"People [...] are paid how much they accept to work for." But ...
In an ideal market economy, everybody might be paid the amount they are willing to work for and that would accurately reflect the value of their work. E.g., if creating an office suite would be extraordinarily valuable, lots of skilled people would start programming until the competition would drive down the price.
In the real world, companies go to great length to extract 'rent', i.e., collect money based on locking the customer into a system without choice. You pay rent for your apartment because you need a place to live. You pay rent for MS office, because you need it to read/write/edit documents that your employer (or others) request in the MS format. You pay 30% extra for your iphone apps because two big companies locked down the market with proprietary phone operating systems. You pay extra money to lawyers, doctors, and other professional groups that protect their status via licensing / accreditation procedures. You pay rent to many companies and people that create an artificial scarcity and make you pay for the scarce resource. Prime company example was Enron, but most modern companies try do the same thing if they get the chance. And the same mechanism is at work, when board members decide that only a member of their exclusive circle can possibly steer the company (as opposed to, e.g., pulling up a talented engineer from their company).
So your salary, even if you are forced to accept it, doesn't really reflect your fair value. The person cleaning the toilets at HP is surely smart enough to run HP into the ground -- but is payed a tiny fraction of the CEO's salary. And don't tell me that more people are willing to clean toilets instead of flying the corporate jet around the world. So your income reflects a complex environment where some manage to extract rent and others pay extra.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
