At the end of the day it is a business, and perhaps the customer of the business will also look at a discount.

In a way you are right, you may need to offer a premium.

I don't think the pay will be the same, you can be the best paymaster but you should also look at local wage benchmarks and stay within ballpark.

Congrats on this bold justification you’ve created to justify your role in the exploitation process, but you’re not fooling anyone. There is no moral or material logic for this nonsense.

But hang on, not all US teams are paid the same either. A dev in kansas gets less than a dev in SV.

Are you arguing that all devs everywhere should be paid the same for moral reasons? (genuine question)

Is it not more morally ethical to hire 2 devs in denver for the price of 1 in New York, thus providing employment for twice as many americans?

I am simply saying there is no moral justification for any of it.

It’s important to take seriously because the logical outcome of this turn to remote work will otherwise be greater class divisions than the world has ever known, within the same economic structures.

I would agree that since there's no agreement of morals or ethics, it's easy to justify or vilify any action. So discussing the morality of employment is fruitless.

Equally Labour entropy suggests that jobs will flow from high-cost locations to low cost locations. Remote work reduces the friction of this flow. If you can work from home in SV you can do the same job from home in ohio, or Latvia or India.

External forces are at work to increase or decrease the friction of this entropy, but for the most part it seems to be flowing in one direction.

Whether this is moral or nor seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

So are you saying if you hire a foreign remote worker, they should be get the same salary as a US worker? Moreover, how could paying a standard wage for a country ever be considered exploitation?

You’re saying: we’re already exploiting foreign labor to some extent, so why not do it more? What kind of logic is that?

The global labor trade has proven a disaster for decades on end. It has destroyed the American middle class. There is no moral justification for any of it.