[gjulianm]

I know that's not how the free market works now, precisely I'm arguing for changing that.

> In an efficient market your theoretical business would be driven into bankruptcy or bought out by the competition that is properly allocating capital.

And as a good theoretical exercise it's pretty useless. In reality most of the markets are not efficient, changing salaries is not 'free' (i.e., employees work differently depending on how you treat them, and replacing unhappy employees has a cost), and there's more to companies and employees than pure economics.

> Also the ceo answers to the shareholders who hired him with the job of maximizing returns

This is what I am criticising, the 'maximize returns over everything' philosophy. Any company already has a lot of power over any employee, and they abuse that position to the point of cheating people out of their fair share of what they produce just because they live in a different place. And in this case we're talking about a relatively benign situation, but the same philosophy pushes companies to lower wages below a living level, condemning people to poverty so that the company "maximizes profits".