Wonderpup from housepricecrash forum, made a breakthrough awhile back to realize that the value of your labour in a free market is not in fact based on your production. Although that isa factor int he maximum theoretical amount you could make. Instead the price for your labour is based on the lowest bidding human offering the same labour.
So we see in auto production for example, the first industry to broadly use industrial robots, an astonishing rise in productivity. Production per worker is up 300% just since 1990 in the auto factories! Yet the auto companies have been cutting wages and benefits over that time. Simply because other humans are bidding lower.
As you say a big trend in our society is wages are trending towards zero. At many of the big private employers like the big box retailers and grocers the wages are so low that there is no way a person could live on them. Yet these operations are also immensly productive per man hour! Wages are so low that millions are choosing to go on welfare, which is a pathetically low standard of living, but actually better than what they get working full time. I like your wording, the commodification of labour.
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