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Comment by wakawaka28 | Hacker News Reader

We do in fact have a meritocracy here in the US for the most part. I don't know how you can say "clearly" we don't. Except for a handful of rich goofs, everyone is generally rewarded proportional to their skills, abilities, output, and impact. You can also work hard and get ahead, which is harder in places that are deeply corrupt. I do think executive-level pay is arbitrarily high but it needs to scale up with the level of responsibility you have. CEOs are rarely the most talented people ever, but to attract actually talented CEOs you have to pay significantly more than they could make doing something else (like starting another business or working as an individual contributor).

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I see no evidence of a positive correlation between hard work and high pay. It seems to be a negative correlation.

> but it needs to scale up with the level of responsibility you have

I hear this phrase a lot.

Why do you think so?

Not op but I guess the assumption here is that people would rather have less responsibility so need to be compensated to have more? I'm not sure this is true, but don't know if responsibility is its own reward. Maybe the status that responsibility conveys is?

People in general would rather have less responsibility if there is no value added by taking more. This is extra important when the person is highly qualified, because in theory they could do their own thing. So you have to pay more than that.

There aren't many people for whom status alone is enough. Why should anyone take on more problems to end up with less money than if they had assumed less problems?

There is another problem with not paying people. It encourages corruption. When people feel they aren't paid fairly, they will do all kinds of awful things.

I said it in that comment. But specifically, if more responsibility comes with the same or less reward than less responsibility, nobody rational will be motivated to do it. The degree of responsibility is somewhat subjective, but again you need to consider what else the qualified person might be doing that is more rewarding than working for you.

I said it in another reply but I should mention it here too. Not paying people well for their level of responsibility encourages corruption.

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