Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so th […]
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sliderider wrote:

Malik wrote:

corporate bastar*s like EA and Bethesda are minting money by the second.

EA and Bethesda have thousands of employees who depend on their jobs to support their families. Should they be forced to take less pay so you can buy their employers games cheaper?

EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so the game company CEO and execs can get higher bonus and golden parachutes?

Really, I never understand some people's obsession to worship the Atlas instead of becoming a rational egoist themselves; people who treat corporations like sports teams, people who relentlessly defend their favorite corporation(s) using any debating tactics possible, including false assumption fallacy.

I'm a consumer, and more over, I'm a rational egoist consumer. When spending my hard-earned money, I seek to maximize my own interest, not the interests of Bethesda, EA, or Microsoft execs. I have no interest to put my hard-earned money on the holy altar of corporatism so the Atlas can have more expensive three-martini lunches. Granted, the job loss of game company employees is most unfortunate, but it is simply the height of naivete (or hypocrisy) to falsely assume that overpriced products is a necessity to support thousands of employees.

And those execs earn every cent of what they get paid. Have you ever tried running a global corporation? Those people have to get paid what they do or else nobody would apply for the job.

"What makes sliderider assume that the money raked by EA or Bethesda automatically translate to their common employee's benefit? "

What makes me assume that is simple economics. Workers who don't think they are getting paid enough go to work for the competition. If the employee is one that is not easily replaced, then it is in the interest of the company to retain that employee by paying them a little bit more rather than having to train someone new. That worker also has knowledge about projects that they are involved in that may be irreplaceable regardless of how much training the company does and can leave the company scrambling to meet deadlines if they leave.

sliderider wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so th […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

EA and Bethesda have thousands of employees who depend on their jobs to support their families. Should they be forced to take less pay so you can buy their employers games cheaper?

EA and Bethesda also have execs who depend on their jobs to support their SUVs. Should the consumers be forced to pay more so the game company CEO and execs can get higher bonus and golden parachutes?

Really, I never understand some people's obsession to worship the Atlas instead of becoming a rational egoist themselves; people who treat corporations like sports teams, people who relentlessly defend their favorite corporation(s) using any debating tactics possible, including false assumption fallacy.

I'm a consumer, and more over, I'm a rational egoist consumer. When spending my hard-earned money, I seek to maximize my own interest, not the interests of Bethesda, EA, or Microsoft execs. I have no interest to put my hard-earned money on the holy altar of corporatism so the Atlas can have more expensive three-martini lunches. Granted, the job loss of game company employees is most unfortunate, but it is simply the height of naivete (or hypocrisy) to falsely assume that overpriced products is a necessity to support thousands of employees.

And those execs earn every cent of what they get paid. Have you ever tried running a global corporation? Those people have to get paid what they do or else nobody would apply for the job.

Please, not all CEOs are Steve Jobs. In fact, there are execs and CEOs who conveniently gave themselves very nice golden parachute after driving the company to the ground. Do you really think it's about their performance? Nope, they were able to give themselves such nice amount of money because they had the power to do so.

Have you ever really been in a global corporation? Do you really, honestly believe one's compensation fully reflects one's performance, while totally ignoring factors like office politics and corporate power structure? Did AIG execs truly earn every cent of what they paid? How about AMD execs?

And yes, there are concerns about CEOs being overpaid. And before anyone accuses the article of being from a socialist website, I'd like to inform anyone that is is actually a management website.

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ZD Net's Total Compensation Vs. Total Return To Shareholders chart (no longer online), shows that total return to shareholders was higher for many companies whose CEO compensation was under $500,000 than for companies who paid their CEOs multi-million dollar compensation.

Workers Unite
The AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch site gives people a lot of information about what they consider "the excessive salaries, bonuses and perks of the CEOs of major corporations". The site features a calculator that shows how your salary increase over the past five years compares to that of a CEO. They also give you tools to "take action to stop runaway CEO pay."

Is It Justified?
John Mariotti, president and founder of The Enterprise Group, asks "CEO Pay: How Much is Too Much?" and answers the question himself. Citing Derek Bok, he points out that as business becomes more complex, the demand for top executives increases and thus they command greater and greater pay. He also noted that such huge awards do little to motivate these outstanding performers, who are generally more motivated by challenge.

Mike Hughlett, Staff Writer for PioneerPlanet, thinks the reason why CEO pay soars so high is that CEO's pay generally is set by the compensation committee, usually comprised of other chief executives.

Graef Crystal, writing for the San Francisco Business Times, Uses Steven Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer to prove his point on CEO compensation: the composition of a CEO's pay package has nothing to do with his future performance and the CEO may not make all that much of a difference in whether the company is a success or a failure.

In her article "Lowering the Bar", WSJ writer Joann S. Lublin notes "Pay for performance? Forget it. These days, CEOs are assured of getting rich -- however the company does."

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As you may note, I may be a pinko leftist. However, I am not the one who said the line above; it is Joan S Lublin, the management news editor in Wallstreet Journal.

sliderider wrote:

"What makes sliderider assume that the money raked by EA or Bethesda automatically translate to their common employee's benefit? "

What makes me assume that is simple economics. Workers who don't think they are getting paid enough go to work for the competition. If the employee is one that is not easily replaced, then it is in the interest of the company to retain that employee by paying them a little bit more rather than having to train someone new. That worker also has knowledge about projects that they are involved in that may be irreplaceable regardless of how much training the company does and can leave the company scrambling to meet deadlines if they leave.

Are you trying to contradict yourself here? If it is easy for common employees to jump to another ship, then why did you rant about them being forced to take less pay if the company lower the prices? Supposed your assumption is true, that employees will be forced to take less pay if the company lower the price. But you also assume that they can easily jump ship. So why could they ever been forced to take less pay if they can easily jump ship as you assumed? Would you like to have your cake, or would you rather eat it? Kindly choose.

Where is the contradiction? I don't see it. It is a simple equation, company makes less money then employees can't expect to keep their current level of compensation. Sooner or later cuts will have to be made. If the company is charging their customers more, then they can afford to pay more. That is irrespective of what the employee is actually worth to the company. The employee may be worth $100K a year, but if the company doesn't have enough money coming in to be able to pay all employees in comparable positions $100K, then they won't be able to pay it without going broke.

It really is useless arguing with Communists.

sliderider wrote:

Where is the contradiction? I don't see it. It is a simple equation, company makes less money then employees can't expect to keep their current level of compensation. Sooner or later cuts will have to be made.

...and then you said yourself that employees can easy move to other corporation, making your previous point moot.

Let me repeat again, slowly: if you said that employees can easily move to other companies, then the cuts you mentioned above is of no consequence, because they will instantly move to other company to avoid suffering from such cuts.

So again, would you rather eat your cake, or have it?

sliderider wrote:

If the company is charging their customers more, then they can afford to pay more.

Being able to pay higher salary to common employees doesn't automatically translate to actually doing it, genius.

sliderider wrote:

It really is useless arguing with Communists.

Ah.... so, eventually, that word. 🤣

You know, this is what I've been suspecting for months since you ranted about "how heinously evil software piracy is", especially after you called Jason Scott a dickhead for doing service to society. So, instead of logically argue with your debating opponents, you choose to call them commies? Why, it sounds familiar.

But still, I wonder what's your take on the article about CEOs being overpaid. Do you prefer to logically refute its argument, or do you prefer calling them commies too? What, people writing for Wall Street Journal are now communists too? 🙄

badmofo wrote:

Kreshna my friend, the world is not that complicated. These companies - who make computer games remember - want your money, and my money; they'd probably even accept my mothers money despite her being a low income earner. To get our money they produce a product which they think we'll want to buy.

But - here's the important bit - we don't have to buy it. They can't make us.

Well, whether computer games are overpriced or not is another thing (although it should be noted Gabe Newell is concerned that game prices is too high - to the point it endangers sales). What's really annoying is sliderider's rather lousy attempt to use employee's welfare to justify high game prices, while in reality, it's quite typical in large corporations for CEOs and execs to enjoy most of the profit instead of Joe the employee. Worse, this article shows that compensation has more to do with power and position instead of hard work and/or performance.

sliderider, could you stop being such a wanker. I am neither (personally) a communist, or a capitalist. I started my activist adventure in the Danish Occupy movement, and I realised I had to use my brains, which means I have taken LOADS of pictures. But I am social, which means to you "WDK is bloody commie", when in fact I am not. Cause I am so tired of all those "isms" I am first and foremost a human being. And where am I political speaking ? not any where any more. Cause I can NOT see the fucking difference between my current "social democratic" government and the former. But I would NEVER vote for anything right winged at all.