I actually think the opposite should happen. I think currently that much too much success of a company is attributed to its leadership, which is why execs are paid so insanely disproportionately compared to everyone else. When you start saying "You have to take the blame for everything that happens in a company", it actually ends up concentrating even more wealth at the top of the pyramid.
As a somewhat macabre example, with CEOs now literally becoming targets after the UHC assassination, I read an article on how many top execs now deliberately take themselves out of the running for CEO. Why put a giant target on your back like that, when you'd still be paid incredibly handsomely to be SVP or whatever but be 10 times more anonymous? So what that does is shrink the potential CEO pool even further, and then these folks demand even more compensation.
To emphasize, I think what we have at present is close to the worst of all possible worlds if CEOs are paid a king's ransom but then escape responsibility when shit goes bad. But I think a better answer is to more evenly distribute both the spoils of success and the responsibilities in a business.
I don't think that's the opposite? Seems like you also want the responsibility to match the power, I agree that in general it should be more evenly distributed, I want a system that can correctly capture outliers. I think that flattening would be the consequence if the power-responsibility curve became more linear, our current reality is nowhere near that.
It's broken at the most baseline level where an individual stealing $1k will face much harsher consequences than an employer stealing $1k of wages.
What happens when the employee steals $1k of wages (by slacking off or lying about sick days)? Even fewer consequences than occur when the employer fails to pay wages that are due.
The problem is you're not going to fix the obscene compensation scheme for the CEO position. There is no stomach for that.
So, I'm with OP. They're going to have ridiculous compensation, therefore they should have personal responsibility if something goes wrong. Justify that big paycheck and put your money where your mouth is if your want it.
I don't think that's the primary reason for CEOs being paid a lot. I think a much bigger reason is: For large companies that manage large amounts of resources, company-scale decisions are extremely impactful, and therefore it may be net beneficial to pay tens of millions to get someone whose decisions are slightly better. For example, someone who on average makes 0.01 fewer billion-dollar mistakes per year is worth $10 million per year on that count alone.
The risk/reward scale with the stakes. If billions are at stake, then it's fine if CEOs make millions. But yea, if you lose billions and destroy the company, the C suite should personally get cleaned out and creditors should be able to garnish their wages for the rest of your life like alimony. This stuff should be written into contracts to weed out grifters.
As a somewhat macabre example, with CEOs now literally becoming targets after the UHC assassination, I read an article on how many top execs now deliberately take themselves out of the running for CEO. Why put a giant target on your back like that, when you'd still be paid incredibly handsomely to be SVP or whatever but be 10 times more anonymous? So what that does is shrink the potential CEO pool even further, and then these folks demand even more compensation.
To emphasize, I think what we have at present is close to the worst of all possible worlds if CEOs are paid a king's ransom but then escape responsibility when shit goes bad. But I think a better answer is to more evenly distribute both the spoils of success and the responsibilities in a business.