With the kickoff of the NFL season underway we found these comments regarding CEOs and the top quarterbacks interesting…

Elan Journo, writer/editor for the Ayn Rand Institute says it’s morally proper to pay top salaries to successful CEOs for the same reason that it is morally proper to do so for Super Bowl quarterbacks.

Journo says in order to have a winning season the CEO’s strategy must encompass countless long-range factors. He must devise a game plan to grow the business in the face of competitors, not only in the company’s own “league,” but also in all the leagues in the world. The CEO often calls the plays years in advance, and often for a team of tens or hundreds of thousands of workers whose livelihoods depend on his judgment.

And in the business world, every day is the Super Bowl. There is no off-season or respite from the need to perform at one’s peak.

The difficulty of running a corporation also makes good CEOs as hard to find as great quarterbacks, with the similar result that companies pay millions to valuable CEOs, so they will not be hired away by a competitor.

Journo concludes, “Just as we admire a quarterback’s skills and understand the importance of rewarding him accordingly, justice demands that we appreciate the long-range, life-enhancing mental skills of successful CEOs and admit that they too deserve every penny of their salaries.”


What are your thoughts on the subject?

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