Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its profits

http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html

1) Identify Friedman’s major themes and key points

- Friedman talks about the concept of social responsibility which basically is that people would leave their jobs to “join their country’s armed forces

- Corporate executive being in charge of the business and take responsibilities for making as much profits as there can be

- Although if the corporate executive decides to take up social responsibilities, “he is acting as a principal, not an agent; he is spending his own money or time or energy, not the money of his employers or the time or energy he has contracted to devote to their purposes. If these are "social responsibili­ties," they are the social responsibilities of in­dividuals, not of business.”

- Raise of political questions such as principle and consequences

- Principle: taxes are imposed so far as possible in ac­cordance with the preferences and desires of the public

- Consequences: A person cannot get away from the problem and that there is a line drawn from what is fair and what belongs to who.

- Unanimity: “ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all coopera­tion is voluntary, all parties to such coopera­tion benefit or they need not participate. No values, no "social" responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form.”

- Conformity: “indi­vidual must serve a more general social inter­est–whether that be determined by a church or a dictator or a majority. The individual may have a vote and say in what is to be done, but if he is overruled, he must conform. It is appropriate for some to require others to contribute to a general social purpose whether they wish to or not.”

- Social responsibility: “it forces people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult for them to "exploit" other people for either selfish or unselfish purposes. They can do good–but only at their own expense.”



2) What cultural values are most important to Friedman?

Cultural values that are important are they can be linked to social responsibility. For example, a person who wants to open a hospital would do so, just because he wants to serve the people rather than earn profits. Friedman thinks that the most important cultural values would be in between individualism and collectivism because people view social responsibility differently in that business man. Business man thinks that “ they are defending free en­terprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing em­ployment, eliminating discrimination, avoid­ing pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of re­formers.” Friedman feels that a corporate execute job mainly is to benefit for its business but if the corporate execute decides to follow their own interest and do something independently then this might affect the economy and the company.



3) Do you personally see a conflict between business and social responsibility?

Yes, I personally see a conflict in between business and social responsibility because social responsibility is often related to self interest therefore it does not benefit the economy as much as someone who is willingly to contribute to the society by accepting any job offers, where as business is not about who doing what job and are people happy with their jobs but is the labor force being productive and is goods being made and sold. Social responsibility is about contributing and giving to the community but business and about earning as much profits and it’s hard to do business if social responsibility is involved.


Work Cited


WASSENER, BETTINA. "Food Prices Push Rate of Inflation Up in China - NYTimes.com." NY Times Advertisement. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/business/global/food-prices-push-rate-of-inflation-up-in-china.html?_r=2>.