[esperluette]

It's not that wages would necessarily go up without collusion, it's that the companies would become significantly less productive.

If you can keep your top people from being poached by your peers, you reduce the number of opportunities for them to leave (even if they would leave for much the same salary) and reduce your team churn, increasing productivity.

Increased productivity => MOAR PROFITZ, or so I've been told ...

[steffan]

If the only thing keeping your people from leaving is lack of opportunity, there are many, many things wrong with your organization.

[001sky]

marginal productivity would set the market wage. Reverse negative productivity is absolute value positive increase in productivity. So, yes...wage would go up absent the collusion...because people will pay out the nose to avoid the loss in productivity. This is why all of those CEOs get paid stupid money...because they can destroy value...not just because the "add it".