Indeed. Oxygen is very valuable too, but it should not be expensive for this reason alone. It's abundant, and therefore cheap, and that's a good thing. Similar

Indeed. Oxygen is very valuable too, but it should not be expensive for this reason alone. It's abundant, and therefore cheap, and that's a good thing. Similarly, hypothetically speaking, perhaps teachers are the most valuable profession to society, but if there's plenty of people willing to become a teacher, and plenty capable, there's no reason to reward these people with vast extra sums of money for the sake of their value. Such a system would lead to extreme inefficient allocations of resources, an oversupply of teachers. Yes, if teachers are valuable and you can't find people willing or capable to do the job, then by all means, raise their pay. That's the reason I think many teachers deserve more pay. Not because they're intrinsically valuable.