Recently uncovered documents found that in 2005, Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar started a coordinated effort to push down their workers’ wages. They agreed to not recruit employees from each other, they shared wage scales, and they made sure to enforce this agreement with each other. As Apple’s Steve Jobs told Google’s Sergey Brin, “if you hire a single one of these people that means war.”

Beyond the nauseating practices shown here by the digital, west-coast Masters of the Universe, this completely overturns the way we should understand how labor markets work. And, in turn, two pieces of information on display here can help explain a central story for why a higher minimum wage doesn’t kill jobs.

First, imagine you got an email from a friend saying that he or she found a new job, and they want to go and get drinks to celebrate. That would be pretty normal, and you’d likely agree. Now imagine the same friend just told you that they’ve bought some groceries in a supermarket, or sold their car to a dealership, and they want to go get a drink to celebrate. Here you probably would think something is wrong (and perhaps start investigating how to do a makeshift intervention).

Why is there a difference? From the simple way economists talk about labor markets, there’s none. The labor market is the same as the car is the same as the grocery store. There’s a clear market price, and you can buy and sell as much as you want at that price at any time.

But what your friend wants to celebrate is the completion of the job search. The first difference is that searching for a job takes time, energy, and frustration. Surveys consistently find that getting a new job is a major life event, in the way that buying and selling random goods is not.