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There is, obviously, or every CEO would already be making a trillion dollars a year. Specifically, they need to convince the owner(s) or their representatives to pay them that much. And the more money they pay the CEO, the less profit they make. Why do you think the board is any less incentivized to cut staffing costs than managers? They're the ones applying that pressure!
As for the actual reasons why the market looks like it does: I'm pretty sure the thinking is much more about ensuring you've got someone who's experienced and reliable enough to avoid any major corporate screwups (which can easily run into the billions) than attracting some business genius to lead the company to glory. But if everyone wants experienced executives with a record of reliability and no one wants to take a chance on someone who isn't there yet... Well, that's how prices get bid up.
These are not at all the same thing. They value the CEO over any other individual in the company, yes. But, as OP pointed out, they're paying him less than half of one percent of their total payroll. Sure, you can't reduce all of Roman history during Caesar's reign to Caesar... but I'm pretty sure you can attribute 0.5% of it to him. He did actually make a lot of decisions that impacted the lives of many Romans, many as a result of his particular circumstances. Upwards of 2-3%, I'd bet.
In general, the strong form of the case against the Great Man Theory is clearly false. Stanislav Petrov and Stanislav Petrov alone prevented nuclear war. Many times events don't neatly follow from the choices of any one (or even several) specific individuals, and sometimes when they do those choices would probably have been made by someone else in their place, but it's ridiculous to insist that's always the case. But I don't think most actual historians push the strong case; the point is just that other factors matter too, and often matter more. Which is in no way incompatible with thinking good leadership really does matter.
Musk is an outlier, for sure. But he's an even bigger outlier in terms of success. You can say he just got extremely lucky (twice, since SpaceX is an incredible success too), but I don't think that's where the balance of probability lies. Now, I'm not sure his compensation is reasonable even given that fact... which is why I haven't put any money into Tesla. (Well, I mainly haven't because I think other companies are quickly catching up, if they're not already there.) If more people thought like me, Tesla's stock would drop and he wouldn't get those huge bonuses... So there's your limiting factor. Clearly the people with skin in the game do feel he's worth it. They might be wrong, but it's their money they're betting.
It's a bit different though. The pressure to cut expenses comes from the top down. But there's no one above the board of directors who can hold them accountable- they're already at the top! Many of them serve on multiple boards at once, and rotate in and out of CEO or other C-level jobs at other companies, so they have a strong "class interest" in pushing up CEO pay in general. They might get some bad press or worker grumbling about unfairness, but there's no one that can actually fire them for setting the CEO pay too high. In theory I guess the general stockholders could all come together to do it, but they're so disorganized that it never happens. The only practical way to force them out is for some corporate raider to do a hostile takeover, and even then there's golden parachute clauses designed in part to preevent that sort of thing.
also worth noting that the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay has massively increased over the last few decades. So it may well just continue to increase until they're taking home some large fraction of the company's total revenue as their personal salary. Or maybe the CEO ends up with all of the company's stock (making it harder and harder for regular shareholders to oppose them) and they become a private company, like SpaceX already is.
edit: most of the starbucks board members are current or former CEOs of other companies. They directly benefit from raising CEO pay, since that sets a higher baseline for themselves to justify their own pay. This isn't some abstract "class consciousness thing," there's a very small group of CEOs and board members who are tightly connected.
I wonder if he was awarded 1% of all the USSR's money as a reward for his services? That should be fair, right? Or did he not get anything at all? Our intuitions for what's fair really fail at this kind of scale. (edit: he was not rewarded. it was seen as an embarassment for the entire Soviet system and was quietly swept under the rug)
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