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Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

And it makes it plain to see that we need collective action. All the people who say "I bring a ton of value to a company and therefore can negotiate to capture that value" are fooling themselves, because no company willingly pays people based on the value they provide.

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Huh? I don't see how the need for collective action follows?

Why would I or should I sabotage a trend that spreads wealth to poorer parts of the world?

> ..., because no company willingly pays people based on the value they provide.

That's what competition is for.

The rest of the world does not necessarily have decent labor laws. What if you end up cheering on a terrible employment standard & reward anti-worker countries and economies?

Letting people in less fortunate countries work for foreign multinationals would give them more alternatives.

Compare also https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/

Salary is a function of supply and demand. By expanding to Poland, the supply of labor increases, so overall SWE compensation goes down. Collective bargaining can only work by artificially constraining the supply of labor such as preventing a Polish SWE from having the ability to undercut an American SWE's salary, which disincentivizes hiring in Poland.

Sort-of. But programmers tend to create more work for programmers.

Because if you live in a richer part (=higher costs), you'll lose a job, lose your house and end up on the street, because you'll be replaced by someone from middleofnowhere.

Yet pay is not based on COL. Google pays people in London less than they pay people working remotely in Montana.

You get the best of both worlds. Google made like $200,000 in profit per FTE in 2021.

And no person pays their grocery store based on the “value” they provide.

People sell things for the highest price they can get paid, and people buy things for the lowest price they can pay. The buyer and seller agreeing on a number is the only factor in determining which price a transaction clears at.

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