That sounds like a decent idea, the problem is almost everyone can make that argument. You think your friend is important, how about the farmers who grow your food, or the truckers who bring it to you, or the people who take away your garbage? Etc. etc.
A huge portion of jobs are absolutely vital to the good functioning of society. (edit:…
That sounds like a decent idea, the problem is almost everyone can make that argument. You think your friend is important, how about the farmers who grow your food, or the truckers who bring it to you, or the people who take away your garbage? Etc. etc.
A huge portion of jobs are absolutely vital to the good functioning of society. (edit: In fact I would argue cancer research is actually a pretty frivolous low importance activity). Allowing all "essential" jobs to hold society hostage for some huge pile of loot because their work is "super important" is going to leave you with not enough resources to go around. What is more it is basically the core conceit of central planning. And central planning, when tried, just categorically produces worse results than market based solutions. These problems are too hard for you or me, or John Maynard Keynes to figure out what everyone's compensation should be.
Now I do think there are perhaps some mildly pernicious things in the US executive compensation realm. Them sitting on each other's boards and being a relatively small subset of people who perhaps don't actually subject each other to market forces. And maybe some nibbling around the edges is warranted.
But ultimately people get paid what they do based on how replaceable they are generally, and that is a GREAT system. Sure some CEOs are shitheels who play golf and went to some fancy fraternity and are no better than you or me. But many of them are amazing together people who have busted ass their whole life and spend every waking hour thinking about their jobs, not making B&R posts.
Anyway, I understand your instinct, but it is an instinct that leads to a bad place.
“But ultimately people get paid what they do based on how replaceable they are generally, and that is a GREAT system.“
That’s it. For some reason people aren’t taught that these days but that’s 99% of the time how it works. That’s why the warehouse worker, as lovely as he is and as hard as he works, makes far less than the sales guy for the same company. Warehouse guy is replaceable in 10 minutes and sales guy is a month of interviews. It’s really very simple when you consider it through the replaceability lense.
That sounds like a decent idea, the problem is almost everyone can make that argument. You think your friend is important, how about the farmers who grow your food, or the truckers who bring it to you, or the people who take away your garbage? Etc. etc.
A huge portion of jobs are absolutely vital to the good functioning of society. (edit: In fact I would argue cancer research is actually a pretty frivolous low importance activity). Allowing all "essential" jobs to hold society hostage for some huge pile of loot because their work is "super important" is going to leave you with not enough resources to go around. What is more it is basically the core conceit of central planning. And central planning, when tried, just categorically produces worse results than market based solutions. These problems are too hard for you or me, or John Maynard Keynes to figure out what everyone's compensation should be.
Now I do think there are perhaps some mildly pernicious things in the US executive compensation realm. Them sitting on each other's boards and being a relatively small subset of people who perhaps don't actually subject each other to market forces. And maybe some nibbling around the edges is warranted.
But ultimately people get paid what they do based on how replaceable they are generally, and that is a GREAT system. Sure some CEOs are shitheels who play golf and went to some fancy fraternity and are no better than you or me. But many of them are amazing together people who have busted ass their whole life and spend every waking hour thinking about their jobs, not making B&R posts.
Anyway, I understand your instinct, but it is an instinct that leads to a bad place.
“But ultimately people get paid what they do based on how replaceable they are generally, and that is a GREAT system.“
That’s it. For some reason people aren’t taught that these days but that’s 99% of the time how it works. That’s why the warehouse worker, as lovely as he is and as hard as he works, makes far less than the sales guy for the same company. Warehouse guy is replaceable in 10 minutes and sales guy is a month of interviews. It’s really very simple when you consider it through the replaceability lense.