On September 13, 1970, The New York Times published an article by Milton Friedman castigating any managers of businesses who were “spending someone else’s money for a general social interest” – in other words, requiring customers to pay more, employees to be paid less, or owners to accept smaller profits so that the firm could exhibit some amount of social responsibility beyond the requirements of the law. Already, in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom Friedman had declared that “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.” Choices about whether and how to use money to remedy social problems should be left to individuals, he argued, who would be in better position to provide it if they were not being in effect taxed by corporate managers who thought they had better ideas for how to spend it.
Capitalism’s Future Is Already Here
But it’s unevenly distributed.
September 10, 2014