When I started to think about this question about defense, I began to vividly recall my graduate school economics professors drilling into my brain that the singular purpose of a company is to maximize value for investors and stakeholders. Full stop. Not defense or risk mitigation, but rather innovation and value maximization. This was premised on the work of the Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Friedman, and his landmark publication, “The Social Responsibility of Businesses.” In this article, Friedman stated that: “a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers…which is to responsibly conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society.”
A Love Letter to Los Angeles
Happy birthday, Los Angeles. You turned 241 on September 4, 2022, but no one said anything. The city government wrote something for your last…