Exactly; is someone who is essentially a replaceable scapegoat really worth millions per year in salary?
It's someone you can pin board and shareholder decisions on, as well as changes in market and accidents, that just goes away and lets some other people keep their power and profits instead of being accountable for their mistakes or lack of strategic performance.
I think the problem is you have to hire someone highly qualified and with relevant experience to at least show you're doing due diligence, and those people aren't cheap.
Pay plays a part in that, it signals that the person is extraordinarily competent and all around great and important.
In large corporations CEO:s aren't very important, it's just one person who mainly collects and structures information from people closer to the work and makes public appearances on behalf of the corporation and does paper shuffling required by the state and so on. It's not rocket surgery. Using this person to protect the reputation and image of shareholders and the board as well is a 'no-brainer' decision to make if your interests are well served by it.
American capitalism has lots of problems. The idea that CEOs "almost always" have no real-world experience is hardly worth arguing against: "almost always" is meaningless rhetoric and "real-world" likewise (what counts as real-world experience for Google? WPP? Northrop Grumman?). Jensen Huang is mentioned literally at the top of this thread and is an obvious counterexample.
I find it obvious from the context that they were referring to celebrity CEO:s in global corporations and not Mom or Pop in some small mom-and-pop corner store.
When I look at en.wikipedia on Huang it seems he graduated into a managing role and then founded Nvidia. By "real-world experience" I'd mean experience as a worker, but I can't answer for the person you're actually quoting.
However, it's an interesting example. Clearly Huang has managed to promote an image to you that is very different from mine. As I see it, Nvidia is a main supplier of hardware for globally fashionable grifts and scams, like large portions of so called 'crypto' and 'AI'. I also expect Nvidia to be an important supplier in the war industry, and I'm sure it is in surveillance tyranny.
I'd say so called AI is largely a scam. It's wobbly databases with non-deterministic query languages dressed up as a substitute for intelligence. Email is similarly a scam. Through mail you send someone an item, which might or might not have some script on it. Email is very different, and it's largely used for spam, even though the name seems to say it is very similar. Is this what you call progress?
No, I'm pointing out that Nvidia are supplying criminals and tyrants with the tools they need for their abusive and oppressive activities. I do not expect your mood to change from having this pointed out, rather the opposite, I expect you to already be somewhat aware of it. Personally, I try to avoid doing business with such people, and I would prefer to not be dependent on their enablers, though that is almost impossible for systemic reasons.
It's the dissonance between promise and delivery that make the term appropriate in my opinion. There's nothing intelligent about AI, and you can't transfer a package to a friend through email.
And, well, yes, one might argue that capitalism is basically a scam. Instead of serfs and slaves that were traded and exploited personally, we're now being traded and exploited collectively. I think Engels said this more succinctly at some point.
In general prisons are suppliers of cheap labour, and don't allow people to actually rot in them, though some inmates aren't actually supplied as labour, for reasons. As the person you're likely alluding to shows, grudge-laden manifestos and bombs don't do much to change society. It's a better idea to get organised around mutual aid and strikes in a wide sense.