@moffintosh @kaia @dushman @Moon @Hyolobrika but value isn't a "thing" is it? It's an ambiguous and largely relative/subjective property. I also don't think value requries "work" to exist.

a shop is only one kind of business. If you have skills you can sell those skills with little to no capital. A person who knows a trade for example can go on craigslist and put up an ad for I think something like 5USD per month. Word of mouth is free.

You can always turn down low wages, and if a business refuses to adjust wages and enough people consider their wage offering to be lacking they will fail if they depend on being able to employ people.