Click to listen to the audio version of this Daily Paradox.

The labourer may be worthy of his hire but that doesn’t tell us how worthy. Capitalism says that he is worth what he can get. That is true in an open market but how many markets are truly open? Businesses, governments, civil services, official bodies, oligopolies – none of these are ‘open’, few have genuine competition.

Do employers value us reasonably? Inevitably it is a matter of trial and error. When an employer makes an error over the worth of an employee, the employee pays, usually with his job. It is not an ideal system and it gives rise to Trades Unions attempting to redress the rather one-sided nature of the transaction.

How do we value another man’s time? The law of supply and demand is the most powerful driver. If there are not enough plumbers to service everyone’s needs their price goes up. If there are too many retailers, their takings go down.

The basis on which we employ people is more complicated than simple supply and demand. To employ sensibly we must forecast the potential value of an employee to an organisation. We do this rather crudely by looking at his qualifications and experience.

Degrees are useful as evidence of an ability to discipline ourselves well enough to reach certain standards of analysis and reasoning. They work when the basis on which exams are marked is relevant to the subsequent needs of employers. The people to answer whether this is happening are the employers, not the universities. Currently employers seem to have too little to say about this.

Experience is greatly overrated for all managerial jobs. It is certainly valuable if you are dealing with mechanical work. Management is a disaster when it is regarded as mechanical.

I have often found experience to be a limiting factor in a man’s management ability. Unless he can extrapolate from the industry he knows he will be doomed to stay in it forever. But good managers should move around, applying what they have learnt to new situations. One of the most effective things I used to do when building a business was to teach salesmen accountancy and the accountants, selling. Unconventional but very effective.

We live in the real world. Employers are the people who decide what you will be paid and if they sometimes lack vision we have to cope with it. However, the answer to the question ‘What are you worth?’ is ‘Probably quite a lot more than you are paid’. Can you get your true value? That depends on how you present and negotiate it.

Seeing the submissions of hundreds of employees I am not surprised that they are going to be poorly paid. The presentation of them is often destructive and self- denigrating. If the jeweler wants a high price he shines a powerful light on the diamond.

Our worth is partly determined by the light we shine on ourselves.