Yes. Thinking of yourself as a 10x engineer, you run the risk of seeing everyone else as 0.1x engineers, mere inconvenient ants that you're forced to tolerate. You can see a bit of that in this thread.

Because Union agreements can bind pay to non meritocratic ways such as time spent in the role or when a higher position opens up. Those top players will rise to the top easier in an open market. It's the same with waitstaff in a tip-based system. The bottom half wants fair wages while the top 20% will leave because they know they can earn without those rules in place.

First, that means there is an open, two-sided market and, second, citation needed that that is really the case. Btw., employers can and do also pay based on non-meritocratic KPIs (but depends on your definition of that term).

I'm not a scientist nor am I trying to get into an actual debate on hackernews. I'm just spouting my opinion and feelings on the matter like conversations were done preinternet when someone could just go digging around to find a study to support their argument. Of course employers reward people for loyalty but as someone who has worked in a union environment before, I've felt stifled. I come from a family of tradesmen and unions do wonders to protect the health and future of employees but they are just as corruptible as corporations. They're just corrupt for the people they protect which happens to benefit the union workers most of the time.

I'm just not interested.

I didn't say they would object, just that they aren't incentivized to care about it. It doesn't help the 10xer's bottom line, and the conditions at the "bottom" of tech are some of the best of any profession.

They actually are, unless the 10x engineer thinks good customer service agents, customer deployment engineers, assistants, etc. somehow are not worth having. Usually, the product is way more than just some software engineering piece.