I think the underlying problem here is managerialism [1], which is mainly a cultural problem [2].
The way that one solves cultural problems is mainly by talking about them. If enough people are saying, "Hey, this prohibition thing doesn't work," and do it for long enough, then eventually the unquestioned cultural assumptions dissolve.
So my question for you is: why are you standing in the way of people doing something about it by being a jerk?
As with alcohol prohibition and, later, drug prohibition, I think the legal environment flows from the cultural notions.
Managerial pay has gone up not because executives are hundreds of times smarter or more competent than a couple generations back. It's because the cultural notion of executives as a higher corporate caste has become much stronger.
In other words, it's not that we rationally measured the value of CEOs and paid them accordingly. It's that we stopped really thinking about it. In, more ore less, the same way that people stopped thinking rationally about drugs for some decades. The change in marijuana laws in the US is now happening not because of new facts, but because of new attitudes.
A shift away from managerialist thinking might similarly trigger new laws. But I doubt it will work the other way around. Especially given the new research showing that laws basically respond only to the interest of rich people and businesses: http://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gilens%20homepage%20materi...
It worked pretty well for alcohol prohibition, and appears to be working for drug prohibition.
I think it has a reasonable chance of working for managerialism over the next couple of decades for a few reasons.
One is the giant spike in inequality. The elite are capturing more and more of the money, causing more and more resentment.
Another is the shift in public communication. For a while, most of the information people received was filtered through mass media. The internet has made it much harder for moneyed interests to dominate what people see. HN is a great example; I'll probably read 5x the words from commenters versus the original article, and much of it is contrary or probing. And a lot of what is linked here is not commercial media; it's individuals publishing directly.
A third is a shift in communication costs. Large companies had a major advantage when communication was hard and expensive. But now that it's free and easy, people have less need to work in highly controlled corporate structures. Thus the rise in freelancing and entrepreneurship. It also makes it much easier for people to switch jobs, reducing the effective power of a managerial elite.
I think those together are having interesting effects. It's my hope that we'll shift back toward seeing executives as stewards of valuable organizations of people, and less treating them as magic sources of all value.
The way that one solves cultural problems is mainly by talking about them. If enough people are saying, "Hey, this prohibition thing doesn't work," and do it for long enough, then eventually the unquestioned cultural assumptions dissolve.
So my question for you is: why are you standing in the way of people doing something about it by being a jerk?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managerialism
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Eco...