| Despite his impressive academic credentials, Mangione doesn't understand how corporations profoundly benefit society. They enable innovation, collaboration, and progress that would be impossible otherwise. How exactly? Let me count the ways... - Pooling resources. Corporations allow individuals to pool capital, skills, and resources, enabling ventures that would be too large for any one person to undertake.
- Collective ownership. Through shares, corporations distribute ownership among many, incentivizing broad participation in economic growth.
- Limited liability. Shareholders are only responsible for the money they invest, not the corporation's debts or liabilities. This legal protection encourages investment and risk-taking, driving innovation and growth.
- Risk mitigation: By spreading financial risk across many investors, corporations can fund large, long-term projects, such as building infrastructure or researching new technologies.
- Funding R&D: Corporations can reinvest profits or raise capital to fund research and development, leading to groundbreaking technologies in medicine, energy, transportation, and more.
- Entrepreneurial innovation: Entrepreneurs can create startups with the backing of corporate investment and acquisition, fueling an ongoing cycle of innovation.
- Employment: Corporations are a major source of employment, offering millions of jobs around the country and the world.
- Economic multiplier: Corporate activities generate wealth not just for shareholders but for entire communities through supply chains, tax contributions, and consumer spending.
- Cross-border trade: Multinational corporations connect economies, facilitating the exchange of goods, services, and ideas worldwide. This also helps maintain peaceful relations.
- Cultural exchange: Through operations in diverse regions, corporations contribute to the sharing and integration of cultures.
- Capital markets: Corporations are integral to capital markets, enabling individuals and institutions to grow wealth through stock investments.
- Infrastructure development: Corporations often fund critical infrastructure like highways, energy grids, and communication networks.
- Perpetual existence: Unlike sole proprietorships or partnerships that dissolve when the owner dies or leaves, corporations can exist indefinitely. This permanence fosters long-term planning and stability.
Corporations provide us with limitless goods and services, provide employment and job training, pay billions in taxes annually, and offer us investment opportunities to fund our lifestyle or retirement. I'm not suggesting that corporations are without flaws. Businesses are run by fallible human beings. Sometimes they make mistakes, breach contracts, use poor judgment, harm individuals, or damage the environment. When they do, the transgressors should be punished. Yet on a net basis, corporate contributions to society are overwhelmingly positive. They enable large-scale collaboration, innovation, and investment, play a pivotal role in advancing peace and progress, and dramatically improve our quality of life. Yet Mangione is hardly alone in not understanding this. Check out this new report from Reuters... In the days since Luigi Mangione was charged with murder for gunning down a top health insurance executive, more than a thousand donations have poured into an online fundraiser for his legal defense, with messages supporting him and even celebrating the crime. In New York, "Wanted" posters with the faces of CEOs have appeared on walls. Websites are selling Mangione merchandise, including hats with "CEO Hunter" printed across a bullseye. And some social media users have swooned over his smile and six-pack abs. Wow. As morally confused as these people are, I'd like to believe they aren't evil enough to shoot an innocent man in the back in cold blood. Yet one thing is clear. They share the suspect's ignorance about how the world actually works. Good investing, Alex P.S. There are programs on campus to educate students about essential political and economic freedoms. But they aren't part of the curriculum. They're offered by an amazing non-profit called Students For Liberty. To learn more, please watch this brief Zoom call I gave on Tuesday. This is how we create more talented young leaders - and less Luigi Mangiones. | 
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