Over the past several election cycles, each election has been seemingly more meaningful and impactful than the last. And 2024’s presidential election is no different.

There’s a great deal at stake with former President Donald Trump going up against current Vice President Kamala Harris to serve as the nation’s 47th President—and the two are offering competing and, in many ways, vastly different visions for the country’s future.

That’s what was at the heart of a September 18 session at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, titled, What’s at Stake This Election Year, moderated by Ainsley Harris, a senior writer at Fast Company. 

That session’s panel was comprised of Asima Ahmad, cofounder and chief medical officer of Carrot Fertility; Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, global chief economist at Boston Consulting Group; and Ian Simmons, cofounder and principal of Blue Haven Initiative; and included a frank exchange between moderator Harris and Simmons, who laid out how threats to democracy connect to the economy.

“We do see democracy at stake,” said Simmons. “We do think political stability is at stake in this election, and that’s very consequential. Democracy has been shown to increase economic, political health, and social freedoms more than other systems. The more we lean into actually practicing democracy, the better the economy is for the long term.”

Harris responded that she was surprised more business leaders aren’t discussing the connection between a healthy democracy and a competitive economy: “Certainly, we’ve seen recently, for example, in Silicon Valley, a whole bunch of tech investors have put their weight behind the Republicans, and it’s been interesting to see that the idea of stability doesn’t seem to be as much of a priority for them.”

Simmons explained: “Yeah, I mean a lot of those are incumbent investors who have already made their billion dollars, so they’re more interested in the tax cut than investing in the future of the economy.”