There's a school of thought among "economic leftists" that the disconnect between US productivity and average US worker wages since the 1970s, is due to a decline in "outrage constraint."[0] Executives didn't pay themselves that much more than their workers because it would essentially be considered "uncouth" to do otherwise. They might be rich, but they would be condemned and considered pariahs among their peers. You could optimize your personal gain, but the reputational damage would be be so suboptimal for your firm that you'd wind up in a net worse position.

Social norms and conventions have significantly shifted since then. It is now entirely acceptable for executives to pay themselves several hundred times the average worker compensation[1]. There is no longer any real cost, reputational or otherwise, for optimizing for your personal gain So you might as well get yours, and fuck everyone else. Sure, some people with "Sanders 2016" bumper stickers will whine on Reddit about you, and maybe they'll even get together and yell at some buildings until they collapse due to a combination of in-fighting and tear-gas. But for the most part, you'll just shrug, order another round of layoffs, and think about how much your RSUs will appreciate in the inevitable stock price bump.

And if you're truly concerned about reputational risk, and can't reconcile that some people in society will still think you're a "bad person" for this, and the thought of being a bad person causes too much discomfort for your liking, then you can literally compare them to Hitler and find a sympathetic audience.[2]

I have to imagine -- and yes, I literally have to imagine, because I don't have any quantitative evidence and don't pretend otherwise -- that this is essentially a sociopath mindset (perhaps best explained by the Gervais Principle[3]) that then trickles down at every level of most professional organizations. When you're optimizing for your personal gain, you don't have a lot of time to consider things like "empathy" or "fairness." This is unfortunate to those disposed to such personality traits like the OPs father, because they essentially get eaten alive in the modern American workplace. At many professional organizations, the approach is binary. If it's not "fuck you, got mine" then it's "fuck! you got mine."

HN is known for having a significant population of those who that there is nothing wrong with this, and if the most productive members of society happen to be sociopaths, then they should be rewarded as such as their productivity is what drives the human race forward. But what's unfortunate to me is that this means some of our society's most brilliant and productive people will essentially get marginalized in their professional (and indirectly, their personal) lives, not because they lack some level of competence, self-reliance, productivity, etc, but because they're incapable of embracing a sociopathic mindset to professional advancement.

I have no problem with those who want to make their fortunes in any way possible, so they can retire to Galt's Gultch with their fortunes. I suppose I only question why they're so hell-bent on having only assholes for neighbors.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/23/opinion/the-outrage-constr...

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/25/t...

[2] http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/the-rich-strike-back-1...

[3] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/