Obviously it's more complicated than that, but the "we have to pay for the best and brightest!" meme starts to sound a lot more like self-dealing when it turns out the best and brightest do approximately the same quality job as one of those dipper things that replaced Homer Simpson at the nuclear plant for a week once.
Well said. My post above explains why CEO pay actually results in a worse product.
The "best and the brightest are not the ones who end up as CEOs of big companies." Pick one at random out of the Fortune 500. Give me a year to study the company and then replace him with me; I'm now the top dog. There is a 60% chance I will do a better job. I'm 26 and have no advanced degree. Do the same with a small business or a farm. There is almost a 0% chance I will do a better job. What does this say about large companies and their management?
On what grounds do you believe that you can do better than the average Fortune 500 CEO? I assert that you're engaging in empty boasting, with absolutely nothing to back this up. How could there be? Have you any experience near the top management of a company this large and complex?
But more important, how much does it cost to find someone who can run a company like that competently? I work for a lot cheaper, but I'm also not capable of managing all of Citigroup. And conversely, if I were someone who had proven that I could do that, I'd likely have enough money to retire; you'd have to pay me quite a lot to convince me to subject myself to that kind of stress rather than sipping pina coladas on the beach.