Dreadful Valuations

I think some of us will have reached a consensus by now that the labour market is oddly and dreadfully valued. By that I mean that human labour is being compensated by a formula that is completely divorced from their value as factors of production.

I was shocked and horrified when I was at a panel of employers, who were talking about people who were perfectly willing to work for NO pay. That is, yup that's right...work for free. To give the prospective employees the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming that they are serious about working.

What did not make sense was that the employers said they would hire the "free" fellas above and beyond the ones who would rather do the job but want pay for it. It would've been perfectly fine if the employers would hire those guys for no pay, but they did actually assign them salaries.

It seems that there is a huge discrepancy in valuations here. Either the employees are grossly undervaluing themselves (because they think they're worth nothing either from being utterly unproductive or having no self-worth whatsoever), or the employers are grossly overpaying the employees (an employee who costs nothing to hire should by definition do no work). Maybe it's both, or the employees are simply liars. I don't know.

I do understand the concept of passion and dedication, and that hobbyists have been doing what is potentially commercially viable work for essentially nothing. What I do not understand is how it's possible or even believable that the hobbyist attitude can survive in the commercial capitalist environment. If the employees are truly earnest about that, they're really just gona open themselves up to exploitation on all fronts.