Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10.

However, depending on who you talk to, workers are not 'exploited' in a loose sense because they can move to another organization that pays the prevailing wage. But the fact remains that the prevailing wage may be below the worker's contribution to organizational productivity at the margin. Thus, my econ professor still taught that exploitation, in a formal sense, occurs whenever wage(worker) < marginal_productivity(worker).

>Not getting a wage equal to your productivity at the margin may be considered exploitation in several schools of microeconomics. If an employee provides value X and receives wages X-10, the amount of exploitation is 10.

And this is, by definition, the competitive wage in neoclassical theory. Suppose there is a group of employers, and a group of employees, and each employee adds value X to any of the employers. Then any employer will want to hire all the workers for themselves, if the prevailing wage is X - 10. So competition ensures that there is no exploitation in that sense.

So while neoclassical theory does allow for "exploitation", it also predicts that it is very unlikely to actually occur.

You seem to be reinterpreting neoclassical theory where "marginal value" is decided according to your accounting rules, rather than the competitive market.

So if an employee produces 0 or negative (as happens in several organizations) but receives wage X, are they exploiting their employer?

Microeconomic models that assume the marginal productivity of a worker can be calculated in advance are drastically at odds with the reality I see, where employers are terrified of a bad hire and even if they get a good hire, they may still end up with zero to show for it because of bad management or simply market conditions.

You could argue that the reason we have corporations at all is to spread the risk of unknowables across many people, so that it becomes bearable and not everyone is exposed to ruin if luck doesn't turn their way.

>Microeconomic models that assume the marginal productivity of a worker can be calculated in advance are drastically at odds with the reality I see

Micro theory is very general, and almost tautological. For example, you can re-interpret "marginal value" to mean "marginal expected value conditional on what the employer knows about you" and then everything you said fits neatly into the usual framework again.

Hence my comment below about the market deciding what a worker's marginal value is. Micro theory makes no claims that the "true economic" (and unobservable) marginal value of a worker is equal to their marginal value measured by some accounting system. Hence why micro theory is to a large extent irrefutable and makes few predictions about the world: if people eat big macs, we assume that increases their utility more than eating kale, and if the market doesn't pay a worker well, we assume that person contributes little marginal value.

Corporations do certainly help spread risk, that just happens to fall slightly outside of the usual micro framework.

You're reinventing a core plank of Marxism, as it happens.

You're assuming that your employer adds no value to your labour.

Maybe that's the case, and maybe it isn't. There's actually no way to know unless you go into competition with them.

Let us know how that goes.