Yeah, I'd argue for the opposite (and often do, in relation to increasing politician's pay).

You want people who don't need to play the game and buddy up to people if they want to improve their lot. You don't want people who see the role as a stepping stone to "better things".

Indeed, entering into a political space is a very expensive gamble and requires significant investment before one could obtain a return that is commensurate. If politicians do not have a way to obtain a return for their risk that puts them in the public's trust, then the profession will be filled with those who take the risk because they seek private reward.

Politicians are easy—reward them with a generous pension rather than a generous salary. Bonus points if part of that pension can be inversely tied to future private income.

I think it's the right move. It worked really well in academia in its hay days (1950-1990):

1. High bar to get a job.

2. Modest, but livable salary.

3. Long-term job stability.

This guarantees you don't really need to worry about money (unless you're super-greedy), but at the same time, no one was in it for the money. It broke when elite university compensation went astronomical ($1 million plus at the top-end), and job stability went away (no reasonable paths to tenure, and lots of adjunct / postdoc / research scientists / etc. positions).

With competition, the easiest way to land a tenured job is to lie and cheat. With high compensation, there are all the wrong reasons to do it. As a result, several elite schools are now cesspools of corruptions, academic misconduct, and (most legal but unethical) embezzlement.

We should go back to where:

* Jobs are stable

* Salaries are modest, but cover food+housing+basic essentials

* Benefits are strong

I'd say something similar is true for other not-for-profits. There are tons of exceptionally smart, competent, caring people who want jobs which provide meaning and have a positive impact on the world. To take them, they want to be able to feed their families. To stay there, you don't need to guarantee high income, so much as high stability.

There needs to be a difference between the stewardship roles and the doer/self-interests roles. You can pay the doer, but the stewards are ideally volunteers who care about the mission.

That this decision was made in the first place, and that ICANN took so long to withhold consent, shows that there are not enough stewards in either organization.

The problem was that oversight roles where hamstrung deliberately by the executive (doers)

Holding meetings in far flung and hard to get to places was one tactic

The actual problem is that the oversight roles didn’t immediately dismiss the executive when they pulled these tricks.

Your not wrong you need a strong chair and a commitment to good governance - I suspect there where a lot of buggins turn appointees with no experience in holding an executive to account.

Exactly right.

Singapore has ways to force people to be socially responsible.