A meeting of high-profile investors and corporate executives held recently in New York heard from one CEO how the structure of his remuneration would allow him to make more in a few years than in his whole career. All he had to do was eliminate spending on research and development and use the money to buy back the company's own shares. Just one drawback: the company wouldn't exist after 10 years, said the CEO.It is becoming increasingly evident that if we don't stop paying our executives as if there's no tomorrow, there might be no tomorrow. Not in the sense of the end of the world, but there will be a very uncertain tomorrow for a capitalist system that has as its bedrock large, powerful, listed companies whose professional and often anonymous shareholders reward top managers for boosting short-term share price performance. The New York meeting was held to discuss ways of securing "tomorrow" and addressing this short-term obsession.For the past 30 years or so, corporate executives have been allowed to do almost anything in the name of maximising shareholder value. Now there are signs of a backlash.Writing recently for global investment management firm GMO, economist James Montier argued that the obsession with maximising shareholder value had contributed significantly to three powerful trends over the period - declining and low rates of business investment, increasing inequality and a low labour share of GDP. The rise of first Japan and then China fitted in well with maximising shareholder value and exacerbated all these trends.Economist William Lazonick continues the argument in a recent Harvard Business Review article, contending that much of what passes for maximising shareholder value is in effect value extraction rather than value creation. He also challenges the notion underpinning maximising shareholder value, which is that shareholders' value must be maximised because they take the risks, pointing out that employees and taxpayers are far more at risk than shareholders, who can exit easily.In South Africa, maximising shareholder value didn't take a firm hold until the '90s. But it quickly caught on. Now lives can be destroyed and untold misery created - but if the CEO can point to increased shareholder value, all is forgiven and he becomes a hero among his peers and is extremely well rewarded.Typical of South Africa's pursuit of the maximising shareholder value strategy was the "reform" of pension and medical aid provisions for employees, widely regarded as both efficient and a major enhancement of shareholder value.But, as Lazonick might have pointed out, it created nothing, all it did was reallocate existing value - away from employees and into the laps of shareholders.Inevitably, the obsession with maximising shareholder value saw executive remuneration being tied to shareholder value. Bribing executives this way ensured nothing was out of bounds.In 1999, South African executives were gifted with the ultimate "maximising shareholder value tool": a change in legislation that allowed companies to repurchase their own shares; US companies had been allowed since the '80s. It essentially allows insiders - management - to manipulate the demand for, and therefore price of, their company's shares, and by reducing the shares in issue secure an easy fillip to earnings per share. Share price and earnings per share are the two critical factors determining executive remuneration.South African executives were initially slow to use the new facility but since 2005 have done so much more enthusiastically. Just how enthusiastic has become apparent for the first time from a recently published PhD thesis.Despite the enormous potential conflicts of interest and the huge amounts of money involved, the JSE has taken a strangely "lite regulation" approach to repurchases.Perhaps it will take many more years for South Africans to realise the dangers highlighted by the CEO in New York. It may be too late then...