The joke’s gotten old: As companies export more and more rank-and-file positions to low-cost job markets like India and Mexico, the CEOs signing off on those moves rake in multi-million dollar paychecks. With every instance of this disparity, suggestions of consistency are offered, in the form of shipping out the high-priced corner office occupant for a discounted emerging-economy model.

It’s in that spirit that Lawrence Orlowski and Florian Lengyel have put some apparent number-crunching and brainwork into the ROI of outsourcing the executive offices:

Current chief executive compensation creates what economists term a perverse incentive. An American chief executive, who is paid an average of $11.3 million annually, gets rewarded enough in one year to exceed the lifetime standard of living of 99.99 percent of the world’s population. Even if he’s booted from his job because of poor performance, he’s set for life.

It is far better for shareholders to have chief executives whose compensation packages are based on the long-term performance of the company. Or in plain language, it is better to have a “hungry” executive instead of one who stays fat and happy even when the corporate ship capsizes into the troubled waters of bankruptcy.

In addition to perverse incentives, the current level of chief executive compensation creates opportunity costs. The money saved by hiring a cheaper executive can be invested in even more offshoring initiatives. A virtuous circle of shareholder profitability can be established.

I re-read this op-ed piece a few times, wondering if I wasn’t missing the punchline. In some ways, it reads like dry-wit satire, only because the concept of deconstructing the transnational corporation hasn’t seriously ventured into this realm (yet). And it’s not like the architects of the cost-cutting mantra are going to cut their own throats, shareholder pressures aside.

But the piece is so straightforwardly rational that I’m missing whatever wink-wink-nudge-nudge is hidden within. Actually, maybe that’s where my perception of the humor is coming from: The tragi-comic notion behind massive efficiency.