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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

People aren't paid what they "deserve" but what value they provide to the company. If the situation exists (whether created by the CEO or not) that makes it more expensive to replace the CEO, then unless they plan on firing the ceo, the ceo's value to the company increases because they are expensive to replace.

Or to put another way, life isn't fair and outcomes dont neccesarily align with what people deserve in a moral sense.

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Also people aren't paid what value they provide to the company, but what they can negotiate for - for example, if you need your job then your boss can get away with paying you peanuts even if you do 3x the work of your colleagues.

Incidentally, this is the basis of unions - the union negotiates your salary with the union's negotiating power of having the company's entire staff walk, which hurts far more than merely losing one employee.

That's not even true. If the CEO is running the company into the ground how are they being paid based upon the value they are bringing to the company?

Its justification of the status quo, not explanation.

This is utter BS - not from you, but from the marketplace and economic theory. What's being created here s additional cost, which is then being parlayed as a proxy for value based on the idea that there is normally a rough equilibrium between the two.

> the ceo's value to the company increases because they are expensive to replace.

The CEO’s value in general increases but that of the current particular CEO which is running the company into the ground decreases a lot more than that.

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