>The idea is that risk taking that jeopardizes lives has been encouraged but outsized rewards
That doesn't make much sense though. The size of rewards might incentivize how hard someone works for them and to what extremes, but the objective they're working towards depends on what the reward is, well, rewarding, which is a separate thing. It's perfectly possible to imagine a system where executive compensation was based purely around safety for example, say "$5 million for no flaw-derived fatalities during tenure of 10 years and another $5 million for no flaw-derived fatalities for anything manufactured during tenure for 10 years after retirement", or whatever exact numbers/details you wish. Of course, even that could be "outsized" in that too high+unbalanced a level might encourage the extreme of too little innovation. But merely saying "executives shouldn't get paid more than [number pulled out a random because who knows]" doesn't seem like a directed policy that'd help. And in fact is quite contrary to other comments calling for more personal responsibility and the like.
It's a perverse incentive; rather than acting for shareholders or the community the scale of CEO reward encourages action to preserve the reward. The scale of CEO pay demands that the only objective is to remain in post. I have actually witnessed this - executives sacrificing their friendship, relationships to children, business performance and health in order to cling on and get a £3m bonus.
I think you’ll just get less competent people with the same levels of greed. I’d see involving more skin in the game as the solution, not decreasing the rewards.
>I’d see involving more skin in the game as the solution
like holding family members hostage? Or perhaps violent mutilation on failure? The financial route has been ramped up as far as can be imagined - $100m's are paid to CEOs to fail, and to wreak the economy, society and the planet at the same time.
