As a counterpoint, if it wasn't for all the friendly people on HackerNews and similar places talking about how big their salaries are, I would still be stuck in Eastern Europe happy to write code for $7/hour.
The biggest capitalist victory has been convincing people that sharing salary information is impolite.
It benefits "the ruling class" in several ways. First it prevents people from realizing they're underpaid and encouraging each other to get better rates. Second it encourages people to spend money on luxury and luxury-ish goods as a way to signal their welloffness to each other.
Because at the end of the day, everyone is still curious about this info and almost everyone likes to feel like they're even just a little better off than those around them. It soothes the ego.
It benefits the "ruling class" because it benefits people who know how to negotiate and use information asymmetry, and those people tend to wind up in the "ruling class".
The biggest capitalist victory has been convincing people that sharing salary information is impolite.
It benefits "the ruling class" in several ways. First it prevents people from realizing they're underpaid and encouraging each other to get better rates. Second it encourages people to spend money on luxury and luxury-ish goods as a way to signal their welloffness to each other.
Because at the end of the day, everyone is still curious about this info and almost everyone likes to feel like they're even just a little better off than those around them. It soothes the ego.