Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: Why CEOs are not worth their enormous salaries

By John M Legge

"By far the fastest way to obtain possession of something desirable is to simply take it: this cuts out the tedious process of bargaining with the object's owner and earning the wherewithal to settle the bargain.

Successful thieves need to protect themselves against the moral slurs as well as the physical retaliation, and they never have lacked for willing propagandists. "

Legge sees the period since the early 1970s as the unraveling of the democratic gains that had been hard won over thousands of years. For those opposed to the increases in rights for citizens the increase in democracy was OK as long as it was impotent. The problem with the 1960s particularly was that the voice of the people was not impotent.

Corporate bandits are those who oppose democracy, and certainly oppose the rights of workers and smaller shareholders to question what they do. Despite the fact that studies show the negative relationship between the increase in pay of executives and the company's performance. Rising inequality leads to lower economic growth and rising unemployment. Feudalism was overthrown by liberalism in the UK in the 1600s. It is remerging today.

(Dissent; no. 10, Summer 2002/2003)