Only the owner (or shareholders) Researchers in universities, are getting paid by public funding from tax payers money (which is agood thing). Every major development is the product of lots of tiny developments and advansments in which the creators or inventors didn’t get their compensation from the end product. Workers in manufacturing are getting paid the least amount of compensation the owner can get away with, or even worse, manufacturing is moved to countries with even less protection for workers. Oh, and workers need protection from the owners.

Only in frictionless spherical cow in a vacuum territory - that is to say in theory in unachievable ideal conditions. In the real world the market is wildly distorted and people are forced by a variety of external pressures to participate even if they don’t believe they are being offered what they are worth.