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Can you prove these CEOs are worth it? That's the difference between CEO pay and literally every other example you've given here. In each of those other exampl

Can you prove these CEOs are worth it? That's the difference between CEO pay and literally every other example you've given here. In each of those other examples, the business is directly and measurably extracting value from the person getting all that money. It's far more abstract for a CEO, and it's far harder to separate their contributions from "what would've happened regardless".

tathougies 7y ago
So you argue that Lebron James provides more value to society than people running the companies that actually keep society productive? America's insane obsession with sports is amazing.
- bleriot 7y ago
  I’m not sure Disney is a productive company for society. I’d argue that Lebron James and Disney are purely for entertainment. And the owners of sports teams are able to attach value to the players by how many people they’ll draw to TV and stadium viewership and product sales, so Lebron’s value can be pretty well guessed in advance by the team that pays him that huge salary.
- Sebguer 7y ago
  That's a really weird takeaway from what I said, which is that it's a lot easier to assign value to what Lebron James does. A team gives him a specific amount of money to perform a very specific task, which is 'perform on a basketball court'. The team paying him believes that his performance will draw in fans and money to outweigh what they're paying him. Netflix didn't pay Adam Sandler for 'thought leadership'. They paid him to deliver a certain number of films, which they know that they can extract a certain amount of value from. The only way to measure executive leadership is the impact they've had on a company's valuation, and that impact cannot be as clearly tied to a single person as Lebron James' performance on the court, or Adam Sandler's (admittedly surprising given how bad his last several movies have been) star power.

tathougies 7y ago

So you argue that Lebron James provides more value to society than people running the companies that actually keep society productive? America's insane obsession with sports is amazing.

bleriot 7y ago
I’m not sure Disney is a productive company for society. I’d argue that Lebron James and Disney are purely for entertainment. And the owners of sports teams are able to attach value to the players by how many people they’ll draw to TV and stadium viewership and product sales, so Lebron’s value can be pretty well guessed in advance by the team that pays him that huge salary.
Sebguer 7y ago
That's a really weird takeaway from what I said, which is that it's a lot easier to assign value to what Lebron James does. A team gives him a specific amount of money to perform a very specific task, which is 'perform on a basketball court'. The team paying him believes that his performance will draw in fans and money to outweigh what they're paying him. Netflix didn't pay Adam Sandler for 'thought leadership'. They paid him to deliver a certain number of films, which they know that they can extract a certain amount of value from. The only way to measure executive leadership is the impact they've had on a company's valuation, and that impact cannot be as clearly tied to a single person as Lebron James' performance on the court, or Adam Sandler's (admittedly surprising given how bad his last several movies have been) star power.