It's Not Hard to Be a Job-Slashing, Pension-Grabbing CEO -- If You're a Sociopath

[Earth Bound Misfit]

By Thom Hartmann, Smirking Chimp
Posted on July 28, 2009, Printed on July 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141615/

CEOs in America pull in the big bucks because there's a shortage of people willing to destroy the lives of many other human beings

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that "Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the US... Highly paid employees received nearly $2.1 trillion of the $6.4 trillion in total US pay in 2007, the latest figures available."

One of the questions often asked when the subject of CEO pay comes up is, "What could a person such as William McGuire or Lee Raymond (the former CEOs of UnitedHealth and ExxonMobil, respectively) possibly do to justify a $1.7 billion paycheck or a $400 million retirement bonus?"

snip

So why is executive pay so high?

I've examined this with both my psychotherapist hat on and my amateur economist hat on, and only one rational answer presents itself: CEOs in America make as much money as they do because there really is a shortage of people with their skill set. And it's such a serious shortage that some companies have to pay as much as $1 million a day to have somebody successfully do the job.

But what part of being a CEO could be so difficult -- so impossible for mere mortals -- that it would mean that there are only a few hundred individuals in the United States capable of performing it?

In my humble opinion, it's the sociopath part.

CEOs of community-based businesses are typically responsive to their communities and decent people. But the CEOs of most of the world's largest corporations daily make decisions that destroy the lives of many other human beings.

Only about 1 to 3 percent of us are sociopaths -- people who don't have normal human feelings and can easily go to sleep at night after having done horrific things. And of that 1 percent of sociopaths, there's probably only a fraction of a percent with a college education. And of that tiny fraction, there's an even tinier fraction that understands how business works, particularly within any specific industry.

Thus there is such a shortage of people who can run modern monopolistic, destructive corporations that stockholders have to pay millions to get them to work. And being sociopaths, they gladly take the money without any thought to its social consequences.

snip

Democracy in the workplace is known as a union. The most democratic workplaces are the least exploitative, because labor has a power to balance capital and management. And looking around the world, we can clearly see that those cultures that most embrace the largest number of their people in an egalitarian and democratic way (in and out of the workplace) are the ones that have the highest quality of life. Those that are the most despotic, from the workplace to the government, are those with the poorest quality of life.

snip

By changing the rules of the game of business so that sociopathic business behavior is no longer rewarded (and, indeed, is punished -- as Teddy Roosevelt famously did as the "trustbuster" and FDR did when he threatened to send "war profiteers" to jail), we can create a less dysfunctional and more egalitarian society. And that's an important first step back from the thresholds to environmental and economic disaster we're now facing.


This article is largely excerpted from Thom Hartmann's new book "Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture."

[aquart]

1. Hang them all in a row.

And don't ever think I'm joking.

[tomreedtoon]

3. Why? We've been worshipping sociopaths for decades.

Look at the characters we've celebrated in popular media. Freddy Krueger. Jason Voorhees. Nearly all the characters played by Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson. Sociopaths cut through all that silly moralistic crap that society and education pushed and "get 'er done."

All this time, we believed that the sociopaths were our defenders against political correctness, liberal passivity, all the things that kept our nation from being great. We never believed our Frankensteins would turn against us. Surprise!

[Lasher]

2. Laid out very well but I disagree.

The premise here is that current levels of executive compensation are justified by demand for sociopaths who are in very short supply. This sinister characteristic is common in chief executives at large corporations, but it is actually not that rare among their underlings (even with the additional qualifiers of a college education and business savvy).

Many CEOs love the power so much, they wouldn't quit even if their compensation were reduced to zero. So why are senior executives being paid so much? It is because the Boards of Directors have been totally corrupted.

BODs at publicly traded companies should represent the interests of shareholders. CEOs should be subservient to the BODs. But if there was a time when it worked that way, it doesn't today.

When corporations need a new member of the BOD, it is the CEO who most often decides who that will be. The BOD then puts it to a shareholder vote but the CEO's selection, and the BOD's complicit recommendation, are rarely opposed.

CEOs are usually members of their employers' BOD, and often the Chairman. And they are also commonly members of several other corporations' BODs. This can have sinister consequences such as board interlocks. But in every case you should expect a BOD to have greater empathy for their CEO if they themselves happen to be CEOs.

Senior executives should be strictly prohibited from sitting on any BOD. Not their own employer's and yes that includes nonprofits. You would see more board members who are spouses with different last names, etc, but all the same that would be a big move in the right direction.

[Gman2]

4. I think Sociopathy can be taught. Prisons, military do a bangup job

Situational sociopathy is taught to populations even. War propaganda is just that.

[bertman]

5. A problem waiting for a solution. Here's how one group of workers solved it.

Mob beats Chinese steel factory executive to death
Thousands of workers had gathered in northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua to protest the takeover of their company and threatened layoffs.
July 27, 2009

Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.

Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.

The protesters worked at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, which was going to be sold to Chen's privately owned Jianlong Steel. Chen sparked the riot by announcing 30,000 workers would be laid off, the newspaper said.

They dispersed later only after they were assured by authorities the sale would not go through.

-- David Pierson

Excerpted from July 28, 2009 LA Times.

However, I agree with Lasher that there are other reasons for CEO's to make so much money. But that doesn't mean that they are not sociopaths.

[bvar22]

6. Apparently, Sociopaths can achieve leadership positions in the Democratic Party too.

The recent debacle of Health Care Reform makes that obvious.