[ejnulls]

Yes, I've been thinking a lot about value the last few months and this is similar to the conclusion I reached. No one is paid based on the value of their output because it is nigh impossible to actually determine for most people!

So we use a proxy for value that is much more closely tied to an employee's leverage in the market place. Does your profession have a government granted monopoly (law/medicine)? Certification to entry? Are you a better negotiator? Do you have another higher job offer? Do you have personal relationships with a business's customers (sales)? All of these things are correlated with increased leverage and thus increased compensation.

Output is largely not. It may set a ceiling for compensation, but it is not as related to compensation as a persons' leverage.

And it follows that people with high amounts of leverage and comparatively low amounts of output will be "screwed" by salary transparency. They will have to justify why their leverage is worth more than someone else's output and that will make them unhappy.