this is a typical misinterpretation of the labor theory of value. it's not the silicon valley "I Am Adding Value" SaaS ideal.
the free market assigns the value created by laborers. it's as simple as that. the buyer wouldn't get this value in their life, at a price the market decided they pay, without the work of the laborer. the value wouldn't be created without the laborer, or any of the capital or tools that it took to create labor (since labor created the capital and the tools). much like machines, it's labor all the way down.
I didn't misinterpret shit. The amount of work something takes too create has very little to do with its value. Labor theory of value would be a joke if it wasn't so popular for some reason. Instead it's actively disinforming people
> it's labor all the way down
This is completely orthogonal to value. Sure things wouldn't exist without people to make them. That doesn't mean that the labor it takes to make something constitutes its value.
if you actually look at the inputs and outputs of entire industrial sectors, rather than individual firms, you generally find a very high correlation between the price of labor as input and the price out the output of that sector. like >96% for the uk as found by cockshott and cottrell in their 1995 paper
the free market assigns the value created by laborers. it's as simple as that. the buyer wouldn't get this value in their life, at a price the market decided they pay, without the work of the laborer. the value wouldn't be created without the laborer, or any of the capital or tools that it took to create labor (since labor created the capital and the tools). much like machines, it's labor all the way down.