Right. In a situation where people may die, the leader must risk his own life to protect the lives of those under him. In a situation where people may lose their livelihoods, the leader should risk his own livelihood to protect the livelihoods of those under him. How is this analogy inappropriate?
* People understandably put a very high value on their life continuing, and really don't want to trade it against other things.
* People vary a lot in how much value they put on their job continuing, and how much they are willing to trade off against it.
For example, many people would consider taking a 2x raise even if it increased their chances of losing their job in the next 3y from 5% to 50%, but you're not going to find many takers for a 50% chance of death in the next 3y no matter what you're offering.
You can have a culture where jobs are treated as sacrosanct as lives, who are nearly so. In a culture like that companies would be extremely cautious about hiring in a way that would make workers overall worse off, and startups with be much less practical. Europe is farther in this direction than the US, though not all the way to what I think you are proposing with your analogy.
No one is saying that jobs should be "treated as sacrosanct as lives". The argument put forward by waylandsmithers is about responsibility and accountability. If we make sea captains legally accountable for the lives they are charged with, why don't we make CEOs accountable for the livelihoods they are responsible for (i.e. that they make decisions about)?
