Depending on what your business is your most valuable asset will be either real estate or people.   Seth Godin asks the questions "what’s of value to you as a business"?  He compares it to the value of good real estate for a Shopping Mall (where Location, Location, Location is everything).

For most businesses the thing of most value is people

"Expensive people are just like expensive real estate. If you invest in them, you may just find they pay off. Some businesses work as hard as they can to pay people as little as they can (witness the fights over the minimum wage). What sort of growing business wants the minimum wage? If your business is people-based, as opposed to machine-based, why wouldn’t you want people who command more than the minimum?"

I’m wondering if Seth is using that argument to justify the high salaries of CEO’s in most large corporations?  I’m thinking that he’s not making that argument (Executive pay salaries are an extreme case) - Think he means that whatever business your in you need to know what’s most valuable so you can invest in it.