The answer is given, immediately in the first paragraph: "If the market is all-knowing and all-optimizing, how can this be?" This is an assumption we have abou

The answer is given, immediately in the first paragraph: "If the market is all-knowing and all-optimizing, how can this be?" This is an assumption we have about the world, and it's a true assumption for competitive markets, where new companies/busiensses can freely enter, where barriers to entry are low. But, with software busineses, barriers to entry are extremely high and this results in businesses that are far less competitive on price and thus price of labor. The result is that many many of the biggest software companies are monopolies. Monopolies don't need to be competitive on the price of their labor.