Risk and reward

The former-but-one Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, makes pretty much this point in his book Market Whys and Human Wherefores.
"It was as obvious then as it is today that the only people in the business who were subject to no risk at all were the ones being rewarded for risk-taking. They would walk off with millions, whatever happened to the company."
The point being that in today's global market, governments can't afford to lose the money/investment/whatever of TNC's operating in their territory and so there is no risk for large employers/investors any more; government[s] will pick up the tab because they can't afford for the system to get too shaky: heads they win tails we lose. So let's cut the bovine back-slurry about rewarding risk and legislate directors pay globally so that it is a proper and decent share of the profit [and no profit = no pay]. Oh and that means dealing with the issue of tax havens and company registrations as a global issue.

In this article, George Monbiot points out the stupidity of allowing 4 people to siphon of £40m rather than using that money to fund decent redudancy payments etc for workers.
And genralising he goes on to say "The owners reward the executives for profit rather than investment, so the managers sacrifice the future to the present. It’s arguable that the staggering returns the high street banks made this year should not have been treated as profits at all, but as the money which might have protected them, and us, against bad loans when the next recession arrives.".

He then goes on to talk about some very interesting ideas about workers' co-operatives an how they don't might yet work. THere's a very interesting case study in this: "After the Argentinian economy collapsed in 2001, about 160 businesses were taken over by co-ops.(3) Some of them have done so well that the owners, who had been unable to make them pay, are now suing the workers in the hope of taking the factories back. One of the reasons for their success, according to the Washington Post, is that they have dropped their “higher-paid managers from the payroll”."
Not eveything in the garden is rosy, and the article explores that. But it's a model worth pursuing more, and finding better ways to enable in certain circumstances.
George Monbiot � A Vehicle for Equality: