If you were right, everyone would be working for minimum wage.

But they aren't. Only 1.5% work for minimum wage.

Let's look at the top 0.1%. An Amazon Senior SWE makes 1% and minimum wage in CA is 0.1% of the $35,000,000 per year that someone in the top 0.01% makes.

1/100 and 1/1000 is different, but the difference isn't that big.

Your overall point didn't make any sense though. "Lots of people don't earn minimum wage" doesn't mean that there isn't any power balance.

A senior engineer can be worth a lot more than $35M. Even just shaving 1% off the time that the server software consumes are worth many millions of dollars to the server company. The server companies compete for those people, so they get paid lots of money.

There is no power imbalance. If a worker produces a lot more value than he costs, he simply goes to another company that bids higher for him.

I'm sure just on this thread you'll find a ton of engineers who have saved their company millions of dollars, but they're still paid the generic wage everyone else is.

I’m not claiming market forces don’t exist. I’m just stating that earning wages is a completely different mindset than “some profit” vs “some more profit”.

People who don’t work for minimum wage are still facing the same basic constraint.