Sure, and we're trading it for money. If the question is "why would you want to know what your coworkers make", the answer is "so I can leverage that informatio

Sure, and we're trading it for money. If the question is "why would you want to know what your coworkers make", the answer is "so I can leverage that information during negotiation for more compensation". If the question is "why wouldn't you want to optimize for your employers' ROI, considering they take on all of the risk", then I wonder why you suggested it would be absurd to take a 50% paycut.