Who is we? Apple’s owners already get to decide how badly they want their executives, what is wrong with this system?

It awards people for being something that they cannot possibly be: worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation. Human excellence hasn't reached the point where this is the case.

They were not awarded hundreds of millions of dollars. They were awarded a number of shares or options, which may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars when and if they sell or excercise.

Either way, two entities came to a voluntary agreement on an exchange of services and compensation. I have not heard of a better model yet.

If the issue is income/wealth gaps in society, then that is better solved by implementing huge marginal income/wealth taxes such that the can be rewarded hundreds of millions of dollars, but they will only end up with a small portion of it.

So why do the owners of Apple decide to pay Tim Cook so much? Do they just not realize that they could come out ahead by only hiring CEOs willing to pay much less?

No, it sounds like we’re not paying them enough if we can’t distract them from their massive fortune!

I hope this is a joke. It's a failing or at best a quirk of our economic system that Tim Cook's time can be so highly valued when any number of different piles of well educated people could do 10x more useful work for less money. It's not meritocracy. He's winning the game, but he's replaceable.

>He's winning the game, but he's replaceable.

~100 million/year says he isn't.

It all comes down to how you define "useful work" and value. A big part Tim Cooks value is simply being a known factor. You might not like that this is valued more than 1,000 engineers, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

If Tim Cook was really worth 100 million a year or more and had achieved a state of intelligence and skill unknown to humanity before, don't you think scientists would be scrambling to study his genetics?

He's just not that unique. The employees should be paid more and Tim should be paid less.

I think you entirely missed the point of my comment. Tim Cook is worth 100 million because he is the same person that ran the company last year and is a known quantity, not because he is 1000x smarter.

His value is being Tim Cook: Apple CEO since 2011. This is something that nobody else on the planet has and 1,000 engineers can't build.

Hey, every human is unique and equally irreplaceable. It’s just that some of us are more equal than others.

Some people just win capitalism.

The problem is, frequently everyone else doesn't get to play a second game.