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I measure the value of a person based on how much they have contributed to a society. A free society will on average pay that person exactly what they are worth to the society for their level of production. In a free society, measuring the value of a person by the wealth they earn is an accurate measurement.
I don't. A janitor or trash collector working his rear off for 40 hours a week contributes just as much to our society as a brainsurgion. The difference in pay represents not a difference in actual contribution, but a difference in scarcity of a particular skillset. Now I am not arguing that everyone should make the same - people of scarcer skillsets should get paid more than people with more common skills (assuming that there is sufficent demand for the scarcer skillsets). But pay does not equate to a humans value value in society.
Now lets say that being a brain surgion was the highest paying skill in the world, and suddenly every bright young person decided that he/she went to med school and specialized in brain surgery. Well not just everyone needs a brain surgion every day, so the pay rates for brain surgions would become very low. The brain surgery qualification may become less neccesary in our society that some skill at mopping floors. So would that mean that brain surgions somehow stopped contributing to society as much as they used to? Of course not. Compensation simply has little to do with human value.