If the going wage of an employee with some skill is X and you decide to pay some arbitrary amount above X, how do you fill your ranks? What's a fair system? You

If the going wage of an employee with some skill is X and you decide to pay some arbitrary amount above X, how do you fill your ranks? What's a fair system? You have 10 equally qualified people going for 1 job. One way is to make decisions based on non-economical conditions, such as attractiveness or familial connection. Another way is lottery, which I admit is more fair, but it's still not fair to those that are willing to do the job for a lower wage than someone who got the job. It's okay to compete for a job by promising to work harder, but somehow negotiating a lower salary is unacceptable? And the other big problem with paying above market wages is that it often introduces a middle man. Since you're swamped with applications, you hire a firm to sort everything out. The firm takes a cut as well and normally ends up bringing down the employees wage to the market wage. On the extreme, if the job is so lucrative, the middle man requires payment or a portion perpetual of the salary for the job placement. This happens in cruise lines: > Long hours and subsistence wages are part of their contracts, as is the threat of being fired without notice or cause. Yet people from some of the world's poorest nations are so eager for work that some pay middlemen the equivalent of a month's wages to get these jobs, a fee that violates international law. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/24/us/sovereign-islands-special-report-for-cruise-ships-workers-much-toil-little.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/24/us/sovereign-islands-spec...