The argument that this is simply the market rate required to attract a person with the required skills can be proven false in so many ways, for example:

1. It's not a market, there is no job advertisement for the CEO role that the general population can apply for. If there were, and if it were to offer a fraction of "market", there would still be thousands of applications, and the top 1% of those candidates would absolutely do the job as well or better than the typical hand-picked candidate.

2. There are several roles in society that place enormous responsibility on those professionals and that only a handful of people in the world can do well, yet those jobs still pay low 6figures max. For example, nuclear engineer, aerospace engineer, state leader, and yes, ironically, most public hospital directors.

The sad reality is that executive pay is simply a result of incentives and the fact that corporate hierarchy gets very thin at the top. It has no relation to the competence or direct value-added of the executive.