There's almost certainly a book or two in there, to do it justice.

Tackling the latter: I recall listening to a BBC interview of a banker, probably in the wake of the 2007-8 global financial crisis, though the example's really an evergreen. The presenter asked how the executive justified his (it was a he) income. He responded based on value creation. Oddly, that's not a basis for compensation in a competitive market -- price should be set equal to marginal cost. Of course, if bank-executive services are a form of rent, he might be correct, but that's an interesting argument on its own.

It was a few years later when I finally got to actually reading Smith that I came across his "five following" discussion. Which a true market-capitalist banker really ought to have fully internalised. It made the interview response all the more curious.

I've also kept this in mind as other discussions of wages (particuarly concerning the tech world, but also other worker classifications) come up.

On the "information wants to be free" comment: skill itself is (in parts) an informational good, though one that lacks inforation's fundamental fungibility (we can transfer information from storage device to storage device across channels and networks, less so skills).

But like information, skill is difficult to both assert and assess. Beyond zero marginal costs, a chief reason information markets behave so poorly is that it's hard to assert high-quality information, and expensive to assess it. If you're reading a book, or article, or ... lengthy and/or cryptic HN comment ... somewhere in your head is the question "is this even worth my time?"

This is what makes tech recruiting, from both sides of the table, such a PITA. The front-line people writing ads and screening calls ... have all but no capability to assess skills. Responses are all over the map, from the absolutely unqualified to domain specialists and experts. "Expertise" itself is almost certainly a misnomer as so much information has so short a half-life -- it's generalised problem-solving and learning which are most required. And the tasks and projects to which talent is applied can itself be called into question. Take the 737 MAX development -- Boeing almost certainly would have been better for not trying to drag out the lifespan of that airframe, a decision which likely should have been made in the mid-1990s. Full costs (or benefits) of decisions cannot be known when they're made, and only manifest over years, decades, or even centuries (fossil fuel use).

Some coverage of that here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864949

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864646

The notion of "manifest vs. latent" properties or consequences is one I've been looking at. Some earlier work by Robert K. Merton and others.

"The market" rewards short-term, highly-apparent, risk-externalising, liquidity-generating behaviours. There are inherent distortions to all of this. Skills and competence (as well as skills development, mentoring, training, preservation, etc.) are poorly served.

There's also some interesting discussion relating to this in Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, from 1970, which I'm reading for the first time. Bits drag, but there is much that's prescient.