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> Redistributing 100% of these 5 executives' salary to all 2.2m workers would be a raise of... $32/year. I don't understand why this is even brought up? Surely

> Redistributing 100% of these 5 executives' salary to all 2.2m workers would be a raise of... $32/year. I don't understand why this is even brought up? Surely the line worker who failed high school can't contribute the same value as a software engineer automating away 20 line workers? All the studies I've seen compare the highest to the lowest salaries, while a more comprehensive look across all employee positions would provide a better data set for setting pay levels.

WalterBright 7y ago
As Steve Jobs proved, the CEO can make decisions that transform a company from near bankruptcy to the biggest market cap in the world. It's hard to get more productive than that, and would be foolish to begrudge Jobs a penny of his compensation. He earned it many, many times over. CEO decisions have enormous leverage over a company's fortunes, both good and bad. CEO pay is the least of those concerns. It's not hitting the pipe with a hammer, it's knowing where to hit the pipe.
- thulecitizen 7y ago
  ““There is not a single key technology behind the iPhone that has not been state funded,” says economist Mazzucato. This includes the wireless networks, “the Internet, GPS, a touch-screen display, and … the voice-activated personal assistant Siri.” Apple has recombined these technologies impressively. But its achievements rest on many years of public-sector investment. To put it another way, do we really think that if Jobs and Musk had never come along, there would have been no smartphone revolution, no surge of interest in electric vehicles?“ Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-great-man-myth/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...
  - janhenr 7y ago
    The question if somebody else would have made the smartphone is besides the point. Apple made the iPhone under the leadership of Steve Jobs, meaning the company profits enormously and thus the company can reward Steve Jobs enormously.
    - FabHK 7y ago
      The question wasn't whether the company can afford to reward him enormously, though, but whether it should reward him enormously.
  - dannyw 7y ago
    I’ll believe it when the government makes the next iPhone, or the next electric vehicle. In my view, there is tremendous value in taking something existing and productionizing it so the whole world can get value from it. It’s value add.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      >> ““There is not a single key technology behind the iPhone that has not been state funded,” says economist Mazzucato. This includes the wireless networks, “the Internet, GPS, a touch-screen display, and … the voice-activated personal assistant Siri.” > I’ll believe it when the government makes the next iPhone, or the next electric vehicle. > In my view, there is tremendous value in taking something existing and productionizing it so the whole world can get value from it. The point is you can't productionize something that doesn't exist. Without the foundation of government-funded basic research and technology development, the iPhone would have been nothing. No one's saying there's no value in product development, just that it's an error to mistake that value for all the value. For the most part, businesses don't do much if any basic research because there's no clear path to a payoff. It's simply a bad business decision. They do the last step (product development) because it's the least risky and most profitable. The exceptions are few monopolies, and they probably wouldn't have bothered without the piles of excess money and the antitrust axe hanging over their head.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        > For the most part, businesses don't do much if any basic research because there's no clear path to a payoff. Businesses (and individuals) often contribute to universities monies which are used for basic research. It becomes the university's endowment. A great deal of basic research is funded this way. Often in return the university will name the building after the donor. The government didn't do much of anything in basic research before WW2, it was privately funded. http://www.bu.edu/articles/2015/funding-for-scientific-research/ http://www.bu.edu/articles/2015/funding-for-scientific-resea...
        ardy42 7y ago
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Jobs turned Apple around long before the iphone. He did it by reorganizing the company and redirecting its efforts, something a string of previous Apple CEOs failed at. > do we really think that if Jobs and Musk had never come along Do you really think that without the internet, nobody would have invented a network? And they did - Compuserve, Timenet, MCIMail, BIX, Prodigy, FidoNet, Gopher, etc. Heck, anyone with two or more computers would hook them together. I even wrote code to connect my own computers together over a serial line. The internet was also based on previous technology - the telegraphy network.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - manigandham 7y ago
    So the names would be different, but the rewards would be the same. What is the point of the question?
    - thulecitizen 7y ago
      From the same article: "The idea of “great men” as engines of change grew popular in the 19th century. In 1840, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here.” It wasn’t long, however, before critics questioned this one–dimensional view, arguing that historical change is driven by a complex mix of trends and not by any one person’s achievements. “" and: "Hero myths like the ones surrounding Musk and Jobs are damaging in other ways, too. If tech leaders are seen primarily as singular, lone achievers, it is easier for them to extract disproportionate wealth. It is also harder to get their companies to accept that they should return some of their profits to agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation through higher taxes or simply less tax dodging." For me the point is that innovators stand on the shoulders of giants (all the advancements made up until this point). Another source talking about the same author (Mariana Mazzucato) and using her arguments (from her book: the Entrepreneurial State): “Lone genius: "An individual at the head of a private enterprise who has achieved fame through effective PR designed to create an arbitrary association of that person with successful commercial innovation, instilling in the public’s mind the absurd belief that the insight behind the innovation emerged from a social, economic and intellectual vacuum” Source: https://qrius.com/the-myth-of-innovation-and-the-lone-genius https://qrius.com/the-myth-of-innovation-and-the-lone-genius
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Successful entrepreneurs do not "extract" wealth, nor is it given to them as some sort of reward for being great. They create the wealth. The compensation they receive is not given out of gratitude, it is agreed upon in advance if they succeed. I and the D team makes and gives away D for free. Many individuals and companies have made a great deal of money from using D. They do not retroactively owe me money. I'm not upset that they made money off of D - I'm glad they did! Of course it is nice when they decide to give back to the D community - I appreciate that. But nobody owes us anything for D.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    DARPA's budget is three billion dollars. Intel's net income is twenty-one billion dollars. The need for public-sector investment has ended.
  - takinola 7y ago
    To paraphrase (fictional) Mark Zuckerburg - "If you had invented the iPhone, you would have invented the iPhone" Every human that has ever lived has lived on the same Earth. We have all had access to the same resources. However, some people did different things with the resources available to them. Stating that the basis of these achievements require the work of others is true but besides the point. Someone somewhere, with access to the exact same things you and I have access to, is inventing something that neither of us will. Should that person not get the reward for their skill and work?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

WalterBright 7y ago

As Steve Jobs proved, the CEO can make decisions that transform a company from near bankruptcy to the biggest market cap in the world. It's hard to get more productive than that, and would be foolish to begrudge Jobs a penny of his compensation. He earned it many, many times over. CEO decisions have enormous leverage over a company's fortunes, both good and bad. CEO pay is the least of those concerns. It's not hitting the pipe with a hammer, it's knowing where to hit the pipe.

thulecitizen 7y ago
““There is not a single key technology behind the iPhone that has not been state funded,” says economist Mazzucato. This includes the wireless networks, “the Internet, GPS, a touch-screen display, and … the voice-activated personal assistant Siri.” Apple has recombined these technologies impressively. But its achievements rest on many years of public-sector investment. To put it another way, do we really think that if Jobs and Musk had never come along, there would have been no smartphone revolution, no surge of interest in electric vehicles?“ Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-great-man-myth/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...
- janhenr 7y ago
  The question if somebody else would have made the smartphone is besides the point. Apple made the iPhone under the leadership of Steve Jobs, meaning the company profits enormously and thus the company can reward Steve Jobs enormously.
  - FabHK 7y ago
    The question wasn't whether the company can afford to reward him enormously, though, but whether it should reward him enormously.
- dannyw 7y ago
  I’ll believe it when the government makes the next iPhone, or the next electric vehicle. In my view, there is tremendous value in taking something existing and productionizing it so the whole world can get value from it. It’s value add.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    >> ““There is not a single key technology behind the iPhone that has not been state funded,” says economist Mazzucato. This includes the wireless networks, “the Internet, GPS, a touch-screen display, and … the voice-activated personal assistant Siri.” > I’ll believe it when the government makes the next iPhone, or the next electric vehicle. > In my view, there is tremendous value in taking something existing and productionizing it so the whole world can get value from it. The point is you can't productionize something that doesn't exist. Without the foundation of government-funded basic research and technology development, the iPhone would have been nothing. No one's saying there's no value in product development, just that it's an error to mistake that value for all the value. For the most part, businesses don't do much if any basic research because there's no clear path to a payoff. It's simply a bad business decision. They do the last step (product development) because it's the least risky and most profitable. The exceptions are few monopolies, and they probably wouldn't have bothered without the piles of excess money and the antitrust axe hanging over their head.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      > For the most part, businesses don't do much if any basic research because there's no clear path to a payoff. Businesses (and individuals) often contribute to universities monies which are used for basic research. It becomes the university's endowment. A great deal of basic research is funded this way. Often in return the university will name the building after the donor. The government didn't do much of anything in basic research before WW2, it was privately funded. http://www.bu.edu/articles/2015/funding-for-scientific-research/ http://www.bu.edu/articles/2015/funding-for-scientific-resea...
      - ardy42 7y ago
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Jobs turned Apple around long before the iphone. He did it by reorganizing the company and redirecting its efforts, something a string of previous Apple CEOs failed at. > do we really think that if Jobs and Musk had never come along Do you really think that without the internet, nobody would have invented a network? And they did - Compuserve, Timenet, MCIMail, BIX, Prodigy, FidoNet, Gopher, etc. Heck, anyone with two or more computers would hook them together. I even wrote code to connect my own computers together over a serial line. The internet was also based on previous technology - the telegraphy network.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- manigandham 7y ago
  So the names would be different, but the rewards would be the same. What is the point of the question?
  - thulecitizen 7y ago
    From the same article: "The idea of “great men” as engines of change grew popular in the 19th century. In 1840, the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the Great Men who have worked here.” It wasn’t long, however, before critics questioned this one–dimensional view, arguing that historical change is driven by a complex mix of trends and not by any one person’s achievements. “" and: "Hero myths like the ones surrounding Musk and Jobs are damaging in other ways, too. If tech leaders are seen primarily as singular, lone achievers, it is easier for them to extract disproportionate wealth. It is also harder to get their companies to accept that they should return some of their profits to agencies like NASA and the National Science Foundation through higher taxes or simply less tax dodging." For me the point is that innovators stand on the shoulders of giants (all the advancements made up until this point). Another source talking about the same author (Mariana Mazzucato) and using her arguments (from her book: the Entrepreneurial State): “Lone genius: "An individual at the head of a private enterprise who has achieved fame through effective PR designed to create an arbitrary association of that person with successful commercial innovation, instilling in the public’s mind the absurd belief that the insight behind the innovation emerged from a social, economic and intellectual vacuum” Source: https://qrius.com/the-myth-of-innovation-and-the-lone-genius https://qrius.com/the-myth-of-innovation-and-the-lone-genius
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Successful entrepreneurs do not "extract" wealth, nor is it given to them as some sort of reward for being great. They create the wealth. The compensation they receive is not given out of gratitude, it is agreed upon in advance if they succeed. I and the D team makes and gives away D for free. Many individuals and companies have made a great deal of money from using D. They do not retroactively owe me money. I'm not upset that they made money off of D - I'm glad they did! Of course it is nice when they decide to give back to the D community - I appreciate that. But nobody owes us anything for D.
- ryacko 7y ago
  DARPA's budget is three billion dollars. Intel's net income is twenty-one billion dollars. The need for public-sector investment has ended.
- takinola 7y ago
  To paraphrase (fictional) Mark Zuckerburg - "If you had invented the iPhone, you would have invented the iPhone" Every human that has ever lived has lived on the same Earth. We have all had access to the same resources. However, some people did different things with the resources available to them. Stating that the basis of these achievements require the work of others is true but besides the point. Someone somewhere, with access to the exact same things you and I have access to, is inventing something that neither of us will. Should that person not get the reward for their skill and work?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]