Corporations have been around since at least the 1600s in one form or fashion. They weren't always called corporations. They didn't act in all the same ways modern corporations do. But the essential concept of a corporation is simply an association of people who get together to seek profit or for some common enterprise. And that's been happening since people needed to fund ships to go and get tea from the South China region and bring it back to Europe. And so these tea companies, which were funded by an agglomeration or group of people, were some of the first corporations. The difference between those corporations and the ones we see today are those corporations needed to be chartered by governments. You needed to be powerful to get the rights to form a corporation. And so these corporations were formed by the already rich and powerful who would then solicit their rich and powerful friends to get involved in, effectively, a state venture. In fact, early corporations were actually called patents. You may be familiar with patent law or intellectual property law. A patent gives you a monopolistic right, a unique right to exploit a technology. And a corporation was seen the same way. You had the unique right to do this particular business. Sort of the inverse of what we think about today in terms of competition. So these kinds of corporations have existed since we've had industrial history. Since we've had a mercantile culture and divisions of labor. So this isn't new. What's new is that in the 1850s in America, we began allowing what we call free incorporation. Various states (and this is the beauty of federalism, because we can have experimentation among states), various states began creating laws that allowed corporations to form in their state. And you didn't have to get permission from the legislature. Almost anyone could do it. And we saw in the 1850s, or at least the mid 1800s, as a result of these free corporation laws, a huge increase in the number of American corporations that started to look like what we identify as modern corporations today. It was actually in that period that America surpassed the rest of the world in terms of number of corporations. And I think it's a big reason why after the First and Second World War, we were prepared to take the reins as the economic center of the world. Because we had the corporate presence here. Again, free corporate presence, as opposed to some of the older versions of corporations, which were really government granted monopolies to go and engage in business together. Now we're talking about a free market system where people can enter into, without having to give special favors to Congress