But, while the wages are not equal to or directly comparable with the disutility of the productive labor engaged, they are, in Mr. Clark's view, equal to the "productive efficiency" of that labor.[18] "Efficiency in a worker is, in reality, power to draw out labor on the part of society. It is capacity to offer that for which society will work in return." By the mediation of market price, under competitive conditions, it is held, the laborer gets, in his wages, a valid claim on the labor of other men (society) as large as they are competitively willing to allow him for the services for which he is paid his wages. The equitable balance between work and pay contemplated by the "natural" law is a balance between wages and "efficiency," as above defined; that is to say, between the wages of labor and the capacity of labor to get wages. So far, the whole matter might evidently have been left as Bastiat left it. It amounts to saying that the laborer gets what he is willing to accept and the consumers give what they are willing to pay. And this is true, of course, whether competition prevails or not. What makes this arrangement just and right under competitive conditions, in Mr. Clark's view, lies in his further doctrine that under such conditions of unobstructed competition the prices of goods, and therefore the wages of labor, are determined, within the scope of the given market, by a quasi-consensus of all the parties in interest. There is of course no formal consensus, but what there is of the kind is implied in the fact that bargains are made, and this is taken as an appraisement by "society" at large. The (quasi-) consensus of buyers is held to embody the righteous (quasi-) appraisement of society in the premises, and the resulting rate of wages is therefore a (quasi-) just return to the laborer.[19] "Each man accordingly is paid an amount that equals the total product that he personally creates."[20] If competitive conditions are in any degree disturbed, the equitable balance of prices and wages is disturbed by that much. All this holds true for the interest of capital, with a change of terms.