True, the market set the rate (including myself, for what I do, IT project management and tech product management/marketing, my salary in the last 5 years hasd gone from 80's to 90's to well over 100's back to 80's, briefly 40's and 60's, and now creeping back up to the 90's) ...
BUT, the market does not set the rate based ONLY, or even primarily, on the lowest rate. You can buy a car for 15K or 50K, and there is a market for both.
So by the same token, you can get a programmer for 40K or you can get a programmer for 80K - and the market should offer opportunities for both *if* the market has a demand for both and can clearly differentiate (and assign value to) the difference between the two - if the 80K programmer offer superior value to the 40K ones - harder working, better coder, speaks English,live in the same time zone, no strange foods, whatever, if the better paid programmer offers a better bang for the higher bucks, and the market values the better bangs (superior products and delivery time, for example), why shouldn't you be able to charge more for the superior bang? People buying 15K cars and 50Ks are both getting what they want for however they value what's important to them - so why wouldn't the market pay higher for the better programmers when they offer superior ROI?
Companies buy all kinds of goods and services, do they always buy the cheapest of everything in goods and services? Or do consideratiions other than the lowest price ever enter into the equation when corporate America buys everything from furnitures to computers and servers to new CRM and ERP systems to advertising to programming projects?