People are always talking about the free market as if it was some kind of self regulating physical law of nature that could never be wrong.

What's so absurd to think that people from one class (CEOs/VC/etc) want to help people from that same class even if it's against the laws of the free market?

If I help someone who kinda identfies with me, it raises the chance that they will help me/my friends/my family in the future.

> What's so absurd

Because it goes against Occam's razor.

People pay CEOs a lot. Why do they do that?

Likely: because they have to.

Unlikely: global conspiratorial private welfare programme.

Do you think investors are, as a rule, rational in the sense presumed by the efficient market hypothesis? Do you think they might be subject to biases that lead them to overvalue their own self worth, and by extension, the worth of people like them?

You made the value judgement, not me. I'd put it down to "keeping up with the Joneses", personally.

"keeping up with the Joneses" by... pushing the Joneses up? Does not compute.