Where did I say this, or even imply it?
> In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover. That's fundamentally not compatible with your original hypothesis.
I mean, if I made that claim, I'd agree with you, but I'm currently quite lost as to how that conclusion was reached. I said and implied nothing about minimizing salaries.
So you implied that disclosing salaries cuts into profits, which I took to mean that you're seeing an inverse first-order relationship between salaries and profits.
> "Reducing surface area for conflict" is one of many steps on the way to the goal for profit, and if cutting out Colorado is less painful to profits than disclosing salaries and opening up that conflict surface, then that's naturally what will happen.
> In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover.
Profit is a function with lots and lots of parameters. Who are you to say which parameter has the highest weight? How about market share? How about profit margins? How about illegal deals with public funding? How about marketing? How about creating addictions? How about being niche? How about having excellent customer support? How about having better quality?
Lots of companies make significant profit from a legacy project that's almost impossible to improve, but marketing still finds clients that want it. They don't need a team full of high achievers with very low turnover.
When trying to build an argument from first principles, it's important not to make a mistake early on. In your case, you use the profit seeking as an argument that this automatically leads to minimizing everyone's salaries.
In reality, profit gets maximized when you have a team full of high achievers and with very low turnover. That's fundamentally not compatible with your original hypothesis.