A few interesting thoughts in here. I had tended to think of the social stigma against discussing salaries as being detrimental to workers and probably encouraged by companies to save a few bucks. But on the flip side, if a company was to be scrupulously honest and made their best effort to pay according to actual value to the company and let everyone know openly how much that was, I expect there would be a lot of drama and hurt feelings over evaluations of exactly who was contributing how much. Maybe it's best to let those sleeping dogs lie after all.