I think that's a bit cynical. There is the very reasonable idea that your compensation should reflect your skills, abilities, and worth to the company, rather than how good you are at negotiation.
I'm not sure if there's any reasonable way to remedy that problem though.
Your worth to the company is reflective of your worth to the market.
The company doesn't want to admit that at first but you are already aware.
This is where negotiation comes into play, and negotiating something higher than what your peers in the company perceive, while remaining in line with reality. Best case is that you move the "average salary" for that position upwards a notch.
> Your worth to the company is reflective of your worth to the market.
Not necessarily. You could certainly be worth less or more to your company than what you're worth on the open market. If it's the former, you probably need a new job.
Assertiveness isn't some superpower that only extroverts have. You can't expect things to happen for you, you need to stand up for yourself and explain why you're worth more to your company than they are paying you.
It's also a skill that is not directly proportional to your value in a company. Effectively, this just moves the problem of compensating fairly somewhere else, without actually solving it.
> Higher pay for those with higher influence and negotiation skills
being portrayed as a negative seems like a main goal was to make it harder for people to negotiate higher salaries.