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Comment by lr | Hacker News Reader

250,000 people (includes student employees) at the university of California can just go online and look up their co-worker’s salary, for the past 10 years! Yet, it doesn’t cause problems. In fact, salaries are public for all government workers in California (UC just makes it very easy to look someone up). The entire country of Finland posts all salaries of the entire population online!

The angst over these laws is, IMO, blown way out of proportion. The only thing I can think is the real underlying issue is that there must be massive pay disparities in some industries…

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The definition of free market is that information is avaliable.

I dont understand how people that declare they believe in free market, want information to be hidden and the market to be less free.

Additionally most of them are employees.

It should be obvious that freely knowing salaries will improve the employee's ability to negotiate the wage they deserve.

> It should be obvious that freely knowing salaries will improve the employee's ability to negotiate the wage they deserve.

I would argue that for high performers, it could become an excuse not to pay more. "Sorry, we know you did XYZ, but we can't give you a further raise because you're already 4% ahead of your colleagues." And of course, everyone thinks they're a high-performer, so this policy would be unpopular with actual high-performers + the people that think they are (but aren't, and wouldn't be affected anyway).

Why presume that high performers are already paid well? Why wouldn't high performers be just as ignorant of salaries?

> I would argue that for high performers, it could become an excuse not to pay more.

This is already used as an excuse, except that right now you can't easily check whether that's even true, so I think transparency would actually be better. If you're a high performer, switch to a company where you feel rewarded suitably, which is easier to do with transparency.

> everyone thinks they're a high-performer

That's again a problem with less information: nobody really knows so they just assume.

But then you can just look up a company that does pay their high performers more, and apply there. And if that happens often enough employers have to consider if paying top talent more money isn't a worthwhile strategy after all (maybe they decide it isn't, but employees will be free to react appropriately)

>The definition of free market is that information is avaliable.

[citation needed]

Do I also need to provide proof you that free market presumes no fraud, and no murders of competitors?

Not the person you are replying to, but I agree with him/her. The definition of a free market has to do with it being free from regulation, not that information is free [0][1][2].

The same thing applies to the claims you made in this post, but maybe you mean that all of these things have to be true for a free market to work well, rather than for it to exist? Again, I still think this requires proof, especially with regards to information having to be free.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

[2] I'm just an armchair economist though, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

so let me make sure I understand this -

Youu believe that a Free Market can exist when buyers don't have access to information and amidst is rampant fraud and violence?

And you expect this to function and not decend into anarchy? Do I understand correctly that Somalia is the perfect free market?

First, just to make sure we are on the same page, I am not some kind of free market radical, and I was not arguing for free markets, only arguing the definition.

> Youu believe that a Free Market can exist when buyers don't have access to information and amidst is rampant fraud and violence?

Existence? Sure. The only thing I was pointing at here is your very non-standard definition of a free market.

For the fraud and violence, your original statement was "no fraud", not "rampant fraud". I think you would agree that there are very few markets without any fraud, no? Such a strong claim definitely requires proof.

To get back to your original claim about free information, I think some amount of regulation would be required for information to be freely availble. Otherwise, why should someone give away their competitive edge (ie. the information), without any gain? Would be interesting to hear you take on that.

Knowing what other people with the same title at current, and similar, employers will definitely improve people’s ability to negotiate. But that’s not the real information employees need. What is really secret is the true value of the labor the employee is producing to the company.

Imagine salaries are completely public. A team of co-workers finds out that they are all being paid $200k each, and are happy with that. But if they only knew that their labor generates $2 million in profits for the company, each. They should be getting paid something like $1.8 or $1.9 million per person. The execs are ripping them off big time.

Let's say at your software company a sales rep brings in $2M in 2022 and demands a $1.8M commission. What do you say?

You literally described what capitalism is all about: extracting the most value out of what you pay for the labour...

> A team of co-workers finds out that they are all being paid $200k each, and are happy with that. But if they only knew that their labor generates $2 million in profits for the company, each. They should be getting paid something like $1.8 or $1.9 million per person. The execs are ripping them off big time.

That is not how pricing works. How much of your budget is spent on food? How much profit does food generate in your life?

Supply and demand curves. If the team or coworkers thinks they can make more than $200k each without their employer, they are free to start their own business and pay themselves $1.9M each.

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