And they will not deserve to be honored by their fellow citizens back home. By contrast, when firms fulfill their responsibilities to their own full identity, they strengthen commerce, and commerce is the foundation of a free polity. Commerce multiplies human opportunity and generates economic growth and thus opens upward pathways for the poor. Commerce promotes inventions and discovery. As new talents rise and obsolete technologies die, commerce constantly stirs the circulation of elites.
Commerce helps to establish a complex system of checks and balances.
Further, commerce makes resources available for projects outside the orbit of state activities and thickens social life while subtracting from the power of the central state. To summarize, the success of many new businesses from the bottom upward is crucial to economic growth. The success of these businesses is crucial to the success of democracy, especially where large majorities are poor. All these goods belong not solely to Americans, but to all people on earth. Being a business leader today, then, is a highly moral profession.