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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.




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