alt Hacker NewsHow often is "You should pay me much more, it will make both of us wealthier" a winning argument when asking for a raise?
Trade very much is zero sum, at least some of the time. Prices are set by power disparities, not by abstract concepts of relative value.
One of the many problems with mainstream econ is that gloms together a whole set of unrelated interactions in a single crude concept of "price."
In reality share dealing, corporate wage bargaining, negotiations between farmers and supermarket chains, lemonade stands, and tourists haggling with craft vendors on vacation are all completely different kinds of interactions.
They end up with a price because they're mediated in currency, but their differences are far more interesting and economically revealing than their very superficial similarities.
Prices are set by supply and demand, which you may choose to label as "power" as a matter of a priori definition, and to some extent that will be a suitable label, but you would be throwing a way a whole deal of explanatory power by insisting on such a rhetorically loaded framing.
> How often is "You should pay me much more, it will make both of us wealthier" a winning argument when asking for a raise?
A great deal. If you don't pay me, I will quit, and you will be worse off, so it's a win-win proposition for you to give me a raise. That's what labor market competition is about.
> They end up with a price because they're mediated in currency, but their differences are far more interesting and economically revealing than their very superficial similarities.
Hence microeconomics, labor economics, financial economics, and the various other mainstream economics disciplines that do try to split those hairs.