consider the following:

"If {some-company} employees can't go to {another-company}, there's always fast food, gas stations, grocery stores, logging and a sea of startups."

As absurd and bizarrely absolute as this sounds, the notion is the same: there's a list of alternatives that is deemed acceptable by parties other than you, the employed.

Still interested in letting others determine the available sources of your livelihood?

I agree. If natural persons can form collectives, guilds, and unions why can't corporate persons do the same? This is, of course, assuming that there is no special grant or license issued by the government to engage in that form of work.

I don't believe corporate persons should have the same rights as natural persons and I'm not alone in that belief.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...

1. This has nothing to do with the decision in Citizens United. This is about anti-trust regulation, which regulates collusive behavior, not speech. Any speech incidental to such a conspiracy (whether to rob a bank or fix wages in a labor market) is not protected anyway, whether it's an individual or a corporation speaking.

2. Please don't misrepresent the decision in Citizens United to make it stand for something which it does not. The holding in Citizens United was not that corporations == natural persons or that corporations have the same rights as natural persons. The holding was that that natural persons don't lose their rights to free speech (paid for with their own funds) because they join together into legal associations. Similar to how natural persons don't lose their 4th amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure or their 5th amendment protections against the government seizing their property when they form such associations.

Basically, they can't do that because it would undermine the market. The entire point of the market is to allocate resources effectively; if its rules allow multiple players to collude in an effort to change the results, it stops being effective.

So if a price of something is higher than what you want, you have to just live with it and can't form group with your friend to only buy from places that sell product at cheaper price?

Huh? I think you have things misunderstood. These executives are intentionally driving down the value of their employees and restricting their opportunities in what should be a free market. These are not products we're talking about, they're people..