Quote from: smscotten on August 14, 2013, 05:33:38 PM

Quote from: J603 on August 14, 2013, 04:48:20 PM

Looks like I missed the point? Maybe you can argue that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sat around twiddling their thumbs, and just by chance they made billion dollar companies, but Zuckerberg made Facebook. Without him, it would not exist. So how could Facebook make a dollar let alone millions if it never existed?

I see two points missed. First, no, you can't argue that either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs sat around twiddling their thumbs. I know that wasn't your point but it should be said. It's easy enough to demonize Bill Gates as the monster behind the Microsoft monster or whatever, but the guy wrote BASIC for the 8080 without having a 8080. And Jobs didn't become a marketing guy until after he and Woz built computers from his garage.

All this misses the point doubly, however, as all three examples are or were not just CEOs but founders. Anyone who claims you don't need a genius idea and the technical chops to make it happen is a fool. But there is a long way between saying that Gates/Jobs/Zuckerberg deserve to be billionaires and saying that most corporate executives bring anything at all to the table. There is a huge difference between starting with no guarantee of a salary and using one's vision to build something and taking on a multimillion dollar job with a multimillion dollar golden parachute, making a few decisions and then taking credit for the short-term success of the company which, if it can be directly linked to that persons actions, are usually because that person did long-term harm to the company.

There are a thousand James Taggarts for every one Dagny.

I picked those examples because I could think of them off of the top of my head. But I fail to see why they don't count. Because they were founders? So what is your point, then? That if a CEO comes out of nowhere (which doesn't happen), and sits there doing nothing at an already established business he doesn't deserve the money? I agree, and so will the board of directors when they fire him and get him replaced. CEOs have to do something beneficial. And since they run the company their decisions and actions are going to million dollar decisions. It doesn't matter whether they were founders or not, or whether they can cover losses from the beginning.

If Zuckerberg had had a "million dollar parachute", but still came up with Facebook, would he not be deserving of money? Why is it a prerequisite that someone be poor (Zuckerberg wasn't poor anyways)? If an individual already personally makes millions, why can't they make their company millions?

Take Elon Musk. Using the success of PayPal, he has founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla, using partly his own designs. He had a safety net, but SpaceX's success (which is groundbreaking) and Tesla's would not happen without him. If that pneumatic train idea works, he will have yet another successful business.

Heck, even Donald Trump who's no doubt an ass personality-wise still has made a ton of money for his various companies. He also started with a safety net.