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People should be free to choose what is best for themselves as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same. I created this blog to discuss issues I have with big government, liberal media,and to talk about my support for capitalism and the Iraq War.
7 comments:
Well, it's a problem for you in as much as it shows how your free-market narative doesn't really pan out. We could have a discussion about how I'd feel if he had retired with $165million after leading the company to record-breaking success, but as the article mentions, this is not the case.
He quit with this huge payout just after teh company reported it's greatest-ever quarterly loss.
The idea that modern capitalism produces efficiency and innovation by rewarding merit is ABSOLUTELY crucial to your narrative. The only way you can justify CEO's making so much money is that they're in a high-risk profession which allows them huge power to innovate and improve markets, and therefore we need huge rewards for success in order to ensure that the best possible people fill those roles.
If incompetence is rewarded as much as - or more than- competence, then the entire narative breaks down, and it becomes abundantly clear that the highest levels of the corporate structure are simply comprised of a bunch of country-club elites who are more concerned with skimming the cream off the top of our economy than with actually improving it.
Let's just reiterate darwin's assertion. HE LOST HIS COMPANY 8 BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!
And it's not just like this is some company that the employees suffer. Everyone who invested in Merrill Lynch suffered. If you were an investor in Merrill Lynch and saw your portfolio go down the shitter while this f-bomb walks away with $165 million I think you'd be a little pissed. I know I would.
He had a bad quarterly loss - so what. That is not the whole story. I knowm MSM wants to make that the whole story in order to make CEO's look like asses.
But what they dont tell you is during his term how much money did he make for that company. It is such a big loss because the previous quarter was such a huge gain.
Also you might think this guy is just an ass who does not care about the little man.
Try again.
This guy got his start on the General Motors assembly line doing grunt work. He showed so much inittitve they gave him a scholarship to go to college. He then went to Harvard and then worked his way up the ladder that Merryl Linch.
Lets not jump so hard on this guy shall we. Jesus. He earned that money (most of which is coming from stocks he ownw, which he obviosly helped raise).
I know its easy and fun for liberals to jump on these guys - there easy targets. But do the math first.
Darwin is right. Fortunately this story illustrates nicely why free markets are desirable to anything else. This guy was ousted one week after his company dropped 2 billion dollars. Free markets did a find job responding to this problem.
Particularly if we compare it to an industry that is more modeled in a fashion Darwin would approve. Lets take teaching in Chicago. If a principal discovers that a teacher had been grossly incompetent over the span of a quarter would the principal by able to fire him in under a week. Clearly not.
Free markets provide a rapid way to punish inefficiency and this story does a very nice job of showing that.
Why is quitting with $165million a punishment? I agree that him leaving so soon after screwing up supports your model of efficiency in free markets on one level, but the fact that he wasn't really punished for screwing up undermines your model of the individual's motivation.
CEO's are supposed to be highly motivated and competent, and to be hugely rewarded because they take huge risks. If failure isn't risky- if failure can get you a $165million parachute- then the motivation for trying to do a good job, as well as the mechanism for ensuring that only the most competent people get the job- is missing.
Nobody said capitalism 'punishes' people. You really don't want the system holding people accountable for mistakes you want the system to respond quickly to those mistakes. When blue collar Joe gets fired for driving a fork lift through a pallet of fixtures should he lose his 401K plan as punishment?
I mean, I personally don't think he should because I'm a liberal, but wouldn't you say that he should? If he doesn't, then there's no differential in incentive between someone who was just in the 40th percentile of worker efficiency when teh company decided to downsize 40% of it's work force, and the guy who is so incompetent as to doom the company.
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