Episode 258: William Magnuson
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Exploring the Role of Corporations in Society
Corporations are engines of progress and prosperity, directly influencing the quality of life of the general public while sometimes recklessly pursuing profit at the expense of us all.
William joins Greg for a nuanced examination of the modern economy’s central institution, its origins in the Roman Republic, where corporations were designed to promote the common good, their role in mediating influence between the tyranny of government and the populace, their flaws, and the cultural shift to turn increasingly to corporations to solve society's biggest problems rather than the public sector.
William Magnuson is an associate professor at Texas A&M Law School. Previously he taught law at Harvard, worked as an associate in Sullivan & Cromwell, and as a journalist in the Rome bureau of the Washington Post. He is the author of Blockchain Democracy: Technology, Law and the Rule of the Crowd, and has written for numerous leading publications including Harvard Business Law Review, Stanford Journal of Law, Business and Finance, and the Wall Street Journal.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
Creating corporations then vs. now
15:27: Today, if you want to create a corporation, I could log on right now and form a corporation within the next five minutes, and I could include in my charter a provision that would say my purpose is all purposes that are legal. Now that's a remarkable change. It used to be you had to go in front of a sovereign and ask them for permission and show why you were going to be good for the state. Nowadays, you can just create immediately.
25:55: It's hard to deny that the sole, single-minded pursuit of profit sometimes, maybe even often, leads to harm to society.
The cultural shift in the way we view corporations
16:22: There's been a cultural shift in the way that we view corporations. It used to be, we thought of them as a tool, right? This tool would be used to promote the common good through the pursuit of commercial endeavors. All right? You had to justify yourself to the sovereign. Nowadays, we don't think of that.
Who influences your life today? The government or corporations.
12:00: You think about who influences your lives more today. Is it the government, or is it a corporation? Most people spend eight to nine hours a day working for corporations. Most people are not doing that for the government. That gives you a pretty clear indication of the importance of corporations today.
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