In this and other free-market situations, the wage for each kind of labor tends toward the marginal utility of its contribution to the product, discounted for both interest and risk. It should be remembered, however, that the wage simultaneously tends toward the marginal disutility of labor in each industry (p. 4.8:10). For instance, if the lower wage for Labor Type 2 becomes insufficient to compensate some workers for their disutility, then they will withdraw their labor from that market, perhaps shifting to Labor Type 1. As a consequence, only those workers for whom the wage for Labor Type 2 exceeds its marginal disutility will remain in that market.

In the real world of often unforeseeable changes and general uncertainty, producers must make decisions on the basis of incomplete knowledge and will therefore sometimes allocate resources in a less than optimal manner. At any given point in time, their decisions can be correctly understood only by recognizing that the value of any asset is determined by its utility at that time, regardless of the past cost of that asset or the producer's original plan of action. Theories that mistakenly equate value with cost (cf. pp. 4.4:34-9) can be especially misleading in such situations.