If I had to guess, I'd say that he'd tell you, that those managers "managed" (haha, get it?) to prevent the worst of bad losses to shareholders and got paid acc

If I had to guess, I'd say that he'd tell you, that those managers "managed" (haha, get it?) to prevent the worst of bad losses to shareholders and got paid accordingly, and/or that said payments were contractually agreed on. I can't bring myself to categorically disagree with either of those positions, because big business, fundamentally, is about setting common goals for absurdly large groups of people and to operate within even (much) larger groups of people in the real world. Complicated situations are bound to arise, and even if a manager failed to save a company, their contract entitles them to bonuses for whatever business goals they did achieve. If they managed to get that agreement signed beforehand, it needs to be honored, because binding contracts are a really fundamental building block of society, that needs to stay intact. It's legitimate, though, to question the payment amounts and business goals they were bound on, as well as whether payments were made, that they were not entitled to. That's where our taxes need to fund a strong justice system, that can bring corruption suits to such cases. Also, I'm sympathetic to situations and feelings of people being ground up in corrupt systems and I think we really need to understand how capitalism-apologists insulate themselves against those feelings by focussing on the guilt of weak people for not taking care of themselves. It's a coping mechanism, that helps when one has been of the receiving end of things before, but on the way up. It also protects from the guilt of not being able to help everybody, that one would like to.