Clearly the solution is not to seek legal tools through which executive compensation may be regulated based on some performance metric or blah blah blah, but rather is to make CEOs themselves illegal. My estimation, based on my experience with CEOs of all shapes and sizes and races and genders, is that we could probably go a full year before anyone noticed, excepting of course the restaurant industry in the Hamptons and the bitching-about-interlopers industry in Big Sky country. Sacrifices, people, sacrifices. Just the other day I was making some yoga all over the floor and that little snitcheroo from NPR's Marketplace, a show so assiduously, chipperly mainstream that it almost daily reinvigorates the essential misanthropy that has brought me to where I am today (uh, blog?), came on interviewing some CEO or other from some industry or other. Frankly the details blur a bit, as I was on the uncomfortably marvelous edge between a hala asana and autofellatio. So this guy, this captain of whatever industry it was, let's call it the kazoo industry, he's essplaining how it is that he runs things. What's, like, his philosophy an shit. And as I'm listening it occurs to me clear as the break of day over a desert in high summer that this guy has got no fucking idea what he's talking about--and not only that he hasn't got a clue, but that he hasn't got a clue that he hasn't got a clue, like the very worst sort of barroom chatterbox, forever holding forth when he oughta be paying his tab and stumbling out. And this, by and large, is true across industries and companies and nations and planets and universes, that competence ceases as soon as they remove the vice- from the title, that your CFO can probably add but your CEO can barely keep the soup off his chin. Consider this: a lottery once a year, eligible to any person with any share in any public company, whose prize is the right to hunt down and shoot the chief executive of any company in which he's currently got a share. Value added.
7 comments:
excellent brainstorming ioz...way to think outside the box on this one. but while this idea has tremendous upside, due diligence must given to ensure this game plan can lay the groundwork for future monetization.
synergistically,
The Board
More shares, more tickets in the lottery?
Wall Street, Thunderdome Edition.
jyd: penalties for not working "paradigm" in there somewheres.
Psst, IOZ, talk about this:
http://lauramartinez.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/in-an-absolut-world/#comment-4179
So you're sort-of implying that the workers should own the means of production, or something like that?
Americans will never de-throne CEOs. As Rom the Ferengi once put it, "Nobody wants the exploitation to stop!!! Everyone wants to become part of the exploitation!"
The line worker doesn't dream about a future when the clueless Dilbertian CEO treats him fairly -- the line worker dreams about sitting in a padded chair and doing nothing all day long besides chuckling inwardly while the insanely hagio-istic business press [is that a word?] write 10-page articles about every nonsense syllable that falls from his mouth. Hunt down and gut all the CEOs, and you take away the line workers' dreams and aspirations.
Other than that, superb idea. You should blog after yoga more often.
Great idea that would bring a great productivity boost to our economy. (...and it will be easy to find most of them, since they tend to gravitate to golf courses and expensive escort services)
It's like politics: Those who are interested in genuinely affecting change make it to 'big fish in a small pond' level. The ones that go all the way to the top are, by design, more interested in amassing power and wealth for themselves.
The more I climb the career ladder, the more I realize that the upper levels are just about how good a manager you are. People who are good at actual work are the ones down there doing it.
Salary and annual bonus are just the tip of the iceburg in CEO compensation. There is free travel on the jet for family, multi-million dollar 'loans' that are forgiven 3 years later, and finally when they can no longer paper over the shitty numbers a nice fat severance package at the end of the day.
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