Social responsibilty to make profits?
By definition, a corporate responsibility is to make profits for the shareholders and stakeholders.
I find this article full of blather. The addtion of “social” to a textbook definition is extraneous, or engineered inclusion.
In my mind Friedman has said a few things over the years that I found somewhat socialistic. Would capitalistic socialism be an oxymoron?
One needs to read to the end to make all of his previous statements clear. The title is correct. Reminds me of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”.
There was also that book called something like the “5,000 Year Leap”. The amount of progress that was made because the USA was built on capitalism and freedom. So many innovations, and so much wealth CREATED by giving people what they wanted. Benefiting ALL of society (social responsibility).
Last bit from the article:
But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collective doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom, I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”