An intellectual's review

[nbarclay]

I'm inclined to agree that salaries for corporate executives have gotten out of hand. It's one thing when people like Henry Ford, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton (founder of Wal-Mart) make a fortune building an extraordinarily successful business from the ground up. In such cases, barring dirty tricks (which I've already said I believe we should do a better job of preventing), the value of the businesses they created offers clear proof that their work has created enormous value for others. (After all, if other people didn't value what their businesses accomplished, their businesses wouldn't have grown so huge.) But it is something else entirely when corporate executives make monstrous amounts of money based on nothing more than a guess that they will probably do enough better a job than someone else to be worth astronomical salaries. That's especially true when the guesses are made by board members who themselves are often executives in other companies, and thus have a vested interest in maintaining a culture where guesses are more likely to err on the high side than to err on the low side.

But trying to use salary caps to address the problem would replace one set of problems with another. Why should an executive take a job running a company like General Motors that is in really serious trouble when he could earn the same amount of money working for a company where the work of managing it is a whole lot easier? Especially, why should an executive leave a comfortable job in a smaller company to try to help a larger company operate more efficiently if the pay is the same either way? Some people would be willing to work for a larger company that faces more serious problems because they like the prestige or think they would enjoy the challenge. But if a large, troubled company like General Motors ends up with someone who is not as good in charge because the best person isn't interested in doing a more difficult, less pleasant job for the same pay, a lot of people can end up worse off.

The tricky part is trying to find a way to provide an incentive for executives to work for companies where their work can be expected to do more good, without having salaries go so out of control that it is highly questionable whether the CEOs really contribute enough value to be worth their salaries. Thus far, I haven't found a solution that I consider truly good.

Consider the way that in Civ, corporations can be worth a lot more when a player uses them well than when a player uses them poorly. Similarly, in the real world, it is valuable for corporations to get the best executives they can as long as they don't have to pay too much in return.

[wodan11]

Well, Unimatrix, I believe the suggestions I made are not fraud even under the current system. For example, a corporate executive could transfer stock options in exchange for favors or other consideration.

Even in Civ, you could give something to another player, in exchange for that player aiding you in a war against a 3rd party.

Wodan

[LzPrst]

i like the review.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11

How can one man earn in one hour, what a hard working man makes in a month ?! Even our president (more a representative figurehead here) commented on this, reminding that people will have a problem with this.

That's because people are both greedy and envious. Any highly progressive tax system will result in those who contribute most to the country leaving it.

Up to a point, they can handle slightly higher taxes and heavy bureaucratic governance. Beyond that, they simply refuse to play ball and there are many places that are quite happy to take them.

There would also be an increase in tax evasion and black market activity so the simple answer that you arrest anyone who does not play by the rules does not take into account the costs of catching them.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by wodan11
Well, Unimatrix, I believe the suggestions I made are not fraud even under the current system. For example, a corporate executive could transfer stock options in exchange for favors or other consideration.

Even in Civ, you could give something to another player, in exchange for that player aiding you in a war against a 3rd party.

Wodan

Well, wouldnt that be a little like the complemental currency, Blake is talking about ?
So if the guy gives away stocks he´d have to give them to people who havent hit the max, yet. Fine. The purpose is to share. I have not much of a problem if the rich guy can to some extend choose with whom he wants to share.

But, to be more concrete, and i can only talk about german laws, if you want to avoid heritage taxes by gifting for example, the law says, that a gift is something you do without anything return or conditions attached. You cant even say: "I give you all my money now, if you promise to take care of me, when i am old" - thats a trade, not a gift, and thus gets taxed. I would guess your example above would fall pretty much under the same category, but since i am not a lawyer i dont know (and have little hope of finding out, because lawyers MUST charge for their services by law - and i am not gonna pay to find out ).

In Civ, pre-corp, if you have 5 rice, you cant capitalize on them directly, but can choose who to give them. Often you dont get the same value in return, which results in a net-sharing (or "loss")...

EDIT: You, know the value of services can be estimated, too, and actually that million$ we are talking about needs to be regarded like a speed limit: If its 50km/h, people tend to drive 55-60 and the police doesnt say anything, but if somebody drives 80 and gets cought, he is in trouble. So its not really needed to account for everything down to the last penny and with the limit being set sufficiently low, i would still be absolutely for "in dubio pro reo" - when in doubt judge in favor of the accused... so if someone makes 1.2M$ a year and manages to disguise the additional 200.000 - fine. But it would be really hard to disguise a salery like the ones of our friends at Porsche for example. That would be like the speed of sound in the above example...

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by couerdelion


That's because people are both greedy and envious. Any highly progressive tax system will result in those who contribute most to the country leaving it.

Up to a point, they can handle slightly higher taxes and heavy bureaucratic governance. Beyond that, they simply refuse to play ball and there are many places that are quite happy to take them.

There would also be an increase in tax evasion and black market activity so the simple answer that you arrest anyone who does not play by the rules does not take into account the costs of catching them.

I did say, that such a legislation would only work if implemented globaly and would be like national suicide if implemented only nationally. After all i did write a couple of chapters to proove that nations by now are competing with tax-breaks for upper-classes and companies just to make them create jobs there - that dependancy of individuals has extended to dependancy of whole nations and that thus the true power has shifted from them to corparations and banks. So what is needed is something like a labour union for nations and we do have such an organization already, that could add this function to itself - the United Nations Organization. It should strive to empower itself and it can only do so, if it manages to "take the power back" to its members. It can advocate democracy as long as it wants to, it doesnt make a difference, when democtratically elected bodies (are forced to) serve corparate interests anyways, because they themeselves became subject to competition for profit.

[nbarclay]

If more than half the members of the U.N. like being in Police State or Hereditary Rule, what are the odds of the U.N. passing through a resolution supporting Universal Suffrage? That type of problem exists in the real world, not just in Civ.

[Unimatrix11]

Yeah, i agree - there is very little hope...

About Chavez: So he lost the vote about allowing him another term (not him being dictator for life as i read it in the newspaper today - free press, uh ?) and socialist components being integrated into the venezualean constitution by 49/51 - that he even put that on the vote, along with him loosing it, and by what numbers, should show everybody how much of an autocrate he really is. Compare that to US-backed Mr. Musharaf in Pakistan. In the GDR for example, the result would have been something like 99,86% "yes" - in the US it would have been 50/50 with a court saying that the vote has accepted the proposal of the government (remember 2000 ?)...

[nbarclay]

What happens between elections is at least as important to maintaining a fair democratic system as the elections themselves. A fair democratic system requires that the government must respect the right of people on both or all sides of a political dispute to express their views on an equitable basis so that voters can have a fair opportunity to understand, discuss, and debate the issues before they vote. If a government uses its money or power to give one side a major artificial advantage over the other, it is impossible to have a genuinely fair democratic process even if every vote is counted fairly. The only way the people in power can lose is if they pursue policies that are so unreasonable or outrageous that they can't persuade a majority of voters to support them in spite of their unfair advantage.

From what I understand, Chavez uses government power to give his views an enormous, unfair advantage over the views of his critics. If that is true, it makes him something far less than a fully legitimate democratic leader. I consider him to be in a gray area in between genuine democratic leaders on one end of the spectrum, and dictators who refuse to allow any but the most rigged of voting on the other.

Regarding the 2000 presidential election in the U.S., from what I've heard and read, my understanding is that the recounts the Democrats wanted were conducted to see what would have happened, and would not have changed the outcome of the election. So while the courts played a major role in determining which process would be followed to determine the official vote tally, the courts did not, as it turned out, have any impact on who won. That is a bit different from the picture painted in the Civ IV event that seems to have been inspired by the 2000 election.

[Kuciwalker]

Someone please put this thread out of its misery.

[Blake]

Threads can't be miserable. They don't have feelings.

[Solver]

Well, in some cases, even threads can be miserable. There may even be a Zen-like explanation to that And this is certainly an example by now.