And value to what? As an ex-physicist I can confidently say that doing that was substantially harder than the ML I do now. But I also think that what I did provided more value to society as a whole. Just my opinion though. But it doesn't pay well (<$100k/yr) and I'm not surprised I saw a mass exodus of people trying to get more money with their math skills (mostly in DS and CS). If pay was correlated strongly to difficulty mathematicians and physicists would be paid much more than Hollywood actors. But for some reason these conversations always revolve around the (barely a) millionaire class and never include the billionaire class. It feels surreal in that it looks like we're fighting for crumbs and arguing who deserves it more.
That is the only way I know to put a price on something, and this is clearly not a reliable process (see all the scams) but is there anything better?
The problem with market value is that it downplays the needs of the poor, and is sensitive to all kinds of regulation (intuitively, if regulation makes the same thing more expensive, it doesn't make it more valuable).
The problem with use value, as defined by Marx, is that it ignores the differences between individuals, and technically the needs of individuals at all. It simply means "what the one who controls the society considers valuable". (If you think this is a strawman, just read the Wikipedia article carefully.) Of course, it is assumed that the one who controls the society is omniscient and can determine the value correctly, but that's just answering the question by passing the buck to a hypothetical omniscient entity. (And if you look at actual communist societies, it turns out, perhaps surprisingly to many, that the ones who control them are neither omniscient nor benevolent.)
What seems to work best, so far, is a hybrid system where:
* the value of million little things (often not useful per se, but as a raw material for something else) is determined by the market;
* some form of social security ensures that anyone's needs have a non-zero weight;
* the "socially useful but not market profitable" projects are paid for by taxes and charities.
In other words, the "use value" can be implemented on top of "market value" by financing things by taxes and charities. In the opposite direction, the "market value" can also be implemented on top of "use value" by trading the government-assigned things on black market; the only problem is that this is typically considered illegal. The fact that both things occur naturally in different kinds of societies suggests that both are necessary. (And the proposal of "free market with unconditional basic income" is how they could exist side by side without having to implement one of them as a hack on top of the other. The last component you need is some kind of Kickstarter.)
There certainly is a shortage, or salaries would be lower. Anecdotally, at least 90% of the people I talk to say something along the lines of “ooh I could never do that” when they learn what I do for a living. Most people seem scared of coding, and I’m not entirely sure why.
Sounds backwards. A shortage is a situation where price is unable to rise. If there is a shortage, salaries should be higher than they are.
Price gouging laws are a good example of where shortages can occur. We experienced a shortage of toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic because the law (in many jurisdictions) prevented vendors from charging the fair market value. If vendors were legally able to sell them for $1,000 a roll, the market would have been easily satisfied as the average person unable to pay $1,000 a roll would have bowed out of the market, leaving just the right amount for those who still were willing to pay up. Instead, because of the law toilet paper remained as affordable as it ever was, so it became a race to see who could get it first instead of letting a higher price scare some people away.
Within the scope of labor, healthcare can be prone to shortages as governments have been known to impose price ceilings on practitioners to try and make healthcare more accessible to all, so that the rich don't buy up all the doctors' time with a better offer, leaving no service available to the poor. This is quite uncommon generally, though, and not something I've ever seen within the software industry. We're quite happy to let Google outbid Mom and Pop's Used Book Emporium for developers.
It's very time consuming, requires you to think in logic and the work is relatively solitary. It's a nightmare job for a lot of people.
This.
Something being difficult to achieve does not make it valuable.
In practice, this is often the opposite. The most difficult jobs are also the less productive/less well paid.
The ability to write code is the closest thing we ever had to magic. There are many levels of mastery, but it is undeniably powerful.
The strange thing is that not everyone seems to enjoy acquiring the skills needed for programming.