[wootland]

If the executives are "just human" then they should be paid like humans along with everyone else. They shouldn't have their cake and eat it too. If you get paid orders of magnitude more than everyone else, you should take on orders of magnitude more risk (including going to prison when the company breaks the law).

[stu2b50]

That's not really a correlation that exists anywhere else. A white collar office worker on average makes significantly more than a blue collar worker but they don't particularly take more risk or anything.

People are paid based on opportunity cost. Executives are paid very highly because the cost of them making a poor decision, or not making a good decision, is very high. Meanwhile, the cost of hiring me and me not performing to expectations is low. It's not because they're God's or anything. The supply of people with leadership experience is also definitionally low.

Of course there's a lot of old boys club in executive roles in reality but that's the boards and shareholders problem when they do a bad job.