Earlier this year, I had the honor of delivering a commencement address to a graduating class of business-focused college students. It was an opportunity not just to speak, but to listen—to the student speakers who spoke before me.
Given the celebratory nature of the occasion, I was surprised by one topic that came up again and again among the students, mostly business majors: regret. One student warned their classmates that the opportunities they’re too afraid to take are the ones they’ll wind up regretting most. Another observed that no amount of regret can change the past.
Their candor inspired me to warn them of a different kind of regret, the regret that would color every aspect of their lives, business and personal, should they fail to defend democracy.
Today, in the United States and around the world, we are in the midst of the most consequential competition we have ever known, between democracy and those working to undermine it for personal gain. The most tragic regret of all would be to see in our time the end of the greatest experiment in the history of the world, one that has fostered individual freedom, innovation, and wealth creation for over two centuries.
Study after study has shown that what’s good for democracy is good for business. In examining 184 countries over half a century, a MIT study found that countries switching to democratic rule experience a 20 percent increase in GDP over a 25-year period.
And yet democracy is in retreat. According to The Economist’s Democracy Index, almost 40% of the world’s population lives under authoritarian rule, a share that has ticked up in recent years, while less than 8% live in a full democracy.
Democracy provides not only the foundation for freedom, but also the fertile soil in which economies grow best. History shows that business leaders’ actions have an outsized influence in determining the strength, vibrancy, and ultimately the fate of democracy. That’s why I shared with the graduating students three principles all of us in the business world—from recent graduates to CEOs—should follow to avoid regret and protect democracy:
1) Don’t poison the soil underneath us—the soil of democracy.
2) Don’t let others poison it.
3) Work to protect it and enrich it.
First, let’s not poison the soil of democracy.
In his 20s, Republican party strategist Kevin Phillips helped formulate Nixon’s Southern strategy, an appeal to disaffected white voters in the South based on racial and ethnic divisions. During the 1968 campaign, Phillips summed up his philosophy to an interviewer: “The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”
Over time Phillips came to regret the politics of hate. The books he wrote later in his career addressed the dangers of ideological extremism, political corruption, and irresponsible capitalism.
The second, most-important principle is: Let’s not let others poison the soil of democracy.
When leaders demonize and dehumanize groups of people, it’s a short, slippery slope to corroding democracy by removing rights and denying equal protections.
Business leaders enable poisonous politics when they focus only on the next quarter’s earnings or winning a special-interest tax cut. Though some would argue that social issues are separate and apart from economic ones, they aren’t.
The German business leaders who enabled Hitler’s rise to power thought it would be good for their businesses. And in many cases it was, initially— but is also produced some of the worst atrocities in the history of the world, and eventually destroyed their nation.
Silence is shortsighted and makes us complicit in the crimes of others when we refuse to draw the line at politicians who deny election results, promise retribution against their opponents, characterize minorities as subhuman, and encourage violence against their enemies.
Microsoft took a helpful step forward by halting its political contributions to election deniers in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Instead, the company has invested in organizations building democracy. When 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists endorsed Harris over Trump in a recent letter, they emphasized that “Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.”
And in late October, when a large group of former CEOs of America’s largest companies wrote a public letter to oppose Trump, they concluded, “American companies and the U.S. economy are now the envy of the world, but that prosperity—unparalleled in world history—is dependent upon the societal trust, cohesion, and collegiality that have long enabled the American economy.”
Today illiberal populist movements threaten our democratic institutions in many parts of the world. When Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace looked at recent examples including Hungary, Brazil, and India, she found that illiberal movements, regardless of ideology, destabilize the business environment and larger global economic order. Social scapegoating goes hand in hand with slower economic growth.
After experiencing the loss of democracy in his home country of Venezuela, business leader and former Minister of Trade and Industry Moisés Naím said, “What I regret is not having been more clear and vocal about the attacks against democracy around the world.”
Which brings me to the third key principle for business leaders: Cultivate democracy.
Early in his career future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.” The future of democracy and freedom will hinge on civic leadership. Many business leaders have stepped up, participating in organizations like the Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan coalition of businesses that support fair and transparent elections, and using their influence to encourage every American to vote.
Business leaders of differing political ideologies can do even more by joining together in pro-democracy business organizations like Leadership Now Project, of which I’m a member. We need more nonpartisan pro-democracy business networks—groups that can best tend to the soil of democracy in which our economy thrives.
Research from the Brookings Institution found that democracy leads to economic growth while democratic decline contributes to instability, cronyism, and brain drain. Democracies “channel contestation into political compromise rather than political violence.” Business leaders—through our actions and our membership in business coalitions—have shown that we can disagree with each other on policies without creating rifts that undermine elections, enable political violence, stoke racism, fuel demonization, or advance misinformation.
As I underscored for the class of 2024, the foundation of real freedom—personal, financial, social, political—is real democracy. These are the freedoms we need to solve our biggest challenges.
It’s in our best interest to protect and strengthen the culture and practice of democracy in America. It’s an investment that those of us in the business community will not regret.
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