All I'm saying that given the job fluidity within the tech industry as a whole, it is unlikely that individuals are going to allow themselves to be compensated at rates very much less than the value they provide. Having the government force employers and employees to account for their work on an hourly basis, so that their labor is not "stolen," is a restriction on their respective individual freedom. So the other side to the parents argument is that maybe the tech industry as a whole is not deluded, maybe it just wants this freedom.
The industry is not necessarily fluid [1] and more importantly any intra-industry fluidity there might be is irrelevant in the context of an entire industry demonstrating the issue you mean to avoid.
>'So the other side to the parents argument is that maybe the tech industry as a whole is not deluded, maybe it just wants this freedom.'
I'd hardly call that 'the other side'. A possibility, sure and if you personally feel that way, fine.
To suggest that the industry as a whole would or does consciously trade an considerable amount of pay for that 'freedom' is absurd.
Also, please stop selectively quoting the grandparent (neatly avoiding the predicating 'partially' of course) in these responses as if you didn't just sum up and summarily dismiss an entire side of this discussion with 'go find another job' in the intervening posts.
1: http://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-... - Note: 1M people is a enormous number in relation to an industry the BLS sizes at ~4M, plenty large enough to be worth considering as capable of characterizing an entire industry.
That completely misses the point.
The parent is observing a behavior in the industry as a whole, not a specific employer.
Argue that the industry doesn't evidence this or argue that programmers should become plumbers, but boiling it down to 'go find another job' is nonsense in the context of an entire industry demonstrating the issue you mean to avoid.