Normally, yeah, sure. But sometimes not. Sometimes the world isn't such a shitty place. Sometimes an employer will decide to take a chance on an employee and invest in them, and pay them more than they need to. Sometimes that same employee will decide to work harder than they need to in order to achieve the goal they share with that employer.

I certainly don't run my business by paying all my staff the absolute bare minimum I need to so they can do work that is just-as-good-but-no-better than needed.

For a company reliant on innovation and driven by human capital, the dynamic you are describing seems like something that would normally come into play at a late stage of its life. Ignoring other factors, imagine how easy it would be to compete against a company that is entirely run this way and staffed by people who work like this. Literally no one there would even care that they're facing disruption.

Perhaps another way to look at this: on your tombstone it reads

   They had written proof that their employer was happy with their work.