Why business leaders ought to worry

North Carolina routinely makes national lists of the top states for business in America. The underlying economic data support such accolades. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, North Carolina’s private sector grew by an inflation-adjusted 3.1% last year — faster than anywhere else in the Southeast and all but five other states in the country.

As with stock or fund performance, past successes are no guarantee of future ones. North Carolina has bountiful natural and human resources, relatively light tax and regulatory burdens, better-than-average infrastructure, and other favorable conditions for business starts and expansions. Our regional and international competitors aren’t standing pat, however. They’d love nothing better than to attract the households, businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs now living in or headed toward North Carolina.

I think we’re up to the challenge. What worries me more than today’s list of unmet needs and unfinished reforms — there’s always going to be such a list — is what I perceive to be a growing undercurrent of suspicion, resentment, and outright hostility aimed at the business sector.

Gallup surveys, for example, have long demonstrated a greater public skepticism of “big business” than of “small business,” but even as recently as 2019 most poll respondents said they had a positive view of big business. By 2025, only 37% rated it positively while 62% had a negative view.

Within our own state, questions on specific issues reflect a sour public mood. A recent Elon University Poll found that 44% of North Carolina adults would oppose the construction of a data center in their community, with only 24% supportive and the rest unsure. An earlier Elon poll found 59% of respondents were concerned that a “growing oligarchy” of tech-company executives would use their power to threaten “basic rights and freedoms.” A Public Policy Polling survey found majority support for raising North Carolina’s tax rates on “large corporations.”

These aren’t the only warning signs. In Charlotte, for example, protestors explicitly identifying themselves as socialists just helped kill a much-needed toll-lanes project south of uptown and impose a moratorium on data centers. “End capitalism before it ends us!” proclaimed one of their signs. Other anti-business radicals hold office in counties and municipalities, or are seeking election this fall. It would be a costly mistake to assume candidates with similarly wacky views couldn’t win legislative or congressional seats, as well.

Just to be clear, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the owners or customers of new data centers to shoulder the cost of supplying electricity or water to their operations. Nor is all of the opprobrium aimed at big business unearned. Some companies have committed colossal errors, bent or broken the law, and abused relationships with collusive public officials to obtain subsidies, quash competitors, or gain other unfair advantages. And whatever its potential to accelerate economic development and alleviate human suffering, artificial intelligence presents plenty of genuine uncertainties and risks.

What is deeply unhealthy, however, is the sweeping demonization of entire industries — AI, tech, private equity, banking, pharmaceuticals, etc. — based not on careful study or empirically sound models but instead on unrepresentative anecdotes, ideological constructs, or vibes. Nor is it prudent to indulge the destructive but common human vices of despair or envy.

No, one’s lot in life is not primarily the result of impersonal forces over which one has no control. And one person’s financial success neither proves nor requires that others be unsuccessful or treated unfairly. True economic progress requires more and bigger pies. It’s about baking, not slicing.

CEOs and other business leaders have a critical role to play in tamping down the populist resentment that could threaten North Carolina’s continued growth and development. They can vigorously and repeatedly defend private enterprise and the principles of a free society. They can forgo attempts to secure targeted subsidies or special treatment from government. And they can model the very standards of honesty, openness, and stewardship that we should expect from all leaders, public or private.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.

“Why business leaders ought to worry” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.