That's why efficient markets are only considered to be an ideal.
Note in edit: I suspect what I remember as the Econ 101 explanation is probably accurate enough for most purposes: Both the employer and the worker have temporary, local monopolies: The employer has plenty of money, but a shortage of time, and the worker has plenty of time but no money. So each is willing to trade with the other. The employer could make money in excess of the value added by the employees, by exploiting other kinds of effective monopolies such as patents, trade secrets, even things like brand recognition and goodwill.
> The employer could make money in excess of the value added by the employees, by exploiting other kinds of effective monopolies such as patents, trade secrets, even things like brand recognition and goodwill.
Exactly. That's why the ideal case is for the employee to be paid for the value he provides, and the employer also paid for the value he provides (i.e. he provides patents, trade secrets, brand recognition, ...).
I understand your point, but there's a glaring error in what you said. People need to get paid less than the value they produce, otherwise their employer would just be a passive participant gaining no advantage from their employment.
If the employers produce no value, then we should get rid of them. If they are producing value, then the overall value produced should be greater than the sum of the value produced by their employees.
That's only true if you believe the you can add up the value every employee produces to get the value the company produces. But the company produces more than the sum of its parts. Or should, anyway.
Can you elaborate? Surely the efficient-market ideal is that everybody gets paid an amount equal to exactly the amount of value they produce.