> It's not clear to me what the difference is between what you're saying and what the parent comment says.

The key difference is whether rentism plays a role or not.

It's one thing to claim that no one will pay a mechanic if it's too expensive. It's an entirely different thing to claim that some employers are abusing their position to pressure wages to stay low to maximize their profit margin at the expense of their employees.

There's a good litmus test: is there a massive wave of car shop bankruptcies due to lack of business? Or are car shop owners complaining they can't get enough employees to keep up with demand?

The auto repair business is still pretty fragmented in most areas so as a practical matter employers can't really pressure wages. Mechanics change jobs all the time to get a raise. The industry has a relatively high annual employee turnover rate.

They agree that corporations don't do things that aren't profitable, their implied disagreement is whether this is greedy/bad or merely rational/amoral.

The implied criticism in the original comment is that companies should pay more. They ignore that in a lot of cases it doesn't make structural sense for a role to exist above a given price.