Your first sentence is correct, kinda. There's more involved than that and it's not cut and dried... each situation has unique circumstances.
Everything after that, I disagree...
Again, this isn't new territory for me. If they've signed a non-compete no one is stopping them from making a living in their chosen profession as long as it's not a direct competitor within their company's main territory of business... they just can't do it until the non-compete expires and those rarely last longer than a year. If a sales person feels his product is no longer good enough then his decision to work there was on him, it' isn't on the company who might have been taking a chance on hiring him in the first place.... I was on both sides of the business, sales/management and production/talent and as for talent, they are, in some cases, the product and if they are any good at all they have signed an agreement for a period of time.... it's all written out and they know the consequences of breaking the agreement....
Again, I've been on both sides and to think that outlawing non-competes without a lot of stipulations is ridiculous and short sighted.... But, since we're talking about a decision made by a government agency full of people who have probably never worked in the real business world i'm not surprised.... Soooo....