Not that you're incorrect in all cases, but generally speaking, you do get what you pay for. SWEs who are charging $500/hr can charge $500/hr due to significant domain knowledge or overall experience, and as such their opinions and work are _worth_ that amount per hour to the market. SWEs who are charging $9/hr are either selling themselves extremely short, lack experience, or operate in an organization that doesn't allow them to negotiate their rate (in which case they should move to a new organization) and thus most likely generate lower quality results. To imply there's no relationship between the hourly rate and the quality of work is to pretend that there's no underlying reason why certain SWEs can charge premium hourly rates.

If xhe is that good and contracting for $15/hr, then xhe is extremely foolish.

There are great engineers in non-Western countries. It's just that they realise talent is so rare, they can charge more than local rates.