Case in point, Dan Snyder thought Brandon Lloyd was worth $30 million. No same owner or fan would have agreed. And you'd be hard pressed to argue that a severely under-performing, highly paid free agent contributes more than his lesser paid peers, let alone than all those lower paid members of society who have jobs that contribute value to said society.

Exactly.

I think Will injected the notion of moral desert into this where Don hadn't intended it. I think “Pitching In” more means producing more; not necessarily deserving more credit or being more virtuous, or whatever.

Case in point, Dan Snyder thought Brandon Lloyd was worth $30 million. No same owner or fan would have agreed. And you'd be hard pressed to argue that a severely under-performing, highly paid free agent contributes more than his lesser paid peers, let alone than all those lower paid members of society who have jobs that contribute value to said society.

Exactly.

I think Will injected the notion of moral desert into this where Don hadn't intended it. I think “Pitching In” more means producing more; not necessarily deserving more credit or being more virtuous, or whatever.

You are saying that in this case the locals are not adding more total value to society, which is true. However, the marginal value of what they do produce is higher (demand curves slop downward because of diminishing marginal utility). The restrictions are not inefficient because of the higher wages, it is the lost production from the labor restrictions.

You also said:
“I know a number of academics who used a job offer from another department to get a hefty raise. I also know a number who are too guileless to ever play this game.”

These negotiations happen because markets, and academic markets in particular, are not perfectly competitive. This is because of transaction costs, asymmetric information etc. These all create deviations from wages equaling marginal productivity, but do not change the that wages are being pulled towards that marginal productivity. Also, not all academics have the same productivity. Being a less productive worker, I may have a hard time finding the guile within me to seek an outside offer.

“But a worker may become more productive due to some innovation in a technology that complements his or her skills without having done anything to increase his or her productivity.”

First, they did do something to increase their productivity: they started using the new technology. Second, if a worker doesn't “do” anything to become more productive, but they are more productive, who cares? It's not the effort that matters, it's what is produced.

I have to agree with Don on this one, though I'd add that the degree to which it tracks “pitching-in-ness” is directly proportional to the degree to which there is a free market in and surrounding that person's particular labor input. In other words, in your example of the local versus the immigrant denied a visa, it tracks it poorly. In other cases where there are fewer restrictions on labor, it will track it better.

If there was a brain-surgeon convention in L.A., and 95% of all brain surgeons attended, and then that convention was bombed: each remaining brain surgeon would suddenly be pitching-in more (that is, creating more value per person) even IF they don't work one single minute more per day. Part of it is because those people consuming their services will be paying much more, and so those consuming their services at that higher rate will, all else equal, be those who for whom brain surgeries were most desperately needed, they will be those with the highest marginal utility to be gained from the brain surgeons services.

That is, unless “pitching-in-ness” is something besides a euphemism for “measuring how much other people value x”. If government artificially creates greater scarcity for some kind of labor, then you're tracking artificially made up make-believe value.

Fair point–many government interventions distort labor markets. Surely, though, Don was referring, in general, to wages earned in a relatively free market. More wage gains are earned through increases in productivity than from rent-seeking, right? Hopefully?

The 'without having done anything' is wrong. The worker has to learn, adapt to, or in some other way integrate that technology into their work-flow. Adapting to new technology is a large part of being productive.