# Help me understand CEO pay **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2011, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-ceo-pay/605397 "2011-12-07T18:56:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2011, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-ceo-pay/605397/81 "2011-12-10T10:19:41Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > My whole point is that there doesn’t have to be collusion. There need not be any agreement among the participants for this to happen. Any individual could use their position on a board to drive up pay, and reap the benefit of a rising market. My point is that one board member, on one board, is not going to impact the overall market in any material way. Unless there’s collusion, there would have to be the simultaneous but unconnected acts of most board members (one board member by himself has only one vote) on most boards, all of them acting deliberately and dishonorably to vote for overpayment to a CEO (breaching their duty as guardian of that company’s best interests) in the hope that this single act will somehow indirectly create a personal benefit somewhere down the road, but only if a bunch of other boards behave in a similarly slimy manner, just coincidentally. That’s outrageous and farfetched, IMO. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-understand-ceo-pay/605397.md?page=4)