>>First of all a rational actor will not intentionally pay a worker the value of their production; you get no profit. The value of their production is NOT the

>>First of all a rational actor will not intentionally pay a worker the value of their production; you get no profit. The value of their production is NOT the value of the production of the enterprise in which their production is employed. Take a worker, whose work is worth $5 an hour according to market forces. Employing him to operate a $40,000 bakery, which generates $40 an hour in operating profits sans labor costs, does not mean the worker's labor is suddenly worth $40 an hour. You can 100% pay workers what their labor is worth, and make a profit, and believing otherwise is a layman's understanding of the factors of production and the definition of value, and exactly the fallacy that underpinned Marx's quackery. I see so many of these comments in Hackernews, which misunderstand basic economics, endeavor to expose some Big Lie allegedly being promoted by Economics/capitalists, and seek to defend some allegedly exploited underdog who needs laws limiting private-property/contract rights to be protected from said exploitation. Also, there is no indication of information asymmetry playing any role in contract negotiations. Signals like market prices are an emergent phenomenon that are easily accessible to all prices. They are easily accessible because well-resourced parties are incentivized to carry out actions that make them accessible, like a firm advertising a job opening and the pay offered as widely as possible, to maximize the number of potential applicants that see it.