No. That's the free market exactly. It was his money. He did with it what he wanted, even and especially if you didn't think that was what he should have done.

Ugh, enough with the "free market". Are you familiar with the terms human capital? Social capital? Your perspective seems to suggest that any extra profit not invested in mergers and acquisitions is money wasted, but the fact of the matter is that moves like these are a sound investment and signals a commitment to building human capital.

Ahh yes. The "testosterone" fueled view of capitalism that thinks optimizing your own wealth and profit must always be associated with a combative, gladiatorial narrative. In this individuals particular situation spreading that money to reward employees is likely the smartest way for him to optimize his own wealth. His employees love him which secures his ongoing wealth accumulation (who fires a popular CEO). I assume he has a significant stack of stock options that continue to increase in value through motivated retained employees.

I'm not allowed to downvote, but I'd like to. There's a huge problem with the conflation of rational principles with ethical principles.

When we say the "law of gravity" it's a way to understand how the world works, not an edict from some moral authority.

If you're so sure the 'value' being created here is so low why not quantify it? I don't see how you can declare 'he could have created a lot more value' when it seems to me the value here (the morale boost to the company, the goodwill engendered, etc) is somewhat unquantifiable.

People doing what they want to do with their own money is "unbecoming of the principles of the free market"? WTF?

Hey, ease up. It must be terrible to be enslaved to a worldview that has accumulation of wealth as its ultimate goal.

s/accumulation/concentration/ is more like it.

I don't agree with the parent comment above yours, but here is something interesting to ponder:

What if he'd taken that 3 million, put it in a big pile and burnt it?

The "free market" doesn't want you to do this, because it needs that money to be back in the market somehow (investing, start up, salaries, purchases, whatever)

Doing 'whatever you want' with your own money is not exactly what the free market wants you to do.

As a slight aside, while I'm not burning my income, I'm not a good "market citizen" in the eyes of the free market. I have no debt, no cell phone, no car. I grow and hunt my own food, live off grid (no bills) and spend the least amount of money possible. This, the "free market" does not want. Imagine if even 25% of people in developed countries did this from now on. Market collapse.

There is no "free market" apart from the desires and actions of its participants. If he decided that burning the money was the thing he wanted to do with it, then that's what the "free market" wanted to do with it too.

Yep. Otherwise it isn't free.

Burning money, by the way, doesn't actually destroy value. It just increases the value of all the other money in circulation. So in effect it's a gift to other money-holders.

The KLF burned a million pounds and filmed it. Then the played the film in car parks to homeless people.

He has already done that by motivating his employee :)

[Citation needed].