[dan-f]

> Your compensation isn't determined by nobility or a sense of equity.

> It's determined by the difficulty of the job.

I strongly disagree. Example: working in a sweatshop is infinitely more difficult than being a software engineer and pays infinitely less.

Your compensation is determined by a big set of factors that I'm sure a sociologist could spell out for us all. I argue that the difficulty of the job is in fact not nearly as important as other factors like race/ethnicity, gender, mental health, etc.

> When a market doesn't reflect that, it is horribly broken and will be horribly abused by the participants.

Eh... I'm not sure such a market exists.

[adrianN]

I think with "difficult" he didn't mean how physically taxing it is, but how hard it is to find people who can do it. Almost anybody can to the work in a sweat shop after a couple of days (weeks?) of training. Becoming a programmer is not something everybody can do and even for those who can it takes years of study before they are competitive on the job market.

[xorcist]

That's not the complete truth either. Where I live there has been a nurse shortage for a long time, but they're not paid better anyway.

Before you say education, some specialist nurses have almost as much education as doctors. They don't receive close to the same pay.

Most of the answer is cultural expectations.

[icelancer]

Big difference between the following two scenarios:

Simple, not easy (sweatshop) Difficult, not hard (programming)

[tonyedgecombe]

I'm not sure about that, any software engineer could work in a sweatshop, the reverse isn't true.