> If people freely trade something, in an ideal, spherical cow way, then they should both be better off afterwards. Therefore the trade (including trading labor

> If people freely trade something, in an ideal, spherical cow way, then they should both be better off afterwards. Therefore the trade (including trading labor as well as goods) creates value. I think this was called "surplus" value. What you're describing is basically the "Subjective theory of value"[1]. > Therefore if one side of the transaction has superior knowledge of what price the other side will accept, then in theory they could get up to 99.99...% of the surplus value, as long as the other party "rationally" will be motivated by the remaining 0.00...1%. Interestingly people don't really act like that[2]. > A purely rational actor with no secrets is easily manipulated. Probably. Good thing that, in this case, the most important information like competing offers tends to be secret. Or at least strategically revealed. --- 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimatum_game