I'd also like to disagree with Piketty here. It is very difficult to give a precise estimate of the value of Tim Cook's contribution to Apple, or indeed what i

I'd also like to disagree with Piketty here. It is very difficult to give a precise estimate of the value of Tim Cook's contribution to Apple, or indeed what it might be at any other firm. Competitive markets do not need (and often must not) rely on comprehensive estimate analysis pricing to determine the value of something to the parties making the exchange. This is why they were much more successful than totalitarian central planning: central planners found themselves forced to try costing out all prices in terms of their complete component parts and recursing ad nauseam, rapidly running into limited knowledge issues. Instead, I find the more Hayekian analysis of prices emerging through human behaviour on voluntary transactions much more compelling. While Piketty is right to mention that the market is embodied in specific institutions and that no market exists in pure isolation from institutional dynamics, these different institutions do exert competitive pressure on one another.