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Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs.

In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn\\u2019t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them. Corporations enabled everything from the construction of ancient Rome\\u2019s roads and aqueducts to the artistic flourishing of the Renaissance to the rise of the middle class in the twentieth century. By recapturing this original spirit of civic virtue, Magnuson argues, corporations can help craft a society in which all of us \\u2014 not just shareholders \\u2014 benefit from the profits of enterprise.

Shermer and Magnuson discuss: corporations and what they are for \\u2022 LLCs \\u2022 Roman corporations \\u2022 medieval economics \\u2022 banks \\u2022 guilds \\u2022 Credit Mobilier scandal \\u2022 Dutch and British East India Companies \\u2022 stocks, bonds, joint stock companies \\u2022 monopolies, duopolies \\u2022 assembly lines \\u2022 multinationals \\u2022 raiders \\u2022 private equity firms \\u2022 start-ups \\u2022 antitrust, trustbusting \\u2022 bankruptcy \\u2022 bitcoin, cryptocurrency \\u2022 Adam Smith\\u2019s critique of corporations \\u2022 profit and market efficiency \\u2022 slavery and economics \\u2022 unions.

William Magnuson is an associate professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Previously, he taught law at Harvard University. The author of Blockchain Democracy, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg. He lives in Austin, Texas.