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Comment by brbsix | Hacker News Reader

> Executive comp is a major racket, enforced by the standard that this is "what the market average is". Which is set by executives overpaying themselves.

> Ask yourself if your CEO is really working 100x as hard as you, or 100x smarter than you. The answer is usually a definite no.

Ask yourself, does a software developer in SF work 1000x harder than a laborer in the Congo? Is a PhD Physicist really as smart as a NYC sanitation worker?

Apart from the emotionally manipulative language, I'm not sure what your point is. CEO compensation is a price. What does hard work or intelligence have to do with the price of something?

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Reapplying it doesn't actually change the argument. Janitors can be underpaid compared to CS people and CS people could be underpaid compared to CEO's at the same time.

Underpaid according to who? The point I was making was that salaries, like all prices, are dictated by market forces. They aren't dictated by some arbitrary metric (e.g. hard work or intelligence) that you, as some uninterested third-party, decide.

Underpaid according to people with sense. For one, market forces do not dictate reality. They are an artificial construction WE created and WE are responsible for. If they result in someone's mistreatment we should see it as it is and not wave our hands and say "well, market forces". Perhaps the mistreatment is not obvious to you but it is obvious to plenty.

For another, the "market forces" aren't really market forces because there are too many other things involved because we don't live in a vacuum of perfect capitalism. There are things like collusion, there are things like threat of loss of shelter and health, etc., that corrupt it. Proper market forces would require extremely powerful and knowledgeable agents that can freely accept and reject products. We're nowhere near close such a reality.

For an obvious example of immoral effects of "market forces", see googamooga's post over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12553936

If you don't see anything wrong there and your reaction is just "well, market forces..." I think you need to take a step back and think about what we humans are doing on this planet.

I'm not seeing the "market forces" in googamooga's post. Rather I see men with guns (the Russian government) prohibiting hospitals and clinics from purchasing stents. The initiation of force here is quite obviously immoral. I'd like to see less of it on this planet, not more.

The same thing is present in the other situations. People don't get to pick and choose where and how they work, they have families to feed. The pure ideal market forces you're talking about don't exist, most of this is ran by much more depressing forces, such as the prisoner's dilemma.

I've just brought up collusion, it's a concern for software engineering jobs, look it up. Not pure market forces? Exactly! So why are you assuming the CEO's job and pay are pure market forces?

> Is a PhD Physicist really as smart as a NYC sanitation worker?

... and often the same person.

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