Paywalled but overall I’ve come to the conclusion that executive pay isn’t as insane as it seems. Like yeah okay there are outliers that are insane, but it’s actually a super difficult role to hire for, and certainly not a role AI can replace soon. It involves:

• high levels of creativity
• good taste and sound judgement
• a ton of politics and emotional intelligence
• mental stability and reliability
• a lot of intangible skills that are hard to survey
• connections & networking
• often unique and original views of the world
• organizational skills and high level problem solving

These aren’t skills to be taken lightly and they take years to develop, to be a good manager & bear responsibility for the lives of many employees. If AI made proposals, someone still has to actually judge which ideas to pursue, so you can’t really get rid of the job. Maybe you could reduce the amount of executives. But when a company has leadership that’s actually coherent and works, employees like them, it’s a goldmine that needs to be protected by the owners

I am currently reading your list and imagining world’s richest man and none of those fit. He’s the dumbest fuck I know

Yeah like I said, there are insane outliers. But you gotta give it to him, he did crazy and creative things nobody else did successfully, over and over, and there is a clear intentionality to his conduct. He does indeed network very efficiently. I can’t imagine him being easily replaced either