> This mechanism isn't dependent on CEO pay, because the CEO is always beholden to the shareholders, and shareholders always want more money

Legally the CEO has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders. In practice, can we honestly say that every CEO of a publicly traded corporation acted in the long term interests of EVERY shareholder and didn't just parasitically extract value from the company for themselves and a handful of LARGE shareholders? Facebook is essentially the personal property of Mark Zuckerberg