I think the popularly accepted notion of "market rates" basically leads to a social status ladder with the kind of jobs that "high class people" tend to do at the top and "low class work" at the bottom, and there might be a correlation with how much each person contributes to the bottom line of the company, but it is my belief that the within-groups variation is larger than the between-groups variation, which makes it basically a farce. The best support person is probably bringing in more revenue than the worst engineer while making less money.
This system endures because if you are in a higher class, there is no incentive to upset the popular notion of market rates. The top half of the pyramid tends to control pay, and why wouldn't they want a graduated scale based on status?
As engineers, we protect this status by releasing our tools when they are robust and easy enough for ourselves and other professional engineers but stop short of polishing our tools until an end-user could use them. We also maintain a complex set of cultural practices that need to be navigated in order to get access to additional layers of information and institutional knowledge. It's in our interest to prevent people from getting in, because under the Market Rates system, that's how you make more money.
CEOs are just another tier in that system. Like engineers, they keep their knowledge amongst themselves, and require you to work up the ladder in order to get the information and knowledge you need to access successive tiers.
I wish more people would spend more energy in actually trying to tease apart where profits are coming from and give compensation based on that. Or, even better: expect everyone to make a full-bodied human contribution and recognize that that's what is truly valuable, and no human is more valuable than any other.
I realize that's a little too woo-woo for many people, and I respect that. Maybe do the profit-assignment model then. But I really wish people would stop talking about "market rates" as if it's anything other than rent-seeking on a cultural scale.