Should the President of the United States have a Swiss bank account?

Marvin Miller is being a bit dangerously subjective. Something he should be careful about, given that he spent a career answering questions from jealous fans who questioned why athletes earn so much "for playing a game."

A good CEO doesn't skim profits by the nature of his salary. He adds value that increases profits at an amount much greater than his salary.

When YankeeFan posted his thing, I had the names of 10 CEOs who have been fucknuts that I was ready to post. That is what you get for dealing with generalizations, though, and issuing a challenge like that. There are always exceptions.

I actually wouldn't start with Craig Dubow, because there are people who make a case that he staved off the demise of a business doomed to failure anyhow a bit longer, and added value to shareholders (not looking to argue this with people who get emotional about it).

But take someone like Aubrey McClendon. It's clear that even though he founded Chesapeake Energy, he was ill equipped to run the company. As long as nat gas prices were rising he could leverage his position and loan himself billions, but when the price started to drop, he had a crisis brought on by the illusion he had created and the fact that profits have dropped like a rock.

But pointing to him, would be a bit like pointing to how much the Yankees paid Carl Pavano for what they got, if you are making an athletes analogy. Or making Ryan Leaf the poster child for why football isn't a meritocracy. The exception doesn't prove a rule -- with a CEO who fucks up or an athlete who does.

Marvin Miller should know that.

 

Only reason I know this is I had friends who were PAs on sets in Chicago and NYC when I was in my 20s.

The key grip, of course, manages the grips.

They rig the set, make sure lighting is right, are in charge of setting up and moving cameras (the guys who drive the cranes, for instance) -- anything related to camerawork.

 

CEOs put in their dues to get to where they are. Why would you say otherwise? It's probably changed a bit since the 1970s and 1980s, but not in ways I'd think you'd be opposed to. Less "company men" get through, but people who have paid their dues in a variety of jobs at a variety of places, do. They are less likely to be Ivy League educated, which was a must in 1970 or 1980. More democratic, the way you'd put it, right? Women actually reach the top, in fairly significant numbers now -- the CEOs of the Fortune 500 in 1970 all looked the same. I know all of that defies the idea that there is an entrenched group of rich people who hold certain jobs that is impermeable, but it's the truth.

As to how they are compensated, A CEOs pay MIGHT be determined by a board of directors that are elected to represent the shareholders -- or owners -- of the company. But Shareholders (and this has been regulated ad nauseum since 2008, actually, something I have worked on) put incentives (and in most cases now, strict guidelines) in place for their boards to align their interests with their shareholder interests. And boards can be voted out. More and more clawback procedures based on performance remove any board discretion on compensation. I spent a year working on a large company's compensation policy and it wasn't a "fox guarding the henhouse" scenario. A lot of money flowed through there, and among other things, they tied compensation and bonus pools strictly to company performance and the board had no say over it once the policy was in place. They were certainly doing more than most baseball teams, which might have a crazy owner who offers Alex Rodriguez, say, way more than any other bidder on the marketplace was offering, only to find out a few years later that the contract was killing them.

 

No argument on that. But it's a more simplistic proposition. I would believe you can assess a prospect's chances of success at throwing a baseball or hitting one or fielding one or making good baseball decisions at the major league level more easily than you can measure the the chances of success in a CEO's job. The CEO's job typically requires more complex skills, more adaptability, more subtlety and a greater ability to adapt to changes, which would amount to baseball abruptly changing the rules (something that doesn't happen very often).