Most reasonable people -- even the most laissez-faire among us -- accept that excessive executive compensation completely out of line with performance is a serious problem in America.

Too often though, this gets debated as a populist issue with congressional hearings and rants from union activists. But at its core, excessive compensation is a corporate governance issue and the ones getting screwed over are the shareholders.

In a great column in the Sunday New York Times, Ben Stein explains the real root of this problem: supine boards of directors, motivated by cushy relationships with CEOs, perks based on kissing asses instead of creating value, and no real skin in the game.

The solution to this should be pretty simple, and it has nothing to do with protests, newspaper columns, or passionate (and televised) congressional hearings. What we need are more activist investors, rigorous enforcement of laws requiring that institutional investors vote their shares in the best interests of their fiduciaries, and for the SEC to improve proxy access rules, making it easier for shareholders to unseat under-performing directors. Unfortunately, the SEC under Republican leadership has backed the interests or entrenched -- and lousy -- executives and directors, not the interests of shareholders. That's wrong.

As Randy Cepuch wrote in his book A Weekend with Warren Buffett, the notion of corporate democracy is "pretty much a myth." That's going to have to change, or our country's competitiveness will be seriously jeopardized.