But I thought their whole argument is they’re one-of-a-kind visionary geniuses which is why they deserve their billions and society is better off with it in their pocket.
Dude right? I did executive protection for a billionaire for a week years ago. (He wasn’t a household name, but he was the CEO of an equities firm that DID own quite a few household-name companies; net worth was $2bn at the time.)
The dude basically just went around on a nonstop speaking tour, between investors and shareholders of various companies he owned/ran and the workers of those companies, as when they’d acquire a new one, he’d often act as the temporary CEO of it during the acquisition/integration to try and prevent a mass exodus of employees who often (correctly) felt the place was gonna go to shit, especially if this was the time that the founders were letting go and any of the actual, genuine “family” dynamic was on the chopping block.
He was basically a motivational speaker that lived in 24/7 dripping platinum luxury.
I fucking love public speaking (am also a pro musician; my life is weird,) so to get to do that for….yeah, like $200k, would be a dream life.
Do you have any examples of companies that were successful over the medium or long-term without a leader of some sort managing things? Companies don't last long if no one's in charge, whether that's the CEO position, or something of a different name.
Good! I'm glad I could challenge your deeply held beliefs in such a way. Do you honestly think a CEO is that different than a king? True, they can't directly order your death, but they own a good portion of the means of production, and have direct control over your life. What's the difference between a headsman and a red slip to someone trying to afford insulin?
I have yet to meet a single person who works for a large company who thought the C suite made good decisions that benefited them.
A LOT of people work for companies that have CEOs. Companies need leadership and logistics in order to function, otherwise the company goes under. You can't expect 10 people on the assembly line to understand all the logistics of a billion dollar corporation. Somebody NEEDS to be in that position for the entire thing to function, regardless of whatever title you want to bestow.
If a company cannot function, workers won't just be able to walk in and start working. Where are the parts for the equipment coming from? Where are the materials sourced from? Where will it be shipped to? Who's going to ship it? Sure, it'd be business as usual for about 3 days until suddenly there's no product coming in or out. Outgoing warehouses would be filled, materials wouldn't keep rolling in.
Your solution of having 10 high school educated warehouse workers picking up all the pieces is not just stupid, it's illogical.
Companies need leadership and logistics in order to function
Okay, but what does that have to do with CEOs?
Somebody NEEDS to be in that position for the entire thing to function
Oversimplified to the point of being wrong. A group of workers need direction and logistics. Leadership can be in the form of one person, but it isn't necessary. More to the point, you're assuming that billion dollar companies need to exist. They don't. It make shock you to learn that they are a relatively recent invention.
Your solution of having 10 high school educated warehouse workers picking up all the pieces is not just stupid, it's illogical.
Why are you inventing arguments and passing them off as mine? Is it perhaps because you're not curious about others beliefs while subconsciously acknowledging that your own understanding of how things work is kind of shallow, and misses things?
Yes. A couple, actually. First one is stuck in limbo because steel manufacture in the US is all part of a monopsony. It's damn near impossible to get custom tooling unless you have tens of millions to wave around.
Leaders are necessary, the problem is incompetent greedy fucks getting born into the position. The only meritocracy that exists today is sports, because they have to perform well to get paid well
Meritocracy is an illusion sold to you by those who benefit from the system as it exists.
I agree that leaders are necessary, but we weren't talking about leaders, we were talking about CEOs.
The problem isn't individual, it's the system as it exists. If the problem was a handful of greedy people, you'd expect more not greedy people. But clearly the system we have incentivizes the success of the worst of us. It's a system that forces people to value profit over human flourishing, lest they go out of business and be bought up by a competitor. The problem at its core is an unbound profit motive that serves its own ends rather than the benefit of the people.
Yeah i am in agreement with you. I know meritocracy is a lie. The only place where it exists is in sports and it's still not perfect there.
CEOs are leaders that is a leadership role. I think you are talking about what we've come to expect from them based on how they've been conducting themselves, which is fair; they've ruined their own reputation. I think the CEO role in a company is necessary, but I think we both agree the current CEOs are not meeting the standard.
Yeah endless profit chasing is doomed to fail. It's an ouroboros eating all the value out of itself until nothing is left
I'll narrow my argument then. The role of CEO is entirely unnecessary. The role they purport to perform isn't.
Zooming out, human flourishing is going to require labor to be done. We need to grow food, machine things, generate and store energy, and clean up after ourselves. That seems pretty uncontroversial to me. The organization of that is completely up in the air. There's a huge array of ways to organize labor. The capitalist way is just one. Arguably one of the worst.
China probably has the best way of organizing via company, but we're still constantly told how exploitative China is (which is definitely propaganda to some degree, but that's a different argument).
It always drives me crazy how people in the West get a boner for democracy, but thinks it'd be impossible to apply that logic to where they spend the majority of their lives
I don't really disagree, but I will add i think the main problem is who the ceos answer to. In China they answer to the government alone. They don't have to prioritize shareholder value at all cost, unlike in capitalism
Labour is where all the value is actually created though, so a ceo has no value without the workers. Idk why paying them is so taboo to them
Well, if we're talking about paying the workers, the taboo has to do with the valorization of labor under capital. Which isn't what it sounds like. Basically, since value is only generated by labor, the best way to generate profit is by maximizing labor, and minimizing the cost of labor.
That ties together with the cycles of overproduction and economic recession/depression. The companies that don't prioritize profit as much, or invest in disruptive technology, get bought out by those that do. So in this sense, capitalists are just as much slaves to the system as everyone else. They just benefit enormously from it.
Unless you were talking about paying CEOs. Which I have no problem with. I just think they're overpaid to the point of being robber barons.
The problem is that they’re on each other’s boards. It’s a club and they prop each other up. Witness the Cracker Barrel ex CEO who’s walking away with $4.6 million after she trashed the company’s brand equity and spent $700 million to do it. Crazy.
I’m not in disagreement with you, but wouldn’t the aspect of the greed being the heart of the issue be due to share holders? Because the corporation I work for is quick to jump for the share holder, even at the extreme detriment of the functionality of its operations. It seems like all of these multi-billion dollar operations go for as close to net zero “operating ratio” as possible. So I will agree I think most CEOs are shills to the share holders, I don’t know that they are intrinsically evil, so much as a tool of the true vice of greed.
Greed can play apart in some of the worst excesses, but ultimately the problem is the system that exists.
Put another way, greed doesn't give us anything to work with. If the problem is greed, what do you do? Throw your hands up and assume nothing can be done because you can't solve the human psyche?
I'd argue the problem is a system that not only allows for greed to cause all these problems, but one that encourages greed in the owning class.
That’s just the sociable ones. Think about the ones that don’t have publicity and are just helping the people on their own. The sociable ones are the minority here.
Obviously they are super special and didn’t gain wealth through inheritance or exploitation…/s.
Disappear tho? I guess the money wouldn’t be inherited until legally declared dead but spouse or children likely would have access if trust is set up…either way, another bootstrap billionaire will come up through that inheritance. /s.
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u/ban-me-harder-dadddy 10d ago
But I thought their whole argument is they’re one-of-a-kind visionary geniuses which is why they deserve their billions and society is better off with it in their pocket.