Well, if a company both: 1) didn't negotiate wage offers; but 2) offered wages lower than people were willing to accept... they would end up with not enough emp

Well, if a company both: 1) didn't negotiate wage offers; but 2) offered wages lower than people were willing to accept... they would end up with not enough employees. So it's not like they could just offer whatever they wanted. I'm not sure it will work, but it seems to be the wage-side proposal of what e.g. Saturn is trying to do with cars: just say, look, this is our price, take it or leave it. Rather than the traditional car (and salary) pricing model where the real price you're willing to agree to is hidden, and arrived at via a negotiation process. That often results in whoever's better at negotiating getting the better deal. Now if it's a negotiating job that might even be a good thing, because the better negotiators are more valuable to you. Or if it's a job where the skill you're looking for correlates highly with being good at negotiating. But if that's not the case, just making the final offer of what you're willing to pay up front, rather than starting lower and negotiating upwards, could be better idea. Then rather than negotiating per-candidate, you just adjust your offer policy until it's high enough to get the kind of candidates you want.