He's also saying startup CEOs have it too cushy. He's saying they can just cruise from startup to startup, and while they may not get OMG rich, they can live a pretty well-off lifestyle.
Which he's arguing, not entirely unreasonably, reduces the chances they'll swing for the fences. They can take less risk and still get a fairly guaranteed reward of a good level of comfort.
Think about who benefits from the CEO living an ascetic lifestyle and that then being a "cap" on everyone below them. I read this whole thing as an appeal to young founders to screw themselves over.
In the old days of Unions, people willing to work for no money would get beat up, because fools like that ruin life for everyone else.
The types of people willing to destroy their health and have no family, no significant others, no interests outside of work should be thrown in jail because all they do is drive down the quality of life of everyone else.
The more that these kinds of myths spread, the worse our lives will be. As software people, it's essential that we counteract this romanticization of economic exploitation, or we will be dragged down with all the clueless fools who buy it into.
I can't get behind beating people up or putting them in jail. Maybe a scolding and/or a sternly worded letter. Or, if people are taken in by the hype, maybe even on a place like hacker news, raise awareness of your objections in the form of a comment.
Putting people that harm society in jail is one of the few ways to actually deal with these kinds of social issues.
Your kind of gutlessness is pretty much exactly why the world has been gifted to neoliberal extremists. Normal liberals lack the courage of their convictions. They're afraid to do anything beyond sending a stern letter.
Your pathetic sternly worded letters go straight to the paper shredder. The corporate state doesn't care. Capitalism doesn't care.
The only truth that capitalism recognizes is power. The only way to stop neofeudalism is through strength and power.
Putting people in jail as I said is really not an effective policy. There are far better policies. But I'm not actually making a specific policy recommendation, I'm arguing that normal modes of individual behavior that are condoned by American capitalist democracy are not effective at solving these issues. To solve these issues the only choice is to do things that your neoliberal masters would consider immoral. The point is that what they call a sin is actually virtue, and vice versa.
Using your muscles/strength/laws/guns/brains to ensure economic safety for everyone is a virtue
The thing is, it's well within people's rights to use their time as they see fit, and that is going to include behaviors I don't agree with or I feel are destructive. This is what it means to live in a free society. I can't throw someone in jail because they fell for some VC bullshit. It's just insane.
Let's put aside the fact that it'd be hard to establish a set of behaviors of similar severity on which to jail people (and build consensus on, because it's not right to jail people on one person's opinion); if society put up such a low bar for jailing people we'd have more jailed than free people. There are behaviors that society has deemed destructive and you can be jailed for; taking a low salary does not appear in this list.
With these areas you are frankly not going to get traction talking the way you do. There's lots of injustice out there, there has been with every political and economic system created to date or what's likely to come in the future. When you are outnumbered like this the best approach I can think of is to live well, be an example to others, and be frank about your opinions to those who will listen. (It's an overused example but as I write this I'm starting to think of the example of Gandhi here.) Talk of guns, beating people up, jailing them for what is in many cases just innocent/naive people doing what society expects of them, does not strike me as constructive.
Edit: To be clear I'm not saying that drastic political change (i.e. through legislation) doesn't sometimes have to happen. I'm saying you need pick your battles wisely. Jailing people for accepting a sub-$100k offer does not make sense.
Which he's arguing, not entirely unreasonably, reduces the chances they'll swing for the fences. They can take less risk and still get a fairly guaranteed reward of a good level of comfort.